ADDR doesn't get a lot of money from me. I pay only 14.95 a month for 200MB of space and 6 gig transfer. All in all a pretty basic account. For my small investment, I get the most reliable uptime out there. They are always up and I've had them for almost a year. I have never had a problem with downtime (excepting a couple 1-2 minute blips with my email).

I figure you are probably thinking, so what, lots of hosts are reliable. I agree with you, but what I find that is lacking in most hosting packages, I get here. Customer service and *Technical Support*

ADDR has 24/7 technical support... that's there!!! And you can actually talk to a person instead of an online form field. You can't imagine my surprise when I called tech support expecting leave a message, and got a "Hello"

To top it off, not only are they there, but they are friendly, and great for folks who aren't webmaster gurus. They go *beyond* the call of duty when it comes to support too. Most webhosts will tell you that it's not their fault if your stupid and you can figure out how to configure your watchamabob on your own. Six or so months ago I learned how to use Unix. I called to ask for help with my password protection and was told that I could use my shell account to set it up. When I said I didn't know how, the support tech spent 2 hours on the phone teaching me Unix commands, and sharing online resources with me. Not just password protection either but creating directories, using email, etc... Oh and by the way, realizing that the call would be lengthy he gave me a 1 800 number and his extension for me to call right back to save on my phone bill.

Finally, what is making me gush... is that I also run a larger site hosted by CQHost. I've got a love hate relationship with my account. It's got all space and the features I need and then some, but the technical support is zero. They won't answer you for weeks when you have a problem (and that is if they bother to answer you at all) I've submitted numerous tickets to have my shell account access fixed (I use Unix religiously now *cough*) and it's been over a month with nothing. My site was down last month for over 19 hours and I still have yet to receive a response on my request that they honor their "uptime guarantee" I gave up trying to pretend that my $108 3 month contract with them meant that they would consider me worthy of responding to.

Recently, I have gotten a response from them, but nothing regarding my trouble tickets. I was told to move an article off of my site or have my services cancelled. I've had the terms of service for a club that I run for my large collective site challenged. And now I'm battling for copyright on an article that I paid for. Now honestly, I can only fight so much. I don't have the money to take this court, but I will fight for my copyright and for the validity of my terms of service until I can't afford to anymore. I have written documentation acknowledging my copyright, the person who I am disputing this with has the power of harassment. CQHost recently told me to move the file off of my server because, and this is a direct quotation: "We are just tired by the number of complaints (and the waste of time) received for 2 months." They cited their policy enabled them to cancel my account for any reason at any time and refund me a pro-rated fee (if they wanted to refund me at all) and told me on the weekend to move the file or be cancelled by Monday. I moved the file to a personal server, and pretty much shut down my site as it is a collective site and basically CQHost's actions invalidated my TOS and left me open to being ripped off by anyone (remember I paid for the article). Although I begrudgingly acknowledge that they did back me for those two months (or else they ignored the person's emails like they did mine), telling me they were "tired" told me basically what I'd suspected for a while - my money is not good enough for them to care.

Oddly enough, the person who made these claims saw that the article was still up and immediately contacted ADDR (she's visited my other site) to start the whole process again. She didn't know that article was being hosted on a private server. ADDR shut down my account. I had no clue until I went to check my email. I contacted them and they responded right away. Then by telephone conversation, I explained to them that I wasn't remote hosting that article on the account, and they actually apologized to me, stating that they had made a mistake by putting my account on hold @_@ <--that is my very surprised look. They offered to hear me out about the copyright dispute. I immediately sent them all of my documentation, including my TOS, a copy of her own acknowledgement of them, and a copy of her written consent to write articles 'at' my site and 'for' my site as her part of the agreement, wherein she was paid in full and then some. And guess what! They immediately sent her an email and me an email stating that they don't randomly shut down their clients sites based on unfounded accusations, and that if this person had a valid complaint, she was welcome to have the courts send a notarized decree to remove the article. They also reinforced my terms of service by sending her own written acknowledgement of them back to her!!!! Finally, they warned her that until she furnished the legal documentation backing her dispute, any other emails would be considered as spam and they would take that up with her ISP.

