What is ChemiCloud?
ChemiCloud is a hosting company that offers several types of hosting including shared hosting, WordPress hosting, reseller hosting and VPS hosting. The company is a relatively new player in the industry and is yet to gain widespread popularity.
In the shared hosting space, the company positions itself as a trustworthy hosting provider with guaranteed 99.99% uptime. Of course, just like every other shared hosting company, ChemiCloud is engaged in free offerings and pricing tricks that can eventually burn a hole in your pocket.
ChemiCloud offers various types of hosting services and shared hosting is one of their most-used hosting types. This review will focus on shared hosting or web hosting, which is one of the most preferred hosting solutions for most of the new websites in this world.
If you are looking for their WordPress hosting you can check out our Chemicloud WordPress Hosting Review
ChemiCloud is one of those rare hosting companies that guarantees 99.99% uptime SLA or service level agreement. In case the company fails to deliver anything less than that, the company promises to refund the money they charge. That’s quite a promise, I must say!
The company has servers located in many places including Singapore, United States, United Kingdom, Bucharest, Amsterdam, Bangalore, etc.
In a short time, the company has managed to become one of the most trusted shared hosting companies you can lay your hands on. The overall system is user-friendly and the customer support is pretty good. The features they offer are pretty standard for any shared hosting company, but there are a few things that set them apart.
Having said that, I will never claim that everything is hunky-dory with ChemiCloud. Virtually every shared hosting company in this world has negative sides and ChemiCloud is not immune to this universal problem that plagues every other hosting company.
Let’s dig deep into the review of ChemiCloud and find out what this company has to offer and where this company could improve. Ready? Great! Let’s start with the pros and cons!
The Pros of ChemiCloud
- 99.99% uptime guarantee SLA or complete refund.
- 45-day money-back guarantee in case you are not happy with the purchase.
- A free domain for life as long as you are an active customer.
- Solid State Drives across all hosting types and hosting plans.
- 24×7 support available via live chat.
- Free SSL, free Cloudflare CDN, and free migration.
- Drag-and-drop website builder available.
The Cons of ChemiCloud
- The minimum commitment required is for 2 years or 1 year. No lower plan available. That sucks!
- The Starter plan lacks advanced firewall protection.
- Only the Turbo plan gets Memcached and Cloudflare Railgun.
- Knowledge base is absent, and hence, no self-help!
- Relatively new in market, and hence, low trust levels.
- Massive price bumps on renewal.
The Splendid Seven – Features of ChemiCloud
ChemiCloud offers some interesting features. Let’s take a quick look at the most important seven features of ChemiCloud shared hosting service:
SSD Storage
ChemiCloud is one of those rare shared hosting providers that offer SSD storage. In fact, you can get SSD storage for any web hosting plan you select. In case you are not aware of the fact, SSD storage plays an instrumental role in speeding up your website and even ensuring that the server response time is low.
Free Lifetime Domain
When you purchase a hosting plan, ChemiCloud will offer you the opportunity of registering a domain for no cost. Unlike other hosting providers who will offer free domain for the first year only, this company will renew the domain for you every year and never charge you a penny as long as you remain a customer. If you stop being a customer of their hosting service, you have to pay for the domain or you will lose the domain.
Cloud Linux
ChemiCloud operates using Cloud Linux operating system. This is ultra-secure and stable. Another benefit of Cloud Linux is that if one particular account is using too much of system resources, the account will be caged so that the performance of other accounts is not impacted at any cost.
In the same way, if one account on a server is compromised by security threats or infections, it will be caged so that it doesn’t compromise other accounts on the same server.
Distributed Data
ChemiCloud ensures that all the data on a server is distributed across several redundant servers. So, in the even of hardware failure, the data is never lost. This ensures absolute security of your data irrespective of which server location you are choosing.
LiteSpeed Web Server
It is extremely rare to find a web hosting company offering LiteSpeed web server out-of-the-box. LiteSpeed is the latest technology in web servers, and it is known for being extremely fast. I always prefer LiteSpeed server (or at least the OpenLiteSpeed server). The combination of SSD storage and LiteSpeed server with Cloudflare is all the magic you will ever need to get extremely fast websites!
Free Cloudflare
Okay, Cloudflare is anyway free, but if you are to use it, you have to do that manually. In the case of ChemiCloud, Cloudflare comes out-of-the-box. You can enable it right from the cPanel without the need for fiddling around with DNS settings.
Daily Backups
No matter which hosting plan you purchase, you will get daily backups for free. Most of the web hosting companies will charge you extra for backups. That’s not the case here. You will get the option of free daily backups with all plans. However, the one-click backup restoration is dependent on plan you purchase.
Other Features of ChemiCloud
While the splendid seven are the most important ones that you should be happy about, there are other features that you should know:
- You will get a free SSL certificate through Let’s Encrypt. If you want, you can purchase a premium SSL certificate as well.
- With any subscription, you are entitled to get a free website migration completed on the same day.
- Eight server locations spread across the world. You can select any without fearing extra costs.
- You will get reliable email services and you don’t have to worry about getting blacklisted. The company has partnered with MailChannels to offer extremely reliable email services. Also, with any plan you purchase, you get to create unlimited email accounts.
- Depending on the plan you are selecting, you will get Imunify360 Malware Protection, Cloudflare Railgun, and Memcached.
- With all web hosting plans, you will get access to the famous cPanel and Softaculous app installer.
