If you intend to start you own web site and you are going to select a host, then stay away from phpwebhosting.com

We started a site based on myphpnuke last year and we had a lot of problems all the way. There were a lot of server and network failures and many hours throughout that year our site was done.

The worst part comes some days ago... On November 14, suddenly our site was not reachable and we had a "403 Forbidden" error. We sent a message to those people and we had no answer (as usual). After FOUR days (yes, our site was down for almost FOUR days) they came with the following answer:

Your site many times consuming too many resources and causing server problems. You may want to consider moving to another host and/or a dedicated server. We have had to disable your site at these times to prevent the problems from effecting the other sites on the server.

Our site is a plain phpnuke like site with about 15-25 online users at a time and is not offering any direct downloads. So i believe we were just consuming a small amount of the resources of an overloaded server.

At last after four days our site was again up and running (with stability problems as usual). And then the same thing happened again. On November 23, we had the same 413 Forbidden error and our site remains inacsessible until now, November 26...

We don't even have the option to login via FTP and backup our site. We are completely locked out. Those people have locked us out of our own content without any prior warning. We need our data and we can't have access on them. We send them a great number of messages and there were no reply at all.

I include the relevant text from our support ticket for your convenience. Sorry for the long message but i believe hosts like phpwebhosting.com should be avoided and this is the only way to make that clear. Here goes the text...



[Updated: November 14, 2002, 3:13 pm by zortal]

We get the following error:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
--------------------------------
Apache/1.3.26 Server at zortal.gr Port 80


What's going wrong. Why there are so many problems?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Updated: November 14, 2002, 3:16 pm by zortal]

I can't even login via FTP - we are completely locked out.

Please reply ASAP !!!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Updated: November 14, 2002, 10:21 pm by zortal]

Seven hours later and our site is still inaccessible - please respond!!!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Updated: November 15, 2002, 5:53 am by zortal]

There is no update on this yet and our site is still inaccessible.

We still need to know when our site will be available again - please respond.

On a situation like this, we expect you not to charge us for the running month, at least...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Updated: November 18, 2002, 2:42 pm by Support]

Hi,

Your site many times consuming too many resources and causing server problems. You may want to consider moving to another host and/or a dedicated server. We have had to disable your site at these times to prevent the problems from effecting the other sites on the server.

Best Regards,

Greg



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Updated: November 23, 2002, 2:24 am by zortal]

You have to warn us before taking such kind of measurement. Our site is at the moment unreachable (forbidden) for one more time.

You have to give us some options instead. Do we have to pay more money or what?

And before doing that please bring our site back online...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Updated: November 24, 2002, 7:41 am by zortal]

Please give us updated pricing and reopen our site...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Updated: November 25, 2002, 2:12 pm by zortal]

We transfered our domain to a different host so we will not cause you any more trouble. Please give us ftp access to our content so we may download our site to upload it to our new host. We are urgent on that so we would appreciate if you react a little faster than usual.

Thank you...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Add an additional comment:


November 26 ... no news yet ... i will update this when i have any response...

Hi. I have the same problems with them. They simply shut off my site, refusing to send me my backups, or to allow me to download my files. Luckily, I just lose 2 days of scripting work. It was a pain to redo it, but at least it was just 2 days. The funny thing is the cpanel they use is still accessible and I can still go and download my sql db. But there's nothing I can do to get my files on the site back. In the end, I just mark it as a bad experience and reprogram my scripts. But I have to agree I share the same experience. Don't expect any replies. Mine happened 1-2 months ago and a few emails or support tickets went unanswered. I given up. At least they refunded me my money....

They refuse access to our own data? Without even a warning? This is unbelievable... We 've spent months of development on that site and we can't afford to lose the data. I don't believe they have the right to do that and if they don't reply to our messages i'm going to act a different way.

If you are hosted on phpwebhosting.com be alarmed and look for a new host NOW, or else you 're going to loose ALL YOU DATA too.. We warned you...

I believe it isn't a case of not allowing you access to your data. But they probably (I am guessing here) deleted your data straight after so they got no data to send you.

I do hope you have backups for your months of development work. That will be a lot of pain to rebuild.... mine was 2 days of work and was already a pain...