In conclusion, I don't know whether I'm going to win my copyright battle, and I don't care. I have a good --no-- *great* webhost. Even if I don't get to keep what I paid for as far as the article goes; even if I am not getting what I paid for as far as my services with CQHost go (I'm sure you realize that this will be the last contract term I have with them); I did get what I paid for and then some with ADDR. I got and continue to get a lot *more* than what I paid for, and that makes up for everything. I don't feel like "the little guy" anymore.

No, I don't work for this company. I really am a paying customer. I'm in the middle of switching domain names for my services, I use them as small dumping or idea ground and put my baby websites there. [link removed - I ain't doin' no spammin' ] In 24-48 hours, my domain will change from mxxxxx.net to exxxxxx.net but it will be the same account. This is a true story. ADDR is fast, reliable, and most importantly cares about it's customers.

If you have a small website and only need 200MB of space and 6 Gig of transfer, I recommend ADDR. Granted every experience will be different, and most of the time folks won't write about a host unless they hate the host. Here is a positive story of webhosting of the highest caliber. Please consider it when you are shopping around.

http://www.addr.com

sincerely,
ochiba

(a satisfied beyond belief customer)

ps. Oh about the tech support by phone. Recently they added a really annoying automated voice that tells you they are experiencing a blah blah blah wait time. Then after 3 times of telling you that it hangs up on you. Don't be discouraged (although I was at first), it means that all the tech support is on the phone. Since they take their time with customers, you'd have a long wait and they are trying to prevent that. Don't call during busy hours and you won't get that message. If you email them, they *will* respond to you within 24 hours.

Well I guess thanks for you opinion but telling the truth - on this board a positive review of a company from a totally new WHT user means close to nothing. Especially when it is cluttered with lines looking like they come direct from marketering division:

"To top it off, not only are they there, but they are friendly, and great for folks who aren't webmaster gurus. They go *beyond* the call of duty when it comes to support too "

I might be wrong about you ochiba and I hope I am but to gain anything here you would better build up a little rep here, replying to questions before.

Yup...that post sure does look like a Marketing 101 assignment. Love that :spam:

Heck, I'll give a big thumbs up to a positive post!

Remember, ochiba, don't let the bastards get you down. People are understandably cynical around here, but the more you post, the stronger your sentiments become. Welcome to the boards.

Yeah, ADDR are great. I love the way I used to contact support and it would only take 2 weeks for a reply.

Originally posted by kmh
Heck, I'll give a big thumbs up to a positive post!

Remember, ochiba, don't let the bastards get you down. People are understandably cynical around here, but the more you post, the stronger your sentiments become. Welcome to the boards.

Hey,did kmh just call me a bastard? Now is that a very nice thing to say? ;)

Originally posted by greggish


Hey,did kmh just call me a bastard? Now is that a very nice thing to say? ;)

Hmm... I guess that could have been phrased better. ;)

Originally posted by kmh

Hmm... I guess that could have been phrased better. ;)

Too late for apologies, you have soiled his reputation...toi the Thunderdome with both of you!!!

:D :D

I only wanted to share a positive experience since I've had so many bad experiences. It said on this forum that this was a place to share *both* positive and negative experiences. I chose to make my first post a positive one. If you'd like I could rag on CQHost, or spit out rants on the evil hosting of LiquidWeb.com, or about the terrible support at InternetPlanners.com, or the nightmare host that is EZ-Webhosting, and on and on and on... I'm with a host that I can barely stand, but at least my website doesn't go down every two seconds like at LiquidWeb (although my 19 hour down time story is one that I've considered posting).

Why is it when someone rants about a webhost they are just being a justified angry customer, and when someone gushes about a webhost they aren't a satisfied customer but a marketing agent? For the record, I was an English major... I suck at all things business related.

I don't know if you guys will ever respect my opinions as I'm not a guru webmaster, nor do I care. I was just hoping that folks would read my personal experience and perhaps help anyone who wanted to find a host. I'm going to tell everyone I know about my good experience.

