Think Host
ThinkHost is a unique web hosting company with an even more unique mission. They are committed to providing its customers high-quality hosting services, but the company also serves to protect the environment by keeping their blog web hosting services entirely solar and wind powered in order to reduce its carbon footprint.
To go along with the company’s green motto, all of its employees telecommute- which means that they work from home rather than drive to work on a daily basis. In addition, the company does its best to reach out to non-profit social groups of many types by offering them low-cost blog web hosting solutions.
Pro’s
Along with being known as a ‘green’ blog web hosting company, ThinkHost offers such amenities to their customers as a plan, which offers 100 GB of server space as well as 1000 GB of bandwidth. Unlimited features such as MySQL database, the ability to host an unlimited number of domain names and access to unlimited POP3 e-mail accounts. Some other features offered by ThinkHost are PHP, Perl, and content management software, shopping carts, a site builder, and spam/virus protection. For an environmentally conscious blogger, ThinkHost may be the perfect option for green blog web hosting.
ThinkHost uses servers based on the UNIX system, whereas its competitors generally use either a Linux or Windows-based server system. The use of UNIX compared to Linux or Windows allows the company to promote a server uptime of 100%. Yes, it does seem too good to be true, but the use of UNIX allows for a higher bandwidth to be used as well as more server storage space. The company’s use of 24/7 monitoring of its servers as well as redundant HVAC systems allows for maximum temperature control as well as server reliability as a whole.
Con’s
Even though ThinkHost is an environmentally sound company, there are some issues, which have arisen over its existence. There is no way to get hold of a live person. All technical support and customer service oriented issues are submitted by using tickets, rather than having a telephone number available to speak to a live representative. Many customers have issues with this due to their feeling of being “brushed off” by the company. This being said, even if one of the tickets is answered, ThinkHost does not claim responsibility for their errors; the customer is generally at fault for some reason or another.
ThinkHost also boasts an uptime of 100%. This number also includes service time, not just the general uptime of servers. The thing is, customer complaints include issues such as the uptime of ThinkHost servers only being around 90% uptime, rather than the advertised 100%.
Overall Rating
As a blogger looking for a reliable blog web host, ThinkHost may not be the best option. Granted their mission is to provide green blog web hosting for anyone, their downtimes, and possibly shady business practices put ThinkHost at the bottom of the “go to” list.
The prices for their blog web hosting packages is fairly decent, but should be further reduced due to the issues its customers have with the reliability of the servers and their lack of customer service abilities.
Hopefully, in the future ThinkHost will work hard in order to remedy the issues its customers are having with the company. It would be best for ThinkHost to improve its server uptime ratio and to stop using its ticket system in regards to issues and strive to allow its customers personal attention from their staff.
