Lunarpages Basic Hosting Review After 23 Weeks
I am back with another honest review on Lunarpages basic hosting. I’ve had the Lunarpages basic hosting account for 23 weeks now, and I am glad that we are still with each other 
My Experiences
Uptime
My last uptime evaluation of Lunarpages basic hosting was till 24th March, 2009 with details at:
http://lunarpageshostingreview.com/lunarpages-uptime-for-march-2009/
I checked from my serviceuptime.com (independent server monitoring service) account today and found that the total uptime from 25th March 2009 to 21st June 2009, i.e. 89 days is 99.96%. For my new readers, I want to inform that I have Lunarpages Linux basic hosting on Laima server.
I don’t have an online automated monitoring tool like serviceuptime.com to constantly check the Lunarpages basic hosting email servers but in general, I have not faced any problem with sending and receiving of emails.
Ease Of Use and Some Time Saving Tips
I have explored and used almost all the tools and features of my Lunarpages basic hosting plan in last four months. I didn’t find any problems in tracking and using any of the features.
However, for new customers of Lunarpages basic hosting, who are new to hosting, I want to share some time saving tips:
Tutorials: To make user conversant with Lunarpages basic hosting, video tutorials are available. After logging to your Lunarpages basic hosting account,the link to the Tutorials is located at the middle top. Some of the important tutorials are of Working with cPanel (Control Panel – Control of your hosting space craft), FTP (File Transfer protocol- for uploading and downloading your site/blog files) and Setting Up your Email Client (e.g. Eudora, Outlook, Pegasus etc.).
The tutorial video display window size cannot be increased and if Zoom In is used (after right clicking on the video), the video somewhatgoes out of the monitor. However, to remove distractions from the tutorials window, click on the video window at right and then press F11 on keyboard. This way, only the video tutorial window is displayed and your browser title bar, menu bar, address bar and status bar etc. are removed.
cPanel: Reaching Lunarpages cPanel is important as you can see the detailed status and do the entire management of your Lunarpages basic hosting account. The shortcut URL that you can use to reach Control Panel, i.e., cPanel is:
https://account.lunarpages.com/control_panel.php
The general account information and the hyperlinks in Control Panel are self explanatory and easy to use, you can very well understand where they are going to lead you before clicking.
File Manager: Management of your hosting files (uploading, downloading, deleting, renaming and changing file attributes etc.) is done by the File Manager utility in cPanel. You won’t have problems in using File Manager like me when I was new to it, if you remember the following two rules:
- Click on a folder icon or picture to navigate or explore (find what is inside it).
- Click on a name or text to view its properties (Delete, rename, move and copy)
A common mistake is to click on the text of the folder and then expect its content to be displayed. Click on the picture (icon at the left of the name in text form) of the folder to see its content.
Note: File and folder management is easier via FileZilla freeware FTP program. I have used it and found it OK. The download page for FileZilla FTP freeware for various operating systems is at:
http://filezilla-project.org/download.php
Suggested Improvements
There is always scope of improvement in even the best of the services. Some suggested improvements that I see Lunarpages should presently make to improve the user’s interface are:
- Sharing of the monthly uptime log with their customers along with reasons for the same.
- An option to increase the video display size of the tutorial window.
Coming back, I am really happy that my Lunarpages basic hosting account on Linux Laima server has an uptime of 99.96%, close to 100%, in last 89 days. That’s all in this 23rd week review of Lunarpages basic hosting. More of my Lunarpages hosting experience, tips and suggestions in my later review posts.
Why Choose The Lunarpages Basic Hosting Plan?
Choosing the right basic hosting plan can be really tough as there are many hosting providers offering a range of features to lure the prospective customer. The task of matching your upcoming site or blog requirements to the basic hosting plan can be more tough if you are new to web hosting.
Before buying the Lunarpages basic hosting plan customers often ask which sites it is best suited for. The purpose of this post is to tell you about some of the important technical features that go behind your decision to buy Lunarpages basic hosting.
After some research and comparison with other providers, I zeroed in on the Lunarpages basic hosting plan (Linux). The following specifications made me decide upon the purchase:
- Unlimited disk usage (Yes it’s true, hard disk storage with no limits).
- Unlimited bandwidth (No bandwidth limit exceeded errors!).
- 30 day money back guarantee (Try and see if it suits your hosting needs).