I am sure they will probably start using AUP and such to say that it has been infringed upon. I have no doubt some on the forum may agree that if we do infringe the AUP, we lose the rights whatsoever and they agree etc.

In any case, to set the record straight, in my case, it was an error in my php script that sort of sucks up resources a bit.... ops... at least I got that fix now :D but yes, I didn't get a whimper of a warning, or offer to allow me to move my files. Just an immediate shut down of my site and zero communications after.

Oh no :(
Zortal rules i hope you get back your files...
Gl :)

They don't have an AUP and they only mention the following on their web site:

[list=1]
Un-metered traffic (but not unlimeted !!! - just unmetered)
Fast linux servers (but unstable and with resource problems)
We really want our customers to be happy! It may sound like the typical sales line that every company gives, but we really mean it! (yes, you just proved how happy you make your customers)
Working hard to ensure total customer satisfaction is the only way that we can continue to build our business! (you don't have a bussiness there - you just look for suckers that you would like to take their money and let them put one or two pages in to support two or three online visitors... - that's all. If it is more than that then you are no good for their powerfull servers)
[/list=1]

They just lie... Our site was based on myphpnuke without complex scripting. Sites like ours are fully operational everywhere around the world without any problems. They are pathetic - stay away from them...

They were a good company about 9 months ago.. but now they have gone down hill :( my friends site was suspended :bawling:

Damn.. Hope things go better with your new host.

Ahhh... things WILL go better for sure. We got our own dedicated server on rackshack. We just need our own sources... I'm in desparate need of a hacker to hack their server and get access to our sources :(

Heeeeeeeeeelp..........

lol zortal. Well. I can help in legal ways (like help with your new server setup) ... but no. I don't hack :D

Sometimes some providers just promises too much, attract the wrong crowd (probably those that leeches the bw with downloads and stuff) and in response, they got jumpy, and start to act really harsh even to bona fide customers.

:angry:

I think I had enough of this. Internet is not only for fun, sometimes it's something we give a little part of our soul participating in...
As an author of Zortal I feel betrayed by someone I don't even know and probably I'll never meet, by someone who counts me only as a number and nothing else, by someone who doesn't give a damn for what I might think and feel, by someone who doesn't care doing his job right and instead of this he likes to fool people.
I maybe don't exactly know what is a server and what exactly does but I sure know that this particular server is doing nothing except lauphing with us because we trusted him. If somebody from PhpWebhosting.com is reading this, please try to give us authoration to get our data back, it's the least you can do and what you are paying for. We 'll leave and no (bad) harm done, you can continue whatever you were doing...

Looking forward for your co-operation

Dj Costas
http://www.zortal.gr

I've been with phpwebhosting since March. I'm personally happy with the service. There has been minimal downtime, even when there are users who have resource intesive sites.

Zortal.gr,

It's not always a matter of how much CPU a site uses...memory and bandwidth are important too. You stated 15-25 users online at any given time. That's pretty resource intensive when you add the .1 cpu usage for each of them, the 80-120k of bandwidth per page load, and I have no idea what your memory requirements were.

If you found yourself needing a dedicated server for your site(s), how did you expect a $10 a month host to be able to serve your obviously resourse extensive site, on a shared server?

KoWind, I think if Zortal (or me) is allowed to download our files and move without any hassle, there would be no disputes. It isn't as if we are not prepared to pay. Zortal as he mentioned got a ded server now (and so do I). But I think the key issue is the abrupt way they turn off the site, and refusing to respond to requests for our site backup so that we can move with minimal fuss. If it happen to you, do consider what you will think. And that's basically what we think ;)

One of my web designers switched from PHPwebhosting. Glad he got away from that.

had a few sites with them for over just over a year... they were excellent at the beginning, but their boxes are way overloaded now. Couldn't even FTP an avatar the other day due to the drive being 100% :eek:

Gradually moving all my sites onto my dedicated box now :)

Moral: always have backup, no mater who your host is... if they go out of business, if they suffer a server crash, you loose your files. It's not like a bank where you have garanties. Backup up your files!

