the hostorian (& his reviews!) » Web Hosting Reviews

One.Com

Hostorian — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 08:14:55 +0000

One.com Web Hosting Ratings

Not recommended by the Hostorian!
Click here to visit One.com.

Or click here to see the recommended shared web hosting companies instead.

Summary

One.com have been in business since 2002, and have helped host Fortune 100 corporations, private resellers, and more. With 160,000 satisfied customers, they have become one of the most reliable hosting companies to date. They include all the services you could possibly want when hosting a website, big or small.

Quick Facts About One.Com

One.com was founded in 2002, and now has 700,000 customers in 149 countries.
One.com is based out of Denmark
Web Hosting Services: Small Plan ($1.45/month), Medium Plan ($3.00), Large Plan ($5.65)
Phone: +45 4690 7100

Products and Services by One.com

One.com has a very straight forward site which will get you started with a website in a matter of minutes. There are no major decisions to make and no confusing hosting options. There are only three plans, and the only difference between them is the hard drive size.

All plans include the following: unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, a photo gallery, web editor, blog, FTP, and a daily backup. All applications appear to be custom-made applications, not well known options like WordPress. There also doesn’t appear to be a content management system option available (meaning no Joomla, Drupal, etc).

The Small hosting plan is $1.45/month, Medium Plan is $3.00/month, and Large Plan is $5.65/month.

Hostorian’s Review of One.com

One.com’s Performance

One.com lists a 99.9% guarantee for uptime with their servers. There is a 15 day money back guarantee for their hosting services, but not domain name registration.

One.com’s Features

The feature list with One.com is small in comparison to most hosting companies. One.com is really looking to capture the beginner market in the world and does not make things complicated at all. All applications are custom built which means there is no support available outside of One.com. This also means you can not add some blog designs you may see or plugins for WordPress, etc. There is a “live demo” on the website, but it is nothing more than some pictures. The website they list as the demo site is only a photo gallery.

Support and Customer Care by One.com

Support for One.com is as basic as their hosting services, but does include live chat, phone, or email support. There are some basic FAQs to help you get your website up and running, as well as, setting up your email accounts through Outlook or other email client.

Pros

Offers the cheapest rates available on the Internet for hosting.
Easy to choose the right hosting plan to use.

Cons

All applications are custom made, so no support for 3rd party applications.
Very limited options for support of the custom applications.
Customers routinely point out the shady billing practise.

Actual Customer Reviews for One.com

“I can only agree with the previous reviewer – avoid one.com at all costs. I too am having to deal with their aggressive and completely anti-social cancellation policy: any other provider would take the lapsed renewal as a cancellation of service – not these cowboys, they insist on charging a full year’s extra cost. ” – Frank Bramwell

“Avoid one.com like the plague! they have disgraceful policies on automatically updating subscriptions and send minimal correspondence. I cancelled my subscription but due to it being after 10month and 5 days of a 12month subscription i was locked until 2011! I didn’t pay the fees as i was trying to rectify the situation with the admin team. And they sent the debt to a third party debt collection firm so in three months a bill of £19 went to £48!!! ” – Steve Davies

“It is impossible to keep track of the billing procedure at one.com. You can’t manage multiple domain accounts together so it is pretty difficult to make sure you pay on time. Why do you need to make sure? Because they only let you pay one year at a time, and if you don’t respond to the only email they send, it goes straight to a collection agency and you have 3-5x the original bill.” – Anonymous

Verdict of this One.com Review

For someone looking to start up a website who has no previous knowledge of HTML, blogging, email, etc. One.com may be a good option for them. This site is really geared towards people who do not want a lot of options with their website. It is perfect for people who want to share their photos online or have a basic blog without getting too complicated.

For anyone else looking for a professional site, this is not the place for you. It is cheap, but there is no easy way to add WordPress, Joomla, etc. to your domain. Other hosting companies offer a lot more options when customizing your hosting package and make it dead simple to install advanced software.

I was feeling more enthusiastic about One.com until I read the customer reviews. Too many of the customers were complaining that their credit cards were automatically charged for renewal when they were not wanting to continue the service. More worrisome is how the unpaid bills went straight to a collection agency after a few weeks, not several months as is standard practice. One.com is routinely voted as one of the lowest rated hosting companies out there, so I would advise against using the site until there are more positive reviews.

Click here to go to One.com’s official website.

Or click here to see other top rated shared web hosting companies instead.

Omnis Network

Hostorian — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 06:31:42 +0000

Omnis Network Hosting Ratings

An excellent web host — highly recommended!
Click here to visit Omnis Network’s website

Apply the coupon code host20 to get 20% discount on your Web Hosting purchase!

Summary

Omnis Network Hosting is a fairly large hosting company, having over 200,000 accounts using their services. They have been offering their services for a long time, since 1999, and have built their business by offering comprehensive services surrounded by great support.

Quick Facts About Omnis Network Hosting

Omnis has been in operation since 1999, and have won several awards for Best Support and Editor’s Choice for Web Hosting.
Are serving over 200,000 accounts
Hosting Plans: 12 months ($6.95/month), 24 months ($5.95/month)
Phone: 877-393-4678

Products and Services by Omnis Network Hosting

With Omnis Network Hosting, you do have a lot of the features other hosting sites have, but there is no tiered pricing for business users. Pricing is dependent on the length of the contract. For 12 months, the hosting plan is $6.95/month, and then that price drops a $1.00/month for 24 months ($5.95). Pricing for a Windows-based hosting plan start at $8.95/month and drops to $7.95/month for a 24 month plan.

With the hosting package, you receive: a free domain for life (with a year or longer package), unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, host unlimited domains, 24/7 support, online help, and have access to free installation scripts to install the best online software available (including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and more).

Hostorian’s Review of Omnis Network Web Hosting

Omnis Network’s Performance

Omnis Network Hosting offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, with 24/7 network monitoring, UPS power backup, and courtesy site backups, plus a 30 day money-back guarantee.

Omnis Network’s Features

The standard features are available at Omnis Network Hosting, such as one click install for popular software. From blogs (WordPress, b2evolution, Nucleus), Content Management Systems (Drupal, Geeklog, Joomla, Movable Type, Xoops), eCommerce (CubeCart, Zen Cart, Open Cart), and much more. They also offer free site promotion tools, a free SiteBuilder with templates, and advertising credits for Yahoo ($25) and Google AdWords ($50).

You also have access to their Design services (receive a free quote with an account), and can register a domain name with pricing from $8.95 for a .com domain, $7.95 for a .net or .org domain, to $14.95 for a .co.uk, with many more options for discounts for mass registrations.

Support and Customer Care by Omnis Network

Support for Omnis Network Solutions is much better than a lot of the other hosting companies out there.

They offer 24/7 phone support, a live chat system, a knowledge base, and video tutorials. The knowledge base has several hundred articles available to read that include How To’s, FAQ’s, and common problems. The video tutorials are not as comprehensive as the knowledge base, but do offer the basic topics, including how to install WordPress or another installation script.

Pros

Offers great choices for software to get your website operational right away, plus $75 worth of advertising coupons to market the site.
A very good rate for unlimited domains, space, and bandwidth, and can cancel at any time.
Over 10 years of hosting experience, and highly recommended by users.

Cons

Only one hosting package available, no room for upgrades.
No other services available apart from cloud hosting.
Some customers noted issues in previous years of their services being slowed because they were using too much space (20+ GB).

Actual Customer Reviews for Omnis Network Hosting

“Had several domains with another provider. Wasn’t happy with that provider for various reasons, but always hesitated to move my accounts because of the hassle. But when they had a server go down that actually lost some data and accounts, that was the final straw. Found Omnis and tried one account with them. There service was good and solid, so decided to move everything over to them. The tech support was great and helped move all my domains over and consolidate them on one account using their link accounts tool. Just had to contact my old registrar and get the auth code to transfer the domains to Omnis and where to input the auth code. A lot simpler than I thought it was going to be. Will be keeping my accounts with Omnis for a long time.” - Mike Cole

“I have shared hosting with dedicated IP, unlimited/unlimited. I’m running WordPress with MySQL. My website’s performance is surprisingly good. I had the exact same setup at another web hosting company, but the performance was awful. Site crashed a few times, and their support never gave me specific answers. Support at Omnis is much more reliable. I have to give Omnis credit. Good job.” - Peter Robertson

“Wow what great service. I’ve been using Omnis for my web hosting, and the service has been outstanding. When I had some problems with my email early on, I contacted their tech support. Easy to reach, and friendly to talk to. We were able to get things fixed really fast. Its great to have such quality staff providing support. Everything has been working perfectly since. Its been two years now. Omnis is the best! “ - risingstargolfacademy.com

Verdict of this Omnis Network Review

Omnis Network Hosting is an excellent option for a site that is small in stature. I would not recommend it for a site that aims to host a lot of photographs or streaming audio/video due to the comments made by some users of their site being slowed because of using too much space. Omnis seems like the ideal solution for someone wanting to set up a blog or an eCommerce website.

I am not fond of sites that only have one hosting plan available and you pay dependent on the length of your contract. This is good for people who own an established, small business, because it is likely the website will be used for at least 24 months. For someone who is just starting up a blog and is noncommittal about the length, it is not an attractive offer. Of course, committing to a plan of over six months will make you commit to publishing to a site regularly.

I did not find any negative comments about Omnis Network Hosting from the past year. There are some from early 2009 and earlier that warned of the sites being slowed down, but this should not be an issue for the majority of the users. Most of the users have only raved about the support they received from the technicians at Omnis.

Omnis Network Hosting is an attractive option for web hosting for an advanced user or a beginner who is willing to commit to a service. With excellent support and great features available to the hosting plan, Omnis Network Hosting is highly regarded. I will rank them highly and give them a 4.5/5 stars.

Click here to visit Omnis Network Hosting’s official website.

Omnis Network Hosting Discount Coupon Code!

Apply the coupon code host20 to get 20% discount on your Web Hosting purchase!
Click here to visit Omnis Network Hosting’s official website.

Network Solutions

Hostorian — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:28:30 +0000

Network Solutions Ratings

Looks good overall, though a bit pricey, and has some negative reviews. Caution!
Click here to visit Network Solutions

Or click here to see the recommended shared web hosting companies instead.

Summary

Network Solutions have been in business for a very long time now, and have compiled a large suite of services to offer their clients, from hosting plans to designing websites. Navigating this large assortment of options can be a challenge, and the prices are a bit higher than other hosting sites. Overall, they appear to be a hit and miss company depending on the person using the services.

Quick Facts About Network Solutions

Network Solutions hosting was founded in 1979, hosting websites since 1995.
Web Hosting Services: Shared (Small) Plan ($9.29/month), Shared (Large) Plan ($12.41/month), Shared Unlimited Plan ($27.18).
Phone: 1-800-361-5712

Products and Services by Network Solutions

Trying to find the best hosting option available on Network Solutions proves to be a bit of a challenge. They have three different tiers for shared hosting, and the prices change depending on how long you are willing to pre-pay for the service.

The Small Shared Hosting plan starts at $9.29/month for a year contract, and with that you receive: 300 GB of hard drive space, 3000 GB of bandwidth, a free domain name, and 1000 email accounts.

The Large Shared Hosting plan is $12.41/month and gives you the following upgrades: 500 GB of space, 5000 GB of bandwidth, 2500 email accounts, but only the one domain name.

The Unlimited Plan is $27.18/month and gives you: Unlimited bandwidth, unlimited hard drive space, 3 domain names, and unlimited amount of email accounts.

Slightly confusing is that Network Solutions offers an additional plan for WordPress blog hosting. This plan starts at $4.13/month for a year contract, and gives you: 50 GB of hard drive space, 500 GB of bandwidth, one free domain name, and online marketing credits to help advertise your website. This is a steal of a deal for people just starting off with blogging.

In addition to the Shared Hosting plans and the WordPress hosting plans, Network Solutions has a wide assortment of services available: domain name registration ($35.00 without a hosting plan), website design, eCommerce websites, online marketing services, and various packages of services to get your website started. For example, their WebAddress Basic package is $34.99/year and includes one web page, domain name, and an email account. This option is only viable for people wanting to create niche mini-sites or need a landing page for an affiliate link.

Hostorian’s Review of Network Solutions

Network Solutions’ Performance

Network Solutions Hosting offers a 99.99% guarantee for uptime, plus a 30 day limited money-back guarantee.

Network Solutions’ Features

All plans contain the features that are becoming standard across all hosting companies. They include different options for blogging (WordPress, b2evolution, BlogEngine.net), Content Management Systems (Joomla, Drupal, Mambo, DotNetNuke), Wikis (TikiWiki, PHPWiki, and ScrewTurn Wiki), Message Forum, eCommerce (Magneto), Project Management, and more.

Support and Customer Care by Network Solutions

Support for Network Solutions Hosting has almost as many options as their hosting packages. They offer free 24/7 phone and email support, 365 days a year. They also have a series of video tutorials, user guides, support forum, knowledge base, getting started guides, and a domain maintenance guide. If you need assistance doing anything website related, you can find it on this site.

Pros

Offers great choices for software to get your website operational right away.
Plenty of hosting options available to find the perfect solution for your site.
Offers a lot of services to help your website and business succeed.

Cons

Domain name registrations are expensive compared to the competition.
Site is overly complicated in setting up a website.
Plenty of negative reviews out there, including complaints of the support staff being located overseas.

Actual Customer Reviews for Network Solutions

“Absolute worst email service I have experienced (and I have been around since email was invented . Constantly battling to simply log on to the site. Constantly tossed off for no apparent reason. Horribly slow response time. Doesn’t work with Internet explorer. Doesn’t scroll properly on my iPhone. I could go on and on but I refuse to let Network Solutions ruin another morning for me!” - NS User

“I have been with Network Solutions for over 10 years…I have NEVER had any problems with Customer Service…it has been fantastic…I have NEVER had my two sites go down…I have NEVER had any issues with the email packages…I have NEVER had ANY problems with image cafe…
I believe the negative reviews are not valid…nor do I think they are written my true NS customers…I have been with NS TOO long know what’s what…
Cmon people…get a grip…
Network Solutions has been nothing but FANTASTIC to me and my two sites…” - Mooosie2

“Used to be great. Not too sure recently. Customer service now offshore and hard to understand and not very responsive. After two days of inoperative email and no resolution to the matter, as well as inconstant information, I am seriously considering a change. to my email and web hosting.” - Fred Carmean

Verdict of this Network Solutions Review

Network Solutions looks like a company that has a lot going for it if you judge it from looking at the website alone. It can be tricky to navigate and to find exactly what you are looking for. Sometimes having too many options is not a good thing when it comes to site design packages.

The prices are a bit high when looking at domain registration or the basic shared hosting accounts, but the WordPress Blog Hosting prices look like a great deal. I would highly recommend checking this site out for your hosting needs, except some of the customer reviews raise red flags for me. Some of the problems were for large sites, but people do not seem to have much luck when it comes to their email services or the customer support. Some complained about the support being overseas help after the office hours had finished and had problems communicating effectively with the support staff. Others complained of their site going down completely and services being canceled.

That being said, all the negative reviews were balanced by positive reviews. I am not sure which way to lean in terms of recommending this hosting company, so I would advise in backing up all your data along the way to ensure your site remains secure and portable to another option if problems arise.

Click here to go to the official Network Solutions website.

Nethosting

Hostorian — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:11:47 +0000

Nethosting Web Hosting Ratings

Seems to be a good web host overall, would be worth a try
Click here to visit Nethosting’s official website

Summary

NetHosting is a company that specializes in the hosting your websites, without offering the suite of applications available at other larger sites. Their primary business is through dedicated and virtual hosting, giving the power of the site’s operation completely to the customer. Servers are completely upgradable to your specifications allowing you to build the server you need.

