Go away from Lunarpages

Hi All,

I want to share my terrible experience with one of
most famous hosting - Lunarpages.

I'm on Lunarpages (basic account) more than 3 months and I sent them few email that
my server is often down.

Thay didn't want to move my accunt to some less overloaded server
and send me each time automatic message

So, thay asked me to sit next to computer and wait my site to be down and make traceroute.

I sent them monthly report from host-tracker.com :

But thay told me that monitoring services are not good...

Anyway I use host-tracker to montor other accounts on hostnine and hostforweb and both of these providers have 100% uptime.

Today I wanted to move some files (3GB of images) from another hosting to one of folders on Lunarpages.
I asked support just to do 2 SSH commands for me, but thay told me to buy SSH access, that is $2 per month.
On the end when I wanted to buy it, thay told me that thay need to move my account to another server that has SSH and that will cost me $75 (per hour of work).

I really understand what is business but this is terrible customer care.

I use other two hostings - Hostine (reseller) and Hostforweb (VPS) and each time I aksed them for this kind of help thay do it without any charge.


Thanks,
Nikola

 

Not too surprising considering the company in question.

There are a number better, and a TON that are a lot worse. As mentioned before in other threads, certain companies over sell their virtual web hosting. Which is why many, not just myself, have recommended people who have REAL sites with traffic, or content heavy look at semi dedicated.

Depending on the company, some only have 4 users per machine, and some more, or less. Cost is a bit more, but worth it. After all, hosting is what your business is built on and if down, or slow, you can forget about sales or repeat customers/visitors.

People will bookmark, and go to sites that are UP all the time, even if less of a resource. No one is interested in sitting around for your 'great site' just because you are a cheapskate.

Invest in your business.

 

I have bad news about my account.
After I posted this post here and on 2 more webmaster forums I send them
few more time emails about my issue.

And guess what?

Thay suspended my account !

I just received this email few hours ago:

I just must say two things:

- I have 3 low visited sites with less than 10 visitors per day on each.
- I have never before received any email about high usage


So, thay just can suspend any account when thay want and that's it.

But, I have big problem now:

All my files are locked there and I can't login to cpanel and ftp and get files back.
All files are stolen from Lunarpages.


Can anybody help me and give me some advice about US federal low
and how to get my files back.

Also there is domain name that I get for free from them and I would like to tranfer it to some other register. I invested in promotion of that domain and if they keep it I will lose my investment.

Any help, please.

Thanks,
Nikola

 

They can't hold you hostage. They have to release your pages, and sites. They do not have to let you keep hosting there. But once you find a new host, they have to release your FTP to pull files.

 

Woah!

Thanks for sharing, I almost moved my sites to them yesterday and then I read this..

http://www.diagnose-me.com/sucks/lunarpages.html

and now I see your post

It's amazing to see the kind of POSITIVE reviews posted in various webhost review sites

 

Ask them nicely to release your files and move your stuff.

Most companies go through rough patches; sometimes hosting companies are just very unlucky and after years of having no problems, a lot of customers go down all at once. I had it happen too this month; I manage *a lot* of servers and didn't have any problems for one year (only the occasional diskfail; they are hotswap + raid so no downtime). However from about first week april till now suddenly servers, networks, power ; everything fails. And before you think; that is probably not a coincidence; it is; we are talking about 4 different providers, 4 different data centers and many different server brands. And every single one of them suddenly had trouble in the same month.

But these are servers, and we are humans, so you give clients a month hosting extra, you say you are sorry and will try to prevent it in the future (which you can't; you are always dependent on 3rd parties, except maybe if you are Google) etc.

It happens... No excuse for support/sales/whatever of that company not to help you in every way, stay friendly and nice and give you the best support they can muster. If they don't (and seems Lunarpages does not, but I have that same experience with Hostgator and others; if there are real problems they mostly don't stay nice and help their large clients first; multiple dedi comes before dedi, dedi before premium accounts and premium before the others; you come *last* at these places).

Downtime is not so bad; bad communication about why, how, how it will be solved, what they will do to help with this problem in the future and when your site will be up with some stability; those points are, to 99.999% of the people, a lot more important than downtime. You can search the web for stories about this; you see even large companies saying in forums; 'we were down 3 hours, but at least support was helpful and very responsive, so...'

So for all you new hosting providers out there; beat the big/old ones; give better *support*! You cannot beat them on price, hardware and that kind of stuff; you can beat them on close client contact with even your smallest clients. Small can turn into big quite fast and big companies don't care about that fact.

 

So very true...

 

With all these bad experience with web hosting service providers I think only way to avoid it is to use web hosting company from the same city where you are physically located so that you can drag them to consumer court, if not go to their office and shout.