Bad experience with hosting companies

There seem to be many different companies offering web hosting these days.
I certainly tried quite a few - and spent hours on the phone to the technical support, sending hundrets of emails, creating support tickets and so on.

In this blog I wanted to share with you my personal experience with some of the hosting companies and to help you avoid the problems I had with them.

The hosting companies I was with are: bone.com, streamline.net, heartinternet.com and recently fasthosts.co.uk.

1. one.com

With this company I only had a shared account and the truth is - I haven't had any problems with them until I wanted to cancel my contract with them.
First of all - I've been sent an email that I need to pay for a renewal - email has been sent 2 weeks before the payment was due.
I have contacted them and told them that I wan't to cancel my contract, however, I've been told that I need to give them 30 days notice in order to cancel it - this is due to the domain being automatically reneved 30 days before - well I know that's not true, but anyway.
I've told them ok - I'll pay for the whole year for the domain name only but I don't need your hosting and I don't want to pay for it - but apparently I have to have it together with the domain name.
Well - as you can imagine, I wasn't very happy.
So - make sure, that if you are using their service, you read terms and conditions which are certainly very well written to ensure they will keep you as long as they can.

Customer/Technical Service
I was in touch with the customer service ones - just to cancel the account I didn't need any more.


2. streamline.net

I had several accounts with streamline.net and in general they seem to be ok. Again I only had shared hosting accounts with them. There were a few, minor problems with the hosting while I was with them, but in general I think they are fairly good hosting company.

Customer/Technical Service
Customer service is the only thing which concerns me about this hosting.
It's ticket based system and getting response may take some time.


3. heartinternet.com

This company seem to be all over the place these days. Wherever you go, you see their adverts.
Now - if you are running any important website, then try to avoid them as the performance is anything but reliable.
I was a Reseller of Heart Internet and I had a headache some days, when my clients were attacking me with emails and phone calls that their site cannot be accessed or they can't send or receive any emails.
Price-wise they offer an affordable packages, but quality - really poor.

Customer/Technical Service
Now this is where they're actually good.
They use ticket system, but unlike other service providers their responses are acutally instant.
When you submit a ticket, you can expect the response within about 5 min - sometimes even earlier.
They don't provide telephone support - so the only way to contact them is using their ticket system - which is ok, as most of the things can be easily solved this way.

4. fasthosts.co.uk

Customer/Technical Service
Now this is my last provider - and after reading about their service on their own, nicely designed website and the promises of the super-duper technical support I've decided to purchase a dedicated server from them.

They state that:

"Owning a Fasthosts dedicated server is worry free, thanks to our comprehensive technical support. Our technical support website features knowledge base articles dealing with all common dedicated server issues. What's more, our UK based support team is available by phone and email 24x7."

This information is on their site at the following address: http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/dedicatedservers/managed-options/

Now - just to clarify - this is far from truth - and I've just found out about it on the first day of the service.
They are using their own control panel together with the Matrix panel to manage the hosting.
I've never used this panel and I'm not hosting literate - I told them this when I was making a purchase over the phone.
I was assured that their technical support will be able to help me - no problem.

Well - it didn't. I called them the same day I've paid for the server to ask how to set-up a domain and create an FTP account for it. They've send me a links to the knowledge base pages. After reading the content of the pages I still wasn't able to set it up. I've decided to call them again and this time the guy told me that they don't provide this kind of support and hang up on me.
I've decided to send an email to their customer support team with the complain and request to cancel my account with them and to refund me the money.

Because it was Friday evening I had to wait till Monday, and call the customer support myself, because I haven't heard from them.
I've explained situation and the answer I've got was that they can't cancel my account because it's a contract and it is till March 2009. They said that I can send an email with the request to the other email address and that I should get the answer withing 14 days. - impressive isn't.
Well - I've done it and I'm still waiting for the answer.

The problem was that I needed desperately to have hosting up and running on Monday which I clearly said when I was ordering the server - but I guess before you pay for the service - everything is wonderfull.

I hope this blog will help you to make a right decision when it comes to choose the hosting company for your site(s).

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Today is 15/04/2008 and so far Fasthost did agree to cancel my contract but they said that they won't refund the money. Now - that's not it - because what they've asked me to do is to go through some cancelling procedure - which is an absolute nightmare.
The've asked me to submit cancellation via my control panel and sent me a link to their knowledge base where I should find the step-by-step guide on how to do it.
Well - the guide they've sent me was the guide on how to cancel your broadband contract - and the things it was referring to had nothing to do with their control panel.
I had to get back to them again - well it may take like the whole year to close the account with them I guess.

Written by Sebastian Sulinski