Hello all,

I would like to express my utmost disappointment with CWI Hosting for its hosting services. For a start, my website that was hosted with them from May 15, 2001 with the URL http://www.hostfrontier.com.
Sometime last week from 19 November 2001 to 22 November 2001, CWI suspended my account WITHOUT even having the decency to send me an email. I was a tad surprised when I got a 'access denied' error when I tried to access my homepage.
Worse still, the site actually hosted my wedding information, like my wedding photos, RSVP guestlists, etc. The actual wedding ceremony was to be held on Saturday, 24 November 2001. So, imagine my surprise when some of my relatives and friends were not able to retrieve information about the wedding.
I emailed them about 11.30pm +0800 GMT on 23 November 2001, and got the following response:

From: JT
In Response To Ticket #2342
Subject: Forbidden
New Status: Closed
---------------------------------------------
Hi Pak Tjun,

The following is a time line of your support request. My
most recent response is at the top.

Thanks,
JT
CWI Support Team
www.cwisupportcenter.com - Online Support Center
www.cwihosting.com

---------------------------------------------
-------------- Latest Response --------------
---------------------------------------------
[Tech: JT] 11/22/2001 09:51 AM
<< Status: Closed >>
-----------------------------
Your site has been suspended due to resource usage by your
website. Your java scripts, JSP's etc are using far too much CPU
time and memory resources. Because of this your site is causing
latency and other problems on the server. It is because of this
that we request that you move to a dedicated server or move to
a new host. If you feel this is incorrect, please email
cto@cwihosting.com.

This was it. No further explaination whatsoever. They did not even give me a opportunity to fix the situation. Looking back I believe that the cause of it may be due to my not closing some database connections or something like that. But I believe that it could have been resonably resolved. However, I was only given two ultimatums:

Hello Chin:

Unfortunately I am unable to unsuspend your account due to its impact on the server. I am sorry that you do not feel that there is any problem with your scripting, however this is not unusual to receive when a site is suspended. We have had multitudes of people that are suspended over time where we have allowed a grace period to test the site again and this ends up causing larger load problems. Therefore you will need to close your account or move your site to a dedicated server. I am sorry it these two options sound harsh, however they are your ONLY options for your domain. Please let me know what you choose, otherwise within 48 hours your account will be deleted by default.

Sincerely

Jason Taylor
CWI

Having been with them for the past 6 months or so, I must admit that their tech support need much improvement. There were instances that I had to resolve some issues myself as the tech guys kepy on saying nothing was wrong when something obviously was. Some of the responses were also quite rude and in bad taste.

However, I must confess that the CEO, Jason, has agreed to credit the unused credits back into my account (as I signed up for a year) within 15 days and only time will tell if this will come to past. Also, Jason had gracefully backed-up my data and allowed me to download them in a tar file.

If things were to have proceeded for the better, I would have been quite satisfied with CWI, reason being I believe that they are improving. However, due to the current circumstances, I will have to move on.

Thanks and regards to all,
Pak Tjun

Originally posted by chinpakt
Worse still, the site actually hosted my wedding information, like my wedding photos, RSVP guestlists, etc.

First of all, we would like to contratulate you and you life partner. We hope life brings all kinds of happiness and great adventure to you.

Ok, my questions about your website is, were you only hosting your wedding information or were you running a popular website with the wedding information in a sub directory?

Originally posted by Mr. Amazon

Ok, my questions about your website is, were you only hosting your wedding information or were you running a popular website with the wedding information in a sub directory?

That is what it sounds like to me. Unless he built a castle of a site for his wedding.

Originally posted by Mr. Amazon


First of all, we would like to contratulate you and you life partner. We hope life brings all kinds of happiness and great adventure to you.

Ok, my questions about your website is, were you only hosting your wedding information or were you running a popular website with the wedding information in a sub directory?


I actually host three things, my wedding site, being the main site, then I have a squash site and a Church prayer site.

From the tar that I downloaded, I looked at the webalizer logs and the hits were less that 200 in the whole of November...
:confused:

My wedding site is is personal site. Not one that promotes anything for sale, etc. As for my squash site, I did it for free, as a hobby for my squash club, that holds only about 70 members. Then as for the prayer page, I only say 3 postings for the past 6 months...;)

Thus, I really don't think that it is due to hits. As mentioned, I was not given a chance to rectify the matter, which I would sincerely have.

