Don't confuse PowWeb with iPowerWeb as they are two different hosting providers. PowWeb is also one of the first hosts who offered large bandwidth with their plans to attract customers. They have been around since 1999 and have built up a good reputation in the cheap web hosting market. They offer one single hosting plan - PowValue and have over 40,000 customers.
Plan Size and Features
In October 2003, they upgraded their plan from 650 MB of disk space to 1,000 MB, and from 45 GB bandwidth per month to 65 GB. Just 2 months later in December, they removed the monthly bandwidth limit and implemented a 5 GB/day bandwidth limit. That means you can use close to 150 GB of bandwidth a month as long as you keep your daily limit to 5 GB. They are now offering the highest bandwidth of any host in this market.
They have included 1 MySQL database free in their hosting package and you can also install the osCommerce shopping cart (Homepage) from their control panel. With SSL and the shopping cart available, the plan is now e-commerce ready. They also offer a free domain name for 1 and 2 year orders.
Control Panel
PowWeb has developed their own custom control panel software, called the Member Operations Center or "OPS" (Demo). Most web hosts use commercial control panel software such as CPanel or Plesk. The demo will show you the features inside OPS. It is actually quite powerful and easy to use. It handles most of the basic tasks, from billing to setting up email accounts and registering new domain names.
Customer Support
Their email support is considered quite good and effective. They were able to answer all our questions and every email sent was answered promptly. In August 2003, they also added a toll-free line to their office, which is 1-877-4POWWEB (1877-476-9932). The toll-free line is available Monday to Friday 6am-8pm PDT and Saturday to Sunday 11am-4pm PDT. The line is available to US and Canadian customers.
They are also doing a great job of preparing a lot of frequently asked questions (FAQ) in their web site. You can find a lot of solutions to your common problems and also a lot of tips and tricks, such as how to create custom error message, how to do HTTP streaming for real audio and many more.
They also provide an online community forum as a place for their customers to meet (Just like LunarPages). It is a good place to meet some other PowWeb customers who are willing to help each other out. Web host with an open forum usually means they are quite confident of their services because they allow open discussion about them. An active forum with lots of customers also means that they have a successful and established business. Their forum has more than 11,000 members! Visit Forum
Limitations
A check on the features chart will show you that PowWeb lacks some of the common features expected from a web host. For example, they do not support email autoresponders. Although most people seldom use this feature, it is actually provided by almost all other web hosts. You should also note that their password protected directories are not controlled within the control panel but need to be configured manually with the .htpasswd file.
There is also a funny limitation - the maximum number of files limit. You cannot have more than 25,000 files in your account. It is funny because it looks like they are the only host in the whole industry that imposes this limitation. The limit is not so bad now because they allowed only 15,000 files before 10th January 2004.
They seem to be addressing most of the limitations we have posted here over the last few months. For example in January, they installed AWStats to allow their customers to view the traffic statistics of their websites. In December, they installed PHPMyAdmin as well. However, please note that remote access to MySQL server has been disabled since the implementation of PHPMyAdmin.
If none of the above bothers you, it should be considered as a very good plan.
Conclusion
Advantages - Large disk space and bandwidth, good customer support (email support), large useful FAQ and community forum to seek for help. Get a free domain name and 2 extra months of hosting if you order for 1 year (4 months if you order for 2 years)! The plan is also e-commerce ready. Now it even includes toll-free support!
Disadvantages - The plan is lacking some common features such as email autoresponders. Password protected directories must be configured manually. There is a maximum 25,000 file limit per account. MySQL remote access is disallowed.
Advice
Try to read other reviews especially LunarPages Review (Rank #1) and iPowerWeb Review before you make any decision on which web host to choose. If you want to go with PowWeb, make sure you order for at least 1 year to get a free domain name and 2 extra months of hosting. We strongly recommend you go for the 2-year order if your budget allows so you can get an extra 4 months hosting for free! With the added free months to your hosting, your averaged monthly price will become $6.66.
(duh!!!)
