Mesra.net Sdn. Bhd was established in 1996 and started out as a free web-based email service provider. They extended their services by offering a web directory and information website before venturing into web hosting.
MesraHosting Web Hosting Plans
MesraHosting has quite a lot of different hosting packages to suite everyone’s hosting needs. There are five plans each under the Linux and Windows operating systems, they are Minimum GB, Entrepreneur GB, Mid GB, Mega GB and Max GB. Let’s take a look at the features summary of each plan for the Linux platform.
Linux Hosting Plans
| Hosting Plan | Minimum GB | Entrepreneur GB | Mid GB | Mega GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disk Space | 20GB | 40GB | 80GB | 200GB |
| Bandwidth | 50GB | 100GB | 200GB | 300GB |
| POP3/WebMail | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Domain Per Account | 10 | 20 | 30 | 50 |
| Dedicated IP | Shared | Shared | 1 | 2 |
| Tomcat/JSP | - | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| ANNUAL PRICING | RM100.00 | RM250.00 | RM450.00 | RM1,100.00 |
For each plan, you will receive an unlimited number of email accounts and you will be able to host a good number of domains under a single account. Users are also entitled to an unlimited number of email aliases, email auto-responders, mailing list server, web-based email and user FTP login accounts.
On the Linux platform, the web hosting control panel they use is cPanel.
Their Windows hosting plans are quite similar to their Linux offerings, except that you can only host one domain on a single account. You will use the popular HELM control panel to manage your web hosting account.
Exabytes Web Hosting Plans
On the other hand, we have Exabytes whose expertise is hosting websites. Exabytes started out in 2001 but prior to that was already a web host going by the name of hostkaki.com. Exabytes’ specialization and experience is enough to give them a lead over MesraHosting. Exabytes has more than five plans to cater to the needs of most websites out there. Here is a summary of their most popular hosting plans:
| Hosting Plan | EBiz Plus | EBiz Gold | EBiz Gold Unlimited |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disk Space | 10GB | 300GB | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | 50GB | 300GB | Unlimited |
| Email Accounts | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Addon Domains | 10 | 30 | Unlimited |
| MySQL Databases | 50 | 300 | Unlimited |
| Addon Domains | 10 | 30 | Unlimited |
| ANNUAL PRICING | RM174.85* |
RM259.35* |
RM291.85* |
* Use coupon code: EXB100WebHosting2013 to get these discounted pricing!
For mere RM291.85 per annum, you’d get:
- Unlimited disk space
- Unlimited monthly data transfer
- Unlimited parked domains, sub-domians and webmails
Therefore, why should you pay 7x more for MesraHosting’s Max GB that only gives you 400GB worth of disk space and caps the monthly bandwidth? Exabytes even has plans to cater for students and bloggers, starting from a mere RM39.00 yearly as in the EBiz Beginner plan. These plans are very affordable to those who do not have advanced requirements for their simple website.
Of course, web hosting is not just all about disk space, domains and data transfers. Exabytes comes with a whole list of freebies and features that will serve your website’s needs well, be it as a blog, an online business or a corporate website. Exabytes hosting plans come with:
- Free 150 Web Site Templates that help you build a website
- Free Google AdWords credits worth RM200
- Two online payment gateways, NbePay and iPay88
The Ebiz Gold plan even comes with the following freebies:
-
90 days of Submitnet SEO
8 useful tools to help your website get a better ranking in search engines
-
Backup mail servers
Your emails are stored in a backup server whenever they are unable to reach your primary server due to a network outage
-
Free domain name
A domain worth RM55 is free for life (MesraHosting charges between RM50 – RM80 for domain registration, depending on the domain that you wish to apply for)
On the other hand, there is no mention of any of these by MesraHosting. It looks as though that MesraHosting is only suitable for regular blogs or corporate websites as they do not have any e-commerce features such as search engine optimisation (SEO) features and shopping carts. This opinion is substantiated by the fact that they do not sell SSL certificates and you would have to get them from a third party, so hosting an online business with MesraHosting will be quite a chore.
Check out our previous review on Exabytes web hosting.
Exabytes vs MesraHosting – is Exabytes better?
Exabytes’s plans are packed with enriching site management, multimedia and hosting account features that will meet your web hosting needs. For all these features, the price you pay is even lesser than MesraHosting’s. Being a long-time player in the market definitely places Exabytes in a position to understand their customers’ needs.
We can use the coupon code: EXB100WebHosting2013 to get discounted pricing from Exabytes.
So, the verdict is that, we do feel Exabytes is a better web hosting company.
Anytime I will go with Exabytes. No question about it..
Hello Abdul,
Thank you for dropping by 100 Web Hosting. Yes, Exabytes is the most popular web hosting company in Malaysia. They are also quite well known around the world, I am sure you have made a good choice.
Cheers.
Dear Postmaster,
Your website is not fair comparing most hosting company with Exabytes (or others).
Just give a fair review and if you want to compare, leave the final verdict to the readers.
I have been in the hosting business for many years (I am not a MesraHosting fan), there is no such thing as the best ‘shared’ hosting company in the world. Its a shared enviroment for God’s sake, compare living in an apartment and a standalone house!
This cannot be understand by the user. If a downtime occur, users will think the hosting company sucks! Their server sucks! But they don’t know it is their neighbour whom causes the downtime.
The best why to know how good a hosting company is is to know how many users hosted in one server.
My conclusion is, there is no such thing as a good ‘shared’ hosting company. Even if you share a room with me, you will complain also.
Dear Zealot,
Thank you for your comment and valuable inputs. Yes, you are right, we always welcome readers to share their hosting experiences. I am sure real customer’s experiences are very much useful to all of us, especially those looking to sign up a web hosting plan.
A matter of fact, there is best shared hosting company! Let’s use an example, there is a 1 person hosting company who offers a shared web hosting plan at RM500 a year, and squeezes 500 accounts on a Pentium server which he leases from a certain data center. Compare this with another web hosting company with a 10 person technical support staff. This company offers a shared web hosting plan at RM200 a year. Both companies are offering shared web hosting. Which company would you go for? Which company do you think is better?
I am never comparing shared web hosting plan with a dedicated web hosting plan!
Please do not mention about downtime caused by ISP (Streamyx for example). On all web hosting plans offered by any web hosting company, downtime can occur due to your own ISP’s problem.
There is no doubt that a good web hosting company will monitor their web hosting accounts (on shared web hosting servers). And if they find any client is overusing the resources, they will take measures to resolve the issue; for example work with the client to find out the cause of the problem (incorrectly coded scripts, traffic spike, etc) and resolve it quickly. Another web hosting company might resolve this issue by asking you to upgrade to a more expensive plan immediately. And yet another web hosting company might not do any monitoring at all; and might only find out about the problem when the server is down!
So, what do you think? Which web hosting company is better and which is best?
Cheers, and have a great day!