HostICan
Oct 8, 2007
I've been doing major research in the past week (the quest to find the perfect host!), and while I have read positive & negative reviews of every host.. this one has jumped out at me.
They wouldn't be classified as budget, but I'm ok with that - I need potential growth, and have enough accounts to justify $45/mo for VPS. Having watched this Lunarpages issue grow, during a live chat, I asked for a sample of their error page. Received a link immediately. Professional looking page, even though it would be replaced
Edit: they also offer a "SwitchNow" feature
I wanted to open a thread to find out more info, any input welcome. Of all the companies reviewed, it stands out as professional, geared towards businesses (rather than budget/free hosts), and it's the last one on my short list!
View 11 Replies
Jan 29, 2008
The short version: Stay Away!
The long version:
When I first got the idea to start a forum, I heard about hostican. I got up a shared hosting plan ("Tera-Host") and the forum went smoothly. But in mid-January, barely two months after signing up (and one month after my 30-day money back guarantee ended), they pulled a dirty trick that me, and more than twenty others, didn't see coming.
I started getting a message at random times when browsing my forum. It was a "You are using way way waaaay too many resources" message, and it blocked me from viewing my site. Odd, I thought, since there were only 5 people on my forum at the time, and I've frequently had as many as seventeen online at once. I took a screenshot, thinking it was just a temporary server issue.
I got the same message four more times that day. I called support. They told me to check my cpu-log folder for anything out of the ordinary. I found nothing. Phoned them again, asking why 5 people online at once could possibly blow out my resources. Their answer, and future answers, proved both unhelpful and uninformed. They couldn't tell me how I was supposed to monitor my cpu use, nor why this problem started happening all of a sudden.
Then I found hostican's support forum, and it turned out I wasn't the only one who was having problems. There were fifteen different threads of customers trying to understand what was going on. I started browsing them, and learned a great deal of many things hostican didn't seem to think it was necessary for me to know.
First was their explanation: They had recently started using software that could monitor resource use better. That way, more people on the shared servers were being caught for their "unfair memory-hogging."
They also said all the people who were having problems with this issue had been using too many resources from the very beginning (but were NEVER told). So the quality of service I got during those first 30 days was not the same as it is now.
I had no idea hostican's shared server could not handel my forum during the first 30 days. I had signed up for two years of shared hosting with hostican, only to find that my site was incapable of being on their shared server after the money-back guarantee was gone. They were telling people to optimize, upgrade to VPS, or get out. Is this a nasty trick or what?
I was told that vbulletin used a lot of resources, and they suggested I switch to phpbb. I did, losing a lot of posts in the process. But even with all those posts gone, the new forum barely had 100 posts before I saw that same error screen of death. It looked like they couldn't handle anything but plain HTML pages!
If that doesn't sound absurd enough, you'll love hearing about some of hostican's claims and trends on their forum during the next week. Here's a nice long list:
- Several customers found that the resources error would appear immediately after executing a query that took longer than a few seconds. This is despite hostican's policy that we canot exceed our share of resources for more than 60 seconds (not 1 second).
- They also found some queries took as long as 13 seconds, even on very simple pages that usually took a fraction of a second to load. It looked as though these long queries were the result of overloaded servers, and that hostican was not only punishing CPU hogs, but innocent people whose sites were slowing down due to those hogs.
- hostican never announced their stricter CPU limits until people began to complain. Not on their forum, site, email, or anywhere. It just blew up in everyone's faces. They've also conveniently not answered posts saying how they should have.
- hosticananswers.com/questions/101/Server+resource+limits
Their policy on resources limits say:
The customer must not: Use 25% or more of system resources for longer then 60 seconds.
However, it never says what exactly 25% is. 25% of what? Of whatever's convenient for the company to say it is at the time? Two different customers on the forums got two different answers from support. Again, uninformed and unhelpful.
- Unless you happen to visit your site while an error is occurring, then you'll never know about it. No email, nothing.
- Among the software people said the servers can no longer handle are: wordpres blogs, phpbb and vbulletin forums, Joomla, and the ability to backup the files on their site. Surely any decent hosting company would give their customers enough resources to do a backup without crashing their site?
-Want more proof that hostican has issues? They want their CUSTOMERS' help in developing CPU monitoring software (this thread might be deleted soon):
forum.hostican.com/5126-post21.html
- They've since merged all those CPU-error/frustration threads into one, and then deleted it. However, it's been saved to another location before it was deleted! If you want 380 posts of evidence, look no further:
gayteenforum.org/stuff/HostICan/
Here are some other blog pages their customers directed me to, both of which posted about this mess:
vhxn.com/hostican-really-really-sucks/
scriptygoddess.com/archives/2008/01/18/hostican-also-known-as-hostisuck-hosticant-and-a-pleothra-of-other-nicknames/
I certainly wasn't going to stay with them after this. Forget VPS. I've since gotten a new domain and hosting from a different host (Hostgator), and was able to copy my forum thanks to a backup I did before this mess started. Lost a lot of posts and money, yes, but the nightmare is over. If this message will help offset the cash those cheaters gained from me, then you'll make this message worth it, and you'll save yourself in the process.
