Web Hosting Reviews

Perhaps a PowWeb vs Hostgator comparison isn’t so fair. Hostgator has consistently grown in size yet managed to snag one of the best reputations in the industry despite such growth. Their CEO Brent Oxley, has garnered quite a reputation online. Oxley started the company 6 years ago out of his dorm room, and it is now one of the largest web hosting services. Yet Brent remains one of the more visible and even approachable CEO’s in web hosting, despite running such an amazingly large web hosting company at such a young age, Brent can be found traversing various internet forums and engaging with users. In the odd event of a mishap, Brent often intervenes to ensure that even some of the most unreasonable customers walk away satisfied.

PowWeb on the other hand, has been bogged in some pretty weird fiascos. To start, a simple Google search for powweb results with their websites, and the next place spot being “PowWeb sucks” from the sayanythingblog who claims PowWeb may have deleted their blog for being right-wing. Nonethless, it’s an interesting charge, but yet only one of many. Another common complaint against them claims that PowWeb is merely one of many in a conglomerate that owns FatCow, Dot5, PowWeb, and other web hosts. Right now, PowWeb is offering their services half-off (buy 6 months, get 6 months free), so they do hold a short-term price advantage over Hostgator.

However, Hostgator on the other hand enjoys one of the greatest reputations in the industry, with no such claims of website deletion or shady business dealings to be found. Across various website forums and reviews, Hostgator is consistently ranked among the best of the larger web hosting services, if not number one.

The Hostgator customer service team is actually paid based on how well the customer rates their responses, which guarantees no such smug responses against you, as if they hope to get paid they would certainly take you seriously. Innovative company policies such as that have ensured Hostgator to be one of the better hosting services, and Hostgator has expanded and profited greatly from such wise decisions. Yet Hostgator also has a heart. Instead of just taking what profits it makes for itself, Hostgator has recently “gone green”, funding renewable energy equivalent to their servers’ energy usage. Hostgator also has been offering free web hosting to various charitable groups, and Brent Oxley, their CEO, and the staff made a joint decision to give $100,000 to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. This type of attitude to business is a good reason to trust your website with Hostgator. Finding a web host is above all, a question of trust, as a website can be a vital part of any business.

So as far as this bout of PowWeb vs Hostgator is concerned, Hostgator is the reigning champion.

Humans love to spend money on a good cause, especially if the purchase was already something they wanted. With web hosting prices often being fairly competitive with each other, factors such as customer service and reliability trump the petty differences in price in most cases. Because of this, many web hosting services have resorted to organized online PR efforts, company blogging, or many different marketing angles to try and distinguish themselves from their competitors.

That’s where ThinkHost comes in. ThinkHost was a web hosting company started by a group of people, rather than one man (which most companies will always call “visionary”). The group of founders are actually the employees, so if any profits are to be had, it would be shared amongst the employees themselves, rather than a venture capitalist or bank. However, those employees claim contentedness with salaries, giving a substantial portion of their profits to charitable groups. Their concern for environmental issues has lead ThinkHost to become a “green web hosting” company. While “green web hosting” has become a hot new trend right now, ThinkHost takes it to the extreme. Not only are their services backed by 100% renewable energies, but even their offices are powered by renewable energy. Many other green web hosting companies simply cover their servers. Yet ThinkHost doesn’t stop there: ThinkHost will also plant a tree for every single one of their clients. That’s a big promise, should ThinkHost ever become as big as the current industry leader 1&1 hosting, that would mean over seven and a half million trees would be planted. With the annual turnover of canceled and new subscribers, millions more could be planted.

ThinkHost also takes it’s environmental approach one step beyond what any other web host can claim: that they aren’t being leeched off of by a polluting bank or venture capitalist. ThinkHost’s money is shared amongst the original founders, who are environmentally concerned. Whereas most web hosting companies were started on loans from banks, or are a publicly traded stock. In either scenario, those profiting from the web host, would probably not be such environmental idealists. ThinkHost might be the only web hosting company that doesn’t have polluting profiteers. ThinkHost customers can rest assured that there are no corporate fat cats in their offices.

