Anyone Using Hostmonster.com Or Siteground.com Web Hosting
Aug 28, 2007
I'm down to only 2 web hosting plan that I want to join and I wonder if anyone is using any one of them.
It seems siteground has a better plan(more space, traffic bandwidth, other feature) but hostmonster allow ssh access and I think that maybe good for installing our own software.
I also interested to see if anyone uses there free shopping cart software like osCommerce, zencart and cubecart.
Anyone has any trouble with them in PHP5 environment?
i want to create a community using vbulletin boards, so i would like you please recommend me.. if this hosting is a godd choice, or another hosting that you have had a very good experience
The funny thing about this "yet another" overselling thread is that my host, Siteground.com, is an active over seller, and even though I don't like it, this is now way of life.
The hosting industry has changed in the past few years. In the quest for success, for more clients and more profits, the larger hosting companies have made sure the hosting world has changed, and has changed for the worse (both for customers and companies). Why did it happened?
Back in 2004/5 hosts used to offer moderate packages containing 1GB of space (a lot) with some traffic. Then, came ego powered web hosts such as Bluehost, came with the answer of the ever important question - "How can we drive more signups our way?" - the answer as simple, genius, and yet destructive - recruit affiliates! Affiliates want money, and money were being offered, a lot of them (65USD per sale I think).
Every miracle lasts for three days - what happened next:
hint: type "web hosting" in google and check out the directories on the top positions So, people started copying the idea, and recruiting affiliates, and the web hosting directories were born. Now everybody is in the directory, and the highest bidder was on the Number one position, the BEST HOST!, well, the one who pays most...when you are first, there is always someone who is willing to pay more, so the first company outbid the N1 host, then the second outbid the first, so quickly afiliate prices jumped from the 50-70 range a few years ago to the 150-200 bucks per new client today.
That is crazy, you are paying affiliates 2-3 years worth of revenue, just to have the client. But what does this have to do with OVERSELLING? Everything!
Now that you are in the directory, and can't pay more (you will never make any money...), you have to be different than the other companies in the directory. How - invest in new technology? better customer service? money? oops, they were spend already by the marketing department. So, the only thing that you can do is to raize features.
The first company raized the features to 20GB space/200GB Traffic, then the next one came with 50/500, then somebody else came with 300/3000, then companies like ours came and said, ok, if you can offer 300GB of space, sure we can offer 600GB of space And then yahoo came, and did it - "we promise you the world" - unlimited space, unlimited traffic - what a rubbish - there is no such thing as unlimited, unmettered maybe, unlimited - just ask them about their bandwidth cap - they have one, don't they?
If you google the directories on "web hosting" you will note that everybody offers unlimited space/traffic. But how can you be now different now? - of course, invest in technology...oops, no money, sorry. Then again someone came up with the idea to offer to host more domains per one account - and now we are different! Here you can host 5 domains, elsewhere, only one, everybody will signup from us! Aleluia! oops, three days later, everybody was offering unlimited domains, and nothing changed the equilibrium.
You though it was all over, wrong! Then came Sept 2008 around, and the Bluehost ego struck again - what can we do to attract more customers - sure, lets dump the prices - 7.95/mo was now 4.95/mo, surely no one can else can charge 4.95/mo, give unlimited features, domains, and pay 200 bucks per new client. Of course this is true, at least for the first 3 days, then everybody lowered their prices.
The end result: everybody has the same equal share of the market, and everybody is making a lot less profit (if any) than before. On the other side, the customer is now used to shop for the biggest features at the lowest price, without really knowing how to understand difference between a quality service and an affiliate "you pay a lot and don't get anything in return" hosting service.
I've seen in previous threads people to immediately jump and start saying that overselling is bad - that is true and yet not true - it depends whether you are a host or a customer:
Customers: + cheaper than before, much cheaper than what it should be + features, if you need to use more features, you have a deal + competition will drive quality/innovation forward - 90%+ of all overselling hosts spend their money on advertising, and you get no service at all
I would never buy a hosting from a company that relies exclusively on affiliate marketing - they don't focus on quality, they can't offer reliability (no money for new servers, no money for softwares etc), and the worst off all, they educate the customer with bad habits and of course, drive them away from the hosting business. Up to now, this was not a problem, as even though many people opt out of building and managing personal websites, newcomers compensated. However, recent stats show that the growth of the US hosting users has grown with less than 0.4% over the last 12 months, and with the economic slowdown, more people are opting out each month.
