Who is the worst web host?

If you need tech support, DON'T choose http://www.addr.com or http://www.generalhosting.com. I currently use General Hosting and plan to switch to ThinkHost soon.

Well y'all know not to go with the former own of TrueHosting. I can't keep up anymore with all his different company names That's about it...

I had a bad experience with CIHOST quite some time back, when I informed them that I wanted to terminate my account by email, they informed that I can only do so if I write to them officially or fax them the letter of termination.

I faxed it to them and waited for 2 months as they seemed to drag their feet on such matters and after many emails threatening to report them, then only did I received an emails from their accounts section that my account is closed.

I think each host has its upsides and downsides. Many times this changes client by client. I know plenty of people that love CIHost - there’s also a large crowed that won’t go near them (myself included). Here are 3 hosts that are popular and my recent opinion of them:

Verio – This is one heck of a corporation and figuring anything out about an account is a mess. They’ve consumed tons of small hosts and all their records and support staff is scattered about. If your get a hold of a good technical support rep you’ll get what you need done, but most of the time you shouldn’t have had to call in the first place.

HostPro – I have a lager client with these guys, overall they seem good but last time I checked they did not provide telnet or SSH. HostPro openly advertises to enterprise clients and you’d think most larger corporate/e-commerce sites would need shell access to setup SQL (mainly) and debug programs, etc. I know I do.

HostWay – The control panel is lacking but support is not half bad. My major gripe is the $5 a month my client had to pay for PHP. They also only support mSQL on the starter packages.

All in all I’m tried of dealing with hosts that don’t live up to your expectations and basic requirements. I could care less if a host offers telephone support, as long as they answer their email and seem responsive. Now that I have a dedicated server I hope to save a lot of time and headaches. We’ll see

Fortunately I haven't had to deal with a really bad web host... but I have heard many problems as far as accounting and support goes with addr.com. Other than that, most of the hosts my friends and I are using (or own) are good.

I have had a bad experience or two (6) with pair.com. I hosted with them when I first got into web stuff, and now, well, I know better. It often takes them over a WEEK to get support replies back, and well, overall, there hosting is plain, slow and unremarkable.

I now host with thinkhost.com and I must say, that, despite the fact that it was originally a courtesy account, thinkhost provides excellent service and the hosting itself is top quality:) oh well, you take the good with the bad:)

Adam

That's interesting, thinkhost recommends pair often (at least from what I remember)! Do they know about your experiences? You may want to share.

Well,

I think addr.com was by far the best support I got so far.
The only problem was that they had no clue how to setup mysql right. So I dropped them last week.

Other hosts where I made bad experiences:
(Mostly german hosts.)
- www-discount ... they managed to "loose" my domain
- netbeat ... fast setup, no support afterwards
- communitech ... spamming, IP range blocked in alta-vista

There is just one simple rule:
If it is to good to be true it isn't worth trying.

ciao
Anti

You might of gotten so-so tech support from Addr.com, but I've heard they aren't exactly bright.

I had an account with them a while ago, but since closed it. I can still access my closed account I'm not paying for... go figure. Thinkhost all the way!

I've never -ever- had an account with the following host, but it's just how their business practices are. [Posting on forums as fake people, corporate badmouthing, and a few other things.] In my opinion you have to be -honest- and -trustworthy.-

Hostrocket.com

[I am not meaning to start a flame war, and if Hostrocket -does- want to provide feedback to this, my e-mail is in my signature.]

[Edited by TheGraphicsExperience on 07-27-2000 at 09:53 AM]

Hi,

Also not looking to start a flame war here, but we have never dealt with you in any fashion whatsoever, and what you saw on these message boards was people doing what you described to us, not visa versa.

I've also seen what Mike (TheGraphicsExperiance) has described. Which forum was it? I forget. Either HostSearch Forums or HostInvestigator Forums. But, like I said, I forget where I saw the discussion about it...

...I believe I described that I'd never done business with you, there, Hosty.

Ehh. Ask Chicken. He's da daddy in that category.

He must be talking about how I exposed how they promote themselves under various names? Or maybe how they denied doing it? Or maybe how they responded about as unprofessionally as a "professional" host could? I'm really not sure.

Anyway, this isn't what the topic is about, and although I could list URLs and go on about this, I don't see the point. They could have admitted what they did, apologized, stopped posting under different names, and it wouldn't have been a big deal. But they didn't do any of those things and instead chose to pathetically justify their actions and post the most arrogant thing I have ever read on these boards by a host.

If you sign up with hostrocket after knowing what they do and how they act, then you just aren't all that bright. There are *many* other respectable Alabanza hosts (in fact they are the only ones I *wouldn't* recommend).

As far as the topic, I have hosted with web229 and burst and have left them due to reasons I won't list. I wouldn't go so far as to say they are the worst hosts out there though. I am sure there are much worse than both of those, so I don't think this is what webmaster2000 is asking.

