Sunwave Review - Shared Hosting
| Sunwave Shared Plan Grid | ||||
| Sun1 | Sun2 | Sun3 | Sun4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Setup Fee | $0 | |||
| Fee/Mo | $7 | $25 | $50 | $100 |
| Disk Space | 500MB | 1000MB | 2000MB | 5000MB |
| Transfer/Mo | 25GB | 110GB | 225GB | 500GB |
| Transfer Overage/GB | $1.75 | $1.25 | $1.00 | $0.75 |
| Domains | 5 | 20 | 25 | 35 |
| Additional blocks of disk space available at a rate of $5 for 500MB/month | ||||
Other Account Features
- Allows a sub-domain for sunwave.com based on username (i.e. username.sunwave.com)
- Month to month term
- Unique IP addresses for each domain
- Adult content: No
- Proxy / IRC: No
- Email and Live Chat support (not 24×7)
- Raw web log access
- SpamAssassin, TMDA
Subjective Review
- Pre-Sales Question. Pre-sales questions were answered sufficiently. Answers came in a timely manner.
- Account Sign Up. Typical sign up procedure. No difficulties.
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Control Panel. Sunwave uses a custom text based control panel. It includes typical features including: Domain Configuration, Email Configuration w/anti-spam Tools, Webmail, PHPMyAdmin for MySQL, File Manager, Cron Editor, Webalizer Web Stats and MRTG Bandwidth Graphs.
The organization of control panel items sometimes feels like a game of hide and seek but overall it is a useful interface. - CMS Install. Automatic script installs are not available, so the CMS (Drupal) was uploaded via FTP and installed manually. No difficulties encountered.
- Site Creation. The CMS administration panel at times was very slow to respond.
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Technical Support Contact. On average Sunwave has provided good technical support but not always in a timely manner.
When live chat support is available (not 24×7) questions have been answered promptly. However email replies have often taken more than a day to be answered and at times with a request for more information (that had already been supplied) rather than a solution / answer. In one case the site became inaccessible and several emails and several days were necessary before the problem was addressed.
On the other hand at times technical support went above the call of duty and even followed up with an email with additional information. -
Subjective Summary. Sunwave’s shared hosting plans provide minimal disk space and transfer allowances by today’s standards. Unique features like month to month payment terms, dedicated IP addresses and advanced control panel features sweeten the deal. Declining support quality may be an issue.
Actual site availability has seldom been a serious issue. However, slow loading (or blank) pages are not uncommon.
The variable quality of technical support and overall site performance has lead to the cancellation of this account. Further testing will not be carried out. 