Overselling by itself is not a problem - it is true that most customers would never hit the limits (even though most of the time they are invisible) - hosting overselling is just like any other industry overselling (phone, electricity, airlines etc). There is only one BUT here - even though it is unlikely that most people would consume a large share of resources - can you provide service to those customers who would actually need the features? - I think the answer is yes at least this is true if you are a large host with a lot of infrastructure.
Of course, what will happen if everybody start using all the resources. What will happen if the Chinese stop eating rise and start consuming meat?
Have you heard the expression "cut off your nose to spite your face?" That's SiteGround.com's customer service in a nutshell.
In March 2008, I wanted to get a new domain and have SiteGround.com host it. I already had two accounts with them. So I got online and began a chat with "Rada" or "Dana" (all bogus names). I signed up for a new domain and extended the others. With the package I ordered I paid $146. During that initial chat, Rada or Dana said that if I signed up for another domain with hosting they would give me $10 off.
Low and behold, I began another chat with Rada and/or Dana the next day. I said I wanted to purchase another domain and mentioned the $10 discount offer I was promised the day before. Suddenly, $10 in the face or ordering a new service for $50 was a big deal to SiteGround.com. They reneged on their offer and refused to give me the $10 discount.
Subsequently, I also had problems logging on with the original order as SiteGround.com naming conventions sometimes prevent users from using the usernames they create. SiteGround.com also created a different password. After 4 hours of chats in which SiteGround.com attempted to upsell everything while you think they are trying to help you went nowhere.
I got the money back from the credit card company but my word of advice is avoid these guys. They will say one thing and do another and they send you lengthy explanations as to why they are "prevented" by their rules from offering $10 discounts for customers who want to purchase services that equal at least $146.
Me and my team run the websites grimepedia.co.uk, grimeforum.com, grimestore.com and grimedigital.com.
Up until two weeks ago our grimepedia website was hosted with Siteground. We were hosted for little over a year until we hit problems with their service and bad business practise. We originally paid for a year of hosting which expired 2 months ago now. As we have a dedicated server which our sites are hosted at we decided that we would move our grimepedia site to this server. After 2 weeks of battling with the cpanel restore siteground gave us we were unable to get the grimepedia to work on our server and so decided we would renew back with siteground for another year.
A week after we had renewed with siteground we received an email from them telling us that for the past few months we have been using over our designated resources and that we must upgrade to VPS or dedicated hosting. With this they also told us that we would be removed from our current server until we upgraded. Now annoyed that they had waited for us to renew before telling us this we decided we would try and move to our new server again (expecting that we would be refunded for the time that we wern't being hosted at siteground).
After a week of trying we finally managed to get our grimepedia site working on our dedicated server and so emailed siteground to let them know we had successfully removed our burden from them and that we would appreciate it if their accounts department could now sort out our refund for the hosting time we paid for but never received. Siteground reply was to tell us that as we broke terms and condition by going over our usage and that as it was a renewal we would not be given a refund of any kind. Shocked we replied to make sure that what they were telling us was correct. Sitegrounds final offer was to allow us to continue using our account but that we host another site there in order to use up the time owed. As we have our own dedicated server and siteground are very aware of this I find this a ridiculous offer.
We are now currently in the process of speaking to our bank to have the fund returned and are in contact with trading standards.
We would also like to thank our great hosts at inspire-hosting.co.uk who have worked endlessly to help us get all of our sites up and running on our dedicated server.
When, after months of efforts, I couldn't get my SiteGround.com account to work my last recourse was to contact my credit card company. With the chargeback complete, SiteGround.com cancelled my account and shut down my website in order to retaliate against me. SiteGround.com is a very mean-spirited company who will pursue you with a sick vigor if they don't get their way (something for nothing.)
You're best bet is to not use SiteGround.com services at all.
