My Hosting Company is a Joke

Hi all,

I would like some suggestions as to what I should do about my hosting company. The company is Just Host and after reading many reviews and browsing their T & C´s, I chose them for the professionalism that they inspired.

There have been many periods where my websites and emails have been down and now yesturday, one of my main websites "Timetobefree" that was converted from a make money website into a travellers information portal, got "accidentally" deleted when they changed their servers. The website was looking rather good with plenty of content and was estimated at $1800.

That website has reverted back to an ancient back up and as a result it is lost. It is now for sale on the "domains section" because I just dont have the time or heart to rebuild it back into a quality travellers portal.

When I confronted them they said they couldnt do anything about it as I should be responsible for my own back ups, unless I had purchased their back up service. That may be true and I am a muppet for not doing so.

Regardless they are still having server issues and usually once or twice a day I am finding my websites and email down. One website is advertised as a writing business and has no doubt lost customers due to my hosting problems.

I would be pleased to take them to court but alas, I am sure their terms and conditions have a loop hole to protect them.

My questions are:

1) What are my grounds for requesting a full refund and have my websites and domains transferred to a new hosting company of my choice?

2) What hosting company do the vetarans recommend? (No affiliate links please)

Any advice would be appreciated,

Regards,

A. Hayes.

 

Honest answer: Not worth the trouble. Take your sites, find yourself a new host, chalk it up to experience, and move on. Chances are all you;re going to get out of them is a refund of hosting fees which usually for this type of host isn't much anyway. There's probably something in their TandC about how they will only give up to 30 days refund anyway.

Something like 93% of my clientele comes from hosts like these. I can tell you some sob stories and you're not alone.

Also if these sites are "mission critical" and mostly static, getting a second fall back host would probably be a plus in case the first falls through. Setting up a second 'A' recond in DNS is all that it takes.

Good luck,
-drmike

 

HostMonster and HostGator
These two are the best.. Ive been using HM for like 4 years now and its one of the best and cheapest..

This is the link to 50% off on HM hosting - http://www.hostmonster.com/promo

 

Thanx Mike,

I may give them one more chance to sort out their nonsense. As you say it probably is not worth the hassle but if it continues much longer I will request a refund and transfer. I have been recording their errors for just such an occasion.

As for the fall back host, I had not thought about that. Excellent idea.

Vellatechieguy,

I will have a look at hostmonster, can anyone else vouch for them?

Regards,

A. Hayes.

 

I use Hostmonster and love it. You can view my site to see it. Good luck!!

 

Hey don't forget to get your money back. See here:

http://www.justhost.com/guarantees

Each time you can document over 45 minutes of downtime in a single month, they owe you your month's cost back. That's their guarantee.

It's good (or at least very nice) of you to provide a second, and even third chance. Small and/or growing hosts often have problems. They post a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and if they stand by it they may deserve another chance.

If they won't stand by their published guarantees, GTFO and don't look back.

 

Hi,

That is excellent I will have to look at that. Thanks for the advice though, one more glitch and I´ll take ´em down to funky town.

A. Hayes.

 

The uptime guarantee is only for their network. Doesn't concern individual sites or servers.

The money back guarantee mentions "term" as well as meaning whatever's current, not the complete amount.

edit: If you read their ToS, they're going to charge you $20 for requesting the guarantee if you;ve registered a domain through them:

http://www.justhost.com/terms-and-conditions?hidenav

Oh and they disallow mechanical malfunctions as a reason for a refund.

May still get away with it but those clauses are in there. One of the reasons why I don't guarantee uptime but promote a "We'll do out best" and then publish results showing that we do.

 

use Hostgator they have thousands of clients and the support quality and response time is excellent.

 

Just Host isn't even a hosting company. They have no infrastructure. It's just a reseller. Probably one dude and maybe a few people in Random Country X that he pays a few pennies to answer emails.

Next time finding a hosting company that actually has their own datacentre with their own servers in it. The farther you remove yourself from the people actually providing the service, the farther you are from the people who can actually solve your problems.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the insight. It seems that you live and you learn. I had tried to be careful, but clearly did not do my homework correctly.

I have had a couple of offers from various clients but strongly heading towards Hostmonster or Hostgator. Does anyone know of the time length it could take to transfer a domain and website? My email address is constantly in use and I wouldn´t want it down for too long.

A. Hayes.

 

first you get the new host.

then you set up the account at the new host with your database, scripts, pages, blah blah blah... and also the email server with all of the accounts the old one has.

then you go to your registrar and update the nameservers for the domain to the new host's name servers.

then you wait about 72 hours, monitoring statistics on both web servers and checking email on both email servers.

at that time, it's pretty safe to disconnect and discontinue the old hosting account, and you never miss an email or a pageview.

it can cause some issues with account data if the site is busy. use a maintenance mode on both servers, if possible.

 

I've used hostgator for a while. They are very good and have always helped me out when I was in need. Never gone down on me either, well as far as I know.

 

Thanks to Goliath for giving me information on how to keep my website live while transferring it.

Thanks to the rest of you for your input. I definately have better alternatives to consider.

A. Hayes.

 

also, don't leave disaster recovery to your host. Make sure you have you code and other artifacts independently backed up.

 

Thank GOD i have read all this, i was willing to buy hosting from this company. any way im using lacehost.
its very good indeed the Admin is also on dp and will help you when ever you need their support 24/7 really is a good host provider, because if i get stocked on any kind of thing such like installation purpose or any php issue although its not his job but he will guide me the rest. thats why i think im on rite place and the price are cheap.
frankly try to look on their service dont get down every thing will be fine its easy he will guide you the rest if you need further help.

Regards

 

chances are the host dont own the server its probley a reseller or a vps, so asking them up front because you may be able to go to the company who host them for back-ups, slim chance but could be worth a a try, if they get defensive about it, do some digging on the ips and nameserver/ips and traceroutes might give you some idea

yes its a shame these hosts are about but they do exist, when i ran my hosting company i bent over backwards to help the clients and took great care and cost keeping data safe, id back up onto to different vps in different companies and monthly backups to a drive at home

its hard but true you should have had a back up somewhere! surley you would have had to copy the files from your computer onto the server so you shouldnt have deleted them, if you did have a look in the recycle bin.

i back up my data daily on to a external hardrive, my databases are emailed automaticlly daily to a gmail account and monthly i back up onto dvds

You also cant go wrong with hostgator as much as i hate to say it, i use them at the moment and no issues what so ever, always easy to talk to someone there and they are cheap, and use a great datacenter too, also they offer a free transfer service too which may help you

 

hostgator all the way...best hosting company IMO

 

Hello,
Have you tried retrieving the data using Google's cache and the waybackmachine ? You should get almost all your indexed pages from the cache depending on how recently they got deleted.

I am sorry to hear about your issue but data loss happens (by mistake or not) and that is why all hosting companies recommend clients to keep their own backups (in addition to the company's backup.)

Ishan

 

Thanks my star i love my host provider.
as what ever happen he is ready to help me out.

thanks