Thanks and regards to all,
Pak Tjun

200 hits all month, and there was a resource problem hanh? They definitely should have tried to figure out what the problem was and corrected it instead of just shutting down your site. Of course they might argue that it's not their job to diagnose your web programming.

Originally posted by chinpakt
...There were instances that I had to resolve some issues myself as the tech guys kepy on saying nothing was wrong when something obviously was. Some of the responses were also quite rude and in bad taste.


They shouldn't have been rude, but this possibly sounds bad on your part? If it was a problem that you were able to resolve on your own, then wouldn't that make it a problem that was on your end?

I agree they shouldn't have been rude and just cancled your account. Anytime you termiate or suspend a account you should email the client and make them be aware of that so they can get any files or move to a host to cover downtime. I think you should move on away from them since that is your only choice. I hope you find a good host. That at least respects you .

Most terms of service allow your site to be taken down without any warning.

With that said, I only see one thing the hosting company did wrong ... no prior notice. It's just the right thing to do.

Most of the resource issues will been seen ahead of time if monitoring is being done. If monitoring is not done issues will be seen when someone complains or something happens.

If you're not monitoring your systems then the issue will actually appear lagrer than it is because you don't have an adequate baseline.

The hosting company handled things better than I expected after their initial mistake. They offered to credit his charge and they provided a backup for him. Most hosting companies won't do that.

Originally posted by bitserve
200 hits all month, and there was a resource problem hanh? They definitely should have tried to figure out what the problem was and corrected it instead of just shutting down your site. Of course they might argue that it's not their job to diagnose your web programming.



They shouldn't have been rude, but this possibly sounds bad on your part? If it was a problem that you were able to resolve on your own, then wouldn't that make it a problem that was on your end?

I agree that with you that if there was a problem that I was able to resolve on my own, I should try. But allow me to explain further. On one instance, CWI upgraded the jdk to 1.3.x. However the upgrade was not carried out correctly, and I had to check and verify that this was indeed the problem was indeed due to the installation and reported it to them. I believe that as a hosting company, these kind of issues should be invincible to us. We pay for these kind of services. Also, another instance that I had to proactively solve my own problem. Due to the constant downtime of the servers at CWI, my site remained down even after the servers were brought up. And I had to initially manually start the server. After a few times of this hassle, I decided to run a cron job to poll and start the web instance if it was down. I believe that on CWI's part, they could have run our start scripts or something like that after a reboot.

I would consider that a classic example of HORRIBLE customer service. Companies like that shouldn't be allowed to stay in business. ;) I can only imagine how I'd feel if MCI called and said "You're making too many long distance phone calls - we have to cut you off." Or what if DirecTV cancelled my service due to me ordering too many PPV movies? Thats just crazy. :D

- My 2 Cents

Originally posted by pgrote
With that said, I only see one thing the hosting company did wrong ... no prior notice. It's just the right thing to do.


I agree. You should always notify the hosting client about what is causing the problems. :cool:


Most of the resource issues will been seen ahead of time if monitoring is being done. If monitoring is not done issues will be seen when someone complains or something happens.


If monitoring was done. Then, i guess you could have been notified in advance and then taken the script causing the problems off. Hrmm...guess that was not the case. :(



The hosting company handled things better than I expected after their initial mistake. They offered to credit his charge and they provided a backup for him. Most hosting companies won't do that.


True. At least they offered to credit his charge and provided a backup for him. Seems like the notice issue was the only thing that could have been better handled. Oh...and if they were rude :eek: when you requested support, then that's a no no on their part.

best wishes on your next host :)

i'm not surprised. i'm an ex-CWI customer and i found them to be a horrible host (terrible support and loads of downtime)

be warned - i've had a discussion with CWI on this forum before about my site being down everyday (for 12 hours) and you can't win. they lie through their teeth and have an answer for everything so my advice is if they come here looking for a fight don't bother participating...

Guys,

CWI prices reflect them not fully understanding java hosting..

We have been doing java hosting and ONLY put java hosting accounts on these servers becauseof the server load and memory usage these animals use.

Thats why we use dual cpu systems with at least 2GB of ram...

;-)

Java hosting is a different animal and looking at their prices, there is now way they can have a hosting enviroment that you need.

