Anyone have experience with heartinternet.co.uk ? I was looking at them and wondered if anyone here has some facts or experiences with them.

Thanks!

Anyone have experience with heartinternet.co.uk ? I was looking at them and wondered if anyone here has some facts or experiences with them.

Thanks!

Be wary of unlimited offers. Search this forum as their name has cropped up before.

Try sending a question to them with a couple of technical issues to see how quickly and accurately they respond - that's often a good sign.

My only personal experience is that of taking customers away from them who have not found it easy to set up email accounts etc (I do it for them!).


Mike

I was helping a friend with his heart internet reseller account and it turned out to be the worst reseller hosting in the world. They are huge limits on FTP uploading / MySQL databases even though it says unlimited.

Also on the home page it says domain names from 9p, then when you keep clicking through their website you notice the price is more like £3 and the 9p is their fee. No little '*' to note that.

Personally I would say stay away from them, really bad company.

I have seen people using them, the above is true.

Just remember unlimited space does not exist.

I was some experiences with similar companies too long time ago. Providing unlimited space/bandwith is not possible in practice. These companies generally have many liminations and speed of connection is slow. You can find a lot of reliable companies on WHT if you search. You have better alternatives.

I've been using a few hosts over the last 10 years

I finally moved all my customers to HI last year
Their servers are fairly reliable, so far this year uptime is at about 99.4%
Their technical support is average to good, if it is a problem on their side they will look into it very quickly
If the problem is a script, or so on, they will help you identify it within a few hours
They probably help me quite a lot, more than some people, as I have pointed out some errors shortly after they become apparent

They recently launched a free version of their own instant payment and account interface, called HostPay, but it is still full of bugs and errors!
Overall the account interface is very good, but there are still problems with new customers and their payments
As a result I still use my own sign-up and payment interface, and then import the customer in to HostPay, and that seems to work perfectly well

I do agree though, there is such thing as unlimited
HI monitor their servers for "abuse"
The normal cause is when people upload large file size videos, etc., and this pushes the bandwidth way beyond what is "acceptable"
My answer to that is to include a term in the T&Cs, that the maximum file size is 250,000 KB, and if a customer wants to upload a file larger than this then they MUST contact us in advance AND received an approval notice for each file larger than this limit
Failure to do so may result in suspension or termination of the account, without notice

So far I have terminated two accounts for this, one was clearly just ripping the pi$$

Cant get Heart internet to stop spamming me with their weekly crap, the Control panel is useless and they changed emphasis from free hosting to paid hosting so quick everything seems to be in a bit of a mess and quite a bit refuses to work, constantly being forwarded to upgrade pages.

They keep mentioning something for 9p, i dont think i would want to be loading my credit card with 9p transactions.

If only unlimited hard drives and bandwidth existed...

I tested their control panel once (as in went on the demo) and it was terrible, they keep sending me rubbish to, I hate them.

And 99.4% uptime is BAD.

Be wary of unlimited offers. Search this forum as their name has cropped up before.

Try sending a question to them with a couple of technical issues to see how quickly and accurately they respond - that's often a good sign.


That's always recommended. Try before you buy :) . We went through virtually every reseller control panel on the market before settling on Cpanel/WHM. My customers are very happy with that setup. It's very widely supported, frequently updated, flexible etc. We have some clients with us now for almost 10 years. Plus, should you ever decide to switch hosts, it's much easier to move from one CPanel/WHM account to another than from some proprietary or not widely used system to something else.

That's always recommended. Try before you buy :) . We went through virtually every reseller control panel on the market before settling on Cpanel/WHM. My customers are very happy with that setup. It's very widely supported, frequently updated, flexible etc. We have some clients with us now for almost 10 years. Plus, should you ever decide to switch hosts, it's much easier to move from one CPanel/WHM account to another than from some proprietary or not widely used system to something else.

Very true, thats why we also use cPanel/WHM and version 11 is just great. Its a lot better than heart internets rubbish custom one.

You don't have to use the HI pre-installed one, it customises very nicely

I know they got really famous quick for their great offers, try signing up with their money back gurantee, and ask them a few pre-sales questions, I'm sure you'll get a feel for their support/service.