Like bank guarantee? I don't think you have an idea how Greek banks work... :bawling:

Dj Costas
Zortal (http://www.zortal.gr)

I have backups... not daily though... cos I develop on the server directly.... but no big loss for me. More for Costas. I wonder why it is so hard for them to actually return the files. It's not as if we are asking for an arm and a leg in return.

Well... problems like ours are always resolved when money comes in the way. Thank God my bank (yes, a lousy Greek one) always calls me before charging international payments for my VISA. So yesterday they called me to accept a charge from phpwebhosting.com which of course i refused. And then suddenly, our beloved sie was back online... Of course they didn't replied to any of our messages - like nothing ever happened !!!

The first thing i did of course was to backup the site, and now we are happy... VERY HAPPY

Only happy webmaster? Is that the only thing you have to say? Personally I am in the best pcycological condition I have ever been. Because we got back a years work.

To be serious once in my life. These people do what they do because we (all internet users) do not react to behaviours like that. Let's don't leave them do whatever they want. Let's denounce anyone who tries to cheat innocent users.

Somone in the forum mentioned that we paid only $10 per month so we shouldn't wait better support. I have to tell him that these people from phpwebhosting.com charged us $10. They never asked for more money. If they had asked we would have given them.

I'd like to first state that I've never had a problem with PHPWebHosting.com. My site was always up (I was on plum.phpwebhosting.com) and I had good service from them. In fact, the same site I closed earlier this month is still up (http://plum.phpwebhosting.com/~akak1701/), which is actually part of the problem.

I attempted to close my phpwebhosting.com account on 11/4/2002 at 10:00am. Mysteriously, my credit card was then charged later that same day for another month of service. What gives?

I moved not because I was unhappy, but because I'm in the process of building my own hosting company.

Ironic that I just caught this on my statement today when I was reading this thread. I've contact them, so we'll see what happens and how they handle it. I'll keep you updated.

Here is the email sent from thier support department to confirm it was closed:


[Updated: November 4, 2002, 10:03 am by Support]

Hi,



The account akak1701 has now been cancelled.



Best regards,

Nancy

----------------------------------------------
Do not reply via email to this message!
For the fastest reply, login to your control
panel and update this request. This will
provide maximum speed and accountability
for your requests. Thanks!
----------------------------------------------

I always dev on local...it's stupid to code stuffs on a remonte machine and FTP the files each time u change something in it :rolleyes: and PHPNuke is such a bloated and heavy script...with a crappy integrated forum..i don't see why people still use it. Code your own site/portal :o

What's your point Daijoubu?

Not everyone can code, therefore using ready made scripts helps a lot. For those who can code, using ready made scripts helps in reducing time-to-market. That's the reason people use them.

Originally posted by Daijoubu
I always dev on local...it's stupid to code stuffs on a remonte machine and FTP the files each time u change something in it :rolleyes: and PHPNuke is such a bloated and heavy script...with a crappy integrated forum..i don't see why people still use it. Code your own site/portal :o

What? Get a life... Even if i could code such a portal do you think that a full time job with a wife and a kid waiting for you at home leave you enough time CODE such a portal? No thanks... i need some time with my baby too... Updating my site is a lot of work already - i prefer to use the portals that are already available and tested.

And you can't always code local. You see... people that work on computers sometimes happen to code on three or more machines. It's not that easy to mmaintain a local copy of your site (together with PHP, Apache, SQL) on every machine that you work on. The bad thing is that we always forget to backup our data - we should...

for those confused - this is in regard to a post a few days ago from zortal.gr about a problem they had with our hosting - sorry for not making this clear! :)

----

[ arraghh - I can't write a short post to safe my life! :) The following is pretty much from everyone at our company after a bit of editing and comments from people around the office. It started off as a short reply to the issue with zortal.gr - I really need to learn to be more brief in my posts! :) ]

Hi everyone,

This is Greg from phpwebhosting.com - in my spare time today I came to the forums and came across the thread from zortal.gr. I wanted to post a copy of an email that I just sent to zortal.gr

[I'm feeling a bit down due to the conflict posted above so excuse my rambling... part of me says that other hosts may try to use my words against phpwebhosting in the future - I hope that is not the case. Whether anyone admits it or not, these are the realities of the "low-end" hosting field.]