- Unlimited – MySQL databases, Add-on domains, Sub domains and parked domains (999 display in cpanel is due to server display restriction and can be increased by Lunarpages when needed by you).
- 99.9% uptime (Almost very close to 100%).
- Free 24-7-365 hours online support via email/web interface (No worry about support issues! Normal low response time of 30 minutes to 4 hours. Free telephonic support too during office hours!).
- 2,000 Mbit connectivity (My, that’s huge!).
- Protection against DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks (Another factor for downtime avoided).
- All at a price of just $ 4.95 per month!
So if you are looking for economical yet proven hosting with great hosting features, go for Lunarpages basic hosting.
Deciding if the Lunarpages basic hosting is the right work environment for your site? Here is the checklist:
- Personal, small or medium website or blog with most of the dynamic content as text
- Typically less than 90,000 hits/month (Shouldn’t have 1000 HITS/second, 90,000 HITS/month is just a broad measure, not a hard and fast rule)
- Less demand for hosting server resources, i.e, RAM, processor and MySQL queries etc.; suitable for non Images and non Videos hosting.
- Simple Machine Forum (SMF) software support for forums site via Fantastico (automated installation).
- ASP (Active Server Pages – Microsoft Server side script engine) support is built in for free in Windows hosting plan but for Linux hosting plans, $2.95 per domain or subdomain is needed.
- Support for addition of dedicated IP address at $ 2.95 per month. Dedicated IP is commonly needed for dedicated SSL certificate and anonymous FTP access. Dedicated Basic SSL certificate is provided at $ 99 per year.
- Addition of JSP (Java Server Pages) at $ 4.95 per month per domain or subdomain.
- Apache 1.3 (available by default) Or Apache 2 addition (upon request)
- Shell access to the account at an extra fee of $2 per month
- Premium Restore Service at $ 1.50 per month (In case of accidental deletion of any of files at yours Lunarpages basic hosting account, Lunarpages will restore the files if you are a Premium Restore service member. Restoration of files dated up to 3 days previously).
- Supports upgradability and scalability with addition of new features
* Prices written are applicable at the time of writing this post
* For server resources monitoring, i.e. point 3, unfortunately there is no accurate monitoring tool. However, you can request Lunarpages support to monitor your site and warn you in advance if you are reaching the basic hosting plan server resources limit!
These separate payment options mean you only end up paying an extra amount for the features that you need. As most of the sites don’t need all of these features, the charges remain reasonable.
Kindly note that Videos and Images hosting sites demand huge server resources (depending on the volume of traffic). Lunar pages basic or shared hosting is not designed to suit these type of sites, as with other providers. If you are anticipating high resource usage for your site, you should choose Lunarpages dedicated or VPS hosting plan.
Lunarpages has been hosting websites from 1998 and hosts over 1,50,000 sites. Their basic hosting pack provides all the features needed for small and medium sized sites.
If you have some queries related to Lunarpages basic hosting purchase, let me know. I would be glad to help!!!
Lunarpages and Wordpress 2.7 Blog Hosting
I was actually going to write a different post today, but when I logged into the admin area of the website to make the post, I saw a message at the top of the page prompting me to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress.
Wordpress BTW is a very popular open source blogging/CMS platform and is used to run this website. Wordpress is great, but it can be quite resource intensive when running on a shared hosting plan. There have also been problems with some web hosts and the new automatic update feature, so I thought I would test it out on my account here with Lunarpages!
You can see that in the above screenshot there is an “Upgrade Automatically” button that I can push to update to the latest version, rather than having to do it manually via FTP.
So I pushed the button and waited to see if Lunarpages really were a Wordpress friendly web host 
Here are the results:
As you can see, the automatic upgrade was successful! So that’s a big plus point for anyone who doesn’t want to upgrade their Wordpress version manually.
One final thing to mention about Wordpress is a point I touched on earlier, and that is the high CPU and memory resources required by Wordpress.
This site is hosted with Lunarpages, and is run on Wordpress. So far I’ve had no CPU, memory or resource usage problems and as far as I can tell the website loads quite quickly. Although you can judge that for yourself
So in conclusion, if you are looking for a web host to run your Wordpress blog on, then I would have no problem in recommending Lunar pages. I’m currently on the basic Linux shared hosting package and this blog runs without any problems.
I installed this blog manually via FTP, but Lunarpages do offer the latest version of Fantastico on all accounts so if you’d rather install using the simple online “1 Click Install Wizard” then you can do that as well!
