Mochahost has been around since 2002. It offers a wide range of hosting services. Additionally, they also have domain registrations services alongside services like website builder, custom web design, and so on. It also offers WordPress hosting solutions.
On their site they clearly mention that their WordPress hosting is cloud-based. But a quick chat with the sales team reveals that it is like cloud-based hosting with certain managed services, but what you get is essentially a shared hosting solutions with slightly beefed-up server resources.
It is funny to know how they play around with words and do not maintain clarity. At least the good thing is that the sales team displayed honestly and told the truth about their offering, but only when asked clearly.
So, hear it loud and clear:
“Mochahost will not give you cloud hosting for their WordPress hosting packages. They will give only and only shared hosting with some managed services.”
Features of Mochahost WordPress Hosting
Mochahost offers a set of features for their WordPress hosting solution that are slightly better than their pure shared hosting. Here is what you get with Mochahost WordPress hosting:
Unlimited Storage
They will give you unlimited SSD storage with cache booster. They will essentially allow you to install W3 Total Cache plugin during WordPress installation process. Do not think that it is the premium version. You get the free version only. Even bad, they do not even preconfigure it for you. You must carry out the configuration by yourself.
The problem with W3 Total Cache is that it is not easy to configure. You must have some technical knowledge to configure the plugin properly.
Unlimited Site Hosting
No matter which WordPress plan you select, you get to install as many WordPress sites as you want.
Free SSL
They will give you free SSL certificate. They advertise it is “Free SSL for Life.” It feels like they are offering premium SSL certificate without charging extra. Do not fall for their wordplay. They are only offering Let’s Encrypt SSL, which is anyway free!
Health Monitoring
They will monitor your website for health and if something critical shows up, they will automatically shoot a notification email. The thing is that they will only tell you that there is a problem. They will not tell you the solution to the problem.
Malware and Spam Checking
What they do is they install ModSecurity by default for their managed WordPress hosting (if you say so). It is a firewall that many other true managed WordPress hosting providers use. It will scan your server and site for malware activities and inform you in the event of any infection. Do not expect that they will clear up infections for you. You need to perform that by yourself. All you get is a notification.
RAM Guarantee
All their WordPress hosting solutions come with guaranteed RAM allocation. You will get 1 GB, 2 GB, or 4 GB depending on the package you purchase.
Free Emails
You get unlimited free emails irrespective of which WordPress hosting plan you select. This is good since you do not need to spend money for third-party email hosting services such as Google Workspace.
Free Migration
If your website is hosted somewhere else and it currently uses cPanel for management, they will perform a free migration for you. Anything other than cPanel is not allowed!
Free Domain
They offer a free domain depending on the hosting plan you select.
SpamExperts
If you do not want malware attacks, phishing attacks, virus attacks in your mailboxes, you can purchase SpamExperts separately. They do not include SpamExperts in their hosting package, but you have the provision for purchasing the service.
Automatic Backups
They offer automatic backups. Backups are taken weekly. However, they throw in JetBackup (nowhere related to Jetpack) that you can use for performing backups whenever you want. You can take partial or full backups. However, there is a limit to the backup size.
Android/iOS Apps Support
They will allow hosting Android and iOS apps on your hosting account alongside your website.
Staging/Cloning
Depending on the plan you are using, you will get the staging or cloning feature. It is a good option to make changes to your site without impacting user experience. You can make changes to your staging site and push them to the live environment at once.
Free CDN
They basic WordPress package (WP Starter) will not get free CDN. CDN is available only for the top two packages. The CDN provider is Cloudflare. Only their highest package (WP Advanced) gets Cloudflare Railgun that allows you to optimized dynamic content.
MemCached and Redis Cache
These features allow caching database for even faster websites. However, these features are available only and only with WP Advanced package, which is their top tier package.
WP-CLI and Git Repo
Again, these are available only on their highest tier plan. These are developer tools. So, if you are not a developer, you should not be worried about these.
Cloud Technology
Even though you will be on shared server, your account will be isolated from other accounts on that server using virtualization technology. Essentially, they will create an isolated environment with dedicated resources that you can quickly scale as required.