The "cheap-end" of hosting (ie. sub $10 a month accounts) can be a rough place to be. We try our best to support as big/busy of a site as possible in a shared environment. Some of you have the money for dedicated boxes for your websites but there are a lot of people who need inexpensive hosting and we have always worked very hard for our customers to meet their needs in the best way possible. It is sad when a relationship comes to a bad end (our fault too!) - I believe zortal.gr was a client for over a year - we do apologize to them for the troubles.

The main issue is that when you are dealing with cms-based sites or large amounts of cgi's you can quickly find that you are using quite a lot of resources. For a host it can be very hard - we know that if we raised our prices many of our clients would be left with no where to go because they cannot afford more than $10 or so a month. We were founded on a one-price-philosophy and find it hard to ask people to start paying more (even though we have quite a few people who pretty much consume a whole box).

Having said that, I do want to point out the many posts on webhostingtalk from our happy customers - I believe we do quite a good job of keeping our servers running quite stable and fast.

However the bottom line will always be that if you run a large forum, cms or other resource-intensive site you probably will experience some issues every now and again (with ANY shared host!!!)

When ever we recommend someone move to a dedicated box we always try to point out that we do not sell dedicated boxes and are not just trying to move them to a higher-priced "product". When a client growns too big for a shared server leave we loose a customer and income. However we make the recommendation because we believe that it is what is in the best long term interest of the client. I am not sure what the hell (excuse my language) happended with our handling of zortal.gr's account. We handled it poorly and they had every right to be upset. [ if any one else has had a bad experience please do let me know! I'm also going to check on the situation with silversurfer's account.]

I believe I'm starting to ramble :) so let me just say that anyone who has ANY doubts about us should contact me so I can do what I can to make the situation good again.

Yes, I am biased but I think there are only a few companies that offer a deal on par with ours (I'll keep those worthy competitor's names to myself :) - most of the hosting world appears to be split between people with :

1.) bad intentions - just out to make a quick buck

or

2.) good intentions but little technical knowledge/staff to keep a service running smoothly.

In the three years that phpwebhosting has been in business a lot of hosts have come and gone. We have always done our best to keep our prices low and provide as many server resources to each client as possible.

I'd better hush up now and post the email as I originally intended.

On with the show :)

Here is my email to zortal.gr

----

Hi,

I happened to come across your post on webhostingtalk.com - I wanted to make sure were able to get your files back. As far as I can tell you still have access to your site.

I was very saddened by your post of :

"They just lie... " and "They are pathetic - stay away from them..."

I hope those words were said out of anger and not your true feelings. You were a client of ours for a long time and I hope that you feel we always did our best to serve you!

I'm still not sure why you went so long without a reply from us. However I can tell you this - anytime that we have to deactivate an account it is never done without a great deal of stress on our part. We HATE having to disable a site but if all of the sudden one day we see that a particular site is causing extreme load we have to decide to either turn off that one site or let the whole server (and thus many other sites) be affected.

I understand that this is little comfort to you now - I guess I mainly just wanted to make sure you know that when we shut your site down it was not something we wanted to do. But it was a decision that had to be made right away to stop an outage to the other clients on your shared server.

I hope that things are going well with your dedicated box. I believe you said you are getting a box with rackshack? Please keep in mind that for the $9.95 a month you paid us we did our very best to keep your growing site online (I believe you were with us for over a year?)

Please let me know if you need anything else or some help on your new box. If you could make a post to webhostingtalk to let everyone know that you did get your files (and that in fact your site was still open to you as recently as a few days ago for anything that you still needed to move out) it would be very good. We don't advertise at all and have always grown on the good word of our customers.

Best of luck with your site in the future! I hope you do know that no one here ever meant to cause you trouble and that we certainly do our very best to offer the services we advertise.

I don't mean to be self-righteous but there are A LOT of shady characters in the webhosting business and we certainly try our best to always be totally honest and true in all our dealings!

Best,

Greg



---------

P.S. If anyone has any questions or needs anything please let me know (or post in your control panel on your server) and we will make sure the situation is taken care of.

