Singlehop Reviews

Advantages

Launched in 2006, singlehop.com currently has over 100 employees across its offices in Columbus, Chicago and Phoenix. The company is quite a small hosting organization with just about 4,000 clients, but has continued to compete for the top spot with other big companies. Singlehop is entirely aimed at providing hosting for the premium end market and it is purely an enterprise and business host. That being said, you won’t find cheap shared hosting plans in their service portfolio. Despite their client base being seemingly small, they offer high-value packages that have made this company a fast-growing, notable contender in the world of hosting.

Singlehop’s hosting solutions are well known for having a fantastic track record when it comes to reliability and uptime. The company has also been very keen at marketing its apps, SLAs and excellent support. Singlehop.com focuses primarily on dedicated hosting where customers have a choice of Linux and Windows.

Highlights: Flexible managed hosting, 24/7 customer support and Microsoft SPLA Partner make Singlehop an awesome company to find hosting from.
Singlehop Hosting Packages
Singlehop hosting packages are primarily aimed at the customer with enterprise-level hosting needs. Among its four hosting categories, Singlehop offers customers options for quality Virtual Private Cloud hosting. This level of hosting can accommodate a workload on a range of 5 to 5,000 machines and offers the extensive scalability of a public cloud system with the privacy and security of a private cloud. Customers of the Virtual Private Cloud plan will receive granular control of all resources, including memory and storage with the ability to scale at will, as well as a monthly bill with a fixed cost, which Singlehop views as a benefit to businesses.

Singlehop also offers a Dedicated Private Cloud package that also utilizes the company’s LEAP portal, accessible online, on iPhones, on Androids and through standard API interfaces. The Dedicated Private Cloud plan ensures that customers have dedicated resources exclusively at their disposal and presents the opportunity for either fully or self-manage hosting service. This plan also includes flexible provisioning with the VMware vSphere and utilizes standardized hardware across its data centers to improve efficiency and cost savings. All dedicated private clouds further offer maximum isolation through controllable direct points of entry that can be controlled by the plan’s system administrator.

Prefer a VPS hosting plan instead? Singlehop offers Virtual Server hosting plans that include redundant SAN cloud-based storage, the ability to choose whichever operating system works for the customer (be it Windows, Linux, Debian, RedHat and more), and a free license to Enterprise SUSE Linux operating systems. Note that this Virtual Server hosting plan does operate on a public cloud, which means that only resources that are utilized require payment, and service can begin and end at any time the customer chooses. Customers of a Singlehop Virtual Server plan will also benefit from the ability to easily integrate a dedicated server with a virtual server using the RESTful API for more diverse deployment and scaling options. Singlehop offers 9 different options for virtual servers. In regards to pricing, as mentioned, customers will engage in a “pay-per-use” plan; however, under Singlehop, their first TB of outbound bandwidth will be free of charge, while all inbound bandwidth is free throughout the duration of the plan.

Dedicated server packages provide what Singlehop refers to as a “robust” hosting platform, with the ability to host a wide variety of specific Windows and Linux operating systems (as with a Virtual Server plan). In fact, many of the same resources and features available to customers in a Virtual Server plan also appear in the company’s Dedicated Server plan, although a dedicated server will not permit any public sharing of resources; companies will maintain sole access to their server. Customers may also choose from 6 different dedicated servers from Singlehop.
Singlehop Features
Singlehop virtual, cloud and dedicated can operate on a variety of operating systems, including the popular Linux and Windows operating systems. Virtual private servers range from 1 vCore 2.5 GHz to a 6 vCore GHz server that provides a hefty 24GB of RAM, 100GB of SAN storage, 1TB of bandwidth with international server locations in Amsterdam, Chicago and Phoenix (where all of the company’s servers are located). Virtual Server plans from Singlehop use both the common, industry-leading control panel cPanel, and the lesser known Vanilla control panel. Infrastructure tools of the Virtual Private Cloud hosting plan include the company’s own LEAP portal and VMware’s vCloud Director.