The Free $775 Lunarpages Bonuses
As a bit of an incentive to entice people to sign up for a web hosting plan, Lunar Pages have started to offer some “free” bonuses to all customers, if you were to purchase these items on the open market then they would set you back around $775!
And before I continue, please do remember that everything I write on this site is correct at the time of writing, if you find any of my information is out of date then please do let me know
Anyway, back to the freebies! Just take a look at what you can expect to get if you decide to become a Lunarpages customer:
The bonuses do look really tempting, but as with most things there is a catch. A lot of the items that Lunarpages offer you for “free” are actually only free trials for a certain length of time, you would then need to pay to continue using the services.
Here’s a breakdown of what you will actually receive if you want to take advantage of the special deals:
Parallels® Workstation
Run Windows, Linux, and more with Parallels Workstation
Free Trial
Ratepoint
Manage your online reputation with RatePoint
60 day free trial
Filestream
Back up your most important photos with Photo TurboBackup and maintain maximum performance of your Windows PC with WinSettings.
Free if you fill out an opt-in form
Visitorville
Give your website great statistics tracking
3 months free
Logo Creator
Create amazing logos right from your PC or Mac with The Logo Creator’s Sports & Entertainment Editions
Possibly free, possibly paid – hard to tell!
Gafana
Stop your spam with up to 15 DNS Level accounts thanks to Gafana
Free
DMXReady
Update & manage your Contact Form from anywhere in the world using DMXReady’s Contact Us Manager
Free if you fill out an opt-in form
DeepTrawl
DeepTrawl checks your whole site for technical & content errors with one click. Scan for broken links, invalid html, spelling mistakes & many other issues.
Free if you fill out an opt-in form
LinkWorth
Get $100 credit from Linkworth by signing up and spending $125.
Bidvertiser
Get your get $20.00 in FREE advertising clicks from BidVertiser
So there you have it, a full breakdown of all the free bonuses that you are entitled to if you sign up for a Lunarpages hosting account, you are entitled to the freebies if you sign up to any of the following packages:
- Linux hosting
- Linux business hosting
- Windows hosting
- Reseller hosting
- Dedicated servers
If you are already a customer with Lunarpages, you can find the special offers section by logging into your client management area and clicking on “Specials”.
Signing Up With Lunarpages
Before I could get started on my Lunarpages Review I needed to first sign up to a hosting package with them!
I already had a website that needed moving to a new host, so I decided that I would use that website as my primary domain and then add any additional domains to my hosting account as “Addon Domains”.
The website I wanted to move used a couple of PHP scripts so I went with a Linux hosting account rather than Windows.
At the time of signing up, Lunarpages were offering a “Winter Special” that would give me:
- Unlimited Disk Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Unlimited MySQL Databases
And much more, for only $4.95 per month.
Although in reality, the price only worked out at $4.95 per month if you paid for 12 or 24 months upfront. If you wanted to sign up for a shorter contract then the options were:
- 6 months @ $8.95 per month
- 3 months @ $9.95 per month
The above plans also needed to be paid in full, there was no option to pay on a monthly basis.
The plan I signed up for also came with a Free Domain name, but as I already had my domain name registered elsewhere I didn’t take advantage of the free registration offer.
The actual signup was very easy, it was just a case of entering the domain name I wanted to host with them, and then filling in my personal information. They of course offered me a range of upsells as you can see in the screenshot below, but I didn’t bother with any of them!
When I had completed the checkout process, and completed my credit card payment I was presented with the following screen:
I think the reason they ask you to fill our the customer survey is actually a smoke screen just to make sure your order is genuine. I know from my own past experiences that hosts are very vunerable to spammers signing up for hosting accounts using compromised credit cards. So asking the customer a few questions goes a long way to proving that they are indeed genuine customers!
Anyway, what happened next?
Well, a few minutes after I had completed my order, my Lunarpages welcome email arrived in my Inbox, this welcome email contained my Lunarpages account username and password, as well as other important information such as:
- Nameservers
- Email Settings
- FTP Settings
- Affiliate Details
- And so on…
Shortly after another email arrived from Lunar Pages, this time it contained details of how I could access my free bonuses, valued at $775!
To tell you the truth, I haven’t had chance to review them yet so I’ll make another post about the free bonuses when I’ve had more chance to look through them
But I think that brings to an end this section on the Lunarpages web hosting signup process, all in all it was a good experience and I didn’t have any problems with the process!