:eek:

Sorry... but im a confused mo-fo :confused:

yeah me too :confused:

I think maybe this post has something to do with this thread: http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=91733

Maybe a mod will merge the two together then to help us poor n00bs :D

I've been using phpwebhosting for a few months now (www.dvdfuture.com). Their support has always been very quick for me. The only problems I've run into was the Hard Drive getting full, which they have promised me to have the issue fixed by the end of this coming weekend, and the server load getting to high (something they can't really help and I totally understand in a shared hosting enviroment).

Anyway, something that users of a shared hosting enviroment might want to do before they decide to go the CMS route is to look at bench marking for CMS systems like what zortal.gr was using, myphpnuke I believe, because a lot of them are resource hogs depending on how you have it set up etc. Even then in a shared hosting enviroment it's really up in the air as to who else is on the machine and what resources they are using as well.

At any rate.. I like phpwebhosting.. despite the fact that their Hard Drives get full and my site doesn't work right for a few minutes. The only thing I wish they would install and I have been requesting this for a few months now is Spam Assassian cause i get a ton of spam! ARG! :D

paulsjv,

I checked out your server and we should have your quota updated shortly. I think we may just move you to a totally different box though. The one you are on now is getting old and only has a single 9 gig SCSI drive (9 gigs was actually a decent sized SCSI drive a few years ago!). Our newer boxes are all RAID 5 with three 73 gig SCSI drives - we'll be able to give you a much higher quota. Also, any load problems should be better on the newer servers as they are all dual proc.

I think someone will get back to you this week (after the holidays).

Anyway, thanks for the good word!

Greg

I feel i have to defend phpwebhosting, i've 3 accounts with them currently, and at times have had up to 7 accounts with them.

Their being totally honest here, and in my opinion they always have been. They are selling virtual accounts at a flat rate fee for sites that dont go overboard and hog resources from everyone else on the server.

The main reason i choose them time and time again is for reasonably small sites (<5gb) which need a good solid php installation and mysql db's.

I have had issues, mainly with the servers occassionally losing the mysql db or going down, but then what virtual account doesnt get issues at a flat $10. Some of the issues were probably contributed to by some of my sql heavy sites, and to be honest for one of my sites i am considering moving it somewhere bigger and paying alot more for it, since its reaching the limit of a mid level virtual account.

The thing i love about phpwebhosting is they will actually listen to you, and then do their best to help you out. I've had domain parking, extra db's setup, custom mail settings, and various other bits all sorted out quickly. I also have a tendancy to setup a site run it for a few months, get bored with it, and move onto something else, they've always been very helpful and quick in closing down my old accounts for me, and helpful when i decided a few months later i'd like to reopen it ;)

The servers do occassionaly go down, but downtime is typically 10-15minutes.


They may not look like the biggest or most professional looking host (from their web site) but underneath they are the best i've found so far (and i've tried alot).


Some of my sites hosted there -

www.atitd.info
www.dragonherald.com

One of my web partners used PHP webhosting before. He had nothing but good things to say about them.

Dave

I've used PHPWebhosting in the past as well and have found them fine. Dynamic content can crawl sometimes and there are short outages but what do you expect for $10? If your web site is so freeking important why would you ever host it with a discount provider?

Originally posted by phpwebhosting.com
paulsjv,

I checked out your server and we should have your quota updated shortly. I think we may just move you to a totally different box though. The one you are on now is getting old and only has a single 9 gig SCSI drive (9 gigs was actually a decent sized SCSI drive a few years ago!). Our newer boxes are all RAID 5 with three 73 gig SCSI drives - we'll be able to give you a much higher quota. Also, any load problems should be better on the newer servers as they are all dual proc.
woh... 73 gig SCSI Raid 5 dual processor!!! wow!!! i can't wait!! thanks for the update!!!

but i agree with the other comments made.. my site isn't the biggest site on the net... it does get some traffic every now and then when we have a hot topic come online.. but things die down.. we usually get about 10k to 20k page views a month so phpwebhosting is perfect for us right now :)

Thanks again greg!

Ti malakies einai autes? :D

3 zortal accounts on WHT? I thought that was not allowed.

