Reviews

I just purchased Submagic to make captions for my YouTube shorts, TikTok videos, and Instagram Reels. To jump straight to the point: I am amazed at how well this works. It does make some errors when generating the captions, but it's very easy and quick to fix the errors manually via their interface.

Not only do they transcribe the content, but they also add animated AI smileys automatically based on the words you speak. These are also easy to edit manually.

It also works well even if you've added music to your video, playing in the background while you talk.

A bit of a strange limitation though is that to generate 60 FPS videos, you need to subscribe to the most expensive plan called Business. This one costs $90/mo when paying annually.

The cheapest plan is $14/mo when paying annually, and the medium priced plan, which is the one I chose, costs $34/mo.

All in all, I am very happy and would recommend this one to anyone that wants a "plug and play" solution that generated amazing captions for their short videos. The software is packed with features for customization, but it works very well as-is without touching any options as well.

I've used 99designs on 12 occasions now and I love it. Now that I've revealed that, let's get into the review.

About the Reviewer

I' started out making websites as a solo dev and affiliate marketer back in 2007. After finally starting to make more money and going full-time from my efforts in 2018, I choose to outsource my logo needs to 99designs the first time in 2019. Since then, I've ordered 12 logos from them for 12 different websites. Before that, I used to make my own logos with Adobe Photoshop.

My Experience with 99designs

I first learned about 99designs from a friend that has a web design company. They use it to outsource their logo creations for their clients, adding a bit of profit on top. I bet a lot of web design companies does this for clients. Instead of designing the logos themselves, they outsource it and are just basically a middle man connecting the designer and the clients.

99designs vs. a Local Web Design Company

By going directly to 99designs you can save money and have full control over how you write your logo design requirements and specifications while also being presented with all the submissions. You can also communicate directly with the designers. That's one reason to use 99designs instead of your local web design shop.

If on the other hand you know that your local web design supplier does design the logos himself/herself, you can expect to pay more for your logo and receive less logo submissions to pick from than if you go with 99designs. Maybe your local designer will just make one logo as per your specification, while you could get 20+ submissions to pick from by going with 99designs.

The 99designs Process

To get your logo created by 99designs you simply need to sign up and post a new contest. You can choose to set it as a blind contest where the every designer cannot see the other designer's submissions. I've used that option sometimes as I believe it can result in more unique submissions, but I've also not used it and been happy with that as well.

One setting that I always have used is to set the prize as guaranteed. This makes the designers know that I guarantee to pick a winner, so they are less likely to waste their time by participating.

When your contest is live, you can expect submissions to start coming in after a day or so.

The 99designs interface for managing your competition is easy to use and functional. You can give each submission a star rating and let the designers know of any wishes you have for changing the design. Designers are usually keen on winning the competition and will work with you to make you fully satisfied based on your feedback.

99design Logo Prices

Logo design at 99designs starts at about $300 and goes up to about $1,300 in 4 tiers. All 4 packages come with a money-back guarantee (terms and conditions apply). With just the cheapest package, you can expect to get ~30 designs to choose from. It is worth noting that choosing one of the slightly more expensive packages attracts higher skilled designers. By just going from the cheapest $300 package to the $500 package, you can expect twice the amount of submissions to choose from.

Conclusion

If you have a budget of at least $300 for your logo, and you don't want to create it yourself, I would strongly suggest trying out 99designs. The price is affordable, the process is easy, and the quality is impeccable.

99designs FAQ

• Is 99designs legit? Yes. You'll find awesome designers competing prducing high quality logo design on 99designs.
• Is 99designs worth it? Yes. I've been happy with the results of even the cheapest logo design packages on 99designs.
• How long does a 99designs logo content take? The standard duration is 7 days. You may pay extra to shorten ti to 3, 2 or 1 day.
• What are 99designs upsells? When creating a logo contest you may pay extra for a featured listing, highlight, being featured on their blog, and to shorten the contest duration.

I've hosted probably 10 or so different servers with Cloudways over the years. My experience with them is good, and I would recommend them to someone looking to host in the cloud easily.

My Hosting Story

I started out with web development in 2007 as a way to try and make money online with affiliate programs. Knowing nothing about the subject, other than being a PC enthusiast, I've tried and failed a lot. This includes trying lots of hosts.

Hosts I've Tried

• ANHosting
• Hostgator
• Hostwinds
• Bluehost
• Namecheap
• Cloudways
• LiquidWeb

I remember starting out with an unknown host called ANHosting which probably was just a white label hosting company on someone else's servers. Then moving on to the popular Hostgator host for a while, which I had mixed experiences with. First of all their plans start cheap the first year or so, but after the initial discounted billing the monthly price 5x'ed or so. This is common practice amongst the biggest web hosts. They probably know that people won't change hosts once their all set up even at higher prices. Don't get me wrong I do appreciate the initial discount, I just want you to be aware of this so you can plan accordingly.

The last few years I've just been hosting with Cloudways and LiquidWeb. This is because I now host like 10 websites and need something stronger than one of the cheapest web hosts. I also have a cheap hosting account with Namecheap for a personal website.

