Heart Internet Review

You’ve found this Heart Internet web hosting review as the chances are, you’re doing some research into this provider to see if Heart Internet is suitable for hosting your website and you’ll find your answers inside this detailed review.

You’ll soon realise that there’s hundreds of different options available when it comes to web hosting services, and you cannot test them all to see which one works best for you, which can make it even more difficult to choose the right one.

With my decade of web hosting experience I decided to test companies such as Heart Internet to see if they do actually deliver what they say and I’ve published all my testing data of this company on this page.

Heart Internet was founded back in 2004 by Tim and Jonathan Brealey (creators of 123-reg and webfusion), although they both left the company in 2014 and have since gone on to launch the popular 20i hosting service.

Under their leadership, Heart Internet was named the ‘Fastest Growing Internet Company in the UK’ in 2009 by Deloitte with over 6000% growth in 5 years.

Since 2004, Heart Internet were:

However, since Heart Internet’s original leaders have left and the company is now owned by GoDaddy, it’s a shadow of it’s former self with nothing really original about it and is basically a clone of tsoHost (also owned by GoDaddy).

Around 10 years ago, their reseller hosting setup was an unbeatable, in-house built powerhouse that ran my own web hosting company until they hiked the prices and stopped updating their technology, so it all went a bit stale.

Heart Internet is a part of the Host Europe Group which is now owned by GoDaddy. The web hosting packages for both Heart Internet and tsoHost are identical as GoDaddy also owns Paragon Internet Group which owns tsoHost.

While I would not say that it’s the end of the road for this company, they are not far off putting a nail in their own coffin as they fail to meet the level of features offered by their closest competitors.

Companies such as Krystal Hosting and 20i Hosting (who have a better reputation than Heart Internet) at least offer free SSL for your domain name, which is a standard requirement for security and privacy of your website visitors.

The fact that Heart Internet is now owned by GoDaddy is not great as I’ve had serious issues with both billing, service and support when using them for my business in the past, so I moved all my services away from them to better providers.

At the time of writing this review, current customers of GoDaddy are still facing similar issues on a regular basis, the same issues that I had years ago, so do you really want to host your website with Heart Internet, knowing GoDaddy owns it?

According to Heart Internet, they only use high-end Dell server hardware alongside the latest generation of processors by Intel, paired with a network that consists of high-spec equipment from Juniper Networks and Cisco Systems to provide server reliability and optimum performance.

They used to have their own in-house built control panel called eXtend that was updated regular, although since Tim and Jonathan Brealey left in 2014, the software seemed to be left to rot and was soon way too out of date.

Now GoDaddy owns it, they have shifted their control panel to cPanel which is the most popular, it’s easy to use and the one I prefer to use to be fair. I would much rather use cPanel than an outdated in-house built control panel.

Heart Internet has a range of web hosting services which include:

Here’s a quick overview of the features:

To get SSL from Heart Internet, you would either have to signup to their Ultimate package or pay them around £50 per year to get the same features that you can get from a more reputable company at a fraction of the cost, if not free.

You are limited by how many websites you can host on your web hosting package as on their most affordable plan you can only host 1 website, so the Economy package would be no use if you have other websites that you want to host on the same account.

If you decide to signup and get a web hosting plan that you pay for a year in advance then you’ll get a free domain name registration for the first year and all plans whether paid monthly or yearly get a free website migration.

While they do offer a large quantity of SSD diskspace and unlimited bandwidth, you will not really be able to utilise it due to the restrictions on the amount of websites you can host on your account which is a bit pointless really.

While their customer support is known for been fast and helpful, the service overall is just not what it used to be, as 10 years ago they were way more innovative compared to their competitors, but seems they are now stale and falling behind.

The loading speed of your website is crucial to the success of your business, as it’s a fact that faster loading websites have higher conversions, which means your website will generate more leads and paying customers if it loads fast.

