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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Syracuse, NY
    Posts
    49

    Thumbs down Final results - HostWay

    Folks:

    This is a follow-up to my original thread (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=680431) regarding my client's experiences with HostWay.

    I simply can't believe all of this, and I went through it. *sigh*

    The low points of the whole thing work out like this: In order to set up an SSL for my client's site, we needed a dedicated IP. If you do a traceroute on my client's URL, it resolves to someone else all together. Int he mean time, I tried to purchase an SSL through HostWay, and when they didn't respond in a week and a half, I e-mailed cancelling the order, and purchased a (thankfully) inexpensive SSL from GoDaddy. I got an e-mail back within hours from HW saying, literally, "We never processed your SSL order, so there's nothing to cancel. Let us know if there's anythig else we can do."

    As I mentioned before, e-mail support seems to be handled off-shore, and it takes over a week for most answers. Phone support gets you, I found out, a service in Florida. While the people I dealt with on the phone were always professional and polite, they literally could do almost nothing. I was told several times, "I have to e-mail someone in Chicago - no, I don't know who it is, all I have is an e-mail address."

    Back to the SSL - seems HostWay already installed one on my client's site at some point - and it had nothing to do with my client. You could visit a secure version of the site, and it would tell you not to enter, as the cert didn't match the site.

    My client and I both were on the phone with the Florida 800 number for hours at a time. Average wait time to speak to someone was 30 minutes or so. I'm not carping about that part - but they were feeding us false information which was supposedly fed them from "Chicago." Specifically, I told them on the phone and via e-mail that the IP didn't resolve correctly, and that the old cert needed to be removed before a new one could go on (and only their SSL team can install certs, supposedly).

    They told my client that the GoDaddy cert was causing them problems, and that it needed to be cancelled before they could install one of their GeoTrust certs. I nuked it - even though I knew better - and of course nothing was done. They lied to my client for several days, saying the new cert was installed (even though I knew it wasn't, and I told my client so, and showed them HW's tech was passing on false information).

    This situation went on for almost two weeks. Finally, Monday night, my client got a supervisor based in British Columbia, Canada, who promised that he would walk "the tech admin" through fixing the problems that night. But that was only after my client threatened to pull his account.

    Well, the IP is still screwed up, but they replaced the cert that night with one for which they charged my client an arm and a leg. The CC processing company is happy, so we let it ride, and they're now processing payments over the web.

    If this is confusing, it's because I condensed many long days and nights into a few short paragraphs. Let's just say that HW didn't have their thinking caps on tight, because they committed to their preposterous stories to e-mails which we all received.

    Later this year, at a conference to be held in Canada, a committee of nuclear power station operators will be discussing whether or not they should keep HW as the host of their site. Gee, I wonder what the consensus will be.
    Scott Gardner - Agile' Marketing Services

    Ask about my upcoming book:
    Profitable Web Hosting

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Spartanburg, SC
    Posts
    396
    so are you looking for another host provider with tech support handled in house and in the US.
    Fully Managed | cPanel Shared Hosting | Windows Shared (coming soon) | R1Soft Daily Backups | FFmpeg packages
    Base 10 Hosting LLC
    follow us on twitter - @Base10Hosting

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Syracuse, NY
    Posts
    49
    Actually, since I have a hosting reseller account, I'll probably take over hosting them myself next year, when the HW account comes due. They hired me to redesign their site and get it up and running with their Merchant Account. They had no idea (nor did I) that their current host would make the process so slow and painful.
    Scott Gardner - Agile' Marketing Services

    Ask about my upcoming book:
    Profitable Web Hosting

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Spartanburg, SC
    Posts
    396
    by the way its nice to see another NY'er <--orignally form brroklyn (off topic) lol
    Fully Managed | cPanel Shared Hosting | Windows Shared (coming soon) | R1Soft Daily Backups | FFmpeg packages
    Base 10 Hosting LLC
    follow us on twitter - @Base10Hosting

  5. #5
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Posts
    58
    Man, don't even get me started on HostWay... our client had enough problems with it that he is now considering ANYTHING else buy hostway for his small ecommerce sites.

    Their tech support is non-existant at best (waiting on the phone for an hour to get a hold of someone only to have them tell you that they "Don't know" how long it will take to resolve a simple issue like mySQL database being down, and sure enough 72 hours later they manage to fix it somehow), their control panel is a joke (half of the features don't even work), their pricing is even a bigger joke (all features are either disabled and limited that you have to pay extra $$$ for something like PHP support, mySQL database, web stats... something that comes as a default pre-built feature on most, if not all, webhosts of today's).

    God knows who comes up with their hosting numbers, accomplishments, awards and whatnot... some very creative copywriter, that's for sure.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Posts
    9,264
    Quote Originally Posted by AgileMktg View Post
    Later this year, at a conference to be held in Canada, a committee of nuclear power station operators will be discussing whether or not they should keep HW as the host of their site. Gee, I wonder what the consensus will be.
    Gee, I pray nothing important is ever retained on their systems. :p

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