Ever had bad experiences with a hosting company?

So, by bad host, I mean that the hosting service wasn't up to par to your standards, or you ran into a lot of trouble with them[lag issues, security issues, etc].

I know I can honestly I've had bad experiences with Hostgator because they've suspended and moved my server before without my buddy's permission, and Hostpolar because their security sucked and hackers were able to bruteforce themselves into customer accounts.

I got hacked because of a result of that, but we managed to get pass that.

How about you?

 

JustHost sucking us a lot. Down from last 2 days.

Our another site runs on Hostgator since 2009. Nice experience till now.

 

What happened with you and Hostgator? And Justhost(are they not reliable?)

 

Hostgator has been very good for us.

Justhost has suspended account for no reason without informing us. Their customer care simply sucks. Gonna ask refund and move to Hostgator.

 

I've had bad experiences in the past. I won't name any names (mainly because I can't remember them), but when I was first starting out online around 2005 I was sucked in by offers of massive amounts of space and bandwidth by new companies.

Needless to say they didn't last in the hosting world and my time with those kind of hosts was riddled with downtime. Due to overselling and inexperienced server management.

 

I'm in the same boat as @benjaminp here,

When I started making websites back in about 05 as well I jumped around from host to host every other month.
I then found a good one and stuck with them a few years, then a buddy of mine opened up a hosting site so I moved everything over to him and have been happy ever since.

I can't remember the old host that I tried, I'm sure if you search my name at WHT you'll see my threads and questions to those host on that forum

 

Ahem, let's see: qualityhostonline.com - horrible, resellerzoom.com - horrible, hostgator.com - horrible for an active forum, otherwise OK and a couple of Romanian hosts. When you're in the business for 10 years, there's gonna be some 'friction'

 

I've burned through a lot of shared hosts. Dreamhost, 1&1, GoDaddy, Hostgator, I think I've had an account at just about everyone of the major hosts. All got left behind for one reason or another. Most likely downtime or crappy support.

Overall I've been pretty happy with my VPS hosts. ServInt got my gizzard when I cancelled them; buried in their TOS is a 30 day notice requirement. They tried to bill me for an extra month, I never paid them. EFF that I never heard of that.

Wired Tree irked me with lack of communication. I asked about upgrading support said they would kick the ticket to billing. Billing never got the ticket so I never got an answer..Then we had downtime and communication was crappy so I moved to another provider. Now I cannot get a refund for the 2 weeks that my server is just sitting there doing nothing.

 

I've had bad experiences on hostgator. Lot of downtimes and such. I asked to be moved onto a less busy server and they refused to do that for me. (I guess actually running a hosting company and doing the work is too much for some people?) So i moved away from hostgator onto Hawkhost and haven't looked back. Had nothing but great experiences with Hawk so far. Been with them for 2 years and counting.

 

You said it best right there. Hostgator has the resources for big websites, but they don't like it when you start using up too many resources on their dedicated servers or shared/vps environments. They've suspended my forum a few times before so I don't even look twice when someone mentions them for hosting. Its ridiculous.

@DarkGizmo You were on a shared host right? They should of done that for you. Idiots.

 

Yes, I put in a complaint that the server speeds were slow/server load was always high, and they just ignored me and shrugged it off. Then to top it all off, they removed me from their moderation team and suspended my account for no reason

JustHost have always been slow for me, and their website chat bot thing always annoys me when you try and leave their site, so don't get conned into buying because they are going to give you a "special discount"

HostGator because they tried selling me something that I didn't want or need claiming that their VPS plans would not be what I want and that it could only support 2 or 3 sites before going into a high server load and that I needed a dedicated server...

 

Yeah man I was on shared. I'm on shared now with Hawkhost and they don't oversell like Hostgator does. Very rarely do we get any downtimes and when we do, they literally last 10 minutes at the most. Usually it's just a couple of minutes though.

 

I did have a bad host at one time. To be honest, I cannot even remember the name of the company. It was the first host I had ever had. They seemed to have too much downtime. They also had poor and slow to respond customer service.

 

Ouch. That kinda sucks. Gotta have love hosts like that and they somehow remain in business with crappy practices like that.

 

Nothing too major. A previous host started having a lot of downtime though, thankfully I was about to move the site anyway.

 

You get what you pay for. I tried to cheap out once with a host I found on web hosting forum. It just some guy reselling and had a page made up to look like a webhosting company. It was a terrible experience. My sites were down more than they were up.

 

Not all the time though, you can pay well for good hosting - has good reviews, and the company just sucks, has lag issues, bad support, etc.

 

With the cheap places yeah of course I have had bad experiences with them.
@cpvr it's probably best to pick out a good host that will also provide you with the internet when you have moved out of the family home and are in with your own family.
The best one I went with was westnet hosting which is my internet provider over here in Australia.
If you want just a host give this place a try http://www.oxxus.net they are cheap and are fantastic.

 

I know I have a host that will still provide with hosting if I got my own place. I've been with Knownhost for almost a year now.

 

Most of my bad hosting experiences aren't mine personally, but when I do private vB server optimisation consult with clients of mine and their bad web hosts. Sometimes on behalf of clients I deal with their web hosts/tech support.

As I stated elsewhere http://admin-talk.com/threads/2208/page-2#post-47087, 2 web hosts to stay away from are 100tb.com and softlayer.com/theplanet.com. With these 2 you can literally start pulling out your own hair dealing with their tech support - especially when server related things go wrong and you need their help i.e. failed hard drives, server migrations, upgrades, etc