Quick Facts About NetHosting

NetHosting was been in operation since 1994, based out of Orem,UT.
Hosting Services: Dedicated ($99.00/month and up), Virtual Private Server ($24.95 per month and up), Virtual Hosting ($7.95/month and up)
Phone: 888-534-4678

Products and Services by Nethosting

NetHosting is a different company from the other hosting sites out there in that they focus on dedicated server accounts. They give the customer the power to setup their server in the way they would like them to be, whether that is the hard drive size or the memory available or the operating system. For the Mark I v2 dedicated service, the starting package comes with 1 GB of RAM, 500 GB of hard drive space, an Intel 1.8 Ghz processor, and your choice of CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, or Windows as an operating system. You can upgrade the memory up to 8 GB, hard drive up to a terabyte, but the processor is not upgradable.

The Virtual Private Server is a cheaper alternative to the dedicated solution, but has limitations with the service it can provide. The VPS 128 comes with 128 MB of RAM, 5 GB of space, CentOS, and only 50 GB of data transfer. These options are only upgradable by purchasing a higher tiered plan, which nearly double in price.

The Virtual Hosting offers 10 GB of space, 100 GB of transfer, and gives you the ability to host an unlimited amount of domain names. The options to add applications to this service are extremely limited. They only offer support for adding WordPress, MediaWiki, OsCommerce, CubeCart, PHPBB, and PHPShop. The service is not amateur friendly.

Hostorian’s Review of Nethosting

Nethosting’s Performance

NetHosting offers a 100% guarantee for uptime through redundant systems. You can get your money back for any services that you have paid for but have not used yet (if pre-paying for the year), but there are no 30 day money-back guarantees.

Nethosting’s Features

Features are extremely limited for the virtual hosting plans. Apart from what is mentioned above, they do offer full POP3 email support, the ability to host an unlimited number of email accounts and setup IMAP accounts. They do support all the major scripting languages, and offer unlimited number of FTP accounts.

Support and Customer Care by Nethosting

Support for NetHosting has a few options available: there is live 24/7 chat, phone support, and an email ticket system. There are a limited amount of FAQs and articles mainly about setting up your server, but no articles about setting up WordPress, for example.

Pros

Offers great choices to customize your server to get your website operational right away.
Affordable hosting plans for small to mid-size businesses.
24/7 support is available through different channels

Cons

Very limited options in adding applications easily to your virtual servers.
Not enough actual customer reviews available to backup NetHosting’s claims.

Actual Customer Reviews for Nethosting

“Nethosting is a great company to work with. Their service is top of the line and my website has never been down. Pricing is good, give them a call and they will always work with you on the price. Used them for almost 2 years now and I’ve never had a problem” - John

“The pricing looks excellent. Sadly, we are based in the UK, so the exchange rate with the dollar is making it more expensive than it would usually be. Also, there are often time of day issues with support between here and the US, and also some speed and congestion issues during busy trans-atlantic periods.” - Terry, Conveyancing Manager, UK

“It’s one thing to experience an instance of exceptional quality of service and out-of-this-world customer satisfaction when doing business with a company; it’s another to experience this with the unmatched dedication and consistency that is Nethosting. That is why I’ve done business with them for over thirteen years. They are more than a vendor; they are my technology partner.” - J. Pedroza, owner, Strüdelhosen Design

Verdict of this Nethosting Review

It is extremely difficult to accurately gauge what NetHosting brings to the table because there are no easily accessible reviews available online. With other hosting companies, it is easy to find relatively accurate accounts of the user experience, whether it is good or bad, and be able to compare NetHosting’s claims to the actual experience.

NetHosting claims to have 100% uptime with their services, and offer stellar support through chat, email, and by the phone. Without the user experience, there is no way to verify this information. I can say that they offer a variety of options when setting up your server, and the virtual hosting plans are comparable to other sites, except for the lack of a full suite of applications to install. NetHosting only offers eight different applications to easily install. On other hosting sites, there are eight different applications in the blogging section alone. This is the one major drawback towards NetHosting for people who are just beginning to setup a website. For professionals who are comfortable working within a file manager to upload and install their software, it will not be a major concern.

For professionals who are looking for a place to set up their website, NetHosting appears to be a good option for them. The prices are reasonable, the options to upgrade the server is powerful, and there is support around the clock available to you. I do advise you to look at their policies posted on the website to make sure you are comfortable with their terms before you build your website.

NetHosting is definitely worth a look, and based on the few customer reviews that are available they do seem to be a good web hosting company for dedicated servers and virtual servers hosting.

Click here to visit Nethosting’s official website.

Netfirms Web Hosting

Hostorian — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:32:42 +0000

Netfirms Web Hosting Ratings

Not recommended if you want to host a website for the long term!
Click here to visit the Netfirms website

Or click here to see the recommended shared web hosting companies instead.

Summary

Netfirms is a hosting company that has been around for several years. They have received press in journals such as New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and ComputerWorld. Their customer reviews are mainly negative, however, so the services may have changed dramatically since the newspaper coverage.

Quick Facts About Netfirms

Netfirms hosting was founded in 1998.
Web Hosting Services: Plus Plan ($4.95/month), Advantage Plan ($9.95), Business Plan ($9.95).
Phone: 1-866-317-4678

Products and Services by Netfirms

Netfirms has three tiers of hosting plans available to choose from. They have the Plus Plans which start at $4.95/month, Advantage Plan ($9.95/month), and Business Plan ($9.95/month).

The Plus Plan comes with 10 GB of space, 500 GB of bandwidth, hosting for one domain only, 10 email accounts and access to several quick install applications.

The Advantage Plan increases the disk space to 250 GB, 2,000 GB of bandwidth, 2 free domains, hosting for an unlimited amount of domains, and 500 email accounts.

The Business Plan increases the disk space to 300 GB, 3,000 GB of bandwidth, 5 free domains, 1000 email accounts, plus all the standard features available to the other accounts.

Hostorian’s Review of Netfirms Web Hosting Service

Netfirms’ Performance

Netfirms does not mention a guarantee for uptime, but does offer a 30 day money back guarantee if you are not happy with the services. Customer reviews pointed out that their sites were down frequently, but those reviews were from previous years. Nothing current has mentioned any issues with the hosting servers.

Netfirms’ Features

All plans contain the features that are becoming standard across all hosting companies. For the Plus Plan, you are able to install WordPress, and PicturePro Photo Gallery. The other plans support those two applications, as well as, Drupal, Joomla, Zen Cart, and PHPBB Discussion Forum. In the features list, the site mentions that they include NetFirms AppsUniverse which are easy to install applications. Plus Plan includes the Silver level, Advantage is Gold, and Business is Platinum. No other information was able to be found in regards to what applications are included at each level apart from the ones mentioned above.

The Plans also include advertising credits for Google Adwords and Facebook Ads. Plus Plan includes $25 worth of credit for each, while Advantage and Business include $50 for each service.

Support and Customer Care by Netfirms

Support for Netfirms is fairly comprehensive. They offer free 24/7 phone and email support, 365 days a year. They also have live chat during business hours. In addition, they have a series of flash tutorials, user guides, support forum, knowledge base, getting started guides, and a domain maintenance guide. If you need assistance doing anything website related, you can find it on this site.

Pros

Offers great choices for software to get your website operational right away.
Cheap Hosting plan with the Business Plans when you include the cost of five free domains
Support is always available online and includes some good tutorials.

Cons

Lack of information about available software to install
No guarantee for the server uptime
Custom designed control panel can be slow

Actual Customer Reviews for Netfirms

“Netfirms had me up and running with a Website and Blog in literally minutes. Servers were fast, setup was easy. Whats really cool is their Grid Hosting feature which I understand they were amongst the first to develop. I bought the Netfirms Business hosting plan which includes toll-free customer service, 5 free domains and Windows and Unix hosting features all one on plan. I used their support services to get help on domain transfers and spoke to a friendly rep who pointed me to the right spot on the control panel. To top it all off, the included 5 free domain name registrations are free for as long as you host with the Netfirms Business plan. I moved 3 domains over using the Control Panel. I give them a 9/10 for overall value. “ - Chris M

“Their customer service is beyond horrible. They do not respond to support emails for literally DAYS and it takes, seriously, an hour and a half to get someone on the phone. Once you have someone, they will put you back on hold for 10 minutes or longer while they search for the answer. Unfortunately, after you’ve spent all that time talking to them they do not follow through with their promises to fix the problem.
We have had nothing but bad experiences with them and it is likely that we will not receive a refund for the hosting non-service, nor for the days wasted attempting to get a satisfactory resolution to our issues.” - Russ Miller

“I have been using Netfirms for about 2 years now, with no problems that I can remember. I have about 30 domains with them and 15 web sites. (The rest of the domains are either parked or multiple names point to one website.) It all works easily. Their control panel is unique to them, but you can do what you need. The few times I called support I was talking to a person in a few minutes who actually knew what they were talking about.” - Alex

Verdict of this Netfirms Review

At first glance, Netfirms looks like a great option for people to use when starting up a website. The Plus package is very reasonable for a beginner blogger who is just starting to build up some reliable traffic to the website, but only if they don’t think they will need support. Registering a domain name is priced similar to other sites. The Business Plan is a steal at the price they are offering when you include the five free domains. It is definitely the plan to go with for professionals.

Problems begin to arise when you delve deeper into the customer reviews of the site. There are not too many performance issues as far as the servers being down, but there are a lot of issues with shifty behaviour by the company, including several mentions of credit card fraud. Several people have mentioned that support calls were delayed and took a long time. That is troubling considering that Netfirms says that all support staff undergo a rigorous training regiment before working.

The site seems like a reasonable place to register your domains and may be cheaper in comparison to some sites. Hosting a site here may cause you problems. Several other websites rank Netfirms at the lower end of the scale when lined up against the other hosting companies.

If you are looking to host a website for the longterm, I would suggest using a different service that is not as much of a gamble as netfirms appears to be.

Click here to go to the official Netfirms website.

Or click here to see other top rated shared web hosting companies instead.

Lunarpages

Hostorian — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:54:02 +0000

Lunarpages Web Hosting Ratings

A good web host if you are starting out, not otherwise!
Click here to visit the Lunarpages website

Or click here to see other recommended web hosting companies instead.

Summary

Lunarpages have been in business for quite a long time, and have helped host Fortune 100 corporations, private resellers, and more. With 160,000 satisfied customers, they have become one of the most reliable hosting companies to date. They include all the services you could possibly want when hosting a website, big or small.

Quick Facts About Lunarpages

Lunarpages was founded in 1998, and now has 160,000 customers.
Datacenters in Irvine and San Diego,CA, Las Vegas,NV and several satellites locations in the United States.
Web Hosting Services: Starter Plan ($3.95/month), Basic Plan ($4.95), Business Plan ($18.95)
Phone: 877-586-2772

Products and Services by Lunarpages

When you first visit the website, you are placed in front of a wall of different offers and services to choose from. It can be rather confusing at first glance compared to other hosting sites, but you can find any solution that you may be looking for, from a basic blog to eCommerce site to VPS hosting.

The Starter plan is a cheap hosting option priced at $3.95/month. With the low price, comes limited features as the storage is only 5 GB, 50 GB of bandwidth, and the only support option is by email, not phone. This option is great for someone who knows what they’re doing and needs a space to develop the look and feel of a website in a live environment, but definitely not suited for someone who may want assistance in the development of a website.

The Basic hosting plan is $4.95/month, has unlimited storage and bandwidth, includes 24/7/365 phone support, and a free domain name. It also comes with $110 worth of advertising credits for MySpace, Facebook, and Google AdWords. The Business hosting plan is $18.95/month, includes everything the Basic plan has, plus 3 domain names. It also includes some features a business may be interested in, including Tremmendesk hosted Help Desk, 3 months of unlimited backup through KeepIt!, and a dedicated IP.

Hostorian’s Review of Lunarpages Web Hosting

Lunarpages’ Performance

Lunarpages offers a 99.9% guarantee for uptime, plus a 30 day money-back guarantee. They also have tape backups, and 24/7/365 server monitoring.

Lunarpages’ Features

All plans come with over 30 web scripts to install software, which include the popular options of WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, ZenCart, and osCommerce. They also include a package worth $700 of free software or coupons that help you design a logo, get customer feedback, and more.

There is also the ability to register a domain name (if it’s not included with your hosting package), but the prices are rather expensive. I did a search for a .com domain which are $19.95 at Lunarpages, and $11.00 at GoDaddy. If you need a domain to include with your package, use a different service.

Support and Customer Care by Lunarpages

Support for Lunarpages has almost as many options as their hosting packages. They offer free 24/7 support, 365 days a year through email, and phone (except for Starter packages). They also have a series of FAQs, a Glossary of terms, Online Tutorials, Knowledge Base, a Wiki, forums, and a ticket system.

In addition, they also monitor the servers 24/7/365.

Pros

Offers great choices for software to get your website operational right away.
Cheap Hosting plans make it affordable for amateurs
Business Plan offers some great add-on features, like the Help Desk.

Cons

Starter package does not include phone support
Registering a domain name is expensive.
Customers routinely ranked the customer service levels as poor.

Actual Customer Reviews for Lunarpages

“I’ve been with Lunarpages for some time now. Prices were great and support were great also.
It used to be that their prices were always the most competitive that you wouldn’t think twice about signing with other hosting company. Now the great price and great offers are mainly for the new accounts while accounts like mine are getting hit with increased prices each year. I asked on their forum page as to why the price increase while others are much lower, I get a response of “Times are changing”.
Support used to be great on the forum and also submitting tickets. Now when you post questions in the forum, you don’t get the same quality of support. It seems like they have more forum moderators than knowledgeable support staff. At least submitting support ticket is still fast and reliable.” - lostchild368

“My previous host was not so good. Lunarpages had great special for two year plan. I must say I’ve saved good money and the hosting has been rock solid, fast, and as I’ve had no issues with service can only say when I caused an htaccess error due to some sloppy ftp handling and brought down all sites – they got back to me in no time and politely informed me of cause of issue and quick fix. I fixed the file and voila, all better. I’ve begun implementing all sorts of php etc. and have five sites now, still rock solid! Super Host, am very pleased!” - satisfiedincny

“Lunar pages is the worst company I have ever dealt with. I have had countless issues with their utterly horrible customer support both via email and phone. They have now taken to “hiding” any complaints and issues about their service on their forums. You can only see the issues customers are posting about if you have made an “account” and have at least 10 posts to your name. This is an obvious attempt to hide the growing number of issues with their service from potential customers viewing their forum.” - Mike

Verdict of this Lunarpages Review

At first glance, Lunarpages looks like a great option for people to use when starting up a website. The Starter package is very reasonable for a beginner blogger who is just starting to build up some reliable traffic to the website, but only if they don’t think they will need support. Registering a domain name is rather expensive compared to other sites, but if money is no object, than it won’t be an issue.

Problems begin to arise when you delve deeper into the customer reviews of the site. There are not too many performance issues as far as the servers being down, but there are a lot of issues with shifty behavior by the company and by poor customer service. Several people have mentioned that the support center is located outside of the US, and is so large, you never deal with the same person twice. They end up wasting a lot of time repeating themselves over and over again.

Another issue that has come up is the site or account being locked out because of “suspicious behavior” which is actually fairly common – for example, checking an IMAP email account from a desktop and mobile on the same wifi network. Having the same IP address send duplicate IMAP requests raises a red flag for the system.

