I am not sure you understand the nature of blogs.  Generally any blog that is ran with any sense moderates the comments.  Only 2% of the comments I get are approved, as the other 98% of the comments this blog gets are spam. Rest assured I will not stop you from posting your comments on this or any brainhost.com related post.  I have approved all of your comments, regardless if they are duplicates as I do not delete or modify a contact for a host’s comments.

However I have pre-approved you for future comments.  Since I got your attention with the last 2 posts on Brainhost.com, I am doing this third one with questions.  I have emailed you the questions; here I will explain the questions in detail.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2996

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2980

18 questions about Brainhost.com

The Basics of Brainhost.com:

I have friends that think I should ask some of the basics which would be questions 1 – 4

1. When did you purchase the domain Brainhost.com?
2. When did you actually start up Brainhost.com?
3. How many servers does Brainhost.com have?
4. What is the collective experience in the hosting industry of the Brainhost.com owners?

Not much to explain here, other than question 4.  As an example I will give out a short history of my experience.

I started out as a web designer with work in data bases over 3 years.  I meet another designer who also had a lot of experience in sales who with a programmer decided to start up a hosting company.  The first try ultimately failed as the programmer got paranoid and greedy and locked us out.  The second time was the charm which would give me 11 years working experience where I and other partners formed 4 companies.  Two years ago I would sell all my shares and get out of the hosting industry, in hopes going for what I wanted to do, as well as time to breath.

The Flippa.com/Brainhost.com partnership:

A partnership is an arrangement where parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests.

It’s pretty clear what Braihost.com’s interests are, what are Flippa.com’s interests? I happen to be monitoring cookies when going from Flippa.com’s Trusted Partner page to Brainhost.com.  Which interestingly enough I get a cookie once I reach Brainhost.com called AffiliateId.

5. Why did Flippa.com choose Brainhost.com over hosting companies that have an established history like Hostgator.com?

As a Flippa Trusted Partner, we offer web hosting and free site transfer to Flippa customers who have less complex websites, like a simple WordPress site. We do offer dedicated hosting as well (http://www.Brainhost.com/dedicated-servers), but most Flippa customers who choose us do not need this level of service.

I don’t see any explanation as to why Flippa.com chooses you to be a partner.  No offense but I would not have choose to partner with your company.  Your company has been running for around a year, a year does not give the definition of established. On top of that the feedback from your customers is less then stellar.

6. Are you willing to sign an affidavit that Flippa does not receive any kind of compensation? Be it monetary or some other action that benefits them directly.

Anyone that sells on flippa.com understands that Flippa will create any gimmick that makes them money.  Something I plan to explore in my next post.  One example is a $50 fee that will put the sale on the first page, my experience is that this only lasts for an hour.  No surprise but just a quick glance at the other trusted partners I can see on a lot of the sites they offer an affiliate program.  I don’t even have to look at odesk as that is an ad I purposely put on my site.

Brainhost.com package questions

7. Does Brainhosting.com have only one “unlimited”/shared hosting plan?
8. If your hosting company only has one “unlimited” hosting plan, why is the $6.95 a month (2 years) not “The Best Value”?

From the chat I had last week, it seems the only variety you offer is Month to Month, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, and 4 years.  The package page gives the illusion that there is more than one package.  Not to mention wouldn’t a 2 – 4 years term be better than a 1 year?

9. Per your company’s terms of service, free accounts do not get the same features as paid plans, so what are the differences?

I am well aware that you changed your terms of service after I did my post. You have completely removed the section on free accounts not having the same features as a paid account.  I don’t have a problem with that, but the differences have to be noted, especially on a plan that offers a free year.  Honestly I did a 3 month free hosting plan, and it was enough to make me want to tear my hair out.  Compared to the affiliate programs people were 80% likely to keep their accounts over a year.  Whereas 95% of the three free month accounts were closed by the end of the free period.

10. Why do you not offer dedicated to them, as well as have this “unlimited” service available through your site?

Regardless of your assumptions to what most Flippa customer’s needs, why do you not have the dedicated offer on the offers page for Flippa, or for that matter on your site?

Take it from someone that was in the business of selling dedicated servers, you can’t sell them unless they are out there for people to get to.  You point me to a link that I can’t seem to find a way to from the main page of Brainhost.com.

Brainhost.com reviews and awards

11. Can you explain why most of the complaints out there complain about too much money being charged on an account?

A lot of the complaints I looked at are complaints in regards to charges, and in some cases multiple charges.

Here is one site that serves as an example:

http://www.web-hosting-top.com/review/Brainhost.com

Now I think the explanation for unexpected charges could be sites like Brainhostreview.net offering $1 a month, but the order form that their site takes you to gives no such offer.  On the other hand I really cannot guess as to why people are complaining about multiple charges.

12. Where did Brainhost.com get the award for 2012 webhosting top 10?
13. Where did Brainhost.com get the award for Most Reliable Web Host 2012?
14. Where did Brainhost.com get the User’s Choice Web hosting Award?
15. Where did Brainhost.com get the Rated #1 Web Host award?
16. Where did Brainhost.com get the awards show cased on http://Brainhostreview.net/about-us/

You should check out the review site Brainhostreview.net. What I find interesting is sites that try to tell you that you should host with host like Brainhost.com. But like many of the review sites that I look at, they don’t host with who they promote.  Guess where Brainhostreview.net is hosted?

I can’t tell you how bad it looks when a review site that is dedicated to your Brainhost.com is hosted with Godaddy.  If they don’t host with Brainhost.com why should I?

The problem with a lot of the awards for Brainhost.com is I have no idea where you got them from.  There are 4 on your site, and then their 5 more on Brainhostreview.net.

17. What are the web sites for the people that wrote you testimonials (i.e. John, Michael, and Anna).

The only place I can find any positive feedback for Brainhost.com, is on Brainhost.com’s main page. The one thing that could add some viability to those reviews is putting some websites that are hosted on your service behind them.

The Brainhost.com/NSA Technologies Connection

18. What is you or your collogues relation to the company NSA Technologies?

During my review of feedback about brainhost.com I find several comments that mention NSA Technologies. I am not going to go into the details; I will leave that up to you.

As I have stated through multiple posts, I have no problem with you being new in the industry. New hosts can be more inclined to work towards keeping a customer. The things that concern me about brainhost.com are that you offer an unlimited package, which there is no such thing.  Then there is the $175 payout that ultimately cuts into what could actually pay for service. I truly believe it’s easier to keep customers then it is to bring new ones in.

I look forward to a response on this Brainhost post.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2980

My initial impression was this host would appear in the so called top host sites. I now think my first impression was wrong, and perhaps the review sites have seen what I failed to look into. There are a lot of reviews out there, and other then those sites that promote brainhost.com there are no positive feedback.  For that matter sites like webhostingstuff.com just started monitoring brainhost.com November 2011.

The only directory / review site I can find on the main page of search engine results is:

http://www.web-hosting-top.com/review/brainhost.com

Flippa tells me to be diligent; perhaps I should use their advice on Brainhost.com?

http://flippa.com/blog/how-old-is-your-site-new-guidelines-on-claiming-site-age/

In short they talk about aged domains, and how some sites used the creation date as the start date.  Something I try to point to when someone says there site is older than it actually is.  In some cases it was a case of site started before their domain was created like mindshark.ca, somehow a web services company is older than the creation date.  Then there is the case of where the domain was aged, like zyma.com who prior to being a British hosting company was a company out of Spain that dealt with construction.

There are a lot of other details that Flippa left out in the way of due diligence. Such as Alexa.com. Which if you read my blog enough you will know that the lower your score the better your company is.  Amazon has a 5, Google 1, Hosting-reviews-exposed.com is around 172,000, and brainhost.com is at 10,154.

Then there are more details you can get from Alexa if the score is below 100,000.

Alexa.com shows some very interesting results.  It seems up until February/March 2011 Brainhost.com was extremely limited in traffic.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/brainhost.com#

Then we come to a recommendation that flippa.com gives for due diligence, arcive.org. A site I use often when looking at a site.

http://web.archive.org/web/20100918115557/http://brainhost.com/

From there I can see that brainhost.com ran PPC pages and was for sale for the bulk of the time.

Now there are few telling details here, especially when you look at their BBB record

http://www.bbb.org/akron/business-reviews/internet-web-hosting/brainhostcom-in-akron-oh-90005710

Here are the details I find interesting about what the BBB lists:

• 28 complaints closed with BBB in last 3 years | 28 closed in last 12 months
• BBB file opened: 03/03/2011
• Business started: 08/20/2010
• The address for this company 3660 Center Rd, Suite 363 Brunswick, OH 44212-3620 is UPS Store.
• This business is in the process of responding to complaint(s) previously closed with no response. (cause of no rating)

As I have stated in the past I am no fan of the BBB, because they don’t validate any information and second their system is awkward. Never mind this is a system that asks for money from those it is supposed to keep an eye on.  No conflict of interest there (yes I am being sarcastic).  It’s been my personal experience that BBB asks the individual for the start date, they don’t look at the actual business license for a company. Because of the file date with the BBB, the Alexa Traffic, and what Archive.org show I think its safe to say the company started in Early 2011.

Brainhost.com and the review sites

But I think the most telling thing is looking up “brainhost.com review” on any search engine.

There are a lot of negative reviews out there.  The ones that have nothing negative are those trying to sell you onto brainhost.com.  Some of which appear on the gurus that promoted brainhost.com in the beginning.  The funny thing is if they allow comments they are negative, one particular so called guru with a site that looks like crap on shingle also wants to promote hostthanprofit.com  (MLM crap).  The only place I can find any comments about liking the service are at brainhost.com, there are no dates of when they got the kind words or what site is hosted with them.

Contact with Brainhost.com

My reason for contacting brainhosting.com is their 4 awards. 4 awards that I cannot tell where they came from, nor can anyone that I have contacted by phone or by chat. I also wanted some clarity on the hosting packages.  After why should I buy the $7.95 plan as its listed as a better value, should I not choose the $9.95 package?

http://www.brainhost.com/web-hosting-plans/

“Brain Host offers a variety of Hosting Plan Options – choose below for the plan that best fits your needs!”

From the looks of it there is only one package at three different prices.

The awards that brainhost.com has I find most interesting are the two for the year 2012. When I first looked at this site back on January 10, 2012 the awards were there. Now perhaps its just me, but in order to be the best host of 2012, you would have to be a good host for at least most or the full year in order to get an award for this year. It seems really premature to get a 2012 award.

Brainhost.com chat

Andrew: Welcome to Live Chat support, how may I help you?

Benjamin: Hello Andrew

Benjamin: Can you point me to the sites where your company got it’s awards from?

Andrew: May i know where you wish to point the website?

Benjamin: Point the website?

Andrew: I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand. Would you mind explaining it again, please?

Benjamin: Your company has 4 awards on the main page. Who was it that gave your company those awards?

Andrew: I will suggest you to call us at 1-800-311-9418 number so that they will assist you further in this regards.

Andrew: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Benjamin: can you tell me the difference in your hosting plans? They all have the same exact points.

Andrew: There are no difference just the tenure are different.

Benjamin: that is not what it looks like from the package page.

Benjamin: you only have one plan?

Andrew: Are you referred by any other company to sign up with us?

Benjamin: flippa

Andrew: We provide following hosting packages:

Andrew: • Month to Month: $9.95 per month. First month hosting + $20 one time setup fee + $14.95 domain registration = Initial pay $44.90

Andrew: • Every 6 Months: $53.70, which breaks down to $8.95 monthly + $14.95 domain registration = Initial pay $68.65

Andrew: • Every 12 Months: $95.40, which breaks down to $7.95 monthly + $14.95 domain registration = Initial pay $110.35

Andrew: • Every 24 Months: $166.80, which breaks down to $6.95 monthly + $14.95 domain registration = Initial pay $181.75

Andrew: • Every 36 Months: $214.20, which breaks down to $5.95 monthly + $14.95 domain registration = Initial pay $229.15

Andrew: • Every 48 Months: $237.60, which breaks down to $4.95 monthly + $14.95 domain registration = Initial pay $252.55

Andrew: All the payments are upfront.

Andrew: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Benjamin: but the site says free for one year.

Benjamin:http://www.brainhost.com/special-offer/flippa.php

Andrew: I will suggest you to call us at 1-800-311-9418 number so that they will assist you further in this regards.

Andrew: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Benjamin: are you sales or do you do customer service?

Andrew: We are technical support.

Andrew: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Andrew: I have not received a response from you for some time and will need to end this session. If you need further assistance please log back in to Live Chat. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Thank you.

Chat session has been terminated by the site operator

The chat session with brainhost.com was confusing, not to mention the chat operator was in a hurry to get off chat with me.  A call to brainhost.com sales department could not give me the answer to who it was they got those awards from.  If anyone should know where a company got an award from it would be the sales department.  I happen to leave the chat session alone for a minute and the chat operator ended the chat session.  Never mind I gave the chat operator more than a minute to respond to me.

One thing is certain and that is the Brainhost,com is a mess.  They only have one package, and multiple ways to pay you can pay more for the same thing.

The one question I forgot to ask was how much under the Flippa offer would I pay and when after my free year expired.

I usually do not have a problem with hosts being new.  But there are things that bother me like an insane affiliate program. $175 uses a lot of what a customer pays to give an affiliate a commission. Sure it’s a tax deduction for the company, but so are things that provide a customer good service. Its far easier to keep existing customers then it is to bring in new ones.

On top of that Brainhost.com’s packages make no sense. I could not get a straight answer, payment terms for a package became different packages on their own.

I will be keeping an eye on Brainhost, mostly to see how long they are a trusted partner of Flippa.

Just to be clear, there is no such thing as an unlimited space or bandwidth package.  Unlimited is nothing more than a marketing gimmick hosts slap on a package to entice buyers . At best it could be called a package that is no more than what you will ever need, and we are not going to tell you the numbers for what a person will need.  When it comes to unlimited bandwidth, well that’s an easy one to do, just put a bottleneck on how much bandwidth can be used.  After all think about it, your internet connection speed is generally limited by what package you purchase with a provider.

What I found interesting is that Flippa.com’s landing page on Brainhost.com has a $4.95 a month; whereas the main page for brainhost.com has it at $7.95. Normally a price that has a mark over it should imply as much value as possible; at least that’s what someone in sales would say.  I figured I would look at Brainhost.com’s webhosting packages.  All three plus the Flippa.com package are unlimited packages, which have the same 8 features, at $6.95, $7.95, and $9.95.  No $4.95 package unless you came through flippa.com (or perhaps another “partner”). There is nothing there to explain the difference between the 4.

So why is Flippa.com “partnered” with Brainhost.com?

First before I go into why I am looking at Brainhost.com, I think it important to examining the relationship between Flippa.com and Brainhost.com.  Flippa.com calls Brainhost.com a Trusted Partner.  Despite having Brainhost.com shows up on https://flippa.com/deals. A page that shows deals is not exactly some place I would put my trusted partners.  The relationship is not clear; in perhaps the only thing that can link them is a possible free hosting deal.

Flippa.com like Brainhost.com is online for one very good reason, and that is to make money. In an attempt to not have to explain myself again, I am not against anyone making money. I do however have a problem when the method to obtain money is not done in an ethical manner.  With that said I find it hard to believe that Flippa.com is directing anyone to Brainhost.com without some form of compensation.

Let’s take for example the free Google Adwords that a lot of hosts offer to their clients.  For any host that offers it, it is an incentive for a customer to sign up.  For Google.com it’s the chance to get new Adwords customers.  Its pretty clear why both host and Google have what I call a win/win situation.  Both parties benefit from this form of a partnership.

So what does Flippa.com get out of this partnership with Brainhost.com? Hosting perhaps?

I have to ask where is Flippa.com hosted?

Since they are an Australian company, I would at first assume they are hosted in Australia.  But Alexa tells me that the U.S. is on top of their traffic. Plus from the whois information for Brainhost.com I can see the owner is in the U.S. The network whois for Flippa.com tells me:

Address:        Amazon Web Services, Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2

Now you can see why I was under the impression that brainhost.com was somehow as good as Rackspace.com based on a recommendation from Flippa.com. Never mind I have avoided Amazon.com as an option because of fear of disappointment in on a website I spend a lot of money on through digital content and that stuff that comes via Fedex, UPS, and USPS. Though that could change.

So is Brainhost.com with Amazon.com as well?

The short of that is no, a network look up shows that they are with singlehop.com.

So why am I interested in Brainhost.com?

I have yet to see this host on any review site but I think that’s going to change with time. Go to their affiliate page and you can see very clearly why I think that:

http://www.brainhost.com/affiliates-portal/

At $175 or more per sign up that is easily a bigger payout then what Hostgator.com pays out.  So how can Flippa.com get a payout when people are getting charge nothing for the first year?

Flippa.com/Brainhost.com free hosting account:

As with any service you apply for it is important to read the terms of service. Terms of Service will tell you all the loop holes a hosting company will use to get out of giving you what you thought you were going to get.

http://www.brainhost.com/terms-of-service/

Free hosting accounts may not include the same standard features and options as paid accounts. For information on what is included in free vs. paid accounts, visit http://www.brainhost.com/help/billing-questions/hostingplans/. Free hosting clients can upgrade to a paid account at any time by contacting client services or logging into their account at http://www.brainhost.com/login/ and selecting the upgrade option.

As for that link to http://www.brainhost.com/help/billing-questions/hostingplans/ to tell you what the differences are between free and paid brainhosting.com accounts is:

As you can see they have not even put the page up for that yet. Honestly there seems to be a lot of incomplete work to be a “Trusted Partner”.  I can tell you that they require a credit card for verification purposes.  Plus there are other things to charge you for like Domain Name Privacy, which is preselected for you regardless if you tell them you will change the dns yourself (meaning that you wisely choose to not have your domain name with your hosting provider). I was hoping there were would be an individual terns of service for free accounts. Granted this is just speculation, but I suspect that this limited account is truly $4.95 a month billed under annual terms after the 365 days. There is nothing to state exactly how much you will be billed and when. Keep in mind the furthest I went in the order process was up to the point where I would have to enter my billing and contact information.  If the details for how much you will be billed for the future and when is in the next step, that is one step too far for notification.

Brainhost.com does however have a FTC discloser in their affiliate terms of service:

http://www.brainhost.com/affilliates-terms-and-conditions/

Brain Host expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and Brain Host any time you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services, in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission guidance as outlined at http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus71-ftcs-revised-endorsement-guideswhat-people-are-asking.pdf. Such disclosure should be clear and prominent, meaning close to the endorsement or testimonial.

Perhaps Flippa can disclose its material connection to Brainhost.

http://www.darklegacycomics.com/322.html

This is the point where I realize that I really have not been paying attention, and leave it to the world of humor to enlighten me per usual.From an uninformed point of view I would support PIPA/SOPA. After all I am a big believer in copy right, I believe people should be paid for what they create. Those that did not create should not be allowed to profit off someone else’s work. But I also believe Innocent until proven guilty. In short the devil is in the details.

Why I have doubts about PIPA/SOPA

If you came here yesterday between 8 am – 8 pm, you will know that I opposed the bill.  Hosting-reviews-exposed.com was blacked out and redirected to a site where I hope the bulk of my visitors that were from the U.S. sign up to inform their Senators and Congress representatives.  If you are not from my country you should be concerned, especially if you have customers from here.  That is why the banner for Hosting-reviews-exposed.com has changed because of  PIPA/SOPA.  Hopefully Wednesday will encourage a more rational approach to fighting copy right violators. But rarely does a single day result in change.

I could tell you many of my customers own experiences with battling copy right violations, but I think my first personal issue with copy right is short enough to bring my point of concern. My problem was that back in the late 90’s a large company had copied a site I set up to show case my work so I could bring in more design customers. You would think that it would be me raising hell against this company, but I would have had to of known it was stolen.

