Just wanted to, share with all, a horrible experience we have had with this company. (Hostforweb)

Replies to support tickets were vague and not timely. Problems were never fixed. Our server was used daily for weeks to spam @aol emails. Eventually we were even ignored.

Here are a few specifics:

Was unable to send email to same domain. We tried emailing a project from admin@ to sales@ (of the same domain) and it never arrived. This prompted us to begin email testing and ALL FAILED. We were not able to send email from or to any resold domains. All resold domains could not email self either.

The support on the above issue was terrible. We were asked "whats the problem" about 6 times. Each time we replied with the problem in extreme detail. Each support team response was more vague than the last. Somehow 2 weeks later it started to work.

About a week later we kept receiving bounced back emails sent to unknown users at our main domain. The bounced back emails contained code. Upon attempting resend the email we noticed about 25 @aol.com email address included in the subject line.

We quickly filed a support ticket and were told that our server was being used to send spam! We were told it would be quickly resolved. We were also told that someone had exploited the formmail.pl script and this is why it was happening. We were further told that the script would be disabled and then fixed to prevent further spamming.

Before we could reply the support ticket was closed. It was never fixed. We STILL receive copies of the spammers spam coded, bounced back, emails. Our server is still being exploited. Many more tickets were filed and many emails were sent with NO REPLY AT ALL.

After the recent AOL lawsuits, I think we all agree that we do not want our email servers spamming the AOL giant. We all know that this WILL land someone in jail with heavy fines.

After a week of being ignored, and still having our email server exploited, we have chosen a different hosting company.

I am WARNING all who are thinking about choosing Hostforweb.com, DO NOT DO IT YOU WILL BE SORRY!

95host
Total Newbie

Registered: Jun 2003
Posts: 1

Mmmmm, nice.

Working for someone?
Any ticket #'s?

Attaching last month customer's reviews :

Reviewed by rebelo (194.65.14.76) on June 5, 2003
Domain Hosted: rebelodacruz.com
Overall Average: 4 (uptime = 4; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 4; price = 4)
Pros: They are faster than their own shadow in handling comercial/tec issues. :)
Cons: So far no cons. Keep up the good work.
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Reviewed by Mike Reed (216.98.90.11) on June 4, 2003
Domain Hosted: cbvfd.com
Overall Average: 4 (uptime = 4; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 4; price = 4)
Pros: Great control panel
Cons: No help files for powerful control panel
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Reviewed by daniel behrman (68.120.68.53) on June 3, 2003
Domain Hosted: dab.la
Overall Average: 4 (uptime = 4; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 4; price = 4)
Pros: multiple domains, unlimited email / db / others
Cons: none that i can think of
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Reviewed by Gasper Novak (213.161.8.245) on May 31, 2003
Domain Hosted: mobilne-melodije.net
Overall Average: 4 (uptime = 4; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 4; price = 4)
Pros: Huge ammount of bandwidth + diskspace, great customer support!
Cons: None
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Reviewed by Michael Kramar (195.66.196.180) on May 30, 2003
Domain Hosted: bee-intel.com
Overall Average: 4 (uptime = 4; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 4; price = 4)
Pros: N/A
Cons: N/A
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Reviewed by Brian Roberts (66.139.106.133) on May 30, 2003
Domain Hosted: 4freehits.com
Overall Average: 3.8 (uptime = 3; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 4; price = 4)
Pros: A genuine interest in customer satisfaction
Cons: none
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Reviewed by Tudor Oman (143.117.135.31) on May 30, 2003
Domain Hosted: citychurchbelfast.org
Overall Average: 4 (uptime = 4; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 4; price = 4)
Pros: Great servive - bend over backwards for you.
Cons: N/A
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Reviewed by KM (219.102.237.230) on May 25, 2003
Domain Hosted: idot.ws
Overall Average: 4 (uptime = 4; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 4; price = 4)
Pros: Good
Cons: The support staff is kind.
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Reviewed by Bill Stewart (192.65.17.24) on May 20, 2003
Domain Hosted: neonskygraphics.com
Overall Average: 4 (uptime = 4; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 4; price = 4)
Pros: Great Customer Service!
Cons: N/A
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Reviewed by Scott Selikoff (24.59.108.88) on May 11, 2003
Domain Hosted: selikoff.net
Overall Average: 4 (uptime = 4; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 4; price = 4)
Pros: Extremely reliable and fast Technical Support
Cons: N/A
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Reviewed by Brian Roberts (66.139.107.132) on May 10, 2003
Domain Hosted: 4freehits.com
Overall Average: 1.8 (uptime = 2; tech = 2; customer = 2; speed = 2; price = 1)
Pros: Cheap Host, No other industry builds such low expectation.
Cons: quick to block db, slow to reactivate, partial access & content is the norm. Not a bus. solution
Company Response: Hey ;) Cheap hosts do not have superb DUAL XEON RAID boxes and own racks. As we are big, we can offer low cost solutions. Well, when mysql overload such systems, do you think it's normal? We had to suspend it, because it's affect other clients.
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Reviewed by Alexandrea Meadows (68.49.124.170) on May 10, 2003
Domain Hosted: echosteria.net
Overall Average: 4 (uptime = 4; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 4; price = 4)
Pros: most reliable uptime rate I've had in a web hosting service.
Cons: minor glitches with their Horde email program.
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Reviewed by mich bubba (67.72.200.14) on May 3, 2003
Domain Hosted: regionfive.net
Overall Average: 3.4 (uptime = 4; tech = 3; customer = 3; speed = 3; price = 4)
Pros: Great bang for the buck, Always Up and so many free features that other places charge for.
Cons: N/A
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Reviewed by Nikolay Botev (63.203.239.186) on May 1, 2003
Domain Hosted: consumerdebtgroup.com
Overall Average: 3.8 (uptime = 4; tech = 4; customer = 4; speed = 3; price = 4)
Pros: all features you could think of at an unbeatable price, fast support, very good control panel
Cons: some features might not be immediately available (shared ssl, ssh access). beaten by fast support
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Not taking sides here - but ignore any host review/survey sites, most of them are fixed by the owner or the site.

