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Posted by JClawson, 12-03-2003, 04:02 AM I have heard alot of good things and alot of bad things. I already ran the search and read all the comments so don't bother posting that. Please don't reply with "Host for web sucks" comments. Give me a detailed explanation on why they "suck." Also include the following information: 1) Servername you were on 2) Length of time hosted 3) # clients hosted on your reseller account 4) Approx # times you contacted support 5) If you left HFW, where did you go? If you did not host with HFW do not post. I want a little detail in the review besides "It sucks" or "No problems here". Thanks guys/gals
Posted by sydneyroy, 12-03-2003, 06:18 AM Hai, I'm with Hostforweb.com from lasy May onwards. I didn't affect any problem till now. But their Java support charges are very high. Already hosted more than 850 domains. Also any one know the same packages on Win2K Server with .net, java & cfm with MS SQL S Roy
Posted by noc32, 12-04-2003, 08:38 AM I'm with them since nov'2002 and had no problems. There were some incidents like: - 3 times IP addresses change - 1 time power down for 4 hours (of course announced) - 1 time routing problem (resolved in 10 minutes by one of their staff) I am on tampa server and i have 10 domains hosted. Also I must add that their support is great.. it is really 24/7 maybe this will give an idea about them
Posted by mynameislee, 12-08-2003, 07:45 AM The HFW support team is hopeless. It seems that every ticket I raise is referred to 'Level 3 Support' who don't reply at all. They actually close me support tickets without any response. This has happened to me on 5 seperate tickets and has waisted many hours of my time. I have 140 accounts on the Seattle server, which I am moving over to a dedicated server at ServerMatrix. I suggest you keep away from HostForWeb. It's not worth the trouble.
Posted by Dcc, 12-22-2003, 12:22 PM I have been with them since February and must tell you that they are definitely better than other hosting companies I've dealt with in the past. So hang in there. I have about 12 accounts with them.
Posted by martindell, 08-04-2004, 02:54 AM My overall experience of dedicated hosting with Host For Web has been disappointing - enough for me to be looking around again. There are two main problems - their own support people are remote from the datacenter and consequently know little more about a server problem than I can deduce myself remotely. The greater problem, however, is that they constantly fail to keep me informed about a problem and it's resolution. Part of this is because they genuinely don't know what's going on but also they show no desire to find out and respond to my support requests in, what I consider to be, a professional manner. We hosted with HFW using their shared servers and had a good experience of their technology and support. As our bandwidth and processor needs grew we naturally moved with them to a dedicated server and that's when the problems started. HFW use colo services at servercentral.net and when (out of sheer frustration with HFW) I contact them directly, I receive straightforward and honest responses (even to the point of them admitting the error is theirs). I highly value this because I can make an educated decision about what to do next - by comparison, the information I get from HFW is often inaccurate, untruthful and patronising. Recently when I pointed out to HFW the inconsistency of the information they were giving me, they shut the live-chat call down. When I requested they escalate the call, they ignored me. This isn't a company that you want to trust with your dedicated server. I've been using the services of Acunett to help me get around the lack of support at HFW and that's been petty successful - however at times there's just no way around the HFW bottleneck. Here's a recent transcript of me not getting anywhere with HFW in an incident that caused over 2 hours of downtime. The following is a record of your online chat. General Info Chat start time Aug 3, 2004 11:53:33 PM EST Chat end time Aug 4, 2004 12:12:46 AM EST Duration (actual chatting time) 00:19:12 Operator TimW Chat Transcript info: Please wait for a site operator to respond. info: You are now chatting with 'TimW' TimW: Welcome to HostForWeb.com, how may I assist you? martin: Hi, Can you give me an update on ticket (ticket number) please TimW: That server is being rebooted on the datacenter end, it will be up shortly. The exact minute it will be I do not know but it usually occurs within 15 minutes. TimW: Is there anything else I can help you with? martin: the server's already been down 30 minutes though and I can see the cpanel screen on (IP address) which would suggest that the server is up but not any of the sites TimW: The moment we received your ticket Martin a reboot request was put in, it will be up shortly. Unfortunately nothing more I can say will speed it up but it will be back in service . martin: that's my point - it's been rebooted because I can see the cpanel prompt but the sites are not back up and it's been that way for 15 minutes at least so I'd like to know what is happening TimW: It has not been reboot since you entered the ticket as I have not been updated to that as well. martin: so what do you suppose is happening at the moment then? when I entered the ticket there was no response from the IP or any of the hosted sites and now I can see the cpanel screen TimW: The moment I receive confirmation as to the reboot Martin, I'll definitely let you know via ticket that it's up and functioning. martin: that's not the problem, i want accurate information as to what is happening now - it's not waiting for a reboot so what is happening - please find out TimW: Martin, the server is being rebooted. That is all that's occurring, the moment it's rebooted I'm notified. After reboot all services take usually 2 minutes before they're fully functional. Therefor once it's up we'll close your ticket and it will be back to normal. TimW: Is there anything else I can help you with? martin: OK, how do I escalate this? - that's clearly not the problem martin: how do i escalate this? TimW: Martin, the server is unaccessible via WHM or SSH on my end, therefor as your ticket also requested it's being rebooted. Once it's up we'll notify you. martin: Why then can I see a cpanel prompt on (web address) which server am I talking to? TimW: If you can see a Cpanel that is one thing, however if the server administrative wise is completely unreachable that's another. TimW: The moment it is up we'll definitely advise you via Ticket Martin. Thank You. TimW: Let us know if you have any other questions. Have a great day! info: Chat session has ended. info: You are not currently in a chat session.