So ThinkHost’s marketing angle consists of who they are: a web hosting company consisting of regular people who are concerned about global issues like the environment, poverty, hunger, and world peace. A company that has no corporate fat cat leeching off of them and polluting all over the world in his gas-guzzling corporate jet. That’s the ThinkHost marketing point, and considering the impact they are making on the web hosting community, this marketing tactic, if it can be called anything other than who they are, might just give ThinkHost the edge.

Price? Reliability? Customer Service? In the end, almost all web hosting companies will pay lip service to one of these three key factors in determining which web host to use. An in-depth focus on what to look for for these factors with every web hosting company is especially important. Often there is certainly more than meets the eye to some widely practiced claims by even some of the most reputable web hosting services.

With customer service, it is easy to see the potential for deception. Any company can claim to have stellar customer service, and no one can sue them for saying it, even if it is in fact deceptive marketing. The reason being, there is no universal standard for measuring “customer satisfaction” that is accepted by law, and no enforcement against those who claim to bear that standard. The best measurements today for customer service are threefold, on the complaints side, the Better Business Bureau will have lists of complaints against each company, which can be a good indicator. “ripoffreport.com” also contains many good listings of complaints. Keep in mind while the content of each complaint is worthy of review, it is the volume you should pay particular attention to. Even the best web hosting service will have a few complaints. However, when comparing two same-sized web hosting companies, if one has an overwhelming number of complaints, then it is easy to see the difference in customer satisfaction.

Reliability, another simple yet effective lie that many web hosting services can claim to possess. Many web hosting services slap a “99% uptime” label on their website. This may in fact be 100% true, yet it is truly unacceptable from a reliability standpoint, due to a misconception. 99% uptime does not mean that it might be “down for 10 minutes a day at most” were you to imagine the 14.5 minutes which would be the 1% of a day, that would not seem so bad. However, now remember what 1% of a year is: 3.65 days. For many website owners, having your small mom and pop store offline for half a week is not acceptable, especially as many business owners who have critically important times, such as around Easter for a chocolate bunny store. Being offline for half of a week before Easter could literally kill that business. So as you can see, the difference between 99.9% uptime and 99% uptime can be utterly significant at second glance.

Last but not least: Prices. Often, low prices can lead to a low-level of either of the above mentioned factors, reliability or customer service. Aside from that fact, many stellar web hosts offer cheap shared hosting services. However, other web hosting services often have hidden surcharges, such as a “bandwidth” fee is your site gets too many visitors, or sometimes when you purchase domains, the price is automatically increased the next year and you are billed even without consenting to the new price. The latter is actually a common occurrence, with many web hosts raising domain prices by as much as a few dollars per year. If you have a hundred domains with one web hosts, that can mean hundreds of extra dollars per year. Many domain registrars and web hosts often lure in unsuspecting victims with superbly low prices, such as $1 per year for a domain, only to raise their rates to $10 per year a few months later, ensnaring thousands of people who can’t be bothered to change their domain registrar.

So watch out for any of these potential tricks that are employed by many web hosting services. The key to avoiding these troubles is to be well-researched. There are many good web hosting services, but a fair share of dishonest businessmen as well.

Early on in January 2008, DreamHost had a major billing crisis leading to millions in accidental charges. DreamHost immediately dealt with the issue, handing out refunds and having the customer service on overtime. However, DreamHost made some critical errors during that next 24 hours which may have lost them a startling amount of business.

One such error, was that in keeping in line with the DreamHost casual atmosphere, one of the co-founders of DreamHost who maintained their DreamHost blog, posted a big “D’oh” message with the Homer Simpson’s characters likeness. Some people found assurance in the simple comedic conveyance of what was going on with what was otherwise a tremendous billing issue. Others, especially those who suffered overdraft fees and possible credit card interest (due to low interest balances being paid first, the refunds would pay off the old low-interest debt, not the recently incurred interest due to the DreamHost mishap.

Yet, how did DreamHost overlook this issue enough to make such an error that it significantly crippled their company’s outlook for the year? The very atmosphere that is their marketing point, may have exposed an ugly head to customers, and become their weakness instead of strength.

