New to the board, although I've looked through it for awhile. This is my first post. My company currently hosts internally and plans to move to external hosting. What's your take on Bluehost vs. Network Solutions for shared hosting?
View 14 RepliesI impulsively signed up for 2 years of web-hosting at Network Solutions @ $89 /year, thinking I was covered by their 30 day money back guarantee. Normally I due a little research but I was actually calling them about another matter and made an (uncharacteristic) impulse decision, thinking I was covered by the money back guarantee. Reading the fine print today, their user agreement says it will cost $24.95 per contract year (x2) to cancel. In addition to this bit of marketing shenanigans, a additional bit of research seems to indicate that they are not exactly a "preferred host" among experienced users.
Q's - Is it worth $50 to walk away from NetSol and start fresh with a new host? Although I'm a newb with simple hosting needs, I still get just a frustrated with poor customer as the next guy. Am I likely to encounter any added grief, compared to other hosting options, by staying with NetSol?
FWIW - I will need hosting for four small sites, two that are nothing more than "multi page" splash pages and two will be new vBulletin powered sites. The vBulletin sites will start simple, but hopefully progress as my skills and traffic grow. While I recognize my needs are modest by any standard, I don't want my learning curve with vBulletin (and as a first time Site Administrator) to be hampered by a mediocre host and/or customer service.
Any comments on Network Solutions as a hosting service?
I have never created a website and would rather not have to deal with coding and all that stuff. I planning a very basic site, but I want it to look good.
It seems Network Solutions has a really nice and easy-to-use web page software package.
But then again I have no idea what's really going on.
My boss sent me a link to a story about Network Solutions scamming people into paying their inflated rates for domain registration. I don't know if this has been covered here before, but i thought I would spread the word just in case. There is already a discussion on it on Sitepoint.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI'm kind of annoyed. Not so much the server outage; I know those happen.
What is annoying me is the inability to get anyone on the phone.
I've been calling each of their 4 numbers in succession for the last 45 minutes. Finally connected with someone who has no idea what's going on, only that it is allegedly affecting their entire customer base. Man, if you're not going to answer the phone, at least put on a voice message, or maybe a banner on your Account Manager page.
their site didn't go down, just the ones they are hosting.
I'm a newbie at this so, for the vets, if you are experiencing a server outage, how long do you give your hosting company to give you an answer before getting "assertive" on the phone.
It's not a big deal to me since currently I only use my site for email. However, there must be some folks losing a bit of cash by being out of commission for an extended period of time.
the original domain registrar itself finally joins the VPS fray. Just saw this on their website:
[url]
After roughly a year or so (I think) of offering the hosting we all know, looks like they've finally decided it's time to take the next step.
(to think I'll be moving my domain name away from them next month...)
Just wanted to share my experiences with you once again. There are a select number of companies on this planet that really seem to go out of the way to be obnoxiously bad at their jobs. Comcast, AIG, United Airlines - the familiar litany. Well, my experience with online hosting would put Network Solutions right up there with those in competition for the title 'Worst Company in America.'
Here's the current problem. Yesterday, May 14, 2009, at about 6:00AM, one of my users reported that my site had come up with a malware/virus alert on his computer. This was odd, as I am not a malware host. Further, my work computer had been infected the day before, though I had only visited reputable news sites; and my own site.
Lo and behold, upon investigation I found that my site had been hacked to carry the FakeAlert-CL trojan, which had the effect of causing my computer to pretend it had been badly hacked to get me to buy some spurious anti-virus software. Essentially, buying "protection" in the Mafia sense.
Luckily for me, this is not my first rodeo with Network Solutions' laughable excuse for security. This exact same thing had happened 18 months or so ago. I realized then that a worm had infected NS's shared hosting servers, and had changed every file with "index" anywhere in the title to include an < iframe > tag linking to a malware site (from which the computer would be infected).
So here's my workaround. I downloaded and repaired the three index files which control my site. I then deleted the infected files, and re-uploaded clean ones. Being prudent, and having experience with this, I also uploaded *backup* copies with different file names. This proved wise. NS has now been hacked 3 times in the last 18 hours in the exact same way. Each time I get hacked again, I simply delete the infected 'index' file and rename my backup to replace it, then upload a new backup for later use.
Some notes: this has affected my entire Movable Type system by corrupting the templates. However, it attacks only the base index.php file; if you simply fix that one file, then rebuild your Movable Type database, the offending code snippet will be removed. Secondarily, some sections of my site (my bulletin board, for instance) do not have 'index' in the title of their operative files. If I could remove every index file from my site and rename them, I would, but unfortunately too many of the components are hard-wired for that name. Finally, I tried CHMODing the index files to 444, which should have prevented even an Administrator from overwriting or changing them, but it had no effect.