Posted by apachedave, 08-04-2004, 08:05 AM hello I am with host for web since may 2004. I am 99% satisfied. I am hosting 10 websites. Their support service is very good. I have experienced one main problem and it was that I couldn't receive any emails. They fixed the problem within an hour but till now they cannot tell me what was the real problem They mentioned it was a corrupted file on the database. That was really frustuating actually. Except that I am pretty satisfied. If i grow in the future I will want to upgrade to a dedicated server. APACHE Dave
Posted by blue__wind, 08-04-2004, 12:24 PM I had very very bad experience in hostforweb in last year( I bought their Supreme package with jsp support ). They have a very bad customer service. And I think they are also used to lying to their customer. The story is , when I found my site was down, I submit a ticke to their support department , but no one reply me after two days. I have to use livechat to talk with their livesupport, but they can not provide any help, just told me they had no idea about it. Finally, I had to send a letter to them ask for cancel my account and return my money back. You know what! This time they reply my letter in half hour, told me they already deleted all my files from their server. But , they didn't mention anything about return my money back. so, I have to send more letters to them for complaining this. Eventually, they admit that this is their fault. But they give me a very ridiculous reason to explain why there is no one reply my ticket. They told me that because the one who setup my site was on holiday , other staff didn't receive this ticket. acutally I think they lie to me. It can't be the real reason. They told me they want give me extra three month service as compensation, certainly I refused their suggestion and ask for return my money back. Since then , they never reply my email. until now , they still hold my money. I can guarantee all above I write is true, I still remained the email they sent to me. If someone say I'm lying, I can publish their email as proof.
Posted by tjjr615, 08-06-2004, 11:20 AM I was with Hostforweb for over a yea, The support is very bad, I had a problem with one of my PHPscripts, (PHPLive) HFW Support was saying it was my Script, I tried to tell them that my scipt is fine, So just to Peas them I put the script on another one of THERE Serves with the same setup, Guess what, It worked. So I told support it was there server that I was on. What did they do about it, Again said it was my Script. It seams they didn't know what was wrong. So they blamed it on me. I moved my Account to a diffrent Company, and all my scripts work fine now. SAY AWAY FROM WFH
Posted by apachedave, 08-06-2004, 12:28 PM what company are you with now? i am with HFW but i didn't have problems yet. let me know thanks APACHE
Posted by rebelo, 08-07-2004, 05:56 PM Hi, we are with HFW for over a year with abt 60 clients hosted. We have an external uptime checker (siteuptime.com) for 5 minutes http, ftp, smtp and pop3 and numbers have been far above 99%. Ticket answer is usually shorter than a few minutes and live chat really works 24/7. Had some minor problems but they were all solved very quick.
