I don’t know how many times I heard my mom say it when I was growing up; “You get what you pay for…” Well, consider me finally learned of this in respect to web hosting. I haven’t posted in a few days—and it’s not because I’ve been sleeping in on account of Daylight Savings Time.
My webhost (which is now my former webhost), WebHostingBuzz.com, decided on Wednesday night that they would ban the Movable Type software which I use to run this blog. This effectively shut me out of my weblog completely. No warning, they (or more correctly, “he” (I think WebhostingBuzz is a one-man show) simply banned it because they claimed it used 90% of the server loads when the program was running. I think this claim is probably fallacious, but the terms of service allowed them to do so. This is not the only thing that has been banned since I started with them six months ago. Audio files were the first to go, and then email usage was limited—all without warning. My brother aptly commented, “at this rate image files will be banned because they take up server load.”
I was a fool. I paid $30 because they offered me what seemed like a steal—200 MB web space, 5 GB traffic, php/MySQL, etc. I’m usually pretty cautious, so I read the reviews on this website that reviews webhosts. Everyone was really positive about WebHostingBuzz.com. This was too good to be true, so I signed up.
I soon found out why the reviews were so good. In the first email with all my account information, there was the following offer:
1. Upgrade your hosting account to the next level absolutely FREE!!!
Q: What would you have to do for this FREE upgrade?
Ans: Due to overwhelming client appreciation letters, we have decided to go for some independent reviews about our services. If you feel that you are satisfied with our services and would like to rate us, kindly do so at:
http://www.findmyhosting.com/addrating.asp?id=6027
Please find time and contribute on your end. Your ratings will boost our morale and dedication to serve you better. Once you submit a rating, we would upgrade your account FREE within 6-12 hours.
I fell for this one too. I was pleased with the intial service, so I thought, “Why not?” Unwittingly I was contributing to a paid advertising scheme that gave the appearance of objective reviews.
Therefore, now I’m here pleading with anyone who is looking for webhosting, STAY AWAY from WebHostingBuzz.com! I even asked to be let back into my blog until I had time to find another host only to be told “we are very sorry.”
Thankfully I’ve found a new host, Amhosting.com, that has bit more proven track record—I’ve used them with another site and I know others who have had success with them. I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship!
I, too, have had hosting problems. I had been using a company — Sevaa — that I was initially happy with. Then the site became slow. Then the hosting company imploded (and they had failed to back anything up). Thankfully, before the implosion, I switched to Globalcon. I’ve been with them for close to a year now and have had zero problems and excellent customer service.
I was looking for a new host and I was considering webhostingbuzz but I’m not so sure any more. Thanks for the info. Also, did you alert findmyhosting.com?
I’ve been using webhostingbuzz.com for almost 2 years. I too believe their review process is misleading. When I made my review almost 2 years ago, I used constructive critisism about an issue I don’t even recall and the rest of my review was positive, but to make a long story short, I never got my promised upgrade. I signed on again for another year though due to the simplicity of not having to find another host just yet, even though the newest promotions are a lot better than when I started. For the most part, they’ve delivered what I asked and while I can’t necessarilly recommend them, they do have one hell of a deal.
Ya WHB sucks the big one I dumped them way back in December. The owner didn’t know a server from a hole in the ground – stuff was always breaking and it seemed like he always had some excuse. Dont make excuses just make it work!!!! I mean I understand an outage here and there every once in awhile but 2-3 times a month is unreasonable. And it wasnt like it was for a minute or 2 Im talking sometimes hours.
Anyways I’ve moved on to greener pastures and Im hosting over at Dreamhost now. They are a night and day differance to WHB – In the 8 mos that I’ve had them Ive probably only had maybe 5 minutes of outage time. I highly recommend them – check them out…