If I can edit my post I'll remove any reference to links. So that even when my domains finish swapping and my sites all come back up, no one will think that I'm making up some crazy story to get people to visit my site (I don't run any commercial sites by the way).

For the person who said they didn't get a response for weeks from ADDR, look I feel your pain. I'm living that right now with CQHost. I'm sure some customer at CQHost will turn around and say CQHost is the best thing since peanut butter and chocolate. And while I'll swear that their support team are minions for the anti-christ, I'll have to acknowledge that what the other customer says might be true. Every experience is different. I'd tell you to try them again but that's silly cuz if anyone told me to go back to one of my old hosts, I'd laugh at them.

Ummm... for the person who called my post spam: trust me, if I wanted to spam you I would have saved a few hundred words --kay now? Buh-bye.

ochiba
(still a satisfied customer no matter how much some jaded forum posters try to pee on her parade)

Again, ADDR rocks! So there.

I give you an A-

Originally posted by timbo
Yeah, ADDR are great. I love the way I used to contact support and it would only take 2 weeks for a reply.


How about loosing the CC database to an FXP group?

Originally posted by timbo
Yeah, ADDR are great. I love the way I used to contact support and it would only take 2 weeks for a reply.

2 weeks? I've had 2 emails so far go unanswered since December. Not that I care (I figured it out on my own) but sheesh.

I'm glad you're happy ochiba, because we sure as heck aren't.


ps. Oh about the tech support by phone. Recently they added a really annoying automated voice that tells you they are experiencing a blah blah blah wait time. Then after 3 times of telling you that it hangs up on you. Don't be discouraged (although I was at first), it means that all the tech support is on the phone. Since they take their time with customers, you'd have a long wait and they are trying to prevent that. Don't call during busy hours and you won't get that message. If you email them, they *will* respond to you within 24 hours.

"Busy hours"? When would you imply they are 'busiest'? I've tried calling at 7:30AM EST and as late as 7PM EST (and all times inbetween) with the exact same recording that you suggest. Not only that, but it is a TOLL CALL. What ever happened to toll-free (e.g. 800-number) support lines?

Also, if my website is down I certainly don't expect them to wait up to 24 hours to reply via email! (For the record, I think one or two out of my emails that I have sent were received by me within 24 hours).

I don't mean to rag on you, but to paint them like that is, with my experience, not true.

Now, I'm sure a lot of "satisfaction" is relative -- however when there exist distinct gripes, e.g.:
Toll call for technical support
Massively overloaded technical support, both phone and e-mail
Hidden fees -- each domain you register past the first one will cost you $5/mo!! So if you have 3 domains that is an extra $10/mo tacked on for a very minor and light issue. I've run my own DNS so I can say it's fairly trivial to add a new domain to their DNS servers.. certainly nothing of the $5/mo. per domain. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by MattR

"Busy hours"? When would you imply they are 'busiest'? I've tried calling at 7:30AM EST and as late as 7PM EST (and all times inbetween) with the exact same recording that you suggest. Not only that, but it is a TOLL CALL. What ever happened to toll-free (e.g. 800-number) support lines?


While I think most of your complaints are valid, and certainly can sympathize with the bad service you have gotten. As far as toll free tech support, I have to say, "Duhhh!". Last time I checked addr.com's plans ranged from $8-$15, unless something has changed it damned near impossible for them to provide toll free support and still make a profit with those prices. If you want toll free support, you are probably going to have to pay $25+ for a basic account.

Again, I am not trying to excuse the poor service you may hav experienced with addr.com, there is never any excuse for that, but you also need to set your expectations properly -- ie you get what you pay for.

I live on the West Coast, and I usually call around 9-10 pm or later (sometimes at 1-2 am depending when I am doing site updates), so maybe off peak hours are easier for me to handle. Also, in all honesty I rarely call them at all. I think I've only called them about 4 times during my entire service, and every single time has been a positive experience. Nor do I email them a lot either. Again, I don't need to because I don't have down time problems. I do get email blips occassionally, and I always check my site to see if it's down, by the time I check my site to see if it's down (to find that it's up) my email is working. I can't explain what those blips are, but for 14.95 a month I can live with a 1 minute email blip every once in a while.