In marketing a “personable” and “casual” corporate atmosphere, DreamHost was hoping to be approachable and friendly to their users. This is certainly not a mistake, as DreamHost has had a good growth rate in the past few years. However, the root of this billing error does not mix well with the “casual” marketing tactic. DreamHost claims it was a simple “typo” that lead to “millions” in erroneous billing charges. Many customers who hear that would go beserk, wondering why special attention was not paid to the processing of their billing cycles. Using the image of Homer Simpson with a “D’oh” expression and saying it was a typo, would lead many customers to believe that an incompetent Homer Simpson was left in charge of a tool that caused millions of dollars to accidentilly change hands.

That’s an impression DreamHost cannot afford to leave in the minds of it’s customers. If the adored “personable” and “casual” atmosphere of DreamHost becomes “incompetent” many customers would flee, and indeed there was an exodus of users due to the incident. However, many also forgave them only due to the wonderful customer service DreamHost has provided in the past.

Yet it was bad enough that other web hosting services chose to leap on the issue, attacking the “casual” corporate atmosphere of DreamHost. Competitor LunarPages, who has built up a sort of rivalry with similar-sized DreamHost, blogged about the DreamHost fiasco, and offered a special coupon code for “DreamHost refugees”. The professional image of LunarPages gave them an edge on DreamHost whose casual mistakes lead to this problem in the first place, although their opportunistic attack seemed perhaps more revenge driven than a well planned corporate decision.

The next day, to make up for the mistake, DreamHost became a whole lot more serious, with a blog post detailing the mistake better, and how it wouldn’t occur again. DreamHost also offered full refunds to anyone who suffered overdraft fees. Perhaps this new measured response and professionalism is the beginning of the end for the “casual” DreamHost corporate environment. Maybe DreamHost has recovered from this issue, but only time will tell if the otherwise well-reputed DreamHost can manage a great year in 2009.

Most businesses in general will promise you the sky. Be suspicious! Web hosting is no exception. Many web hosting companies have popped up, grabbed millions, then disappeared leaving thousands of users confused and possibly without control of their websites.

Since many small businesses depend on their websites for a substantial portion of their income, it is simply unaffordable to be fooled by a fraudulent web hosting company. Or worse, a perfectly legal company who lacks the proper ethical judgement. It is far more important to sign-up with a trustworthy web host, moreso than just whichever web hosting service is the cheapest and promises the most features.

For example, even the well-reputed Network Solutions, was caught engaging in what is known as “domain name frontrunning”, this is a practice of buying domains only for a 5 day grace period, then cancelling them and getting a refund. Whenever a user searched for a domain through Network Solutions’ website, Network Solutions would grab it for themselves, preventing the user from buying it elsewhere, thereby forcing the purchase from Network Solutions, atleast for the next 5 days, while also allowing others on Network Solutions to make the purchase, if the user doesn’t follow through.

Such practices as that can be a major red flag as to the ethical conduct of a company. Other good indicators are reviews, and the general reputation of the company online. Or how the company deals with payments. For example 1&1 hosting has repeated customer complaints online referring to 1&1 as having sent collection agencies to people without informing them ahead of time of due payments. While no direct 1&1 response to the allegations has been offered, the potential fear such a move can cause may scare off some customers. Keeping in mind the sheer size of 1&1, it could be a fluke, as there are millions of members.

Yet, those are precisely the types of things to look for, the very symptoms of a web hosting company solely “in it for the money”. While some greed may be healthy, as it will breed the competitiveness necessary to survive, it can become excessive and lead to mistreatment of the customer. So often, a good indicator of a good web hosting company are the oddities, often. Like how Hostgator and DreamHost have “gone green” by funding renewable energy efforts, or how DreamHost fosters a personable anti-corporate atmosphere, while Hostgator has been donating a large part of it’s revenue to charitable efforts.

Such factors can be a good indicator, though there are no mind-readers, and it will ultimately require vigilance to stay out ahead. Companies such as Alpha Red, which declared bankruptcy and disappeared last week, have proven that it is ever more important to do so as we head into the economic downturn. By gathering as many opinions as you can and staying informed, you can help protect your online ventures.

It’s official: Alpha Red shut down over the holidays.

An e-mail went out on December 23rd

This Morning December, 23 2008 at 9:30 AM CST, Alpha Red, Inc. entered Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. Doug Brickley of LECG was appointed the Chapter 7 Trustee. The receiver’s duties are to liquidate the assets of Alpha Red and collect past due balances from Alpha Red’s current and former clients.

