Arvixe Review

Founded in 2003, Arvixe has spent the last two decades building a name for itself as an affordable, reliable, and high-quality web host provider.

On its website, you’ll find numerous references to prestigious industry awards it has won, as well as claims of being the best web host and a trusted partner for serious website owners.

When tested, does Arvixe meet the expectations it sets for its users? Does it perform at an award-winning level? The short answer? We have our doubts.

The long answer is the rest of this Arvixe review.

So let’s dive into what makes this web host just all right and why there may be better and more affordable options for you to choose from.

General Info & Hosting Overview

Advantages of Using Arvixe Hosting

Even Arvixe’s most basic plan comes with several useful features and perks. Let’s dig deeper into the advantages of choosing this web host.

1. Reliable Uptime

Out of every feature we tested with Arvixe, its uptime was exceptional. From January 2022 to November 2022, we found its average uptime to be 99.98% (no more than 11 minutes of downtime per month). It’s almost neck and neck with the near-perfect uptime of SiteGround (99.99%).

Still, 2022 didn’t end well for Arvixe. Its uptime dipped in December 2022 to 98.47%, which is well below the industry standard of 99.9%. The long downtime was due to an outage that lasted about six hours.

Not great. But then again, these numbers are still impressive considering Arvixe’s history of poor uptime performance. Take, for instance, the web host’s average monthly uptimes from December 2018 to February 2019:

• 45% (December 2018)
• 98% (January 2019)
• 17% (February 2019)

All things considered, Arvixe has done an impressive job of improving its uptime over the past few years.

Like many web hosts, Arvixe has an uptime guarantee to ensure its servers are available to users 99.9% of the time each month. If it doesn’t meet that guarantee in a particular month, you can contact the customer support to get a credit worth one month of services — you’ll need to contact the support within 30 days after the end of the concerned month.

2. 45-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Although Arvixe doesn’t offer a free trial, you can still enjoy its services with a no-questions-asked 45-day money-back guarantee. You’ll pay to get started, but you’ll have 45 days from the date of purchase to decide if Arvixe is a great fit for your personal or business website.

Arvixe offers a longer grace period than Hostinger, A2 Hosting, and Namecheap, each of which only offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. That’s an additional 15 days to test out Arvixe’s loading speeds, uptime performance, and other features.

With Arvixe, this refund is only available for the shared, reseller, and VPS hosting plans. It also only applies to new plans and first-time shared hosting clients. So if you already have an existing plan with Arvixe, this guarantee won’t apply to you. It also won’t apply to services like dedicated hosting.

3. Intuitive cPanel and User Dashboard

Once you sign up for a hosting plan with Arvixe, you gain access to a simple and easy-to-navigate dashboard. From there, you have access to all your account settings and features.

For instance, you can:

• Purchase and activate add-ons and extra services
• Upgrade to a higher plan or downgrade by clicking a button
• Log in to your webmail and cPanel
• Manage your domains and billing information
• Launch a support ticket and receive responses from customer agents

4. Free cPanel Site Migrations and Free Domain Name

If you’re using cPanel with your current hosting provider and want to switch, Arvixe will do it for free.

If you’re looking to migrate multiple websites at once, you’ll have to sign up for the VPSClass plan. In our customer support interaction, the support agent mentioned that only the VPS hosting plan supports multiple cPanels.

You’ll also get a free domain for your first year if you sign up for any of Arvixe’s hosting plans. Still, remember that the domain renews at the market price once your current plan expires.

5. No Renewal Price Increases

With Arvixe, the price you see is the price you get. Once your current plan expires, you’ll renew it at the same price you signed up for. In other words, Arvixe doesn’t use a discounted price to try and lure you into buying its services.

In contrast, consider IONOS. When you sign up for its Business plan, you pay $1/month for the first year, then $10/month afterward. That’s a 900% increase in price year-to-year.

Knowing your plan’s price isn’t going to skyrocket when the time for renewal comes is a huge relief for many website owners.

6. Proactive Security Solutions

Website security is an essential thing to look for when selecting a new hosting service. With Arvixe, you get several proactive security solutions with your new plan. They help monitor the health and security of your website and protect you from malicious attacks.

For example, the basic Arvixe hosting plan comes with:

• Brute-force attack detection
• Firewall
• Daily backups
• SSH access

These features go a long way in making your website secure and trustworthy. In fact, even the customers who’ve had an average experience with Arvixe praise its security features in their reviews.

7. Capable Website Builder

Another feature we like among Arvixe’s offerings is the RVsitebuilder. It’s an intuitive and user-friendly website builder. You only need to enter your site name, basic page categories (about page, contact page, homepage), and a slogan to get started.

After that, you can choose a theme template and drag and drop features to customize your website. If you’re proficient with coding, you can also add custom code to several out-of-the-box features for additional functionality.