Singlehop’s dedicated servers range from the Quad Core i5-760 with a CPU of 2.8GHz to the company’s most powerful and expensive dedicated server, the 2x Hexa Core Xeon E5-2620v2 with a 2x Hexa Core CPU of 2.0GHz and a hefty 10TB of bandwidth and 16GB of RAM. Dedicated servers are also available in single processor options as well, to be found on Singlehop’s “All Servers” page.
Singlehop Data Center Location and Acceleration
Singlehop operates data centers out of Phoenix, Chicago, and Amsterdam. Each of these data centers benefit from:

• 24/7 security
• Biometric access
• PTZ
• Anti-tailgating protocols

The servers housed in these data centers operate on a redundant infrastructure with BMS control and monitoring. Each data center is also a SSAE-16 certified facility with technicians that have earned VMware certification. To offer customers enhanced speed, Singlehop guarantees that its cloud and dedicated hosting environments can be deployed within an hour (typically within minutes), and access to the IPCast Content Delivery Network Bandwidth for an additional monthly fee; customers can also purchase extra bandwidth to improve speed as well.
Singlehop Security and More
Singlehop provides extensive options for hosting security, some of which are available for an additional annual cost. Its anti -virus security plan from ESET Corp includes frequent fingerprint updates, spam filtering, email anti-virus protection, and a dedicated MailFoundry device. Every Singlehop customer will benefit from access to a free, lifetime SSL certificate for any type of server; the company actually offers a variety of these GlobalSign SSL certificates free of charge, including its:

• Alpha
• Domain
• Alpha Wild Card
• Domain Wild Card versions

Packages also include free SSL VPN access and the opportunity to purchase intrusion detection services and DDoS mitigation. Customers can further ensure that their data is safely stored and backed up on a regular basis with an Idera Automated Backup. This company’s standard automatic backup services are included in a Singlehop hosting package, while its pay-as-you-go backup plan and self-managed solution with a free server license come at an additional cost. A self-serve FTP backup plan is also available from Singlehop at a relatively low monthly cost.

The Virtual Private Cloud hosting package is also specifically crafted so that businesses can easily comply with HIPAA and PCI regulations that help ensure a cloud environment is secure. The Dedicated Private Server package affords customers data loss protection with its vCenter Site Recovery Management that covers all cloud applications and smaller sites, along with fault tolerance in the case of server failure to ensure continuous cloud application availability.

All Singlehop customers can elect to receive fully managed, server administration services for an additional cost; such provides 24/7 technical support and hosting oversight, along with general administrative duties. For additional hosting monitoring, Singlehop offers its QuickReaction™ service that ensures that a technician immediately addresses any situation that arises on a server, as well as an Automated Event Notifications plan that allows customers to specify which aspects of dedicated server performance they would like to be notified of should performance be hindered; this type of monitoring is more suitable for those ready to address any issue themselves. All Singlehop servers also come with a complementary server setup that is free of charge to customers.

Singlehop has also just released its new Leap3 client portal that permits advanced cloud management from a wide range of devices, including mobile, tablet, desktop and API. Singlehop further provides additional IP space (up to 61 additional IPs), extra bandwidth allocations, and an upgraded connection to a 1 GigE Switch Port or a secondary port connection for additional monthly costs.
Singlehop Webmail
Unlike many other hosting providers, Singlehop doesn’t advertise use of an email platform or the opportunity to take advantage of a separate email hosting package. However, Singlehop has made recommendations on its official blog as to which type of Mail Transfer Agent customers would be best served using, citing Postfix and Exim. Customers of Singlehop can therefore configure an existing email service or integrate a new service such as Postfix or Exim to their Singlehop hosting server.
Is Singlehop Good?
If you’re in the market for a premium, enterprise-level hosting package, then yes, Singlehop will likely be a good choice. Though less than 10 years old, the company has demonstrated impressive growth and has maintained a loyal customer base thanks to its consistently fast uptimes and competitive prices, along with a commitment to provide top-notch SLAs. In fact, Singlehop has maintained 100% uptimes for all of its customers for the last three years and running. Note that Singlehop does not offer shared web hosting, so if you’re looking to host your first website or setup a small blog, Singlehop may provide more resources than you’ll need.