The business will not continue. All services including power, bandwidth, and technical support will be shutdown at 9:00 AM CST on December 24, 2008, tomorrow. We will begin shutting down servers this evening around 8:00 PM CST, December 23, 2008 starting with accounts which have outstanding/past due balances.

If you have paid your bill and are current, you may contact us at support@alphared.com or by phone: (713) 936-2388 to delay your shut-off time until 9:00 AM CST tomorrow morning.

Shocking, as it was rumoured that Alpha Red would be auctioned off at bankruptcy court. No word on the status of that event has hit the presswires yet. Now the website for Alpha Red is offline, and as I said I am bit glad such a shady company has seen the end.

I am however, shocked at the sheer speed of it’s demise. Alpha Red gave mere hours after the e-mail for it’s users to move their files and domains off of their servers. This must be truly inconvenient, and hopefully many of them were watching the fact that it went bankrupt and had gotten out before the ship began to sink. Our sympathy goes out to the potential loss of websites for mom and pop businesses. This kind of behavior from Alpha Red seems downright criminal. Alpha Red seems intent on destroying mom and pops on their way out the door. Truly unethical and contemptible.

This has all been an example of why it’s so important to pick a web host majoritively on customer service and ethics, rather than whether it is a dollar or two less a month.

Microsoft is King. Certainly in the PC market, Microsoft has dominated and defeated most competition. Only in recent years, thanks to a savvy marketing department and the abysmal marketing of Vista, Apple began to make ground against Microsoft. The only other competitors are from the Unix variety.

And this is where the split in web hosting occurs. The majority of web hosting services tend to be Linux, due to the lower cost, and added security of using that operating system. However, Microsoft, being as it is, had developed proprietary software that cannot be run “as is” on Linux based systems. The most prominent of these being Active Server Pages (ASP).

Today, perhaps the majority of webmasters will agree that JSP exceeds ASP, however since Microsoft has already gotten many webmasters to use ASP, not all of them are willing to make the switch. Hence, the web hosting provider’s quandry. In order to grab this large market of potential customers, web hosts have only two choices. Either to install a Virtual Private Server with Chilisoft ASP, or buy a windows server for those customers.

The first option, installing a Virtual Private Server with Chilisoft can be expensive, Chilisoft seem to no longer be for sale, having once gone for nearly $500. Now Sun as of June 2007 is no longer even offering Chilisoft ASP for sale, requiring perhaps that you buy one of their servers (usually in excess of $1,500) though private deals with web hosting companies might be possible.

In the event a company somehow does manage to get Chilisoft ASP onto one of their servers, the VPS cannot support both Chilisoft and Cold Fusion, which may exclude some users from it.

The second option may be more practical: simply buy a windows server. However the process of managing dedicated servers or shared hosting servers can be quite drastically different on a Windows versus Linux based system. This usually means hiring a new employee to manage the new responsibilities that entails.

In the end, the web hosting company will have to decide: will the profits from the new ASP users exceed the potential costs of installing Chillisoft or managing a windows server? Will those costs be passed onto users? Will that make the web hosting service no longer competitive with cheap web hosting services’ prices? With the potential need to hire new employees to manage the windows systems, or added expenses from Chilisoft, which will already increase the burden on one of your Linux systems, it would be a difficult choice. The web hosting service will have to decide what the potential gains in customers could be from making that leap to supporting ASP, and whether that outweighs the significant costs.

Price, price, price. Numbers do have an effect on people. The difference between five dollars a month, and ten dollars a month can be a game-breaker to those looking for shared web hosting services.

But should it be that way? A resounding no, would be the correct answer. Web hosting services can be critical to many businesses, and going with a sub-par web host can end up costing them thousands in business, despite their reason to go with that cheaper web host was merely to save a few dollars.

Most of the time in web hosting, customer service always trumps price. Many ill-reputed web hosting services have stolen domain names, put false charges on members, or even called collection agencies on users who cancel their accounts. If given the choice between a web host for a few dollars more, and one who might do one of the above mentioned things, for most customers, that choice is a no-brainer. Going with a “cheap” yet notorious web hosting service may lead to hundreds of dollars in extra charges, the theft of domain names, and an extremely difficult cancellation process. Even the largest web host in the world, 1&1 web hosting, has had it’s reputation tarnished by claims that they won’t allow users to cancel and have called collection agencies on them. 1&1 hosting remains one of the cheapest web hosting service. Regardless of the truth of the claims, it is important to research and be aware of the potential costs and losses that may be incurred by using a “cheap” host who does not provide proper customer service.