Easy Cloud Hosting

The main benefit of hosting with Cloudways is the ease of use. You can spin up a new server with just a few clicks, and it will be online in like 5 minutes. It also features one-click installation of WordPress. It is a bit more expensive than using an unmanaged cloud web hosting provider, but that is just for the more proficient of us. For most of us, that does not have the IT skills or an IT expert on staff, going with a managed solution is probably the best choice.

Cloudways uses a custom control panel where you can manage most aspects of your website and server. It is easy to use, but does not allow for certain advanced features like you would get with WHM and cPanel. The ease and convenience of the custom Cloudways control panel leaves most jobs most of us need to do to the server and web server easy to do though. Note that you won't get root access with Cloudways, so some advanced web server configuration might be a drawback for some.

Some cool features that you get with Cloudways cloud hosting is the ability to scale up servers - but you can't scale servers down - which is a drawback. You can also create staging sites easily.

The Support

The live chat support is decent, but they are not on the same level as the live chat support team of LiquidWeb, unfortunately. Cloudways support will sometimes answer that I need to have my IT guy look into the problem, as it is outside their support scope to be hands-on and help out fixing the problem.

Usually, though, the support is sufficient, and they will point me to a knowledge-base article for how to fix my problem, set up my email, or whatever else.

One of the benefits of the Cloudways support is actually the well-written and easy-to-use knowledge base articles that will sort out most common issues and probably answer the most common questions you might have.

Migration

Cloudways does not offer free white-glove migrations of your websites to their servers. But they do offer a free WordPress plugin that makes it easy to migrate WordPress sites to their servers. It might require a bit of MySQL edits after migration though. At least it did for me, so be aware of that and check that everything works after your migration.

Pricing

Cloudways has transparent pricing, where you pay for each month of your server being online - or less if you host for less than a month.

Note that Cloudways does not include email, unlike most other web hosts. Instead, you have to pay $1/mo for each email. The email service is provided my another company called RackSpace, but it is easy to use and integrates well with the Cloudways system.

Note that Cloudways is now owned by DigitalOcean, which is one of the server providers part of the system. You'll get the most bang for your buck if you go with a DigitalOcean server on Cloudways.

Conclusion

All in all, I will give Cloudways 4.5 out of 5.0 score. I think this is one of the top 3 best web host around and will be perfect for most people looking for a scalable cloud web hosting solution.

You might also want to check out my 5.0 out of 5.0 score LiquidWeb review. That host is different as it offers more traditional VPS and dedicated servers in addition to cloud hosting solutions. They've also have more hands-on support and they offer initial price discounts.

LiquidWeb is my current web hosting company, after being with 5+ other web hosts over the years, I've settled with this company. At least for as long as they continue to perform and being very helpful via their live chat support, I see no reason to change web host at the moment.

My Hosting Story

I started out with web development in 2007 as a way to try and make money online with affiliate programs. Knowing nothing about the subject, other than being a PC enthusiast, I've tried and failed a lot. This includes trying lots of hosts.

Hosts I've Tried

• ANHosting
• Hostgator
• Hostwinds
• Bluehost
• Namecheap
• Cloudways
• LiquidWeb

I rememember starting out with an unknown host called ANHosting which probably was just a whitelabel hosting company on someone else's servers. Then moving on to the popular Hostgator host for a while which I had mixed experiences with. First of all their plans start cheap the first year or so, but after the initial discounted billing the monthly price 5x'ed or so. This is common practice amongst the biggest web hosts. They probably know that people won't change hosts once their all set up even at higher prices. Don't get me wrong I do appreciate the initial discount, I just want you to be aware of this so you can plan accordingly.

The last few years I've just been hosting with Cloudways and LiquidWeb. This is because I now host like 10 websites and need something stronger than one of the cheapest web hosts. I also have a cheap hosting account with Namecheap for a personal website.

Pricing

I am very happy with the LiquidWeb pricing and find it decently affordable, transparent, and good value for the size of the servers compared with other web hosts.

The Support

LiquidWeb offers both live chat support and ticket support for more complicated issues. I've found that the live chat support is very technically skilled and can help out almost always. If they can't, which has happened to me once or twice, they'll post a ticket to higher level technicians.

The live chat support replies in like 10 seconds. They are hands-on and don't mind fixing the issues on your servers, instead of just pointing you to a help guide like Cloudways support usually does.

Control Panels

I have always used WHM & cPanel with LiquidWeb. They also offer a lower cost alternative called Interworx but I can't recommend it as I have not tried it and I think it does lack some features that you get with the WHM & cPanel combo.

Conclusion

All in all I give LiquidWeb the best rating with 5 out of 5 stars. If you can afford a $20/mo host with 24 month pre pay, this is the host to choose!

On the other hand, if you're just starting out and do not require the best web host, going with a cheap host like Bluehost or Namecheap is more reasonable. Just keep LiquidWeb in the back of your mind, in case you want to upgrade after your initial cheap billing at another host is up for renewal at a higher price.