Posted by lool49, 08-23-2004, 05:06 PM i'm very happy with hfw, was on their amsterdam server about 6months but now upgraded to vps. also had external tracker that showed every month was over the promised 99,6% I find the support great, ALWAYS ONLINE small thing always happen. The support team helped straight away even though sometimes it was all my fault. I recommend hfw
Posted by waytorussia, 08-26-2004, 01:52 PM Stay away from HostForWeb! Because of the incompetence of their migration department and customer support, one of our websites, www.trainline.ru, which relies on PHP with mySQL has been down for almost 17 hours and still is. This downtime costed us a few hundred dollars of unfulfilled orders, as well as 4 hours of working time on my part (which I value at $100 US). Besides, a valuable database of trains and clients' orders was lost during the migration process. When I asked their customer support to correct this problem, they ignored my letter and I haven't received a reply for 5 hours, even though I was communicating with their support in real-time. Here's a brief account of the problems. Just to let you know, I have a reseller account with HostForWeb for 6 months. ------- Yesterday, at around 10pm GMT (25 August) I received a note from HostForWeb migration department that they are starting to move my servers (ticket RYI-37831, Frederic G.) from madrid.servershost.com to paris.servershost.com. At about 12am GMT (26 August) I received a note from Frederic that the servers were successfully moved. When I checked our website www.trainline.ru which was one of the websites hosted on your servers, it turned out that it doesn't work (php content wouldn't load). I asked Frederic what the problem was and he said that perhaps the new server had different PHP settings, and that I should tell him what settings he should change to make it work. As I didn't know exactly what settings were changed, I couldn't immediately respond. Finally, after an hour I sent Frederic a list of settings which might have caused the problem, however, I haven't received a reply from him in 9 hours. I contacted their customer support again, the next day, at around 10am GMT (ticket CMZ-41018, Jason H.). He said that he can't help, because it's something I should deal with on my own, and basically he can't do anything because he thinks the issue is PHP settings, but he doesn't know which. Finally, I checked the database of www.trainline.ru (trainlin_main) and found out that 4 out of 7 tables in this database were not there! In other words, HostForWeb migration department lost 4 databases on the way, and their customer support could not even find out that it was the issue, blaming everything on my incompetence! Maybe I should have looked if they copied everything OK, but I tended to believe them, as they said the migration was successful and I couldn't even think that they would lose 4 out of 7 tables in my database. This incident shows me 3 main issues with HostForWeb: 1) Incompetence of customer support 2) Fast replies, but without any meaning, I always had to exchange 10 or 20 e-mails with their staff to get a minor thing sorted. 3) Inability to take responsibility for their own mistakes 4) A lot of promises, little results (6 months ago they were very proud about their speed, however, it was dead slow sometimes) 5) Slow servers (at least on the previous server I had) On the other side, among good things I can mention 1) Flexible conditions for hosting 2) Lower costs 3) A lot of features available
Posted by SupaDucta, 09-01-2004, 09:28 PM Besides some 'glitches', the HFW server I am hosted on works mostly correctly. I know they have been a good hosting company, with some current tech problems, but as far as I can see - things are getting back to normal. I haven't experienced any bad support from HFW, they have fixed all required in no time and responded very quickly.
Posted by south_coast, 03-04-2005, 01:42 PM I was with HostForWeb for a year, during which time I had lots and lots of problems. Several outages of several days each. I never got notices from them explaining the outages, though each time I called they had a different excuse ... viruses, hackers, you name it. Plus I had lots of problems with e-mail: the servers going down, other people bouncing my mails, and more. A lot of headaches in a year's time. I used their online support chat and honestly I thought the guy was stoned. He made no sense whatsoever. Later I tried WebWorkzISP.com, and I found that WebWorkz was disappointing too. When I had problems they almost never responded to my e-mails, and when I called and spoke to their main tech, he always sounded extremely annoyed to hear from me, as if I was the last person he needed to hear from. Also, despite the fact that they supposedly offered 24/7 phone support, many times my calls went unanswered. I later switched to ICDsoft.com and, in contrast, I could not BELIEVE how fantastic the service was. I had read positive reviews on some host-finder sites, and sure enough, they have been just incredible. I rave about them to friends. Online support requests are almost always answered within 5 minutes, their techs are incredibly knowledgeable and very willing to help -- they even helped me fix some code in an installation of Gallery, which is something they don't rpovide themselves! Some of my technical needs have grown a bit over the year I've been with them, and I'm now shopping around for a slightly more robust feature package elsewhere, but I would not hesitate to recommend ICDsoft to anyone, and I think their online tech support is truly unbelieveably good, plus after the first year the price drops to only US$40/year. I have no complaints about ICD Soft, and in fact am sad to be leaving them. As I told them in an e-mail, if they ever decide to offer the features I need, I hope they will contact me, as I would be glad to remain a customer. I definitely would recommend against going with HostForWeb, however. Do look elsewhere. Last edited by south_coast; 03-04-2005 at 01:46 PM.
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