Hosting a small site on Lunarpages seems to be the ideal situation to be in while dealing with the company. If you plan on hosting a major site that will be using a lot of processing power, or have a lot of bandwidth usage, Lunarpages is not a great option for you. The only reason to use this service is for their Starter package to get a site up and running quickly. Otherwise, I would suggest finding a better alternative.

Rolling all of the above into a number, I would only rate this company a 3/5 and warn people to be extremely cautious with what they do with their website.

Click here to visit the official Lunarpages website.

Livedrive

Hostorian — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 06:37:10 +0000

Livedrive Online Backup & File Storage — Reviews and Ratings

Livedrive looks like a great service from what they offer, but fails to fully deliver.
Click here to visit Livedrive’s official website

Summary

Livedrive is an online backup solution for your data residing on your computer, but offers a bunch of different options in accessing your data. It works seamlessly in the background doing all the work for you, keeping your data in the cloud in a secure environment. Compatible with Mac and PC, it is an affordable solution to backing up your computer data.

Quick Facts About Livedrive

Livedrive has been in operation since 2008.
Pricing: Backup ($6.95month or $59.98/year) or Backup & Briefcase ($16.95/month or $153.95/year)
Contact: questions@livedrivesupport.com

Products and Services by Livedrive

The statistics are quite staggering when it comes to data loss. 43% of people lose irreplaceable files every year, only 3 out of every 100 laptops stolen are recovered, and up to 13% of hard drives fail in their first year. Livedrive has come along and developed a service to save that data before you lose it. Their software sits on your computer and uploads all or select files to their servers in a secure manner. They offer two different plans, a plain Backup solution, and the Backup & Briefcase option which gives you some added features.

The Backup plan starts at $6.95/month or $59.98 for the year if you pre-pay. With the service, you get unlimited storage space, unlimited bandwidth to access your files, unlimited transfer speed (no caps on upload/download speeds if you have a high-speed internet connection), and you can install the software on any number of computers. After you install the software and do the initial backup, you will be able to log into the website to view the files like you would if they were on your desktop. The added bonus is that not only can you see the files, you can view the content of them, too (photos, videos, play music, and display Office documents). Livedrive has also developed an iPhone/iPod App that gives you the same accessibility as logging into the online account. It allows you to stream music to your iPhone/iPod or view the photos. There is also a Blackberry application.

With the Backup & Briefcase option, you get everything mentioned earlier, plus a few added features. You can install the software on any number of computers, but each computer can access the same Briefcase. This allows you to synchronize your work files with your computer at home or with your work laptop so you can see the files while traveling. There is also the ability to edit the documents or photos through the web browser. This is a handy feature for text documents if you need to update some notes. You also have the ability to share your documents with anyone by sending a private link to the file on the servers. No need to worry about the size of that email attachment. Put it on Livedrive and send the link for people to download.

Hostorian’s Review of Livedrive

Livedrive’s Performance

Livedrive offers two options to try out the software.

There is a 14 day trial which gives you the opportunity to try out both the Backup & Briefcase options. There are no restrictions of usage besides the two week trial timeline.

The other option is to purchase a plan, and then have a 30 day money-back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied.

The only difference between the two is the purchase plan is cheaper if you do decide to continue with the service. After the 14 day trial if you want to continue, you get charged the full price of the plan.

Livedrive does not take up too much computer memory when in operation, and you have the option to limit the bandwidth usage. With the backups, Livedrive will do one automatically when the program is first started up, but you can schedule one daily at a certain time if you like leaving the program open and running. Livedrive does do backups of their servers on a daily basis in case something happens to fail on their end.

Pros

Offers a solution to backup your computers without concern for bandwidth usage or storage space
Works for PC or Mac
Ability to view files through website or iPhone/iPod

Cons

Customers mention frequent data corruptions
Desktop client can run slowly
Poor to no customer support – only available by email, no phone, live chat, or forums.

Actual Customer Reviews of Livedrive

“You can’t make a genuine assessment of Livedrive’s service in 1 week, let alone within their 30 day trial period. Slowly but surely, severe flaws start to become apparent. As each build of the client would come out once a month (if we were lucky), it would take 2 steps forward and then 3 back. The basic functionality of being able to reliably backup my library became worse and worse. Checksum errors, file corruption, uploads that take forever, files that upload over and over again, I could go on and on. Once you run their client for a while and start looking behind the fancy interface to verify whether it’s doing what it’s supposed to do, you find out that you’ve been ripped off. After 6-1/2 months of pure frustration, I finally got a refund. Your mileage may vary.” - Bruce

“DONT USE LIVEDRIVE. Why?
1. No Support Response
2. Files get corrupted
3. Files get lost
4. Desktop Client is unusable on slower pcs (i.e.. netbooks)
5. Livedrive does not guarantee for the files. if your files get lost due to hardware issue at livedrive.com they are gone forever.
6. Livedrive lies on their customers (i.e. they say they use encryption, actually the DO NOT)
7Livedrive staff can look at your data.
8. Livedrive can ban you any time and without prior warning and without violating the ToS
9. FTP does not work consistently
and so on and so on…” - Brethil

“I’ve seen mention issues of corrupted files and data. This is something I pointed out would happen, as their backend software has difficulty in assigning storage properly through their very poorly implemented database.
Encryption? Not a hope! Their servers weren’t (aren’t?) powerful enough to deal with it, so it didn’t (doesn’t?) happen. They had not even worked out how to separate peoples accounts securely. I’m pretty sure that given a few hours and an account I could hack between peoples accounts and get some juicy data from them. I’m just not prepared to pay for the account to do it!” - Ed

Verdict of this Livedrive Review

Livedrive looks like a great service from what they offer, but fails to fully deliver if the user complaints are to be believed. The Desktop client for the Mac does run a bit slow, but it is only a Technical Preview and will improve in time. Getting everything setup on the computer is painless, and it starts to synchronize immediately after you select which folders to backup. The files were available as soon as they were marked as complete, too. One flaw with the synchronization process that I came across was that it only sends one file at a time, making a very slow first time process if you have more than a hundred files to backup.

If Livedrive was a free service to use, it would be well worth trying out as it is easy to use. If you are operating a business and want to backup some important files, there may be a better service available to you. This is all being judged by only seeing some rather negative comments about the service and hardly any good comments from longterm users. All short term reviewers were thrilled with the service. I especially like the iPod application, myself.

If you only need the ability to backup a small number of files, a service like DropBox will suit you just fine. The reviews of Livedrive make me too cautious with using their services for real important data. It may be best suited for music and videos if you want to sync it between multiple computers. I will rate it a 3.5 out of 5.

Click here to go to Livedrive’s official website.

IX Web Hosting

Hostorian — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 06:42:27 +0000

IX Web Hosting Ratings

An excellent web host — highly recommended!
Click here to visit IX Web Hosting’s website

Summary

ix Web hosting has been in business for just over ten years, and they show their love for customers in several ways. They have a great support system for clients, have specials happening throughout the year, and offer a free 7 day trial, plus a 30 day money-back guarantee after those first seven days. They have a lot of other services to offer beyond a hosting account, allowing you to find the ideal product for your site.

Quick Facts About IX Web Hosting

ix Web hosting was founded in 1999, has 110,000 clients, and hosts 470,000 sites.
Web Hosting Services: Expert Plan ($3.95/month), Unlimited Pro Plan ($7.95), Business Plan ($7.95).
Phone: 800-385-0450

Products and Services by IX Web Hosting

ix Web Hosting has three hosting plans available. The Expert Plan is priced at $3.95/month, Unlimited at $7.95, and Business at $7.95.

All three plans include unlimited amount of domain names to host, unlimited bandwidth, and an unlimited amount of storage space. That is simply outstanding pricing for the Expert Plan, but it gets even better. It includes a free domain name registration (3 for Unlimited, and 2 for Business Plus). The main differences between the hosting plans occurs with the amount of MySQL databases and their capacities, and the amount of email accounts and the inbox storage. With the Unlimited Pro account, you receive 10 GB of space to host an unlimited amount of email accounts. The Unlimited Pro account is accurate when it says it’s unlimited.

Hostorian’s Review of IX Web Hosting

IX Web Hosting’s Performance

ix Web Hosting offers a 99.9% guarantee for uptime, plus a 30 day money-back guarantee for all hosting plans.

In addition, there is a free 7 day trial available, and your credit card is not charged until after those seven days have expired. They also offer UPS Power/Back-up Generator, Firewall protection, 24/7 server monitoring service, and a spam filter.

IX Web Hosting’s Features

All hosting plans come with the ability to install different web software, forums, blogs, online shops, and CMS. Unfortunately, they do not include a list of the software that is available to install. There is also free web templates to use, an online web editor, full multimedia support (Flash, streaming audio, streaming video), and full support for all major scripting languages.

Support and Customer Care by IX Web Hosting

Support for ix Web Hosting comes in four different flavours: 24/7 phone support, 24/7 ticket system, live chat during business hours, and a catalogue of video tutorials.

Topics for the videos vary from setting up an email client for your account, transferring your domain, and setting up WordPress, amongst others. They are all very informative and easy to understand.

Something a bit different about ix Web Hosting is that they assign you a Support Hero, someone you get to know over the length of your hosting contract that can help you out with all your issues. I thought this is a nice touch, because the support person would have first-hand knowledge of any previous issues you have had.

Pros

Great pricing with lots of features included.
Personal Support person assigned to handle your account.
Great reviews from current clients.

Cons

No clear list of software available to install
A few customers noted downtimes, but ix Web Hosting is open about their issues over at http://status.ixwebhosting.com

Actual Customer Reviews for IX Web Hosting

“Ix has solved every problem encountered in a professional and timely manner. The support has been great on all matters needing attention. Live support waiting time was very minimal for the few times help was needed and all issues were resolved to my satisfaction.” - Donald Clem

“Generally there were a few issues to start but I have found that with most hosting companies. Ix have consistently helped me to do things that other hosts just refer you to articles to read.
I don’t usually write reviews but have felt that after reading many reviews that it is only fair to give credit where it is due.” - Trevor L

“I had a problem today and Alexey has assisted me, his support was amazing, professional and friendly. I love the online chat, always get great results and what I most love is that no-one treats me as an idiot even though I have limited knowledge of websites and no knowledge of programming.
Thank you! Alway recommend for others, has been hosting our other businesses for over 5 years with ix.” - Erika

Verdict of this IX Web Hosting Review

ix Web Hosting looks like one of the best kept secrets for hosting companies. They offer a lot, especially if you’re willing to pay the extra dollar a month to get the Unlimited plan, and their prices are extremely low in comparison to some other companies out there. The plans are loaded with features, and has the great option to try out their services risk-free for seven days. That gives you plenty of time to get familiar with the administrative tools and the tutorial videos.

Some customers noted some down times, but after scanning over the status logs that ix Web Hosting posts, some of them are fairly minor, and I have yet to see a duplicate issue. One user suggested that if your business needed a solid 24/7 uptime that they choose a different hosting solution.

Because of all the positive reviews that I came across on the web, I will have to say ix Web Hosting is one of the best companies available on the web to host your site on. It is rare to come across a company that receives positive comments, is customer service oriented, and has some great web tutorials. ix Web Hosting is highly recommended and gets a rating of 4.5/5.

Click here to go to IX Web Hosting’s official website.

InMotion Hosting

Hostorian — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:38:57 +0000

Inmotion Hosting Company Ratings

A top rated web host with excellent customer reviews and low prices. Highly recommended!
Click here to visit Inmotion Hosting’s website

Summary

Inmotion hosting has been in business for nearly ten years, and that experience shows in the many awards they have received. They have taken home awards for best hosting company, best dedicated servers, and best support every year from 2005 to the present. They offer quite a few different hosting plans that make sure to cover any of your needs to make the hosting affordable.

Quick Facts About Inmotion Hosting

inmotion hosting was founded in 2001.
Web Hosting Services: Starter Plan ($3.00/month), Basic Plan ($4.00), Max Plan ($5.00). Business Plans starting at $3.95/month.
Phone: 888-321-4678

Products and Services by Inmotion Hosting

inmotion Hosting has two tiers of hosting plans available to choose from. They have the Value Plans which start at $3.00/month, or the business plans that start at $3.95/month. After looking through the options of the plans, the business plans offer a lot more for only a $1.00 more, so that’s what I will highlight below. The best Value Plan hosting option you can get is the Max Plan ($5.00/month), and it offers less than the lowest grade option of the Business plans ($3.95/month), for example.

An important thing to note about these plans before I get into specifics: you do have to prepay for two year’s worth of services when looking at the Value Plans. With the Business Plans, you can order by a monthly, annual, or prepay for multiple years. Value Plans offer a 30 day money back guarantee, whereas Business Plans offer a 90 day money back guarantee.

The Business Plans include everything you could possibly need to get started with any kind of website. The one exception is the Launch Business Plan does not come with any eCart software options (the Max Plan is the only Value Plan that comes with them). With the Power and Pro Business Plans, you get those features included. The Launch Business Plan comes with 6 domains, and that scales up to unlimited domains with the Pro Business plan. The Launch Business Plan also only comes with two MySQL databases. Enough to host one blog, but not enough to do much more than that. Otherwise, all three business plans come fully stacked with features.

Hostorian’s Review of Inmotion Hosting

Inmotion Hosting’s Performance

inmotion Hosting offers a 99.9% guarantee for uptime, plus a 30 day money-back guarantee for Value Plans and 90 day money-back guarantee for Business Plans.

They also offer daily backups with the Business plan, or weekly with the Value packages. There is the usual 24/7 server monitoring.

Something different about inmotion Hosting is the added feature of Max Speed Zones. Sites are hosted in one of two datacenters (one on the East coast, one on the West coast of USA) that help speed up downloads. They have a test setup to download a file from each datacenter to see which is fastest for your connection. I’m located on the West coast, and both files came in at around the same speed. This may make a difference with larger files, and especially streaming audio or video, but I could not test that feature out.

Inmotion Hosting’s Features

All business plans contain the features that are becoming standard across all hosting companies.

They include different options for blogging (WordPress, b2evolution, Nucleus, geeklog), plugins (web calendar, forum software, Joomla, Mambo), support for the major scripting services, and the Power and Pro Business plans come with support for eCarts (OsCommerce, ZenCart, CubeCart). The Business plans also come with a free new domain, or a free transfer from a different host.

Support and Customer Care by Inmotion Hosting

Support for inmotion Hosting has almost as many options as their hosting packages.

They offer free 24/7 phone and email support, 365 days a year. They also have live chat during business hours. In addition, they have a series of flash tutorials, user guides, support forum, knowledge base, getting started guides, and a domain maintenance guide. If you need assistance doing anything website related, you can find it on this site.

Pros

Offers great choices for software to get your website operational right away.
Cheap Hosting plans with the Value Plans make it affordable for amateurs
Great reviews from current clients.

Cons

All Value plans have to be pre-paid for two year minimum.
Some issues with the migration from a different host to inmotion, but all issues were resolved quickly.

