GeekStorage Review: A Good Entry Level Host (Pros & Cons)

Founded by Jay Higdon and Matthew Eli in 2007, GeekStorage is an Oklahoma based web hosting provider that offers a variety of hosting options.

They’ve been around for just over 14-years, are 100% employee owned and currently serve over 20,000 customers. Some would even go as far to call them a hidden gem in the hosting space.

Their plans are very affordable, site speed loads quite well (with higher tier plans) and the plans they offer are impressive for such a small company.

GeekStorage Pros and Cons

Features

Before we get into the features, here’s a quick TLDR (too long, didn’t read);

Would recommend GeekStorage if…

• You’re just getting started online
• You want an affordable hosting option
• You run a small blog or small business
• You want to support the little guy
• You don’t mind email support
• Modern interfaces aren’t important to you
• You like the idea of a website builder being included

Would not recommend this host if…

• Top tier performance (speed) means everything to you
• You want phone support and live chat
• You need a modern interface
• You run an agency that requires enterprise level hosting

Various Hosting Options

One of the standout features of GeekStorage is the amount of hosting packages they have. I’ve reviewed several other web hosting services and GeekStorage offers more variety compared to the rest.

You’ve got unlimited, WordPress, performance, reseller, VPS, dedicated, CloudLinux and LiteSpeed hosting.

LiteSpeed Web Servers (SSD)

When it comes to speed, GeekStorage runs 100% on LiteSpeed web servers. Compared to traditional Apache server, LiteSpeed absolutely demolishes it in performance and security.

The standard across the web hosting industry is 7.2K SATA HDDs (Hard Disk Drive). GeekStorage on the other hand uses SSDs (Solid-State Drive) with RAID 10 configuration.

Simply put; you’re getting speed and security that you otherwise wouldn’t get with traditional servers.

Daily Backups by JetBackup

Web hosts overall tend to offer automatic-backups with their plans. GeekStorage is no different. They offer this with JetBackup, a website backup plugin that is specifically designed to work with cPanel.

Everyday you’ll have a backup of your files, emails, databases, DNS, SSL and much more. Sold separately, JetBackup goes for $5.95/mo. That’s an annual value of $71.40 added into your plan at no additional cost.

Site Pro Website Builder

While GeekStorage doesn’t have their own in-house website builder, they do have an affiliation with Site Pro – a website builder software. It looks like Site Pro can be resold as a white label software. Simply smack your logo on it and now it’s your companies own “website builder.”

Although it appears to be licensed, it does include over 200+ templates to choose from and also acts as an eCommerce builder. Site Pro looks like a useful tool to bring your idea to life.

If you have multiple websites that need customization, you can create them with Site Pro. It starts at $2.85/mo on it’s own but is included with the Unlimited or Reseller plan with GeekStorage.

Uptime Guarantee

GeekStorage comes with a 99.9% Uptime Guarantee. Here’s how they stack up in comparison to other web hosts across the industry.

Security

There really isn’t a lot of information on the security specifics. Using a combination of cPanel, CloudLinux, MariaDB and LiteSpeed; this is dubbed as the “GeekStack.” Here’s what is generally said about their plans:

“We provide a secure, reliable and enterprise-quality environment to ensure your website is safe, easy to manage, and always online.”

Information revolving around security is limited to what can be found on the GeekStorage terms and conditions.

Performance

As with all web hosting reviews on 2BW, I always do a basic speed test. The rule of thumb is to find a website that’s using the web host in the review – in this case it’s GeekStorage and then run it through a few website speed test tools:

• Web Dev (Measure)
• Pingdom
• GTMetrix

Then based off of the three results, we give the host an average score. Here’s how the results turned out:

Web Dev (Lighthouse Score)

As you can see, the Lighthouse Score came back at a 50/100 with a first contentful paint time of 2.9 seconds. Ideally you want to see this come under 1.8 seconds. Already off to a poor start as it’s loading a whole 1.1 second longer.

Time to interactive (fully loaded) came back at 13.2 seconds! I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t wait that long for a page to load. I will say that the site I tested is media heavy and could be improved with some optimization methods.

Pingdom

Pingdom’s speed test brought back some opposite results with a load time of 648 ms! This is over 12x’s faster than what Web Dev showed us for a fully loaded page.

GTMetrix

Finally, GTMetrix kicked back a fully loaded time of 1.5 seconds.