Thanks for your replies. I'm going to look around a bit more to see what else I can find.

/me says their live chat is down a lot.

Their servers are fairly reliable, so far this year uptime is at about 99.4%99.4% is actually quite bad, though it certainly depends on your target market (the end user's expectations). How have you been monitoring their uptime?

We've got about 70 odd domains hosted under our HI reseller account (a few of which are using > 2gb of disk space), there's the odd problem with SMTP and POP delays but other than that we've never noticed any downtime or had any urgent problems that weren't resolved quickly. If Heart Internet are regarded as a bit crappy then maybe my experiences with i-websolutions (my threads kicking around somewhere) must have made HI look like the best thing since sliced bread.

99.4% is actually quite bad, though it certainly depends on your target market (the end user's expectations). How have you been monitoring their uptime?
That uptime monitor is from host-tracker.com and is only monitoring one of the 30 (estimated) servers, if you include web, mail, and MySQL
It is set to ping and check every 60 seconds

You say there is no such thing as "Unlimited webspace/bandwidth" how ever heart never really had a problem of adding new hard disks to the array... and they have limitations in how to use "Unlimited webspace/bandwidth" in a way it is suppose to be. What do you think paying £29.99 / Monthly is for?

And since I first joined them the uptime has been 99.99% uptime since July 2007.
In fact ever since they first started their business as a whole they have 99.99% Uptime.. and how long are we talking? Years... consider your nonsense futile may I suggest you express it some other way by prooving your absurd claims by doing a little research before running your mouth.

You say there is no such thing as "Unlimited webspace/bandwidth" how ever heart never really had a problem of adding new hard disks to the array... and they have limitations in how to use "Unlimited webspace/bandwidth" in a way it is suppose to be. What do you think paying £29.99 / Monthly is for?

And since I first joined them the uptime has been 99.99% uptime since July 2007.
In fact ever since they first started their business as a whole they have 99.99% Uptime.. and how long are we talking? Years... consider your nonsense futile may I suggest you express it some other way by prooving your absurd claims by doing a little research before running your mouth.
You don't even know how long the intervals are to which he was monitoring.. If it was say, 1 minute and your monitor was say 15minutes, then there could have been 14minutes of downtime in between your monitor checking.

I am not vouching for him, just stating the possibilities before making such a claim.

That's one of the reasons I use host-tracker
The server is checked every 60 minutes, although you can set this to 30 minutes
In the event the server is found to be offline, then it is rechecked every 30 minutes
I believe this is long enough before a customer would deem the downtime to be unacceptable, and at that point I contact support

Lol? http://www.webhostingstuff.com/company/HeartInternet.html

In fact ever since they first started their business as a whole they have 99.99% Uptime..

Lol? http://www.webhostingstuff.com/company/HeartInternet.html1. They were not monitored since they've started their business.
2. If you don't monitor all their servers, you can't really talk about "their" uptime as a whole.
3. No monitoring service is perfect.

1. They were not monitored since they've started their business.
2. If you don't monitor all their servers, you can't really talk about "their" uptime as a whole.
3. No monitoring service is perfect.

1) Well lets put it this way "Years.." Webhostingstuff represents Hearts's preconcieved generalised notion of what their uptime is.

2) I can as I am with Heart, and talk about my experience on their uptime 'as a whole' since 'I' first joined up with them. If you would consider their uptime to be bad, if your not even with Heart, or as you said as a whole but that statement mentioned is just not true and based on what you just said you proved that point :)

3) No of course, but it indicates their rough uptime which is "99.99%" and they started monitoring for years... if their uptime is "99.95%" or different it would say that...

Well then again I know Heart's uptime is excellent :)
A lot of it saved on how the system runs itself. (E.g moving accounts to a faster server, fast response of an event of an outage etc)

Your saying that the uptime would be different on other servers? Not necessarily true as if a server fails it's moved to a different one without causing any down time. Downtime of heart is likely to be caused of a network failure etc not the server itself.

