Skystra Review – The Best New Host on The Market?

As an online marketer and web hosting consultant who’s helped dozens of clients set up their websites, I have tested 100s of web hosting providers, but younger web hosting companies have always been the most fun to evaluate.

When you are trying to make a name for yourself in the market, you go above and beyond with superb customer support, affordable plans, and excellent performance. Skystra is one such underdog host, and with their customers continuing to hail them as their Robin Hood, I just had to check out what they’re about.

In this Skystra review, we’ll take a look through the web host’s plans, the price tag on these plans, how fast their servers are, their support portals, and everything else you should consider as a website owner. Let’s dive in!

Skystra Review

As one of the young web hosts on the market, Skystra is just a little over a decade old and was founded in 2011. While they don’t explicitly say how many customers they cater to, they have an impressive client profile of bloggers, business owners, marketing agencies, and so many more.

Skystra offers cloud hosting packages best suited for small to mid-sized websites. Their all-in-one double-tier packages are then optimized for WordPress websites, eCommerce websites, web apps, and other platform-specific hosting.

On all Skystra plans, you get SSD storage, a free SSL certificate, and a professional email address. What’s more? Skystra has a rather impressive reputation with helping website owners recover their hacked websites. Transferring your website to Skystra is also free. Skystra has been reviewed by over 110 people on TrustPilot and scores an impressive 4.4.

Skystra Rating – Here’s How I’d Rate Them

With thousands of web hosts on the market, it can be hard to choose the right provider for your website. Plus, there’s really no guarantee you can trust the reviews that many web hosts publish on their websites. 

The best approach to know exactly how great a web host’s services are? A no-bs review of the web host from a third party who’s in no way affiliated with them – me.

Considering the key features that Skystra offers and how they perform in real life, here’s how I’d rate the web host on a scale of 1-5. Note that these scores are not static and do not reflect how I’d rate them in the future, should their offerings improve: 

Skystra Plans and Pricing 

Skystra launched as a cloud hosting platform and offers just one plan in two tiers to website owners. When you choose a plan on Skystra, you can pay via credit card.

Cloud hosting

GO

Storage – 10 GB SSD storage

Number of websites – 1 website

Features – Free SSL, free transfer and free professional email

Price – $4/month billed annually

PLUS

Storage – 50 GB SSD storage

Number of websites – 5 website

Features – Free SSL, free transfer and free professional email, 

Price – $9/month billed annually

Depending on how many websites you can choose either Skystra’s GO hosting plan for 1 website or the more economical PLUS plan that allows you to host 5 websites at $9/month for the first year. For new users, Skystra’s web hosting plans are sold at 50% off meaning after the first year, your hosting fees double – which is still very fair compared to other web hosts that woo you in with cheaper prices that then triple or quadruple from the next year.

Who this is for:

Skystra’s cloud hosting plans are best for small to mid-sized website owners that have little or a decent amount of traffic. Bloggers, creatives, marketers, agencies, and freelancers enjoy Skystra’s plans the most.

Skystra’s Features

• Free SSL and professional email
• SSD storage
• Free website migration
• AI-powered web application firewall
• 1-click installs for common apps – WordPress, Joomla, Drupal
• Renewable energy matched servers
• Online-only support
• Skystra custom hosting control panel

Skystra stands out amongst other web hosts thanks to its superior performance and simplistic hosting plans. No need to navigate through dozens of plans with complicated conditions and features – you know exactly what you get. They also stand out with their custom hosting control panel that makes managing your hosting account and website’s backend super convenient.

Skystra’s Performance Tests

And onto Skystra’s real-life performance. It’s super important to consider the speed and uptime of any web host you are looking at, and Skystra will be treated no differently. 

The web host’s server response speeds contribute to the overall loading time of your website. The faster the web host’s servers respond, the quicker your website will load.

Experts recommend that websites should load within 2 seconds to minimize customer bounce rate so your choice of a web host also affects how much traffic your website gets.

The uptime, on the other hand, tells us how much of the time the web host keeps your website active. You don’t want a web host that has service disruptions every other day as this will also mean you can lose potential customers who can’t access your website.

Skystra hosting speed test

To test Skystra’s speed, I used GTMetrix to analyze one of the websites hosted o their platform. These were the results:

Skystra’s servers had an incredible server response time (time to first byte) of 70 milliseconds. 

And the overall performance was 100%, which is excellent.

To test Skystra’s uptime, I ran the same website on Uptime Robot and got these results:

Skystra’s servers were up 100% of the time over the last 30 days.

