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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Aug 2003
    Location
    Toronto, ON
    Posts
    124

    Post iPowerWeb Review from an Ex-Customer

    Posted this as a reply to the "iPowerWeb Hosting Stinks" thread but it probably should have a topic of it's own. My review of iPowerWeb:

    The Bad
    They crammed over 1,800+ accounts on ONE server (my server, specifically). There was frequent downtime and sometimes the MySQL server would get overloaded for -hours- (receiving the mysql:too_many_connections message). When I contacted iPowerWeb customer support they told me that it had been up for 5 days and closed the ticket. Yes, up but overloaded.

    If you want to host multiple domains, you must pay an extra $10 per domain to add it to your account, AND the domain would not have e-mail capability. Subdomains are also priced at $10 each.

    Phone support is there, but expect a 20 minute on-hold wait (and hey, I called at 11pm at night).

    The Good
    Polite and curteous. Their e-mail support is fast, yet a bit impersonal, I never got the same person twice. These guys are SERIOUS about their customers and will bend over backwards for you.

    Example 1:
    I accidentally deleted a very important database, after cussing at myself for 10 minutes I e-mailed iPowerWeb asking if they could restore the db. iPowerWeb replied that they were sorry but they could not help. I replied again, telling them that it was indeed the main portion of my site and that they better prove to me that they in fact did have tape back-ups. iPowerWeb promptly replied that the database has been restored. Props for that.

    Example 2:
    Pondering the possibility of switching hosts, I opened a support ticket about their cancellation policy. The ticket was closed with no reply (which I was a bit surprised at), but that afternoon I received a phonecall from 'Mike'. Mike was polite and professional and inquired about my intentions and whether iPowerWeb could do anything to keep my as a customer. I said that I was -thinking- about cancelling. Mike then decided to politely 'bribe' me, offering free priority technical support and a whole bunch of other goodies. He also left me his phone number and extension if I ever wanted to contact me directly.

    I was mightily impressed and stuck with iPowerWeb for a few more months.

    The Conclusion
    When the downtime finally got to me, I requested that my account is cancelled. That same Mike replied, one last valiant attempt to save them a customer. I was offered a $25 credit at Overture and a free month of hosting. I politely declined. iPowerWeb told me that my account was cancelled, yet no refund has been issued (which I suppose is their right since I signed up for a full-year contract) and my account is still active, Cpanel and all.

    Overall, great customer support, but they seriously need to work on their technical issues. In the end, what is truly admirable is how far they will go for just one customer.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Location
    Orlando, Florida
    Posts
    232
    $10 for add ons and subdomains? I guess if they are overloading the server as you assume, they are charging you for even more httpd connections to the server. They charged you because it hurts their server I guess.
    D :

    Nice to hear that the support is good. About getting the same person... it's impressive when a company can actually do that.. but I don't think it is a huge factor.

    About the year contract, if you didn't check a Yes on something that said "we are entitled to keep your yearly payment if you cancel before the year is over" then they need to give it back. : )
    Surpass / Shared, Reseller, VPS & Dedi
    Hosting and helping you since 2002
    http://surpasshosting.com

  3. #3
    Originally posted by surpass

    About the year contract, if you didn't check a Yes on something that said "we are entitled to keep your yearly payment if you cancel before the year is over" then they need to give it back. : )
    This is correct, they are obligated to give it back according to their own
    Usage Policy . I have quoted [below] the applicable portion of the policy, located under "3. Term; Termination; Cancellation Policy".

    If you cancel this Agreement prior to the end of the Term, (i) you shall be obligated to pay all fees and charges accrued prior to the effectiveness of such cancellation, (ii) iPowerWeb shall refund to you all pre-paid fees for basic hosting services (shared, dedicated and/or managed) for the full months remaining after effectiveness of cancellation (i.e., no partial month fees shall be refunded), less any setup fees and any discount applied for prepayment, (iii) you shall be obligated to pay 100% of all charges for all Services for each month remaining in the Term (other than basic hosting fees as provided in (ii) above) and (iii) iPowerWeb shall have the right to charge you an early cancellation fee of $25.00. Any cancellation request shall be effective 30 days after receipt by iPowerWeb, unless a later date is specified in such request.
    (Emphasis added)

    I hope this helps!

