What does the InterServer control panel look like?

InterServer utilizes cPanel, one of the most common hosting control panels available. Sadly, fewer and fewer businesses are currently providing it. Reason? cPanel became so popular that its prices began to rise daily. Uh-oh. Everyone is replaceable.

InterServer nevertheless continues to use cPanel.

It has a clean interface and all the resources you need to create and maintain a successful website. This includes setting up WordPress, creating a webmail account, adding a domain, and editing files in the File Manager.

cPanel is very beginner-friendly as most of the tools you’ll need come with built-in explanations. Also, the knowledge bases are full of tutorials too. Promise, you won’t get lost.

So apart from the very outdated look, InterServer is nothing but easy to use.

Shall we get into specifics?

How to install WordPress on InterServer?

WordPress installation with InterServer is easy and takes just a couple of minutes. It has 3 steps involved – finding Softaculous in the cPanel, choosing the WordPress app, and filling out the installation form.

Let me quickly show you how everything looks and where to find it.

To find the Softaculous Apps Installer, you’ll need to scroll down cPanel a bit. It will be under the Software tab. Alternatively, you can use WordPress Manager by Softaculous. This way, you’ll save a couple of clicks.

No matter if you chose Softaculous or WordPress Manager, WordPress is the first option available. By the way, this is the place where you can find all the available apps if WP is not your first choice.

The installation window can look intimidating for all the details asked, but it’s actually super simple. All you’ll need to enter or choose is – your domain name, user name, and password. The rest can be left as “default.”

Once you’re done entering the details, simply click one of the blue Install buttons. One is at the top of the window, and one is at the bottom. As simple as that.

How to create a professional email with InterServer?

One of the key things for a successful brand is a professional email, and that is very simple to set up with InterServer. All you’ll have to make sure of is that you have a working domain name.

So to get that nice yourname@yourwebsite.com instead of yourname@gmail.com email address, find the Email tab in the cPanel.

As you can see, there are a lot of tools here for email management. You can customize autoresponders, create mailing lists, and even track the deliverability. However, to create and reach your email account, you’ll need the first one – the Email Accounts module.

In this interface, you can create and reach your mailboxes.

If you’d click on the blue +CREATE button, you’d see how easy it is to set up a professional email account.

All you need to do is pick your domain from the drop-down list, create a username for your mailbox, and set a password.

The storage space can also be reduced or left unrestricted, depending on your preferences. Once you’re finished, simply click Create, and your mailbox will be prepared.

One thing to note is that InterServer uses just the most basic email clients like RoundCube. They are good for day-to-day mailing but will not suffice the needs of serious email marketing campaigns.

All in all, InterServer is easy to use, and day-to-day tasks like installations or email management are done in a matter of seconds. While interfaces could be prettier, I have no actual complaints regarding usability and functionality.

Performance – is InterServer fast?

The performance is very much in line with the rest of our InterServer review so far. When put under pressure, InterServer displays highly consistent 99.99% uptime, average server speed, and quite impressive website loading times.

I put InterServer through a number of tests, including speed testing, reliability monitoring, and stress testing, to see how it works.

InterServer uptime and response time

Long-term performance monitoring results are both great and average. The uptime stayed at 99.99%, which is amazing. Barely an hour of downtime is expected in a year, and that’s basically the best you can expect from any server.

This result is even more appreciated when considering the provider’s official SLA uptime guarantee of 99.9%.

The server response time, on the other hand, is available. It took 662 ms on average, which is… Standard. Performance-oriented companies, such as Hostinger or SiteGround, perform better than 300ms.

That’s just the raw data, in any case. Suppose there was a real website?

InterServer speed

Actually, InterServer’s statistics for loading a WordPress website that is empty are good. It loaded in 0.9s when tested from the United States, where my website is based. (see Largest Contentful Paint). According to Google, you’re good if you can finish in 2.5 seconds. Well, 0.9 seconds is definitely acceptable.

Other locations are below 2.5 seconds too, even though they are much further away from the data center. And the further away the server is from the visitor, the longer it takes to load a website.

This brings me to my next point.

Once I set up a website that could actually work for someone’s real website, I ran the same GTMetrix test, but only from the US now. The website loaded in 2.3 seconds.

Although the outcome is not spectacular, it is quick.

Even yet, we still manage to complete the task in the suggested 2.5 seconds. As can be observed in the speed visualization, there is no more lag after the Largest Contentful Paint until the website is entirely loaded.

The outcome is nonetheless excellent even though InterServer doesn’t really compete with industry titans like SiteGround or A2 Hosting.

Also consider whether your website truly requires top-tier speed.You get excellent performance and extremely affordable costs with InterServer.You would have to spend more than twice as much for providers who prioritize speed. Therefore, if you’re just getting started, wouldn’t it be preferable to invest on creating a quality website rather than focusing on metrics that won’t significantly impact your success in the short term? Once you feel the need for speed and have the money for it, you can upgrade.

But our work is not yet done. These tests only demonstrate functionality when there is no one else using the website. What if I added more users to it?

InterServer Stress Testing

The excitement starts here.I used K6 software to send 50 virtual users to my website.

