THC Servers is a smaller hosting company, but it’s come a long way since being founded in 2013.
With over 21,000 registered domains and over 15,500 active clients, THC Servers is a success…though still not even close to the big players like GoDaddy or Bluehost.
Of course, that doesn’t mean THC Servers is bad! But it does lead us to the main question:
Is THC Servers a hidden gem that will give you an edge? Or is it not more popular because of some large flaws?
I’ll answer those questions, and more, in this review.
Let’s start off with the positives:
THC Servers Review: Pros
Pro #1: Good performance
Maybe the best indicator of this, is THC Servers’ uptime guarantee.
Most hosting companies will have some sort of uptime guarantee. Usually, this guarantee is 99.9% uptime.
If you’re not familiar with hosting, then that sounds like a fantastic guarantee. But, the way uptime is measured, 99.9% is actually not that great—it’s sort of the bare minimum of “decent” hosting.
Let me show you why—you can use our free uptime calculator to see for yourself:
99.9% uptime means 10 minutes of downtime over the course of a week. 99.9% uptime over the course of a month (which is how most uptime guarantees are measured) means 43 minutes of downtime.
For some people, particularly those running hobby sites or unimportant projects, that’s okay. But anyone who’s trying to earn money from their site NEEDS better uptime.
THC Servers’ uptime guarantee is a lot better:
Just adding that extra .09% does a lot:
That’s just a few minutes of downtime over the course of a month, which is much better.
And remember, that’s THC Servers’ guaranteed MINIMUM. So most of the time, THC Servers will have better uptime—usually, 100% uptime.
Along with that THC Servers is generally fast—though it’s not the fastest host I’ve used.
So all-together, THC Servers have pretty good performance.
Pro #2: Wide range of hosting products
THC Servers offers the typical range of hosting products: shared web hosting on the more accessible end, dedicated servers on the other end, and VPS and reseller hosting in-between.
But what I really like about THC Servers is that it has more than just the regular range of hosting:
As you can see, THC Servers also provides hosting that’s oriented towards supporting certain kinds of website management software.
WordPress hosting is common, but hosting for the other types of CMS (content management systems) is less common.
These plans are fundamentally the same: they’re basically the web hosting plan, and have similar prices and features.
So in that sense, there’s less variety.
However, the THC Servers’ customer support is trained to provide support for these various content management systems, instead of just regular web hosting support.
Pro #3: Good features
First thing’s first: let’s see what we’re dealing with. These are the web hosting plans:
Now outwardly, the features may not seem all that impressive.
Sure, the basics are there—like SSL, email, etc—but that’s about it.
Well, first, I’d like to note that the website builder is a nice addition, and is not super common on web hosting plans.
Second, let’s take a look at the basic features—these are the features that come with ALL web hosting plans:
Now here’s where things get more interesting.
Of particular note: unlimited bandwidth, daily backups, free SEO tools, and spam filtering are great additions, especially for the lower-cost first and second tiers.
There are some optional add-ons one can purchase:
It doesn’t change my overall assessment of the features, as I look mostly at what’s included by default for plans, but it’s nice to have.
Pro #4: Pricing is excellent.
Yep—a double-whammy, in a good way!
First, let me remind you of the price range for the web hosting:
This is a pretty solid price range. Of course, it shoots up towards the end, but the end is also proportionately featured.
Those first three tiers, however, are all on the cheaper side of average.
Most web hosting plans START at what the “Nerd” tier costs, so the “Geek” tier is great for those who just need a low-cost option.
But it’s the flexibility that I really love about the prices. Most web hosting plans look cheap as advertised, but you have to purchase them in bulk for two years to actually get those prices.
And while committing to two years may be a good deal over time, it can be a lot for smaller businesses to cough up at once, out of pocket.
So the first good point here is that advertised prices are for ONE year of service only—you won’t be tricked into getting a longer-term to get the low cost.
But the other great point is that you have many more options for choosing how much service you want.
Instead of choosing between 1, 2, and 3 years, you can choose at this range:
Now, as you can see, it IS more expensive in the long run to pay for shorter commitments. But that’s very normal—I haven’t seen a host that does not do that.
The key point here is that you at least can CHOOSE what’s best for you. If buying a year of hosting for low cost isn’t too much to pay at once, then you can do that.
But if money is tight and you still want a certain tier’s features, or if you don’t want to commit too long, you can pay for just 6 months or even a month at a time.
In addition to flexibility, pricing is just more transparent and lower in the long-run. That’s because most web hosting plans are low-cost the first year, but renew at much higher prices.
It’s why so many companies advertise web hosting that starts at a dollar a month—those plans usually become $7 or $8 after renewal. So they’re not actually that cheap in the past year.
BUT, THC Servers do NOT do that. Renewal prices are the same as your initial prices, unless you upgrade to a higher package.
It’s not just the web hosting plans that have good prices, though.
The WordPress plans ALSO have this same flexibility. The VPS plans are also flexible, though not to the same extent:
So all in all:
THC Servers isn’t crazy-cheap, but it IS lower-cost. And best of all, it’s very flexible, allowing customers to pay for plans they wouldn’t be able to otherwise, and keeps prices consistent.
Pro #5: Solid data centers
I should probably sneak in another “pro” here…THC Servers also has data centers in four continents:
But more importantly, those data centers are up to speed with their infrastructure and security.
It’s true that I’d like to see more information on these data centers. But, it would seem that THC Servers is at least meeting industry standards.