Lol? http://www.webhostingstuff.com/company/HeartInternet.html
Yea, I wouldn't trust WHS as far as I could throw it.. Their system (to me) is just rubish and unethical. I have a thread on WHT about how my uptime was off and when I complained about it, they just wiped my uptime completely.. (I'll admit, we had about 23 minutes of downtime)..

Instead of showing a 99.97% They showed us as having 99.3% uptime - I emailed them and then made a post on WHT about it and they just wiped all the downtime away.. I may be different, but I want people to know that Web Hosting isn't a guarantee and that downtime can happen (therefore, showing we have 99.99% uptime versus 100% now)..

Get a better Uptime Monitor.

I've met the heart team at the ISPA awards, they are a nice bunch.
I spent several years contracting for some major UK players...

Anyone who isn't working out of their bedroom, there is a great credit owed to them.

For some reason, people put too much faith in these online "uptime" monitors.. Granted I use them to gain customers, but I don't need them to prove we're a good host. Time tells..

TBPH it doesn't matter how many hops between my ISP and your server there are, whats important is that the content is delivered.

Yes, I no longer want my account with WHS too as uptime was affected when the browser refuses to redirect in a way it can never be completed... aswell as the other links working it brought my uptime down to 99.57% when it's suppose to be 100% :(

I use host tracker..

Again it seems there are a lot of vested interests in discrediting Heart Internet. Of cours there would be because none of you can offer what they offer for the price. I have been with them since August 2004 and I would not have stayed with them this long if they were no good!

They have down time the same as any other hosting provider but certainly no more than most. Their customer support has always been excellent and I usually get a response to a ticket within 10 minutes. They have often gone out of their way to help me with products that they have no supplied even though strictly speaking it's not their responsibility and I have never run into any usage limits.

I would agree they should stop using the term "unlimited" because there clearly are limits. The only one they will confirm though is usage of system resources which should not exceed 5%. In practice, for me at least that has never proved to be a problem.

If you need to host large files then Heart Internet is not for you and they will tell you that if you ask.

As for the issue of selling domains and advertising .co.uk's for 9p on the front page. I have not come across a host yet that gives the actual full price incl registrar fee. It would be a refreshing change if they did....including Heart Internet.

All in all they are great value for money. Not perfect but certainly up there with the best of them.

They don't offer cpanel as far as I see which is my number one reason to look for someone else. It will be very hard in selling hosting without cpanel even though you have unlimited resources.

Yes, because every host on the internetz uses cPanel, right?

I assure you many of the big names don't use cPanel and sell more hosting than you in several orders of magnitude.

I would write more but another hosting order came through which is weird because we don't use cPanel.

Just thought I would update this thread in the interests of honesty. I have now hit a limit! and for me it's an important one. A few months back I landed a large client who has offices around the world. Everything was fine until their emails started bouncing. They were getting a message that their mail boxes were full! Full? how can that be on an "unlimited" account? Ahhh....now and only now I discover that there is in fact a 250mb limit on each individual mail account. This is not a configurable limit but is set by Heart Internet.

So now I am left in a situation where my biggest customer cannot access email and their clients are getting bounced email messages. Doesn't look good for them or for me!

I now have to try and find a hosting solution where I have full control over the mail box quotas and fast! or I will lose this customer.

Out of interest I checked around and nearly every host I have seen has much larger mail box limits than Heart Internet's paltry 250mb. 123-reg for instance has a limit of 2Gb per account and others, notably those using C-Panel allow the reseller to adjust the size of the mail box limit within the total allocated space per account, which is the way it should be.

Maybe a 250mb limit is not a problem for most people as they usually download all their email to their local machine. However there will always be people who prefer to leave mail on the server, as in my case and 250mb is just not going to cut the mustard :(

Just thought it fair to highlight this point if your thinking of signing up to Heart Internet. Oh and by the way, you are not made aware of this limit in any of their advertising or information on their web site. It's only once you have signed up and if you think to look in the support database will you be made aware of it.

They are the WORST ever.

Well I would not say they are the worst but you do need to be aware of the limitations. As I pointed out, up until today they have been fine and that includes customer support but they have let me down badly on this one and that's a shame after nearly 5 years of good service.