Out of all the audacity after stealing and butchering my design they chose to send a letter in the mail threatening me with legal action. I had to say I was pretty baffled as all the design was my own personal creation that I had spent weeks on.  I could clearly see their site was a hacked copy of my site. But as I have said many times I am the last person to go after because in short I am rather weird. Hostile results against me will result in strange feedback. It was my overwhelming need to keep every bit of data that I make or get that saved me.  If my data was actually physical items I probably would appear on TV being forced to give up my precious data. I am a data hoarder.

On top of the desire to horde data I had a CD burner and I was sending copies of my work to a friend through the Post Office. It was not exactly practical at the time to do backups online.  It was not for fear of copy right, but fear of data lose that drove me to do this.  So there were 4 copies of my site design of the then current design work with every detail down to raw data sitting in unopened envelopes with post marks that predated their copy of my work. Not to mention the raw data from the first two designs before the one they stole was in another 5 envelopes. The two original designs showed an evolution of similar elements. The only thing not included there was the rough design I did in sketch pads that I also still have.  I presented them with a few samples of what I had of raw data, a photo copy of one of the envelopes letting them know that there was more than one.  Of course the company had no raw production data, so they quickly withdrew their threat against me. The design for their site quickly changed to their own design (at least I can hope), granted I would have sold them the design as I was not attached to it. I did not pursue litigation because ultimately I had a livelihood to work on.

It was one of my many quirks that saved me from a lengthy legal battle.

So I have to ask, would I have been able to keep my site up under PIPA/SOPA?

I hate reading laws like this, they are far less clear then a loan agreement. Laws by politicians that think we should ”bring in the nerds”, But from what I have read the bill is supposed to only affect sites that are in other countries.  For that matter I don’t think this would help anyone in this country that does not have a large legal department behind them.  I could go onto to counter arguments against it.  But I think that there are other people that have done a better job than me.

http://gizmodo.com/5877000/what-is-sopa

http://www.rackspace.com/blog/?p=2741

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/sopa-pipa/

http://theoatmeal.com/sopa

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/technology/web-protests-piracy-bill-and-2-key-senators-change-course.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

http://sopastrike.com/strike

http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/

Frankly I am ashamed to say that I did not do start blogging about this last year.

What really bothers me about SOPA/PIPA

The other thing that bothers me is that it does not exactly explain how they will contact, or if they will even contact them at all.  Nor do I see a penalty for a false claim.

For over a decade I have had my own battles with copy right offenders from people that would like to call themselves my customers, to those that were too stupid to realize that when they copied one of my sites, that I might have learned tricks to encoding my work.  Or those too stupid to realize that the scripts they scraped were reporting back to me and my business partners.

Something needs to be done, but not when it affects innocent individuals.

Congress and the Senate need to understand that PIPA/SOPA are bad ideas.

Manashosting.com was the encouragement for starting posts on companies that spam.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1040

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1152

I was emailed by someone claiming to be Antony John with Manashosting.com telling me I should have used the unsubscribe link. They asked me to remove my posts about Manashosting.com, and to give my email account, so they could remove me from their list. I made it clear that I would not give my email account as I never gave it to them to begin with. Hence why I labeled manashosting a spammer.

After which the email spam stopped from Manashosting.com.

By October 2011 it seemed Manashosting.com decided to do something that they had done on many other sites to my site and that was to post fake positive feedback. They tried to use a post on a Hostgator.com post to get people to go to Manashosting.com. Frankly I thought It was distasteful to use a negative post I made on a host to try and advertise manashosting.com. For which I made another post about Manashosting.com:

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2706

Manashosting.com choose the wrong person to spam

I have a lot of reasons to hate spam. Being a former hosting provider being the ultimate reason for hating spam. I can’t even begin to speculate the countless hours of money and man hours lost in dealing with spam. The more domains that were put on our servers, the more spam that the servers were forced to endure. On top things like spam assassin ran making it to where we had to put less clients on a server. Then there is all the legitimate email that I lost because of measures to avoid spam.  Some cases this would cost me clients. Then there was the occasional asshole that thought they could use our servers to spam. Sometimes my servers were held hostage by the likes of spamcop to pay what very well may be deemed as black mail to white lists IPs. Don’t get me started on Comcast whose own spam policies costs me hours of man hours to fix. They had adapted a stupid practice of using abandoned email accounts to catch supposed spammers. That is only a small taste of why I cannot stand spammers and I could write novels of what can only amount to a burning rage. But this is about one company that will use illegitimate means to get customers, Manashosting.com.

An email exchange with Manashosting.com

I had to meant to post the email exchange between me and Manashosting back in December 2011. But as I stated super busy with issues such as the loss of a family member, work, and well the holidays.

This email came in again from someone claiming to be Anthony John on December 7, 2001.  The Subject was “ACTION REQUIRED”
“Am writing on behalf of Manashosting.com, on your website there have been several occasion of abuse of service by posting unreliable and false statement about our company which is hampering our business to a greater extent and also its affecting our branding. We from the company have brought this to your notice several times and no action has been taken yet with this regards. Now that there has been a new rule implemented by the Indian government to protect company’s interests and individual interests we request you to remove these folly reviews from your site at the earliest. The rule that is governing is called as Information Technology Act (ITA). If you are unable to remove the folly reviews we recommend that you remove our company from your website completely. All the keywords that are added with our name Manashosting and or Manashosting needs to be removed from your website.

Thanks and regards,

Antony John
Branding Manager
Manashosting
Bangalore, India”

I only received one email from Manashosting.com, from this guy claiming to be Anthony John. This time around I have no idea why he has my email, as I never sent a reply back to him through the hosting-reviews-exposed.com Gmail account. I simply posted his email to the first post, and allowed the blog to email him with a email from the system.

Here is my response to Manashosting.com

“Anthony,

Your company spammed me, hence why I did an article on your company.  Had you not spammed me you would not have found yourself on my site.

As for I where I lied, point out where and I will see if there is an actually correction needed. Otherwise instead of issuing threats you do not understand, I would suggest in your next email you ask me how you can work to resolve this and change your company to a viable option. By that I do not mean a bribe, but following business practices I lay out.  If you do not want to see any more articles stop spamming me and every one else.

I have done reviews on far bigger companies then you, and they are willing to work with me.

Also Anthony, don’t lie your company only contacted me once, as I published your companies last email.

Regards,

Benjamin”

Manashosting.com’s response:

“Hi Benjamin,

Its nice of you to respond with your grievances and we do apologies if we had spammed you earlier, but what we would like to tell you is that due to this review on your site we are losing business to an extent, and more over we had never approached you on this, now since there is a law that is in place in our country where we can approach the site owners and let them know about the hindrance caused to us and we would like to settle the matter in a more amicable manner rather than seeking the justice through law Information technology act (ITA) www.mit.gov.in/content/information-technology-act.

We do also understand that there might have been a mistake from our side by spamming you. At the same time we would like you also to consider the amount of work that is done from our side to bring our company’s branding and there by would like you to take us of your website.

I hope that you would surely consider this request.

Regards,

Antony John
Manager Branding
Manashosting
Bangalore
India”

I did try to dig into their laws, but frankly I doubt even Manashosting.com understands the link they sent me. It’s a pdf file so not exactly easy to search for the exact law they are trying to point to. I could care less about there lose if Manahosting is going to fake their reviews and spam. But in short I get the last word with manashosting.com.

“Anthony,

You spammed a U.S. citizen.  I am not a citizen of your country.  Therefore your law does not apply to me. Spamming is illegal in my country. Which means any severs that you have in my country must comply with U.S. law, not India law.  Never mind my first amendment rights.

But if you want to go after people that have negative things to say about your site, how about  http://www.webhostingreviews.com/manas-hosting-reviews.htm

I also know your spam commenting like you did on my blog my biggest case in point is:

http://www.web-hosting-top.com/review/manashosting.com

If you care to debate it I can make it a point to have that company review the positives.  You have a trend of creating positives (and you’re not good at faking it) every time there are negative comments.

Trying to point me to a law that does not affect me, is not going to help you.  Point to me where you thought there was an actual lie.  I suggest you read each of my posts on your site word for word.  But I know I am not the first to complain about your spam.

http://indian-web-hosting.blogspot.com/2008/09/manas-hosting-spammer.html

Also there is no question about if you spammed me, you did spam me.  I never gave your company  my email nor would I ever give your company my email address.  Which makes the emails your company sent to my private yahoo account spam.  There is no might of about it.  I will not accept a half assed apology.  Simply put I should never have received any of your companies emails.

As for never approaching me on this your full of crap.  I have your previous email from “11/14/10″.

Antony
antony@manashosting.com

Message:
Hi,

It looks like we have sent emails to your personal mail id. This could
have been amicably settled because we also give links for DND which we
update on a regular basis. We request you to mail your email id so
that in near future you would not receive any emails from us. And we
also request you to take the content off your site.

I hope that you would surely do the same.

Regards,
Antony John

Sent from (ip address): 117.192.180.91 (117.192.180.91)

Then there is your email from earlier “We from the company have brought this to your notice several times and no action has been taken yet with this regards. “

So yes you have approached me on this.

I have dealt with another host from your country on the same issues.  Unlimitedgb.com, of course they did not try to pull some law on me, they tried to bribe me.  Which did not work out so well from them either.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2461

Read the blog and actually correct everything I pointed out.  Doing so means I will work with you and update the posts.  The posts will not be removed.

Either way you spam my email, blogs, YouTube account or whatever else I will write up another post.  So before you spam anyone, think twice as I have over 30 email accounts with various sites, 26 blogs, and 5 YouTube accounts.

Once again there was no might have been about the spam.

Regards,

Benjamin

P.S. Spam pisses me off to no end”

Manashosting.com can choose to respond to this post, or learn from their mistakes to avoid having to suffer further consequences.

I hope I do not have to give Manashosting any more lessons in ethics.

How my review of Zyma.com began

Last year Khuram the owner/marketing director and from what other people tell me the support for zyma.com contacted me to offer me free hosting account in exchange for a review. Not the first host to ask for a review. But like all of them, the owner of Zyma.com did not bother to actually look at this site and see if it’s actually a review site. I told him there was no way I would trust any of my sites on a $10 a year account. Shortly after I find that not only did he contact me he contacted a review site that uses “(hosts name) + sucks” as a marketing strategy in search engines like Google.  That site was hostingsthatsuck.com. The whole premise was this must be a good host because there were no negative reviews about this site. Never mind that before Zyma.com was a U.K. webhosting site, it belonged to some construction company in Spain. The review was disingenuous.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1618

Khuram of Zyma.com was not happy with me

My review of Hostingsthatsucks.com review had Khuram the owner/marketing director/support and probable sales agent for Zyma.com contact me sharply protesting my review for calling his site a scam. This had to be a record in response time as he contacted me the same day I had posted this blog article. He asked that I remove my review of Zyma.com. I declined removing the post as I will only do that if I am wrong. I also made clear I only quoted one of the other people that he asked to do a review, which was hostingsthatsuck.com.  Hostingsthatsuck.com used words like scam and sucks, everything that someone would not want to hear about their site.  A site that has appeared on my site before and will continue to appear as long as hostingsthatsuck.com continues to use a false negative context while obscuring other negative search engine reviews.

After Khuram finale really read what I had wrote he conceded and claimed to have contacted hostingsthatsuck.com to remove their post, and that he removed their free hosting account and affiliate link:

“which is why we have revoked hostingsthatsuck.com affiliate license with us, as well as removed their website from our servers.”

“With regards to hostingsthatsuck.com, we have requested them to remove the post, however we cannot force anyone to do anything, and so we are limited as to what more we can do.”

Honestly I don’t believe him as the so called review for zyma.com at hostingsthatsuck.com has remained unchanged as you can see from the attached screen shot. I do not believe that the owners of this fake review site would leave a post-up for a site that will not pay them.

But the true gem out of all of this was the discussion on unlimited hosting. I could not get an answer on what normal usage was. It’s the same spill I get from any unlimited hosting advocate.  But in order to know what normal is you have to have number that’s your base line.  At less than $10 a year Zyma.com’s normal is going to be lower than what hostgator.com considers normal usage.

Why the Interest in Zyma.com again?

There are a few factors in why.  Last year I had promised to do a re-review of Zyma.com. I was going to do a re-review.  But with of the big hosts doing FTC compliance the need for a template review became unnecessary. It seemed better to just go after any review site that show cased a host with an FTC compliance requirements in their terms of service. After all my issue is not that affiliates are making money, it is that some affiliates try to label themselves as review sites and do not mention they are biased for the sake of a payment.

Another reason I bring up Zyma.com again is because of this unreal unlimited hosting plan. Not that I think any unlimited plan should be trusted for real hosting needs. Zyma.com offered this so called unlimited hosting plan for less than $10 a year.  I call it unreal because it’s not something done by other providers such as Hostgator.com and Endurance International Group. There are a lot of good reasons behind that. First and foremost it takes money to make money. One thing I am certain of is that Zyma.com does not have the capital and buying power that any of the popular so called unlimited companies have. In short Hostgator.com has the power to buy machines that can handle hundreds of people for far less then Zyma.com would.

Too often I encounter people that think that hosting should make up less than 1% of what they bring in. These are the same people that fall for any cheap solution. To anyone that thinks hosting should always be cheap, it is time to wake up from fairy land. When you buy hosting your data is not stored in another dimension where there is infinite capacity, its stored on a hard drive on a server, which in turn is stored on a rack that is hooked into a router.  This server’s rack is housed in data center that receives utilities such as water, electricity, and perhaps natural gas. Not to mention phone lines, the connection to an upstream provider. Plus if the provider offers backup options such as a gas powered generator and battery backups there are even more expenses.  Plus there are no gnomes working for free in the back ground. A human being in needed to do the maintenance and support for zyma.com, and most preferable more than 1 human being. If these human being are not outsourced from another country like say the Philippines or India and is in Great Britain then the costs go up even further.

Don’t forget that they offer 40% payment to people in their affiliate scheme (once again their choice of words not mine). Though I doubt at less than $4 per sale most review sites would be interested. That and merchants are not exactly allowing you to collect money for free. Which at the time Zyma.com’s only merchant was PayPal.com, that alone could cause less people to sign up as there are a lot of people that are not fans of PayPal.com who has decided to have a 30% retainer on proven participants. Then there are other fees such as business licenses. Running a business is not as simple as snapping your fingers.

The quality of the equipment and human interaction elements to a degree depend on how much is paid for them.  In short don’t expect a Porsche 918 Spyder on a budget that could buy you a 1985 Chevrolet Chevettee.  But while we are on the subject of human interaction back in January 2011 they were only offering 14 – 16 hours of support. This is my own opinion that Khuram was the only person at Zyma.com.

By October 2011 Zyma.com appeared to be falling apart at the seams

While I got a few comments on the down time at Zyma.com, most of the customers that contacted me via email. Per my own policy I do not publish the emails of customers unless they give me permission; sadly none of them contacted me back.  Down time seemed to be as long as 10 days. Review sites like hostingsthatsuck.com had people complaining about down time as well in October.

I contacted Khuram to get his side in regards to people complaining about down time, but I was never contacted back.

So what about the people that promoted Zyma.com?

I have looked at lot of sites that did a so called review based off of the free hosting plan from Zyma.com. One in particular did not have their hosting account continued this year by Zyma.com:

http://www.pingable.org/zyma-com-cheap-webhost-review/

Out of all of the sites that I have found with in the first 2 pages of search engine results on Google, this is the only one I find that retracts their positive feedback.

At the top of the page has been added a notice of:

“We have received a lot of comments saying how bad Zyma have been, constant down time, and poor service. Zyma were meant to provide us with a free account for life, and they did not renew our account after 12 months, so all I can say as I would not trust these guys. Over the space of the year, we found that our site was down more often, and that it was slower to respond. So if you are considering Zyma, I would not go with them as a provider.”

Never mind that was a 2012 update, a far cry from the complaints they also received in October 2011. It seems the only reason that they did an update was because of the removal of free hosting. I did not see anything in the email that was sent to me by zyma.com that stated a free for life account; then again I saw nothing of how long the free hosting would last. I can’t see any affiliate links despite the previous endorsement still intact below this despite a warning to avoid zyma.com.

Is Zyma.com a scam?

It would be safe to say that Zyma.com was a scam if people did not say that their websites had come back up.  But sites have come up. There is a back story that has yet to be told. I can only speculate as to what the cause was. But I personally feel the only way Zyma.com can move forwards is to get some pricing similar to the competitors they try to compete with. It was ok in the beginning, maybe in the first month to bring new customers end. But in the long run it’s a bad idea to not have a package that ensures a company does not struggle.

If anything I think Zyma.com is at worse a company that treads on despite its failures.

I will shortly explain why I choose thebest10webhosting.com to be my example.

There is nothing special about thebest10webhosting.com.

thebest10webhosting.com has an Alexa Score of: 5,859,871

Hostingreviews.exposed.com has an Alexa Score of 165,972 (before my server issues I was below 140,000)

Remember when it comes to an Alexa score you want a low number.

Some example of companies with low Alexa scores

Facebook – 2

Amazon.com – 12

Hostgator.com – 245

Bluehost.com – 393

Fatcow.com – 3,095

This high a number generally means visitors are rare. Despite having more Facebook fans then me, they have far less feedback then I would expect from a site with so many Followers on Facebook.  You would think on average they would have more reviews then Facebook fans.

As for being a site with years of experience:

Creation Date: 06-aug-2011

They have not even been online for a year, but from what archive.org shows they did start the site the same month they bought the domain.

http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/thebest10webhosting.com

So why am I even bothering going after thebest10webhosting.com?

In terms of a post that will bring me in traffic this is not one of them. It may very well go down to be my least viewed post. In general I don’t bother with hosts that have an Alexa score above 1,000,000 after having dealt with the hosts that purchased fake positions at webhostingstuff.com. I only did that because I wanted to prove that these hosts were paying for a position in the top 25. For review sites I don’t bother with them unless they are below 500,000. That does not mean just because your Alexa score was too high that I completely forgot about them. For some that I have potential I have on a list for re-review at a later date.

But as I stated I wanted to work on a post that deals with comments; in this case hosts, sites that sell services to websites (Like Mindshark.ca), and review sites that choose to spam in one form or another.

This review site that had the unlucky timing to spam my blog Tuesday is thebest10webhosting.com .

Which happens to come in at a time when I need an example of  what happens when you spam me. At the same time it serves as one of many so called consumer watch dogs or in other words top 10 sites. Though I guess you could have figured that out by the long domain name.

This so called review site tried to chime in on a post I made about inmotion, it did not really add anything to conversation. But they defiantly tried to get their link in there. After all how best to get a big payout then to go to a site that has a post about one of the companies that they are trying to convince people is a good company. Because of this review site I decided to review webhostinghub.com and inmotionhosting.com to see if they had an FTC compliance clause in their Affiliate Agreement.  Turns out every one of the hosts on this top 10 list do.

This post is pretty much to point out why companies should not bother doing fake comments on my site or spam me to promote their own company.  I will make it a point to make my own traffic from their name. Just as I will do with any company that tries to spam me be in via email, YouTube, comments on this blog, or whatever else. Which means I will look for every flaw that I can find about their site.

Another problem is if people look up your site through an internet search they will find my site. So instead of making traffic off my work, I make traffic off thier work.

If any individual needs more of a reason not to spam me or anyone else they need look no further then this list of companies that I can think off the top of my head that spammed me in one form or another. This site appears on the first page of many of their search engine results:

Mindshark.ca http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2037

UnlimitedGB.com http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1240

Manashosting.com http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1040

So here are the flaws with thebest10webhosting.com

They are another of these so called top 10 sites, who allow comments/reviews (maybe).  I have a very good reason for believing that their reviews are fake.  After all how can a site get a review before they were up? Remember the creation date for their domain is August 6, 2011, yet this review as done July 23, 2011.

