HostClear Home review

It’s hard not get excited when you read the specifications of Host Clear’s Home package. For only £5.95 per month you get unlimited server space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited MySQL databases and an unlimited number of email accounts.

You also get one-click installs of over 50 web apps, including WordPress, Joomla, plus other blogging and photo tools. These are all grouped under an installer called Fantastico - a simple label such as One-click installs would have made them a lot easier to find. Thankfully, the package comes with a freephone support number and very good 24-hour online live-chat tech support (which we tested several times), so at least there’s someone to help if you need it.

The control panel (cPanel) is one of the most commonly used by web hosts. It’s a bit cluttered, but that’s mostly because there are a lot of features on offer. Generally the interface is well organised and functional, which is all you really need. We liked the way that your account’s vital statistics, disk space used and other details, are always on display in the left-hand panel. It would have been nice, though, if an elegant way could be found to achieve the same with the main cPanel options so that you're not forced to scroll down a long page to find all the information hidden below the fold.

The site builder included with the package is of variable quality. Templates are at worst ugly and tacky. Some of the better ones are actually not bad, clean and relatively elegant – at least for this type of site, though occasionally marred by odd design choices. The step-by-step wizard is also a bit frustratingly inflexible. We recommend avoiding the site builders that come with most of these packages, unless for designing placeholders while you put your real site together.

All in all this is a very impressive hosting package. If it’s so great, we hear you ask, why doesn’t HostClear win a Best Buy award? The reason is simple: iPage. iPage's Essential Plan offers almost everything that Host Clear does, but for only £1.99 per month. HostClear Home is still a great hosting package and, as it has a UK office, you can pay in pounds.