Hostripples Review 2023: Is it Recommended?
Hostripples is a decent website hosting provider if you plan to get hit by ripples, not waves. In more understandable words, if you own a low-traffic website, Hostripples is an acceptable option; however, if it starts getting slightly more real-time traffic, your site might struggle.
The above statement is in comparison to other better and almost equally-affordable options like Hostinger.
Apart from that big problem, Hostripples is pretty much average, as you’ll find in this comprehensive review containing the info you need- SRT, loading speed, uptime, customer support quality, features, and more.
Hostripples Overview
Here’s everything about Hostripples in brief:
Our ratings | C- | 3/5 |
Average response time | ~ 185 ms |
Avg. response times in top-targeted countries | US: ~ 200 ms | India: 70 ms |
Uptime | 99.84% |
Support | Chat and email/ticket |
Site transfer | DIY |
Introductory Pricing | Starts at INR 35/mo |
Top features | 99.9% uptime guarantee, free SSL certificate, free site builder |
Company Information
Started in 2013, Hostripples is the web hosting services arm of Sarps Technologies, a multi-services providing company. It’s headquartered in Nashik, India, and also operates out of Delaware, USA.
Though it’s not as big a name as some of our favorite web hosting providers, it has data centers in India, the USA, Canada, France, and Europe. They claim to offer “the cheapest hosting on the internet,” which is not true; still, their packages are super-cheap. But are they worth considering? We don’t think so, and here’s why:
2 things good about Hostripples
1. Servers in India
The best part about Hostripples is it’s an India-based hosting provider and owns data center(s) in India. Meaning, your site’s performance would be at its peak for the Indian audience.
The simplest way to know how it’s better is by knowing the server response time or SRT. SRT is the amount of time it takes for the web browser to receive a response from the server.
We used a tool named Bitcatcha to measure it and found that server response time from Bangalore (an Indian city) was a mere 70 ms, which is well under the recommended 200 ms boundary.
Overall, too, the average SRT remained under 200 ms, making Hostripples a selectable option.
2. Two freebies
Hostripples offers two value-added features on its base plan. Generally, we would have criticized the hosting provider for giving only two freebies, but given the pricing of Hostripples, a free SSL certificate and a free professional email are appreciated.
3 Things Bad about Hostripples
1. Mediocre performance
Apart from SRT, two other metrics help us decide whether the web host in question is good or not: Uptime and Loading time.
Uptime is the total time during which the site is available. It’s a measure of reliability, and in our experiment, Hostripple proved to be quite unreliable. It offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, but our test showed a mere 99.84% availability. Compared to that, our preferred alternative, Hostinger, averaged 99.99% uptime.
Loading time is the total time it takes to load the full web page. For this test, we run a basic WordPress page through a loading speed measurement tool and aim to have the loading time under 1 second to recommend the host. Hostripples hosted site page loaded in about 950 ms, which is under recommended but not that impressive if compared to peers. For instance, Hostinger’s ~500 ms loading time.
Even more devastating is the fact that Hostripples’ servers seem overcrowded, i.e., fewer resources per site — they most probably are given the “cheapest” badge they wear. When we did the stress loading test, the site started struggling at way-lesser-than-usual virtual users.
2. Not quite "technical” support
Let’s assume you found SRT, uptime, and loading speed good enough to purchase a Hostripples plan. You tried installing WordPress on your domain but failed. What do you do? For one, contact technical support.
When we contacted the support team, we received a reply almost instantly — that’s great. However, the problem arose after that. It took longer than expected to solve our problem. Plus, the support rep didn’t seem technically sound, to be honest.
3. Possibly fake reviews
You are smart enough to read reviews like this one, but many people just visit the site, see the social proof they have advertised, and believe in all those 5-star ratings.
Our experience with Hostripples, as you can guess, was mediocre at best. However, seeing all these five-star ratings made us think it might be our standards are too high for a 35 rupee per month hosting...until we came across this:
Apparently, Hostripples’ customer reviews on the internet are fake. This is a great PR strategy to lure customers, no doubt, but we don’t appreciate it a bit.
