My Review On IXWebhosting

my domain [url] was hosted with ixwebhosting for the last 1 year. Before that I had 4 more domains hosted with Ixwebhosting. I will write up a review of me being a customer with them for the last 2 years and 2 months. Unlike most people, I was not entirely unhappy with their service, however the jotdown with points in different categories in this review will help you from deciding wither you want to go with them or not.

My Hosting Plan: Unlimited Pro

* Unlimited Domains

* Unlimited Transfer

* Unlimited Web Space

* 2 Free Domain Regs

* 8 Dedicated IPs

* Ecommerce Ready!

Why I joined them?

Because, I saw some reviews back in 2006 and I found out nothing but good reviews and in fact that year, they won the Webhosting Company of the Year Award from a very reliable hosting review company. I was excited to see the words "Unlimited", but little did I know what I was getting into.
Support:

Their chat support is indeed a handy thing but its full of people who dont know what they are doing. Everytime you open up a ticket in the control panel, always give the chat support client, the ticket ID and tell them to fix it right away. They will reply back within 1 day which is just lame but if you dont bother chatting with them, then expect a reply in 3-5 days time.
Server:

Their Unlimited Pro was based on the same servers shared with everyone else in their clients list. It was good enough for my forum when I had around 30-40 users online at once, but when it became 100 users online a day, you would get MYSQL errors and server downtime every now and then.

Loading Speed:

Loading was considerably very slow, I never found it even comparable to 1and1.

Money Back Guarantee:

Believe it or not, I got my money back when I asked for it after renewing my contract for another 2 years. I could not decide whether to go with them or not, but I just signed up for the heck of it. Later, I realized I needed to move right away, I did not care about the refund but they were nice enough to keep the promise for the Anytime Money Back guarantee. I did not get all the money back because they would charge you for the domains you have with them.

Worst Experience with them:

Novemeber 20, 2008 was my renewal date with them. I signed up in 2006 November for a 2 year agreement. In november, 19th, a guy with a funny Ukrainaian name "Tiberiu" from system administration sent me an e-mail saying I am violating their terms of service by having a big disk space. remember they said unlimited disk space and I stored only 5 gigs worth of data. But still, they threatened me the day before my renewal date. I was shocked and mad, they threatened to suspend my account if I dont take any action within 5 business days. I deleted most of the contents and kept nothing important, making all recommended backups. I signed up with them for another two years as I was a fool lost and not knowing what to do. If I wanted to move to another host, I would have my site on downtime. I could not take anymore downtime, as a result, I earned some more money and decided to move to a VPS.

Why I moved to VPS?

As they say, you get what your pay for and I got it. I understood my lesson. My site is more valuable than the 310 dollars they charge me for a 2 year agreement. My website is right now very successful with an alexa rank of 60,000+. With all this traffic and so much addictive members in my website, I had to move to a reliable place where you would pay more and get more as well.

Notes to other webmasters:

You can definitely sign up with IXwebhosting if you are new in the web development zone. But, always research and read reviews, understand the promises they make and never take anything for granted. And most of all, make regular backups (database and file contents). I know my vps guys monitor my server and keep regular backups, but I schedule my sites backup every week or less and believe me its a relief! I made my sites myself, edited all the commercial scripts (vbulletin, photopost, joomla etc.). I did it because, I have a passion. Always explore all the possibilities and go with a reliable hosting company. Don't depend on any of them and pay more for a better host plan if you love your site as much as I do.