Actual Customer Reviews for Inmotion Hosting

“I am using InMotion business class hosting (shared server) for my web site, and they have been pretty good for me. Their customer service is excellent. I had a complaint about their MySql version, and they offered me right away to switch to another server that had an updated version. Besides that I haven’t had any issues.” - Jeff Patrick

“I signed up with InMotion, and am perfectly happy with how prompt they were in setting me up and getting my sites up and running.
I am a web designer, and I construct my own sites using professional software, FTP, etc. However, within 12 hours, I successfully transferred my site (which is almost 1 GB in size) to InMotion, and it works flawlessly.
Their prices are excellent, their online support and documentation is tops. They have superb Flash tutorials, and you have extensive access to web analysis info about your site. Couldn’t be happier.” - Elliott

“We have dedicated servers with inmotion hosting as a web design and development company and thus so far we have had a few issues with support but that is to be expected in any technologic arena. They are fairly supportive and promote but any one using a hosting company should keep in mind this is what they do best. Do not expect them to configure websites or files for you or upload software to support your websites even if it may be a server software, this is your responsibility.
Even though everything has not be perfect with inmotion hosting, needless to say things do happen and this is something we should all keep in mind. We have leased servers from other companies and I can truly say my experience with Inmotion Hosting has been far better then my past experiences.” - Adam Kanji

Verdict of this Inmotion Hosting Review

inmotion Hosting looks like one of the best kept secrets for hosting companies. They offer a lot, especially if you’re willing to pay the extra dollar a month to get the Business plans, and their prices are extremely low in comparison to some other companies out there. All the major software that you may want is included with the plans, allowing you to get your website operational quickly.

The only downside comes with the Value Plans, since you have to commit to them for two years ahead of time. You do have a 30 day money-back guarantee, but that may not be enough time to fully judge the service for yourself. The Business plans come with a 90 day money-back guarantee, which does protect your interests. That being said, the customer reviews have been stellar, and no one has mentioned any significant downtime apart from server maintenance or a routine restart of a server.

Because of all the positive reviews that I came across on the web, I will have to say inmotion Hosting is one of the best companies available on the web to host your site on. It is rare to come across a company that receives positive comments about the server uptime to support to the features available. inmotion Hosting is highly recommended and gets a rating of 4.5/5.

Click here to go to Inmotion Hosting’s website.

ImHosted Web Hosting Company

Hostorian — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:16:06 +0000

ImHosted Web Hosting Ratings

A poorly rated web host. Not recommended!
Click here to visit ImHosted’s website

Or click here to see other top rated shared web hosting companies instead.

Summary

ImHosted appears to have been a great company that has slowly gone downhill. They claim to serve customers in 78 countries, and their Facebook fan page has nearly 4,000 fans, but no current reviews of the company could be found. Their prices are reasonable, but there are better options out there.

Quick Facts About ImHosted

imhosted serves customers in 78 countries.
imhosted data servers are located in Dallas, TX and Atlanta, GA.
Web Hosting Services: Simple Plan ($4.95/month), Power Plan ($9.95/month) – plus a 30 day money-back guarantee.
Phone: (877) 777-0744

Products and Services by ImHosted

The Simple Plan ($4.95/month, $3.95/month if prepaid for a year) offers the most basic service. You receive 10 GB of space, 100 GB of bandwidth, but you’re only able to host one domain. With the Power Plan ($9.95/month, $7.95/month if prepaid for a year), you get unlimited domains, bandwidth, and hosting space.

In addition, you receive 110+ one-click install scripts (including WordPress, b2evolution, Joomla, Drupal, CubeCart, ZenCart, etc.), unlimited email and ftp accounts, a full suite of web statistics, direct server access, and much more.

Hostorian’s Review of ImHosted

ImHosted’s Performance

imhosted offers a 99.98% guarantee for uptime, and 100% customer satisfaction.

ImHosted’s Features

In addition to the usual features included in a hosting plan, imhosted also provides you with a one year subscription to MegaTemplate.com ($60 value), and $215 value in ad credit coupons with services like Yahoo and Miva. The services also include a professional web design tool, and the use of cPanel to control your server.

Support and Customer Care by ImHosted

Support for imhosted comes in many options, including 24/7 phone support, a ticket system, extensive knowledge base, and flash video tutorials. Some of the answers given in the knowledge base are fairly brief, but the video tutorials were quite instructive in nature.

Pros

Offers great choices for software to get your website operational right away.
Extensive knowledge base and flash tutorials
Reasonably priced, and well worth it if you prepay for a year.

Cons

No real upgrade between the two service packages apart from unlimited domains and bandwidth.
Poor customer reviews, but all reviews are dated from 2009 and earlier.
No good reviews for customer support.

Actual Customer Reviews for ImHosted

“I would think twice about this host. I canceled right away as their support sucked. So they refunded my money. Next month I am not their client any more and they billed me anyway. So I asked for a refund. They answered one email and said checking into. No response ever again. And No Refund Ever Came!” - Kevin G

“As a user of this host for over 3 years I can say that this site is incredibly over farmed. My reason for using it was strictly that 3 years ago they offered a competitive price, however, as technology has significantly improved competitors now offer better prices while their price have stayed the same and their servers have become bloated and more and more unreliable. My users constantly complain that they are blocked from my website since Imhosted will block IP addresses indefinitely when their server becomes overloaded and Imhosted keeps these IP blocks secret so that as the owner of a website, I can’t even tell when a user of my website has been blocked. A sorry excuse for a host.” - GSplayer

“Please stay away at all costs! I currently have 2 sites on ImHosted. I asked for an updated release of PHP, as they were still using 4.4.5? on the shared server I was on. All they told me was that they will be updating their servers in a couple of days. Now, my sites have been inaccessible for days. I am not sure what they did, and their support is the worst. They definitely did not upgrade their servers. I have written them and am yet to get any answers.” - Rachel M

Verdict of this ImHosted Review

As mentioned in the summary, imhosted appears to be a company that has lived beyond its life expectancy. The fact that there are no reviews out there for the company that are within a year old, tells me that there aren’t that many new clients coming to the site. In fact, most reviews were from 2005-2007, which is considered ancient in the Internet Age.

Because of all the poor reviews out there were dated from before 2009, I would remain cautious with this company. They claim to have a 99.98% uptime, but on several reports I saw, there were outages at least once a week, if not more. They do offer a 30 day trial of the services, so take advantage of it for a month, but keep track of how often the service is unavailable to protect your future investment.

I can only rate imhosted as a 2.5/5, but may rate higher if there were more recent and positive reviews.

Click here to go to the ImHosted website.

Or click here to see the top rated shared hosting companies instead. (Recommended!)

Host Rocket Web Hosting

Hostorian — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 19:34:56 +0000

Host Papa Web Hosting Ratings

A good web host for professionals, not if you are a beginner. Slightly expensive too.
Click here to visit Host Rocket’s website

Summary

Currently celebrating their 10th year anniversary, Host Rocket is a hosting company specializing in hosting with additional services being an added cost. The company is smaller in size compared to others, but operates its own servers (as opposed to another company maintaining them). Because they host their own servers, downtime is not an issue with customers.

Quick Facts About Host Rocket

Host Rocket has been in operation since 1999, based out of Clifton Park, NY
Are hosting over 50,000 websites
Prices are dependent on length of contract. Start at $11.98/month going down to $5.99 for a 24 month contract.
30 day money-back guarantee.
Phone (US only): 1.866.519.7079, Outside US: 1.518.371.3421

Products and Services by Host Rocket

Host Rocket is definitely geared towards professionals who want complete control of their hosting experience. The services offer unlimited bandwidth, domains, FTP accounts, email accounts, and free site backups through Cpanel. It includes basic software support, such as MySQL, Perl, PHP, and SSH access, but does not include any easy install software solutions.

The hosting services are based upon the length of your contract. It starts off at $11.98/month, then $8.99/month for six month contract, $7.99/month for a 12 month contract, and finally down to $5.99/month for a 2 year plan. The $5.99 price point is slightly higher than other companies, but you do get a lot of value for the price.

They do have a web design service available, but the prices are fairly expensive for someone looking to start their own website. Design services start at $350 for a basic site, $999 for a custom design, and $600 for a content management system (Joomla, Drupal) or a eCommerce Shopping Cart. Even a blog install starts at $150 and that is a fairly straight forward operation.

Hostorian’s Review of Host Rocket

Host Rocket’s Performance

HostMonster offers a 99.5% uptime guarantee, with 24/7 network monitoring, UPS power backup, and courtesy site backups. They control their own servers so any problems are resolved quickly on site. They offer additional remote backup services that cost $5 per backup.

Host Rocket’s Features

There are no additional features that are included in the package other than the ones mentioned above. The other features listed are fairly standard to find (ie web-mail access, web file manager through CPanel, phpMyAdmin, etc).

In order to get a website up and running, you will have to do a lot of the work yourself. If you want to install WordPress or Joomla, you will have to manually upload the files and go through the web installer. There are no free web templates to use, either.

Support and Customer Care by Host Rocket

Support for Host Rocket is rather limited compared to some of the other support systems.

Support is given by 24/7 phone support, live chat, and email. They do have a FAQ/Knowledge base system on their website, but there is no way to input your own questions and there is no community feedback for helpful tips. You rely solely on the knowledge of the technicians at Host Rocket. The questions they answer are fairly diverse, but the answers do not have any videos or screenshots to help guide you through the process.

Pros

Offers unlimited bandwidth, hosting space, domain hosting, email accounts and more.
Servers are controlled by company allowing problems to be resolved quickly
Nearly 10 years of hosting experience to help you succeed.

Cons

Only one hosting package available, price dependent on length of contract.
Additional services offered are expensive.
No quick install software options (WordPress, Joomla) – geared towards professionals.

Actual Customer Reviews for Host Rocket Web Hosting

“As for everyone running professional business on the Internet, resilience is of great importance for me. In the past I have had certain problems with server network availability caused by lack of redundancy. It is difficult to assess the actual character of redundancy promised by hosting providers. But with Host Rocket I hit the nail on the head! I’m not strong in technical specs, and the words “redundant CSS switches” convey little meaning to me. Still I’m greatly satisfied with the performance of my site – and it’s enough to entrust Host Rocket with my further Internet projects.” - Jimmy Wanders

“If you want to resell hosting,I think HostRocket is best.If you think about rate,its really wonderful. But,if you look HostGator,they take $25 for 24 GB Hosting.You never over sell HostGator hosting. But,you can over sell RocketHost hosting.They give you 1000GB WHM reseller hosting!I think it is best in the world.No any company can offer like this.What you think?” - Chris

“saw the review commenting on customer service, and I’d just like to say that the email system of customer support works incredibly well and the guys there – Don is particularly brilliant! – are so good at sorting stuff out, including anticipating where problems might arise and warning me. The phone system isn’t perfect but I’ve never had too much need of it, given the promptness with which the support tickets are dealt with.” - Anonymous

Verdict of this Host Rocket Review

I was a bit surprised when looking over the feature list for Host Rocket and finding it so limited. They do offer a lot for professionals by giving away unlimited bandwidth, hosting space, email accounts, domains, etc. But there are no simple answers for starting up your own web site. The price to pay for their design services to install a blog, for instance, are not worth it when other hosting companies include it in their price or you can find people to do it for free or $5.

That being said, having the company host their own servers allows them to get them up and running quickly if problems do arise. The prices you pay for this service are more expensive than the rest, but if you do commit to a 2 year plan, it will be well worth it.

Based upon the price point and the limited feature set available to people, I can only rank them a 3.5/5, but for people that know what they’re doing, it would be a great company to work with.

Click here to visit Host Rocket’s official web site.

HostPapa Web Hosting

Hostorian — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 06:24:03 +0000

Host Papa Web Hosting Ratings

A poorly rated web host. Not recommended!
Click here to visit Host Papa’s website

Or click here to see other top rated shared web hosting companies instead.

Summary

Host Papa is a hosting company powered by 100% renewable energy sources. They focus on offering solutions for small to medium-size businesses. It is easy to make a decision on your hosting solution: just pick a duration for your site.

Quick Facts About Host Papa Web Hosting

Host Papa is based out of Niagara Falls, NY and Oakville, ON in Canada
Majority of customers are not happy with the services.
Web Hosting Services: Price dependent on how long you sign up for. $4.95/month for 3 year contract, $5.95 for 2 years, $6.95 for 1 year.
Phone: 888-959-7272

Products and Services by Host Papa

With Host Papa, you do have a lot of the features other hosting sites have, but there is a catch. With other companies, the hosting packages are tiered, meaning the more you pay, your services are upgraded (more bandwidth, domains, etc.) With Host Papa, the price of the package is dependent on the length of your contract, and you do not receive any upgrades in the services.

With the package, you receive: a free domain for life, unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, 24/7 email support, online help, and a 30 day money-back guarantee. Pricing starts at $6.95/month for a one year contract, $5.95/month for a two year plan, and $4.95/month for a three year contract.

Hostorian’s Review of Host Papa

Host Papa’s Performance

Host Papa offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, with 24/7 network monitoring, UPS power backup, and a triple redundant firewall protection.

Host Papa’s Features

The standard features are available at Host Papa, such as one click install for popular software (WordPress, Joomla, B2evolution, ZenCart, and more), uses CPanel for FTP control, and unlimited email accounts.

The features that are being offered at Host Papa that may not be available everywhere are ad credits to several services, and a free website builder (SohoLaunch), and hundreds of design templates. The ad credits are for Google Adwords ($25), Yahoo ($25), MySpace ($25), Miva ($25), Ask ($50), and Bidvertiser Advertising Network ($25). That’s a total of $175 of free advertising to get the site off to a great start.

Support and Customer Care by Host Papa

Support for Host Papa is rather limited compared to some of the larger hosting companies. 24/7 support is only available through email, while live chat and phone support is only during regular office hours.

There is a knowledge base available, but the amount of messages in the forum are a tiny fraction of the amount found on the others. They do list free video tutorials, but I was unable to find them easily in their support system.

Pros

Offers great choices for software to get your website operational right away.
Packages offer a lot of features and services for a very low rate (with the 3 year contract).
Powered through green initiatives to help out the environment.

Cons

No added features for longterm commitment.
No 24/7 phone or live chat support.
Very low customer review scores.

Actual Customer Reviews of Host Papa Web Hosting

“Host Papa are ABYSMAL. I’ve just built 4 websites for small businesses, On Monday they were down for 4 HOURS and they’ve been down for a hour this evening…and this is just when I’m trying to work on them…so who knows how often they’re down when I’m not looking. Not the 99% uptime they promise…Online support say “this is a shared hosting it’s bound to happen occasionally” “ - Rowena

“What a selection of idiots. Only a country with such liberal views could allow a shower of incompetents to operate from there. My sites are constantly down (6 times in the last 2 weeks) and even planned maintenance is scheduled wrongly and the given dates are not accurate. I would be interested to hear from Canadians who actually runs Hostpapa. I really think they should start all over again. I suppose if their servers were as efficient as their program for spotting criticism of their sites online then we may not have the problems they do.” - Dissatisfied Brit

“Firstly- I wanted to vote 0 out of 10 but I can’t so my review is 1/10. Don’t bother, no RUN from Host Papa! They are the worst web hosting company on the planet. Our site was down so may times that our customers stated to think we had gone bankrupt! We are in the process of switching to Host Gator and waiting to transfer over completely. In the meantime Host Papa has kindly posted on our webpage that our account has been suspended and we need to contact them immediately for payment!!! LOL, we don’t owe them a penny, we just canceled with them!! “ - DBCL

Verdict of this Host Papa Review

Host Papa is a hosting company that has good intentions with their green initiative, but falls short in terms of performance. They have some interesting ideas in terms of pricing their hosting packages, and it’s nice to see that returning customers get a slight discount with the longer they commit to Host Papa – a common complaint with other hosts. I do think people would prefer the option to boost the performance of their packages, however.

The big problem with Host Papa arises when you do a due diligence report on them. Repeatedly when reviewing the customer review sites, people are ranking Host Papa poorly. The two major complaints are with the customer service, and with the uptime of the servers – the two features that people rely on the most with hosting companies. If it were one or two complaints, it would be easy to overlook, but there are countless amounts of complaints against the company, on different websites, too.