Think about it, if you visited a website to buy a product and the website was so slow that you could not load the shopping cart, would you visit that website again to buy something or buy it from a website you know loads fast consistently?

Here’s a few stats that prove loading speed is so important:

Sources: LoadStorm, Econsultancy.

When hosting your website with Heart Internet it would be useful to determine if their web hosting service is fast enough to ensure you don’t leave a bad impression on potential customers who visit your website.

Krystal Hosting Performance Metrics

The following metrics are generated using Lighthouse Performance data.

Krystal Hosting Browser Timings

These timings are milestones reported by the browser.

The website loading speed for Heart Internet is excellent compared their closest competitors. However when you look at the bigger picture, you will find that they lack in other departments such as server uptime, features and technical support.

You need a web hosting provider that has proven to deliver exceptional uptime as this metric will determine how often your website is offline and unavailable to visit.

If your website is down, your customers are unable to visit which means you could lose revenue and potential customers who find your website on Google may move directly into the hands of your competitors if your website is inaccessible.

This is why I track the uptime of Heart Internet, to see if they deliver on their uptime promises and to also give you a better understanding of how they perform over long periods of time, as the results can fluctuate from week to week.

Here’s the current uptime stats for Heart Internet:

Heart Internet promises a 99.90% server uptime guarantee, not including planned or emergency server maintenance and our data confirms that the average uptime over a time period of 90 days was 99.969%, which means they are delivering on their promises.

In your search for the best web host, it would be beneficial to compare Heart Internet with some of its competitors to ensure you’re getting the best deal, so let’s compare features, performance and price points for the basic packages on each individual hosting company.

Heart Internet vs Krystal vs 20iWeb Hosting Battle

VS

VS

The results show that Heart Internet has some decent features, including plenty of storage space and bandwidth but the fact that they are now owned by GoDaddy is a real issue for me.

Despite a below average uptime, the server response time and website loading time is pretty decent, which is bound to offer a better user experience when potential customers visit your website.

You get a decent amount of SSD diskspace and unlimited bandwidth for a low fee but as they only allow you to host 1 website and don’t offer free SSL on their smallest package, this puts them behind the competition.

If you want your website to load faster, be online more of the time (better uptime stats), get better customer support and more web hosting features for an even better price, then check out my in-depth 20i hosting review to see why they are my #1 recommendation.

Heart Internet provides its customers with a range of cost-effective web hosting solutions with the choice of either a monthly or annual subscription, so you are not forced on a yearly plan if you don’t want to be.

The prices shown below are based on Heart Internet’s shared web hosting packages and don’t include VAT.

ECONOMY Best Price

Economy allows you to host 1 website, comes with 100GB SSD diskspace, unlimited bandwidth, 512MB memory, 1 basic migration & unlimited mailboxes.

£3.99

DELUXE BeTTER VALUE

Deluxe allows you to host 5 websites, comes with unlimited SSD diskspace, unlimited bandwidth, 512MB memory, 3 basic migrations & unlimited mailboxes.

£5.99

ULTIMATE Best VALUE

Ultimate allows you to host 10 websites, comes with unlimited SSD diskspace, unlimited bandwidth, 1GB memory, free simple SSL, 3 basic migrations & unlimited mailboxes.

£8.99

MAXIMUM Best PERFORMANCE

Maximum allows you to host 200 websites, comes with unlimited SSD diskspace, unlimited bandwidth, 2GB memory, free simple SSL, 3 basic migrations & unlimited mailboxes.

£14.99

If you have tried all other web hosting companies we have featured and they are still not doing it for you then check out Heart Internet as a last resort, they have a monthly billing option and a 30 day money back guarantee so it’s risk free.

Heart Internet Review

• 1About Heart Internet
• 2Heart Internet Pros & Cons
• 3Heart Internet Features
• 4Heart Internet Loading Speed
• 5Heart Internet Uptime Tracker
• 6Heart Internet Comparison
• 7Heart Internet Prices
• 8Heart Internet Reviews

£3.99

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