On top of that most of the comments are between September and October 2011 in no particular random order.

So which of the top 10 hosts that appears on the list does thebest10webhosting.com host with?

NONE OF THEM

That’s right, not a single one of these hosts.  They host with Godaddy. Honestly compared to many of the hosts that appear on list I can tell you why. While Godaddy does have an affiliate program it does not payout near as much for the same package as most of these companies.

The interesting thing is thebest10webhosting.com has not gotten the memo that HostClear.com is merging with JustHost.com.

Is thebest10webhosting.com FTC compliant?

Well they do have a disclaimer, which I copied and pasted below.  Please keep in mind that text in italics and red is not my grammar or spelling.  Clearly doing very little to state they get paid by this top 10 list, but they do in great length say they are not liable.

http://thebest10webhosting.com/disclaimer.php

In the interest of the consumer and according to FTC requirements we openly disclose that all the information on this website TheBest10WebHosting.com is for information purposes only. Not trying to provide advise of any kind. Saying that, you as user of this site, should not rely completely on the information found here to provide advise. It is also important to disclose that we receive payments from advertising other companies in this website. 

The scoring system used in this website is at the discretion of the webmaster, as well as the statements, reviews and recommendations. The user must be aware that some reviews could be falsely submitter with exagerated or incorrect statments. We do our best to keep all the information from our advertisers up to date, but we do not provide any warranty of the accuracy of the information provided in this website. It is also necesary to clarify that we are not a web hosting company, we do not own nor are we owned or managed by a hosting company.

Neither TheBest10WebHosting.com, its owners, subsidiaries, affiliates, and employees, nor any person associated with the creation and maintenance of this website shall be responsible or liable in any manner or to any extent for any direct, indirect, special, third party or consequential damages, losses or expenses arising out of the use of this website. We will not be responsible for any detrimental reliance that you may place upon the site or its contents.

You hereby agree and acknowledge that TheBest10WebHosting.com and its affiliates shall not be responsible for any damages you may suffer as a result of the transmission of confidential or sensitive information over the Internet, and that all such communications will be at your own risk.

While thebest10webhosting.com has a page stating that they get paid (very short)  this violates many of the hosts FTC compliance measures.

1. You have to scroll down and click to find and read the disclosure.

2. Its not on the same pages as the endorsements.

3. Its not clear that thebest10webhosting.com is being paid by these “top” hosts.

So that means I will be contacting every Endurance International Group host, Hostgator.com, and other hosting groups that appear on this top 10 to advise them that their affiliate is non-compliant.

I will update this post with the responses I get from the following hosts:

Inmotionhosting.com

Webhostinghub.com

Justhost.com

iPage.com

Hostgator.com

Fatcow.com

SuperGreen.com

Bluehost.com

HostMonster.com

JustHost.com

Hopefully I do not add too much traffic to thebest10webhosting.

Why would anyone want to put webhostinghub.com on a top 10 list?

As you can tell from the screen shot, $100 per sale is very enticing.  Which is why I see webhostinghub.com on many so called top 10 site sites.

What I find interesting is that Inmotionhosting.com and webhostinghub.com have the same FTC notice.

https://ref.webhostinghub.com/affiliates/tos.php?page=tos

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2896

Perhaps at a later date I will explore the relationship between these two companies as  I find it hard to believe that Webhostinghub.com would borrow copy from InMotionhosting.com.

So Called Top Host Sites take notice of Webhostinghub.com Affiliate Terms:

As with the other FTC notices, in a nutshell Webhostingpad.com requires its affiliates that do endorsements disclose that they make a commission:

FTC Endorsement Compliance

At Web Hosting Hub, our aim is to care for our customers in a fair manner and to fully abide with all Federal Trade Commissions regulations that relate to advertising. At the same time, we necessitate that our affiliates do so as well. The regulations include, but are not restricted to, Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which necessitates, along with other criteria, that material connections between advertisers and endorsers be revealed. Therefore, directories, review/rating websites, blogs and other websites, email or collateral that claim to provide an endorsement or assessment of an advertiser (in this case Web Hosting Hub) must clearly state that the fact financial or in-kind compensation is given by the advertiser.

You can get further information and suggestions on complying with these guidelines via the links below. You are advised to search for and acquire your own legal advice on how these rules apply to your website or any promotional activities that you receive compensation for. Web Hosting Hub reserves the right to withhold commission fees and cancel the affiliate relationship with you should we find, at our discretion, that you are not abiding with the previously mentioned guide or other FTC regulations/guides we view as applicable.

The FTC offers a variety of resources to help make it easier for you to comply with the guidelines, including:

• Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising:http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf
• The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking: http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus71-ftcs-revised-endorsement-guideswhat-people-are-asking
• Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising: http://business.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/bus41-dot-com-disclosures-information-about-online-advertising.pdf

Webhostinghub.com joins the list of hosts that require review sites to disclose that they make money when people use them to sign up with a host.  If you’re a review site and choose to show case Webhostinghub.com be prepared for a visit from me.

Non-disclosure of getting paid for an endorsement for by Webhostinghub will result in me contacting  them to enforce their policy.

This is not the first time I have done a review on Inmotion:

Inmotion was the 6^th host that reviewed to appear on webhostingstuff.com’s so called top 25 list.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=134

Honestly at the time this was not a site that I had thought was a big host. But I find them in the top 10 of some review sites.  Perhaps this may be the reason why:

http://www.inmotionhosting.com/hosting_affiliate_program.html

No surprise as to why top 10 sites are show casing Inmotion when they get $50 – $100.  Even $50 is not that much

But Inmotion has a catch:

http://www.inmotionhosting.com/hosting_affiliate_program_tos.html

FTC Endoresement Compliance

At InMotion Hosting, our aim is to care for our customers in a fair manner and to fully abide with all Federal Trade Commissions regulations that relate to advertising. At the same time, we necessitate that our affiliates do so as well. The regulations include, but are not restricted to, Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which necessitates, along with other criteria, that material connections between advertisers and endorsers be revealed. Therefore, directories, review/rating websites, blogs and other websites, email or collateral that claim to provide an endorsement or assessment of an advertiser (in this case InMotion Hosting) must clearly state that the fact financial or in-kind compensation is given by the advertiser.

You can get further information and suggestions on complying with these guidelines via the links below. You are advised to search for and acquire your own legal advice on how these rules apply to your website or any promotional activities that you receive compensation for.

InMotion Hosting reserves the right to withhold commission fees and cancel the affiliate relationship with you should we find, at our discretion, that you are not abiding with the previously mentioned guide or other FTC regulations/guides we view as applicable.

The FTC offers a variety of resources to help make it easier for you to comply with the guidelines, including:

• Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising:http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf
• The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking:http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus71-ftcs-revised-endorsement-guideswhat-people-are-asking
• Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising:http://business.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/bus41-dot-com-disclosures-information-about-online-advertising.pdf

Inmotion joins the list of hosts that require review sites to disclose that they make money when people use them to sign up with a host.  If you’re a review site and choose to show case Inmotion be prepared for a visit from me.

Non-disclosure of getting paid for an endorsement for by InMotion will have me contacting  them to enforce their policy.

Before this all began I had already entertained in October 2011 the idea of migrating, after all traffic was up and the site was performing slower.  Not to mention a month earlier another site that shares this account had its database moved by MediaTemple.net. Per usual the tech at MediaTemple did not bother to check their work.  The site was offline for at least 8 hours. This is something that can easily sour me on a company. They simply do something and do not bother to see if what they did fixed a site or made it worse.

By mid-December 2011 it became clear that that there were some serious problems with Hosting-Reviews-Exposed.com. Pingdom shows that I had 132 outages. Per my last post I had not had a lot of time to dedicate to this site, and the sites that shared the account at MediaTemple as they were not in any shape or form income makers.  Between a death in the family and a rather serious customer trying to regain a nice sized 5 figure a month income. But December 22^st would change that. As I would have a 5 hour outage and unlike the other outages this time the server would not recover within a few minutes.

The problem ultimately was with a plug-in that did the fancy color bars that told you what posts were popular that week (personally glad to see it go as I thought it was tacky).  After removing that plugin, the site ran perfectly. MediaTemple.net’s response was to disable every part of my site leaving only bare bones WordPress.  On top of that they disable the theme for my site. Though clearly they realized that was a mistake because 5 minutes after doing so they re-enabled the theme before I could. Keep in mind it was Rackspace that pointed to the exact issue.

MediaTemple wanted to shoot first ask questions later

I am not a telephone person.  I hate my cell phone. You can thank this bank called Bank of America (who stores their money in the Caribbean), they cured me long ago of ever wanting to talk to someone on the phone for customer service. Maybe someday I will go into my gripe with them. About the only thing that will get me on the phone to talk to someone is a site being down.  I made it to a point to put a ticket in first with MediaTemple.  But it was pretty clear I should call them after all Mediatemple has this 20 hour response time up when I post a ticket.  In the cyber universe an hour is an eternity too long. I grudgingly listen to reggae music while on hold.  Not that I hate reggae music, I truly love it. It just should not sound like it’s going through a broken speaker that puts out a lot of static.  Anytime I was placed on hold I had to bear with this, which is why I requested not to be placed on hold. The first time I was on hold I had to endure 12 minutes of this.  My mood was pretty sour after listening to this tortured music, not like I could have hit mute.  I mean from a business stand point it would have made sense For MediaTemple to go with something neutral like elevator music, unless of course it has the same static  effect that wore my nerves thin.

Keep in mind I am not a programing person, I am a graphics person. I delegate the non-design part to other people.  Perhaps that’s something I should have explained to the person on the other end at MediaTemple. Since my usual web master (whose name is on the account with MediaTemple) was busy with the holidays, I figure why not hand this off to Mediatemple. I asked how much it would cost for them to remedy this. I mean seriously, I offered more money to make the problem go away. Next thing the guy on the other end went in to a ramble on stuff I could hardly understand.  The part I did understand was the word theory; after all I am someone that wanted to be in a field of science (biology). The way he used the word theory is that he speculated on what the problem was and that they did not have concrete proof of what the problem was.  It was at this point I had to ask if this meant he had any idea of what was wrong. because it seemed like he didn’t.  He told me that he did know exactly what was going on.  Hence no need for the word theory. But clearly his conclusions were that it had something to do with my plugins as he disabled all of them, and even the theme for my site. After another ramble I thanked him for bringing the site back up and told him I will have it migrated off to another provider. This is where I notice that he disabled my theme

MediaTemple.net trying for Redemption

Shortly after hanging up I had contacted Rackspace because I wanted to look for another solution. The MediaTemple tech I was on the phone with updated the ticket and wanted to arrange for me to speak with a supervisor to try and retain my account.  They were supposed call me around noon. At the same time he had re-enabled the theme to hosting-reviews-exposed.com.

While in contact with Rackspace and telling them about my problem with MediaTemple while trying to re-enabling plugins slowly to see which ones were slowing the site down.  It was Rackspace that pointed to top posts plugin.  Enabling every other plugin but this one, I could see a drastic improvement in service.

Two hours before noon, the MediaTemple supervisor decided to change the time to 3 pm.  Since I had  missed the update too late and had a client to deal with I missed it, honestly I saw no point in updating the ticket.  By 5:15 pm he updated the ticket.

Before I go any further, this is a point where he could have changed my mind, he could have pointed to what was the exact problem. But what I got was a very lengthy list of suspects and:

“Please let me know a good time and number to reach you at, I’m available Tuesday - Friday 10am-9PM.”

This was December 23, 2011 Thursday so a total of 3 days where any host has a chance to win me over. Heck even Virtuallis and Dialtone had someone to talk to on the 24th and 26th of December.  Keep in mind they were lousy companies that were eventually bought up.  Sure he can celebrate the holidays, and yes I do celebrate Christmas, but it has not been a full day off for me since I became self-employed 13 years ago. Perhaps MediaTemple.net did not have someone to do crisis management during a Christian holiday?

The worst of it was the MediaTemple.net supervisor while not calling on time, had decided that he would list every single plugin that I ran in conjunction with WordPress and how many in quantity that I had on the other sites that shared the server. I can’t say that impressed me. It pretty much pointed the finger at every single one as if they were the problem. This had me believing MediaTemple.net knew less about what was going on than they had led me to believe. They could not point to any particular plugin that was the cause of the problem.  Never mind this is after I disabled the plugin that Rackspace had pointed me to for almost 24 hours, and I had updated the ticket with that information.

After that and up to the time I migrated the site had run better then it had in months. In fact if it had ran this well before I would not have been inclined to migrate off MediaTemple.

I was not beyond being talked out of migrating to another provider. Between the loss of a family member, a new client with a ton of work, the holidays, the cost and time of having someone migrate this site and other sites, and on top of that going from $40 a month to $150 a month I would have loved a reason to not migrate.

But they were unable to do what RackSpace did in a few minutes, and that is point me to a problem.  Another problem that I have not really got into is MediaTemple.net’s in house control panel.  If it worked that list of plugins would have been shorter. I should have told him that part of the reason that there were so many had to do with the fact that their control panel did not delete sites that I tried to get it to delete. While the control panel says we have 15 sites, you can login through ftp and see that there are 20. Keep in mind I said I am not a technical person, but I do know how to use FTP, meaning there is a serious issue when I can see this problem. Yeah I guess I suppose I could have contacted them in the past to fix this.  But I am not here to debug their stuff for them. That is the job of whoever develops the MediaTemple control panel. Another annoying aspect of their control panel is adding a domain to the control panel.  It is not instant like most control panels, it can take up to 15 minutes for their control panel to add a domain (the process relies on a cron).  I figured after a year and half that MediaTemple.net would have this fine tuned.

Is MediaTemple.net WordPress Friendly?

When you search for “Mediatemple WordPress” you find they have landing pages just for WordPress. But it has been my experience a lot of plugins do not work with their service.  One in particular vital to someone that does not know how to back up their site, case in point is BackUpBuddy. There are some others that I am not mentioning purely because some tricks of the trade are up to the software providers to get out there, and the less that know about them the better off I am. But I found myself constantly having to reenter my serial numbers in.  At first I had thought it was the plugin developers favoring cPanel.  After all a very popular control panel, you go where the masses are.  But after relocating for the first time WordPress sites on RackSpace I am more inclined to think it was MediaTemple.net.  BackUpBuddy is working perfectly.  Also those licensed plugins are not asking me to re-enter my license information. MediaTemple is not as WordPress friendly as they could be.

Final thoughts on MediaTemple.net

MediaTemple.net is capable of great things. I would like to think they are a step above companies like Hostgator.com and Godaddy.com.  But there are things like this that keep me from wanting to list them in the big boys club. They have done what I wanted to do which was to create a control panel. There is defiantly room for a competitor to cPanel.  But it has been an unfinished product in the 1.5 years of my using it.

Then there are things like this:

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=723

Is this the point where I tell you that you should avoid MediaTemple.net at all costs? Their control panel while being home grown, is an unfinished product. At times they seemed understaffed. Don’t even mention outsourced support to them (regardless if it can be done successfully).

Despite these failings MediaTemple is not a company that I will ultimately lump with the likes of Virtualis, DialTone, OChosting, FastServers/Layeredtech), and Burst.Net. They may very well be in the same position as Server Beach. Which honestly after my first dealings with them I would have told you to avoid Server Beach. But before I left the hosting industry I was approached by a company that had bought them out. Frankly the sales person they had contact me had changed my mind, though I had left by the time my previous company started using them. It was because they did what those companies I listed as failures would not do, and that is to seek redemption. MediaTemple did at least try to do some damage control, something I can not say about those I list as failures.

Regardless of how this ended, I can’t say that I would not consider MediaTemple in the future.

Honestly there were a few other hosts that I had my eye on, one of which is a solar powered host out of California.  But given how chaotic my schedule has been I wanted to avoid not being able to get a full review of this host, not to mention I am in the progress of actually finding a home.  After all that was another reason I had got out of the hosting industry which was because I wanted time to buy things such as a car and a house. I got the Car back in late September 2010, granted car prices are not in state of change.  But I think now is the time for a new home.

I wanted to go with a true green hosting provider because at heart I am a tree huger. While I have not mentioned this provider by name the solar host out of California it is not hard to Google them and see who they are.

But here is why Rackspace won the handling of Hosting-reviews-exposed.com. There was a problem with databases, and it was that rather annoying looking color bars that told you what was a popular post for that week.  This widget turns out to be what was killing this site.  It was something I was recommended, I grudgingly did it as it looked like an eye sore on this site. I was really looking for a rational reason to remove it other than having to say I disliked how it looked. But I was told that it would help traffic, clearly it did it cut traffic by 80%. Mediatemple did not find it, and frankly I was not happy with them using the word theory to mean fact.  Not to mention they did a hatchet job to my site in the progress.

This is not an Endorsement of Rackspace

I have mentioned in the past that I was not particularly happy with Rackspace.  But I have yet to mention why.  My problems in the past had to do with the sales agents they had given me.  When I contact them to get new service often there was a lot of feet dragging in the progress. The easiest way to sour me on a company is to give me one too many company representatives that take up my time. One of the reasons I hated dealing with sales and billing reps at ThePlanet, as they were not inclined to keep you as a customer.

Granted these days I have not dealt with a sales agent with Rackspace, but I have never had a bad server from Rackspace.  Support is generally good; I do get the occasional bad tech that you will encounter from other companies.  Remember though this is not unlimited $3.99 a month hosting.  The hosting for Hosting-reviews-exposed.com is now costing me $150 a month, from the $40 at Mediatemple, from the $4 I originally spent at Godaddy.

Advice on WordPress for Rackspace Cloud users

The last two days hosting-reviews-espoed.com was only coming up 50% of the time, and would come up after a reload. The first 24 hours I had ignored Pingdom as I was a bit busy and thought that may have been the dns change. This turned out to be a php memory issue that I was able to correct by adjusting the values.

Now to see that Rackspace can earn being the home to Hosting-Reviews-Exposed.

According to your Affiliate Terms of Service:

http://www.hostgator.com/tos/affiliate-tos.php

“HostGator expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and HostGator any time you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services, in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission guidance as outlined here. Such disclosure should be clear and prominent, meaning close to the endorsement or testimonial.”

In short they must disclose that they get paid for every referral.  Through my screen shots you can clearly see there is no disclosure.

Webhostingstuff.com does not disclose on any page that links to Hostgator.com that they get paid for their endorsement of your site.  For which they put your company on the number 1 positions for Top Best Hosting and Hot Deal list.

Instead they have what is called WHSRank, where supposedly they base ranking off of customer feed back.  Regardless of this there are two hosts with more positive reviews then your company.  After years of reviewing their site I can tell you that they do not base any ratings off of WHSRank, but off of what they are panning off as PPC, which really is bidding on positions.  In Hostgator.com’s case they signed up as one of your affiliates.

I have suspected for a while now that webhostingstuff was an affiliate of Hostgator.com. That Hostgator.com may not be involved in the ruse called PPC (pay per click) which is no where evident on Webhostingstuff.com’s site or other sites.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1015

All it took to find out if they were a Hostgator.com affiliate was a simple cleaning out my cookies going to webhostingstuff.com and clicking on the HostGator.com  link and ta da, sure enough a Hostgator.com affiliate cookie shows up in my cookie folder.

But in short here is what I did to look at the cookie:

Firefox seems the best way to watch cookies.

1. Go to options
2. Click on Options
3. Select Use custom settings for History
4. Show Cookies

From there you get a window to watch cookies as they come in.  You can also clean out all cookies from here for Firefox.

What I did next was go to webhostingstuff.com, clicked on the hostgator.com link.  Where for some bizarre reason I have to select from three sets of characters which one has an actual word. After sending me to Hostgator.com I find an affiliate Cookie for Hostgator.com.

