Omnis Network Introduction
Omnis Network was founded in 1999 and is located in Torrance, California. Staff work on-site at its own data centre. I wasn’t able to clarify who the founder is, but all of the staff members - including the support team - appears to be located in the Los Angeles area, according to information on LinkedIn.
The hosting company has two primary services on offer: Linux cloud hosting and Windows cloud hosting. These packages are broadly similar to ordinary shared hosting plans.
Omnis Network Hosting Plans
Omnis Network’s shared hosting is offered on Linux or Windows. Both are cloud hosting services, and both provide unmetered disk space, bandwidth, domains, aliases and subdomains. Users can bolt on a dedicated IP or private SSL certificate if they wish - these are chargeable, optional extras.
A site builder is included on both plans; this allows users to create a 3-page website for free, which is obviously very limited. If you want to create a larger site, you’ll need to pay for the Pro or Ecommerce site builder instead.
Dedicated servers and VPS hosting are currently marked as ‘coming soon’ on the website, so it looks like these services are not yet on offer.
Omnis Network Uptime/Downtime
Omnis Network customers are given a 99.9% uptime guarantee - this equates to 44 minutes of downtime in any given month. There’s nothing at all in the User Agreement about this guarantee, and no offer of compensation or account credits if it’s not met. The company does not publish uptime statistics or historical data, so it’s hard to say how often it meets this SLA.
Omnis Network has its own data centre in Torrance, and it appears that all of its clients’ websites are run from this facility. The company offers little detail on its data centre, which is quite strange, seeing as it’s managed and run in-house. It would be good to see more data about its facility, particularly since the company has been offering hosting for more than a decade and presumably has quite a bit of experience and an established infrastructure.
Omnis Network Support
All Omnis Network support staff are based in the US, and the company specifically says that it does not outsource technical support. Customers can contact the host via live chat, email or phone, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The host also offers a knowledgebase - this is quite good and covers most of the basics customers will need to know. The support area also includes FAQs and a handful of (extremely basic) video tutorials. The videos I found on its YouTube channel were useful, if fairly short.
Omnis Network uses social media channels to keep customers informed about downtime. This unfortunately presents a fairly skewed picture of the quality of its service; for example, on its Facebook page, every single message relates to downtime or a DDOS attack. It would probably benefit from some positive messages to break up the bad news.
Omnis Network in the News
I checked several tech news blogs and didn’t find any stories about about Omnis Network or its services.
Omnis Network Control Panel
Omnis Networks’ customers must use a custom control panel, simply called Account Manager - cPanel and Plesk aren’t offered.
If you want to take a look behind the scenes and see what Account Manager is like, you can see several sneak previews of the control panel’s features on Omnis Network’s YouTube channel. Although the layout looks clear, there appear to be fewer tools than there would be in cPanel, and this might be a cause for frustration if you’re a more advanced user.
Omnis Network Extras
New Omnis Network customers can claim a free domain name, providing they sign up for a year. After the first year, the domain must be paid for at normal rates. Customers are also offered $100 in Google AdWords credit and $25 for Yahoo! ads, providing they haven’t used either of those services before. The $100 AdWords credit requires a $25 minimum spend.
There’s also a free site builder, but remember - you can only create three pages before you have to pay, and the Pro version isn’t cheap.
Omnis Network Money Back Guarantee / Cancellation Policy
Omnis Network offers customers a 30 day money-back guarantee. To claim a refund under the guarantee, you’ll need to explicitly ask for cancellation when contacting the support department.
Users can cancel their hosting account by emailing the customer service department; cancellations are immediate, and you can’t schedule a cancellation in advance. In the hosting terms and conditions document, it says users can request a pro rata refund for any unused proportion of their hosting plan.
Omnis Network Summary
Omnis Network’s hosting plans are clearly and succinctly described, and customers looking for shared hosting will find everything they’re looking for - except, maybe, a well-known control panel. The host does keep its customers informed on social media and clearly has a strong track record in hosting; it’s a shame it doesn’t promote its data centre facilities as well as it could.
I've been using Omnis for years now. I have multiple domains with them.. I refer all of my clients to Omnis on a regular basis. They've always provided fantastic support and their prices are some of the best around. Their control panel is one of the friendliest I've worked with. Overall this host is preferred by me and recommended to anyone running personal websites to enterprise applications.