Yes I am a newbie!

Apparently the above reply is from Hostforweb
themselves. I guess they figure since I am new
I am nothing.

Hey, I'm just a regular guy who had enough.
Its your money, waste it if you want to!

Want ticket#'s got PLENTY!
Heres a few:
Ticket ID: PSJ-93947
Ticket Key: 14c9b5

Ticket ID: OWM-87089
Ticket Key: 908627

Want links? We got them too!

Hey Matt,

Some sites may be fixed by the owners of the webhosting companies, but not all. It all depends on how they verify the people who post comments up there.

Like for example, some sites require email address verification to allow ratings of the hosts. Those, they gain more validiity of the comments compared to those that don't have those features. So...I won't exactly ignore all of those hosts that have ratings on them, because most owners cannot have more than 10 different email addresses to send the verifications to register and then post comments on their business.

Hello webhost95,

I am sorry that things didn't work out well for you at Hostforweb. However, there is few things that can be excused since it is not exactly their fault, but more of Cpanel itself. Reason is that I have admined quite a few servers with Cpanel on it with various hosting companies and I have seen some emails that is going to AOL started getting blocked because of the crackdown on hosts that don't have reverse IP implemented.

That created quite a havoc on quite a few servers and it took few days for AOL to get those sorted out to allow emails to resume. Usually...it would take like 2 days at most, but they took like nearly 9 days to get it resolved, which made it a pain in the ass.

Secondly, the formmail script, it have been fixed by Cpanel developers, but they created a bad side effect out of this. When spammers tries to exploit it, it acts like it did work, but it doesn't. But what it does create is that it bounces back to the domain owner's email account, which in turns sort of spams their mailbox. That I found is annoying as hell and I trying to get Cpanel to change that. It may appear it is spamming and went though the email server, but it never did because it is rejected outright, but it goes back to the owner's email box even they never sent it in the first place.

You will see that problem on nearly all Cpanel servers til the formmail problem is fixed on that issue.