Hello Everyone,

I started this forum so that we could start discussing the topic of web hosts -- to avoid those that are not worth it, but also to mention those few that deserve credit. There should be some positive posts in here as well. Any good stories? We are all quick to post the bad out there, but what about a host that is reliable, cheap, fast, etc.? I know they exist because several of our web properties are hosted with such companies. Anyways, let the posting continue. Just remember not to turn this into a full blown flame thread.

David from http://www.web-master.tv
Web-Master.TV: The channel for webmasters.
FREE ADVERTISING - WEB HOSTING - SITE IMPROVEMENT - MORE...

web2000: the only problem with these "who is the best/who is the worst" type posts is that they are so general that nearly every host would fit into one of these catagories for at least one person.

What I mean is, you'll find at least one person touting Communitech as the best host ever, along with another saying how horrible they are. It is just too vague to be all that useful.

I realize you are looking for vague and general, but...

Tera-byte has been very good to me (dedicated colo), and I would recommend them to anyone.

Time with them: 2 months.
Uptime: Rock solid, no problems.
Support: Always extremely helpful. I shouldn't even be getting the kind of help they have provided so I can't complain!

Hope this added info helps. If you have another area you want info about, let me know and I'll edit this post.

Well, I like Thinkhost. Justin be damned! It's just.. purely awesome. Erm. Anyways... well.. umm.. PAK CHOOIE UNF!

I support ThinkHost as well...

Worst host? I've never heard a good thing about CI Host.

As for Addr.com: I've used/use them (will dump them soon though)...they seem like a huge company, but their tech support takes a bit long (no big deal, but a tad annoying) and they don't see terribly intelligent to me. Too many responses sound automated and based around templates...which would be fine, except they dont' always answer my question!

nomonthlyfees is super dupa bad. It seems like a good deal at first, but then things start going wrong...

often the mail servers get un-officiall (they don't admit it) suspended for an hour or 2.

Support - good at first, but loyal members (been there over 3 months) get ignored.

Lots of e-mails from them about cheap domain names.

Lots of iffy stuff with other companies.

The whole thing is more than a bit starnge, they have some wierd connections with other companies.

My only advice, stay away.

Actually CI Host is better then some hosts I’ve used. My largest complaint is POP email timeouts. There’s nothing more annoying. Particularly when I’m at home and my email synchronizes every two minutes.

Otherwise you get what they say you will, support is about the same as any other large corporation (InterLand, Verio, HostWay, ProHosting, etc), and uptime is not horrible (not great either). I don’t personally use them but I have a client with an account there. She’ll be moving to my dedicated server this week for one main reason, secure PHP. CI Host doesn’t support PHP through SSL.

Please do not consider this a recommendation for CI Host. Just my personal experience with them. I'd never sign-up with them or recommend a client to them.

in my opinion interland is worst, just because i'm tired of getting all the junk mail and sales pitch phone calls from them.

We do hosting for schools and government organisations (in the UK), and were considering hosting to "the rest" of the ppl out there. We get money from the local education authority which is more than enough to maintain the servers, so we would be able to offer a great service, our tech support is amazing (we get a lot of messed up in the head school Tech's),

But the only thing would be the extra load the other clients would become. Not so much on the server not being powerfull enough (thats all state of the art), but more if we go to the outside world we will probably experiance more (not that we've had any yet) fraud, and people trying to screw up the system.

...All that said, we are seriousely considering it.

This is an interesting (and long) thread all you ThnikHost people might want to read up on: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000478.html

Justin,

I am a little confused here -- you're pointing out yet another thread where our competitors end up flaming us. Our competitors hate us -- thats a given. Just like TWA hates ProAir because of their low prices. Same thing.

When you find a client complaint, then tell me.

Justin,

Must I remind you that you are ALSO a competitor? [/url]

Yep, I'm a competitor. Well soon at least. Maybe within the week. I plan to definitely give y'all a run for your money. Also, I'd highly suggest anyone thinking about using ThinkHost to check out the above thread. Note that not everyone giving _valid_ arguments is a host, and the hosts that are posting are giving _valid_ arguments. At least I think so.

Good luck Justin. However if you intend to living up to your company's name and giving us a run for our money by flaming us... good luck

....Can't we all just love each other?

I love you, Justin.

I love you, Vlad.

TWT, I need a hug.

- un loved -

Awww... I love you all. Especially you, Medrecki.

feelin great, someone just gave me £70 to put in a new sound card and speakers!!!

See what the love of a TWF Conquerer can get you?

C'mon, let's all have a group hug.

The guy just kept giving me money.

Web2000,

Thanks for doing this thread. This is probably really boring for the veterans, but very helpful to us newbies out here shopping around.

_________________________________________________
Don't steal, the government hates competition.
_________________________________________________

Great signature, Medrecki. You may be talking about England, but this is *really* applicable here in the U.S.

After experiencing 11 different poor hosting companies, I got tired of the same bad service so I started up my own.

The worst companies I experienced were addr.com and he.net.

Bad tech support (no reply at all in some cases) was common with these companies.