If it were up to me, I would heed the advice of these complainers and not take a chance with Host Papa. I would gladly go with Host Papa other than the larger companies because of their environmental policies, but not until they improve their performance.

Because of the limitations with their services, and the poor reviews, I can only give Host Papa a 2/5.

Click here to visit Host Papa’s official website.

Or click here to see other top rated shared web hosting companies instead.

Hostmonster Web Hosting

Hostorian — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 04:32:03 +0000

HostMonster Web Hosting Ratings

A good web host for beginners, not suitable for sites with heavy traffic
Click here to visit HostMonster’s website

Summary

HostMonster is a fairly large hosting company, having over 750,000 websites use their services. They have been offering their services for a long time, since 1996, and have built their business by offering lots of services for a good rate.

Quick Facts About HostMonster Web Hosting

Host Papa has been in operation since 1996
Are hosting over 750,000 domains
No long term contracts, or tiered pricing. A flat rate of $5.95/month, and can cancel at anytime.
Phone: 866-573-4678

Products and Services by HostMonster

With HostMonster, you do have a lot of the features other hosting sites have, but there is a catch. With other companies, the hosting packages are tiered, meaning the more you pay, your services are upgraded (more bandwidth, domains, etc.) With HostMonster, you pay a flat rate of $5.95 a month, and can cancel at anytime.

With the package, you receive: a free domain for life, unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, host unlimited domains, 24/7 email support, online help, and have access to free installation scripts to install the best online software available.

Hostorian’s Review of HostMonster Web Hosting

HostMonster’s Performance

HostMonster offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, with 24/7 network monitoring, UPS power backup, and courtesy site backups.

HostMonster’s Features

The standard features are available at HostMonster, such as one click install for popular software. From blogs (WordPress, b2evolution, Nucleus), Content Management Systems (Drupal, Geeklog, Joomla, Mambo Open Source), Support systems (Helpdesk, Help Center Live), eCommerce (CubeCart, Zen Cart), and much more. They also offer free site promotion tools, a free SiteBuilder with templates, and advertising credits for Yahoo ($25) and Google ($50).

Support and Customer Care by HostMonster

Support for HostMonster is much better than a lot of the other hosting companies out there. They offer 24/7 phone support, a live chat system, a knowledge base, and video tutorials.

The knowledge base has several hundred articles available to read, and there are easily a hundred video tutorials to view.

The tutorials are very straight forward and easy to follow. They also go at a slow enough pace that you could easily watch, change windows, and do, if you wanted. They cover topics from basic (setting up your email client) to more complicated (modifying WordPress installations).

Pros

Offers great choices for software to get your website operational right away, plus advertising coupons to market the site.
A very good rate for unlimited domains, space, and bandwidth, and can cancel at any time.
Nearly 15 years of hosting experience to help you succeed.

Cons

Only one hosting package available, no room for upgrades.
No other services available apart from shared hosting.
Several customers warn about accounts being suspended after surpassing certain metrics (bandwidth, processes, space).

Actual Customer Reviews of HostMonster Web Hosting

“HostMonster is a decent host for the price you pay. It isn’t expensive so you can’t expect as much as you can from the more expensive ones. But it is a great host to start your business up from the ground. After you get enough traffic you can always move up to a better, but more expensive, host. As for uptime I have had no real downtime for the past 8 months.” - minitech.org

“I am with HostMonster for 2 years now and I am think I change it. All my sites are down at least one time every week during the day when the traffic is good. They always have problems with servers or the network. Avoid them and pay a little bit more and get a good host.” - myusedcubagear.com

“Always read fine print. There is no such thing as “unlimited storage and bandwidth.” If you use too much, they will cancel your account on the grounds that “they can cancel you for any reason at any time” even though it contradicts their advertising. That aside, the deal is pretty good. That is, until they have a disk failure and suddenly all your sites are down. You call support and they offer to restore one of the backups they have for you, obviously you say “go ahead.” Then they call back and say “whoops it turns out we didn’t have a backup for you after all.” Now you are stuck uploading your own backup over a household DSL line which will take forever… Local colocation space and servers are cheap these days. Time to move on from HostMonster. I’m done with hosts like this. Beware.” - Anonymous

Verdict of this HostMonster Review

Before reading the customer reviews of HostMonster, I had a positive outlook for the company. They have a wealth of experience with hosting, have over 750,000 domains under their belt, and have a full suite of software options to choose from that can be installed easily. Between the knowledge base and video tutorials, they can help you get any site you would like up and running in no time.

I was disappointed to see that they only offer the one price for hosting services, though. It does make it much easier for newcomers to get started, but a power user will definitely want more with their package than what HostMonster offers. While it is nice to have no longterm commitment, it would be beneficial to have some upgrades available, or a discounted price for using the service for a long time.

Several users left comments noting that their accounts had been suspended after they surpassed bandwidth or space allocation metrics, despite HostMonster’s claim of unlimited bandwidth and space available. For heavy traffic sites, this would be a risk not worth taking, so I would suggest they look for a service that is able to handle high loads of traffic. This hosting company seems to be geared towards someone just starting out and not expecting to have major traffic levels.

With the limitations of the hosting plans, and the user comments, I would be cautious with this company. They do offer a lot of software and other features, however, so I will rate them as a 3.5/5 until I see some more positive reviews.

Click here to go to HostMonster’s official website.

Hostgator

Hostorian — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 08:15:12 +0000

HostGator Web Hosting Ratings

A top rated web host — highly recommended!
Click here to visit HostGator’s official website

Summary

HostGator is one of the largest, if not the largest, hosting company available to consumers. They boast about having 7,000 servers under their management, which supports the over two million domains hosted by HostGator. Those two million domains account for 1% of the world’s Internet traffic.

Quick Facts About HostGator

HostGator was founded in a dorm room in 2002, and now has 225,000 customers
90% of HostGator customers are happy with the services
Web Hosting Services: Hatchling Plan ($4.95/month), Baby Plan ($7.95), Business Plan ($12.95)
Phone: 800.866.9642867

Products and Services by HostGator

Being one of the most popular hosting companies out there allows HostGator to provide some great deals to the consumers. Their hosting packages include a lot of extras to go with prices slightly higher than other companies. Their Hatchling Package offers unlimited disk space and bandwidth, unlimited sub-domains, unlimited MySQL Databases (for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.), and unlimited email accounts. All that and more for less than $5.00 a month. Their Baby and Business packages upgrade those services to include unlimited domain names, and the Business package includes your own toll-free phone number.

All hosting packages come with a 45 day money back guarantee, $100 credit towards Google Adwords, support for all major coding/scripting languages (Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python), support for three types of shopping cart software (osCommerce, ZenCart, Cube Cart), and use cPanel as the control panel for everything. In addition, they have lots of quick install options for software (for shopping carts, blogs, forums, etc.)

Hostorian’s Review of HostGator Web Hosting

HostGator’s Performance

HostGator offers a 99.9% guarantee for uptime, and also has an automatic weekly off-site data backup for all hosting plans.

HostGator’s Features

HostGator has become one of the best hosting companies by simply offering a lot of value for the price you pay. They do offer a lot with the plans, so here are some more features not mentioned already: they include a free SiteBuilder and SiteStudio website building tools, free website/domain/MySQL/Script transfer from another provider, website statistics, web based file manager, unlimited auto-responders for email, full IMAP support with email, and Spam Assassin to kill off unwanted email before it reaches you.

Support and Customer Care by HostGator

Support for HostGator has almost as many options as their hosting packages. They offer free 24/7 support, 365 days a year with their phone, email, and live chat systems. They also monitor the servers 24/7/365. In addition, there is a online support portal with over 500 videos, and 700+ articles to browse through. You will certainly be able to find an answer in the wealth of information they offer.

Pros

Offers great choices for software to get your website operational right away.
Excellent customer service, and current customers rate it a 5/5.
Offers more bang for your buck than most competition out there.

Cons

No discounts for repeating customers.
Multiple sites/packages are under one account – may be annoying for people operating sites for clients
Slightly more expensive than other sites, but offers more services.

Actual Customer Reviews of HostGator

“I just wanted to write a quick note to let ya’ll (<—Texas slang) know how much I appreciate finally finding a host that has more than enough features for my needs and excellent educational offerings. This is my third host and I haven’t even felt a twinge of that sinking-feeling-what-have-I-done that I felt within a day or so of the other hosts. I have learned so much just from the forums and tutorials! So, thank you to all! I look forward to learning and building my business with you!” - DaniK

“So then, why am I making the change? First, I heard good things about HostGator, and I wanted to consolidate everything. Secondly, the HostGator package is solid and has more to offer. Lastly, and most important of all, is the richness of their customer support. I can get customer support when I want it, how I want it — chat, email, phone. “ - Reb

“Overall, I like HostGator. They are waaaay better than the previous host I had. That company started off great, but got to 60%+ downtime. I never have that problem with HG. My two big hang ups with HG are:
1. new customers get a 20% discount, while loyal customers get nothing except the bill at the end of their term; and
2. no elgg support or hosting on their shared/reseller hosting. Other than that, they are great.” - LC

Verdict of this HostGator Review

HostGator is one of the most referred hosting sites on the Internet today. It is very difficult to miss their banner ads on a lot of blogs. All of this publicity is warranted as HostGator is a very solid hosting company.

With a variety of software options to choose from, you can take your website in any direction you would choose. What helps with that decision is the ability to play around with their catalog of free website templates. You are sure to find something you can work with amongst the 4,500 templates available. If you need assistance in getting that site up and running, the HostGator support staff will help you right away – several reviewers noted wait times of less than half an hour when sending in questions by email. If you would rather try to solve the issue on your own, the video tutorials and knowledge base in the forum will guide you down the right path.

For a newcomer wanting to start a blog, or an experienced pro wanting to host multiple sites, HostGator becomes a great choice for you to use. They are constantly updating their software and servers, offer automatic backups for your security, and make the setup dead simple.

I have not experienced or read many bad things about HostGator, so overall I would rate it a 4.8/5.

Click here to visit HostGator’s official website.

Dotster Web Hosting

Hostorian — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 07:01:56 +0000

Dotster Web Hosting Ratings

Not a very good web host!
Click here to visit Dotster’s official website

Summary

Dotster is a hosting company that prides itself on offering a one-stop shopping center for your hosting needs. They are currently managing over 3 million domains, which makes it one of the largest hosting companies in the world. They have built upon relationships with their customer base to add several services to make it more convenient for current and future customers.

Quick Facts About Dotster Web Hosting

Dotster is based out of Vancouver, Washington
Are managing over 3 million domains
Services: Basic ($5.75/month), Deluxe ($8.75), Ultra ($15.99). All packages have discounted rates depending on length of contract.
Phone: 360-449-5800

Products and Services by Dotster

Dotster is impressive with their range of services available to you, covering all of your needs. From domain registration to hosting to offering you design tools for your website or blog, Dotster has it all.

Basic Hosting starts at $5.75 a month, but that prices drops if you choose a longer contract (up to 30% off with a 5 year contract). With the Basic plan, you receive 10GB of space, 300GB of bandwidth, and only one domain. With the Deluxe ($8.75/month), those increase to 100GB of space, unlimited bandwidth, and 50 domains, and then Ultra plan ($15.99/month) offers unlimited in all those features.

All plans include some great tools to use for your website, including one-click installation for WordPress, Joomla, ZenCart, TikiWiki, Nucleus, and more. You also receive 100 email accounts with the Basic account (500 with Deluxe, unlimited with Ultra), and remote access to your server.

You can also register your domain at the site (limited types of domains, however).They also offer various business solutions, including the website builder package that starts at $49.00/month and includes free domain, Basic Hosting, and a professional web design. There are also options for SEO Marketing, Local Site Promotion, Email Marketing, and Social Networking.

Hostorian’s Review of Dotster Web Hosting

Dotster’s Performance

Dotster offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, with 24/7 network monitoring, full network redundancy, data backups, and Tier-1 Gigabit Internet connections.

Dotster’s Features

There are plenty of features available to the hosting packages. The packages include web analytic tools, remote database access, lots of one click install software packages (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, ZenCart, TikiWiki, etc.), and email anti-virus, auto-responder and POP/SMTP support.

Support and Customer Care by Dotster

Support for Dotster is rather limited considering the amount of domains under their control. Support is given by 24/7 phone support, and email, no live chat support. Several customers have noted that the support they received was rather poor, which is not a good sign.

They do have a FAQ/Knowledge base system on their website, but there is no way to input your own questions and there is no community feedback for helpful tips. You rely solely on the knowledge of the technicians at Dotster. The questions they answer are fairly diverse, but the answers do not have any videos or screenshots to help guide you through the process.

Pros

Offers one-stop shopping for all your hosting needs
Discounted rates depending on length of contract
Nearly 10 years of hosting experience to help you succeed

Cons

Basic Hosting is rather limited compared to other sites
Additional services offered are expensive
Poor reviews of customer support

Actual Customer Reviews of Dotster Web Hosting

“Dotster is absolutely the worst registrar I have ever had to deal with. I have been trying for two weeks now to change the name servers for a client to point to GoDaddy where he has his hosting account. I have been on hold with their non-existant “customer service” (now there’s an oxymoron) for as long as 178 minutes. My client is getting mad at me because I can not get his web site to show, I have submitted numerous tickets to Dotser with only one canned reply telling me someone would get back to me with-in 24 hours and never did and I can not reach them by phone. I have even tried calling their sales line and have gotten a message that said to contact them during normal business hours. When exactly are their normal business hours since it isnot 9-5 M-F Use Godaddy or another hosting company that also acts as a registrar, avoid Dotster like the plague – the Worst they should be investigated! “ - John Martin

“I switched from Register because of endless problems every time they implemented “improvements” and “upgrades,” to Dotster. I am very disappointed in its webmail, which is hardly user friendly. Downloading is extremely slow and most functions are also very slow. Technical support is limited to 9-5 weekdays and nothing on weekends. Support is poor and there are never any call backs.” - Jean Kirshenbaum

“I have dealt with many hosting companies in the past and I would rate Dotster as the worst. Buyer beware. I have never been in a situation where if I canceled early, I would not get a refund. I do not need to be hateful or anything but their plans are high and the service is not something I would recommend. At first things seemed great but after a while, service went down as well as speed. We were running a site with videos and the HD videos were so slow to load where Go Daddy has faster service and lower priced plans.” - Roger Sandoval

Verdict of this Dotster Review

After looking over all the services that Dotster offer, they looked like a good company to work with. The one-stop shopping is most convenient for people who do not want to worry about redirecting their name-servers and want options for design services. The list of one-click install for software options is impressive, and I was happy to see that you don’t need to pay an outrageous amount to get a blog or CMS site operational.

When I started reviewing the customer reviews, however, a different story emerges. There are plenty of poor comments about the lack of support received, customer service skills were poor, or there was no response at all. Support and customer service are very important when dealing with a hosting company because so many problems can arise, and often do, when setting up a site.

I would suggest people proceed with caution, and maybe go with the Basic package at first until you find a comfort level with the hosting services available to you. Several people made longterm commitments only to later regret them. Because of the customer complaints that were quite numerous, I would only rate Dotster a 3.5/5.

Click here to go to the official Dotster website.

CoreCommerce Web Hosting

Hostorian — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 03:33:12 +0000

CoreCommerce E-Commerce & Shopping Cart Hosting

A great web host for ecommerce & shopping cart hosting — highly recommended!
Click here to visit CoreCommerce’s website

Summary

CoreCommerce is a specialty website geared towards helping you set-up and run a fully featured eStore. The software was previously only available as a licensed property, but now offers a monthly service to help small to medium sized businesses grow. They currently power over 13,000 stores online, including clients such as, GE, Michigan State University, and Clear Channel Radio.