Also, I've worked in tech support for an ISP and I can tell you that the peak hours were usually around 5:30 to 8 pm wherein people would have to wait for hours and hours. Customers were on hold for hours (no joke) and since most of the tech support folks were newbies or contractors (high turnover ^^;) they would hang up on the customer on accident and send them back into circulation. At this company during peak hours in the call center there were barely enough workstations to sit at with 50-100 support techs (I never counted so don't quote me) and again, folks would have to wait for hours. This was a major broadband internet service. I seriously don't think that ADDR has as much tech support as we did, and again from my experience they practice customer service *not* call turnover.

I think you have to remember that while your getting that message someone else is getting their issues resolved.


Lastly a blanket statement, ummm... *many* webhosts use a toll number. When you call ask for the toll free number, it doesn't hurt. And even if a company doesn't have a toll free number, at least they offer phone support. Lately all the companies I see are email or trouble ticket only and we all know how the evil internet monster likes to gobble up all of our hosting complaints.

For the record I hate that answering machine thingy too. When I first heard it I thought it was a scam, and I emailed asking if it was (which I received a reply less than 24 hrs later that said no).

^_^

ochiba

Originally posted by uuallan
While I think most of your complaints are valid, and certainly can sympathize with the bad service you have gotten. As far as toll free tech support, I have to say, "Duhhh!". Last time I checked addr.com's plans ranged from $8-$15, unless something has changed it damned near impossible for them to provide toll free support and still make a profit with those prices. If you want toll free support, you are probably going to have to pay $25+ for a basic account.

We are paying $35 (give or take) per month for their 'gold' package + Miva Merchant (the one with the shipping cart).

Personally, I've only been with three other hosts, RackSpace ($~3,000+/mo.), DialToneInternet, and Verio ($120/mo). Both of them have 24/7 800 service and I'm immediately connected with a tech when I call. I think Verio has an 800 number in which you have to wade through menus, I had to call them only once I think and that was last summer. Then again, we pay several thousand dollars a month to them so I guess it is economics of scale as you suggest. :(

Originally posted by uuallan
Again, I am not trying to excuse the poor service you may hav experienced with addr.com, there is never any excuse for that, but you also need to set your expectations properly -- ie you get what you pay for.

I understand completely -- I'm just used to different style of business from my webhost. :( Of course, Verio, DTI, RackSpace, etc. all have big money accounts who either have many dedicated servers or co-loc in their facilities and pay a LOT of money, so perhaps they can afford it a bit more.

I was just thinking 800 numbers for tech support were the norm, not the exception. I guess I can't fault ADDR for that. :(

Originally posted by ochiba
I live on the West Coast, and I usually call around 9-10 pm or later (sometimes at 1-2 am depending when I am doing site updates)

That's understandable. My fears are, though, that the site goes down for whatever reason at 2PM. If they don't know about it (I don't know how their monitoring works) then I could have potentially a long amount of downtime. :(


Originally posted by ochiba
Also, I've worked in tech support for an ISP and I can tell you that the peak hours were usually around 5:30 to 8 pm wherein people would have to wait for hours and hours. Customers were on hold for hours (no joke) and since most of the tech support folks were newbies or contractors (high turnover ^^;) ...This was a major broadband internet service. I seriously don't think that ADDR has as much tech support as we did, and again from my experience they practice customer service *not* call turnover.

Cool -- which company? I worked for BellSouth.net doing tech support for about a year. Boy was that hell! :) I never really sat through our menus but I did know that customers would never be dropped from the system (like ADDRs does after 3 repeats of the message). They just sit there for a long time "in queue" as we called it. On a big board we'd have the number of calls in queue, how long they had been there, etc. I don't think I ever saw a call sit there more than 10-15 minutes.

Originally posted by ochiba
For the record I hate that answering machine thingy too. When I first heard it I thought it was a scam, and I emailed asking if it was (which I received a reply less than 24 hrs later that said no).