About a month ago I transferred a live site from a host to siteground as they supported all the functions I needed. I could have transferred the site myself, but to help convince to move to siteground promised me a free no downtime guaranteed transfer (which apparently is company policy) So I let them do it. There was downtime during the transfer but not a big deal I was ok with that But then a few days later my site went down big time. Someone called me to tell me it was down and I didn't have access to a computer so I called siteground. The operator (besides having trouble understanding english) wouldn't even report that my site was down to support!! Finally I get back to the computer and report it myself. Their 15 min or less turned out to be about 45 Then when I ask if I am going to be compensated for the extreme amount of downtime like the promise but I get turned down at every turn the excuse being technically it was downtime because it loaded a blank page STILL downtime in my book since it was siteground's fault I hadn't touched it. To add injury upon insult my site that ran perfectly smooth before has numerous problems. Every time I submitted a ticket they either tried to make it sound like it was my fault (again I hadn't touched it) or gave me the "normally this is a paid service but we made an exception for you" line as if I would need the service if they hadn't messed up the transfer. My overall experience with their service left me disgusted. Not to mention when I cancelled the "guaranteed money back" withholds nearly 4 months worth of the year I paid in advance. I have since transferred the SAME site MYSELF to atechosting and now have had it running for a few days there and had no downtime during transfer or a single problem since.
I will say performance wise they were fine even though their was some 169 on my server.
I signed up with siteground yesterday and everything has been perfect. Uptime has been great, and server speeds are alright. Except the only thing I don't like is that it's fairly hard to find the place to submit a ticket, and their interface is a bit confusing.
I am posting here as I did not see any place else to post. I do not think they are window based web hosting. so here it is:
Beware! they say anything to get you to sign up and then you are stuck because there is a $30 cancellation fee plus you have to pay $15 "free" domain that I did not even need!
I went on chat (before purchase and during) and must have asked every which way if unlimited domain meant unlimited website. I even said I wanted to work on a few websites that I already owned domain name for and that is what I would be doing 1st.
apparently their term for websites is "add on". Because I did no use that term, I did not know there was a $15 charge /website per year! I told them that was not what i was told before I signed up. It took me 8 time of asking where was the link explaining this before they finally told me it. I looked all over and could not find this charge in all of their packages and prices. I had to ask again where exactly is this information.
She told me to scroll all the way down to where it says "add on" I asked what is add on? Thats website add on! It does not say web site add on but thats what you are suppose to figure out for your self after you do an extensive search of their website and ask the sale representative who lies to you and tell you can have unlimited websites!
Do not be scammed like I was. fortunately this all took place w/in a 12 hour period so I should be able to cancel on my credit card company. I am sure others have been taken by this deception.
I am back in the hunt for a honest vbullettin and joomla friendly web host provider and allows for at least 10 website on one account and not extra charges for website addition. And will be upfront about any additional charges just to get my site up and running. I been at this for over 2 weeks now. Right back where I started.
i frequently read these forums for offers/to stay up to date with web hosting in general.
I never felt the need to register until now.
I have experienced what i believe to be sub-standard service from my paid hosting.
Here's what happened:
I got up, as usual to check my emails and i was hit with the following email
Your web hosting account for xxxxxxxx has been deactivated (reason: terms of service violation). Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted.
If you feel this deactivation is in error, please contact customer support as soon as possible.
Thank you,
HostMonster.Com Support xxxxxx (couldn't have url's in this post) For support go to xxxxxx Toll-Free: (866) 573-4678
I checked my domain, it returned nothing.
I don't believe that i have committed any terms of service violation and i am quite peeved off with the results.
My account was just suddenly deactivated with no warning, my domain (also registered via them) no longer works (i have no way of telling current visitors whats happened, the domain just wont work) and i have 15 days to contact them (via email) as phone is not an option as i live out of the US.
Not to mention after all that, i wouldn't review host-monster very greatly at all for speed, at first it was great but it just kept degrading from there until it was just extremely poor.
One thing they did do right was refund me (but i bet it doesn't include the domain) so ill be taking that money and my business else ware.