This brings our total average fully loaded page time to 5.1 seconds. The industry standard for any hosting service should be between 1-2 seconds tops. Anything longer than that is considered slow.

I must admit that the site tested wasn’t the best optimized site. GeekStorage probably has much faster load times with a site that’s optimized correctly with compressed images, caching plugins, and of course a content delivery network. Take these results with a grain of salt.

Customer Support

Overall “Powered by Geek” support is limited to an email ticket system. Most of the support can be found through their knowledge base which has a web 2.0 interface. I went ahead and looked for general support revolving around WordPress and couldn’t find anything.

They also don’t offer live chat agents so if you have a time sensitive issue, you may be in for a bit of frustration. Phone support is also limited to a FAX machine phone number. Which makes sense since this is a small operation compared to the giants of web hosting.

In the email exchange above, you’ll see that I sent over an email at 5:08PM PST and received a response approximately 12 minutes after at 5:20PM PST. I’d say that’s service in a timely manner.

That’s actually a quick turnaround in regards to technical support. I was given a clear and concise response with a link to gain more information. I’d say the support itself, even though I’d prefer a chat, was very good for email.

Ease of Use

GeekStorage uses the cPanel interface so it’s fairly easy to navigate for both new and familiar users. SSH access, file manager, FTP connections, and your MySQL databases are just a few of the things you can configure from here.

If you want a provider that’s super easy to navigate, I’d recommend checking out Kinsta. Their user interface is the best I’ve seen so far.

Plans and Pricing

Depending on what you’re looking for, plans and pricing are going to vary. Server speed, disk space and of course the goals you have for your site. Plans below will have resource limits on some while other’s won’t.

Also, the renewal rates of the hosting plans don’t change from the initial signup rate unless you upgrade, downgrade, or have a license affected by a cost change (such as cPanel/WHM for VPS and dedicated servers most commonly).

Unlimited Plan Hosting

• Economy Plan – Starting at $3.19/mo
• Deluxe Plan – Starting at $4.39/mo
• Business Plan – Starting at $10.79/mo

WordPress Hosting

• WordPress PX-1 – Starting at $4.79/mo
• WordPress PX-2 – Starting at $6.59/mo
• WordPress PX-3 – Starting at $9.59/mo

LiteSpeed Shared Hosting

• LiteSpeed PX-1 – Starting at $4.79/mo
• LiteSpeed PX-2 – Starting at $6.59/mo
• LiteSpeed PX-3 – Starting at $9.59/mo

Performance Hosting

• PX-1 – Starting at $4.79/mo
• PX-2 – Starting at $6.59/mo
• PX-3 – Starting at $9.59/mo

Reseller Hosting

• Entry Reseller – Starting at $17.97/mo
• Prime Reseller – Starting at $23.97/mo
• Ultimate Reseller – Starting at $29.97/mo

VPS Hosting

• 1 GB – Starting at $7.50/mo
• 2 GB – Starting at $15.00/mo
• 4 GB – Starting at $30.00/mo
• 8 GB – Starting at $60.00/mo

CloudLinux Hosting

• CloudLinux PX-1 – Starting at $4.79/mo
• CloudLinux PX-2 – Starting at $6.59/mo
• CloudLinux PX-3 – Starting at $9.59/mo

Dedicated Servers

*30-Day Money Back Guarantee does not apply to dedicated server plans.*

• DS-1 – $99/mo
• DS-5 – $124/mo
• DS-6 – $154/mo
• DS-7 – $174/mo

GeekStorage Alternatives

• Hawk Host is reliable, affordable, and very similar to GeekStorage in terms of their overall offerings. They’re also a small company and pride themselves on giving you a more personal web hosting experience.

• A2 Hosting is a great alternative to GeekStorage not just for their pricing but also for the various plans they offer. You can get shared, VPS, dedicated servers and even reseller options at rates you can afford.

• SiteGround is a solid alternative if you’re looking for a WordPress centric host. They have a much more modern interface than GeekStorage but prices are around the mid-range level. Worth checking out.

FAQs

Final Thoughts

In a world where companies are growing into behemoths, personalized service can go a long way, especially if you’re relying on your web host to keep your company web server up.

Geek Storage definitely has the options available: Unlimited plans, a free website builder with their basic plan and a 30 day money back guarantee.

You also get access to a knowledge base full of resources to help you. Web hosting should always be people first and Geek Storage definitely excels in this area.

While they do have limited server locations, I’d still recommend GeekStorage as a great choice for first time users.