Quick Facts About CoreCommerce

CoreCommerce has been hosting eCommerce sites since 2008
13,000 stores online in 60 countries.
Tech Support Staff have an average tenure of 3 years.
Based in Franklin, TN, USA
Services: Beginner ($19.99/month), Starter ($24.99), Basic ($39.99), Standard ($79.99), and Pro ($99.99)
Phone: 800.747.4270

Products and Services by CoreCommerce

As mentioned previously, coreCommerce is a site focused on setting your eShops up quickly and easily.

Their Beginner package ($19.99/month) is for a small store of 100 products, 1 GB of data transfer, and 100 MB of storage space. That package scales up to the high-end of the Pro package which includes 5,000 products, 20 GB of data transfer, and 1 GB of storage space.

All packages include mobile commerce, Facebook Integration, free support, and no setup fee. If that wasn’t enough, they offer an additional 36 services included in the packages, among them: pre-designed templates, Quickbooks integration, Google Checkout, marketing tools, one page checkout, and much more.

coreCommerce really wants to see your site succeed, so they offer additional services to make sure that happens. If you want to accept credit card payments in your store, they offer a service to do that for you that is priced reasonably at 2.29% for Visa/Mastercard, plus a $10 monthly service fee. You can also register your domain name through the site.

The real helpful, but expensive, service they offer is the custom design packages. These packages cover all areas of the website: logo, slideshow for your products, homepage design, etc. They offer these services individually, or as packages that cover multiple items (starting at $1,999). There are cheaper options out there to get the design work done, but on the other hand, their designers have been using their product for a long time and will be comfortable with all the in’s and outs. If you have the money, it would be a worthwhile investment.

Hostorian’s Review of CoreCommerce Web Hosting

CoreCommerce Performance

CoreCommerce offers a 99.9% guarantee for uptime, but their hosting is done through Rackspace which offers a 100% guarantee for server uptime. From reading countless customer reviews of the site, not one of them have mentioned any issues with their store being down or other performance issues.

CoreCommerce Features

The list of features that are included with any of the hosting packages seems endless.

Here are some of the features that stand out on their lists that offers something additional to help your business grow:

Automatic free upgrades and updates
Phone order system and built in Point of Sale (POS)
Receive text message alerts for when orders are placed
Search engine friendly (entire site is optimized)
Gift certificate and coupon system
Integration with major shipping providers (USPS, UPS, FedEX, DHL, Canada Post, etc)
Customers can setup accounts for each store
Vendor and multiple warehouse control
And so much more!

Support and Customer Care by CoreCommerce

Support for coreCommerce comes from their live phone support (with a call centre based in the US, but not available 24/7), a 24/7 ticket system (supported after office hours by on-call engineers), and by live chat (regular office hours).

They also have training videos (including a YouTube channel) that cover topics as diverse as the Support Ticketing System to Configuring Pre-Designed Templates to setting up the Point of Sale system. The videos walk you through step-by-step and are quite detailed. With some of the videos have over 3,000 views on YouTube, the tutorial videos are getting well used.

CoreCommerce also has an extensive knowledge database available for customers to use through their forum.

Pros

Easy, free setup using pre-designed templates
Offers more services included in the package than one needs
Web design and marketing services available
Facebook, eBay, and mobile integration

Cons

No option to self-host on your own server (but can use custom domain names)
Not able to include a personal/company blog on the website.
No 24/7 hour support option by phone (only through emergency tickets to on-call engineers)

Actual Customer Reviews of CoreCommerce Hosting

“One of the biggest strengths is they don’t sit still. We had been with a web company that told us that their cart was basically ‘cooked’ or done as they called it. (Never tell me there will be no more features, especially in the online market.) CoreCommerce always seems to be coming out with new features, tweaks and upgrades. I love that. They also have free customer support with real people who want to help. That is huge. I have never had a bad experience with any of its customer service people.” – Tim Burns

“I’ve been in e-commerce for 5 years. During that time, I’ve built stores with Yahoo, Network Solutions (Monster Commerce), Volusion, and Core Commerce. We’ve had problems with the other providers, but CoreCommerce has been great.” - Ross Cohen

“I have used Miva, Yahoo Store, and Volusion in the past (having set-up multiple websites). I just decided to try the CoreCommerce software yesterday, and was able to put up a full-featured site in 48 hours. I am really impressed with the ease of use offered by CoreCommerce, love the pricing, and am hoping it will do well in terms of SEO too. Also, they have a lot of great features that you have to pay extra for when you use other software or buy modules (as in Miva).” - Cari Haus

Verdict of this CoreCommerce Review

CoreCommerce is a hosting site that offers more than one could ever imagine using, and the majority of it is rolled into their packages. With tight integration with important tools such as Facebook, mobile, shipping companies, and Quickbooks, you will be able to focus your attention to the products and customers, not the operation of the administrative tasks.

While the live support is lacking if you need assistance after 6pm EST, this may not be a major concern for people considering the uptimes are guaranteed at 100% through the Rackspace service. Having the training videos and forums may also solve your issues without having to make that phone call to the support centre.

I browsed several of the websites that use the CoreCommerce shopping cart software, and I came away quite impressed with the quality and layout of the designs. I went through the purchasing of a few items to get a feel for the checkout procedure, and it is very straight forward to use. There are going to be few to no phone calls to you asking for help when checking out with an order online.

Overall, this company is top notch from the top to the bottom with what they offer. Their monthly prices are higher than those of a regular hosting company, but the inclusion of so many services make it hard to beat. They are the best shopping cart option on the Internet today, and they rank highly with all of their customers.

I would have to rate CoreCommerce 4.5 stars out of 5.

Click here to visit CoreCommerce’s official website.

Cool Handle Web Hosting

Hostorian — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:08:16 +0000

Cool Handle Web Hosting

A good web host — recommended!
Click here to visit Cool Handle’s website

Summary

Cool Handle Hosting is a fully featured hosting company looking to help anyone get started, from beginners to professionals. With Cool Handle Hosting, you can register your domain name, choose a hosting package, and get your site operational right away. They offer round the clock support, plus additional services to help design your website to get you published and earning more revenue.

Quick facts about Cool Handle Web Hosting

Cool Handle Hosting was started in 2001.
Ranked highly on several web hosting sites.
Based in Florida.
Services: Starter package ($7.95/month), Business ($10.95), Professional ($12.95), plus 30 day money back guarantee.
Phone: 866.200.2828

Products and Services by Cool Handle Web Hosting

Cool Handle primarily focuses on managed servers, which allows you to focus on your content rather than be bothered with maintaining the server.

They do offer a dedicated package, but the server is not customizable if you want to upgrade the memory or hard drive space. The managed packages come in three tiers: Starter ($7.95/month), Business ($10.95) and Pro ($12.95). The only differences between the tiers are the amount of IP addresses and domains you can have. All three offer unlimited bandwidth and hard drive space, which will make the choice of package easier on the consumer.

Hostorian’s Review of Cool Handle Web Hosting

Cool Handle’s Performance

The website guarantees a 99.9% uptime for all servers, apart from the usual maintenance and upkeep. Out of all the customer reviews of the service online, only one mentioned problems of a server going down. That being said, an official from Cool Handle responded to the complaint and said it was the first time the server had failed since being installed, and was fixed right away.

Cool Handle’s Features

The features available for Cool Handle Hosting are endless. The highlights include instant backups and restore, web-based file manager, support for all major code and database types, a website builder, and support of Fantastico which allows you to install software easily (such as WordPress, Drupal, e-cart software, online support systems, and much more). Cool Handle also includes a webmail application, a full suite of tracking programs to get your website statistics, and usage of CPanel (for Linux) or Plex (for Windows) – the best control panels for servers available.

Support and Customer Care by Cool Handle

There are several options to receive support with Cool Hosting, just like other major hosting companies, whether you are a customer with them or not.

There are agents available for a phone call 24/7, as well as, live chat (which doesn’t ask you to install any software, but does ask for an email address). The agent I decided to chat with was very polite and prompt with their responses.

Cool Handle also offers a knowledge base archive to browse through, and flash tutorials. The tutorials that I watched were very well put together, and some of the best I’ve seen on the Internet. They cover all the major software Cool Handle supports, and go into detail about certain tasks. One could easily design a good website through watching these tutorials alone.

One more thing I mentioned earlier is that Cool Handle has agents browsing the review sites and responding to the users. That is a sign that they understand consumer needs and care enough to make people happy.

Pros

Loads of software options available to load onto your site
24/7 Live Support by phone, email, or live chat
Video tutorials for all software options, including email, ftp, WordPress

Cons

Only one option available for dedicated servers
Not many upgrades with more expensive packages
Slightly more expensive than other options

Actual Customer Reviews of Cool Handle Web Hosting

“I used Cool Handle hosting services for more than 4 years now, the service, price and features are the best, with lowest prices, unlimited space and bandwidth and some special packages, this is one of the best services I had ever found and I’m glad to say I proudly recommend this company. 100% uptime, great customer service and attention.” - Alejandro Vallejo

“I’m happy to report that my experience with their hosting service has been outstanding. I’ve been with other hosts, and no one has ever been as forthcoming with explanations as they have been. For example, I am new to cpanel, and their cpanel Wizard walked me through right away. I had no questions left to ask when I finished with my setups.” - Ed Peters

“CoolHandle provides awesome service with great customer service and the best of all, great prices! There’s no need to look anywhere. They are all about customer service…” - David Chau

Verdict of this Cool Handle Review

There is so much being offered by Cool Handle that it is really difficult to list absolutely everything without just copying and pasting from their website. The amount of software options that can be loaded on with a few clicks of the button is a bit overwhelming. They have the ability to provide software for every kind of website out there – blogs, eCommerce, customer care portals, and so on. Their Flash tutorials and website design services make Cool Handle really stand out from the competitors.

After reading through thirty comments left by users, I only discovered the one negative review. That bodes well for the site, because one would expect to find primarily negative reviews on the Internet. The negative issues were very minor in comparison to some other sites I have read over, too.

If you are looking for a place to register your domain name, and start up a blog today, Cool Handle Hosting would be the ideal spot for you. The options are endless with this company, and are there to help you create the best website imaginable.

I would rate Cool Handles highly, giving them at least a 4/5 from what I’ve read on their website, the tutorials, and customer reviews. The only thing stopping me from making them a 5 is they are a little more expensive than other hosting sites (only by a few dollars a month). If you know what you’re doing, you may want to look at a cheaper alternative, but if you’re a beginner, Cool Handles is perfect for you.

Click here to visit Cool Handle web hosting’s official website.

Codero Web Hosting

Hostorian — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:37:51 +0000

Codero Web Hosting Ratings

A good web host overall, with some caveats
Click here to visit Codero’s official website

Summary

Codero is a relatively new hosting option, having started up only in summer of 2009. That being said, they do have an extensive background in hosting from working with other companies. After 15 years working with Aplus.net’s hosting solution, they have a wealth of experience to draw from, offering hosting solutions for small to mid-size companies.

Quick Facts About Codero Web Hosting

Codero was started in July 2009
Ranked in the Top 10 for hosting on several hosting review sites.
Servers in Phoenix,AZ and San Diego,CA
Services: Dedicated or Managed Server (starting at $60/month), Backup services ($10/month and up), network uptime guarantee of 99.9% (hardware 100%)
Phone: 877-999-2750

Products and Services by Codero Web Hosting

Codero offers a wide range of services, and all of them are customizable.

Starting with a dedicated or managed servers from $60 a month, you can upgrade every aspect of the service. The most basic, dedicated server offers a 1.8GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 250 GB hard drive. That server can be upgraded all the way to include a Intel Core Duo 3.0 GHz processor, 8 GB of RAM, four 1.5TB hard drives, plus upgrades to bandwidth and IP addresses.

A Linux-based operating system is included, with the option to upgrade to a Windows-based system.

Hostorian’s Review of Codero Web Hosting

Codero’s Performance

There aren’t many independent customer reviews available on the Internet, but the ones I have come across have been one way or the other. Two common themes: up-time is not very reliable, and the price is very competitive. Several people have commented that their dedicated servers remained down for up to a week at a time, with no refunds available. The problems started in 2009 and have persisted until the latest incident in July 2010.

Features of Codero Web Hosting

The features available for Codero are very limited in comparison to other hosting companies. There is an e-commerce add-on, email hosting, and remote access control panels, but when compared to other companies that offer various blogging platforms, Drupal, Joomla, or even a basic site builder, Codero is definitely geared to a larger, established company than a newcomer wanting to start up an online business.

Codero’s Support and Customer Care

There are several options to receive support with Codero, whether you are a customer or not.

There are agents available for a phone call 24/7, as well as, live chat (which does NOT ask you to install any software). The agent I decided to chat with was very polite and prompt with their responses. They actually spent the time to read what I was asking about (best package to choose for a website), asked some follow-up questions, and provided a reasonable answer.

Another great option is the Knowledge Base. At that site, you can search through the articles, or post your own, to discover the answers to a wide-range of problems. Because Codero uses common operating systems, the information found on other websites would be more in depth and helpful, but having a local option is nice for people not wanting to do an extensive search for information.

Pros

Servers are completely customizable from RAM, Hard drive, Operation System
24/7 Live Support
Reasonably priced

Cons

Automated backups of servers is an extra cost
Not for beginners
Long down times noted by some users

Actual Customer Reviews of Codero Web Hosting

“2 hours now my server’s been down.. They rebooted it an hour ago..worked for 10 minutes..and then down again. This is how its been the last 2 days since relocating to Phoenix.” - Mike2010

“Codero has been amazing. Super faster server, only matched by their network and support staff. One of the best thing’s I’ve ever done with my business.” - Landmine

“The dedicated server went down and stayed down for almost a week. When the service was restored they couldn’t recover any data, citing corrupted hard disk. We had to use our own out-of-date backup and live with the missing data. Customer service response time was acceptable but the attitude and ability to solve the problem weren’t. They had the balls to suggest paying for the backup service!! Moved to a different shared host and couldn’t believe the difference in price and cp features. We canceled the service but didn’t do it in time before the automatic renewal date as Codero requires 7 days notice. I contacted the customer representative stating the case and asked him to hold the charges. When he responded a week later the card was already charged and they refused to give any refund, steadfastly referring to the term of service. So we paid $660 for 3 days of unused service. Horrible customer service, unreliable hosting, and no automatic backup for the premium dedicated server service.” - Codero Customer

Verdict of this Codero Web Hosting Review

After analyzing the comments left on the various review sites, choosing Codero appears to be a crap-shoot.

The comments about the servers being down for any length of time over an hour concerns me. Unless those sites were operating a service as large as Twitter, there should be no reason for those servers to be down for so long.

The only thing stopping me from giving Codero a zero rating is the number of reviews out there is a very low number. A small sample size of only six reviews does not mean much. That being said, Codero’s website only has five positive reviews themselves, which does not bode well for their product.

If you’re comfortable working with a Linux server, and need a place to test and design your site, Codero seems to be an attractive option for you. The options to customize are very broad, and the prices cheap. With that cheap price comes the chance of a server failure, so I do suggest an off-site backup option.

Until I see more positive reviews, I can only rate Codero a 2/5 for people looking for 100%, guaranteed up-time.

Click here to visit Codero’s official website

Aplus.Net Web Hosting

Hostorian — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:06:22 +0000

Aplus.Net Web Hosting Ratings

Somewhat good, somewhat bad
Click here to visit Aplus.Net’s official website

Summary

Aplus.net is a fully featured hosting company that offers a range of services. You can register a domain name, host a website (shared or dedicated services), have them handle your web design, or have them assist you in marketing your website. Aplus.net is also the company working with Codero Hosting.

