Stay away from Hostmonster

June 19th, 2006, 4:14 pm

Hi. I was a customer with hostmonster which is registered through wildwestdomains and my service sucked terribly. It went offline more than 10 times in a month that I KNOW OF and 4 in one day as well...
Today it went from bad to worse to worst! I was working on my site and then it stopped loading...firefox brought up the dreaded message that the page couldn't be found. So I knew it was off again. But this time it was worse than usual. The webhost itself website was offline...did a tracert in command prompt and I was quite disappointed. The site came back online in 15 minutes.

I immediately opened a ticket and enquired about the problem and they told me that an external router problem caused the break in service and that the router was external to them and that they couldn't fix it.

About 3 hours later...it went from worse to worst. It went offline again...as I type this it is still offline. It was offline for about 50 minutes so far, I am wondering if it will be off for over an hour. I am terribly disappointed and I am warning others not to use hostmonster...and remember that it is also related to bluehosts.com so stay away from both.

If anyone else has had problems please post here...I hope that they aren't any more sufferers.

July 30th, 2006, 1:54 am

That's unfortunant to hear. I was considering them until I read the negative reviews. Plus, you have to pay by contract and there's a setup fee...

January 13th, 2007, 5:18 am

Do anyone have other cases of downtime from hostmonster? I was writning a review and just bumped inot this thread. Generally, I hear good opinion about hostmonster. Anyone with real experience, please share.

January 13th, 2007, 9:30 am

hi, this thread was started 2006 Jun, long time has passed. so, think we not suppose to follow this downtime anymore.

basically, downtime as mentioned is caused by dns on the visitor isp.
barbados, the dns might having some prob. thus causing the site can not be accessible.

i facing same dns prob to some website as well, including yahoo once a while in a week. it will recover and accessible after.

February 19th, 2007, 11:42 am

Hostmonster sucks!

Look at their home page. No setup fees is what it says right there. And no hidden fees! Don't believe it for one second.

Several of their sales reps told me, before I signed up, that I could get a full refund the first 30 days. Not true. When I called them on that, they said that was just "hearsay".

I am out over $30. They don't refund your money the first 30 days. Don't just try them out to evaluate their service, stay away.

BTW, when I called to get a refund, I was put on hold and finally left a message, which, a week later, was not returned.

March 10th, 2007, 2:57 pm

We started our website with Globat and apparently caught the tailend of a bad situation with them that almost destroyed our site and ruined a partnership. We then went to Startlogic which for two years did fine by us. Then we began to notice them promoting themselves everywhere and suddenly the bottom fell out. The good service we were having died as our site began crashing and they began lying to us as to why only to find out that their servers had crashed altogether. In reading this, I see the same pattern so let me see if I can make sense of this for you.

You are not getting 200gb for your own use, its shared and very deceptive of them to package it this way. When more people come online with them, they just keep packing them in with you until the sardine can can't hold anymore and it starts bursting at the seams. They then offer to move you to a new server begging the question why they weren't putting the new clients on these new servers in the first place.

We also noticed that our problems really began when Startlogic cut their prices and began to offer more for like $4.95 a month. There is no possible way they can do this when your average server costs over a thousand bucks and generally has around 200gb of space. There's no way you're getting all that for that price but it does bring in the customers.

So we had to find a new server and went with someone a bit less known but who sounded more reliable. Not enough about them online so we found no bad reviews. Now we have no site at all because the server owner doesn't understand what they are doing and destroyed every website on his servers. So now we are searching for a good host and when I saw this I saw reflected exactly what brought us down at Globat and Startlogic.

The promise looks good but remember, there are a lot of things these sites hide from you until you've paid up front and run into problems they know you'll have later on such as file limits and bandwidth limitations as you may have 2,000gb of bandwidth but the number of sql connections themselves can limit you to less than 2gb's.

They do have a pretty gal in their promos though rowwwwrrrr.

March 15th, 2007, 11:33 pm

Quote:

We started our website with Globat and apparently caught the tailend of a bad situation with them that almost destroyed our site and ruined a partnership. We then went to Startlogic which for two years did fine by us. Then we began to notice them promoting themselves everywhere and suddenly the bottom fell out.

Ummm, you never mention HostMonster. Is everything that you're talking about pertain to StartLogic or am I missing something?

I need a new host this weekend for my four sites and HostMonster is a serious contender as of right now.

March 15th, 2007, 11:59 pm

Quote:

In reading this, I see the same pattern so let me see if I can make sense of this for you.

