Yahoo! Web Hosting Review

Yahoo! Web Hosting is a web hosting provider that offers a range of hosting plans and services to businesses and individuals. The company was founded in 1994 and has since grown to become one of the leading hosting providers in the industry. 

Yahoo! Web Hosting’s hosting plans include a variety of options such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting, all of which are designed to meet the specific needs of different users. The company prides itself on providing fast and reliable hosting services with exceptional customer support, all while offering competitive pricing plans. 

Yahoo! Web Hosting also offers a variety of additional features and tools, such as website builders, one-click installs for popular applications, and advanced security options. With its focus on providing high-quality hosting solutions, Yahoo! Web Hosting has gained a reputation for being one of the most reliable and innovative hosting providers in the industry. 

In this review, we’ll take a closer look at Yahoo! Web Hosting’s hosting plans, features, and performance, to help you decide if it’s the right hosting provider for your needs.

Overview

Yahoo! Web Hosting is a web hosting service that was launched in 1998. It is a part of Yahoo’s small business services, which offers a variety of tools and services for small businesses, including domain registration, website design, and marketing tools. 

Yahoo! Web Hosting provides shared hosting plans, which are designed for small to medium-sized businesses. The plans offer a range of features, including unlimited disk space and bandwidth, a free domain name, and 24/7 customer support. 

The service also provides a website builder tool that allows users to create a website without any coding skills. Yahoo! Web Hosting has been a popular choice for many small businesses looking to establish an online presence.

Customer Support

Yahoo! Web Hosting is a web hosting company that provides a variety of hosting services, including shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. Along with their hosting services, Yahoo! Web Hosting offers a range of customer support options to help their clients get the most out of their hosting experience.

One of the key customer support options from Yahoo! Web Hosting is their 24/7 support team. This team of experienced technical experts is always available to assist with any hosting-related issues or questions that clients may have. They can provide support via phone, email, or ticket system, depending on the client’s preference.

Yahoo! Web Hosting also provides a comprehensive knowledge base on their website. This knowledge base includes a wealth of information on hosting-related topics, including how to manage your hosting account, troubleshoot common issues, and optimize your website. Clients can use the knowledge base to find answers to their questions or to learn more about the hosting services that Yahoo! Web Hosting provides.

In addition to their live support and knowledge base, Yahoo! Web Hosting provides a range of tools and resources to help clients manage their hosting services. For example, their custom-built control panel provides easy access to server settings, application management tools, and other important details about your hosting service.

Overall, Yahoo! Web Hosting provides a comprehensive set of customer support options for their hosting clients. Whether you need help resolving technical issues or simply want to learn more about the hosting services they provide, the Yahoo! Web Hosting support team and their online resources are always available to help.

Plans & Pricing

Yahoo! Web Hosting offers three shared hosting plans: Basic, Advanced, and Premier. These plans come with unlimited storage and bandwidth, a free domain name for the first year, and a website builder with customizable templates. The Basic plan starts at $3.99/month and supports one website, while the Advanced plan at $5.99/month supports up to 10 websites. The Premier plan, which starts at $9.99/month, supports up to 100 websites and includes a dedicated IP address and SSL certificate.

Additionally, Yahoo! Web Hosting offers a managed WordPress hosting plan that starts at $6.49/month and includes automatic WordPress updates, daily backups, and pre-installed WordPress plugins and themes. There is also a VPS hosting option available, starting at $40/month.

Here’s a markdown table summarizing Yahoo! Web Hosting’s plans and pricing:

Ratings

• Overall Score: 80/100
• Reliability: 80/100
• Usability: 80/100
• Customer Support: 80/100
• Features: 80/100

Yahoo Small Business

Yahoo, one of the internet’s pioneers, enhances the experiences and processes that matter most to each consumer with exceptional content and web services. Verizon owns both of these.

Yahoo Small Business equips businesses with the tools and services they need to thrive. Starting with a custom domain name, they have over 400 TLDs, such as ‘.com,’ ‘.info,’ ‘.shop,’ and more to assist your business in obtaining the ideal web address.

