When it comes to the Internet, you need to have a place that you can call home. Your company’s Web site needs to be accessible, and the best way to do that is to rent space on a server through a Web host. A Web host is a company that allows you to save space on a server, which is basically a computer. The Internet is made up of servers that store information in a form that can be easily retrieved and then displayed by computer screens all over the world. In order to get your Web site on the Internet easily, it pays to rent space from a Web host.
We will focus in ASP.NET hosting since this blog is for ASP.NET hosting lover. There are many ASP.NET hosts out there, and some of them even offer free hosting. However, these free services often come at a price: diminished service or you have to let the company run ads on your business Web site (which looks unprofessional). In the end, it is often worth it to find ASP.NET hosting that costs a little bit. There are plenty of low-cost ASP.NET hosting options out there. Two Web hosts will be discussed here: SmarterASP and 1&1 Internet Inc. You can find out more about other popular low-cost ASP.NET hosting at https://www.topreviewhostingasp.net.
About 1and1 and SmarterASP.NET Hosting
1&1 hosting is made by people who know the Internet inside out. After all, United Internet, a corporation which owns this provider, has been around since 1988. It wasn’t only doing hosting. One of their other products is Mail.com, one of the biggest email services on the planet.
And in late 2018, we were greeted with the blockbuster news. 1&1 bought and merged with Profitbricks, an enterprise cloud solution. This is how 1&1 IONOS was born: even bigger and more powerful than ever before.
SmarterASP.net is a web hosting company offering plans focused on Windows hosting based on ASP.NET. It hosting services include shared hosting, VPS, and semi-dedicated hosting.
SmarterASP.net is quite new in ASP.NET hosting business, around 2012 and has its headquarters in Monterey Park, California. The company takes pride in being debt-free and purchases equipment with cash available.
Pricing Schemes ASP.NET Hosting
Leading ASP.NET hosts across the board, 1&1 and SmarterASP are two trusted brands in the ASP.NET hosting industry that have been around for ages. Shared hosting plans don’t come much cheaper than with these two, but 1&1 and SmarterASP both pack the features into their high-value packages. By building their own control panel, CDN, and website builder, 1&1 takes a personal role in ensuring the user experience is streamlined and intuitive.
If you compare about their ASP.NET hosting pricing, you can see that SmarterASP is clearly the winner.
Comparison SmarterASP vs 1and1 ASP.NET Hosting Features
Both of the companies offer many features to help customers run website smoothly and stably and manage the accounts easily. However, there are also some limitations. The table below lists the main features SmarterASP and 1&1 provide.
Both SmarterASP and 1&1 offers plenty of freebies and add-ons to their hosting plans. They both offer a free domain name for a year with purchase of a hosting plan.
SmarterASP ASP.NET hosting and 1&1 do daily backups of your server. SmarterASP has better recovery system than 1&1. Actually is almost the same with ASPHostPortal backup system. ASPHostPortal also have great recovery system. You don’t need to worry if you want to recover your missing files and they keep on their backup system for a month.
For money back guarantee, both also offer money back guarantee. If you don’t satisfied with their hosting services, you can claim your money back.
Below are complete information about their hosting plan
| 1&1 Business Plan | SmarterASP NET Basic |
|---|---|
| Unlimited* hosted domains | 1 hosted domains |
| 100 GB Space | 1 GB Space |
| Unlimited* Bandwith | 10 GB Bandwith |
| Windows 2012/2016 Version | Windows 2012/2016 Version |
| All ASP.NET Features | All ASP.NET Features |
| Full Trust Not Allowed | Support Full Trust |
| No dedicated pool | No dedicated pool |
| 25 Email Accounts | Unlimited Email Accounts |
| No Support URL Rewrite | No Support URL Rewrite |
If you see above features, their features are almost same and it depends on your choice and your need. Both offer good features. But if you need advanced feature like IIS Remote Management, WebDeploy, Dedicated pool, and URL Rewrite, then you can’t find on their lowest package. If you need this feature, then you need go to their higher package. It is not the same with ASPHostPortal. With ASPHostPortal Host One package, you can get all this features without any single fee.
How is Their ASP.NET Hosting Performance?
Features, however, do not really matter if the ASP.NET host does not perform. The job of a ASP.NET web host is deliver your website files to a visitor’s browser every time they go to you web address as reliably and as quickly as possible.
Uptime is the measure of how well the web host fits the “reliably” part of performance. Both SmarterASP and 1&1 claim industry-standard uptime of 99.9%. Any measure of uptime by customers is going to anecdotal (including mine – neither me nor my clients have had noticeable downtime with either). Their uptime claims are supposed to be audited – so I’ll give them both a tie on reliability.
Quick aside on reliability – be wary of any host that over-promises reliability. Everyone can (and does) go down at some point. The famous website like Facebook, Yahoo, or Bloomberg can down also. And 1&1 certainly goes down. You should expect a very high-level of performance from your web host, but be sure not to let past performance set future expectations. Additionally, both services promise “unlimited bandwidth” (ie, how many concurrent visitors you can have on your site). That’s a partial untruth for nearly all web hosts. If your site is featured on CNN, Yahoo, and goes viral on Facebook at the same time…your site is probably going to crash. Again, expect a high-level of performance, but don’t have unrealistic expectations or put value in unfulfillable promises.
Back to comparing 1&1 hosting vs SmarterASP on performance. Even though we can’t look at uptime directly – we can look at how quickly their servers can deliver files – ie how fast your website is.
As you can see above, we have tested using monitoring tools and we found they are quite slow and incompetent in website speed. We believe that if you need high speed and great performance, then this is not good option to choose them. It will better to find other ASP.NET Hosting providers that offer high speed for your website.
Customer Service is Also Important Factors
Customer service, like overall uptime, is often hard to judge based on just anecdotes – and companies’ internal metrics are not generally available. Both SmarterASP and 1&1 are huge companies with a lot of customers. Usually, customers with good experiences rarely talk about their customer service (especially if the service is functioning properly). Meanwhile, customers who do have problems will vocally talk about their bad experiences online.
Our most recent SmarterASP customer experience revolved around a problem with their ASP.NET version on control panel. The support answered very quickly and was very cordial. The issue was resolved within 10 minutes, and we received quick follow up via email from the rep.
1&1 hosting support has typically been fine, but not quite good. Their support is fast (usually under a minute wait) and cordial, but not super knowledgeable. They seem to view support as a cost center rather than a marketing & retention channel.
In my conclusion, SmarterASP is more effective than 1&1 for technical support. I must admit that they must improve their customer support, but overall I would prefer SmarterASP than 1&1 hosting.
Final Verdict
Anyone looking for a ASP.NET hosting provider knows there are tons of companies out there, all jostling for position and attention. 1&1 and SmarterASP have been around long enough to earn a place in the pack – but just where does it sit?
In our research and testing, we found that SmarterASP is better than 1and1 based on their pricing and customer support.
But if you are truly ASP.NET hosting lover and require high speed ASP.NET hosting performance, then we really recommend ASPHostPortal ASP.NET hosting.
ASPHostPortal is the best all-round ASP.NET hosting provider and scored full marks for help and support in our research. It also scored top marks for the types of hosting it offers, not to mention value for money, disk space, and uptime.