No surprise that Webhostingstuff.com has Hostgator.com at the top of both Top Best Hosting and Hot Deal lists.  After all that $50 – 125 per sign up is hard thing to resist.

In short I am asking that you have webhostingstuff.com put up a disclosure or that you remove their affiliate access.

Regards,

Benjamin of Hosting-Reviews-Exposed.com

I challenged them to take on the spam which had gotten pretty bad as I was getting it in emails, YouTube comments, and blog comments. While I don’t approved of the method which they choose to deal with it, I can say I only got one comment spam for Black Friday.

A simple challenge to Hostgator.com

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2743

My other challenge was for them to do the same FTC compliance that EIG was doing with their affiliates.

My mistake in writing to back to them was I had just woke up when I had gotten the email early in the morning. I missed the part where they stated that they had sent out FTC compliance emails to their affiliates. I was told after my last response I could personally contact one of their staff if I had any additional questions. Which I waited till after Thanks Giving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, to ask for the FTC compliance email (last Tuesday to be exact). I realize the next part I could have found on my own by reviewing their terms of service, but I wanted an email that stated in short that if you do a review and get paid you had disclose that fact.  Right now there is someone that I had always thought that was making money as a Hostgator.com affiliate, turns out I was right. I should have looked at the cookies, pretty simple clear my browsers cookies out and then go to the site to see if any affiliate links come up. Sure enough this process showed an affiliate cookie, and not just for Hostgator.com. Tomorrow I will revel which review site it is, and if you read my blog it should not be to figure out who it is.

Part of the reason I am sending this post out as a email is in hopes of getting other people to email Hostgator.com once I expose the review site for not following FTC guidelines. While Hostgator.com can ignore me, it’s a little harder for them to ignore other people.  I plan to have the post up tomorrow.

A brief examine of their affiliate terms of service revels that reviews for profit must be disclose.

Hostgator.com’s terms validates the FTC requirement

http://www.hostgator.com/tos/affiliate-tos.php

5. Responsibility for Your Site.

HostGator expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and HostGator any time you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services, in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission guidance as outlined here. Such disclosure should be clear and prominent, meaning close to the endorsement or testimonial.

http://business.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/bus71-ftcs-revised-endorsement-guideswhat-people-are-asking.pdf

Stay tuned for updates in regards to the review site I plan to expose that is not FTC compliant with Hostgator.

A short re-introduction of the history of reviewing hosting review sites

My start in the hosting industry was about 15 years ago, when I was introduced to the guy that would later be my business partner in the hosting industry. At that time I had been hired because I was pretty good with data bases, and later I would transition over to graphics.  At the time we both worked for a so called “I can make you rich if you buy my book” guy, or in short a guru.  Even before that my business partner had ideas of running a hosting company.  By the time we had gotten out of the “give me money so I can tell you how I got rich” industry we had partnered with someone else that would ultimately lock us out of our first hosting operation, this host would ultimately die 2 weeks after we were locked out.   Which set us back 8 months in getting another host started up.  Ultimately this host would take off and it still is active to this day.  Despite some other failed business relationships one with a tech who did not believe in virus protection.  Details given in one of my early posts.

By the time webhostignstuff.com came into the picture we had 2 hosts running, a third in production.  This was the point where they decided to delete the positive hosting review feedback of one of my companies.  My company was not the first, nor was it the last.  The big difference is those other hosts did not have someone like me.  I am not saying I am special, far from it. It’s the whole thinking outside the dimensions of a box and not just out of the box. Simple put I am really weird.

The reason webhostingstuff.com deleted my positive feed back was because they were using the negative hosting reviews for my site to encourage others to buy from their top 25, and the same for any host that was not paying for a spot in the top 25. After all its not profitable for people to come to their site and find out that people were happy with the service my company provided or the company they were looking into.   That and the less new customers that flow in from webhostingstuff.com to those that paid for top 1 – 25 positioning will be less likely to pay for a spot, or in the case of Michael Lows hosting review site hostaz.com, people would be less likely to sign up for the hosts that are set up with affiliate links.  Despite saying they don’t delete feed back, they do.  They even give reasons for deleting it such as you closed your account and got a refund.  Never mind the reasons for closing your account may very well justify you creating a hosting review.

Seeing (a) positive review(s) would not give the possible customer a reason to review the so called top 25 list. At the same time people who paid for the top 25 have had their negative hosting review(s) deleted.  Something I witnessed with Infinite Networks.   When I first reviewed them they had 6 reviews with a 2 out of 5 star rating.  Then they had 4 reviews so it was 3 out of 5 stars.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2117

This site started as a way to vent my anger in my scant free time.  After launching the one page site and the video, I contacted many of the hosts that appeared in these so called hosting review sites.  None of them responded back to me. By the end of December 2007 my anger had long cooled down, and I thought this site would go no where.

I of coarse debated on advertising my hosting company on the site, but it seemed like a conflict of interest.  In many ways I think this would work to my advantage as many smaller hosts would point people to my site.

Right before the 4^th quarter of 2009 several factors lead to me deciding it was time to get out of the hosting business among them  was zero vacations/weekends and  long hours.  Not to mention I had wanted to finish up school for a career in biology.  I was not too thrilled dealing with a cheap hosting industry as the less a customer paid the more they expected.  They were more likely to put in support tickets.  On top of that others in our company infrastructure wanted to do what EIG (Endurance International Group) was doing (several hosting companies while using the control panel as a advertising platform), and already had two more companies planned for release in early 2010.

By the end I sold my shares for 60 – 70% of their value, in hopes of getting out as fast as possible (a decision I would regret later as that was a lot of money). I had to sign a non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clause (ncc) agreements.

In early 2010 after finalizing the sales Google contacted me to put AdSense on the site.  Also someone in Singapore was trying to buy the site off of me (Which so happens to be where Michael Low is from).

I thought it was a bit odd, here is a site that for two and half years I did nothing with, it was tied to two videos on YouTube.   One with no sound which is the most popular, and has people saying I should add sound.  Another with sound (thanks to a volunteer) that gets less traffic.  I approved or declined of comments and responded to them.  That was the most I did to maintain this site.  So why the heck did Google want me to put AdSense on it?

I decided to see what a search of Google would find.  The first was a blog for a host.  It pointed to my video and actually did a review of some of the hosts on this hosting review site that were on the top 25, one was hostdawgs.com (Which later went out of business).   They showed based on numbers that the system made no sense.  Hosts with a high amount of negative reviews or no reviews at all were on the list. They also had proof that webhostingstuff.com was deleting negative feed back. I also found that other hosts were referring people to my site such as this one.

This was the point I had decided that I need to start reviewing webhostingstuff.com on a regular basis to find their inconstancies.  I would also soon find out the site was losing traffic due to be on a shared environment with Godaddy and would soon move off to MediaTemple.

A summary of 1.5 years of looking at hosting review sites

One of the biggest inconstancies with this so called hosting review site, was a site called i7net.  The problem with i7net was it had not been online for months at a time.  Worse yet webhostingstuff.com stated that because of the frequency of downtime they were no longer keeping track of the up time   So on this wonderful top 25 you could see a very clear 0% for up time next to the zero stars for zero hosting reviews. Despite that it appeared off an on in the top 25 list from June – November 2010.  Until Webhostignstuff.com finale figured it out, and deleted the site’s listing from their data base.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=586

A better summation of the problems I found on this so called unbiased hosting review site can be found at:

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2121

As my reviews intensified I had to start asking friends around the globe to get me screen shots because I was being blocked.  Which in turned my friends started being blocked.  They probable would not have been blocked if I had not sent emails to Michael Low telling him what countries and ISP my friends were in. Seriously if his site was legit why block people?

By May 2011 Webhostingstuff.com went through a face lift making the top 25 list obscure.  As I had to tell a very angry Jixhost.com (who happen to argue with me on webhostingtalk.com) that it may not be profitable to have to pay for a position that is now 9 clicks away from the main page when it was only 1.  Plus risk the chance of  losing people who are blocked.  At which time I have stopped reviews.  Though I can say I am not done with webhostingstuff.com. Despite these changes the only PPC going on with their site is from Google.

Fun on Webhostingtalk.com

I also got exposed on webhostingtalk.com:

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2207

I learned about Endurance International Group

Its funny how a chat can tell you things you never knew.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=771

One of the big problems with this company is it does not fully disclose the list of hosts that are with them.  One of their former employees as you can see from the comments on that last post claimed that justhost.com was not added the BBB record (the only place I know that has a list of their sites) as it was a fairly new acquisition.  Which is not true as netfirms was acquired after that by atleast a year or 2, appeared just weeks after someone notified me that Netfirms had a been acquired.  I think had something to do with it being a Canadian host versus a U.S. host.  As EIG went out of its way to notify people and actually had a page dedicated to the transfer of the customers.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1964

A few months ago they may have given me an edge with hosting review sites on FTC guide lines.  Which in short means if you profit by a review, you have to have a disclaimer up.  Which another site called hostingsthatsuck.com did not have until after I did a post on them.  I had planned on doing a review of every review site with an Alexa score below 1,000,000 that I came across based on these guidelines.  Time permitting I will start that process up again.

If you are a host, hosting review site, or anyone else I am the last person to spam.

I decided to take on certain elements in the hosting / web site industry.  The first of which was mindshark.ca.  A so called SEO company.  They harvested my email (they claim a third party did it, after I called their bluff on so called opting in), by going to my contact form and sending me an email.  I of coarse trying to not be rude responded.  Next thing I know I got spam.  Never mind the only purpose of that email was contacts from the contact form, blog updates, and YouTube. They claimed that I opted in, having been a previous hosting provider I know full well what opted in means.  In short I wrote two posts that stay at the top of their search engine results to prove they don’t know diddly squat about SEO, which says a lot as I don’t know a lot about SEO.  Did I mention my two posts appear in the top page of mindshark.ca review for Google?

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2037
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2055

Fake hosting review comments by Unlimitedgb.com

This is an on going drama, and one that I never thought would have gotten a lot of attention.  My former business partner thought it was a waste of time for me to do posts on hosts that spam unless they were like hostgator.  But a post on Unlimtedgb.com was the first host to get in trouble with me for posting fake positive reviews on my posts.  Seriously I am try to find the worst things about a host, and this host comes along to create fake feed back while bashing a host. Did they not think that maybe if I did not like fake reviews, I am really not going to like spam.  Not to mention its poor taste to try and make a buck off another hosts expense.

The worst of it was yet to come.  After I wrote a post:

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1240

Which in turn they decided to post positive comments, big surprise as this is strategy they do on other sites to drown out negative feed back (in a few cases some of these commenters came from the same IP).  But the worst of it was this page appeared on the first page of their search engine results. So he tried to bribe me.  I had to see how much he would pay, so before I contacted him I stated on Twitter and Face Book that some host was trying to bribe me and that I was going to soon bust them for it.

Clearly he did not read my Social Media for this site.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2436

This is where he had the nerve to question my ethics for posting his email after not responding to the above post.  Never mind he spammed my blog, created fake feed back, and then tried to bribe me.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2461

Despite a third post they decided to start spamming fake comments again on my site. Despite calming they had stopped that.

Bottom line if your going to spam my site, be prepared for me to do a post so I can get traffic off your site.

Another hosting company that has my interest is Gogvo.com, after one of their affiliates decided to spam my personal YouTube account. Which brings me back to the point where I worked for a “give me money and I will tell you how I got rich” guy.  Frankly this is worse than most review sites.  It not even so much the promise of good hosting, as it is the promise of income.  Never mind half the so called gurus have a disclaimer that states that results are not typical (translation stay away).

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2679

Those are some the highlights over the past few years I thought were interesting.

A few answers to questions I get in regards to hosting-reviews-exposed.com

For those that wonder what hosts I ran.

The answer is I cannot say, granted even if I was not legally bound by a non-disclosure agreement I have no desire anyway.

For those that wonder if I will start new hosting company.

Despite having a little more than 3 years left in the non-compete agreement. I ultimately have no desire to get back into hosting.  Perhaps that will change in the future.  But I have no desire to get back into nickel and dime hosting.  No offence, but the cheap plans are fine to start out with, but they are not a viable long term solution for a serious site.  If I get back in it would only be with hosting solutions for those that want serious solutions.  Otherwise called overpriced hosting to those that think unlimited hosting is the key to success.  Even if I did I would not involve that company with this site.

My site is against hosting review sites making money / I hate affiliate programs?

I never stated that I hate affiliate programs.  I have at many points expressed concern over affiliate programs that pay out more than a customer that clicks on an affiliate link may pay for in a year.  I am concerned with quality of service / support.  When 100% or more of a customer’s payment goes to the affiliate, none of it goes to service.

With that said, this is not my only site.  Far from my only source of income (I would be living in a card board box, with a card board iPad).  All of my sites, including this one are involved in an affiliate program or a program like Google’s Adsense.  I am not telling people that they should not use affiliate programs or that making money of referring people to a host is a bad thing.  It’s a bad thing when a review site makes so called top lists based on how much they get paid.  That means they don’t have a hosting customers interests in mind with a false hosting review site.

The problem is I have yet to see a hosting review site that does not manipulate the system to make a gain.  Which is why I have turned away many hosts review sites that have asked for my endorsement.  Often by giving them email of what the post would look like.

Having ads on my site is hypocritical of since I am going after hosting review sites that make money?

This is an argument I don’t understand. I am not telling you what hosts to use (though books, music, video games, or electronics just ask I will refer you).   I don’t have some so called review site with hosts I have never used, telling you their the best while getting  secretly paid out for referals.  For that matter there is no host I am willing to put my name behind.  I admit I have tried some of the same writing  style of sites I find on the first page of “(host name) + sucks” on Google to formulate posts in the beginning.  Many of these affiliates were not even hosted with the hosts they recommend.  One example is webhostingstuff.com which as far as I have seen has never had softlayer.com on their top 25 list.

In short the argument does not focus on the real issue.  Even if I had affiliate ads for hosts every where and made large commissions on referrals I would not be doing the same thing they are, and that is telling you a host is the best.

For over 2 years I have debated on any form of advertising let it be my own hosting company, or like my reviews of the Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch. Now that I think about it, its not so bad advertising non-hosting related stuff.  I also enjoyed writing up a review of my two new tech toys:

Kindle Fire: http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2799

Kindle Touch: http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2757

Which those reviews ended up paying for my two Kindle’s.  Well the Kindle Fire review paid for both.  I have yet to see any one buy a Touch (come on readers its better than a color device for reading).

Ultimately I think it would have been bad to advertise my own hosting company, while going after other companies.  Simply because this would have been just as bad as a creating a review site.  It would be like telling you my host is best, without actually telling you why.

I can say lately I have been debating about removing Google Adsense and going purely with advertisers that I control.  After all I had one ad come up a few days ago about Hot Thai’s, and I am not referring to cuisine.  That and I have blocked a lot of hosts.  Though I may very well restore every host back to appearing in Adsense.  I have been debating the fairness of blocking hosts while allowing others.  Which is why it would be easier just to stop using Google Adsense and have no hosts appear.

I am now a hosting customer like most of the people that visit here. Being a former hosting provider gives me some insight in what to expect.   I can’t say I am not bias, as there was a standard for the service I gave people when I was in the business.  Ultimately any host I recommend will have to be up to those standards.

Is there a host that I recommend?

Sorry to say but no, the list has grown shorter of hosts I am using which is MediaTemple and Rackspace.  However there are two new hosts that I am in the progress of trying.  Expect reviews this month.

So What will Hosting Reviews Exposed.com be doing next?

It’s a bit difficult to say where this site will go next.  It mostly depends on my free time.

One thing is for certain this site is getting slow again, and that means it needs to be moved to a more powerful system.  Which may mean I move from MediaTemple.

I defiantly plan to find if review sites are following the FTC guide lines and work with the hosts that appear on hosting review sites.  I also plan to post more reviews of hosts that I am using (I added a few) or ones that customers make me set up sites on (some good, most bad).  Not to mention hosts or web site related services that decided to spam me.  Honestly if they cannot afford real advertising they are not worth hosting with.  Perhaps next year I may recommend hosts, but I would not count on it me starting a hosting review endorsement.

The first thing that came to mind with the Kindle Fire was not so much a productivity tablet, and after weeks of viewing the app store I can’t say it even looked like a gaming platform.  My thoughts were a mobile media extender.  After all I have purchased as of this date 435 mp3 albums from Amazon and Amazon is allowing free unlimited music storage for those that purchase 20 gigs or more (Just $20 a year). Which means I will have an online library of 3,000 albums. Then I have Amazon’s Instant videos (formally Amazon Unboxed) if there is a Doctor Who episode for sale I own it (one can only hope that those up for rent only will be purchasable).  Then there is my Kindle library that I have been building up for the last 2 years of 432 books as of last count. All of which is available via the Kindle Fire.

But there is more, after all I also have Amazon Prime.  In the past that meant I could get orders for free in 2 days, whereas without the membership I had to get $25 in a order to get free regular shipping.  But now it means a sort of Netflix like video access.  Plus as of October the ability to borrow a Kindle book each month. Which gives the Kindle Fire a bit more, I can only wonder if Apple will have a similar offer.

With my last review I compared the Kindle Touch against the Kindle 2:

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2757

This time around I will compare the Kindle Fire against the iPad 1 (64 GB).  Most of my friends that know me, know I am not big fan of Apple.  From Apple’s “I’m a Mac” commercials to their cult like stores (yeah I said it). To date iPad is the standard for tablets, hence why I have one.  But I gladly welcome another company.  Last year I had hoped that it would be HP, but they post phoned till this year and then jumped ship.  Fortunately a few months ago Amazon announced they were going to get in the tablet business.  Amazingly they released a day early, and not to mention a full 8 days early on the Kindle Touch.  If only a certain game company would release things early (*cough* Blizzard *cough* Diablo 3).

Full Disclosure about my Endorsement of the Kindle Fire

I have placed affiliate links thru out this post, which means if you buy a Kindle Fire or other recommended item via any of the links I placed I get paid a commission.   Unlike the review sites that I rail against I actually use the product(s) I listed. I will not tell you that a product is good just to get a payout. I actually stand behind a review of a service or item that I provide affiliate links to.

The Amazon Kindle Fire

I can honestly say I am not disappointed in the Kindle Fire, despite its short comings.  After all this is Amazon’s first attempt in the tablet industry.   With my experience of the Kindle 2, there was only one short coming and that was it did not have any pages numbers.  The Kindle 2 was not bad for a second generation device.  I am willing to bet with the second generation of Kindle Fire the short comings will be far less than they are this time around.  Never mind that a lot of the short comings could be remedied by updates and more apps becoming available. Despite what I have read from other reviews I have not had any crashes.

The only software with the Kindle Fire that I have had issues with is Comics, I have had two Doctor Who comics that I purchased and had to contact this third party who has no access to my order information. It took 5 days for them to correct the issue. I was going to go hog wild and order all of the Sand Man series.  One problem is there is no direct link to purchased items, hopefully they fix that later.

I am not too happy about 8 gigs of space, or the lack of a memory card slot on the Kindle Fire. But then again its only $199, compared to $900 I paid for my first tablet. But it would be nice to store more for periods I may not be near an internet connection.

Battery life on the Kindle Fire seems to be about 4 hours when playing games (more like 4 hours of Plants versus Zombies), but as far as checking email, reading books or magazines, listening to music and browsing the internet I get about 8 hours.

The Kindle Fire‘s Browser (silk) is the best tablet based browser that I have encountered. The Kindle Fire‘s Browser loads smoother if not faster than Apple’s Safari or the HP’s Web OS browser.

While browsing the software I found interesting software that allows me to see the strength of my Wi-Fi connection.  But I am still playing with some of the productivity software such as Documents to Go.  Not really much of an opinion on what’s available for the Kindle Fire, I’ll comment later on an opinion. What notes software I have found does not auto save, it requires you to manually save unlike with my iPad and iPod touch that allows me to write a note and close the app to open back up where I left off.

