ChemiCloud review

As a bright young thing in the long-lived web hosting market, ChemiCloud started its story of success in the summer of 2016, although their “trusted and passionate” team (or so they claim) has more than a decade of experience in the industry. With a main office in Middletown (USA), they take pride in having employed different experts from various countries spread across different time zones, emphasizing diversity as one of their major selling points.

At present ChemiCloud deploys seven data centers which are scattered across four continents: Dallas (the US), London (the UK), Frankfurt (Germany), Bucharest (Romania), Singapore (Singapore) and Sydney (Australia) and CDN services whose network covers more than 90 counties. All of their data centers are marked on the map and clearly presented on their main website, so you can easily find which location is most convenient for you. In addition to this, users can download a speed test from each of these servers and check them for yourself.

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ChemiCloud’s main website is pleasurably purple and has a vivid visual attitude, yet it’s far from being tacky. What is more important, it is easy-to-use and has given us answers to all of the questions we had, and we weren’t trying hard or anything. On top of everything, it features an official blog and a good one to boot. It feels alive and kicking (publishing new articles throughout each month) as well as their Twitter and Facebook accounts, which is a pleasure we seldom get to see.

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Plans and pricing

Apart from shared hosting packages, ChemiCloud offers several WordPress-optimized, reseller and cloud-based VPS hosting solutions. The simple shared hosting plans tend to be on the pricier side (in comparison with similar companies), but they provide some superb cost-free features including: domain name for life, Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate, 15GB of disk space (SSD), unmetered bandwidth, unlimited email accounts and daily backups. All of this sounds wonderful and you’ll get it for a puny price of $3.95?

If you think that there must be a catch, you got it all figured out. This price becomes valid only if you decide to subscribe for three years, and the only alternative (for “Web Hosting Starter” plan) is going for two years (that will cost $4.95 per month), which is far from flexible. However, two bigger shared hosting plans allow billing for one year as well. 

Credit/debit cards and PayPal are supported methods of payment and if you’re having second thoughts about everything, there is a rather generous 45-day money-back guarantee.

Ease of use

One of the concerns you’ll seldom have when hosting with ChemiCloud is the one related to the security of your data. They promise a “top-level” security and deliver on that promise (in addition to free SSL) by maintaining a constant protective monitoring of their servers and free offsite backups of all websites, which are then stored for 30 days. Therefore, if you happen to lose some of your data, you can restore it through your control panel without breaking a sweat. Another most welcome bonus are free website and cPanel migrations, and if you have multiple websites, the ChemiCloud’s technical team will move up to 50 of them for you. Your only task is to get in touch with them about this request within 60 days from signing up.

To begin hosting a website with ChemiCloud you’ll have to pick out a plan, and since there are plenty of them, it’s important to have an idea of what you want before going further. If you, however, don’t know where to start, don’t hesitate to ask ChemiCloud’s support team for an advice or two. In any case, opting for a certain plan shouldn’t be too overwhelming an experience, since all are nicely presented with all of their most notable features listed below.

After this, you’ll determine what to do with a domain name, pick out a billing cycle and a server location, and decide if you want any of the suggested add-ons (which are linked to security and marketing). To proceed with the payment and finish your purchase, you’ll first be required to add your personal data, opt for a payment method and decide if you want to be on ChemiCloud’s mailing list.

ChemiCloud’s dashboard corresponds in style with their website, which is good news. From there you’ll get access to cPanel and thanks to one-click installer, you can create content and manage all aspects of your website (or websites) with ease.

Speed and experience

Among the five promoted reasons why we should choose ChemiCloud as our hosting provider, there was no mention of speedy performance, so we were a bit concerned about the results the GTmetrix (our speed testing tool) was going to introduce us with. Not surprisingly, after performing a few tests on ChemiCloud’s main websites, GTmetrix rated the overall performance with an E (48%), which is a slightly below the average score.

Fortunately, an uptime test was a completely different story. Because ChemiCloud offers a 99.99% of uptime, your website should be available at all times. Theirs (according to UptimeRobot) was, since after monitoring the uptime of ChemiCloud’s main website for a month, not a single second of downtime was found in our records. Although we understand that one month doesn’t guarantee a whole year of impeccable uptime, it is a good start. 

Support

When customer support is concerned, ChemiCloud reassures us that our “peace of mind starts here” since they are providing “instantly available world-class support” to each and every customer “anytime, day or night”. There are several ways to get in touch with this team and they include: telephone, live chat, support ticket and e-mail. They promise an instant response with chat and a reply within ten minutes to those who submitted a support ticket. When we checked the chat option wondering whether they are going to keep their word or not, we got our (courteous and clever) reply within two minutes, which is not exactly instant, but close enough.

The self-help options on ChemiCloud’s website leave a lot to be desired for unsubscribed users. However, their customers are well armed with an easy-to-use knowledgebase (titled as “Getting Started”) which is packed with step-by-step tutorials (with complementary pictures) on all important issues.

The competition

There’s no doubt that HostGator and ChemiCloud can attract the attention of absolute novices and seasoned webmasters alike. Although both of them can supply newcomers with some superb features to boost their self-confidence (free domain, an SSL certificate and 45-day refund guarantee), HostGator includes a drag-and-drop website builder to boost up its bargain.

Bluehost has been around for almost two decades, while ChemiCloud seems like a beginner in comparison. However, despite not being a veteran of the industry, ChemiCloud can provide its users with an unlimited website migration, free domain for life and seven data centers to choose from. On the other hand, those who are looking for dedicated servers for their demanding businesses will have to go with Bluehost, since ChemiCloud doesn’t provide them yet.

Both VirMach and ChemiCloud are relatively new on the market and have, despite that, managed to cover a decent range of hosting services. However, since ChemiCloud doesn’t provide dedicated servers, if you are in search of that, you’ll find it with VirMach (managed and unmanaged ones). If you are new here and want your first-time experience to be a pleasant one, we would recommend opting for ChemiCloud, since they provide more support channels and a bit better user experience overall.

WebHostingPad is a fellow US-based host that can supply you with everything ChemiCloud can, but almost without restrictions and for a pretty penny. That being said, having a competent technical team and enough support options, both hosts share a beginner-friendly approach and are a great choice for first-time users.

Final verdict

ChemiCloud promises “the best hosting experience” and although we wouldn’t call it exactly the best hosting we ever experienced, it will stay on our good side beyond any doubt. They may not cover all types of hosting, their billing cycle may not be flexible enough nor are they the most pocket-friendly option out there, but they will supply you with everything they can and give you the best possible support along the way. This, together with the fact they have achieved a lot in the brief time they’ve been around, makes them easy to recommend.

However, if you would rather give your trust a more experienced host, HostGator and Bluehost are worth a shot.

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