Price: $7.77/month + Free Setup
Size: Unlimited Disk Space, Unlimited Bandwidth
Overview:
PowWeb has only one plan, PowValue Package.
A 3 months plan is at $47.31.
A typical one year plan is at $69.24.
A typical two year plan is at $138.48.
Customer Support - The choice is yours.
Email Support : PowWeb has a 24/7 email support, you can reach their customer support at support@powweb.com.
Community Forum - Customer & non-customer can join Community Forum for guides and faq. You can find informative review and answers there. The website is reachable at http://forum.powweb.com/
Phone Support - Toll free 7 days telephone support.
Special Highlight
1. Unlimited domain - Host unlimited domains on one single account.
2. PHP and MySQL - You can use PHP to create dynamic website. Or you may use MySQL database to create a database driven application with this hosting plan. Up to 5 MySQL databases is allowed. MySQL activation fee $10 waived.
3 . 30 days money back guarantee.
4 . Load Balanced servers. - Your website will never get overloaded because your website will be serve by 5 servers.
5 . Free domain - Free domain registration.
6 . WebSite Builder - An excellent tool for beginners or someone that needs to create a website quick.
PowWeb has been listed here since I launched this site. I am happy to see that there are still able to perform well. They are currently offering 35% discount for its 12 month plan ($4.88/month).
(Click Picture To Visit PowWeb Website)
Don’t confuse PowWeb with iPowerWeb as they are two different hosting providers. They have been around for a decade since 1999 and have built up a good reputation in the cheap web hosting market. They offer one single hosting plan.
Plan Size and Features:
Same like others, they are now offering unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth and allows you to host unlimited websites.
They have included 75 MySQL databases free in their hosting package. They also offer a free domain name for 12 month and 24 month orders.
Control Panel
PowWeb has developed their own custom control panel software, called the “OPS”. Most web hosts use commercial control panel software such as CPanel or Plesk. It is 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. The downside of using a custom control panel is learning curve. You have to learn how to use the control panel and if you choose to move to another host, you will have to learn to use the new control panel. Unlike picking a CPanel host, you can move around LunarPages, HostGator or BlueHost easily because they use the same control panel. You can also easily backup a CPanel site and restore it to your new CPanel host!
They no longer offer online demo to OPS so you can’t really try it before you buy. However, you can click on the picture above to view the complete screen capture of my OPS account, just to get the feel.
<>InstallCentral - Fantastico Replacement
Since they do not offer Fantastico Scripts Library (like in HostMonster and LunarPages), they are offering InstallCentral as a replacement but it contains less scripts than Fantastico. What included currently are Joomla, Drupal, Mambo, e107, WordPress, PixelPost, b2evolution, Gallery2, Coppermine, ZenPhoto, Gbook, phpBB, SMF, osCommerce, AgoraCart, ZenCart, Gregarius, MediaWiki, SugarCRM, X7Chat, WebCalendar, Moodle, OpenRealty and phpFormGenerator.
Customer Support
Their email support is very good and effective. They were able to answer all our questions and every email sent was answered promptly. They’ve 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 only. Live chat support is also available now!
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 20,000 members!
No More Limitations
They have addressed most of the limitations I have posted here ever since I posted this review 5 years ago. For example in January 2004, they installed AWStats to allow their customers to view the traffic statistics of their websites. Before that, they provide no web stats.
They also provide toll-free support and live-chat support later. You are now able to create password protected directories directly via the control panel. You are also able to setup email autoresponders now. We can see that they are constantly improving their hosting package.
PowWeb has also removed their maximum number of files limit. They used to have this “funny” limitation where each user cannot have more than 50,000 files in an account. It is funny because it looks like they are the only host in the whole industry that imposed this limitation. But now it has been removed.
They have increased their MySQL databases to 75 in February 2007 after I highlighted it in the review. There are lots of free scripts available to us today (such as forum, blog, etc.) and all of them require a MySQL database. Having more databases means you can install more free scripts. It is good that my writing does have an impact on them. 
Free Domain Name
If you are registering a new domain name for your hosting account, PowWeb will register it for you for free. This offer is only apply to 1-year or 2-years order. If you are transferring your domain/website to PowWeb, you will not get another free domain name.