I also subscribe to a few Magazines Men’s Health that are only available to the Kindle Fire (which I unsubscribed from once I saw it was almost 90% ads), Rolling Stone (which lead to me buying a book called Free Ride, a review on that at a later date as it has reverence to this blog), PC Magazine, Popular Science, and Popular Mechanics.  The neat thing is you can switch between page view and text view.  Page view gives you that glossy magazine as you would see it on the stands, where as Text view gives you a view that focuses just on the text of the magazine.

The Positives of Amazon Kindle Fire

• Access to Cloud Storage of Music files bought through Amazon or your private collection with the Unlimited music storage when you purchase the 20 gb or greater storage plan ($20 a month)
• Smooth integration with Amazon Cloud music files

• Crisp graphics
• Mostly Earth Friendly packing limited plastic covering (too bad no soy ink)

• Large array of videos, music, books, newspapers, and magazines (some with a 90 day trial) available for purchase or rent
• Despite listing not coming with a Power adapter it came with one
• Awesome video quality

The Negatives of Amazon Kindle Fire

• Limited Productivity and Gaming software (though this could change with time)
• No Skype App (or Skype integration in Trillian which is available)
• 8 gigs of storage
  e
• No USB computer cable
• No memory card slot

• No integration with Cloud storage files (i.e. personal files such as pictures, documents, video (perhaps changed at a later date).
• No VPN App/Capability (perhaps an update later)

Amazon Kindle Fire faces the Mom Test (or the Skeptic’s test)

Perhaps its reverse psychology, as my mother can often take the counter point of any argument.  But my recommendation to her is that she go with an iPad.  After all she has a iPod Touch, with a lot of software.  She is also someone that can be cheap on a lot of things. But after handling the Kindle Fire she wants a Kindle Fire now.  Maybe it’s me recommending something familiar (reverse psychology), or perhaps just the weight of the device versus the iPad.  Not to mention the cover I have on the iPad seems to double the weight.

Recommended for Amazon Kindle Fire

On my iPad I have an Otter Box casing:

I swear it doubles the weight of the iPad, however it is the best case that I have had.

Unfortunately I cannot at this time recommend a Kindle Fire cover that is not leather (As I am a vegan) that is up to the standards of the Otter Box cover.  I can only hope that they will come out with a better one later.

For now I can recommend a cover that can provide some protection.  Which is by Marware, but in my opinion the cover for the Kindle Fire is overpriced.  But some protection is better than none.  Another thing that bothers me is that while the outer packing is paper printed with soy ink, the divider they inserted in the cover is not an earth friendly option as you can see from the gallery I posted.  It could have been cardboard, corn starch peanuts, or some other bio-degradable option.  Especially for a company that states: “At Malware, we are committed to providing innovative and affordable products that create customers for life, promote environmental  awareness and enhance the communities we serve.”  So why not so earth friendly packing inside the envelope?

However Marware does provide the best screen cover for the Kindle Fire, and with zero bubbles.

If you are looking for a screen protector for the iPad I recommend:

Finale thoughts on the Kindle Fire

Despite draw backs like the limited memory, no memory card slot, and a limited amount of apps.  If the Kindle Fire follows the same rate of progress as the Kindle eReader it is bound to be a good substitute for Apple’s iPad.  Especially considering the cloud storage with Apple is more expensive (Amazon is $1 a gig, and Apple is roughly $2 a gig).The next review will be on iPad 3, and hopefully Kindle Fire 2.

With Black Friday fast approaching, I feel that your company needs to address a problem, that it is a part of.  That problem being spam.  Last year I received both comment and email spam from your affiliates during your Black Friday event. In short spam being either sending to a non-opted in email address or posting unwanted comments which generally have nothing to do with content they are posted on for the purpose of monetary gain.  This year I have been getting spam well in advance of November.  Of all places my first video.  This was a video I had emailed you and several other companies at the time of release 4 years ago from this month, hoping that you and other hosts would deal with the so called “review” industry.

Here is just a sample of Hostgator.com related spam I received on one of the many videos on YouTube.com.

‘That does not include my email or my blogs.

Just to be clear, I am not against you having affiliate program or making money. But I believe in doing it ethically, and I can respect creativity in bringing in customers.  But spam i.e. unwanted solicitation, is not a form of creative marketing.  I realize with your affiliate doing spam and in some cases “review” sites, its to your advantage as you make money off their actions.

With Black Friday around the corner, I challenge you to contact your affilates before you send out your Black Friday Promotion to stop them from spamming.  Not to mention seeing you practice the same FTC policy that Endurance International Group.

Full Disclosure about my Endorsement of the Kindle Touch

I have placed affiliate links thru out this post, which means if you buy a Kindle Touch or other recommended item via any of the links I placed I get paid a commission.   Unlike the review sites that I rail against I actually use the product(s) I listed.  I actually stand behind a review of a service or item that I provide affiliate links to.

The Amazon Kindle Touch with free life time 3g

The version of the Kindle Touch I got was the free 3g, without “special offers”.  Those special offers include advertising on your Kindle. I was not really interested in turning my Kindle Touch into an advertising platform. My Kindle 2 has 3g, which I have enjoyed not having to set it up when I take it any where. After trying the Kindle 3 with Wi-Fi I decided I would rather have the free 3g because I am not always near a Wi-Fi connection.  Even when I am near a Wi-Fi connection some can be painfully slow (even by free 3g standards) or disconnect a lot.  That and I may be a bit lazy on connecting my device.  I wanted to be able to synch my library as I like to synch often when traveling, rarely do I buy books outside of home.   Not to mention both the Kindle 2 and Kindle Touch have a browser which while being very slow, can some times helps out when there is no Wi-Fi or if I want another source to see if a web site is down.

Why did I buy a Kindle Touch when I also bought the Kindle Fire?

Most of my friends that don’t read or rarely read don’t understand the appeal of a black and white screen. They did not quite get why I would buy a Kindle 2 or Kindle Touch when I had an iPad or now the Kindle Fire.  After all they are color.  These being friends that will never read Lord of The Rings and other page heavy books, but they had no problem borrowing the deluxe version of the DVDs from me.

For any one that reads as much as I do or more knows It’s not so much the black and white screen, as the long battery life.  Anyone I know that likes to read, and like myself may get less sleep because of staying up longer than usual because of a good book, understands well that a device with a long battery life is better than a tablet that lasts 4 – 10 hours on a charge.

On my Kindle 2 I recharge about every 3 weeks to 6 weeks; whereas I recharge my iPad about every 1 – 2 days.    Not to mention most of the books I read are mostly text and not a lot of pictures.  So there is no advantage of having a color screen to read on. That and while I can read the iPad outside, it is no where near as clear as my Kindle 2 or Kindle Touch in direct sun light.

So after 2 years the Kindle 2 is no good?

Back when I was selling off my shares in 4 hosting companies in 2009, I decided in November to get a Kindle 2, since then I have added over 400 books to it. To be honest I really had no justification for buying the Kindle Touch. Other than a fancy new tech toy, I had no reason to validate a new eReader. The Kindle 2’s battery life shows no signs of decline. With a Speck cover and a proper screen cover my kindle is in the same condition I bought it in. Despite getting a new device I will not be retiring the Kindle 2, and will continue using it at home, while using the Kindle 3 when I travel.  I will not be sending back to Amazon for what amounts to a small percentage of the $280 I paid for it.  They pay $25. Especially when the extended warranty is still in effect for another year or two.

Generally if I avoid leaving the 3g connection on I can go almost a month or longer before having to recharge.  But I wanted one that fits easier in my pockets, even when I am not wearing cargo pants / shorts.

My biggest gripe with the Kindle 2, is that Amazon seems to have abandoned it this year after they put my model up for less than $100 last year for Black Friday which I bought for a friend last year.  I had hoped that like the Kindle 3, they would release a patch that would provide page numbers.  I am bothered by the lack of updates this year.

Despite the lack of updates, the Kindle 2 is still a good eReader which I have had zero issues with.

The positives of the Kindle Touch

• More of the screen is dedicated to text

• Smaller then Kindle 2 or 3, with a screen that’s a bit wider than a the Kindle 2
• Lighter then Kindle 2
• Longer battery life then previous models (I have yet to see the battery life and will update this post in a month).
• 3g model also includes Wi-Fi
• Pocket Size
• Touch Screen, and you can just tap to turn a page
• Holds up to 3,000 books
• Comes in earth friendly / recyclable packaging (minus a piece of plastic that covers the screen), would be better if printed with soy ink

The down side / quirks of Kindle Touch

• No page numbers (perhaps a new patch, as Kindle 3 has page numbers per a patch)
• Text to Speech is no better than the Kindle 2
• I was unable to copy my collection / folder options from the Kindle 2 (perhaps another fix with a patch)

My recommendations for the Kindle Touch

At this point there are no covers that I can recommend.  Being a very strict vegan I refuse to buy any cover made of leather.  I will at later date post a cover that I find practical for the Kindle Touch.  Currently the one I have on my Kindle 2 is made by Speck which is a snap on shell that has been very effective.

The best screen covers I have found are:

Grantwood Technology Premium Anti-Glare Screen Protector for Kindle, 2-Pack Fits Latest, New Kindle (4G), Kindle Touch, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 2nd Generation

They are a good anti-glare cover, however I find that they are near impossible to get the bubbles out.  Despite that flaw they are a good protection for your Kindle 2, Kindle 3, or the Kindle Touch.

My personal thoughts on Kindle Touch

There are many reasons I went from paper books to an eReader.  One of which is that I did not want tree to be cut down to provide me with reading material.  Then there is that part of me that that is a tech geek / data hoarder. On top of that I have not exactly gotten a permanent residence yet.  I would dread having those to lug another 400 plus books, another reason I stopped buying cds and went to buying mp3’s.  I can’t say saving money was the reason that went with an eReader.  The Kindle Touch is a tech toy I recommend if you like to read a lot.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2706

In short its a bunch of self proclaimed gurus that tell you:

“GET STARTED IMMEDIATELY BY LOCKING IN YOUR POSTION AND EXPLODE YOUR PROFITS NOW!“

I wish I could claim for some level of exaggeration here, but that is an actual quote from their site right down to the all caps.  It’s all intended to lure you in.  But I can assure you results that they choose to show case are far from typical.  More about the package they offer you at a later date.

When I first looked into this site I found it had just started back in September, despite the domain being bought early this year.  The traffic statistics are very impressive.  I am most wager it was in part to the spamming on places such as YouTube (where they spammed my personal account), forums, blogs, and where ever else they could find a voice. GVO notified so called gurus with large mailing lists in regards to hostthenprofit.com.  After all this was how my first company got started, even though ties with a certain guru out of Utah that will remain nameless (though now that I think about it there was no non-disclosure agreement).  Something about variable flows of cash, well not those words but pretty close.  Other links were still available to these so called gurus.  Some of the stories I have about these gurus would make any normal person cringe.  Perhaps I may go into that at a later date.  But it’s really off topic.

Hostthenprofit.com – Results not Typical

That of coarse is what they should have in bold writing.

What I find interesting is that the original video at the top is no longer there, no worries a quick search of YouTube and I found it as well as tons of other people pushing hostthenprofit.com. The video software these guys claims to offer makes me wonder if it’s nothing more than a re-brander.  Considering YouTube is not too found of multiple copies of the same video.  I have to wonder if it changes the timing of sequences and other things to trick the system.

Here I find several gurus.  Tons of affiliates have been flooding search engine results for hostthenprofit sucks, hostthenprofit scam, and hostthenprofit review.  I noticed the same was not true for all the gurus.  Though some guru’s affiliates have flooded the results in regards to their domain.  At this time it’s not even 2 months since the site started.

Hostthenprofit.com videos with Guru approval

Mike Filsaime – HostThenProfit.com video testimonial

network:Org-Name:Road Runner Commercial

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1040

“Hi, It looks like we have sent emails to your personal mail id. This could have been amicably settled because we also give links for DND which we update on a regular basis. We request you to mail your email id so that in near future you would not receive any emails from us. And we also request you to take the content off your site. I hope that you would surely do the same.

Regards,

Antony John“.

I of coarse declined their request.

This is a post that has been sitting on the back burner, and yet I think I need to get this out of the way before I start my review of gogvo.com. I want to get this out of the way because spam does inspire me to write, but my rage has an expiration date.  Yes I suffer attention deficet disorder, and shinny things such as the Kindle Touch and the Kindle Fire do distract me.  So if I don’t do this now, I probable will not do it later.

So that was the end of my dealings with Manashosting.com?

I thought Manashosting.com learned their lesson as I did not get any more spam to my personal email account.  But in the middle of last month this came in:

Email spam did not pan out so Manashosting.com choose to comment spam my blog.  After all what does a Indian host have to do with an American host like Hostgator.com.  Not to mention the 5000 rupee unlimited Linux plan is about $101 so its not that much more then Hostgator.com. This is not the first time I have received spam from some host that is a bit ridiculous.  One that stole the Android logo tried to spam on my Youtube account:

“Bot agrees, all Bot wants to do is offer affordable web hosting to the regular person. Not everyone is a major corporation that can afford $200 a month, which is what some of the other hosting companies out there charge 
And thats why we are slowly gaining popularity. We do what all the rest can do, but MUCH cheaper. ”

Then of coarse I basically told him this was his chance to be honest, as frankly with his traffic rank it really was not worth my time to review them.  He then went into this whole spill about free hosting for those in the militarty, and donations to a charity which was according to the way back machine police officer charity site, and now a soldier charity site.  But it was that $200 figure, which really makes no sense.  Most people who come to my video are not going to pay $200 a month.  Nor was this guy role playing as a bot, as he  was hosted with one of Endurance International Groups hosts.

This manashosting.com positive comment,  is not the first I have seen that looks a little too good to be true.

Manashosting.com a Host for India?

At the start of my business I wanted to market to people in my country.  Not because I did not want money from other countries, far from it I will take as much money from anyone that will not have me tossing and turning at night over something that bugs my conscience. I probable would be a far richer man if my greed was stronger then that pesky thing called a conscience.  In the beginning I just figured people would rather do business with their own country.  After all you see enough “Buy American” bumper stickers, never mind a lot of the cars with them are parked at Walmart.  To them I have to ask is it okay to buy from Brazil?

The United States, unlike India is a mixing pot of every nation. Meaning any pictures of people were varied, though mostly with people wore business attire.  Not dressed in shorts, t-shirts and sandals with my Beatles style / bowl hair cut so no skater looking guys like myself. Which interestingly enough I don’t see a lot of stock images that show case the people of India.  A little odd for a No 1 host of Southern India..

Manashosting has 30 different methods to obtain to contact them

A lot appears to have changed when I last looked at this host, as it used to have a blue background.  But the thing that truly bothers me despite not really having pictures of the local populace.  Is that while claiming to be the Number One host in South India, they do try to get international customers.  Most of which are offline or away during what amounts to bankers hours in the U.S.  How can any company that wants business from my country not offer support during my hours?

Manashosting.com a ISO 9001 company?

I am not to sure of that as there is nothing to validate it.  A search of Iso.org reveals nothing on this Manashosting.com.  Perhaps like much of the fake positive reviews this is another lie told by Manashosting.

Now this is only for Google Chrome not on Internet Explorer, Opera,  and after having to re install the rather buggy Firefox it was not found there.  Safari is acting buggy on my machine

According to Google in regards to Hosting-review.com

What is the current listing status for hosting-review.com?

Site is listed as suspicious – visiting this web site may harm your computer.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 2 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 45 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 3 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2011-10-12, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2011-10-12.Malicious software includes 5 exploit(s), 1 trojan(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 4 new process(es) on the target machine.

Malicious software is hosted on 3 domain(s), including 32hdtydjrdjhfgf.ce.ms/, 31ahflawigilajlif.ce.ms/, 24sjegohmjosee.ce.ms/.

1 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including opienetwork.com/.

This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS26788 (BLINK).

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, hosting-review.com did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

How did this happen?

In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.“

intermediaries for the infection of 1 other site(s) including, for example, hosting-review.com/.

It appears Hosting-review has a Tim Thumb Exploit.

During hard economic times, snake oils sales men are hard at work.  They know people are desperate, anything to keep the bill collector from taking their house away.  I was there myself.  Even almost tried a program called Destiny that sold phone cards in the 90′s.  What kept me from giving my hard earned money was that the state of Alabama would not allow their cards to work in the state. I kept trying to use the card to call my grandmother, but it constantly failed.  I figured once the card worked I would buy into the program.  This is of coarse is before I realized how bad I was at selling people on a product.  Fortunately the company fell apart, something about the head of the company taking off.

http://cageyconsumer.com/destiny.html

There is a lot of details missing on hostthenprofit.com’s site, such as a terms of service.  Where to go to report spam.  But there are a lot of “Top MLM and Internet Marketers”.

Looking at the site these “gurus” are trying to promote brings back bad memories where I worked for a MLM (multi level marketing) guru. Who pretty much drove me crazy when he wanted a back ground that was the same color as money.  Not to mention his web master was not to happy with me because I had done something he could not do, and that was create a bob@ email account.   Because he claimed that a three letter email address was impossible.  The graphics guy(me) could do what the webmaster could not.  Really it was a simple matter of asking Virtualis to do it, so technically I did not do it but I got the task done. It was not until I had to scan a book and edit it for the web that I realized “how to get rich” sites make only one person rich and that is the people that tell you to buy their book.  Not to mention the methods for getting rich such as advice to grandparents to take custody of their disabled grandchildren for tax benefits.

Hostthenprofit.com’s spam

thealexangroup sent you a video: “VIDEO – HostThenProfit.com-live.info | Affordable Web Hosting and Business Opp In One!”

Now if only hostthenprofit.com had been running since March 11, 2011.  But lets take a look at what Alexa says about hostthenprofit.com:

I find it amazing that hostthenprofit.com just started last month but they have an Alexa score of 26,527.

As much they want hide any flaws that might come up, they made one mistake.  They have So Called Gurus, that did not drown out their negative feed back. So instead of working on reviewing review sites that have EIG sites that mailed out FTC compliance emails this month as I had planned.  This month will be about reviewing this site and gogov.com

My personal opinion of gogov.com and hostthenprofit is your better off trusting a host that appears on webhostingstuff and you know how much I don’t approve of them.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/fatcow-com.html

I am also going to point out why they are wrong.

http://www.hostingsthatsuck.com/fatcow-sucks/

If your don’t know why you should not trust hostingsthatsuck.com, here is why.

They work to be at the top of “(host name) sucks” in search engine results.  The reason why they do that is they know a lot of people try to find out rather a host is good or bad, though that particular search phrase.  They hope that you will go to their site and read why you should host with that host, and search no further.  In this case they want you to get an account with Fatcow.com so they can get $100 for every sign up, plus a performance bonus for bringing in x amount of customers (per month?).

Fatcow sucks? Beware – Read this Fatcow Review First | Even the Best Hosts Suck Sometimes

That is the header they give you, they want top ranking when you do a search for Fatcow.com sucks.  They want you to look no further then their site.  Here is how they try to prove they are on your side:

“Some say Fatcow Hosting scams or Fatcow sucks? Saw some Fatcow.com issues, Fatcow complaints and bad customer experiences? Can these negative reviews be trusted? Heard some horror stories about their limitations?“

This time around they decide to point to Fatcow.com’s BBB record.  Honestly I would never use the Better Business Burea as the finale measurement of trusting a company.  That and it proable needs a review of its own for the hosting companies that pay for their reviews.  Take a look at this ABC post on the BBB, and yes Wolfgang Puck still has an F rating.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/business-bureau-best-ratings-money-buy/story?id=12123843

Another site of interest is http://www.bbbroundup.com/

Read enough there, and you can see that I should be looking at the BBB in regards to so called hosting reviews.  So perhaps a post for another day.