In general I have been happy with hostmonster. Mostly because their support staff is polite and are willing to help. However, I do question the server reliability at times.
Lately when a customer registers at my forum or gallery, the customer does not get the activation email 4 or 5 hours later. Today, I tested it and sure enough, the activation email took 4 or 5 hours before it came.
I talked to tech support and they acknowledged they had over 250,000 emails backed up. That there are too many connections with hotmail accounts and that was causing a problem as well.
A customer having to wait 4 or 5 hours before they receive an activation email seems a bit long.
I'm not sure if hostmonster is going to do anything to prevent this from happening in the future, but for now they seem to be satisfied with the emails backing up on the server and the time it takes for them to be sent. They indicated this does not happen often, but I really don't know since I don't send myself emails on a daily basis.
I would rate email as one of the most important functions there is for a webmaster. Otherwise, hostmonster staff has been responsive and my hope is this will not be a constant problem.
If there are any other hostmonster webmasters out there, I would appreciate your feedback. You may have to send yourself a registration or a email to test it.
I noticed that HostGator, HostMonster, and BlueHost are very popular, but I would really like to know which is better overall. I plan on running vBulletin, and when it gets more traffic I will upgrade to a VPS.
Based on your experiences, which one should I go with?
I'm come here to complain the hosting company hostmonster which is the very bad hosing provide company. Until now,
I have contact with them for 36 hours, and my website is still down. the first 12 hours, the server is down. after that, they are installing sever packages on it. after that, they did
not do any work on it. they not recover my data, my website's content is gone! I contact them many times, some time they reply me, and tell me server will be back up momentarily. I'm very tired on this problem. I'm charge an comerece site, now some customers is going to refund from me, they
thought me as a cheater.
If you see my post, I suggest you to choose the other web hosting. Stay away from hostmonster, do not harm
yourself. Bluthost.com is also the same hosting company. so, please be clever.
here is our email I contact with Hostmonster:
Take care, this mail is replied from bluehost. dateFri, May 22, 2009 at 9:53 AM subject[ #318137]: Not Found mailed-byhelpdesk.hostmonster.com
Dear Customer,
Currently the admin of your server is swapping new drives in to better improve system performance. Your site will
be back up momentarily.
Thank You,
Jonathan L. S.
Support Level 1 BlueHost.com 888.401.4678
dateFri, May 22, 2009 at 11:59 AM subject[ #318137]: Not Found mailed-byhelpdesk.hostmonster.com
Dear Customer, We apologize for the trouble you've been having. Our administrators are working as fast as they can to get the
server back up on line.
Again I apologize for the wait.
Thank You, EricJ L1 Support Hostmonster.com 866-573-4678
dateSat, May 23, 2009 at 2:10 PM subject[ #318137]: Not Found mailed-byhelpdesk.hostmonster.com
hide details 2:10 PM (12 hours ago)
Dear Customer,
There is no eta on the server at this time but please bear with us as we get it back on line.
Thanks for contacting us.
We apologize for the trouble you've been having,
Thanks JChristensen
Level 1 Support Engineer Hostmonster.com (866) 573-HOST
dateSat, May 23, 2009 at 2:30 PM subject[ #318137]: Not Found mailed-byhelpdesk.hostmonster.com
We apologize for the inconvenience, but we have encountered some unexpected problems with the server. We currently
have no ETA, but I would expect that it won't be for maybe another 12 hours. Our SysAdmins have been working on
the server round the clock to get it back up as soon as possible. When it is back up, your files should be back as
I have a shared host with them for a few months which the disk usage for home/backup is usually around 85-95%. Right now I am experiencing very slow download speed. What about yours?
Server Load 2.92 (8 cpus) Memory Used 42.6 % Swap Used 0.01 % Disk /dev/sdc1 (/home) 91 % Disk /dev/sdd1 (/backup) 90 % Disk /dev/sde1 (/backup/cpbackup/weekly) 43 % Disk /dev/ram0 (/ramdisk) 24 % Disk /dev/sdb1 (/) 22 %
I'm gonna start an online affiliate biz and am looking for a good reliable and cheap hosting service. I came up with these. Now I'm finding it difficult to decide which one to go with.