Unfortunately, since you will be on a shared server anyway, the resources will not be infinite as in the case of true cloud. There will be limited resources. If you think that you can scale as much as you need, that is not possible.
cPanel
For the management of your website, you get the cPanel. Do not forget that it is a shared hosting server. Shared hosting servers mostly use cPanel for website management. With cPanel you get a file manager and a host of other features that you can use for easily managing your site.
The cPanel you get with Mochahost will have Softaculous software installer that you can use for installing WordPress easily. They also have a separate managed WordPress installer. It is nothing special because it is still managed by Softaculous. The only difference is that it will allow you to include W3 Total Cache during the installation process.
This is how the cPanel looks like:
Everything is neatly arranged in accordion boxes. If you want to find something look at the according title and you should find it in that tab. For instance, if you want to get access to the file manager or get access to FTP accounts, etc., you can find all those options in the according titled Files.
WordPress Installation
WordPress installation is the same as you will find with any Softaculous-based one-click installation. Though it is called one-click installation, it is not really a one-click installation.
The WordPress installation screen looks like this:
When you click on the Install button, it will ask you to select the domain, the installation directory, and the protocol.
You can scroll further down to give your blog a name and add admin details.
Further down, you can get to select admin email and select the plugins you want to install. This is where you can select to have W3 Total Cache installed.
Once you have selected all the settings, you can move forward and install WordPress. The installation button is at the very bottom.
Once you click on the install button, WordPress will be installed, and you can see this screen after installation:
You can see the admin URL and the site frontend URL. You can click on them to visit your WordPress site dashboard or your site frontend.
Website Speed
The bare site installed on the hosting server offered by Mochahost did give good speed, but something horrible emerged in the Google PageSpeed Insights test. Here is the mobile test result:
And here is the desktop test result:
It is beyond my intellect to understand how on earth can a server powered by SSD storage have such high initial server response time. This is the type of speed you would normally see in traditional spinning hard drives.
The initial server response time reflects the Time to First Byte. That is an important parameter in Core Web Vitals. With some effort you can definitely bring down the initial server response time, but with the type of initial server response time that Mochahost server provides, it will be mighty difficult to bring this down to Google’s prefer speed mark.
Optimization Attempt
I went ahead and configured the caching plugin (I used Fastest Cache) and re-ran the test. The test still reported high server response time for mobile devices. This is what I found:
You can see from the image above that the initial server response time was still high at 0.67 seconds.
That is not something you expect from server with SSD storage. There must be something seriously wrong with their server-side caching.
Pricing Plans of Mochahost
Mochahost offers three different WordPress hosting plans – WP Starter, WP Premium, and WP Advanced. They use the same trick that any shared hosting provider uses. You get the lowest price only when you sign up for a long term. Also, they will jack up the prices during renewal.
Why wouldn’t they do it? Afterall, their WordPress hosting solution is nothing but slightly beefed-up shared hosting.
Here is a quick screenshot of their pricing plans:
Remember that the prices you see in that image above are available only and only when you go for a 3-year commitment. And I will never recommend doing that.
Pros and Cons of Mochahost
The Advantages
- They offer a lot of free stuff.
- They offer ModSecurity for securing your website against malwares and hackers.
- They guarantee a certain amount of RAM depending on your chosen plan.
- They offer staging / cloning sites (higher plans only).
- They give isolated virtual environments with resource scalability.
The Disadvantages
- They only provide a certain aspect of cloud technology (virtualization). You do not get to host your website(s) on the cloud. In reality, you get hosting on a shared server.
- The so-called Cloudflare integration in WP Premium only gives you a tool to install Cloudflare on your site. You have to create a new account or if you already have Cloudflare account, you can login. All you get is free Cloudflare services. You get paid Cloudflare services only when you go for their Advanced plan.
- Database caching is available only and only in the highest plan.
- They still rely on the outdated cPanel.
- They falsely claim on their site that they offer cloud-based hosting.
- They have an extremely high initial server response time.
Conclusion
Do I recommend Mochahost? No! Not at all! It is just shared hosting with scalability and some dedicated resources. On top of that, their servers returned high server response time. That is not the type of server you will want for your WordPress site.
If you really want a managed WordPress hosting solution, go for Liquid Web, Kinsta, Flywheel, etc. Yes, they cost more, but they are highly reliable and save you a lot of trouble over the long run.
