Greetings,
The posting is dedicated to my own experience with 55Host ONLY and doesn't pretend to be universal kind of truth.
When looking for a backup reseller account (I decided to have one ready after the Demetrius long downtime incident at JaguarPC) I chose to test
55Host.
PREFACE. I was looking for reseller hosting provider granting SSH access to the accounts. I am 'command-line man' and I prefer to use SSH wherever possible to maintain/install/backup/etc sites.
I visited
*********** Reseller Hosting Plans and noted there was SSH access granted.
IMPORTANT: that page was edited by 55Host during my conversation with the Support person, Tim Pownall (? I can't tell for sure, see below why) several hours ago and SSH mention is no more. But it was there, I suppose 'Web archive' services could prove that.
I bought their Basic Reseller plan and installed a site there.
Two days ago the troubles began. I noticed the site was suspended. The tech told me the site caused high load on the server and this is why it was suspended.
This is strange, since this is moderately popular personal site, run under Drupal 5 and MediaWiki, both were upgraded to the last stable versions and site was never causing troubles at previous hosting facility.
The support didn't provide me with comments what scripts were the load generators and finally I have switched the site on.
Today, several hours ago, the site was suspended again. Once again the tech told me the site was causing high load, once again I wasn't told what scripts/URLs were troublemakers. The site was simply suspended and this time by root user, I couldn't unsuspend them.
The sequence of actions afterwards:
1. I asked the tech to enable the site and place 'Deny From All' to all the .htaccess to disable site, but allowing me to SSH and backup the site to transfer it away. He refused to do so.
2. When I repeated this request, I was told that 55Host does not allow SSH access. When I referred to the above page where SSH was mentioned, I was told that the page is outdated and 55Host decided to disallow using SSH as insecure feature.
When I revisited that page in several minutes, the SSH was gone from the list.
IMPORTANT: when I was sent the initial credentials of my WHM reseller account, the option 'Shell access' was available and I added SSH access to the account myself - it worked without problems. The question is, when the SSH was actually disallowed - I suppose it was done when I communicated.
3. I asked the tech to do the site backup and let me download it elsewhere. I have also posted the cancellation request and promised to post review (this one you are reading) on WHT.
55Host Support person said this is a threat and that the 55Host may refuse to refund me.
CURRENT STATE:
1. My billing account at 55Host is removed. I haven't received the reply from Billing - neither they will refund me, nor they won't. They simply deleted my account, period.
2. Along with the above account, all my Support tickets history is now gone. The only proof it wasn't all my imagination are the email copies of the Support replies I received.
3. No refund was made and I suppose there will not be any.
4. I wasn't told where to find my site's backup. Looks like there will not be any.
5. The page dedicated to their Reseller accounts now shows no SSH mention. So I can't prove I was misled into thinking that there is such a feature.
RESUME:
1. The Support persons (I suppose there were 2 of them, I can't remember the name of the first one) I communicated with at 55Host behave very unprofessionally.
The first one (I contacted him/her when I noticed that Box Trapper feature doesn't work well with non-English message templates) uses very strange English - looks like they have very poor knowledge of English language. Note that English is not my native language, but I hope it is literate and readable enough.
The second one (the one that I talked to finally) was rather unfriendly and he was not aimed to solve the problem to mutual satisfaction.
2. 55Host - intentionally or not - mislead me into thinking they provide SSH access. When I pointed at their offer page, they simply changed it.
I would not recommend using 55Host services from now on.
Linear Mode