So, back to NS. I contacted a person from NS' marketing department (who contacted me after I posted a previous complaint on this board) and let him know that I had been hacked. He told me he was referring me to "third level support" (meaning what? they speak better English?). I have since been hacked twice more, and have emailed this same PR guy both times. The last time I asked for a phone call; no shock, I have not yet heard back. Maybe this post will prompt a response.
At any rate, to those of you experiencing this with Network Solutions, hopefully my solution will help you. To those of you considering a hosting provider, DO NOT CHOOSE NETWORK SOLUTIONS.
if anyone knew if with Network Solutions advanced hosting package on unix there was a way to store the documents outside of document root? If not is there a good way to secure a folder/files that is in the document root from users?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI signup bluehost early this month, i am very satisfied with bluehost hosting.
Bluehost established since 1996, and hosted more than 250,000 sites.
I had no problem of any until now, FTP access is reliable and fast, website is loaded fast, and no downtime detected yet.I also find their bluehostforum.com very useful in getting helps.
Bluehost $6.95 plan allow me to host up to 6 domains My domain i mentioning here is:
Time to time i perform speed test using hostpulse.com online test,
the result can be view at here:
anyone had experienced with bluehost are welcome to post here
I'm looking to get hosting and domain names.
Does anyone know anything bluehost.com, or are there any other hosts you'd recommend? (I don't need anything too expensive)
There seems to be a lot of negative press for bluehost... are they really that bad? Or was it a short period they went though? The bigger a service is, the more people there are so the higher the odds are of someone having a bad experience... have they really gone downhill?
View 14 Replies View RelatedSo when you got a website for a service and it says "$6 per month for 3 years" would you take that as they charge you monthly, $6?
Well Bluehost doesn't. They charged me $250 and I didn't realize what they were doing until the charge went through.
I called within 24 hours and spoke to billing. I cancelled the entire service. She said it was only a "hold" on my account and she would make the hold credit me back and it would be done within a few hours and that I would receive an email from her confirming. Well, I got another confirmation email NOT a we are cancelling the service email.
Then, one $250 charge dropped off... AND TWO MORE APPEARED.
In one of the confirmation emails they sent there was an email address for the help desk. So I emailed this to them. I am not speaking to them on the phone. I want it in writing this time. Two seconds after I sent the email I got an auto response telling me they don't read the email and I must formally put in a ticket.
I didn't think I would be able to since my account was supposed to be cancelled. Well, it did let me log in. She didn't cancel it and if she did she went and put it back in again twice.
DON'T BUY ANYTHING FROM THESE PEOPLE.
I am looking into BlueHost.com and I was just wondering if her anyone here used it.
View 19 Replies View RelatedHas anyone ever used them. They claim to host 825000 domains?
View 13 Replies View RelatedWhich one is better in shared hosting between bluehost and 1&1?
View 9 Replies View RelatedOut of these two host which one would you guys pick they both seem like solid hosting companies.
Any coupons for these hosting companies without signing up for there annual plans.
Of the many sites I have, I have one hosted at Bluehost. In the beginning I was very sattisfied and happy. Lately due to workload and stuff, I changed the sites scripts into Drupal.
This seems in retrospect a bad choice because I get CPU exceeds suddenly. Now because I was new to Drupal I thought it was mistake. But with caching enabled agressivly, a minimum of mods enabled and FastCGI on there are still reports of CPU exceeds. This is something which ticks me of. Google Analytics says (I have hosting stats disabled) I get about 300 unique visitors per day.
So the real question is, whats suxors the most. Drupal or Bluehost? Bluehost says Drupal is a falty script made up of bad coding...
I find 300 visitors per day a little low to move to a VPS host. So my question is, is there another host where I can host my site(s) that has equal settings as Bluehost?
They are scammer, we sign up with them and they ask us to submit credit card detail which we do.
Guess what , they use our credit card to purchase server for their own use, we contact them and they ask us to charge back if we wish, I think as they are now no longer need for the server
They are a scammer Scammer and poor DC will suffer a lost becasue I will chargeback all the charges for the server
May I Know is there any way to report this company (I am not in US) cause they must be punish for this issue
I heard many blogger appreiate this company, but I a little hestitate to use their service because I have to pay one-year fee once.
View 24 Replies View RelatedI want to run couple of sites which are ajax and GWT based. I can spend upto 120 bucks for at least 6 months great service.