What I would have done is move you to another server with you alone and put smaller sites in that server.

Well I am not CWI - I had experiences with them and was not happy with them, and when they refund you they do not refund everything, maybe just half, like they did to me.

Originally posted by en2
i'm not surprised. i'm an ex-CWI customer and i found them to be a horrible host (terrible support and loads of downtime)

be warned - i've had a discussion with CWI on this forum before about my site being down everyday (for 12 hours) and you can't win. they lie through their teeth and have an answer for everything so my advice is if they come here looking for a fight don't bother participating...

Doesn't it say somewhere in their site 100% uptime guaranteed or they will fully refund you all your money. I swear I read that a while back. And I agree with you 150%

Chinpakt, I’m sincerely sorry for the timing of these events, and also wish you and your partner the best.

The user En has something bad to say every time someone says anything about cwihosting, maybe he is still sore from being suspended himself using all his allotted bandwidth, and not requesting more beforehand. This is what, nearly a year ago now? You can do a search your self, its so blatant, many threads where closed after his same ole same ole from (EN En2). We have had many changes from then as well and I am not claiming we are perfect then or now, but absolutely not liars and absolutely continually evolving into a greater hosting company through experience and feedback.

Our official policy is we are not required to send prior warning if the site is effecting the server as a whole, this allows that one site to be suspended immediately to allow others to function properly as every minute counts, instead of trying to make contact first while the server is fighting it. However we do send pre-warning whenever we can, which is for most cases. Immediate suspending are only on severe case, as in, if we left it up, wouldn’t do any good to anyone to have a server that is on the verge of crashing anyhow.

As far as JSP, we are the first company to use the JVM Resin by Caucho for virtual hosting applications as our tech staff and CTO actually made it possible for resin to be used as such with modifications and can be seen in their change log. We know and fully understand java hosting. I’m guessing myBIZ is thinking our prices are too low to come to the conclusion we don’t. Our prices are good because we can. We considered charging more, however decided to stick with not increasing any plan prices, only increasing features, and offering new plans all together when that is not possible for nearly 5 years.

We respect opinions and intelligent corrective criticism on this forum. We have been in business this long (5 years) because we continually adapt to what the majority of our market wants, and listen when something we can improve is pointed out.

firstly let me say i used to use the username en but someone posted some crap here under that name (i know the person it was supposed to be a joke) so i no longer use that login...

i'm not gonna get into an argument with CWI (as i say u can't win), but i'll briefly tell you what my problem was -

1. my website was down for 12 HOURS EVERY DAY
2. their support never claimed responsibility for their problems
3. they suspended my account without telling me (would not let me access my files etc.) so i closed my account

in my previous posts cwi claim none of the above problems ever happened.

and just to prove that i'm not just some psycho who hates his hosts, i currently use wizardshosting, sexy-hosting and dsvr. i am very happy with all three.

:rolleyes: Your thing is about a year ago, and has nothing to do with this, or today. Get over it En2. We should make a tribute to you, and repost all your comments to every cwi post so no one is sure to miss it, as that is your goal, which is fine by us, as people see through it :D Its always the same news with you. You were hosted until you ran out of bandwidth, your other claims are exaggerations, none the less you were not happy and that has long been understood here for a long time now.

Year later En, we are still here because ...most people, and easily 99% of our clients are more than satisfied. We sell more from word of mouth than any other one source. From now on, when we post, or are being posted on, I will note how your comments if not already there, are on their way and what they will say, which will be no surprise;)

i'm exaggerating? search through previous posts and you will see other people had the same problems.

oh and while you're at it, see if you can find any positive posts about CWI. good luck!

the problem i have with your company is that you are so arrogant - you won't admit that your company used to have major downtime. i accept that maybe things have improved now, but when you try to pretend that your past reliability was great (even though it wasn't) you just sound like a bunch of amateurs...

reply away this is my final comment in this thread

My account has been suspended. After I sent a support ticket, I received the same letter from CWIHosting.

[Tech: JT] 12/10/2001 04:53 PM
« Status: Closed »
-----------------------------
Your account has been suspended due to the fact that your JSP scripts were overrunning the machine, particularly search.jsp. Because of this a shared server is not meant for your account as it is causing severe latency. We believe that your account would be better off on a dedicated server. Therefore you should move your account to a dedicated server or move to a new host.
-----------------------------
......


