Editors Globat Review

Globat Review

For the price, Globat offers a solid amount of resources and a decent control panel. For novice users there are many features which are lacking, but if you know what you're doing and do not need support Globat's offerings are adequate.

We reviewed the Globat $7.95/mo Gigabyte Package which offers 75GB/month of transfer, 2.5GB disk space, and a whopping 2500 POP accounts. Globat is one of the few hosting companies that seems to run weekly promotions, so if you keep your eyes open you are likely to get a couple months free.

One convenient benefit for those with multiple hosting accounts is the ability to link more than one domain through the same account, eliminating the need to login to multiple accounts on a frequent basis.

The browser-based file manager offers all the features you'd expect, with a couple extras. It's one of the few file managers that lists both the file permissions and the group/owner right on the directory, allowing you to see any mistakes right away. You can upload up to five files at a time and create new HTML pages quickly and easily.

Adding e-mail accounts is simple, but very basic. Forwards, autoresponders, and POP accounts must be created under separate screens, and there are no configurable spam settings. They appear to offer two forms of webmail, but the link to the first option is broken. Still, the second option, @Mail, is a fully-featured and powerful web-based utility. Configuration information for major e-mail programs is easily accessible and customized for each individual e-mail account. With no global edit feature, if you actually use anywhere near the possible 2500 accounts you could be looking at a laborious process. In fact managing over a few hundred email accounts would probably be impossible.

Globat utilizes the open source AWstats for web statistics, which is a thorough and useful program for just about anyone. Adding a MySQL database takes seconds, as does adding FTP subaccounts.

A major drawback with Globat is their integrated web applications (or lack thereof). The closest thing we could find was a Bonus Tools section, which is essentially a laundry list of downloadable executables. It offers such items as the Webmaster Tool Kit, a photo gallery maker, a pop-up blocker, and more. While each tool is useful in its own right, they alone are not an incentive to signup for the Globat hosting plan, as each program (or its equivalent) can easily be found for free at major Internet shareware sites. Installation of these tools is also very cumbersome and only works with Windows ( .exe file format).

Globat does not seem devoted to offering technical support, as not one mention of it could be found anywhere in the control panel. However, navigating to the main Globat page, we found e-mail, live chat, and telephone support, all 24/7. After receiving "internal server errors" with one of the downloadable bonus tools we decided to put their support to the test. It took about 3 hours to get an email response and we were told that "probably you have unzipped the file incorrectly". A few replies later we were directed to an online FAQ that told us to check for syntax errors or the change the permissions. A few more replies and we were finally up and running. All and all a very long conversation for such a trivial error.

On the whole Globat offers a good deal of disk space and bandwidth for the price. We got the feeling that they have been experiencing some growing pains and could probably use some additional help in the support department. Furthermore they really need to take a look at the usability of the bonus tools section. We were not "wowed" by Globat but their offerings are adequate. Just take a look at a few other companies before committing.

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