WebHostingPad
This once was one of my webhosts; and lets say, it did not go well. FIrst off, they had pretty bad billing issues when I signed up; it took 20 hours to be set up and I had to sign up twice. The plus side was that we only had a 30 minute wait at 9 PM on the phone. Everything went smoothly; except for a few hiccups, like for example, PHPMyAdmin took 2-5 minutes to load and was to laggy to use. Several times a week my website would be down for extended periods, usually a hardrive crashed or they had DNS issues. About a year into being fed up with this host, they cancelled my account; 7 days before my new cycle began. A non-existant DDOS attack, that was really just my regular traffic (20 or so people were online the site during this 'DDOS attack'), caused our site to be host-booted They did, however, comply with us by giving me a complete backup of the website, although it took then 4 days. I cancelled my account as I was not aloud back at WebHostingPad, and 3 days later, billed for 3 years. No wonder why they have so many BBB complaints against them (193 in the last 3 years have been closed). Additionally, I have heard from numerous people that their affiliate program, which claims to pay out 100 dollars for each person you refer, is a complete scam and no money is EVER paid out.
BBB Complaints:
| Complaint Type | Total Closed Complaints |
|---|---|
| Advertising / Sales Issues | 15 |
| Billing / Collection Issues | 88 |
| Delivery Issues | 2 |
| Guarantee / Warranty Issues | 3 |
| Problems with Product / Service | 85 |
| Total Closed Complaints | 193 |
iPower
iPower is a rather well-known webhost; they claim to host over 700,000 websigtes. Despite their reputation, I've heard numerous reports, if not hundreds, about their poor service. They aren't even registered with the BBB and they have a total of 76 complaints in the last 3 years, without being registered with the Bureau. One review that I read said that iPower had incorrectly charged for over 130 dollars worth of services; the same person claims that the problem is stemmed from iPower outsourcing everything including their machines. Another review said that on average, their site was down 4 times a month -- and that's only during the 4 hours at night when they are online, working on their website. Another complaint said that a reseller had to change every single email account on all 30 websites that they hosted to a forwarding email with a max inbox size of 250 MB because of iPower's decision to revamp their email. Reportably, iPower's service was down in December 2010 for 4 days. iPower is accused of 'overbilling the hell out of customers', and that same customer has been charged several times for services he did not purchase. One customer claims to have fild a class-action lawsuite against iPower. Obviously, something is wrong with this company if it racks up complaints year after year.
BBB complaints:
| Complaint Type | Total Closed Complaints |
|---|---|
| Advertising/Sales Issues | 3 |
| Billing/Collection Issues | 25 |
| Delivery Issues | 1 |
| Guarantee/Warranty Issues | 0 |
| Problems with Product/Service | 47 |
| Total Closed Complaints | 76 |
VistaPages/HostMDS
HostMDS was originally known as VistaPages, a host renowned for stealing customer's money. One review states 'They hijacked my site; wouldn't unlock the domain I paid for, because i wanted to switch hosts after they had continuous downtime and server issues - at 50 a month for their incognito shared plan i expected good service. I had phoned them, and was hung up on rudely after asking for my domain to be unlocked again.' Several reviews states that all of their data was erased. The host offers no money back garuntee and has an outrageous price for their shared plans. Most of the reviews says that they are usually down; 70% downtime. Poor service, many people have NEVER gotten responses to their billing requests. Another review states that all of their SQL data was erased. Quiet simply, this webhost is a scam and should not be trusted with your credit card or your data. You can read more reviews at: HostJury
Heritage Web Solutions
Heritage Web Solutions is mainly a design company; but they also offer extremely expensive (40-60 dollar a month) shared web hosting with minimum features (10 GB of diskspace range). They are well known for scamming people and never finishing websites after charging for them. Several complaints say that their service simply does not work and that they can't access their websites or emails. An employee who spoke out said that they are underpaid and overworked; the company is more focussed on selling their product then making it, and force way too much work onto a small team of webdesigners. Most of the desginers have little experience as the highly expereinced designers have moved on to freelance or a company that pays much more. One complaint said that their attorney contacted them for speaking against the service and the attorney threatened legal consequences. Here is where I found the majority of the reports.
| Complaint Type | Total Closed Complaints |
|---|---|
| Advertising / Sales Issues | 74 |
| Billing / Collection Issues | 83 |
| Delivery Issues | 79 |
| Guarantee / Warranty Issues | 6 |
| Problems with Product / Service | 643 |
| Total Closed Complaints | 885 |
What host SHOULD I pick?
I try and stay clear of any small webhosts; although I'm all for supporting small and new businesses, they generally don't have the same support and features that name-brand hosts do. Make sure to check with the BBB before purchasing hosting; no big host will have a perfect record, as misunderstandings and cancellations for ToS voids are abundant in the hosting world, but if they have an A+ rating, they are generally suggested. In my experience, hosts that cost 2 dollars a month have very poor service, and the one time I risked it with one of them, the main website was deleted 2 weeks after I signed up. Especially with reseller hosting; when I was searching to buy reseller hosting, there were several hosts that offered AMAZING plans. Unlimited bandwidth, domains, and storage all for say, 10 bucks a month. I didn't go with these hosts as they were extremely lagy, and no surprises when they were gone in 6 monthes.
If there was any hosts I would suggest, it'd be the hosts on our front page. I have tried them ALL. Never, ever, ever had a hiccup. When I used Host Gator and Dreamhost, I would even ask questions about FTP clients, Photoshop, and coding issues -- an expert would ALWAYS be there to help out. I haven't tried that with Thinkhost and Godaddy, primarily because I've ran out of questions. This site is hosted by GoDaddy and I am very happy with their service.