I have no idea if this was an experimental money-making tactic by hostican gone horribly wrong, or how many people were affected. It's possible it's only a few dozen. I don't know. But if it happened to 20+ people, it can happen to you.
In summary, don't go with hostican, and do not sign up for 2 years of hosting unless you're confident in your host.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jan 6, 2009
I want take vps from Hostican.com and I want know reviews.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Aug 4, 2008
My year with Hostican was up last night at midnight. I had worked double shifts at the day job all weekend, and was waiting to back up my database and move the site to a new host when I got home from work Sunday night. Hostican sent me an invoice last week saying payment for another year was due on the 7th. I got home last night, read my email, and they had charged my credit card for $95 and change on Saturday, without my consent.
I sent them a rather pissed off, but not over the line, email telling them they needed to fix that immediately. They did, in fact I was surprised that in only 10 minutes the money was back on my card. However, they also took down my site and all my access to anything connected with the account. They failed to respond to repeated emails regarding this, despite the fact that they had been so quick to refund my money.
I am now on my new host, trying to get my site back together from a 3 month old backup. Thanks a lot Hostican, you can kiss my @$$.
To anyone considering Hostican:
1. It's impossible to speak to a human being there if you have a problem
2. Their network is frequently very slow
3. I have gotten excessive usage shutdowns on occasions when I had less than 25 people on the site at the time.
4. They will charge your credit card without your consent
5. Good luck getting anything off your site with them if you piss them off, because they will remove your access and ignore your emails
I hate these dirtbags, and I normally am pretty polite and level headed about things. I will be spending all day, a day I could have enjoyed playing with my three year old son who hasn't seen me since Thursday, getting my site back the way it should be. I shouldn't have had to go through this.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Dec 10, 2008
who is better for vps
hostican.com
or
inmotion.net(inmotionhosting.com)
View 6 Replies
View Related
May 11, 2008
Has anyone tested vps plans of hostican.com?
Any personal review or experience with them?
View 6 Replies
View Related
Feb 12, 2008
Is hostican any good? Any reviews? Is it true that sites hosted in hostican does not appear on google because they host adult sites?
View 18 Replies
View Related
Jul 25, 2007
Anyone have a review for Hostican's VPS'?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Jun 13, 2007
Does anyone have any up-to-date experiences with Hostican? I feel that even though they're obviously overselling their bandwidth, their features and hardware specs for the VPS packages compensate for this.
I've read the forums, and it seems Gene Steinberg (who promotes Hostican frequently) has good ties with Hostican-- Not that there isn't anything wrong with that, but I prefer non-biased opinions.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Aug 29, 2007
since February (this year) I was a happy reseller user of HostICan. When I moved with them they transfered all my accounts and had no problems for the months I stayed with them.
But all has to come to an end ... and I moved from their reseller because they closed it.
But, what better place to move from HostICan reseller than HostICan VPS?
About a week ago we agreed to be transfered to one of their VPS. Painless, free, fast (half our for 40 cpanel accounts) and had no problems at all. I just waited a week to make sure nothing bad happens so I can tell you about this.
Anything else? No downtime that I know about, fast services and fast support. I didn't had more than 3 support tickets in all these months
I must say these guys really took care of me all these months, especially Denis Motova.
Not a bad review like you would of thought ...
Very satisfied with them... one of the best hosts I've been with.
View 12 Replies
View Related
Mar 30, 2009
I just want to complain about HostICan.
I am a affiliate partner of HostICan.
From Jan.2009, they give me the wrong report about the sales on my file, the sales and commissions were alway be zero.....
I am a web designer, so I am very sure that my clients they signed up to HostICan from my site.
When they signed up to HostICan, I was by their side.
But there was still no sales and commissions showing on my file.
I have sent the tickets to them 5 times from Feb.2009, but they didn't reply me any.
I ask them at the live chat, the person at live chat always told me that I have to create a ticket to their affiliate department.
HostICan....well...I think maybe he/she is cheater, or they have some problems with their financial affairs?
I live in Asia, I have no idea about this! I think I have nothing can do!
Or how should I do?
My english is not good enough, thanks for your attention.
If there are personnel of HostICan this forum,
View 14 Replies
View Related