I ordered the $30 plan with 1.2G space, 30G band width and most importantly the JSP support. My site is as simple as that only contains an index.html and 2 .jsp files.

I logged every request to my JSP program that shows no more than 5 hits per minute. CWIHosting just cannot handle it.

Although I may get my first month money back, I lost the setup fee within 10 days.

yysun

<<Removed: Rudeness will not be tolerated>>

Originally posted by CWIhosting
:rolleyes: Your thing is about a year ago, and has nothing to do with this, or today. Get over it En2. We should make a tribute to you, and repost all your comments to every cwi post so no one is sure to miss it, as that is your goal, which is fine by us, as people see through it :D Its always the same news with you. You were hosted until you ran out of bandwidth, your other claims are exaggerations, none the less you were not happy and that has long been understood here for a long time now.

Year later En, we are still here because ...most people, and easily 99% of our clients are more than satisfied. We sell more from word of mouth than any other one source. From now on, when we post, or are being posted on, I will note how your comments if not already there, are on their way and what they will say, which will be no surprise;)

:rolleyes: RIGHT! You shouldn't throw out false statments once again. There is a praise right here on web hosting talk! Obvious we are one of the favorite topics here and forums tend to bring up more negative things in general. You bringing several old anti CWI posts to the top again at the same time just show’s your true intentions.

“No reply. Ok, I thought, if they are so unpolite, I give up. I found an excellent hosting, cwihosting.com (and I use it now and I am happy).” –user Mayevski

You saying we sucked a year ago, and still sucks shows your intelligence as well as your improper and disrespectful opening lines when you do not know me. Not even En made it personal by name calling, your really sad and other forum members will see this. Name calling, come on now!

We wouldn't still be here a year later as one of the fastest growing privately held host with extremely high retention rates. I would love to invite you and the likes to our offices where you can see rows and rows of posted letters of praises for our clients! When you help thousands, I'm not saying 100% will he 100% happy and that we NEVER had any problems, though honestly most are very happy and easily over 90%. You needed a server and it’s obvious you can hide and twist it all you want. What are you using now again?

Though I shouldn’t even bother, here you go, and your idea on having our customers post here is not a bad one, however we don’t post here to scrape sales or spend a lot of time here, only to help others when we can, and commit with honest response when this company is talked about.

How about these, and trust me, I can keep posting them tell your bored to death or admit your last comments were very wrong, from emails, on the web and various sites in almost endless suppy and all from real customers:

mailto:webguru@surusa.com
Milton
65.81.5.228

Rating: 10

I've been with CWI for almost a year now. So far so good.Tech support is good & customer service is great (thanx Tina) .Because of the great service I decided to open another account with CWI :)Keep it up CWI.

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THESE GUYS TALK THE JAVA TALK & WALK THE JAVA WALK

mailto:dave@dcddesigns.com
DC Dalton
63.160.43.20

Rating: 10

I recently signed with this company to build my first 100% Java Servlet site. In my opinion I couldnt have made a better choice. Having never built anything of this magnitude & never built a servlet site I was bound to make stupid mistakes. These folks patience with a newbie Servlet developer is amazing. Not only did they gladdly point me in the right direction for info but responded quickly to all (way too many) tech support questions. They even went so far as to look at one of my servlets to find my stupid mistake that blew it up. They always answer tech support emails. Their prices are also truely scarey cheap! The GUI interface they have for database interaction makes that god awful db administration a real breeze. As far as Im concerned there is no better deal out there!

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Simply the best

mailto:gotoheels@hotmail.com
Georges Murray
209.239.81.6

Rating: 10

From experience I'd like to say that these people are just perfect. I have had a very strange problem caused by my ISP routers. CW helped me answering my questions during not more than an hour. they knew that they were not the cause of the problem and told me so but they still helped until I was convinced and I talked to my ISP and solved it. I am using their servers since a few months and I am fully satisfied

Yes En2, “1. my website was down for 12 HOURS EVERY DAY” is a gross exaggeration. There are no other posts supporting that, and we were never down 12 hours every day for any number of days. I admit you may have had an outage and you were suspended by CWI, but nothing close to the above.

yysun, hits are not the only reason. Bad scripts can casue big problems. If your account was well within the 30 days, and despite a violation, I can get you a full refund, email sales@cwihosting.com