But as of today does Fatcow have a A+ rating?

As you can tell going to link that hostingsthatsucks.com, fatcow does not own its own BBB acreditation, it shares it with other EIG owned companies.  Unlike what I did, hostingsthatsuck.com did not post a full shot of that rating, and yes I got that from the same exact link they point people to.

So how bad is Fatcow?

Personally I have tried a few of eig companies, Fatcow, Justhost, ipage, just to name a few. Always the service is to slow to do anything serious on.  For some bizarre reason people pay me a couple thousand to build a site, but they can’t be bothered to pay more then $100 a year to keep their site going.  Many of these clients burnt by other people because they choose to buy from someone offering their design at the price they wanted, only to disappoint them.

As hostingsthatsuck.com always does, it claims that you should buy Fatcow, because there are only a hand full of complaints against them.  For some reason Hostingsthatsuck.com tries to use Alexa to compare Fatcow against Ipower (also owned by EIG).  An Alexa rating has no bearing on weather a host is good or not.  It is a measure of traffic, and there are alot of host that have a higher rating and more complaints then fatcow.  Unfortunately I don’t have time to point them out.  But I am sure Hostgator.com has more complaints then fatcow, and it definatly has a higher alexa rating.

But as far as searches go, the top 2 pages are mostly affiliates such as hostingsthatsuck.com.  But there is one site that has more then 8 complaints http://www.web-hosting-top.com/review/fatcow.com

So is hostingsthatsuck.com ftc compliant?  No, despite the many “discount” links, there is no full disclosure that they get paid by fatcow.com for any referral. Lets see if Fatcow is serious about that email they sent, and will do something about it.

It occurred to me  after reading theecologist.org  and then calling Dell while brewing some coffee. Funny how some things are so obvious,  yet don’t quite connect in my head.  I was just about to vent my frustration over a order gone wrong when I glanced at the fair trade logo on my Trader Joe’s Organic Morning Blend (In short Fair Trade offers a reasonable pay for work done, not to mention reasonable hours and working conditions).   The fair trade logo connected all those points together. My first thought was did this guy on the other end really deserve my rage?  Was he paid enough to bear my rage?  I doubt it.

The Outsource Tech Support Sucks(?)

No I am not writing a rant against foreigners that are being outsource for customer service.  While there are many exported jobs that I am unhappy about, I actually have sympathy for this guy on the other end trying to do his job.  He is simply following the script that Dell provided him. At best his training consists of either being handed a binder with a table of contents that takes him to each answer, or being told to refer to the f.a.q. section on the company provided pc (which may have been the pinnacle of  technology 8 years ago). When it comes to something not covered by the materials provided, you either get a long pause or are put on hold while they ask someone that may know the answer.  Then when he / she comes back with an unsatisfactory answer, they may have to deal with the brunt of a customer’s anger.

There is no excuse for a company using Outsource Tech Support(?)

I don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to complaining about outsourcing, after all on some of my cheaper companies used outsource tech support with India.

I went with outsource support for one reason and one reason only, and that was to compete in a cheap market.  When ever you try to compete in a cheap market,  as with any business its all about money. While the techs I had here in the U.S. were very good at their job, it was not cost efficient to have them dealing with a cheap market for many reasons.  Read enough of my blog and you will know that the cheaper an account was the more likely  the account holder would place a ticket.  That was a fact that I would not see until much later when software was in place that tracked such details.  The other details that was pretty obvious was the level web development skill was not equal to higher paying customers.  On the much higher end if my customers did not know, they hired webmasters.  The more a customer paid the less likely they put tickets in for support.

I can tell you my outsource tech support worked, but not without constant vigilance.  Hence why I had monitors dedicated to chat, so I could jump in if needed, or come through on another chat program to guide the outsource techs.  The vigilance being one of the driving factors into me desiring to leave the hosting industry.

Not all cheap companies provider Outsource Tech Support

There are companies out there that don’t offer outsource support such as Godaddy.com and Hostgator.com. I suggest looking up the results for yourself as this is a post about foreign provided support and not domestic.   That is a blog post for another day.

Having been an ex-employee of a major company whose current logo is “Save Money, Live Better”, or included advertising about “roll back prices”. Did I mention they had their employees go to competitors and write down their prices?  One of the big reasons I left them was the lack of employee benefits like insurance and money for college.  I had fulfilled my obligations to obtain these benefits.  Too bad I did not know the state I was in required these benefits for employees that work full time hours for more then three months.

The reason I bring Walmart in the mix of an Outsource post, is that low cost companies will sometimes do whatever they can to obtain a profit.  Like when Walmart bought Dead Peasant Policies on employees without their knowledge.

What is a Dead Peasant Policy?

“Dead Peasant Insurance is sometimes used as a shorthand reference for life insurance policies that insure a company’s rank-and-file employees and name the company as the beneficiary. This means that the company receives the life insurance benefits when the covered employees die. This insurance may also be called “janitor insurance,” “corporate-owned life insurance,” or “COLI.””

http://deadpeasantinsurance.com/

Its the Outsource Tech’s fault(?)

I hear that a lot.  Just as I hear my mother complain about the quality of something she bought at the $ 0.99 store.  However she is willing to pay no more then a dollar for a lot of the things she gets at there.  She even goes so far as to return things that she finds defective there.  I honestly would not bother to return anything  after all it was not until 2 months ago I started going there as they started carrying my favorite energy drink for $0.79 and it usually runs $2.00 +.  Not that I have gotten anything defective from there, but if I did its just not worth my time to return anything. Its really a matter of math, in the time I spend going back to the store not to mention factors such as if I drove there or biked.  What could I use that time instead doing?

I get why people want the most for their money, but what about some realistic expectations?  After all how much are you willing to do for that $3.25 a month?   Are you willing to provide at less then a dollar a day service equal to what Pepsi pays for their hosting? Chances are that tech you complain about probable gets less then $0.01 of your hosting payment for having to help you out.  Sure there are hundreds of you on a server in order to make it profitable. Never mind that slow tech that is on chat with you may be slow because they are dealing with more then just you at that moment.

One of the things that I have seen while reviewing some 80 companies, those that use outsource support have a lot of complaints.  Endurance International Group being the owner of many of these companies.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/hosts-that-use-exposed-reviews/dont-buy-from-ipage-com-until-you-read-my-review-to-save-time-and-money.html

When I first reviewed iPage, I had this weird chat session.  Where I am asked what home page I was referring to, that had me wondering how many hosting companies this support company worked for.

Turned out it was a large company that buys out other hosting companies.  Which I found out after I reviewed a company that shared a spot in the top 10 with Justhost, which was fatcow.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/fatcow/fatcow-sucks-beware-read-this-fatcow-review-first-before-buying.html

What I find interesting is they do not know what company they are handling chat for. Though the tech on the iPage review probable told me more then I should know.

I tend to think alot of these outsourcing companies that pop up out there do little to train their employees before releasing them to companies seeking outsource support.  Several years back before starting up my 2nd company I was trying to find a support company that could do it cheaply for the second host.   Trust me I was not eager to go with a cheap outsource solution.  But as I said before it was a matter of profit.  The cheaper you go, the more people you have to put on a server to make it profitable.  The less likely a you are going to put people on state of the art technology.   If you live in a area like I do where the cost of living is comparable higher then other parts on the world, outsource support is your best bet to make your cheap hosting solution profitable.

The first company I found was a complete disaster.  This was a former software developer if I remember correctly was in India.  I tend to think this outsource solution would have been the death of my company if I did not decided to monitor chats and the company had not started up.  As the people they provided did not even have the basics of for what they were doing.  For some reasons the owner of this operation thought my company would train people who barely understood what a pc was on how to be IT experts.

Their boss collected my fee and disappeared.  No surprise but they are no longer in business and the software part. there most industrious part was shut down.  Other wise there would be a post on avoiding them.

Outsource tech support versus Affiliate Programs

The main argument behind me not being for affiliate programs that pay more then 20% of what a customer pays is very simple. Yes the payment is tax deductable.  But lets take a host gator account that a design client of mine signed up for, I sent him to a friends affilate link on the promise he told he how much he got paid.  Being the cheap skate this design client was he went with the month to month plan which was $7.96 (never mind it would have been cheaper to sign up for a year or more).  That means that it takes 13 months before any of that money is put into tech support, its all being sent to the affiliate.  That also means that until the 13th payment, not a singe penny goes towards any form of service.  There are other things that qualify as a tax deduction which are things that would improve service, such as paying a decent living wage to the tech on the other end.  After all a happy employee is a productive employee.

As much as we may try to blame affiliates, and the companies that pay them.  The real problem is not the outsourced techs, nor is it the companies that employee them.   After all lets go back the product that started this post, Organic Fair Trade Wake Up Blend coffee from Trader Joes.  This is a product that caters to people such as myself that are Tree Huggers, and concerned with the well being of others.  I am not going to be on a list of people that buy blood diamonds out of Africa knowing full well the human cost.  Hence products that carry the Fair Trade Logo, for those that would rather not have coffee or other things under slave labor conditions.  Any company will flow to an idea that brings in money, especially when people stop buying from companies that operate sweet shops.

So before you decided to yell at an outsource tech, ask yourself how much did you pay for your  hosting package.  I welcome any outsource techs that want to share their experience be they good or bad.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/redemption/unlimitedgb-com-2.html

I am not going to be like hostingsthatsuck.com and whine about someone comment spamming on my blog.  Personally I welcome it as nothing inspires me to write like spam, and I really hate spam.

Granted it was only one comment, but look at it.  What did it have to do with my attempt to get a host with a serious problem with customer complaints and vagrant fake positive reviews?  Absolutely nothing, in their comment had anything to do with my post.

Then again their comment does not make a lot of sense.

So why did Deepahosting.com spam?

They did it for one reason and one reason only, and that was for a back link which helps to grow their search engine ranking. Maybe on the rare hope someone might follow the link and buy something from them.  I advise avoiding this company.

Honestly I don’t mind a host giving their two cents, for that matter they are more then welcome to put their site in the form area that lists site.  But having vagrant advertisement, is not welcome.  For that matter in the up coming months I am going to remove Google Adsense so I can remove all hosting ads off my site.  Granted that might bring my site income down to zero.   This is not the place for a host to advertise or attempt to get back links.  As you can see their comment was about “Reseller Hosting” which has nothing to do with what the blog post was about.

So how does Deepahosting.com suck

Here is the first thing that caught my attention: “Established in 2009 to provide advance , High technology web hosting Service to all internet service provider”

Naturally when ever I see a company say they started on x date, I am very inclined to look at their whois information.  I can tell you now that Deepahost.com was not around in 2009, their whois information says:

   Updated Date: 14-aug-2011
   Creation Date: 07-jan-2010
   Expiration Date: 07-jan-2017

As I have repeatedly pointed out, creation date does not mean a start date.   But the way back machine says deepahost.com was up no later then February 2010.

http://wayback.archive.org/web/20100909113548*/http://www.deepahosting.com/

I really don’t get claiming that you have been a year longer then your whois information states, why not lie and say you have been in business since 1999?  Its not like the host made a single typo as they repeated this lie several times.

The big whopper of a lie that Deepahosting.com told is…..

They could not make their company older then 2009, yet….

“Our global community is more than 10 million customer contracts strong. ”

http://deepahosting.com/about_us.php

So why do they have an Alexa Score of 205,837?  With that many clients they should be near Godaddy.com and Hostgator.com in terms of traffic score.  There would be no need to comment spam on my blog, which has a traffic score of 158,037.  Remember with Alexa you want a lower number.

Seriously if they really started back in 2009, there would be hosting companies begging to know the secrets of getting 3 million customers a year.

Nevermind that web-hosting-top.com  did not start getting reviews for deepahosting.com til July 24, 2011.

http://www.web-hosting-top.com/reviews/deepahosting.com “

Webhostingstuff.com only has one review and this was back in June 2011.

http://www.webhostingstuff.com/review/DeepaHosting.html “

Never mind some of the biggest names in hosting have far more reviews.

“Deepahosting is world no:1 Hosting company selected by 15000 customers world wide .”

I don’t quite understand what that means, as the one page says they have 10 million customer contracts strong company. Their spouting numbers without proof some how means your supposed to trust them.

Then there is the fuzzy refund policy at Deepahosting.com

Its rather unclear.  Between several pages its either 15 days, 30 days or 180 days.  At one point they state pro-rated refund, and by prorated they deduct your time used based on month to month pricing.  Honestly nothing wrong with that.  I did that myself, however what I did not do is try to confuse it with being a guarantee.  It seems the 180 days is more of a play on words, and not a point where guarantee should apply.

If you want a host from India, I suggest avoiding Deepahosting.  But for those that choose did spend time with this host I want to hear your experience.  Keep in mind if your going to provide positive feedback for deepahosting, I want a domain that is actually hosted with them.

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2010/Oct/466

To be percise this is the exact reason I am trying to get their attention, they accuse me of:

“Here is a list of Host gator google bombing with fake websites and prolifically self-aggrandizing sponsored conversations to bury negative reviews:”

Based off one of my first posts: hostgator bad web host read honest hostgator review

In short he pastes part of my post:

“Hostgartor.com [sic] likes to brag about numbers”, “Even though Hostgator has their own building, it does not appear they have their own server center, and they to [sic] like the first three companies I reviewed that are also using theplanet.com.”, “Even though Hostgator.com is only in number 5th position, they probable [sic] should be in the top position at webhostingstuff.com.”

That is not an exact quote from my site.  For that matter the miss over the details that prove I am not “google bombing“, nor am I “prolifically self-aggrandizing sponsored conversations to bury negative reviews“.  Hostgator is not paying me to write about themTo be honest yes I was copying what those so called Google bombers have done, and those Google bombers have even accused me of such.  Over time though I have not done it so much as it gets a bit boring. While I do enjoy a good link, I would be happier if it was in a proper context.  I honestly really love it when some one is trashing me for what I am really doing.  But calling my site fake? Not so much.  This Seclists.org author did not do his research.

Seclists.org – I am not “google bombing“

First off let me explain I claim to be no expert at blogging, and this site is not making me a income to live off of.  I started this because back in Oct 2007 I found a site called webhostingstuff.com that thought it was a good idea to remove my positive feed back given to my company by customers.  In short when I confronted this so called review site he blocked me from further communications. Long story short, hosting-reviews-exposed.com was born.

Which lead to the creation of this video.

 So Seclists.org do I need to show further proof?

A little after that post on Seclists.org, I got spammed from hostgator’s affiliates:

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/hostgator.html

Which I am sure I will see happen again before November, and have friends that have promised to send me Hostgator’s advance warning to cj.com so I can do an advance broad cast next time.

So Seclists.org how about issuing a correction?

I can respect not liking hostgator, after all they used to be one of my competitors.   Not to mention they fuel fake review sites like webhostingstuff.com.  The person who choose to post their rant on seclists.org did not read my post in full before grouping me with others.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/unlimited-hosting/hostgator-bad-web-host-read-honest-hostgator-review.html

“You would think they could at least beat Arvand.  Perhaps hostgator paid in advance for their “advertising” on webhostingstuff.com for that 5th spot. I would suggest contacting webhostingstuff.com to get a push up on those rankings, perhaps hostgator can get in a bidding war with iPage for that number 1 spot …… sorry I meant advertising Webhostingstuff.com does not “sell” rankings *eye roll*. Did I forget to mention the mysterious disappearing negative fee back.”

Perhaps my sarcasm was not evident?  I am still wetting my feet, and I make no claims at being a professional blogger. But I make it a point to read before I post links.  What I find interesting, that the only mention of webhostingstuff.com (who is doing the damage your writer was worried about) was mentioned by me.  Yet this is absent on the seclists.org post.

Come on Seclists, everyone makes a mistake so please issue a correction.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/hosts-that-use-exposed-reviews/bluehost.html

Like many of the big name hosts that appear on so called review sites, hostmonster.com shows up on many top lists.  Its no mystery why these affiliates create fake rankings, after all at $65 per sign up how could they possible resist?  While there is no clear connection between Endurance International Group and Hostmonster.com.  I find in interesting that Hostmonster.com has sent out a FTC compliance email at the same time as other EIG companies.

The Hostmonster.com FTC compliance email

Dear Affiliate,
As you may know, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has strict guidelines that relate to affiliates who offer reviews, rankings, endorsements and testimonials; and we require all affiliates of our CJ program to comply with these requirements.

To be compliant with the FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, HostMonster expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and HostMonster anytime you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU
If you provide reviews, rankings, endorsements or testimonials about a service for which you receive commissions from us, you must clearly disclose the fact that you receive such compensation in a clear and prominent place–that is close to your endorsement.

The FTC takes the Endorsement guidelines seriously and has started to enforce them for both content providers like yourself and advertisers like HostMonster.

As an advertiser, HostMonster will monitor affiliate sites to be sure our services are represented appropriately. Under the updated Affiliate Agreement, failure to comply with the endorsement guidelines could result in removal from our affiliate program and the cancellation of commissions.

TIPS FOR MAKING SURE YOUR SITE IS COMPLIANT
To make it easier for you, we’ve pulled together information, based on a recent FTC enforcement case, to illustrate ways you can disclose a material connection between you and your advertisers. Take a few minutes to review this summary at:

HostMonster Affiliate Disclosure Requirements and Examples can be seen at: https://www.hostmonster.com/cgi/info/ftc.html. The FTC also offers a variety of resources to help make it easier for you to comply with the guidelines, including: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising: http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking: http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus71-ftcs-revised-endorsement-guideswhat-people-are-asking Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising: http://business.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/bus41-dot-com-disclosures-information-about-online-advertising.pdf

Please note: These links are intended to provide guidance only. If you provide endorsements of some type, you should obtain legal advice on how the FTC rules apply to you.

Please take steps immediately to make sure your site is in compliance with these guidelines. Several of our leading affiliates have already posted their disclosures, and they continue to enjoy great success.

Best wishes,
The HostMonster Affiliate Team

In short what does that mean if your a Hostmonster.com affiliate?

It means if you run a site that runs any form of review for profit, you have to disclose that detail right next to the link that send people to the host.

Bluehost.com is amongst many hosts that find themselves in so called top 10 sites as well as reviews.  After all $65 per sign up is very encouraging.  It also means I have more material for pointing out review sites that do not comply with this Federal Trade Commissions requiremens.

If Hostmonster sticks with this, they are on the right path to not showing up on my blog

This was the site that promised me , if I sold I sold 25 hosting accounts with Bluehost.com that they would give you an iPad (cheapest model) and $550.   Unfortunately that would have been a step down for me as I had the deluxe model of the first version, and never mind going straight through Bluehost.com’s own affiliate program I would get $1,625 at $65 per sale  on 25 sales (now its $2250 at $90 per sale).   Like most companies that choose to comment spam where ever there is an opening they have no idea who gets their spam.  So as karma would have it, he spammed me.   Back in June 2010 I was still warming up to doing some regular blogging.  It did not take much inspriration to make a post on this affiliate.  As I really hate spam.

Whybluehost.com goes to Flippa

Last year not sure the exact month, I am assuming late July or early August.  But whybluehost.com went up for sale on Flippa.   There are a few things that are wrong with this site, as the seller was far less then honest.

https://flippa.com/101262-earning-130-month-5-yrs-free-hosting-proven-niche-moneymaker

“REVENUE DETAILS

June- $65 (1 sale)

July- $130 (2 sales)

These sales were achieved without any type of AdWords campaign or traffic building techniques. The site was literally sitting on my “to do” list and it got sales without me having to lift a finger.I strongly recommend that the new owner of this site to take the time to build targeted traffic and run an AdWords campaign to maximize the best results.