That was my first thought as well because as I stated I called extraordinarily early (7:30AM EST). I certainly didn't expect all of their lines to be busy that early in the morning. It's my sneaking suspicion that they don't have enough people to work the off-shift and so they just throw up that notice when they don't have anyone to man the phones. That is just my guess but I don't really have any way to verify that.

Also re: tech-support e-mail. I'm not sure if they have an auto-responder or not, but I recently (December) sent an e-mail about something. I think it had to do with DNS entries so we could point our domains to their servers. The problem was that the section in their FAQ online which deals with DNS came up as "This page is under construction". So, I send them an e-mail stating something like "The FAQ page is listed as under construction, and since DNS entries take a long time to propogate I'd like to double check we have the right entries since a wrong IP could make us wait a while to see it filter down". I received a reply fairly quickly but it said "Please check our online FAQ for the information". Well, duh, I couldn't check the FAQ since it was offline! :( The reply from my second email came the following day (around 24 hours as you state).

They don't even have a 800 do they? Not according to webhostmagazine.com review.

I have to agree, you can't aford to offer 800 support with people that only want to spend less than $15 a month, we are not selling dell computers here.

:)

We went with ADDR about three years ago when we were doing only design and outsourced all hosting.

We now hot thanks to the customer service level of ADDR.com at that time.

All we're gonna say ;)

When I first opened my account, my control panel didn't work so I couldn't figure out how to do anything. It was a completely different design then (really bleh-ish brown or yellow I think, with a bunch of broken links) I was there today as I just did a domain name swap and my control panel was working fine. I checked the DNS section to make sure, and it was fine. When did you email them? If it was a while ago, I wouldn't know because I don't go there often. I will say that when I do use my control panel, I love the FAQ. I'm sure I'm going to get rotten tomatoes thrown at me for saying that, but it's true. It is comprehensive enough for me and usually after two minutes of browsing whatever problem I have I've figured out. Like I forgot my pop/smtp servers to set up my new email. Two seconds and I'm back on track. I know that's over simplifying, but again, I run a few small sites on there.

When I first moved here to LA I worked for ATT RoadRunner which is now ATT Broadband (right after they bought out Media One) I was only a tier one tech, and I couldn't stand it! What did you guys use for your TT OSS? Remedy? Oh, and we had hourly queues during peak times. I don't work there anymore, but I still receive services from them --just at full price, when I have to call up I put my phone on speaker and proceed to do other things because the wait is *still* atrocious. Still, I'm the kind of person who when I want something, I don't mind stubbornly staying on hold until I get it. That's why I was really annoyed with that automated voice thingy. I think it should give you the choice whether you want to stay on hold or not. I hate being hung up on by anyone, even moreso by a recording! But like I said, fortunately I don't have to deal with miss autobot voice often ^_^

I also arch my eyebrow to folks who rave about the customer support of a company saying things like I call them all the time and they always respond right away... cuz to me if you're having to call "all the time" whoever you're paying is more focused on customer service than doing their job. There has got to be that balance.

ochiba

Originally posted by ochiba
[B]I only wanted to share a positive experience since I've had so many bad experiences. It said on this forum that this was a place to share *both* positive and negative experiences. I chose to make my first post a positive one.


While being right in theory, there tend to be a lot of 'fake' positive reviews about services and products from firsttime posters here. And it is just like real life, who would you you trust: a total stranger or someone you know from before if they recommended a service/thing for you?


I don't know if you guys will ever respect my opinions as I'm not a guru webmaster, nor do I care. I was just hoping that folks would read my personal experience and perhaps help anyone who wanted to find a host.

It is not whether you are a guru webmaster or not. We don't know you yet, that's it. Don't take it so hard or personal, you are more than welcome here :)

"While being right in theory, there tend to be a lot of 'fake' positive reviews about services and products from firsttime posters here. And it is just like real life, who would you you trust: a total stranger or someone you know from before if they recommended a service/thing for you?"

If you couldn't make up your mind between webhost A and webhost B, and you go to your favorite webhost related forum, and upon opening the forum you see: webhost A is evil here is my horrible experience... blah bleh bloh. And you see that this poster was brand new, what would be your first assumption?