As a free product, it’s a major plus. Otherwise, it’s an obscure builder with limited users. You won’t find much community support. If you need a website builder, you’re better off with GoDaddy’s Website Builder.

Disadvantages of Using Arvixe Hosting

At first glance, Arvixe looks like a pretty decent web hosting option. That said, there are some downsides to the web host’s services we simply can’t ignore.

Two of the biggest offenders are response time and customer support, both crucial aspects of any website owner’s hosting experience. In addition, the pricing plans — while transparent — are pricey when compared to similar web hosts.

Let’s explore more of the disadvantages of hosting with Arvixe below.

1. Poor Loading Speeds

Between January 2022 and December 2022, Arvixe’s average loading speed was more than a second: 1099 ms, to be precise.

You might be wondering why this is such a problem. A second’s pretty quick, right?

Not in the world of web hosting. Essentially, the slower your website loads, the more likely your visitors will give up and go elsewhere. This is what’s known as a bounce rate.

According to data published by Google, if your website load speed increases from one to three seconds, the bounce rate will correspondingly increase by 32%. Ouch!

Similarly, a 2022 Portent study found an inverse relationship between load speed and conversion rate: A website that takes one second to load has three times the conversion rate of a website that takes five seconds to load.

Essentially, each additional second your website takes to load costs you in terms of sales and conversions.

We’d be remiss not to mention, however, that Arvixe is moving in the right direction. As recently as November 2021, Arvixe had a response time of more than four seconds. Getting that load time down to an average of 1099 ms — a nearly 75% improvement — is impressive.

But Arvixe’s loading speeds still lag behind those of other hosts. For instance, Bluehost offers similar services at a lower price and reported an average loading speed of 661 ms in 2022.

2. Expensive Prices

As we mentioned earlier, Arvixe is refreshingly transparent with its pricing plans. What you pay from day one is what you’ll always pay.

But there’s a caveat. Even for its cheapest plans, you’ll be paying more than for other hosts. For example, you can find shared hosting plans for less than $10/month with GoDaddy or IONOS.

Arvixe’s cheapest hosting plan (Linux shared hosting) is priced at $15.99/month. And if you want to host more than six domains, you have to upgrade to Arvixe’s PersonalClass Pro plan, which costs an extra $5/month.

If you prefer your servers to run on Windows, the cheapest option starts at $17.99/month. With this plan, you can only host a single website. For more, you’ll have to upgrade to the PersonalClass Pro for Windows plan, which also costs an additional $5/month and pushes the website limit to five.

3. Limited Features

Even with higher prices, you don’t get as many add-ons, except a free domain for a year.

If you want an SSL certificate for your website — a good idea for protecting both you and your visitors — you’ll have to pay an additional $25/year. That’s steep, especially considering that competitors like A2 Hosting and SiteGround offer free SSL certificates with each of their hosting plans.

4. Subpar Customer Service

When it comes to customer support, Arvixe offers the bare minimum. Your options are live chat support, service tickets, email, a knowledge base, and… that’s about it. Like many web hosts, Arvixe has opted to discontinue its phone support.

This isn’t necessarily a disadvantage. Hostinger got rid of its phone support but still manages to offer high-quality customer support.

However, what matters is effort. And it seems to be missing in how Arvixe is handling its customer support. A bevy of online reviews underscores the lack of satisfaction customers have with Arvixe’s support features.

Even when the overall review is positive, customers still mention poor technical support.

These reviews do not inspire much confidence in the future of Arvixe’s customer support service.

Quick Facts

• Free domain: Yes.
• Ease of Signup: Easy, single-page signup.
• Money-Back: 45-day money-back guarantee.
• Payment Methods: Credit Card or PayPal.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: No hidden fees. The money-back guarantee applies for first-time shared, reseller, and VPS hosting accounts only. To benefit from uptime guarantee, you’ll need to contact the customer support within 30 days after the end of the affected month.
• Account Activation: Quick activation.
• Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel for Linux hosting and Plesk for Windows
• Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Softaculous for one-click installation of apps and CMSs.
• Other Features: DDoS attack response, unmetered MySQL databases, HTML editor, daily backups, and website builder.

Do We Recommend Arvixe Hosting?

No, we don’t recommend Arvixe Hosting.

Not at this time, at least. We recognize that Arvixe has done much to improve its loading speeds and uptime over the past few years. These are massive steps in the right direction, but it’s still not enough to get our seal of approval.

Free domain registrations, security options, daily backups, and unmetered bandwidth are all good features that Arvixe offers. But considering that you have to pay for an SSL certificate and deal with potentially unsatisfactory support teams, Arvixe’s pricing is too much of an ask.

Instead, check out these top-performing hosts to find a cheaper and more reliable hosting partner.