In addition, Yahoo Small Business has data centers located in New York and Washington. Then there’s your website, and Yahoo Small Business provides a variety of options ranging from the simple self-service option with their website builder to hosting.

This allows you to construct more personalized websites with the website building app or other tools and stores for those starting e-commerce businesses. With Website Design Services, they can even design, create, and manage your website for you.

An email address is part of the online identity, and they provide professional email addresses that use your domain name for easy recognition. All in all, small business owners can expect top-of-the-line service and features from Yahoo Business whether for basic websites or advanced ones.

Getting Started With Yahoo Web Hosting

To get started, you need to go to the Yahoo Small Business website.

Upon clicking the Web Hosting tab, you have three options to choose from: Basic, Advanced, and Premium. This is a shared web hosting plan, with each having its own set of features. Shared hosting is predominantly for small businesses as you share the hosting capabilities with other such businesses.

For this Yahoo Web Hosting review, I went for the Basic plan – their cheapest one. This plan has 100GB of disk space, 1000GB of data transfer monthly, 10 site pages, 250 email addresses, site design tools, a free domain for a year, and a $100 ad credit coupon.

That’s quite a lot of online resources that should help you conduct your online business better. By clicking “Choose Plan,” you will be redirected to a page where you set the new domain, or transfer an existing one.

After setting up your domain, the next page will require personal information such as your name, email address, and your password. After you’ve input this info, click ‘Sign Up’.

Next comes the Billings page. Here, you have two payment options; Credit Card or Paypal. This is also where you’ll input your billing address for invoicing.

After signing up, you’ll receive an email from Yahoo to activate your login ID, which looks like this: 

After confirming your email, you will be prompted to create a password. Once you finish setting up your password, you’ll get a login link for the Yahoo Small Business website.

Using and Managing Your Website on Yahoo Web Hosting

Once your account setup and confirmation are complete, you can now proceed to the login page.

Here, you will input the email and password. Clicking ‘Log In’ automatically redirects you to the Yahoo Small Business control panel called ‘My Services’.

My Services

Yahoo hosting doesn’t use the industry-standard cPanel; instead, they give you their own. Their control panel is user-friendly and the interface is easy to navigate as well. Here, you can add an email (ie. business-class email), run marketing campaigns, and manage your account.

Access to design & marketing tools, user access management, and far more is possible with the Web Hosting Control Panel. When you log in to the Web Hosting Control Panel, all navigation links are located on the left side

Emails

You can access emails by logging in to your My Services page. Yahoo hosting currently offers POP and IMAP, both of which are business email accounts. Both of these allow access to your email from a remote server.

Additionally, Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a feature that enables programs to communicate across a network safely. Somewhat unfortunately,

Yahoo Small Business no longer supports TLS 1.0 encryption as of March 1, 2018. To help protect your data as well as that of your users, they will only support TLS 1.2. As a result, older versions of mail clients may no longer operate effectively or at all.

File Management

File Manager

Accessing the File Manager is done by clicking the “Create & Update” button on the left side of your My Services page. Under the File Management tools, you will find the File Manager link.

Here, you can upload and organize files, create and edit web pages, as well as work with your website folders.

Backup

You can manually generate a MySQL backup by using the control panel’s database services, although you’ll have to do that every time you make a change to your website.

Depending on the amount of administration necessary, this can rapidly become a nuisance and is not recommended for managing an e-commerce website.

Disk Usage

The Basic and Advanced plans of Yahoo Small Business have limited disk space; if you don’t want to worry about running out of space and have some extra money to spend, you can always upgrade to the Premier plan that has unlimited storage.

If not, then you’ll have to manually delete some files to free up space considering Basic and Advanced plans don’t come with unlimited disk space.

FTP

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the most efficient and user-friendly method of transferring photos and other data to and from your account. FTP allows you to effortlessly transfer large files, including your entire website, from your computer to your Web Hosting account and the Internet. This makes it a useful tool for constructing and managing your own website!

Note: Bear in mind that FTP gives a direct link to your website, so you have to be cautious when granting anyone access. FTP is also incompatible with a lot of other publishing tools. All FTP sessions require an FTPS connection and TLS 1.2 protocol support for increased system security.