So far I have googled, I think I may have to choose between mediatemple or bluehost(unless someone comes out with real and better offer).
I was wondering why I will choose MediaTeple with double the price than other one. What are the advantages do they provide over others?Do they provide exactly what they say? Like 1TB bandwidth, GPU unit usage , 100GB space, fast MySQL ?
I found a lot of people moving from bluehost to mediatemple and vice varsa talking about their issues. But what is the recent performance status of those 2 hosting sites?
My (must to have) requirements are -
1. Is not too much bandwidth sensitive (expected grow in 3 months to consume upto 1TB/month )
2. Is not too much sensitive on resource usage (must not block users)
3. Is fast in response. (Ajax site)
4. Has fast MySQL server.
Please suggest me best possible web hosting suitable for my requirements.
IMO.... Stay far away from Bluehost... not worth it.
Actually, I took notice of all the discussion over on phpBB about bluehost. They quickly close and locked such discussions. It's obviously due to there income from Bluehosts advertising through them. Anyhow...it's how I ended up here since this is where they tell us to come. lol
Here is my letter I sent to their admin since I know I can't post it on their site....
Hello,
I couldn't happen but notice the extensive advertising of Bluehost on your site. I also took notice of the quick closing of discussions pertaining to hosting companies, especially of Bluehost. It's obvious that they help support phpBB financially, but please take into consideration the companies you promote to your users. This could in return have a negative effect on here.
With my personal experience with this company, I have nothing good to say about them. I am the executive director of an ad agency that had several clients hosting their sites with them. Due to awful experiences over and over again, we now fully and highly recommend that no one hosts with them. Actually, we are located in the same town as this company and it's well known throughout the community to stay away from them.
An example of what we dealt with..... One of our largest billion dollar clients had several accounts hosted with them. One lovely evening, we took notice to an awful notification of suspension on this clients site. According to them, the site was shut down due to an automatic response that reacted to a bad piece of script. As such, without warning, it shut the entire site down. With immediate phone calls, no one was willing to help us out nor explain the situation. No one cared and there was no more information beyond a bad piece of script. It took almost 48 hours to get all of our files and data copied over so we could host it on another server. 48 hours with a huge account is like eternity and a loss of significant income and reputation. There was never an explanation nor any attempt to help. Once we moved the site over, we never experienced any issues. Couple weeks later, two more sites that this client hosted through them had the same exact issue. Not only did they pull ALL of their sites off their servers, but so did the rest of our clients due to our recommendation.
No money is worth supporting and aligning oneself with a company of such a negative reputation and statistics that prove it.
I truly hope you take this into consideration.
(BTW...I forgot to mention the awful notice they put up on the site. In huge letters it says "This site has been suspended" Then it goes into about having the owner of the site contact them. Sorry...but it's a very negative message that was display. They could've at least posted something along the lines of... Sorry for the inconvenience, xxxxxx is currently unavailable due to technical server issues" Then they coulda called us to inform us of this issue Better yet..they could've warned us about the message and situation and given us a chance to do something about it beforehand.... but absolutely no customer service what-so-ever. Very poor business practices.)
I conducted a couple of questions for each host and this is what was said, it seems HG is abit shy on giving out details, where bluehost didn't mind telling:
Please wait for a HostGator operator to respond.
Welcome to HostGator Live Chat! You are now chatting with 'Jefferson S.'
Jefferson S.: Welcome to HostGator, how may I assist you?
Stuart: evening Jefferson
Stuart: could you tell me how many shared accounts use the same ip address
Jefferson S.: no, i don't have that information
Stuart: couldn't you find out?
Jefferson S.: no, I can not see how many accounts are on a server and we do not give that information out
Stuart: ok its just a performance related question i thought you could answer and to many accounts on the same ip isn't good really as you must know... for your information Bluehost have 500accounts per server and a couple of hundred that use the same ip.
Jefferson S.: we fill our servers 80% capacity
Stuart: ok thank you for your help Jefferson
Jefferson S.: You're welcome!
AND HERE'S MY QUESTIONS WITH BLUEHOST
Ann A. [5:48:14 PM]: Thank you for contacting the Sales Team. Please give me a moment while I review your question.
stuart [5:48:14 PM]: could you tell me if you have any uptime stats and do you own your servers or lease?