See Attachments For More Detail”

As you can tell no one came in to make enough sales to get a iPad.  But he lied about “The site was literally sitting on my “to do” list and it got sales without me having to lift a finger.“.  You can go to my orginal post to see that he was going around spamming through YouTube.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/bad-affiliate-programs/whybluehost-com-is-not-the-place-to-try-and-be-an-affiliate-for-bluehost-com.html

It appear the site sold for a whopping $150.

Frankly I would avoid buying from someone on flippa if they do not accept Escrow.

If memory serves me correctly, there was a claim of giving out an iPad.  Granted I did not take a snap shot, and the original site was gone.  Now more then a year later the site has become nothing more then ppc page holder until the domain expires.

I am not the only one that was offered to be an affilate under whybluehost

http://www.youtube.com/user/wlchrbanditgaming

Want the chance to win an iPad?

So, here’s the deal! The first 25 people to purchase Bluehost hosting through whybluehost.com will be entered into a fair and unbiased drawing for a free iPad.

You can find the video by searching youtube.com for “whybluehost”.

I had contacted this affilate, and made it clear that he could go directly to Bluehost.com and make more, but he made it clear he did not care.

In the end whybluehost is an example of using cation when it comes to hosting review sites.

Never mind this was someone that wanted other people to do his sales work for him, and pay less the more someone sold.  Or the fact that he was not even hosted on  Bluehost.com.  From the stand point of being an affiliate, what is going to stop a person from going directly to bluehost.com to find they could earn more?  I can’t say I was worried too much about affiliates finding out what I did doing 2 minutes of research most of which involved finding my calculator.  My biggest problem is I notified bluehost,com and never received a response on any action they might take to remove whybluehost’s affiliate id.  Would have been nice to know they had taken action against whybluehost.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/endurance-international-group-inc.html

The timing is about the only thing that could make me think that bluehost.com belongs to Endurance International Group.

The Bluehost.com FTC compliance email

Dear Affiliate,
As you may know, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has strict guidelines that relate to affiliates who offer reviews, rankings, endorsements and testimonials; and we require all affiliates of our CJ program to comply with these requirements.

To be compliant with the FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, BlueHost expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and BlueHost anytime you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU
If you provide reviews, rankings, endorsements or testimonials about a service for which you receive commissions from us, you must clearly disclose the fact that you receive such compensation in a clear and prominent place–that is close to your endorsement.

The FTC takes the Endorsement guidelines seriously and has started to enforce them for both content providers like yourself and advertisers like BlueHost.

As an advertiser, BlueHost will monitor affiliate sites to be sure our services are represented appropriately. Under the updated Affiliate Agreement, failure to comply with the endorsement guidelines could result in removal from our affiliate program and the cancellation of commissions.

TIPS FOR MAKING SURE YOUR SITE IS COMPLIANT
To make it easier for you, we’ve pulled together information, based on a recent FTC enforcement case, to illustrate ways you can disclose a material connection between you and your advertisers. Take a few minutes to review this summary at:

BlueHost Affiliate Disclosure Requirements and Examples can be seen at: https://www.bluehost.com/cgi/info/ftc.html. The FTC also offers a variety of resources to help make it easier for you to comply with the guidelines, including: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising: http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking: http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus71-ftcs-revised-endorsement-guideswhat-people-are-asking Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising: http://business.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/bus41-dot-com-disclosures-information-about-online-advertising.pdf

Please note: These links are intended to provide guidance only. If you provide endorsements of some type, you should obtain legal advice on how the FTC rules apply to you.

Please take steps immediately to make sure your site is in compliance with these guidelines. Several of our leading affiliates have already posted their disclosures, and they continue to enjoy great success.

Best wishes,
The BlueHost Affiliate Team

In short what does that mean if your a Bluehost.com affiliate?

It means if you run a site that runs any form of review for profit, you have to disclose that detail right next to the link that send people to the host.

Bluehost.com is amongst many hosts that find themselves in so called top 10 sites as well as reviews.  After all $90 per sign up is very encouraging.

If Bluehost sticks with this, they are on the right path to not showing up on my blog.

Back in my college years, I had a job that I really loved. No it was not my dream job of going through the Amazon looking for unidentified species.  It was work at a comic store.  Considering I used to be a Marvel Comics fan, it was a dream job to work for extra money for college.  This was months before the Death of Superman in the 90′s, for which I earned enough money to buy my second PC.  Given my last job was flipping burgers and working at Walmart, converting the orders of 456 customers with a large array of comic titles and comic related goods into a data base was a big step up. Their adaption turned a routine that took 6 days every month into a process that could be modified when customers ask to remove or add items to their orders.   With all that time freed up a new policy of once a week company diner meetings.  Granted most of the meetings were more or less a discussion of pop culture.

I would in time get another job as the only way to really advance in a comic store is to know how to sell, I had the buying part down.   But I am one of those people that would have trouble selling water in the desert. While this store is still up today, my dos based data base is no longer in use and they moved on to more efficient ways of processing customer’s orders.  From the time I first went to work for them they have gone through 3 store face lifts.  While I may have never have learned how to sell, I did learn a lot of what it took to manage a business.  The store’s owners told me back when I first started the two keys to their success was being diverse and adapting to their customers.  Though I have to say another part of their success was loving what they do.

How does Borders have any thing to do with hosting?

If you read enough of my reviews you will see that I do complain about design, I might go on about it being a copy of someone elses.  Or that my mother can do a better job.   I can not tell you how many sites I have looked at where the design was out dated, or worse yet they show cased software that long expired.  Software has about the same shelf life as a bag of potato chips.  So why would something stale attract me to buy?  Could you seriously buy a bag of stale chips just because the price is real low?  Some how people perceive the argument about design is a surface level argument.   But to me the design goes deeper into the heart of a company.  I am often asked would I prefer a site that is well designed or would I prefer good service.  To that I prefer a service that can prove they have skill in the very market they wish to provide service.  Design speaks volumes, in a world where to days big thing is tomorrows fad.  A web site is a companies resume, and I am not inclined to hire the person who looked like they fell out of their bed into their clothes, and can  not give me a good reason to hire them.

10 years ago Borders in Glendale Arizona was a great place to go, though this was before I started shopping on Amazon. Also I might add the store was clean. I went for the coffee and often buying cds and books. I have to say I did not buy commonly known artists from Borders as they were often $5 more then what I could get them at BestBuy. DVDs were definatly out of the question as Borders wanted most of the time $30 for a movie, where other places charged 20.  After a year it became clear the only bargains at Borders were in the clearance section.

The big Borders flaw, the pricing and the failure to adapt

I know I harp a lot on cheap hosting. Yet I do often look for the cheapest price on items such as media.  There is a big difference about bargain shopping for a movie and buying hosting.  After all the wide screen version at Best Buy is going to be the same as the one at Boarders.  With hosting you don’t really get to see the guts of what you get.  But there are somethings that do tell you, that your not getting a good deal.  10 megs of space for $20 a month is not a bargain in 2011, 2001 perhaps.   Not to mention with a world in economic turmoil, the last thing to do is the same old thing.  Sure people are going to buy books, movies, and music.  But they are more incline to bargain hunt.  I am no exception, especially since I collect nature references some of which can cost a couple hundreds (like one I have on termites).

One thing that bothered me was the membership card.   To get a discount you had to pay a fee, even though that discount did not equate to what I could get from a store that had no membership.  Unless maybe you considered your local grocery store that handed out memberships for free.  A little weird that a grocery store could beat a store like Borders on a cheaper deal.  I think it was two years ago Borders stopped charging for the membership and simply gave you one if you gave them an email. After doing so I never found any of their sales appealing.

Through the years I would still go to Borders, always for coffee and to browse through the clearance section.  But here is where I get to the clean part.  Perhaps the fabric chairs were meant to be part of the atmosphere.  But last I looked they were no longer burgundy color and more of a mud.  I am not sure they were steam cleaning these chair, but they are pretty gross now.  Perhaps they should have opted for a rubber chair that could easily be wiped down.  Perhaps not very appealing, but after ten years the excuse of paying for atmosphere is not excuse for high prices.

Which brings me to some hosts that fail in their design.   Sometimes when you dig through the sites you find things that are not bargains.  After all in some cases these hosts charge something like $25 to install word press, and $10 a month.  Never mind word press is free. Most host shared hosts use cPanel, have software (Fantastico) that installs it for you.  Yeah it can be more complex when you add widgets and other add ons or you choose to use a theme.  But most widgets are pretty self explanatory.  Or they want to charge you $20 for a domain or $75 for a ssl certificate.  For which you can get for for 1/2 the cost elsewhere.  Perhaps they are great because they can tell you how to set up your email, but are they ready to prevent modern threats.  Will they be ready for the next big thing like Word Press?

Kindle killed Borders?

I have friends that like to joke with me about my buying a Kindle killing off Borders.  Its a lot like blaming Netflicks for killing Blockbuster (though some would argue that it was Blockbuster that killed the family owned video shop), or perhaps DSL / Cable killed AOL.  But another rival to Borders, Barnes and Noble seems to have no problem with their adaption which is the Nook.  When a company fails to adapt they deserve to join Borders.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/endurance-international-group-inc.html

I did not get a lot of details about supergreen, just bread crumbs.  Up til now I had little legitimate details linking this host to EIG,  Unless in the unlikely event that Supergreen copied the EIG mail outs.

SuperGreen is  added onto the list of Endurance International Group hosts to send out FTC compliance notices to their affiliates.  If you read some of my previous posts you will see that just like fatcow.com and ipage.com they used the same exact notice.   I will continue to do a post for each notice I recieve from Endurance International Group.  This is my first post on SuperGreen, I have to say that it does not have the same feel as many of the Endurance International Group sites, not to mention I don’t really recall seeing it on any review sites.   I do know that they are with cj.com (Commission Junction). The first email about Federal Trade Commission guidelines was sent to Just Host affiliates.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/just-host.html
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/ipower-com.html
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/fatcow-com.html
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/ipage-com.html

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/ipowerweb-com.html 

A copy of the Email from supergreen – supergreenhosting.com

Dear SuperGreen Affiliate,As you may know, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has strict guidelines that relate to affiliates who offer reviews, rankings, endorsements and testimonials; and we require all affiliates of our CJ program to comply with these requirements.To be compliant with the FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, SuperGreen expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and SuperGreen anytime you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services.WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOUIf you provide reviews, rankings, endorsements or testimonials about a service for which you receive commissions from us, you must clearly disclose the fact that you receive such compensation in a clear and prominent place–that is close to your endorsement.The FTC takes the Endorsement guidelines seriously and has started to enforce them for both content providers like yourself and advertisers like SuperGreen.As an advertiser, SuperGreen will monitor affiliate sites to be sure our services are represented appropriately. Failure to comply with the endorsement guidelines could result in removal from our affiliate program and the cancellation of commissions.TIPS FOR MAKING SURE YOUR SITE IS COMPLIANT To make it easier for you, we’ve pulled together information, based on a recent FTC enforcement case, to illustrate ways you can disclose a material connection between you and your advertisers. Take a few minutes to review this summary at: SuperGreen Affiliate Disclosure Requirements and Examples The FTC also offers a variety of resources to help make it easier for you to comply with the guidelines, including: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising Please note: These links are intended to provide guidance only. If you provide endorsements of some type, you should obtain legal advice on how the FTC rules apply to you. Please take steps immediately to make sure your site is in compliance with these guidelines. Several of our leading affiliates have already posted their disclosures, and they continue to enjoy great success. Best wishes, The SuperGreen Affiliate Team

So what does this email from supergreen – supergreenhosting.com mean?

In short if your a review site, and you don’t disclose that you created your site for the purpose of making money they will remove you from the affiliate program.  Here are the steps they recommend to be in compliance with the FTC.

Frequent: Disclosures must be available on any page that has an endorsement. Clear: Language must be easy to understand; don’t attempt to hide the fact that it’s a disclosure. Conspicuous: Place your disclosure close to your endorsement or review. Differentiate the disclosure’s font treatment from the rest of your site. Require no action: The user shouldn’t need to click, hover or scroll to locate or understand the nature of your disclosure.

If SuperGreen.com sticks with this, I have to commend them on doing things ethically.  I hope they did not start doing this because the FTC contacted them first.  I will be sure to contact them should I find any violators.

Be warned if you run a so called top review site, and you have Supergreen.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/scams-to-avoid/unlimitedgb.html

For which they choose to create feed back, in most cases not giving out domains.  In one case two different endorsements came from the same ip.

Last week the CEO decided to contact me, not to fix things but to get me to remove my page.

Email exchange with Unlimitedgb.com

Per usual red text is who is responding to me.

Blue text is me.

From: Sanson Dsilva info@unlimitedgb.comMessage: Dear Benjamin, I am the CEO and the Managing Director of UnlimitedGB.com. Its been 2 years since I have started unlimitedgb.com and its a budding hosting company. During the start of unlimitedgb.com we outsourced some seo work to a seo firm “GK Media Soft” in coimbatore, India and what they did is to generate back links they did blog commenting on various forums including yours.. I swear on my son this was not an intentional commenting blast on your blogs and during that time due to a shortage in manpower we were giving support to customers on live chat only during the day times in India, and so that is the reason when you came to our website the chat was offline. During that time we had no more than 800 hosted domains on our servers. ALL THIS IS IN THE PAST….But Now Benjamin, Please As a Brother I am requesting you, Please Remove this post from your website. http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/scams-to-avoid/unlimitedgb.html 1. Now! You can verify that we have completely stopped Blog Commenting. 2. We Provide True 24/7 Support, Please check this for your self..Benjamin I read in you blog that you also have a hosting company and in a similar situation some one is writing wrong about your website and you decide and correct your mistakes, and then your existing customers and new customers sees on a blog that you are bad and abandons your website and services, But you are not like that right now…..It Hurts Benjamin, It is really pricking HARD.When you wrote this blog I just had 800 hosted domains and now we have around 7000 hosted domains and If any of my existing and satisfied customers just go to google and search for “UNLIMITEDGB” and your page is in the second position “Unlimitedgb.com – A Scam to Avoid!!! | Hosting Reviews Exposed”I understand that your blog is monetizing my traffic to earn through AdSense. I am ready to pay you a compensation for that Please give my your PayPal ID and I will send you a compensation that you request..to remove this post http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/scams-to-avoid/unlimitedgb.html You could verify the below two points on my website before you could decide.. 1. Now! You can verify that we have completely stopped Blog Commenting. 2. We Provide True 24/7 Support, Please check this for your self.. Thank you for your understanding and generosity in this regard. Best regards, Sanson D’silva Managing Director Interweb iTech (India) Private Limited.

Before I responded I thought I would make it clear before hand I was not going to be paid / bribed to remove a post.

I had no intention of taking any money to remove my post.  But I was curious to see how much he would offer.

I am not saying I want compensation, I am saying what do you mean by that?

I honestly did not expect a reply.  I thought maybe, just maybe he was watching my twitter feed.  As some companies do.   But he did skip over the part of my contact form that states “If your a host that is contacting me about one of my posts I will post any and all emails directly to the blog post associated to your contact.“.

Dear Benjamin, I have no other choice this post http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/scams-to-avoid/unlimitedgb.html is killing a good company that is growing. Please help I am ready to pay any thing you require. >I understand that your blog is monetizing my traffic to earn through >AdSense. I am ready to pay you a compensation for that Please give me >your PayPal ID and I will send you a compensation that you request..t Thanks and best regards, Sanson D’silva Managing Director Interweb iTech (India) Private Limited.

My curiosity had reached its limit, I made a quick post hoping to get him to engage him in dealing with his customers problems.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/redemption/unlimitedgb-com.html

Hello Sanson, If you had read my twitter feed before you sent you response, you would have noticed I am not going to take a bribe. Instead I offer you redemption: http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/redemption/unlimitedgb-com.html I look forward to dealing with you publicly to solve your issues. Regards, Benjamin

Of coarse after three days, Sanson choose not to respond to me.  Never mind I offered to provide free mediation with prior customers.

After I did the last post on unlimitedgb.com I thought I would try the chat out.  Turns out this is the screen I got most of the time:

By Monday I sent a response:

Hello Sanson, I had hoped that you would work with me to turn your company around. Think about it, you have a pretty bad rap going around the internet,  what I offer is better then having a single page removed.  I offer you a chance to get this cleaned up and deal with your customers. If you don’t want to work with me then I will make a finale post with the email you sent through my forum that warned you that I will post your email. Regards, Benjamin

12 hours later and on my 18th random attempt I finale got a hold of a tech named James.  I seem to have misplaced the chat. In short I asked to speak with Sanson.  He got back to me quickly right after.

Dear Benjamin >what I offer is better then having a single page removed. I have over 7000+ customers & 1200+ Resellers and 1% of my customers are unhappy. And to all that 1% unhappy customers I have either refunded the money or they are no longer using my service. So what is the point in communicating with them. As I have mentioned in my previous mail. your forum post is confusing my 99% of happy customers.In this case I better have a single page removed & lead the way by satisfying my 99% happy customers.. >If you don’t want to work with me then I will make a finale post with the email you sent through my forum that warned you that I will post your email. Please have some basic ethics, my communication with you is 1 to 1 and not meant to be posted on a public forum. Thanks and best regards,Sanson D’silva Managing Director Interweb iTech (India) Private Limited.

Wait!!!!!  He is telling me to be ethical?????

A Finale Email to UnlimitedGB

Hello Sanson, “Please have some basic ethics“   Please don’t try to tell me how to be ethical.  You spammed my blog, posted fake positive reviews, and last but defiantly by far not least you tried to bribe me. Your not exactly on a list of people that have a right to preach to anyone about ethics.  Or do you want to see what people have to say when they see your email? Your first mistake when dealing with me was thinking this was about money.   After finally being able to deal with the chat on your company, and trust me I tried 18 random times since your first email to confirm you had live 24/7 chat support (I was going to give it 20 chances).  When I finale got on chat with my last try, I was not impressed.  A lot of what I see in complaints regarding support rang true, as my responses with “James”, were extremely slow.  As for this 1%, I don’t know if you have 7,000 customers.  If its true, at less then 2 years old that is a impressive number.  Granted I suspect you started up in 2010, despite what your domain whois says (Creation Date: 28-sep-2009)  But over more then a year now of looking at hosts.  I can say that you have a lot of reviews for someone with 7,000 reviews, you have a lot of negative feed back.   http://www.web-hosting-top.com/directory/search/unlimitedgb.com   I have to say most of the positive feed back is fake. It does not have the feel of a happy customers. Not to mention your company tried to create fake positive reviews on my site, which would not stop you from doing this elsewhere.   Example:   Gopala Krishnan ( gkmediasoft@g… ) October 4, 2010 Time Hosted: 2 to 3 years   You need to stop with the fake feed back.  You need to deal with the negative feed back, instead of trying to bury it as I have clearly demonstrated it has ways of going above the positive. I have offered to help you deal with your customers complaints as well as altering my blog post.  You can either work with me, a person who has 11 years of experience, or you can continue to do the same thing.  Regards, Benjamin

I doubt that there will be any more response from Sanson

There is a reason I stated that I don’t think the site was active since 2009, part of what drew my interest was a review that said they had been hosting with unlimitedgb for more then 2 years.  Which made me look at the whois for their domain.  The creation Date is 28-sep-2009.  Then there is this chart from Alexa.

I think part of what he told me was true, even though he switched 7,000 domains to 7,000 customers. Never mind number of domains does not mean amount of customers.

“When you wrote this blog I just had 800 hosted domains and now we have around 7000 hosted domains”

This response makes me think that he lied about being 2 years old.  After all 900% increase in a period under 8 months. Where as it took them 15 months  to get 800 domains.   But another thing that makes me think they started back in October 2010 is that most of the comment spam began around that time.  Websites like webhostingstuff.com did not start tracking uptime until around this time http://www.webhostingstuff.com/uptime/UnlimitedGB.html, like the one comment I mentioned:

From this point forward if you have a complaint about unlimitedgb I want your support tickets, emails, as well as chat sessions.