Hello 95host,

I am sorry that things didn't work out well for you at Hostforweb. However, there is few things that can be excused since it is not exactly their fault, but more of Cpanel itself. Reason is that I have admined quite a few servers with Cpanel on it with various hosting companies and I have seen some emails that is going to AOL started getting blocked because of the crackdown on hosts that don't have reverse IP implemented.

That created quite a havoc on quite a few servers and it took few days for AOL to get those sorted out to allow emails to resume. Usually...it would take like 2 days at most, but they took like nearly 9 days to get it resolved, which made it a pain in the ass.

Secondly, the formmail script, it have been fixed by Cpanel developers, but they created a bad side effect out of this. When spammers tries to exploit it, it acts like it did work, but it doesn't. But what it does create is that it bounces back to the domain owner's email account, which in turns sort of spams their mailbox. That I found is annoying as hell and I trying to get Cpanel to change that. It may appear it is spamming and went though the email server, but it never did because it is rejected outright, but it goes back to the owner's email box even they never sent it in the first place.

You will see that problem on nearly all Cpanel servers til the formmail problem is fixed on that issue.

Ouch...double posts. Sorry about that. The WHT seems to be going up and down like on a roller coaster, about to leap off the tracks today.

Just wanted to update my beginning post of this thread about Hostforweb.com

Today I finally received a reply to my support ticket that I filled May 23rd. The ticket was lasted updated (by me) June 6th. The reply was:

>Hello,
>I will see what we can do to stop your bounced mail.
>Maybe the admin will know.
>Regards,
>Steve

This is after 3 weeks! And me explaining the problem to the 4-5 times already.

I am adding this because I find it so absurd that, not only has it been 3 weeks since the ticket was created, but I cancelled this account 3 DAYS AGO!

Shame on you Hostforweb!

All I can say is Host For Web has been a heck of a lot better service for a reasonable cost than our previous hosts. They did have some datacenter problems and so they moved over a few months time to a new datacenter. All was going great until the datacenter’s entire IP block got blacklisted by some spam blockers. It has taken HFW about a month to buy their own block of new “clean” IPs and get everything changed over. I was a bit disappointed about how long it took but it was a major change. I have never had a support ticket go more than 4 hours with no response and usually it is within the hour (and I have sent plenty of them). Uptime has been good, cost is very reasonable. I can’t complain too much. Read these forums and you will notice ALL hosts have problems. Some handle them better than others.

Read these forums and you will notice ALL hosts have problems. Some handle them better than others.

Agreed, what troubles me here is the fact that hostforweb was very quick to post implying that the thread starter had a hidden agenda and questioned his honesty. Once the thread starter gave the ticket #s which were asked of him...where did hostforweb go?

IMHO, the reviews were more than likely fraudulent.

Dave

If you ask me this below says it ALL about Hostforweb's customer service and attitude toward it clientèle!!!!!

First of all Lets insult our client by insinuating something due to his WHT post count:

Then ask who they are working for, insinuating that they are another host just here to flame Hostforwebs.

How truely PATHETIC customer service!!!!!!!!

PS- I removed your self advertising 'reviews' (isn't that against the rules). PS your attempt to post reviews to a unsattisified customer is the LAMEST thing I think I ever seen!!!

Your upset customers will not give 2 sh*t's about your happy clients. (even if those are real)

Originally posted by Max J.
95host
Total Newbie

Registered: Jun 2003
Posts: 1

Mmmmm, nice.

Working for someone?
Any ticket #'s?

Attaching last month customer's reviews :

Just wanted to add another VERY IMPORTANT factor...

As seen above I have had problems with Hostforweb.
I have since left their service. BUT there service hasn't
left me. I now receive SPAM at the email address I joined
Hostforweb with. Its our admin@ too!

I get about 10-15 emails a day that are PURE SPAM. How do
I know that this is Hostforweb's fault? Simple! I NEVER EVER
received a single spam letter until AFTER I cancelled my account.

Shame on you Hostforweb.com! SHAME ON YOU!!!!!!