1) that the newbie signed up right after dealing with such a horrible ordeal, and that maybe you should go with webhost B to be safe

2) that the newbie signed up right after dealing with such a horrible ordeal, but you don't care what that opinion is until that newbie posts on the board more often (which most likely s/he won't)

3) that the newbie just came online to spam the board, and most likely didn't have a horrible ordeal at all.


I agree with you about the trust thing, but I also think that most folks are willing to trust the negative posts over the positive posts. ::laughs:: It's like we don't want to learn about the good hosts!

Lastly, don't worry I'm not taking it hard ^_~ I'm thrilled to have found this board, and right when I want to change webhosts too!

However, you're gonna wish that you didn't tell me post more, because I have an opinion on everything, and I would seriously love to gnash my teeth on few webhosts out there for their evil policies and crappy services. Granted no webhost can be perfect, but I swear some of the practices that are done in webhosting would land the owners in jail if this weren't the net.

ochiba

Originally posted by ochiba
I agree with you about the trust thing, but I also think that most folks are willing to trust the negative posts over the positive posts. ::laughs:: It's like we don't want to learn about the good hosts!


Well since I am a webhost myself it is very easy to see why:

Fact: I want more customers. What would help my business:

- Post a fake positive review on my company

or

- Post a bad review on some other hosting company

You gain close to nothing to post a fake negative review, I mean it is a long shot to hope that people with leave that company and go hosting with you instead, when there are thousands of hosting comanies out there.

Hey ochiba,

Good for you for posting a positive review! Reviews like yours -- ones that are well thought-out and detailed -- are the most helpful reviews there are, whether positive or negative.

I can't speak for the masses (nor would I care to), but I pay 10 times more attention to an informative review like yours, good or bad, than to 1000 one-paragraph comments simply declaring how much thisorthathost.com sucks.

This was the URL I went to:
http://www.addr.com/show.cgi?faq-dns_info

Which is accessable via ADDR.com -> Help Center -> FAQ -> What if I already have my domain name.

There's nothing wrong with liking the FAQ, actually I think that's a good thing!! :D It's always good to find the information yourself rather than asking someone a question which is easily located.

What did you guys use for your TT OSS? Remedy?
We had a home-grown system of sorts. Most of the time they were simple one-time calls (e.g. fix dial up number, remove DUN and reinstall, etc.) so all we had was a basic call log of who did what and when.
e.g.
2002-01-09 MattR Customer XYZ needed Name Server information.

I haven't worked there in... oh man 4 years now? so they may have changed it somewhat.

I also arch my eyebrow to folks who rave about the customer support of a company saying things like I call them all the time and they always respond right away... cuz to me if you're having to call "all the time" whoever you're paying is more focused on customer service than doing their job. There has got to be that balance.
ochiba

That's true -- calling 'all the time' indicates one of two things:
1) Your server is breaking 24/7 ;)
2) You don't use the FAQ or have zero clue about what you're doing :D

There is no point as a webhost to post negative stuff about other webhosts, because that doesn't guarantee that the folks who leave will come to your services. That's why I put my domain and link up at first because I wanted people to see that I *was* a customer. I took it down because I was called a spammer, which is understandable cuz it was my first post, but well... ya just can't win can you -_- I don't read testimonials at all! I really think that companies write those up themselves. What I'd like to see is testomonials with links to their customers sites so that I can check to see if they are legit and/or ask them myself.

http://www.addr.com/show.cgi?faq-dns_info.htm

That's where you can get your DNS info. I have my own domain names too, and that's where I go. I don't know how you got that one page @_@ Wierd...

This might be a case of lousy site upkeep for their webmaster, maybe you should email them and tell them they have a link to an outdated page on their site, but then as a paying customer... you shouldn't have to! I dunno, I didn't have a problem accessing my DNS info. Also, I recommend next time trying their FAQ not from their main page but from your control panel if you get an updating message like that. Remember the main page is usually for people who don't have service already so they may take their time with that (which I think is a bad business decision but I can't complain because they're taking care of their paying customers)

Anyway, hope that helps.

ochiba

If anyone's interested in my 2 cents, I was with them for about 3 weeks and had nothing but problems...