Wanted to share a bit (read vent a bit if you're cynical ).
Just got the following e-mail from hostmonster.
----------- Dear Dale:
Your web hosting account for ibycus.com has been deactivated (reason: site causing performance problems).
Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted.
If you feel this deactivation is in error, please contact customer support as soon as possible.
Thank you, Support
For support go to Toll-Free: (866) 573-4678 -------------
Apparently, there are two files on my website that are being hit quite a bit, and causing the server to slow down. (I admit, its a busy site, and the files are very big).
The files aren't new there, and neither is the traffic, but the plug was pulled with no warning what so ever, and no offer of remediation on their part beyond refunding the remaining portion of my contract (I would hope so too!).
I can understand that they may not be able to continue to host my site due to the volume of traffic it generates, but they really could have handled this much better.
I just want to move from hostmonster to dedicated server
the problem is the database(vbulletin) size about 1 GB
when I try make backup for it through ssh it arraive to 723 MB then stop becuase it have highload on hostmonster system they not allowed more than 20% cpu
I take to them they tell me can’t do any thing I please them make backup but they say we can’t do any thing for you and I’m sure they can log by root and do it with ssh on less than 1 minute
how can I make backup or if there r way to move the database to the new server
I had two websites on hostmonster for over a year and last weekend they migrated my site without a proper back up and completed DELETED both of my entire websites along with 900 other websites. If you have had problems with hostmonster in the last three years, please get in contact with me to join a class action law suit against them. They are claiming zero responsibility for the horrific act. Not only do they expect us to rebuild our websites at our expense they are expecting us to be o.k. with the loss of revenue this has also created. Hostmonster generates millions of dollars each month in revenue. Corporate america - enough of your passing the buck. It's time for us to stick together and make they pay for their mistakes. Please contact me to join the class action lawsuit.
I'm trying to find at least three web hosting companies to choose from to host a Joomla websites on a shared server. Would consider dedicated if the deal was right. I have a friend of mine who wants to create a church website, and is looking for the best deal. I use Netfirms which I have never had an issue with, but I didn't want to be bias, and would like give him other options to choose from.
Is there a good WebHosting Review site, I could check out, or maybe someone could recommend their top three. I reading threw the forums here and I noticed there are not that many complaints with Hostgator. Again, I just want to see if there was anything out there better.
Lets say you're a customer looking for web hosting, but do have technical experience - you know, you develop your own websites, you've had experience in this sort of thing before.
What if you came across a provider who seemed to offer a good service, they're high quality, they can host your website on their brilliant setup etc... but they do not provide any e-mail accounts with your hosting?
We're developing our own shared hosting setup, our own control panel too. Regardless of the control panel though, we wouldn't feel comfortable hosting peoples e-mail. We have plenty of experience in every other aspect of general shared hosting - but not looking after e-mail accounts nor the associated software.
To be honest I don't think that many shared hosting providers truely handle e-mail properly, and that job should really be left to the professionals.
We could of course guide customers or potential customers on why we won't offer e-mail accounts (i.e. not wanting to offer something we know we can't provide to a high enough standard) and instruct them on how to setup e-mail with another provider (such as Google, who will do this for free with limitations).
The alternative to the above is that we mask in a third party to look after e-mail, i.e. resell someone elses e-mail services as part of our hosting packages. The third party would require API access to setup/remove accounts..
What do you think? Are we just acting stupid trying to provide web hosting without e-mail hosting included? I noticed a while back Dreamhost encouraged their customers to use an alternative e-mail provider!
I have about 5 sites all hosted on my same hosting account. One of those domains is attached to the hosting account. I place my other domains in a folder of a sub-directory of my main domain. This has been working fine, up until today when i noticed a weird error. I give you a little example of how my sites are setup
my main domain: www.maindomain.com
My other sites hosted in a sub-directory of my main domain: www.maindomain.com/sites/site2/ www.maindomain.com/sites/site3/
How my other sites appear on the web: www.site2.com www.site3.com
This works fine for every page until i go to www.site2.com/index.php It redirects to www.maindomain.com/sites/site2/index.php for some reason