Indeed, price does not always reflect service. Some atrocious web hosting services charge higher prices, while some genuinely good web hosts charge far less. The key to making web hosting a positive experience for all, is in improving customer service from the web host’s side, while the customer has an equal obligation to search for that web host who does provide that great  level of satisfaction for their customers.

Perhaps both sides can be at fault for the bad experience, as web hosting is an industry where online opinions of each company are numerous and easy-to-find.  A customer who hands over his small business’ domain to a notorious web host will certainly regret not taking the time to research the company they were trusting their business’ future with.

On the flip side, a web hosting company who offers cheap, yet horrible services will only reap short-term gains. However, many entrepreneurs could be satisfied with such gains, considering legal reprisals against the owners of such companies are usually protected by corporate personhood.

In conculsion, to protect themselves, and ultimately help reward the good web hosting services, small business owners and other web hosting customers have a duty to research and find out which companies truly offer the best deal at the best rate.

Web hosting is a new industry. Due to the invention of the internet, and subsequently domain names, thousands of businesses have sprung up to provide services to support what we now know as the internet.

The web hosting industry has been very profitable for those who succeed, yet also subject to fierce competition and a highly partisan consumer base. In this industry, reputation and word-of-mouth truly exceed the gains of the more expensive, traditional methods of advertising.

Often, all it takes is one upset customer to a create a “this web host sucks” website, that can scare away thousands of potential customers. Other times, a bad experience with customer service can lead to the irate customer creating a “thread” in a popular online forum to complain of the service. While one such occurrence may not be a game-breaker, if the trend is allowed to occur it can cause the downfall of a web hosting company. Yet, in such an industry, a few giants have emerged to grab large profits and succeed quite well.

Most of the medium to large sized web hosting companies report a staggering growth rate as well, due in part to the boom of the internet in various parts of the world, and the international nature of the internet. So while US demand may slide, the gain in demand in other countries, can easily exceed what is lost from the American consumer base.

There could be what some are calling a “plateau” within American web hosting. Once some of the premier web hosting companies establish solid reputations, with consistently excellent customer service, most customers tend to stay with the same web host.

So in the future, to avoid losing their currently rapid rate of growth, the larger web hosts will have to begin offerings in some of the larger foreign markets to stay competitive. Some companies have already done this. For example, Hostgator launched hostgator.com.br in August 2007, as they noticed a large growth in customers from South America, particularly Brazil, to help cater to that target demographic. Hostgator has seen an explosion of international customers in the past year, as they now comprise over a third of the american company’s customers. Hostgator plans to market more aggressively in Brazil in the future, and is dedicating more resources to the South American region. Expect other web hosting companies to follow suit, to expand into foreign regions. If other web hosting companies don’t make the move into foreign markets, they may lose their competitive edge on some of their more savvy counterparts.

So, in conclusion, while the American consumer demand may reach a “plateau” once they find a comfortable web hosting service, expect the thriving web hosts to have moved into foreign markets.

Here are the mathematical results. If we compare the two web hosts, Startlogic vs. Netfirms on the basis of sheer number of complaints

Netfirms complaints
30,900

Startlogic complaints
4,750

As far as the composition of the complaints, both of them seem to have some pretty serious complaints levelled against them. Startlogic is rumoured to have outsourced their customer service, and their owner seems to own other web hosting services such as Dot5 (which seems a bit suspicious to me), and Netfirms has some weird complaints (like that they sabotaged a customer’s control panel to prevent them from canceling before the refund time limit wore off) against them… so weird it makes them quite credible. To be fair, in this industry there are many competitors who may file false complaints.

I try to be fair, and pick one web host over the other each time I compare them, however in this case, I don’t feel I can recommend either of the web hosts. So for Netfirms vs Startlogic, I’ll have to say neither. Better stick with a consistently praised web hosting company such as Hostgator.