“Lunarpages – The Full Review”
Here is the information you MUST have before purchasing this web hosting.
Note: This is a review, Click Here to Visit The Lunarpages Website.
What kind of hosting plans does Lunarpages offer you?
Lunarpages is a full service hosting company that hosts on a variety of platforms such as Windows, VPS, Unix, dedicated servers and more. But you don’t need to worry about the wide number of services they offer. Most people looking for a hosting plan will only need their Basic Plan.
They offer different pricing plans depending on the length of the plan you buy, for example a 12 month plan is $8.95 a month, a 24 month plan is $6.95 a month, they even have a new 60 month plan for only $4.05 a month. There are some more inexpensive competitors out there but you won’t find the same quality of service as you will with Lunarpages. After all, you get what you pay for!
Lunarpages also offers what is called a Business Plan. There actually isn’t much use for it! I first noticed it when I started hosting my site with Lunarpages six years ago. It’s significantly larger than the Basic Plan which, at the time, only featured 100 MB of disk space. But Lunarpages keeps updated their Basic Plan, now it’s too the point where the Business Plan isn’t much larger at all! I mean, how could you make a plan with something more than unlimited space?
The Business Plan also costs a lot more. Would you believe they charge $21.95 for it? And this is when the Basic Plan also has unlimited space. Business Plan sites do come with a free dedicated IP but you can get that in the basic Plan for just an extra dollar a month!
If the Business Plan is so superfluous why do they still have it? I think it’s to fool new and old customers alike, what about the people who bought a Business Plan 6 years ago and have still been paying $21.95 a month, unaware that downgrading to a Basic Plan would save them so much money?
I also wouldn’t suggest the Lunarpages Starter Plan as it only comes with one MySQL database. Just think about it: unlimited disk space and bandwidth both.
It may be hard to wrap your head around that. I can easily explain to you the usage of limited disk space and bandwidth but how on Earth would I be able to describe unlimited space? Before Lunarpages began to offer unlimited space they were offering plans with 1500 and 15000 gigabytes of disk space. Those numbers are huge, but unlike unlimited space you at least have something to go by.
There are other web hosting services that boast about a large amount of bandwidth and disk space but often they’ll put ridiculous restrictions on your usage such as limiting the size of files allowed, how much bandwidth the site can use on a daily basis etc. Lunarpages doesn’t put any such restrictions on the usage of your space.
Click Here to Visit The Lunarpages Website.
If you wanted you could upload a 1500 GB file or your site could use up 15000 GB of bandwidth in a single day. Lunarpages CEO Ron Riddle prides himself on the fact that his hosting company doesn’t want in the way of letting people use the space they buy for whatever needs they have.
But how is their customer support overall?
I may like the amazing unlimited disk space and bandwidth available but the reason I give so much praise for Lunarpages is their excellent customer service. Lunarpages has hired a robust support staff to take care of their customers’ needs. And everyone on the staff are knowledgeable and helpful. You can expect any problems or questions you have to be treated with care.
You can contact the support team at any time via email at support@lunarpages.com and you can always expect a timely, detailed reply no matter if you’re already a customer or just have some questions about the service. They will always provide you with the exact information you need.
Why don’t you send them an email right now so you can see for yourself? Every email is also tracked by the same ticket system that the Lunarpages help desk uses. This is how I always send in request for support as it’s fast and convenient. You can email the support staff 24/7, whenever you have a question or require assistance.
Lunarpages also features its own help desk, or LunarDesk, where you can request help via an online form. This form then sends a ticket to the help desk. The ticket system will keep a record of every request you have submitted so that you can reference them at any time. The help desk also features an FAQ so that you can find help immediately without even submitting a ticket first.
At one point Lunarpages was using a third party help desk system called DeskPro. However, in order to provide their customers with better service they discontinued use of DeskPro to create their own LunarDesk!
You can also call for support by phone at 1-877-LUNARPAGES from either the United States or Canada. If you are located in the United Kingdom you should call 0800-072-9150. Anyone who is not in these countries will not be able to call the toll free numbers. International customers can call Lunarpages at 1-714-521-8150. I’ve gone for phone support several times and have always had a positive experience.