Pro #6: Good customer support
You can contact representatives via live chat or ticket.
One nice thing about THC Servers’ ticket system is that it’s loosely organized into four categories. So you can send your query to the right support staff immediately:
Talking to representatives via live chat is another avenue for support, and it’s pretty reliable:
I was a little annoyed that I had to reiterate the question, but the representative was still very quick to respond once I did:
Note that my computer’s clock is 3 minutes ahead, so the messages register as 3 minutes old.
In reality, the representative responded to every message I had within a minute.
So the whole interaction in total lasted for maybe a couple minutes—that’s exactly what so many people love about live chat features.
Aside from contacting representatives directly, you can also look at the informational support—basically, the knowledge base:
I have some issues with it, but I’ll get to that later. Overall, however, the knowledge base is still good for addressing basic questions and troubleshooting.
Anyway, when you put all this together, you get a customer support set-up that’s pretty decent. It may not be seamless, but it’s definitely reliable and of good quality.
THC Servers Review: Cons
Con #1: Web hosting could use more storage
Earlier, I said I was impressed by the web hosting features. That’s still true.
But there’s a caveat—the storage.
Let’s take another look:
With the first tier, it’s pretty obvious that 2GB isn’t a lot of storage space.
But you may argue that the first tier is pretty cheap, so proportionately it’s fine.
I have to responses to that:
First: $1.95 a month may be cheap for hosting, but there ARE plans that go to around that price and offer more storage.
However, I will concede that often, these are plans like GoDaddy’s or IONOS’: dirt-cheap for a year, but expensive upon renewal, to even out at an average price within two years.
But…
Second: even if the storage for the first tier isn’t bad, what about the other three?
The second tier is where most web hosting plans start, in terms of price, so it’s a good point of comparison.
10GB of SSD space for around $4 a month is not that much. There ARE hosts that offer around that much, but I’d think at least 20GB is better, with some hosts offering as much as 50GB.
Now, we have to be reasonable:
When a host offers 50GB of storage for a few bucks a month, how many customers really use all that space?
Most won’t come very close at that price point, as they’re running less intensive sites.
10GB is enough for most small sites to put up a fair amount of media like videos. So I don’t expect this to be a huge issue.
But, if you’re prioritizing value in terms of resources per price, these web hosting plans are worse for storage.
Con #2: Not as good for people who want to double-down on high-end hosting
By high-end, in this instance I’m referring to the premium forms of hosting—mainly VPS and dedicated hosting.
And the key phrase here is “double down.” If you need VPS hosting or dedicated servers in general, THC Servers will be fine.
So this applies for people who want to max out on resources, basically. For example, on the VPS plans, these are the maximum resources you can get:
The disk space/storage isn’t bad, but the RAM and CPU Cores are a bit limited compared to what some competitors offer.
In this case, 5120 MB translates to just over 5 GB of RAM—whereas most hosts will offer VPS plans with up to 16 or 32 GB of RAM, and more than 8 cores.
That’s just the Linux VPS plans though. THC Servers does have more RAM and Cores available for its Windows VPS plans:
But as you can see, the storage is a lot lower too.
Additionally, while the VPS and dedicated plans are more customizable RELATIVE to the web hosting-based plans, they’re not as customizable as some rival companies’ plans.
Not to mention, other companies also have newer hosting solutions, like cloud-based VPS or cloud-dedicated servers.
As for dedicated servers—THC Servers is pretty okay. The only real complaint I have is that most of the servers don’t go beyond 4 cores—and the max you can get is 16.
Anyway, just to make sure we’re on the same page:
I’m not saying that THC Servers have bad VPS or dedicated plans.
In general, they’re solid—they have a nice price range, including more affordable options (relatively speaking).
But people who need support for very intensive projects or websites may want to consider more advanced options.
Con #3: Informational support can be unorganized
For the most part, the informational support is just fine. The knowledge base may not have a ton of articles, but it still covers some of the basics.
But did you know that there’s actually a blog?
This blog has more than just typical hosting/tech company marketing fluff.
It has how-to tutorials and further explanations that should be in the main support page:
Most of this stuff is old—late 2018ish. But despite the age, some things are covered that are NOT covered in the knowledge base.
To make matters more frustrating, sometimes knowledge base articles simply tell you to go to a blog post:
By the way, the blog post linked to in that article above? It doesn’t even explain that well to beginners.
There’s even a bit of text below the table for the resource limits of the hosting plans that tells readers to contact customer support via live chat/ticket if they don’t understand what the numbers mean.
That’s just one example, but it goes to show the flaws in the informational customer support.
Like I’ve said, the informational support is overall okay. However, it definitely lacks in certain ways.
THC Servers Review: Do we recommend THC Servers?
Is THC Servers going to be for everyone?
No, of course not—no company is.
But is THC Servers a good choice for many of you reading this?
Definitely.
Basically, if you prioritize the best support ever (and specifically onsite information), having advanced VPS/dedicated plans, or having the most amount of storage per price on the web hosting plans, then THC Servers isn’t the best pick for you.
But outside of that, THC Servers does very well in key areas:
It’s got good performance with a high uptime guarantee. The prices are low, flexible, and consistent—meaning no extra renewal costs. The features aren’t crazy, but they’re pretty good, especially for the price.
These key things make it pretty clear to me that THC Servers offers great value web hosting, and can support customers with more advanced needs as well.
So yes, for most of you, THC Servers is solid!
But don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself, risk-free, to find out:
Happy hosting!