Expert's Rating
Our Verdict
Easyspace delivers a neat website building package, but for now you’re probably best avoiding that and heading in the direction of its WordPress deals.
Price When Reviewed
From $4 per month
Best Prices Today: Easyspace
Easyspace is another tried-and-tested web hosting company that has been doing the rounds for more years than we care to remember. As a result, the British business reckons it has something to offer any kind of user and its website certainly packs everything you need to get started, including domain registration and, naturally, providing you with the option of a site builder in the shape of EasySiteLive Pro.
‘A brand new way of building & managing websites easily!’ claims the current promotional blurb as well as offering you a free trial to see what’s what. In a competitive environment Easyspace has seen that it needs to up its game in terms of what it can offer and the results are pretty impressive.
Prices & plans
Standard Hosting , the entry-level plan cost from £3.60 / $4.59 per month, and this includes 10GB of SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, 25 email addresses and a choice of Windows or Linux as the server operating system.
You get a free domain name if you sign up for a year’s hosting. You’ll only get that price if you commit to a year and pay up front and the discounts increase for two-year or longer contracts.
Premium Hosting costs from £6.15 / $7.95 per month and gives you unlimited storage, upgrades the email from POP to IMAP (which is what you want) and doubles the number of mailboxes and storage for email. You also get a backup & restore feature which is missing from the Standard plan.
WordPress hosting is more expensive still, costing from £8.25 / $10.66 per month.
For alternatives, check out our roundup of the best web hosting services.
Ease of use & features
The range and diversity of Easyspace’s ready-to-go templates is very good, with lots of them needing little work and just a bit of customisation to get you up-and-running. EasySiteLive Pro also comes packed with plenty of features that should enable just about anyone to dive in and create dynamic-looking pages that belie the fact that they’ve been created using an online site builder.
After choosing your template it’s all fairly standard fare, in a good way of course. All you need to do is explore the drag-and-drop functionality to make changes to any aspect of your pages.
This is a very forgiving system too, because if you screw up or decide it’s time to go back to square one, the service lets you do that without fuss or bother.
And, while there are a lot of simplistic tools that make light of the building pages, EasySiteLive Pro does let you add in more powerful options. So, adding elements such as Google Maps and contact forms is wonderfully easy, while making your site ready for social media interaction is also a breeze.
Working on basic things like text edits and fiddling with image content can be done using drag-and-drop efficiency, but if you do get bogged down along the way then there are some cool support videos that will soon have you picking up where you left off.
Support
The company also makes a big point about the fact that it can offer 24/7 UK-based customer support, which although you probably won’t need it if you’re working your way through a basic website creation job, is good to know that it’s there.
Similarly, getting to the point where you’re building pages is pretty easy, with the option to pick a new domain name, work with an existing one or just get building and pick a domain later all being on the table. You’ll need to work through some account sign-up areas first, but there’s nothing too scary along the way.
That said, we found getting in touch with Easyspace for the purpose of this review more challenging than expected. We’re sure that’s not a reflection on the bigger picture and, there’s an interesting twist to the tale in that at the time of writing Easyspace told us that it was preparing to redo its site building tool and that a newer and even more improved version should be available later in the year.
So, in that respect it’s hard for us to accurately rate the offering for now, though we will of course test out the improved offering when it’s available. However, Easyspace was also keen to underline the appeal of its WordPress hosting.
Plenty of hosting packages support WordPress though but it’s a good option, particularly if you’re eager to build a bells and whistles blog. Word Press can also be used for more conventional websites too with regular pages as found in everyday sites.
But, it can be a little bit idiosyncratic and if you’re not au fait with its charms then you might possibly want to bypass Easyspace until they’ve got the new website builder package is ready to go. On the flip side, if you’re up for a challenge then WordPress offers lots of power tools and extra web functionality, plus there are also countless themes and templates that you can both use and customise in order to make a formidable website.
If you’re a newbie who’s not really sure about the relevance of this particular content management system, and seek to create a static site that doesn’t need updating all the time, or which needs new pages added regularly, you may be better off with a provider that offers a simple-to-use site builder that’s already proven, such as Weebly.
Verdict
Easyspace isn’t the best web hosting provider right now. Its prices aren’t hugely competitive for what’s on offer, even if you do go for the multi-year contracts. It’s possible to get managed WordPress hosting without paying a premium from other providers such as SiteGround review.
Phone support is good, though, so that’s a plus if you’re in the UK but in such a competitive landscape, it’s tough to recommend it above some of its rivals.