Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Stay away from APHosting.com

[Viper220]

Longtime regulars (and longtime lurkers like me) will remember APHosting.com from Andy and Mat's posting here. They stood out because they seemed to always be around to answer questions and especially because of their low prices.

Although I had heard of them from these forums, by coincidence I ended up being hooked up with them via 3rd-party. My friend signed up for a reseller account through them, and I signed on through his account.

My account was activated around December, and my site Slushfactory.com went live on January 15 with no problems. However, the next week my site went down for about 12-13 hours, smack prime in the middle of the day. As a relatively new content entertainment site, this hit me big. Users who were visiting my site for the first time weren't able to reach it, and thus many probably lost interest. First impressions are very important, especially when you are trying to stand out from other sites.

AP told us (via the reseller Jason), that it was the result of a hacking. However, they could provide no evidence whatsoever to back up their claim. We repeatedly asked for basic information such as how did they get in, what was the hacker's IP address, and other such information. They provided nothing.

Over the next few weeks our site would go down for minutes to hours at a time. And it isn't just our site, it's every site on their server, including their APHosting.com site.

As I'm writing this, it is currently almost 3am. My site has been down since 11:30pm. Andy from AP told us that he was working on one of the accounts and he messed up with something, forcing the server to rewrite a file, thus apparently causing it to go offline. When I called him up around midnight he assured me that it would be back up in 20 minutes. That was almost 3 hours ago.

I'm told that someone has bought APHosting.com, which I would ordinarily champion, but apparently this new owner doesn't like the price structures of APHosting, so he wants all of the customers to move to his other, more expensive web service. Why he purchased AP when he didn't like the pricing structures is beyond me. The only reason people are with AP is because of the prices, so he has to know if he wants to raise them he'll lose all customers, thus negating the entire point of the purchase I'd think.

But anyway, just warning everyone to stay away from this mess of a company. With AP, you do get what you pay for, and it ain't much.

Best,
Brian Jacks
Publisher/Founder, Slushfactory.com
viper220ny@aol.com

[Viper220]

Ok, I've just been told that Andy has been fired and AP no longer exists as a company. So apparently it's "screw you" to all the current customers I guess because, as I mentioned, the new owner wants everyone to simply come over to his other, more expensive, hosting service. Nice.

Oh, by the way, Andy posts on these boards as "Synergy." The company that owns AP is Xism.net. That's the one that apparently let Andy go tonight.

-Brian

[Viper220]

To update, it's now after 6am and my site is still down. Tony, the owner of XISM.net and the tech that is "supposed" to be working on it, both went offline hours ago, literally within seconds of each other. No response to e-mails. I hope they are sleeping well while I'm sitting up drinking coffee trying to keep myself awake so I can update the site for Friday's content as soon as it comes back online.

Blah.

-Brian

(edit: now after 8am and still down)

[Magic2K2]

I am dissapointed now in APHosting too. It's been down for about 12 hours. How do you know they are being bought out? And, does anybody have any suggestions where to go next? I'm thinking of Tera-byte.

[hitspot]

They have an obligation to continue your hosting service at your current rate at least for the time you have currently paid. Have they cut your service all-together?

David Kiley

[billybatson]

Hi,

This is Jason here, who signed up Brian (above) under my reseller account.

It's now been 13 and a half hours since the sites on the server went offline and it is becoming increasingly worrying that nobody from Xism is reply to my e-mails. Under normal circumstances how ong would it take to redo/fix an http.conf file?

A ray of hope is that my WHM is now working, and lists all of my accounts in the various functions correctly, with the exception of the List Accounts area, strangely enough.

WHM also tells me that Apache is down on the server, which I'm guessing is the cause of the current refused connections. Am I wrong in thinking it's pretty straightforward to restart Apache?

If anyone here has a telephone number for Tony Chau, please PM it to me.


Jason Brice

[Magic2K2]

The rumor is true, I believe. I just spoke to Bryan online who used to work for the company, but he says he is no longer employed and hasn't talked to Andy in two weeks. This new company must have taken over.

[genaldi]

Glad I didn't signup with them a few months back. They were one of the handful that I had narrowed down to actually. Thank God I went with my current host, that being Hostmatters, whose absolutely wonderful. I remember email correspondence with Andy and one of my concerns were that they were a new company pretty much, but I was assured they were in it for the "Long haul". Guess that haul wasn't long enough.....

Best of luck,

David

Genaldi Co.

[El Nino]

Wow, I'm glad I didn't sign up with them in August when they started, I'd be SOL! I picked a hosting company instead that has been around for a couple years so I knew they were stable, and I'm very glad I did. They had a pretty good pricing plan I thought but I guess higher prices = more profits for the new owner.

[MCHost-Marc]

Are they permanently closing down?

[genaldi]

Anyone run a "whois" for both companies? Andy is listed as the registrant for xism.net also, which has the same mailing address as aphosting.com by the way....

Good luck,

David

Genaldi Co.

[billybatson]

Yeah, I was aware that Andy is the registered owner for both of those.

Doesn't do me much good right now, though...

I have FTP access, so iff anyone wants to offer me a cheap reseller account now would be a good time.

[Magic2K2]

I know this isn't a technical support forum, but does anyone know how I can possibly get my database data from APHosting?

[billybatson]

Yeah, that's only thing I haven't been able to back-up as well....

The FTP is up, as with everything else, except Apache. Which is the only reason they aren't back up again.

And, Magic2k2, can you please drop me an e-mail?

[Magic2K2]

Nevermind, the database is still accessible. Grab your data while you can.