- You will also get access to a drag-and-drop website builder in case you don’t want to build your website using a CMS like WordPress or Joomla.
Website Speed on ChemiCloud Web Hosting
Okay, this is the moment of truth. We know that ChemiCloud has cloud infrastructure even for its shared hosting services. It uses LiteSpeed web server along with SSD storage. There’s free Cloudflare CDN available for all plans.
My expectation was to see ultrafast websites. So, I built a website on ChemiCloud’s basic plan called the Starter plan. The website was a WordPress powered site with no plugin installed and no Cloudflare activated. The demo site only used the GeneratePress theme (the free version). Here are the test results:
Google PageSpeed Insights – Mobile Results
Well, that’s the magic of LiteSpeed web server and SSD storage working together. It cannot get better, can it?
Google PageSpeed Insights – Desktop Results
A perfect 100! What else do you need?
GTmetrix Test Results
Do I need to say anything else?
Pingdom Test Results
Honestly, things cannot get better than this. However, you need to understand that when you start adding plugins, rich media, third-party codes, etc., things will change. Your website will slowdown. That’s when Cloudflare will come to your rescue. Cloudflare’s global CDN network combined with proper optimization of images, codes, etc. ensure that your website is blazing fast.
Honestly, I am super impressed with the results I see with ChemiCloud. It is needless to say that I will recommend this hosting company without an iota of doubt.
Plans and Pricing Structure
ChemiCloud will offer three different plans for shared hosting or web hosting. They are:
Web Hosting Starter
- Price: $3.95 per month for the first term.
- Renewal: $7.90 per month for second term onwards.
- Minimum term: Two years.
- Number of websites allowed: One.
- Bandwidth: Truly unlimited.
- Free domain: Yes.
- Free SSL: Yes.
- Disk space: 15 GB SSD.
- Free daily backups: Yes.
- Free migration: Yes.
- cPanel: Available.
- Email accounts: Unlimited.
- Cloudflare CDN: Yes
Web Hosting Pro
- Price: $6.95 per month for the first term.
- Renewal: $13.90 per month for second term onwards.
- Minimum term: One year.
- Number of websites allowed: Unlimited.
- Bandwidth: Truly unlimited.
- Free domain: Yes.
- Free SSL: Yes.
- Disk space: 25 GB SSD.
- Free daily backups: Yes.
- Free migration: Yes.
- cPanel: Available.
- Email accounts: Unlimited.
- Cloudflare CDN: Yes.
- Backup Restore: 1-click.
- Imunify360 Malware Protection.
- Priority support (24×7).
Web Hosting Turbo
- Price: $10.95 per month for the first term.
- Renewal: $21.90 per month for second term onwards.
- Minimum term: One year.
- Number of websites allowed: One
- Bandwidth: Truly unlimited.
- Free domain: Yes
- Free SSL: Yes
- Disk space: 35 GB SSD
- Free daily backups: Yes
- Free migration: Yes
- cPanel: Available.
- Email accounts: Unlimited.
- Cloudflare CDN: Yes
- Backup restore: 1-click.
- Imunify360 Malware Protection.
- Cloudflare Railgun.
- OPcache/APC and Memcached.
- Turbo Boost (3x more memory and power).
- Priority support (24×7).
Things I Didn’t Like About ChemiCloud
There are a few things that I didn’t like about ChemiCloud and I wish, ChemiCloud did something about those things to make themselves a more favorable destination for shared hosting. Here is what I didn’t like about ChemiCloud:
Pay for Website Builder
There are many web hosting companies that will throw in a website builder free of cost. ChemiCloud is not going to do that. You have to pay for it. The website builder is provided by Weebly.
All Long Term Plans
This sucks big time! You need commit for at least one year or two years depending on the plan you are selecting. There is no half-yearly, quarterly, or monthly plan available.
No Knowledge Base
I don’t find a reason for not providing this basic thing. Okay, they have a 24×7 customer support available. However, that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t me a knowledge base.
Pricing
It is normal for web hosting companies to offer a low introductory price and then charge more than double during renewal. ChemiCloud follows the same rule.
What’s more disturbing is that even the introductory prices are quite high compared to many popular options like HostGator, IONOS, FastComet, etc.
ChemiCloud Customer Support
The customer support of ChemiCloud is great! I need to accept that. Their 24×7 chat support staff are courteous, well-behaved and answer every question properly. They don’t sound to be mechanical.
They also have other channels of support that include emails, tickets and phone support. Usually, you don’t have to resort to those other channels. The chat support is strong enough to deal with most of the technical queries you may have.
Conclusion and Verdict
So, do I recommend using ChemiCloud? The answer is, YES. You will get blazing fast websites when you are using their shared hosting platform. This is made possible by SSD drives, LiteSpeed web server, and other modern and cutting-edge technologies that you won’t usually find in competing shared hosting companies.
Yes, there is a bit of concern when it comes to the overall existence of the company. It has been in the market for a little over three years. However, I think that shouldn’t be an impediment to your decision of going for this company. Every hosting company started at some point in time and they have gained experience over the years.
ChemiCloud will also grow over time! The bright side of working with a relatively new company is that they will strive to be the finest in the market that is overwhelmed by competition. That will keep them motivated to provide the best possible services. No wonder, the company’s overall technical offerings and the customer support department are top-notch.
So, yes! Go for ChemiCloud if you have enough money to commit for a long-term plan. I’m sure, you won’t regret your decision!