    -Philip
    Email

  4. #4
    And dont forget iPowerWeb has the right to charge you an early cancellation fee :-) And it takes 30 days to cancel :-)
    Walter Landman
    Simplicato - Email Hosting

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Posts
    51
    We have gotten several ex-ipowerweb customers in the past month - all with the same problems.. overloaded servers that are down a lot.
    http://cybertarp.com Web Hosting

  6. #6
    i heard about overloaded problems too...

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Posts
    84
    That's severe overselling. How do they cram 1,800 accounts each having 800MB diskspace and 40GB bandwidth?

  8. #8

    IPower Web

    I called and find out they do NOT have 1,800 customers per server. In addition, their servers are equipped to handle 3,000 and they place 1300 or so.

    But I could be wrong.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Posts
    293

    iPowerWeb is a joke

    Please, I used iPowerWeb or shall I say I tried to transfer my site over and they gave no assistance at all. I was on hold for over 30 minutes (god bless the speaker phone, otherwise my arm would've been tired). I left a voicemail, never got a call back. I emailed them, never got a response. This what happens to web hosts when they become to big.

  10. #10
    Well, it could have been worse...its good they don't have UnlimitedDomain Reseller packages... because then your server would actually have had 3000 domains hosted, which they claim their servers can do.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Oct 2001
    Location
    Ohio
    Posts
    8,535

    Re: IPower Web

    Originally posted by phroznmayhem
    I called and find out they do NOT have 1,800 customers per server. In addition, their servers are equipped to handle 3,000 and they place 1300 or so.

    But I could be wrong.
    Well, according to Whois.Sc which uses the A entry in a domains DNS to determine how many sites are hosted per server, it shows that they do...

    This is for one domain that is on host30.
    Reverse IP: Web server hosts 2208 websites (reverse ip tool requires free login)
    This is for another iPowerWeb hostee
    Web server hosts 2029 websites (reverse ip tool requires free login
    I know iPowerWeb uses Dual Xeon 2+ GHz servers with quite a bit of ram. But 2,000 websites. Just scares me to think about that.

  12. #12
    Reason still evades me...if 2000 websites are scary, then how many domains will an UnlimitedDomain Reseller server host to cut even a $500/mo profit ? I believe that no. will again be 2000+

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Oct 2001
    Location
    Ohio
    Posts
    8,535
    Originally posted by nipl
    Reason still evades me...if 2000 websites are scary, then how many domains will an UnlimitedDomain Reseller server host to cut even a $500/mo profit ? I believe that no. will again be 2000+
    They charge more then $7.95 a month

    But, with unlimited domain resellers, many of them have space/package limits. So there is a limit as to how many domains you can host, but it depends more on the resource consumption and not the amount of domains hosted.

    Many people use unlimited domain resellers to just simply park domains. Parked domains use very little resources.

    You could probably fit 50 Small Unlimited Domain Resellers and that's well over $1,500 a month profit for most of the resellers like that.

  14. #14
    Web server hosts 2029 websites (reverse ip tool requires free login

    And I thought I was pushing it when I put over 100 customers on 1 server.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Feb 2002
    Location
    New Orleans, LA "Nawlins"
    Posts
    1,131
    Maybe not hard enough! No jam and cram for you huh.
    intellec
    ....you get what you pay for and you pay for what you get....

  16. #16
    My theory behind it is if a server crashes I'd rather only have 100 pissed of clients while i get them back up rather then 2029.

    Of course I’m still looking to break the 500 customer mark, couldn’t put 2029 sites on a server if I wanted too.

  17. #17
    some of you guys don't know what you are talking about (not you reading this...those *other* guys...you know the ones).

    the number of sites on the server doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the speed or stability that server will experience. if you are talking about an all-in-one box that serves up www, databases, ftp, mail - yeah, putting 2,000 sites on a server like that *might* be a problem. depends on the server though, doesn't it?

    you can't just throw out blanket accusations of "overselling" because a host puts 1800 or 2000 sites on a server. in some cases that wouldn't be good (think: windows servers), in other cases, that could be a fraction of the realistic capacity. especially if a web server is just that - a web server, and not also a database server, etc.

    without knowing a lot about a given network's configuration you can't say xxx is too many sites.

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    78

    good but bad

    They had major problems when i was using them, but i must admit..the customer service is great and they live up to there 30day refund policy which was repaid back to me when they could not get my site working properly

  19. #19
    i used to use them , my website kept having downtime , and the MySQL server kept failing

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