The warning is that Hostmonster is following the same pattern and when you look at the deal they offer compared to the other sites I mention, you'll see the same. Startlogic and Globat are ones I personally dealt with and both at one time had good reps. However, the pattern is they do well by site owners for a time then you see them dropping prices to ridiculously low amounts while increasing what they offer in relation to things like bandwidth and disc space. They also hide things from you like file limits which after you hit the limit they conveniently say they aren't required to tell you that. So you have like 20 gigs of space but after using only 2gigs you hit their file limit or sql limitations so you are effectively dead.

Go to the sites I mention and check the deals they offer. Then check their reps by searching Google for problems others have had with them. Then do Hostmonster, you find a lot of the same issues. You will also find a lot of supposedly unbiased sites who evaluate the server host providers who clearly are being paid to report well on them because even some of the worst hosts have sterling reps on these sites.

We went with Hostdime because in researching server hosts, we found some problems but in looking at many of the complaints, we found many were actually the site owners fault by their own admission and most links a google search will pull up if you type in Hostdime problems into search are actually others telling people to switch to Hostdime rather than actual problems with the provider itself.

The question is...can you afford to have what happened to us happen to you. Our support dropped to almost nothing and our site was almost destroyed by the bad service we got. Just remember, if you want to be a sardine then its ok to be shoved into a can where with everyone as I can see how you can fit 100 sites at 20 gigs each on a 280 gig server...put them in and just keep beating them until you crush out enough room to add more.

But try it if you have a small site and don't mind taking chances because even when we were getting service, there were all kinds of issues such as them actually telling us our server was full and twice being moved to new servers by startlogic because the older servers were jam packed and degrading while the new servers were kept for new customers so that for a time they seem to get good service and have good servers. Maybe Hostmonster isn't doing what these others I mentioned are doing...but their deals are pretty much the same and you have to ask how they can offer so much for so little without major risks that you could lose everything.

March 16th, 2007, 5:47 pm

Armorbeast wrote:

Quote:

In reading this, I see the same pattern so let me see if I can make sense of this for you.

Thanks for your clarification, I didn't quite catch your connection since you didn't directly reference HostMonster. I was very satisfied with Scottsdale Hosting, but now they're not accepting new clients and my contract is up, so I'm looking elsewhere. And I've got to find someone and move this weekend, or my sites are going dark!

Another thing that I've noticed but not yet verified is that several of these host rating sites seem to be almost identical, if I get around to it I might try to track down the site owners and see if we've got hosts running the review sites.

It looks like I'll probably end up with DreamHost, they're more than twice what I was paying, but if they're reliable that's all that counts.

March 16th, 2007, 7:58 pm

Its ok but a simple google search shows numerous complaints about Dreamhost that really makes them look like they don't have a clue.

The best way to check is to do a Google search about a host by simply typing the name of the host and adding the word problems. Find out how long they have been around and pay close attention to whats being offered as if they offr too much for next to nothing there is no way its going to be a longstanding proposition.

With Hostdime there as one important factor we looked at...we pay monthly so we can leave anytime we want with no longterm committments unless we choose to do so. They currently have a deal http://www.hostdime.com/specials/ for ten bucks a month but they clearly tell you its shared space and when we spoke with them they were very upfront about their policies.

One thing Hostdime does from what we see is try to promote moving to a virtual server or a dedicated server as your site grows. They offer full service on all of these and you could actually get with about a dozen or so other site owners to share a 280 gig server for about 168 a month with them providing free servicing. Now if you don't have a lot of money, this has huge benefits because you and the other site owners control who is on the server with you and you can monitor traffic to make sure you don't get sardine canned like what happens to you on shared servers where you are put in with others you have no way to see how many are on the server with you or how much space you have.

If you check them out, they had us set up and we were back in business in less than one day. Our current deal is a shared virtual server because we need time to redevelop our site and can't afford a full dedicated server until we do.

But if you go with them, its ten bucks a month or 100 for a year. You run the same risks with this as on other sites but so far they have a solid rep with their servers. Then if your site grows or you can negotiate with other site owners to go in on a dedicated server, they'll upgrade you and still offer full support on the dedicated server that most hosts won't.

Consider that for a bit as I know how being in a pinch with almost no time to act feels. Plus if you get their monthly plan, you're not locked into a long term committment and I think they may offer that even on their standard deals but there is setup fee to consider as well.

May I ask for a url to your site?

March 20th, 2007, 8:01 am

Armorbeast, you are right about dreamhost. and through my long experience in forums, i had seen many feedback, and too little is good.

seem like you having difficulty to find a hosting provider.
you should consider these:
1. hostgator. 1 free month
2. bluehost.
**this 2 with cpanel.

3. globat. 4 month free promo now.

more budget, would suggest ixwebhosting.

