Netfirms Web Hosting
Posted under: Netfirms Web Hosting Ratings
Not recommended if you want to host a website for the long term!
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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.
after the migration to the new platform , controle panle looks very cool and nice with fancy icons , but the reliabilty have dromped to almost zero and tech support have very limited knowlage and they put you on hold till you give up and provide no help and they always acuse you of having a bad browser ( almost all problems are explained by YOU MUSH HAVE A BAD BROWSER) or sorry you can no longer do this or that , and most of the normalk features that is almost standard with any hosting company became absolute even the ability to upload files from the controle panel or unzipping or archiving files has to be done locally and then ftp to the site
netfirms has became during the past couple months , the worst lazyest most unreliable hosting company with the worst tech staff
not recommended if you are planning to have a stable site that is bigger than couple of static pages , or if you are planning to use it for anything other than the ready made scripts like worldpress or joomla < other than that it is not the hosting company for you if you are planning to have a dynamic site that requires anything more than the minimum
I have been with netfirms for many years with no problems. Their support has been great. I can not figure out why you all have so many problems. Maybe I have a easy site to maintain. Oh well…… Netfirms is worth every penny I have spent.