50 visitors is a significant load on the server. For any shared hosting, that’s close to the maximum we would expect to pass the test.

And it failed. Miserably.

You can see those blue (speed), red (failures), and purple (requests) lines jumping all over the place while the grey (virtual users) line does its job. Well, all this traffic did not come through. So I had to find out how much InterServer can handle.

I started decreasing the number of visitors by 5. The first test InterServer has passed was with 35 VUs.

The red line indicates HTTP failures when the server was unable to keep up, and the blue line denotes speed. In the meanwhile, our bots are the gray line.

In a perfect world, the red line would not exist and the blue line would be flat. However, InterServer was having some issues with this volume of traffic. It did slow down, and a few attempts failed.

Even so, it managed to keep our website up and pass the test.

So while InterServer is not capable of handling the ultimate maximum, it still does quite a good job.

In all honesty, the most affordable plan will accommodate a modest website that infrequently has significant traffic spikes.

Overall, InterServer’s performance is still extremely good for shared hosting even though it isn’t precisely exceptional. The server can take quite a bit of traffic, performance is excellent, and your website will be online longer than you might imagine.

Security – is InterServer secure?

InterServer takes no chances when it comes to security. An SSL certificate is given out without charge when you buy a package. Weekly backups are done, and integrating Cloudflare is simple. Furthermore, InterShield and Inter-Insurance are complimentary.

Like every other reputable host, InterServer provides a number of industry-standard security features. I liked how InterServer outperforms other, more well-known and pricier suppliers. How does it accomplish that? Obviously, by going the additional mile. When you purchase an InterServer plan, you have access to the following standard security features:

• A free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate. You and I both know that not all providers offer one for free. So, let’s just take a moment and appreciate this. Okay, okay. Most of them do. But there is a couple of black sheep.
• Weekly backups – according to a customer support agent, the backups are stored on a remote server for added security.
• You can integrate the Cloudflare content delivery network, which comes with DDoS attack protection.

InterServer also has a native security suite called InterShield. It includes 4 tools which are meant to detect and prevent attacks:

• Automatic virus scanner with regular scans
• Machine-learning firewall
• Web attack blocking
• In-house malware database

This has a great sound to it. Unfortunately, since everything is handled on the backend, we will have to assume that it exists and functions. You don’t need to do anything.

You also receive Inter-Insurance as part of your free package. There isn’t much information available about it, however it is effective for people whose websites have been hacked or corrupted. InterServer pledges to look into the problem, restore your website, and make efforts to prevent a recurrence. Everything there is free.

This bundle may save your life. I intentionally broke a number of websites to observe how customer support would respond. As it was not their responsibility that I was hacked or infected, the majority of providers advised me to resolve my problems on my own. Inter-Insurance should not provide this option to customer service representatives.

I gathered from InterServer’s security features that the provider offers a variety of tools for keeping your website secure. I appreciate that not only the standard features, such as the SSL certificate, but also the more comprehensive solutions for a highly secure web hosting experience are free.

Will InterServer customer support help me?

InterServer offers four support channels if you ever need consumer support. There are live chat, telephone, email, and…Messenger. Facebook messenger? WhatsApp? Anyone? Please inform me if you attempted it. In addition, the provider provides a comprehensive knowledge base filled with articles, guides, and tutorials.

This InterServer evaluation was going so well until I had to use the live communication feature. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve experienced worse, but I was so accustomed to receiving excellent service from this provider that I felt like the heavens had fallen when I reached the support section.

Typically, wait periods are extremely short.Within 10 minutes, you’ll be conversing with an actual person. Or so you would like to believe.

An unidentified agent joined within a couple of minutes and asked for my domain name. Regular things. Then, however, things went awry.

The agent simply stated that my website now functions properly and advised me to examine my browser. However, he is not fooling me.

I understand why the outage and response time peak occurred. It was a stress test for me. This should be evident to them. Na-ah. The emissary vanished without a trace. A half-hour has passed, and I’ve simply lost interest in the conversation.

Other conversations were more useful. I had problems with my SSL certificate.

The agent has just activated the SSL certificate.No questions posed.

In my cPanel, I was able to observe that SSL was operational… Or so I believed. It did not function correctly.

So I again contacted support. And again received straightforward assistance.

The agent has just resolved the issue for me. This time, permanently.

So… how is the support ultimately?

I’d say it’s average. The initial experience was extremely unpleasant. Other agents were expedient and helpful. They did not direct me to the knowledge base; they handled everything on their own. Which is very effective and ideal for beginners.

I have also contacted ticket support when my payment was declined. The issue was resolved after less than an hour of receiving the responses.

With the exception of one particularly negative encounter, customer service was helpful and expedient in general.

Putting aside the live conversation, InterServer has a knowledge base. There are numerous tutorials and guides available. The search bar will assist you in locating the desired content.

The knowledge base is a little messy. The tutorials themselves are great, but it’s not easy to distinguish which one should you use – different tutorials are meant for different hosting options and panels, although they are named similarly.

Overall, you will get helped with InterServer. Basic problems are solved on the spot, and there’s a big knowledge base. Nonetheless, not every agent is trained equally well, and you might encounter some bad experiences along the way.