Important Note!
About 2 years ago, Andrew Te, the founder and president of PowWeb at that time, left the company after he sold it to Endurance International Group. Endurance International Group has actively acquired many web hosting companies. Some of the acquired companies (such as iPowerWeb) suffer badly after the take over. Fortunately, PowWeb is still able to maintain its service quality. I hope future policies of Endurance will not affect the quality of PowWeb.
PowWeb has been around since 1999 and their service has been both cursed and praised ever since. At TopTenREVIEWS we have used a variety of hosting companies for our different sites, and PowWeb service for us falls into the middle range. Some of the things that make PowWeb less attractive: occasional downtime, fewer features, and inconsistent support.
Standout Features
DNS?Text RecordActive Community ForumLoad Balancing TechnologyHosting Package: 
PowWeb doesn’t have a bunch of different plans with various levels of features bogging you down with the conflict of choosing this one or that one. ?They offer one plan that has several different, quality features, such as unlimited disk space and monthly bandwidth.? It would be nice it if it had more features, but for the low price of?$4.88 you can’t go wrong with the multifaceted, high functioning plan they offer.
PowWeb supports the following software: FrontPage, PHP4, Perl5, Sendmail CGI-BIN, SSI, .htaccess, Cronjobs, Flash, Shockwave, Midi, Mulitmedia Support, MySQL databases and phpmyadmin databases.
PowWeb’s control panel, called the Member Operations Center, is of their own design. The six main functions on the panel include Main, personal, accounting, packages, domreg and history. The main tab provides you access to FAQs, submits questions to support, sales, or billing staff. The personal tab allows you to view or edit your personal information as well as add new user accounts. The accounting tab lets you create billing accounts, view online payments, add payment methods, and view account history. The package tab is where you will configure the meat of your hosting service-you can configure pop3 accounts, smtp, ftp, http, domains, MySQL, and SSL. The DomReg tab is where you register your domain names. The final tab is your history tab, which logs all the changes you make to your account.
Ease of Use: 
PowWeb has several superb features that are both high functioning and easy to use.? They are made easier by the company’s friendly, reliable customer service representatives.? You can also go on their website to read their thorough FAQ section.? If you’re still stumped, their active user community can connect you with those who are in the know.? Solving your problems will be easier than you expect.
Support and Service: 
PowWeb offers a few support options, such as email, live-chat and toll-free telephone support. The toll-free line is available Monday to Friday 6:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M. PDT and Saturday to Sunday 11:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. PDT. Technicians we spoke to were not always able to resolve our concerns right away.
PowWeb also offers online tutorials and a FAQ (frequently asked questions) section on their website. If you are new to web hosting, these tutorials and FAQs are quite helpful when setting up your site and other tasks. PowWeb also provides an online community forum where most of your e-mail questions will be answered, and a negative e-mail response will be available for everyone to see.
Site Creation Tools:
PowWeb offers an easy to use website builder, which offers the following:
Nine site pages.100 templates and various color schemes.Flash movie capabilities.Guest book.Business blog tool.SiteMap generator.Live statistics.Search Engine Optimization features.A site search tool.Tickers for important announcements.A voting tool for your visitors.A map generator (great for stores!).Server Access:
PowWeb offers 24/7 FTP access with the ability to unlimited users onto it.? You can transfer files using the simple web-based file manager that makes transferring files to different locations as easy as moving files around on your hard drive.? You will be impressed with how easy it is to get files for your website uploaded.
Marketing Tools:
PowWeb has several features, including email marketing, RatePoint and several other tools to make your site more visible on the crowded internet landscape.
Reporting and Statistics:
You have Webalizer and AwStats at your disposal using PowWeb. ?Both of them are fantastic programs by themselves, but when you put them together, a clearer picture of your website’s performance comes to light.? You can also get bandwidth reports, access/error/referral logs and real-time logging.
Summary:
Overall, PowWeb is a moderate web hosting company. ?They have excellent, easy to use features that are made even easier by their quality customer service representatives.? We would definitely recommend them for their reliability and low price for a package that’s loaded with all sorts of features you would have to pay more to get elsewhere.? You won’t be disappointed with them.
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