Quick Facts About Aplus.Net Web Hosting

Aplus.net has been hosting websites since 1998
Ranked poorly on several web hosting sites.
Voted CNet’s Most Popular Web Hosting company.
Based in Kansas
Services: Personal Plan ($5.95/month), Business ($7.46), Professional ($14.96), plus many more hosting options. Includes a 30 day money back guarantee.
Phone: 913.563.6462

Products and Services by Aplus.Net Web Hosting

It will be impossible to list every single service you can find at Aplus.net. The service with the most demand will be their hosting solutions, which offers a shared server solution, but has the option for a dedicated server through their sister company, Codero.

With reasonable rates, Aplus.net’s Personal Plan starts at $5.95/month for a Linux server with 15GB of space, 250GB bandwidth, one domain, and a limited selection of software options to quick install. The service is ready to support some of the main software options out there (WordPress CMS, Joomla, and Drupal), but does not come ready to support WordPress blogging software. As the plans become more expensive, the software options grow significantly, as does the space available and bandwidth.

Hostorian’s Review of Aplus.Net Web Hosting

Aplus.Net’s Performance

Aplus.net offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee for users, and also includes a 30 day money back guarantee if you do have issues with the service. After browsing through some of the customer review sites, the uptime scores were real low. A lot of people made comments about their websites being down frequently.

Features of Aplus.Net Web Hosting

The features available for Aplus.net are limited for the lower grade plans. The most valued features available will be the firewall, virus protection, redundant power supply, and support for all major scripting languages. With the Business plan and up, your options open up wider, with some of the standouts being a website builder, WordPress blog support, and search engine optimization.

Aplus.Net’s Support and Customer Care

There are several options to receive support with Aplus.net, just like other major hosting companies, whether you are a customer with them or not. There are agents available for a phone call 24/7, as well as, live chat (which doesn’t ask you to install any software.)

Aplus.net also offers an extensive knowledge base archive to browse through. The questions I looked at were quite detailed with their responses, and included links to the software vendor’s website for more information. Step by step explanations were a welcome sight to see, and the steps were very specific.

Pros

Inexpensive option for hosting a website
24/7 Live Support by phone, email, or live chat, plus knowledge base
Web design and marketing services available

Cons

Personal Plan (the basic plan) does not support WordPress and is very limited.
Customers rank the services very poorly, with frequent downtime for sites

Actual Customer Reviews for Aplus.Net Web Hosting

“I have been a customer of Aplus since 2005. The other day I had them upgrade my website from “parking status” to active status. They inadvertently eliminated my entire website. Wiped it out completely.” - Nancy Passot

“I’m a web designer and use / have used many different hosting companies over the years. Aplus.net was the absolute worst out of all of them. Frequent down time, terrible customer services, and questionable billing practices.” – Chris

“I signed up with aplus in March 09 and was satisfied for the first 6 months. When they “upgraded” in Dec. 09, everything blew up. Communication and support were awful during the transition. They took away options and downtime was rampant. Run away.” – Gary Wilson

Verdict of this Aplus.Net Review

It is difficult to come to a fair conclusion about Aplus.net’s services. On the one hand, they claim to have over 110,000 websites, and 400,000 domains registered. On the other, there is a legion of users out there calling for the end of this company, filing for lawsuits, and complain to the Better Business Bureaus across the United States.

Looking at the services they offer, Aplus.net offers lower priced services, but their beginner packages are very limited in comparison to some of the other major hosting sites out there. Their knowledge base for support is quite good, but I can’t comment on their other support systems. They do have other services available mentioned previously, like website design, but they fail to include samples of their work for the sites. A small picture showing “Air Conditioning Solutions,” does not tell me a whole lot about the quality of the work.

The number of negative reviews about this company are staggering, going back as far as five years ago to the present. Compared to some of the other sites, they receive a far larger share of the negative reviews, it seems. With 150+ people in agreement, I would say to be cautious when signing up for Aplus.net.

Click here to visit Aplus.Net Web Hosting’s Official Website.

Jumpline Web Hosting

Hostorian — Fri, 14 May 2010 11:57:20 +0000

Summary:

Jumpline web hosting has two great offers apart from their regular offers – a two year FREE shared web hosting account (click here) and a six months FREE VPS hosting account (click here). (These offers are not available on their regular pages.)

The company was founded in 1997 and has been providing reliable web hosting services to several thousands of customers since then.

Quick Facts About Jumpline:

Number of domains hosted: Over 100,000
Services: Domain name registration, shared hosting, VPS hosting, bare metal hosting, dedicated server hosting, managed server hosting, and even custom hosting solutions for you
Location: Columbus, Ohio (USA)
Guarantees: 30-day money back guarantee, 100% uptime, under 4-hour support ticket resolution, daily backups
Contact information: Call 1-800-651-2028 (toll free), or 00+1+614-859-1170 (international), or visit their contact page

Products and Services By Jumpline Web Hosting:

Domain registration (at $9.95), Shared hosting (starting at $7.95/month), Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting (starting at $27.95/month), Bare Metal Hosting (starting at $59.95/month), Dedicated Server hosting (starting at $99.95/month), and even custom hosting solutions.

They also have a two year FREE shared web hosting account (click here) and a six months FREE VPS hosting account available (click here). These offers are not available through their regular website and you need to click the above links to see them.

Hostorian’s Jumpline Review:

Jumpline’s Performance

Jumpline has a really impressive infrastructure to boast of. They have multiple Tier 1 providers for bandwidth and IP services, providing reliable connectivity and round the clock monitoring. They take all these providers and blend them into a single handoff thereby providing a superior performance.

They have a 100% uptime service level agreement (SLA), which is possible due to their advanced physical and logical network architecture, six-carrier blend and fault tolerant cores. Factor in redundant cores, redundant power, and daily backups, and what you get is a state of the art high performance data center, virtually guaranteeing that your site is never down.

They get an excellent rating for performance and uptime.

Features of Jumpline web hosting

Jumpline web hosting doesn’t really offer a rich feature set. Most of their products and services are a bit expensive compared to other web hosts, and the feature set they offer is really lackluster in comparison. They don’t even offer a free domain with their shared hosting account, which most hosting providers do these days.

They do let you choose your control panel though (cPanel or Parallels Plesk Panel), and you can switch from one control panel to another and vice versa as you wish.

Jumpline’s Support and Customer Care

Their customer support is simply fantastic, according to most people who have reported about it on the Internet. They have a US based call center, which means no more struggling with foreign accents and timely resolution of issues. An in-house customer support facility also means problems can get sorted out quicker than if it was outsourced to a third world country in a different time zone than the rest of their staff. They claim a 1-hour average time for support ticket resolutions and 24/7/365 customer support.

All in all, great customer support! They do lack online chat support though, which is a must if you want to ask quick questions before you decide upon a particular web host.

Pros

In-house customer support staff (US based), so you don’t have to deal with call centers in third world countries with accents you don’t understand.
Great customer support with awesome resolution times. They respond to your emails within a couple hours at the most.
Extremely good performance and reliable hosting
Great prices for dedicated and VPS hosting.
If you want to experience their level and quality of service, you can give them a try before committing. Click here to get a shared hosting account for free (two years!), and click here to get a VPS account for free (six months).

Cons

Their shared hosting plans are a little expensive compared to other shared web hosting providers, but when you consider the high speed connectivity and almost 100% uptime, it may be worth it for your business. Besides, they do offer a free two year shared hosting plan for you to check them out.
You need to install the applications yourself. But this is easily taken care of by their robust and extensive documentation for everything. And if you need more help, you can always reach their customer support staff 24×7.
They don’t offer a lot of features and limited amount of bandwidth and disk space compared to other web hosts.

Actual Customer Feedback About Jumpline Web Hosting:

Terrible customer service. Always playing the blame game and never taking responsibility for their service issues. I’d recommend staying far, far away from this company. – sp ( sibyl2(at)yahoo(dot)com )

I have been a customer of Jumpline.com for about 9 years. I have seen other companies come and offer better deals but one thing has kept me a loyal customer to them, a 800 number that I can call and get someone. I am a reseller through them and have over 30 websites. I am extremely satisfied with Jumpline.com service, support and applications. The only thing that i wish they offered is the ability to host my own server. I HIGHLY recommend them. – Alexander ( ah5890 at aol dot com )

They are the best free hosting server you can get (like a dedicated server at no cost). They do not charge you, but you need to add the credit card number. – Anonymous

These guys have incredible up time and great customer support – Chad Brosious

Verdict Of This Jumpline Web Hosting Review:

Although Jumpline web hosting does seem a little expensive and lacking in features, they more than make up for it by offering two free years of shared web hosting and six free months of VPS hosting. A great customer service, 100% uptime SLA, and redundant power supply, redundant cores, high speed connectivity and their attention to a lot of small details make this a web host that can be trusted to host your website.

Verdict: It’s OK to host your website with Jumpline web hosting.

Click here to get a shared hosting account for free with Jumpline (two years!)
Click here to get a VPS account for free with Jumpline (six months).

SiteSell – A Special Web Host

Hostorian — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 17:28:30 +0000

So what do you expect from a web hosting company? That they provide an online space for your web pages for a decent price, that their servers never go down, that they provide great customer service, right?

Right.

And most web hosts do meet your expectations. But then that’s it.

Your website needs more than just hosting space, bandwidth and uptime. It needs traffic.

Most websites (yes, most) are like a party thrown at the north pole. No one’s there.

Without traffic, a website may as well be non-existent. If no one sees it, does it exist?

Hosting space, bandwidth, uptime, and all the addon features and scripts are a matter of course for all web hosts. But what next?

Traffic from search engines

SiteSell is a web host that helps your site succeed (link opens in a new window) by attracting free, organic search engine traffic. They go beyond just hosting your site and provide tools and guidance that ensure its success.

They do this through their flagship product, called “Site Build It!” or “SBI!” (link opens in a new window) for short.

What is SBI?

That’s a bit hard to define to someone who has not yet been introduced to SBI!. Simply because there is nothing like it, in my experience and knowledge.

In short though, SBI! is a whole set of tools and packages that help you build your website, host it, and make it a success. This success part is important; do pay attention to it. Almost anyone can build a website, or get one built by someone else. It takes more to be successful.

In addition to the tools and packages, Site Build It! is a guide. A guide that will take you by the hand and help you make your website successful. You need to follow the instructions, though. It takes hard work to be successful. No shortcuts here.

But the most amazing thing about Site Build It! is that it empowers common people, with absolutely no technical skills whatsoever, to build successful websites that beat those built by professionals. You don’t need to know the technology or tricks behind building a website, having your own Search Engine Marketing campaign, creating your own Web 2.0 engine to let your site’s visitors add content to your site, or anything else. If you know all this stuff, very good. Now try to forget all that you know, and learn to focus on success. But if you don’t, and especially if you don’t, you still have a level playing field. Why?

Because SBI! does it all for you. The technology part, I mean. Lots of things will happen without you even having to lift a finger. No, scratch that. You will have to lift your finger once in a while. To click, write your content, etc.

And because you haven’t been “corrupted” yet. So you can focus on your success right from the beginning, instead of getting lost in the myriad of technological details.

But you still need to bring your own brain and motivation to the table. You are the one who knows your business, hobby or passion. SBI! doesn’t. You deliver on that count, and SBI! will deliver too.

How will SBI! benefit me?

That’s easy to answer. It will make you successful. The best part is, you define what success is for you. The rest is just details…

Site Build It! will help you if you:

Want to get your website in the top positions in the Search Engine listings
Need more traffic to your site
Want to let your site’s visitors add content to your site
Want to build a site quickly and efficiently, focusing on building your content, forgetting the technological details
Need to help people or simply reach out to them
Need to make money
Extend or bring your offline business online
Start an online business venture from your home or small office
Want to quit your day job

There are many more ways SBI! can help you. The above are just a few examples. The power of Site Build It! lies in its ability to make your website successful too. Provided you follow the system, of course.

How is SBI different?

Be glad we are not in a commercial for a certain ketchup that shall go unnamed. Otherwise I would have answered that with, “It’s different!” After a few times, you would have gone nuts.

Anyway, Site Build It! is the only package that guarantees success. And not just tall claims, but solid proof. See below.

Site Build It! is the only package that includes everything you need to succeed — tools to build your website, market your website, build new as well as ongoing traffic, etc. etc. etc. And they go on adding more and more at no extra charge.

Site Build It! is the only package that removes all the technological barriers and reduces the work and time required by 90%. But mind you, you still have to work hard. This is not one of those get-rich-quick-by-magic type schemes. You are going to build a real business, and building a real business always takes work.

Bottom line? Success.

How do you know?

I know because I am a happy customer too. I have an SBI! site of my own.

I know because they give proof of success (link opens in a new window).

They deliver verifiable results (link opens in a new window). Those are a few hundreds of their clients who have websites in the top 1%. Of course, that page doesn’t include all their successful clients, only a small cross-section of them.

35% of SBI! sites ranked in the top 1% of all sites on the web
53% were in the top 2%
62% scored in the top 3%

I know some of these people with these websites. These people are real, like you and me. I get a chance to interact with some of these people.

If you want to know more, maybe you would like to go to the Site Build It! summary site (link opens in a new window). Or you can even ask a real SBI! owner (link opens in a new window) yourself.

Bluehost – Consumer complaints and comments, facts, and company profile

Hostorian — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:28:41 +0000

Summary

Bluehost is one of our recommended web hosts. They have been around since 1996, and currently host over 750,000 web sites. They provide professional web hosting plans that include all the features one can possibly want, and at the best possible price. From top-notch support (I personally have seen answers to my support requests within minutes) to great service and features, there is everything to like about Bluehost, and nothing to dislike, from my personal experience.

Why I’m so impressed with them: Among other things (read below for more), I once sent an email to their CEO Matt Heaten, just to see what happens. I got back a personal reply from him! Now look. It’s not like Bluehost is a company running out of someone’s basement or anything. They host 750,000+ websites with them! So the CEO replying back to an unknown person is a BIG DEAL, as far as I am concerned. It shows how much he cares about his customers. This is reflected in everything that the company does. They keep improving their technology, their packages, their support system, and everything else.

Website: Click here to go to the official Bluehost website

Quick Facts

Number of domains hosted: Over 750,000
Services: Shared hosting (at $6.95/month) with free set-up, no hidden fees, domain included, unlimited disk space, unlimited domains and sub-domains, unlimited data transfer, and support for almost every script you can imagine
Location: Provo, UT (USA)
Guarantees: 30-day money back guarantee, highest uptime, no hidden fees, free domain for life
Contact information: Call (888) 401-HOST, (888) 401-4678, or visit their contact page.

Click here to go to the official Bluehost website

Products & Services

Shared Linux hosting (at $6.95/month) with free set-up, no hidden fees, domain included, unlimited disk space, unlimited domains and sub-domains, unlimited data transfer, and support for almost every script you can imagine.

Hostorian’s Review

Performance

While Bluehost does tend to oversell like every other web hosting company out there, they have tried really hard to not let that affect the overall performance of the servers. Judging from the feedback by other people who host their sites with Bluehost, and other reviews (and my own personal experience), they’ve just got to be one of the better performing hosts in the shared web hosting space.

With the rapid growth that Bluehost has been experiencing in the recent past, they have constantly been upgrading their bandwidth as well as servers and data centers to keep up with the increasing demand.

Overall, they seem very reliable for hosting serious websites.