Nextraone Hosting Plans and Features
Hostripples has plans for everyone, including individuals, SMBs, resellers, enterprises, SaaS companies, etc. Though we haven’t tried all the plans, here’s what they offer in case you were wondering: (Side note: For more info on types of hosting, read this)
1. Shared Hosting
For small and mid-sized websites, these are the shared plans Hostripple offers:
Linux shared plans - Plesk
These plans come with the Plesk Obsidian 18 control panel:
Name | Price (per month) | No. of sites | Storage (GB) | Bandwidth | Additional features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plan 1 | INR 35 | 1 | 2 | 10 GB | Cell |
Plan 2 | INR 97 | 3 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Cell |
Plan 3 | INR 149.50 | 7 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Cell |
Plan 4 | INR 199.50 | 20 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Free .com domain |
Plan 5 | INR 349.50 | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Free .com domain |
Plan 6 | INR 549.50 | 200 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Free .com domain |
Linux shared plans - cPanel
These plans come with the popular cPanel control panel and have comparatively more memory per plan:
Name | Price (per month) | No. of sites | Storage (GB) | Bandwidth | Additional features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plan 1 | INR 84.50 | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Cell |
Plan 2 | INR 117 | 3 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Cell |
Plan 3 | INR 169.50 | 7 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Cell |
Plan 4 | INR 219.50 | 20 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Free .com domain |
Plan 5 | INR 369.50 | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Free .com domain |
Plan 6 | INR 569.50 | 200 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Free .com domain |
Windows shared hosting
For ASP .Net users, these are the plans, including the Plesk control panel:
Name | Price (per month) | No. of sites | Storage (GB) | Bandwidth | Additional features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plan 1 | INR 84.50 | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | 5 email accounts |
Plan 2 | INR 160 | 3 | Unlimited | Unlimited | 10 email accounts |
Plan 3 | INR 360 | 7 | Unlimited | Unlimited | 25 email accounts |
Plan 4 | INR 625 | 20 | Unlimited | Unlimited | 60 email accounts, Free .com domain |
Plan 5 | INR 875 | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited email accounts, Free .com domain |
Plan 6 | INR 1350 | 200 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited email accounts, Free .com domain |
Other than the Linux and Windows shared hosting plans, Hostripples also sells SSD hosting, Fully managed WordPress hosting, Joomla hosting, Magento hosting, and more, all starting at INR 140/month.
If you plan to resell these shared plans to your clients, you can get similar plans to white label & resell. Of course, the control panel accounts and consequently the price will be more.
2. VPS
If you want slightly better & guaranteed performance, Hostripples has these two types of VPS plans:
Name | Price | CPU | RAM | Storage (Raid 10) | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Xen VPS | INR 2700/year + INR 479/month to INR 6000/month | 2 cores-10 cores | 512 MB-16 GB | 20 GB-500 GB | 100 GB-3000 GB |
OpenVZ VPS | INR 850/month to INR 6000/month | 2 cores-10 cores | 1 GB-16 GB | 50 GB-500 GB | 100 GB-3000 GB |
3. Dedicated Servers
For huge sites with lots of traffic, these are the appropriate Hostripples’ India-based plans (the ones we’re mentioning are the Quad-core plans; they also have the same plans with Hexa core CPU for Rs. 3000/month extra.):
Name | Price (per month) | CPU | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
IND QC 1 | INR 6500 | 1 x 4-cores | 8 GB | 1 TB ENTERPRISE SATA HDD | 500 GB |
IND QC 2 | INR 9000 | 2 x 4-cores | 16 GB | 2X1 TB ENTERPRISE SATA HDD | 1000 GB |
IND QC 3 | INR 10,500 | 2 x 4-cores | 16 GB | 2X1 TB SSD HDD | 1000 GB |
IND QC 4 | INR 13,500 | 2 x 4-cores | 32 GB | 2X2 TB ENTERPRISE SATA HDD | 2000 GB |
IND QC 5 | INR 16,500 | 2 x 4-cores | 32 GB | 2X2 TB SSD HDD | 2000 GB |
IND QC 6 | INR 15,500 | 2 x 4-cores | 64 GB | 2X2 TB ENTERPRISE SATA HDD | 2000 GB |
IND QC 7 | INR 19,500 | 2 x 4-cores | 64 GB | 2X2 TB SSD HDD | 2000 GB |
Conclusion | Do we recommend Hostripples?
Absolutely not!
Hostripples isn’t the worst hosting you’ll come across, but it’s definitely not one of the best. Yes, its server response time in India is excellent. Yes, it gives useful freebies considering the price. However, the main elements of web hosting — loading speed, server availability, customer support, etc. — are below par.
And we do not expect more than a “below par” performance from a web hosting provider that tries to be the “cheapest.”
In our experience, only a few providers have managed to give superb quality at a super-affordable rate. At the top of that heap is Hostinger, the one we mentioned throughout the review.
starts at ₹79 per month
Starts From
₹79*
monthly
• Best uptime (99.99%)
• Fast, 0.4ms load time as average
• Good & quick customer support