Lunarpages also has its own forum at LunarForums.com, here customers can help each other out on problems and discuss the service. You can find out a wealth of information from other users here. You’ll also find many satisfied customers praising the service.
A hosting company would have to be pretty confident in their customer support in order to create an open forum for customers don’t you think? As of this writing the LunarForum boasts over 35,000 members. On top of that LunarForums is one of the oldest webmaster forums on the internet.
On a scale of 1 to 10 I’d say their customer service is an 11! When my visitors ask me about where to turn for hosting plans I send them to LunarPages, especially if they are new to websites and will need a lot of assistance. That way I know they’ll be well taken care of by a friendly and helpful service.
You may have already read my other reviews of other web hosting services, I usually say if you have any outstanding problems with a host you can always forward it to me and I can take it directly to them. But I never say such a thing when it comes to LunarPages. I don’t have to, Lunarpages is just that dedicated to customer service and has such a superior support staff on hand, they don’t need a middle man like me.
A while back I sent them a ticket about a possible SPAM problem. I was surprised to find that no only did I get a real response in email but they also left me a voice mail message. If you don’t believe me then click on the Play button provided below and you can hear the voice message for yourself.
They investigated the problem I reported seriously and thoroughly. And they always make sure that their customer emails are always received properly and replied to in a timely fashion.
More Lunarpages Features
Host Multiple Domains With LunarPages
The ability to host multiple domains is an essential part of website hosting. Lunarpages gives you unlimited domains on a single account. That means you only need one hosting account in order to host every website you have. I’ve never had to start another account or search for a different hosting service for another website of mine because I can have it all in one place. This can also save you a ton in costs. Of course the downside is my reviews suffer because I don’t have much of an excuse to try out other web hosting services.
Video Instructions
Lunarpages features over 100 instructional videos to help you get started with the service. These instructional videos cover topics such as using the CPanel, changing nameservers, setting up your domain email, using an FTP to upload files, how to use Dreamweaver, Flash, and Microsoft Frontpage. Whatever you need to know chances are there’s a video for it.
A FREE Domain
With every annual plan Lunarpages offers you one free domain name. New customers can register their domain or transfer one they already have to Lunarpages for no extra cost. If the customer registered a domain it will be in their name and free for the first payment. This is an automatic feature, no need to remember coupon codes or other things of that nature.
PHP and MySQL Database
Lunarpages offers an excellent PHP platform an MySQL database. They ensure that their software is up to date with the latest versions and technology.
You might have noticed that I use MySQL and PHP as a huge part of my website functions. I use Drupal, the opensource CMS, to take care of the brunt of the website organization. There are also many PHP scripts running that require a MySQL database to store the data and structures they use. Lunarpages offers you unlimited MySQL databases.
PHP MyAdmin is also available in your control panel. The web-based interface helps you easily work with your MySQL databases.
You can even use a MySQL remote connect tool like SQLYog to remotely connect to and work on your Lunarpages MySQL server.
Lunarpages even allows you to choose what version of PHP your website is going to use. You can’t have both PHP4 and PHP5 at the same time, however most web hosts would instead force you to move to a different server if you wanted to use a different version of PHP. On Lunarpages you only have to select one of the two options in your control panel. I use PHP5 on my own website.
Sever Info
Lunarpages uses over 2500 servers to provide their web hosting service. They tend to add 5 more servers each month. New customers tend to be placed on the newest servers which have the most resources available. Lunarpages uses Dell PowerEdge 2850 servers, these servers us a dual Intel Xeon 3.2Ghz hyper-threaded processor with 5 x 73 gig hard drives using Raid 5 configuration and 4 gigabytes of memory. These servers cost around $10,000 each! And of course Lunarpages preforms a backup of the server information daily.
CPanel
Lunarpages has actually stopped using CPanel in newer servers in favor of LPCP. I have gone over this before in a previous blog post “LunarPages LPCP vs CPanel.” You can get LPCP at no cost but CPanel adds an extra $2 a month onto your service fees. You can choose which one you want to use when you sign up for an account with Lunarpages.