Features

The number of features offered by Bluehost just boggles the mind – unlimited storage, unlimited domains and sub-domains, unlimited data transfer, drag and drop site-builder, support for 100 databases, e-commerce support, several plug-in scripts and shopping carts, blogs, forums, wiki, multi-media support, and so many other things, it just boggles the mind.

They offer almost everything you would want from a Linux web hosting service – cPanel (the best hosting control panel), fantastico support, .htaccess customization, custom php.ini files, and more. They even allow shell access (SSH), and have DDOS protection and power backup and complimentary site backup services.

Support and Customer Care

Here again I can speak from personal experience. Their support is unlike ANYTHING I have ever seen. They are the best!

I have received answers to my questions within minutes of sending emails to their support no matter what the time was. And the biggest surprise (!) was that the support person used to actually read my email and give me exactly the answer I needed!

They even helped me with a problem I had with a PHP script I had installed on one of my websites.

Not surprisingly, they have won several awards for customer support. And why not, when they take such good care of their customers.

Click here to go to the official Bluehost website

Actual Customer Feedback

Used bluehost for 2 years now. Always up, good customer service, and good value. - g torregrassa

They are definitely WELL worth the $6.95 per month and even more! I’ve been very impressed with their service, speed and features. The uptime could be a bit better, but I’m guessing it’s about 98%. Just a few unannounced outages over the year. Overall, I couldn’t be more stoked about a Web host. I run 30k unique users and about 20gb of monthly bandwidth no problems! - Jason Mitchell

I’ve been with Blue Host for one year now. They are the BEST! Best overall and best value. Outstanding customer service. The company is always making improvements AND they are HONEST. A novice might find it a little challenging to figure everything at first, but once you do the number of features is unbeatable. - Brad

Bluehost is amazing. Their service is really amazingly outstanding. They go well beyond what is required and are always eager to help. - Amit

I have been with Bluehost for over 5 years and as a web designer, appreciate a good host. I recommend Bluehost to all my website clients. I have worked with many different hosts and have not found one yet that I liked more than Bluehost. - Chantal

I have been with bluehost for over a year, and have not had a single hick up, i am running 3 domains. Whenever i have needed help their support has been able to promptly help me. - Isaac Witton, Australia

Click here to go to the official Bluehost website

Verdict Of This Review

Bluehost beats almost every other web host in the Linux shared hosting space. Unbeatable pricing, unmatched features, what more could one want?

Highly recommended!

Rating: 5 out of 5

Click here to go to the official Bluehost website

Apollo Hosting – Consumer complaints and comments, facts, and company profile

Hostorian — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:19:12 +0000

Summary

Apollo Hosting hosts over 165,000 domains since 1999. They provide reliable and affordable website hosting services for business, ecommerce, reseller and personal use with all the tools you need for a successful website.

Website: Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

Quick Facts

Number of domains hosted: 165,000
Services: Business hosting (starting at $6.96/month), Personal hosting (starting at $6.96/month), Windows hosting (starting at $13.96/month), and Dedicated hosting (starting at $99.95/month)
Location: Austin, Texas (USA)
Guarantees: 30-day money back guarantee, 99.9% uptime guarantee, price freeze guarantee (for dedicated server hosting)
Contact information: Call 1-877-525-HOST (4678), or visit their contact page.

Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

Products & Services

Business Hosting: Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting, Shared web hosting – Linux, Shared web hosting – Windows, Dedicated hosting – Linux, Dedicated hosting – Windows, Reseller hosting

Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

Hostorian’s Review

Performance

Several customers of Apollo Hosting have posted their reviews of their service. Most of them have reported negatively about their performance, uptime, etc. People report that their servers are frequently down, and at least one person has reported their site being down for a whole day. Another person reported their site being down at least once every week.

I wonder how many people take advantage of their 99.99% uptime guarantee, and if they don’t, why not.

Site speeds are also reported to be on the slow side. All in all Apollo Hosting does not score high on performance.

Features

Apollo Hosting offers a wide variety of features to cater to every need, budget and technical requirement. If you want any additional features not included in one of their core packages, you can always pay a bit extra to get them. This lets you totally customize the feature set if you want.

However, other web hosting companies offer more disk storage, more bandwidth/data transfer, and more domains on a single account.

Support and Customer Care

Their technical support is based out of their headquarters in Austin, Texas, and is completely in-house. This means no more struggling with foreign accents or trying to get your point across to someone with English as a second language.

In addition to this, Apollo Hosting provides a lot of options to help you with your support issues. There is a pre-sales FAQ, a collection of quick start guides, knowledgebase articles, video tutorials, online manuals, forums, help desk, live chat, and phone support to assist you in every way they can.

Their contact number and a live chat button are available from every page on their site, making it easy to get in touch with them, should you have any issues.

All that said, it is really difficult to get a meaningful response from them, especially if you run into a challenging technical problem. The live chat support personnel will usually ask you to get a support ticket, which makes you wonder why they are there in the first place.

The fact that their telephone support is not outsourced is both an advantage and disadvantage in that though you are spared the trauma of struggling through foreign accents of non-native speakers, they can only afford to employ a limited number of support people, causing long wait periods for telephone support.

On the bright side, their manuals, tutorials, and articles are really good, and if you are not afraid of getting your hands dirty managing your sites yourself, Apollo Hosting can be a very good choice for you.

Cons

A lot of features are offered at an extra price, and are not included in the package price. These prices are all clearly mentioned though, both on the package details page and the plan comparisons pages, so you will have a clear idea of what you would be paying before you purchase their services. Also, extra cost usually means they will spend additional resources to make sure everything runs smoothly, which is ultimately more important for a business than a few dollars per month. In addition, this pricing scheme means that those who don’t need the extra feature can pay less.
Their prices are slightly higher than other hosting companies. But this also means better hardware, better network and server performance, and better support, so it’s all worth it, if you think about it.
Customer support is not as good as some of the other hosting firms.

Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

Actual Customer Feedback

The Live Chat Tech Support is awesome and the low cost and great service is why I have been their customer for over 2 years. Apollo’s web hosting needs little web knowledge for upkeep. If I can maintain a website, anyone can! Thanks Apollo! – Dawna Avery, visualtestaments.com

I eventually tried 3 other providers before stumbling on Apollo. Email is extremely important in my business as our employees are all over the world and being up and running all the time is critical. I can not say enough good things about Apollo. They are always on call and always ready to help. Their network is one of the best. What they are doing is right on track. With a very in depth understanding of the industry and what is critical, I can truthfully say, they are doing a fantastic job. Customer service is one of the most critical areas for a company, and they know what they are doing. My business’ success depends on the website and email, and I feel that I am in good hands with Apollo. – Chris Atkins, linguasmex.com

I had previously been jumping from one hosting company to another, in search of the perfect host. I have now had my two websites with Apollohosting for about 2 years, and I am perfectly happy with their services – the main reason for choosing Apollohosting was that they have [a premium email filter] which blocks 99.9% of all spam and virus suspect emails on their server, and I don’t have to deal with them. Considering that I get around 700 spam messages per email address a day, this is a big load off my back, and my computer! But I also must say that the fact that I have not noticed any downtime of my websites at all, and they run smoothly, is also very valuable. When initially setting up my accounts, the help staff were always very helpful and kind, and since then I have not had to contact them once. I am here to stay! – Mimi Sidwell, jxranch.com

I am a long time Apollo Customer, Apollo Reseller, web developer and entrepreneur.

Apollo Hosting is there when you need them, late night, early morning, holidays, whenever. Apollo is there and that is nice and that’s why I’m still using them after 6 years. – Jeff Miller, closingvideos.com

Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

Verdict of This Review

Apollo Hosting does seem to be offering a wide array of services to cater to every need and budget, but it would have been better if they could focus on improving their pricing model, customer support, and performance of their servers in terms of speed and reliability.

Not recommended, unless maybe you are in Austin, Texas, and are looking for a local hosting provider.

Rating:

Click here to go to the official Apollo Hosting website

1&1 Internet UK – Consumer complaints and comments, facts, and company profile

Hostorian — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:32:50 +0000

Summary

1&1 claim to be the world’s number 1 web host and the fastest growing web hosting company. According to their “About 1&1″ page, 1&1′s global community is 7.46 million people strong with 2,500 new customers signing up every day.

Website: Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet UK website

Quick Facts

Number of domains: 9.82 million registered domains, and over 2.7 million websites
Services: Domain registration, Email hosting, Linux hosting, Microsoft hosting, VPS hosting, Managed Server hosting, Root Server hosting, Windows Server hosting, “eShop hosting,” Microsoft Sharepoint hosting
Location: 1&1 Internet Limited, Aquasulis House, 10-14 Bath Road, Slough, SL1 3SA, UK
Guarantees: 60-day money back guarantee, 99.99% uptime, no hidden charges
Contact information: Call 0871 641 21 21. Or visit the contact page on their website.

Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet UK website

Products & Services

Domain registration, Email hosting, Linux hosting, Microsoft hosting, VPS hosting, Managed Server hosting, Root Server hosting, Windows Server hosting, “eShop hosting,” Microsoft Sharepoint hosting

Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet UK website

Hostorian’s Review

Performance

Several customers of 1&1 Internet Ltd. UK have posted their reviews of their performance. Most, if not all, have a negative review of their performance.

From horror stories of how their servers seem to be down intermittently to how everything is slower than a drugged tortoise on occasions, the impression we get is not good.

Of course, some people report good things too, but it does shake your confidence in them overall.

Features

This is probably the only good thing about 1&1 Internet Ltd. UK and their web hosting packages. They are loaded with features.

But then so is every other hosting provider. In fact, most hosting providers let you host more domains in a single account.

They offer about £400 worth of software for free with their web hosting packages, and you can also get RatePoint for free with select business packages. You get 100 business cards for free when you sign up for their 1&1 Home package.

Support and Customer Care

Support and customer care seems to be a joke, in the words of many of their customers (who are now ex-customers and very happy about it). Some people switched hosting providers solely because of 1&1 Internet UK’s poor customer support.

In fact, they put you on hold for such long periods that it might be worth getting a speaker-phone just so you can continue doing other work while you are waiting for someone to answer the phone.

Not just that, it’s a battle to get them to understand the problem, and an even bigger battle to get them to solve it in a timely manner.

Cons

Canceling your account with them is very difficult, and requires you to fax a signed copy of your application to them.
Support is outsourced to a non-English speaking country, and not only is the accent difficult to understand, the support staff doesn’t seem to be competent either.
Because of their low prices, they are forced to share the same server among a lot of sites, and as a result the site performance is not up to the mark. Speeds are slow, and uptime is not good either.

Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet UK website

Actual Customer Feedback

Awful, awful, awful service. Avoid these people like the plaque. I have customers who have registered domain names with one and one and releasing them to (better) other suppliers is a nightmare with .coms. The helpline is some far off country and the operators are difficult to understand especially when you require technical assistance.

Consequently my customers 1and1 domain and email account has NOT been running for 2 weeks. – Paul

Have now 6 domains with 1and1 uk and am very happy with the customer service and uptime, cant fault them yet – James Brabyn

I have bought an eshop from them and all I have to say is their online based program is so slow and you can not use any other things, they say you have 500mb but they don’t let you upload any thing to your space by any ftp or program other than their eshop which means you can only upload certain image files and that it.

Their customer service were alright in the begining but now no answer what so ever for a month or non at all for some of my posts.

I have to mention if you really want to go into truble then they are good at it. – Parkook

Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet UK website

Verdict of This Review

Everything about 1&1 Internet Ltd. UK hosting is bad. May be a bit useful for registering cheap domains, but not good for hosting sites. Not recommended at all. Avoid at all costs.

Rating:

Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet UK website

1&1 Internet Inc. – Consumer complaints and comments, facts, and company profile

Hostorian — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 11:22:10 +0000

Summary

Website: Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet Inc. website

Quick Facts

Number of domains: 9.82 million registered domains, and over 2.7 million websites
Services: Domain registration, Email hosting, Linux hosting, Microsoft hosting, VPS hosting, Managed Server hosting, Root Server hosting, Windows Server hosting, “eShop hosting,” Microsoft Sharepoint hosting
Location: Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania, USA
Guarantees: 60-day money back guarantee, 99.99% uptime, no hidden charges
Contact information: Call 1-877-GO-1AND1 (1-877-461-2631). Or visit the contact page on their website.

Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet Inc. website

Products & Services

Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet Inc. website

Hostorian’s Review

Performance

1&1 Internet’s performance, according to customer reports found all over the web, is not too impressive. Several people report long downtimes, some even up to five days!

While they do have impressive hardware and connectivity, they host SO many websites, it’s apparently taking a toll on performance.

Well, that might be the reason, or it could be something else, but a prospective customer would be better advised to look for another web host with better performance records.

Features

They do offer an impressive array of features, but then, so do most web hosts these days.

Oh wait! Actually, there are quite a few web hosts that offer MORE features than 1&1 Internet does. For example, these days, several web hosts offer unlimited domains on a single shared hosting account. But the marketing angels at 1&1 only offer from 1-5 domains on a single shared hosting account, depending on your account type.

With the exception of a couple of features, most features can be classified as either something that everyone offers, or something that no one needs. Methinks someone at 1&1 Internet Inc is just trying to bloat the feature list.

We don’t want features we don’t need. We want more value, better hosting, better performance, and better service.

Support and Customer Care

One word: Crooks!

Several people complain about 1&1 Internet Inc. continuing to charge their credit cards long after they cancel their accounts with them. Getting a refund may not be impossible, but it’s close. Be prepared to file a complaint with your credit card company AND change your credit card if you want to avoid getting rebilled.

I have also read accounts of 1&1 Internet Inc’s customer service people yelling at customers, calling them names, and hanging up on them.

In case a customer’s credit card fails to authorize for some reason, they send it to a collection agency before even contacting the customer to remedy the situation. This is very strange, considering it would be a lot cheaper and quicker for them to just inform the customer that there is a problem, and ask them to update their billing information. Not to mention the PR suicide they are committing.

Cons

Horrible customer service and rude customer service people.
A big portion of the customer support is outsourced to a non-English speaking country, which makes understanding them difficult.
Performance is very bad, and customers frequently experience downtime, despite their 99.99% uptime guarantee.

Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet Inc. website

Actual Customer Feedback

If you are thinking of purchasing from 1&1 don’t do it! – Louis Lang

Filed complaint with Better Business Bureau. They already have and Unsatisfactory rating there. – Owner ( customerservice at clean-fill-wanted(dot)com )

My site has been down for 3 days with no support from 1and1 at all. Nobody will tell me what is going on. This company should be avoided at all costs. My site was intermittently down for 2 weeks prior to that. Please Please someone start a class action lawsuit. Google 1and1 and see millions of negative messages regarding 1and1. – Steve Tarnowski

1 and 1 is horrendous in every way! After transferring a domain to them and receiving confirmation from them that the transaction was completed, they sold the name to someone else without letting us know. They continued to bill us of course, and didn’t even give the promised and advertised promotional discount. This national campaign for the site lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they have still not corrected their mistake. The Better Business Bureau and Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office are investigating them, and so is the media. As an investigative journalist myself, I have been sharing my story with the print and broadcast community and my colleagues who are realizing how poorly this company conducts business. Hundreds of emails gone unanswered, phone calls dropped with no resolution, no support at all, and ethical issues are just the tip of the 1 and 1 iceburg. Caveat emptor! – Kelly

Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet Inc. website

Verdict of This Review

Not impressive at all. Stay away from this company at all costs. In fact, if you don’t like someone, send them over to 1&1 for hosting their websites. Not recommended, if you are thinking of hosting your own sites with them.

Rating:

Click here to go to the official 1&1 Internet Inc. website