Ann A. [5:48:52 PM]: Hi! We average 99.9% network uptime. You can google bluehost uptime, there's several sites that monitor uptime for different hosts. We manage our own servers, which are located in Orem, Utah, USA
stuart [5:49:47 PM]: how would you say you are as a company compared to hostgator?
stuart [5:50:59 PM]: thinking of an answer lol
Ann A. [5:53:23 PM]: Our hosting packages are pretty similar. The way we run our scripts is more secure. Bluehost's scripts run using user:user based permissions, which means your scripts and files are as secure as Linux itself. HostGator runs scripts as nobody:nobody, making the individual script security not as secure.
Ann A. [5:53:46 PM]: We also offer free backup restores, which I think hostgator charges for.
Ann A. [5:54:08 PM]: They also use cpanel, which is what we use. I'm not certain what their cpu and process limits are,
stuart [5:54:31 PM]: excellent answer thats what I call good customer service! even though you had to ask a collegue lol
[5:54:53 PM]: how many people share the same ip?
Ann A. [5:55:43 PM]: On average we have 500 accounts per server. Each server has multiple ips, let me see if I can find a more exact number. one moment please.
stuart [5:55:55 PM]: thank you
Ann A. [6:01:35 PM]: Thank you for waiting. There's probably a couple hundred that share the same ip address.
stuart [6:03:16 PM]: thank you Ann for answering the questions ohnestly..hostgator wouldn't tell me theirs they just said they fill their servers 80%
Ann A. [6:04:06 PM]: Have a good day Stuart!
Bluehost apparently offers unlimited bandwidth and disk space (so they say). This seems suspicious. Are there any limitations I should be aware of?
View 14 Replies View RelatedBased on my experience with their twin brand, Hostmonster, I would say that they should be just fine for a hobby site/playing around. I don't know about their support, as I didn't use it.
View 16 Replies View RelatedHostmonster VS Bluehost
Whats different about the two. are they the same company. it looks like it. if so which would you chose?
some largeish download file links to test my download speed with. I need some from Bluehost and Dreamhost. If you have a link for another host on the west coast feel free to post it.
View 14 Replies View Relatedim planning to get bluehost web hosting, can anyone give any comment about bluehost?
View 14 Replies View RelatedPresently I run a site on a shared server. I run a database backup every night to the host root and two backup servers and I run a full root backup every week to the backup servers.
I have two questions. One, let's say I lose my entire forum root for some reason and need to run a backup. I use vBulletin and am wondering how that works with the database. Would the database be stored in the root somewhere, or would I have to take one of my database backups, create a new database in cpanel, and import the backup into the new database (and link to it via config.php)?
Second, I'm looking to increase my backup security. I understand that offsite backup servers are great if the site gets hacked, but let's say the server gets hacked. Not that I find it likely, but if it does happen from what I understand the hacker could destroy the rsync'd backups because the key is right there.
I'm looking for a backup solution that would keep this from happening. I'm thinking of going with an external RAID harddrive configuration with DVD backups at regular intervals (probably weekly).
I'm considering using an automatic FTP from one of my backup roots (more bandwidth) to my computer. If I do this, and my main root is compromised, is there any way the hacker could compromise my home computer or backups. Further, is there a way to get the information on my home computer without simply copying everything over every time, because that will really eat bandwidth and take a lot of time. I know rsync is great because it only updates, and thus if I lose all my folders it won't delete the backup, whereas an FTP that happened at the correct time could potentially do so.
if you remember recently Crissic Solutions went offline. I was told by Skylar when he came back online i would receive a refund within 5-7 days.
He has yet again, unavailable everywhere i look, and guess what.... i still have no refund that was promised.
Is the free linux hot-copy enough? Or should I go with something along the lines of the Linux CDP?
I've never really looked into CDP before so any help would be good. Our current backup solutions are manual, so were looking for something that can be more automated.
I have been with Galaxy-Solutions.net (GS) for a long time. At first, they were really good, especially Richard Anderson. So, coming to the real story -
I got a new server with them in April -
AMD Dual Core 5600+
2 GB RAM
250x2 HDD
2000 GB on 100mbit shared
5 IPs
cPanel/WHM + Fantastico
Free Remote Reboot port
Free MRTG
for $124.99/month
At that time I had a server with Burst & BurstNET do 50/50 on Bandwidth , 50% in & 50% out, so I asked how bandwidth is measured at GS.
They told me - 2000 GB in & 2000 GB out,
Server was setup with 3 days & all was pretty good.
SCAM/FRAUD #1 & #2 =
I NEVER got the Remote Reboot port & the MRTG stats , & in August (5 months later) I was told that it had been canceled, & they will not provide it as it was insecure.
In the meantime I was told ....