Try getting your own dedicated server.

As I am just starting out in the Web Hosting end of things I have been reading a lot of this forum lately. It would seem that the general consensus is that Support is one of the most important attributes of a successful Host. What I have read in this thread is exactly what I would want to avoid.

While I don't know phpwebhosting or zortal I see a ton of problems that all could have been avoided with communication.

Here are my thoughts for whatever it's worth:

Suspending a site without notice is poor business.
Offering unmetered bandwidth is asking for trouble.
Pointing out you have a few happy customers in the face of the poor handling of a situation is really poor business. It's making an excuse for poor customer service. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, people don't remember your success, they remember your failures. If I were to come out on a 3rd party forum to defend myself, the ony thing I would do is try and satisfy the customer I handled badly. Perhaps a full refund for the past two months. I sure wouldnt try and defend my position by saying that my servers are full of the low end accounts and I do the best I can.

While web hosting is new for me, running a successful business sure isn't.

My .02 worth.....

Just curious, Watcher_TVI, I visited the URL in your "www" icon and although I like what I see, I wonder if a collection of photos from fashion magazines etc constitutes some form of copyright breach.

Not to sidetrack this thread, but those are avatars used for the various virtual chat systems we support. There is zero revenue taken in from their existence and they do fall under the Public Domain in the Berne agreement for the purposes for which they are used.

If you have any other concerns about them I would be glad to give you the details in a PM or email...:)

I just have to peep in here...I've had a acct at phpwebhosting.com for going close to 1 1/2 to 2 years now...

I use it primarily for my blog and for hosting pics for auctions, testbedding stuff, and email, etc.

I can say, they have come a long way and I'm very happy with them for the cost...the FTP server on Maple is extremely quick and reliable..I've hardly noticed ANY downtime that I can remember in recent history...

EVERY host has it's problems....servers are only machines and machines break...it's HOW a host handles those issues that defines them and how they handle customer complaints. I think phpwebhostings reply in this thread is a prime example of HOW TO handle these issues (unlike a certain OTHER hosting company from Groton,NY).

Even though I am a reseller and have 95% of my sites on that service, I keep the phpwebhosting acct as my backup and becuase..well, been happy with it for this long, why jinx my blog..lol...

:)

I've had an account at phpwebhosting.com for almost a year now and I have experienced no major problems. One time I noticed a disk full situation, notified them, and they had the situation corrected within a couple of hours. To keep things in perspective, I've seen disk full situations on production unix servers at billion dollar financial corporations, so it's not like phpwebhosting is unusual in this regard.

Any time I've asked them questions, they responded quickly and to the point. I notice that critical problems seem to get responded to more quickly than trivial newbie RTFM type questions, but they will eventually get to everyone. As many others have said, what more can you expect from a $9.95/month service.

I haven't stressed tested my site, which is really just a corporate business card and not an interactive service. Were I to set up an e-commerce, high bandwidth 99.999, 7x24 type of operation I'd certainly go with at least a dedicated co-lo server or perhaps a rack option and I would expect to spend $100 or more to start. Anyway this is just one person's experience; I hope people read through this thread to the end to get some perspective because it sounds like phpwebhosting got raked over the hot coals here.
Cheers,
Terry

http://www.tastysoftware.com

phpNuke is a resource hog. Forum/Bulletin Board is definitely a NO on sharehosting (especially when you have a lot of members). If you have to use a portal, try something lighter like postNuke.

I have a site on phpwebhosting for almost a year and a half. The site gets 15k page views everyday. Yes, it's a bandwidth hog (80GB :D bandwidth usage for December 2002), but it's definitely not a resource hog (all custom php scripts, using around 50 MB of diskspace including the database).

This month I'm expecting around 100-120 GB bandwidth usage. If phpwebhosting decided to pull the plug of my site, I will host it myself on my 100mbit university connection.

But I'm more than satisfied with phpwebhosting service. Although sometimes they have problems, the response time from the tech support is really quick.

And their unmetered transfer IS really unmetered (my site grow with phpwebhosting from 1.5 years ago until last month peaked at 80GB and it's still growing).