Skystra’s Customer Support

In terms of support, Skystra is decent – not spectacular. You get support on Skystra via:

Skystra knowledgebase

Here, you’ll find all the answers to questions on managing your website, email, setting up your domain names, etc. The help center comes with a search engine to help you find answers quickly.

Support ticket

To reach Skystra as a non-customer, you can create a ticket:

I tested their support ticket and was a bit disappointed because it took at least 7 hours to get a reply back. However, I got the answers to all the questions I asked.

Human support

Skystra also prides itself on providing 100% human support. Unlike most big hosts with too many customers to cater to who will have you chatting with a bot initially, Skystra only provides support through human agents.

My thoughts: Skystra is great for their human support and while the support process itself is excellent, they don’t have as many support channels as I’d like to see.

I was looking forward to seeing a blog section, live chat, tutorials page, or maybe phone support. However, most of these aren’t on Skystra. Their live chat support becomes available after you pay for a plan.

Skystra’s Security Features

Security is the watch-word of the digital age where cyberattackers are getting more sophisticated. To encrypt your website’s data, Skystra gives you a free SSL certificate out-of-the-box, ensuring your website has the ‘padlock’ and ‘HTTPS’ seal of trust.

With every plan you purchase on Skystra, you also get a web application firewall powered by AI that detects any threats to your website’s security automatically and quarantines them.

Skystra also integrates seamlessly with many of the well known content delivery networks (CDNs), opening up your website to be stored across a network of servers globally and improving your website’s performance. All your third-party software is also updated automatically.

Skystra’s Website Builder

This is going to be a short one. Skystra doesn’t come with any native website builder – it’s to be expected though, they are a young host. However, Skystra offers 1-click installs to the most popular content management systems (CMS) and no-code website builders on the market – WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.

Skystra’s User Friendliness

So how easy is it to use Skystra for your website management essentials – creating an account, the control panel, and installing WordPress? Let’s take a look:

How to create an account on Skystra

Like with most web hosting providers on the market, to create an account you’d just need to buy one of their hosting plans. 

Step 1

Choose the plan you want and click on ‘BUY NOW’. You’ll then be redirected to the domain name confirmation/checkout page.

Step 2

Next, choose the addons you want and fill in your personal details:

Step 3

Finally, fill in your payment details. You’ll then receive a confirmation email to the email address you provided with your login credentials. And that’s it! You now have a hosting account with Skystra.

Skystra’s control panel

Skystra actually gives you a custom control panel to manage your website’s backend. I was genuinely impressed as it’s only usually the very top hosting providers that offer this. 

Through your Skystra control panel, you can access settings for your domains, emails, website files, database, security features, and so much more.

Plus their user account dashboard is quite decent too:

Systra’s control panel is more user-friendly than the traditional cPanel making the platform incredibly easy to use.

How to install WordPress on Skystra

Installing WordPress on Skystra is super easy. Simply login to your hosting control panel and click the dropdown at the top right beside the internet logo:

Next, scroll to the ‘tools’ section and click on ‘WordPress Manager’:

This opens up the WordPress installation tool. 

Click on ‘Install’. 

You’ll then be prompted to select the domain name you want WordPress installed on.

Under ‘Choose installation URL’ select your domain name. Now scroll down to the ‘Admin Account’ section and choose your Admin Username and ‘Admin Password’.

You can decide to leave the default ones or put in new ones – whichever you choose, make sure to copy and save them securely as you’ll need them to login. Next fill in your ‘Admin email’  which can be any email address you have access to.

Double check all your details and click ‘Install’

You’ll then get a confirmation page with your Administrative URL which is the link you’ll use to login to your WordPress dashboard. 

And that’s it!

Conclusion: Do We Recommend Skystra?

Skystra is a relatively young hosting provider that’s revolutionizing customer support and ease of use. They offer 100% human support and quite surprisingly, a custom control panel that many big hosts don’t even have.

What’s more? Their double-tier single plan doesn’t leave too much to figure out – you can simply one of the two and move forward quickly. I absolutely recommend Skystra for small to mid-sized websites who need a dependable host they can count on. Their performance stats too are through the roof!

On the other hand, they are not the best host for people with much larger websites who may need dedicated resources. Another aspect they can improve on is to have more support channels like live chat and phone support for quicker contact.

Visit Skystra →

FAQs

Is Skystra’s phone number available?

Skystra does not list any phone numbers for support on their website. However, you can reach out to one of their support agents by creating a support ticket.

Need a host for new travel blog – Skystra or BlueHost?

Creatives and bloggers love Skystra in particular thanks to their dedicated support and superior performance. BlueHost, on the other hand, provides way more features than just hosting – domains, website builder, email, etc.

If you own a travel blog, I recommend Skystra because their success stories have been mostly with bloggers and creatives.