The customer service was helpful, but that was after waiting for 30 minutes on a NON toll free number (they just got a toll-free number after a week or so of me being with them)

My billing was messed up and it took me several months before my cc was properly refunded.

Just my 2 cents.

Point&Click

For what it's worth, I too had sites hosted at Addr for about 3 years, switched them to Aleita in October, which was great at first but has gone completely down hill.

In my opinion, Addr is the type of host that's ok if it's a personal site where you don't need any support and uptime to downtime ration is irrelavent. (Although I've got to say their uptime was probably better than Aleita's has been the last 3 months).

Although they have phone support, the only thing you get is their answering machine. When I tried to cancel my accounts via email, they went ignored and continued to bill me. I contacted my credit card company and did chargebacks and finally got Addr to stop billing.

I still have client sites hosted at Addr, although they were warned, they chose to stay. All the sites that use Addr's shared secure server were down for about a month because Addr decided to change the path and didn't bother to tell any of their customers. Even after several emails with Tech Support replies I continually was given different paths to they shared certificate, it took a month before someone actually gave me a path that worked.

If you're looking for cheap hosting (although theres cheaper), I guess Addr is ok, but certainly don't expect knowledgeable Tech support, that's if you ever get through by phone or get your emails replied to, and don't expect them to stand by their claims to guaranteed 99% uptime not to mention believing all the crap on their Web site about how important their customers are.

I'm in the market myself for a new host. I have 4 sites that need hosting and about 15 client sites... although I'm sure there are still good hosts out there (or at least I hope so), lately the search for a Web Host hasn't been very promising.

Well, I've been lurking on this board for a while now, and since I don't work for addr.com anymore, I guess it's time to share some of my personal horror stories. First, their billing database application. I never was able to find out the exact name, but it is only built to handle 10,000 customers max. When I was fired, they had around 60,000 customer records stuffed in the thing. Said database is sitting on their LAN on a Win2k box in the same office as the tech support dept. The same machine runs a copy of ICVerify, which I'm not really familiar with, but some of you may be. Not a very professional setup. Second, if you ever wondered why the support dept took so long to answer their phones, it's because there was a maximum of 5-6 people answering phones at any given time. Not only that, if there wasn't anyone there to supervise us, 90% of us would promply log off the phones and try to work on the massive backlog of support email that wasn't getting answered. (avg. backlog of 2500 messages) There were several nights where only two people were answering phone calls. As far as I know, the situation has only gotten worse. Also, their other big problem is the fact that they are only running one dual-processor box to handle inbound/outbound email for ALL of their customers, leading to complaints that mail would be delivered 24-48 hours late. Now, I will say this: after getting all of their CC# records stolen, and having every customer's DNS records pointed to kiddie porn sites (THAT was a fun day taking calls!!!) they finally got halfway wise and hired additional sysadmins to augment their staff of one. The people they hired really know their stuff, and had all of their recommendations been followed, Addr's systems should have seen big improvements. Some of the improvements have taken place, but I honestly don't know if they've gotten any better since I left their employ. Decent services for the price, but the little hidden fees will burn you if you want such things as multiple domains, etc. Obviously, they don't have jack for support staff, but the people who still work there sincerely will do everything in their power to help you, even if not all of them are as knowledgable as they should be. Don't even think about hosting with them unless you do not care at all about support response times.

itchy

Addr is horrible! Sendmail is always not working and the server got hacked by some child porno site and all web requests we're forwarded to it! I HATE ADDR.COM!

At least my refund check cleared the bank!

I recently read that they fired their whole US tech support department with almost NO notice (in fact lied to them when people became suspicious that something was wrong), to move the tech support dept to India. Now, I have no problem with a company making a decision to move their support to India.. However, (if this is indeed the case) such blatant disregard of employee well being for pure greed should not go un-noticed, and I would hope both current and potential clients consider this.

Originally posted by nvphone
At least my refund check cleared the bank!

I was in that boat too! hehe