Startlogic

Start Logic is a web hosting service provider with a strange lineup of offerings that seems likely to change in the near future in order to remain competitive. The problems are mostly limited to the two standard web hosting accounts, referred to as the PersonalLogic and ProLogic accounts. The ProLogic account is an unlimited domain/storage/bandwidth account option priced at $5.95 per month.  Ignore the PersonalLogic account that costs $3.95, as you can only host 10 domains on that plan. The problem is that there are a number of competitors offering $3.95 unlimited everything style hosting accounts, which essentially renders Start Logic’s offerings overpriced.

Startlogic is now offering a “transfer customer” plan, which is great if you already have a website and don’t need a domain name.  It is and unlimited hosting plan (same as the Prologic), but is a $1 cheaper at only $4.95/month.

$3.95 a month gets consumers 60 GB of storage, a stunning 600 GB of monthly transfer allotment. 60 GB certainly is a great deal of storage, and it would be hard to use over 600 GB of monthly transfer limits, but neither of these have the ring of the word unlimited. The strange thing about Start Logic’s offerings is that one would generally assume that the $5.95 per month unlimited ProLogic account would be their top of the line offering before moving up to VPS offerings. Strangely enough, the WindowsLogic account offering only 100 GB of storage and 1000 GB of storage costs $8.95 per month, or over twice the cost of the PersonalLogic account. Those that need Windows based features such as ASP.NET support may find better deals elsewhere.

Despite the somewhat confusing consumer grade offerings at StartLogic, the real deal is the $29.95 per month VirtualServer plan. This appears to be StartLogic’s only VPS plan, but it seems fairly reasonable: a dedicated IP address, Plesk 8.3 for LINUX, Virtuozzo Panel, 2000 GB of monthly bandwidth, 60 GB of storage, and a laundry list of supported features. The sales material provided by StartLogic does not give any indication as to the performance of VPS server in terms of CPU or memory allocation. This makes StartLogic’s VPS offering interesting, but questionable in terms of real value without knowing any of the actual performance characteristics.

All of StartLogic’s offerings except the PersonalLogic come with both Google AdWords credits and Yahoo! search credits. Unfortunately, none of the advertising credits include any of the social networking sites, which makes promotion in the Google Universal Search Engine age a challenge that one will have to handle on their own if they opt for any StartLogic package. Hopefully StartLogic will address this shortcoming and restructure their offerings to be more competitive in the near future.