March 20th, 2007, 3:06 pm

Careful with Globat as they were our first host and almost destroyed us with their poor service and ineptness. You can search online about Globat and you'll find they have a very bad rep which is hard to repair with the business practices some of these servers offer.

Not only did Hostdime get us set up, but they also helped us fix some coding with our Nuke Evolution software not even the guys putting out Nuke Evo would help us with. I think that the best idea here might be for several people to get their own dedicated server which is what we will be building up to by getting some merchants and members to go in with us who will be using our site to generate cashflow. If the site goes down then we all go down together lol.

But what we really need are more sites that don't promise the moon and the stars as I know its difficult for many to afford a site of their own but if they would just do something like offer you a certain genre of ad's if they want to suppliment their low cost service with ad's to guarantee more uptime, I'd go for that. We have a 3d art site and wouldn't mind ad's for art related merchandise if they weren't obtrusive.

After being bitten not once, not twice, but three times...I gotta tell you that an unreliable provider can pretty much kill any site thats got active membership. We hope Hostdime is a good choice as they seem to offer a solid platform. I haven't checked out Hostgator and Bluehost but I have definately heard of both.

Some say you get what you pay for and if you pay very little then you get what you pay for. But you're buying more than just disc space and bandwidth here, you're buying a promise and guarantee's which is what sets one host above another...its called substance of character and if you deliver what you promise, then you deserve to be a top host. Funny thing though, Hostdime is really good and you see very few complaints about them, yet you don't see them on most of the sites claiming unbiased reviews of the best servers...you only see the ones that are known to have major problems.

March 20th, 2007, 8:17 pm

ziggy wrote:

Hostmonster sucks!

Look at their home page. No setup fees is what it says right there. And no hidden fees! Don't believe it for one second.

Several of their sales reps told me, before I signed up, that I could get a full refund the first 30 days. Not true. When I called them on that, they said that was just "hearsay".

I am out over $30. They don't refund your money the first 30 days. Don't just try them out to evaluate their service, stay away.

BTW, when I called to get a refund, I was put on hold and finally left a message, which, a week later, was not returned.

many hosting provider todays offering free setup, when user signup a year or above. Look for monthly plan if you look for setup fee.

October 22nd, 2007, 1:08 pm

I got to this site because I googled hostmonster problems. Occasionally, over the last few years, I've decided to put up some more websites or change my webhost (spiderweave). I was all set on hostmonster because of the decent price and the wealth of features (I like the SSH and control that I have in unix/linx). But, once again, I see this blast on how my choice is the devil itself and I'm going to rot in hell if I choose them. So, after a days of looking all over (why can't anyone have an honest review of webhosts and complaints and costs?), I see that a choice that I finally made is "junk".

My needs are probably very modest - linux, cheap, reliable, probably very low traffic - should be a snap to find a list of webhosts which can do this, no? Uh, no.. geesh.

So, I look here and see a few sites. Dreamhost looks good, hostgator looks good, I have friends on godaddy who are happy with it, but I'd like to play with multiple sites and heard complaints from elsewhere about godaddy. So, I finally think hostgator looks good. Googled hostgator and problems. Geez, if you think hostmonster is terrible, well, hostgator will cut you off at the knees because you use some of the resources that are supposed to be yours - or for no reason, etc. Wow! I don't need that.

So, now I'm thinking, gee this hostmonster is pretty good. My current webhost might be the best of this mess?

Have I about summed up the cesspool that we have for "reviews" and "advice" on getting a webhost to match my needs? Bogus reviews, hidden charges, arbitrary actions by the companies -- unless I pay $80/mo instead of a reasonable $7 for an almost do-nothing website?

Very frustrating - maybe I'll kiss this all off for another year.

October 29th, 2007, 3:17 am

Hi Joe B,

i having hosting with hostmonster, and running review on them, and with a demo website setup at their server as well. COnstantly monitoring their service uptime using serviceuptime.com. Which appear to be above 99.9% on average.

Last month, they are having control panel upgrade to cpanel 11. The service interuption is schedule and my site was down for that duration of almost 1 hour.

Hostmonster is more focus of afforadable web hosting, when there is problem, definately user need to contact the support, through live chat is the fastest, and get it solved. Apparently, dreamhost not having this, and if there is problem, you are stuck in email support queue, which might take up to 24 hours.

For host that is better than hostmonster, bluehost & hostgator will be the choice. Hostican is good as well. I said these, as because i using them all, and running intensive reviews with personal demo website setup on their server.

Hostmonster hosting is now $4.95, if you follow the discount link through my site. Normal price is selling at $5.95 now. And $7.95 if you signup 12 months term which is usually more expensive, even at many other hosting provider.