Domains

All Yahoo hosting package offers come with domain registration for free if you end up using ‘included’ domain extensions.

This section on Yahoo’s control panel is where you can set up new domains, set up redirects, change your domain’s contact information, establish subdomains, and more. To access the domains page on My Services, click on the Domain button.

Databases

MySQL

MySQL’s defined and standardized data schema is more consistent and reliable than other databases. Another significant benefit of implementing MySQL is its greater data security due to ACID-compliant transactions, making it the best choice for applications that value this feature.

You can set up the MySQL database through the My Services page by clicking the Web Hosting button. Here, you’ll need to create a username and a password that will be submitted to a database administrator.

Keep in mind that, once you register a username, you won’t be able to change it. However, if you forget your password or username, you’ll be able to recover them which technically means you’ll always be able to access your account.

phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a robust database management tool. You’ll need to provide the database administrator password and username in order to access the databases or database tools. Please remember that this user information is distinct from the login ID and password you have used to activate your plan.

Here, you have access to tabs for managing your database structure, running SQL queries, importing, exporting, and doing a lot more.

Metrics

The metrics section is where the records and analytics of your website are kept. Here, you can track site visitor metrics, see how many visitors your website got in the past week or month, what section of your site got the most views, monitor bandwidth usage, and track any faults in your website as well.

Moreover, any Yahoo hosting plan comes with paid service where you have the ability to create custom reports using the metrics and dimensions that you’re most interested in. This is done through Localworks Analytics.

Security

Yahoo ensures protection on two aspects: one for your site’s visitors & customers, and another for website owners such as yourself. To guarantee your users’ security, all Yahoo Small Business plans include SSL certificates and are PCI compliant. However, they now only provide domain-validated SSL certificates. For back-end security, they don’t offer malware scanning, firewalls, or DDoS Protection for servers.

Software

The software section is where you can expand your website. You can install add-ons and plugins for whatever application you want to include in your site, be it for security, design, or for advanced scripts and software like JavaScript, Java, PHP, Perl, VBScript, CSS, Flash, Shockwave, DHTML, SSI, and Joomla. Unfortunately, Yahoo Small Business does not provide assistance for these.

Preferences

In the Preferences section you can personalize your website. You may change themes, languages, passwords, and more.

Yahoo Web Hosting Website Builder

Screenshot of Yahoo Web Building plans[/caption] Yahoo Small Business offers a website builder which you can use to quickly create a website without all the fuss.

Now for the fun part – this Website Builder is free and comes with your existing web hosting packages. Plus, you can switch back to your existing website anytime you like!

Apps Installer

Yahoo App Gallery

Yahoo has their own set of apps that you can install during the site-building process. These are simple apps but help massively in further developing and expanding your personal sites or site. The Yahoo app gallery enables you to install Facebook Chat on your website so that you may connect and interact with your customers via Facebook Messenger, establish a live chat function, and sign up for an advertising platform.

According to Yahoo’s knowledgebase, “beyond the topics provided in our WordPress Help Pages, we do not support WordPress.” This implies that Yahoo does not appear to be targeting WordPress users, at least in the shared hosting plan.

If you intend to use or you wish to install WordPress, you should consider using a hosting provider that is well-known for its WordPress expertise and offers what is known as “managed hosting.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that Yahoo will offer WordPress support any time soon for the shared hosting plan which is a pretty big downside considering most web hosts nowadays come with WP support.

Add the fact that beginners prefer making a WordPress site due to ease of use & simplicity and most inexperienced website owners will be turned back due to this oversight on Yahoo’s part.

Website Builder Themes

Screenshot of Yahoo Website builder themes[/caption] As mentioned earlier, Yahoo does not support WordPress on its shared web hosting plans. But they do have a site builder that comes with various themes in different categories to choose from.

Yahoo Web Hosting Customer Support

Because Yahoo’s web hosting services are user and beginner-friendly, I didn’t need to contact their live chat customer support. 

Screenshot of Yahoo Customer Support[/caption] On another note, Yahoo Small Business has a community where you can seek help if you’re having certain issues with your website. 

Yahoo web hosting has almost all the answers in their knowledge base. However, if there’s an instance that you can’t find the solution to a problem, or you have technical issues, reaching out to tech support is always a good idea.

Buyer’s Guide For Yahoo Web Hosting

Plans and Pricing

Shared Web Hosting Plans starts at $2.92/month. 

Screenshot of shared hosting plans[/caption] The features of Yahoo’s shared hosting plans are quite equivalent to those of other hosting providers.

You can develop your site using their website builder, WordPress, or another software. Compared to the Website Builder and WordPress plans, these plans provide a lot of disk space and email addresses. WordPress Hosting Plans starts at $6.49/month.

Yahoo offers two options – Starter and Standard, that use WordPress rather than their website builder for website development. 

However, you have to install WordPress manually, including adding or purchasing themes and plugins to increase the functionality of your website. With the Yahoo site, you’ll have to do all the site maintenance yourself. Website Builder – Basic plan priced at $6.66/month 

Yahoo offers three website builder plans: Starter, Basic, and Professional.

The most significant difference between these two paid plans would be that the Professional plan includes five email accounts. Yahoo’s plans all provide free domain name registration for as long as you host your website with them. E-commerce Plans starts at $33.95/month.

Starter, Standard, and Professional are the titles of Yahoo’s three E-Commerce packages. The key distinction between them is the monthly cost and transaction fees.

All online store plans include unlimited product listings, bandwidth, storage, as well as free domain registration & 1,000 email addresses, analytics & built-in SEO, the ability to process credit card and PayPal payments, live chat with customers, and UPS shipping integration. 

Furthermore, you may use API programming to connect your business website to your inventory and accounting systems with the two top-tier options.

Server Speed

Yahoo says that their hosted sites are operational 99.9% of the time and 100% of the time during the year-end festivities. Yahoo’s uptime over the last year has been 99.99 percent, which I can say is exceptional.

According to html.com, their server response times appear to be slower than expected and compared to some other web hosts, but they are somewhat similar to GoDaddy’s response times. Sadly, they provide no enforceable uptime guarantee on neither of Yahoo’s web hosting services.

Security and Backups

It’s usually a good idea to keep local backups of any files you submit to your website or store. You may end up not being able to download copies of the data after it has been posted, depending on the tool you used for website or store creation.

Sites created with Site Solution, Store Editor, or Website Builder cannot be downloaded. This is due to the fact that the pages generated by these tools are unique to the tools and cannot be transferred to or controlled by other programs.

Features of Yahoo Web Hosting

• 250+ email addresses
• All plans are equipped with an SSL Certificate
• Provides backup and restore tools
• 24/7 phone, chat, and online customer support
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• Free domain registration
• A drag-and-drop site builder
• Unlimited bandwidth and disk space for top plans
• Localworks – a dashboard that offers a high-level view of your business across multiple fronts

Pros

• Free website builder with a drag-and-drop feature
• Good for small businesses and their sites
• Affordable price point
• A 30-day money-back guarantee
• 24/7 customer support
• Free SSL Certificate and PCI compliant
• Built-in SEO tools

Cons

• No VPS Hosting
• No Dedicated Servers
• Slower response time compared to other web hosting providers
• WordPress Hosting not prominently advertised
• WordPress Hosting not optimized
• Yahoo web hosting services come with a limited number of plugins
• No room to grow beyond shared hosting
• Yahoo Small Business does not allow the migration of existing website to their hosting servers.

Final Thoughts

Yahoo does not have advanced software to simplify site-building processes, so if you are looking for a web hosting service with advanced settings, I would not recommend Yahoo Web Hosting for you.

On a brighter note, if you are a small business owner on a budget wanting to boost your site’s online presence, then you can definitely go for Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting. However, as traffic to your website increases, this hosting solution will become obsolete. Yahoo is a suitable hosting provider for micro-businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs on a tight budget when we combine all of its features.

Using the site builder, your website will look wonderful, and you will have access to support whenever you need it. I hope this Yahoo Web Hosting review has helped you in the journey of finding the perfect web host!