Unlimitedgb.com is more then welcome to respond to these complaints, but they are not welcome to post fake positive feedback.

“Domain slamming (also known as unauthorized transfers or domain name registration scams) is a scam in which the offending domain name registrar attempts to trick domain owners into switching from their existing registrar to theirs, under the pretense that the customer is simply renewing their subscription to their current registrar. The term derives from telephone slamming.”

This is how they start the letter they sent me through the postal service:

“As a courtesy to domain holders we are sending you this notification of the the domain name registrations that due to expire in the next few months. ”

In a not so tell tale way they tell you that they are not your domain register if you read further.  They don’t come forward and directly say that you are not their customer.  Some how “This notice is not a bill” is supposed let you know that your not a customer.  Some of my former customers,  friends and family did not bother to read that detail and they hurried and signed the renew notice, as they were more concerned about losing their domain then seeing if the notice was legit.  After all it mentioned their name and domain, so it had to be legit right?  They may not even had read this part: “Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you on the web.” .  Of coarse they are hoping you read that part, panic and send them a check.

Long before my firsts post on Domain Registry of America (http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/scams-to-avoid/domain-registry-of-america.html) and long before I even Hosting-reviews-exposed.com was started,  I had my eye on this company.  When I got my first notice, I instantly knew something was up.   After all I owned my own domain registry company and still do, what it has never done is send out paper notices.   Domains being 9.99, and a $2.50 profit I really did not want to pay for .40 notice to be sent out.  Regrettable I did what so many other people should do and threw it into the recycling bin.  Because today it would be nice to compare a letter from 2002 to present day.  I don’t remember them disclosing that they were not your domain register.   Now they do, even if they do it in a round about was

A reason to not trust DROA.com

The FTC has this on DROA.com

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/12/domainreg.shtm

“According to the FTC, the company told consumers that their domain registrations were expiring, leading many consumers unwittingly to switch their domain name registrar. The company also allegedly did not disclose that it would charge a processing fee to consumers if their transfer request was not competed – for any reason – and failed to provide consumers refunds in a timely manner.”

Yeah I know this was back in 2003, so let us see what the BBB has this to say about DROA.com

http://www.bbb.org/upstate-new-york/business-reviews/internet-services/domain-registry-of-america-in-buffalo-ny-17000531/

“The BBB file contains a pattern of complaints from consumers who report that the company’s mailing is misleading. Consumers state that they have received notices from Domain Registry of America that appear to be invoices for renewal of their internet domain name. The company claims that their marketing materials clearly state that ‘Domain name holders are not obligated to renew their domain name with their current registrar or the Domain Registry of America…. This notice is not a bill.”

Regardless of the statement Domains Registry of America gave to the BBB, they have a F rating.

This is a current record with the BBB.

It takes alot for me to say a company is a scam.  The first bad sign was this notice was not from my own personal domain register which does not send out snail mail.  The other as you can see from the scans is the billing notice.  On the back is print that I don’t think the average person could read.  Even I have hard time,  keep in mind on my kindle I have the print as small as possible.  Is an extra page really too much to pay to make sure some one can read the Registration Agreement?   One that in far larger letters lets you know they are not affiliated with the U.S. government.  I honestly do not think its so much the cost, but the fact a extra page or two would make people actually check the bill out further.

 The snail mail from Droa.com / Domain Registry of America domain slamming.

DROA is a reseller for eNom

Looking through the hard to read fine print one thing sticks out to me

eNom, Inc., BRANDON GRAY INTERNET SERVICES INC. (dba “NameJuice.com:), and DROA.

Enom is the company droa is reselling for much like Wild West Domains/ Godaddy.com.   Depending on which level of reseller account you pick, which I am assuming they picked the one that lets them buy domains for $8.50 a year.

The alias of DROA

According to icannwikki: http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Brandon_Gray_Internet_Services_Inc.

Brandon Gray Internet Services Inc.

Namejuice.com

Domain Registry of America

Domain Renewal Group

Domain Registry of Australia

Domain Registry of Canada

Domain Registry of Europe

Internet Registry of Canada

Liberty Names of America

Registration Services Inc.

Yellow Business.ca

Internet Corporation Listing Service

Are you unsure if your a customer of DROA?

I recommend going to http://www.internic.net/whois.html

Click on register to see who your register is.

Where to send complaints about DROA

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/12/domainreg.shtm

http://www.enom.com/help/abusepolicy.aspx

http://reports.internic.net/cgi/registrars/problem-report.cgi

Do you really need to pay $35.00 for a domain, well don’t pick DROA

I don’t recommend paying more then $15 for a .com, ,net, .org.  But if you really have to pay $35.00 then atleast go with a reputable company such as Network Soultions.  Yes that is an affilate link submitted below, and I get paid a commision if you use that link to order a domain.   Generally I would tell people to not pick Network Solutions due to is higher then average price.  But I would rather see people go to Network Solutions over DROA any day if they just have to pay $35 a year.

This is not my first post on droa and it will not be my last until they either reform or close up shop.  Per my lat post on Domain Registry of America, I found they operate out of Europe and Canada as well. Do you have a letter from other alias of DROA?

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/just-host.html
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/ipower-com.html
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/fatcow-com.html
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/ipage-com.html

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/startlogic-com.html 

A copy of the Email from Ipowerweb.com

Dear iPowerWeb Affiliate, As you may know, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has strict guidelines that relate to affiliates who offer reviews, rankings, endorsements and testimonials; and we require all affiliates of our CJ program to comply with these requirements.To be compliant with the FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, iPowerWeb expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and iPowerWeb anytime you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services.View more information about iPowerWeb’s strict adherence to the FTC Endorsement Requirement.WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU If you provide reviews, rankings, endorsements or testimonials about a service for which you receive commissions from us, you must clearly disclose the fact that you receive such compensation in a clear and prominent place–that is close to your endorsement. The FTC takes the Endorsement guidelines seriously and has started to enforce them for both content providers like yourself and advertisers like iPowerWeb. As an advertiser, iPowerWeb will monitor affiliate sites to be sure our services are represented appropriately. Failure to comply with the endorsement guidelines could result in removal from our affiliate program and the cancellation of commissions. TIPS FOR MAKING SURE YOUR SITE IS COMPLIANT To make it easier for you, we’ve pulled together information, based on a recent FTC enforcement case, to illustrate ways you can disclose a material connection between you and your advertisers. Take a few minutes to review this summary at: iPowerWeb Affiliate Disclosure Requirements and Examples The FTC also offers a variety of resources to help make it easier for you to comply with the guidelines, including: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising Please note: These links are intended to provide guidance only. If you provide endorsements of some type, you should obtain legal advice on how the FTC rules apply to you. Please take steps immediately to make sure your site is in compliance with these guidelines. Several of our leading affiliates have already posted their disclosures, and they continue to enjoy great success. Best wishes, The iPowerWeb Affiliate Team

So what does this email from Ipowerweb.com mean?

In short if your a review site, and you don’t disclose that you created your site for the purpose of making money they will remove you from the affiliate program.  Here are the steps they recommend to be in compliance with the FTC.

Frequent: Disclosures must be available on any page that has an endorsement. Clear: Language must be easy to understand; don’t attempt to hide the fact that it’s a disclosure. Conspicuous: Place your disclosure close to your endorsement or review. Differentiate the disclosure’s font treatment from the rest of your site. Require no action: The user shouldn’t need to click, hover or scroll to locate or understand the nature of your disclosure.

If Ipowerweb.com sticks with this, I have to commend them on doing things ethically.  I hope they did not start doing this because the FTC contacted them first.  I will be sure to contact them should I find any violators.

Be warned if you run a so called top review site, and you have Ipowerweb.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/just-host.html
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/ipower-com.html
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/fatcow-com.html
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/ipage-com.html

A copy of the Email from StartLogic.com

Dear StartLogic Affiliate, As you may know, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has strict guidelines that relate to affiliates who offer reviews, rankings, endorsements and testimonials; and we require all affiliates of our CJ program to comply with these requirements.To be compliant with the FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, StartLogic expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and StartLogic anytime you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services.View more information about StartLogic’s strict adherence to the FTC Endorsement Requirement.WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU If you provide reviews, rankings, endorsements or testimonials about a service for which you receive commissions from us, you must clearly disclose the fact that you receive such compensation in a clear and prominent place–that is close to your endorsement. The FTC takes the Endorsement guidelines seriously and has started to enforce them for both content providers like yourself and advertisers like StartLogic. As an advertiser, StartLogic will monitor affiliate sites to be sure our services are represented appropriately. Failure to comply with the endorsement guidelines could result in removal from our affiliate program and the cancellation of commissions. TIPS FOR MAKING SURE YOUR SITE IS COMPLIANT To make it easier for you, we’ve pulled together information, based on a recent FTC enforcement case, to illustrate ways you can disclose a material connection between you and your advertisers. Take a few minutes to review this summary at: StartLogic Affiliate Disclosure Requirements and Examples The FTC also offers a variety of resources to help make it easier for you to comply with the guidelines, including: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising Please note: These links are intended to provide guidance only. If you provide endorsements of some type, you should obtain legal advice on how the FTC rules apply to you. Please take steps immediately to make sure your site is in compliance with these guidelines. Several of our leading affiliates have already posted their disclosures, and they continue to enjoy great success. Best wishes, The StartLogic Affiliate Team

So what does this email from StartLogic.com mean?

In short if your a review site, and you don’t disclose that you created your site for the purpose of making money they will remove you from the affiliate program.  Here are the steps they recommend to be in compliance with the FTC.

Frequent: Disclosures must be available on any page that has an endorsement. Clear: Language must be easy to understand; don’t attempt to hide the fact that it’s a disclosure. Conspicuous: Place your disclosure close to your endorsement or review. Differentiate the disclosure’s font treatment from the rest of your site. Require no action: The user shouldn’t need to click, hover or scroll to locate or understand the nature of your disclosure.

If StartLogic.com sticks with this, I have to commend them on doing things ethically.  I hope they did not start doing this because the FTC contacted them first.  I will be sure to contact them should I find any violators.

Be warned if you run a so called top review site, and you have StartLogic.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/scams-to-avoid/unlimitedgb.html

I did a post on them because they choose to create fake comments on this blog to get people to visit their site. Which if you think about it, not a very smart move as this is a site that is all about exposing fake reviews for hosts Kind of like throwing rabbit in a snake pit thinking it will not get eaten. I quickly notices that the posts had a similar problem, they all entered my domain in field for website when making a comment.  I wrote my last post to point out how those spam comments were fake, and several other flaws with this host. To make matters worse they choose to create positive feed back on the very post that called them a scam. Never mind most of these forum trolls did not provide web sites that were hosted with this host. On top of that two of the responses came in the same day came from the same ip address. Not to mention the only positive review that came from someone that appeared to be a client (waterlemon.co.in ) appears to have moved to a Australian server last month.

This is my public letter to Unlimitedgb.com

To Sanson D’silva
Managing Director
Interweb iTech (India) Private Limited.

I am not removing my post, not for any amount of money.   I did not create this site to make money.  Yes there are ads, I would like the site to atleast pay its way.  The people that come to my site, don’t have shopping in mind.   In some cases they want to find a host or they want to complain about a host. You mentioned compensating me, and that I made money by making a post on your company.  To that I have to say I made $18 on adsense last month.  Taking the percentage of traffic I got last month for that single page I made $0.06 if anyone actually went to any of the ads on my site.  Yes the post has the most comments of any of my posts.  Which in part was because someone in your company thought it would be a good idea to post fake comments on my blog.  There are also a lot of unhappy customers as well.  Did it not occur to you that creating fake posts would only increase the relevance of my post in search engines?

I want to make one thing perfectly clear, I did not go looking for Unlimitedgb.com

If the fake comments such as someone that claimed to have been hosting with you for 2 years (never mind your domain whois says that is impossible) and other fake comments had never been posted.  I would never have known who your company was.  Which means I would not have made a post about unlimitedgb.com.

We do not share a similar situation. I owned (past tense) a hosting company that was effected by a review site (webhostingstuff.com), because they deleted positive feed back my customers gave me.   I did not go there and place the comments myself.  I asked them to restore my customer’s comments or to remove me out of their system.  Instead I was blocked, which lead to this site that goes after fake reviews by those in the hosting industry.  Fake reviews like what were done on my site by your company.

Why I will not delete my post on unlimitedgb.com and what can be done to salvage your reputation

Another thing that does not make us similar is I am not going to block you from contacting me as webhostingstuff.com did to me.  I am willing to work with you to turn things around.  The first thing I am going to tell you is it would not matter if I delete the post, you have a lot of angry customers.  Never mind if I did delete this post, someone would figure out that I did something dishonest and / or other people will create pages negative pages about unlimitedgb.com to take my posts place.

I suggest:

• You need to admit to what was done, and what will be done to prevent it, here on this blog post.
• You need to address the complaints of your customers.

Running from this will only make it worse, the only thing to do is to take this head on.  If you are willing to take on the complaints of your customers, I offer freely to mediate between you and your customers. I will even contact previous angry customers that posted on my blog as well as other sites if I can.Your not going to get out of this by paying people to remove the past.  Use that money to take care of your customers.

If you will work with me I will modify the post to change the results in search engines, but I will not remove it.

Regards,

Benjamin

P.S. Unlimitedgb has an opportunity to change, I am offering to help you do it.  But I will not give that opportunity to unlimitedgb in an unethical manner.

The flaw with Amazon Cloud Drive

I make no excuses, I am a data horder.  Every tid bit of programming, graphic work, data base, spreed sheet, email, chat (got to love trillian), photos (digital and scanned), video, video game saves, documents, and perhaps a lot of data that could  easily be sent to eternal oblivion, and not be missed.   Over all I estimate that I have around 1 trig of data that I could not live without.  Would I pay $1,000 a year to store it?  Yes.   But the problem is folders.

One example is the photos I took for 2010.   Which are in a folder called 2010.  In it are folders labeled by month, in there are folders labeled by event (vacation, holiday, business trip) .  Last year I had 106 folders.  I do this in part because I take a lot of pictures, and don’t always label them.  Not to mention that moron cto I had at the beginning had borrowed my camera decided it was a smart thing to reset the numbering on my camera.

The fatal flaw is that Amazon Cloud Drive does not import folders.   I had contact Amazon about this and they told me:

Hello,

Thanks for your comments about uploading folders to Cloud. Customer feedback like yours really helps us continue to improve our products and provide better service to our customers. I’ve passed your suggestion to the appropriate team for consideration.

We hope to see you again soon.

I am not sure why they hope, it took me less then 30 minutes to buy something, in which case carbon for my fish tanks.  If you have read my posts frequently, you know I have love obsession when it comes to Amazon.com.  But it boggles the mind that they want to sell a product for $20 – $1,000 a year for storage, which does not upload folders.   Which means you create each folder and bulk load each picture in.  Which is a lot of mind numbing work as I have 3031 folders just in pictures.   For the amount of work it would take me to upload all of my photo’s to Amazon Cloud Drive, I might as well just get a dedicated server and upload everything by FTP.

How could Amazon, not have thought about folder uploading for Amazon Cloud drive?

I am not sure what Amazon was thinking.  Quirks like this with Amazon Cloud Drive, are what make me not want to try the hosting.  I don’t want want a reason to stop shopping at Amazon.  One of the things I noticed when I got the Kindle 2, was that instead of having page numbers, I got percentage.  It was not until the Kindle 3 that they decided to add page numbers.  Never mind I got my Kindle 2 five months before Kindle 3 came out, and it was not until last December (2010) they stopped selling the Kindle 2.  They have not released a patch for the Kindle 2 for page numbers, so like Kindle 3 readers they can read along with their paper back counter parts.

Here is hoping there is a Amazon Cloud Drive fix soon.

The first email about Federal Trade Commission guidelines was sent to Just Host affiliates.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/just-host.html

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/ipower-com.html

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/fatcow-com.html

As I had hoped ipage.com was next.  After all it was a chat on ipage.com and fatcow.com that lead me to look into their connection.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/fatcow/fatcow-sucks-beware-read-this-fatcow-review-first-before-buying.html

A copy of the Email from iPage.com

Dear iPage Affiliate, As you may know, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has strict guidelines that relate to affiliates who offer reviews, rankings, endorsements and testimonials; and we require all affiliates of our CJ program to comply with these requirements.To be compliant with the FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, iPage expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and iPage anytime you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services. View more information about iPage’s strict adherence to the FTC Endorsement Requirement. WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU If you provide reviews, rankings, endorsements or testimonials about a service for which you receive commissions from us, you must clearly disclose the fact that you receive such compensation in a clear and prominent place–that is close to your endorsement. The FTC takes the Endorsement guidelines seriously and has started to enforce them for both content providers like yourself and advertisers like iPage. As an advertiser, iPage will monitor affiliate sites to be sure our services are represented appropriately. Failure to comply with the endorsement guidelines could result in removal from our affiliate program and the cancellation of commissions. TIPS FOR MAKING SURE YOUR SITE IS COMPLIANT To make it easier for you, we’ve pulled together information, based on a recent FTC enforcement case, to illustrate ways you can disclose a material connection between you and your advertisers. Take a few minutes to review this summary at: iPage Affiliate Disclosure Requirements and Examples The FTC also offers a variety of resources to help make it easier for you to comply with the guidelines, including: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising Please note: These links are intended to provide guidance only. If you provide endorsements of some type, you should obtain legal advice on how the FTC rules apply to you. Please take steps immediately to make sure your site is in compliance with these guidelines. Several of our leading affiliates have already posted their disclosures, and they continue to enjoy great success. Best wishes, The iPage Affiliate Team

So what does this email from iPage.com mean?

In short if your a review site, and you don’t disclose that you created your site for the purpose of making money they will remove you from the affiliate program.  Here are the steps they recommend to be in compliance with the FTC.

Frequent: Disclosures must be available on any page that has an endorsement. Clear: Language must be easy to understand; don’t attempt to hide the fact that it’s a disclosure. Conspicuous: Place your disclosure close to your endorsement or review. Differentiate the disclosure’s font treatment from the rest of your site. Require no action: The user shouldn’t need to click, hover or scroll to locate or understand the nature of your disclosure.

If iPage.com sticks with this, I have to commend them on doing things ethically.  I hope they did not start doing this because the FTC contacted them first.  I will be sure to contact them should I find any violators.

Be warned if you run a so called top review site, and you have iPage.

The first email about Federal Trade Commission guidelines was sent to Just Host affiliates.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/just-host.html

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/ipower-com.html

I can only hope that ipage.com is next.  After all it was a chat on ipage.com and fatcow.com that lead me to look into their connection.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/fatcow/fatcow-sucks-beware-read-this-fatcow-review-first-before-buying.html

A copy of the Email from Fatcow.com

Dear FatCow Affiliate,As you may know, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has strict guidelines that relate to affiliates who offer reviews, rankings, endorsements and testimonials; and we require all affiliates of our CJ program to comply with these requirements.To be compliant with the FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, FatCow expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and FatCow anytime you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services. View more information about FatCow’s strict adherence to the FTC Endorsement Requirement. WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU If you provide reviews, rankings, endorsements or testimonials about a service for which you receive commissions from us, you must clearly disclose the fact that you receive such compensation in a clear and prominent place–that is close to your endorsement. The FTC takes the Endorsement guidelines seriously and has started to enforce them for both content providers like yourself and advertisers like FatCow. As an advertiser, FatCow will monitor affiliate sites to be sure our services are represented appropriately. Failure to comply with the endorsement guidelines could result in removal from our affiliate program and the cancellation of commissions. TIPS FOR MAKING SURE YOUR SITE IS COMPLIANT To make it easier for you, we’ve pulled together information, based on a recent FTC enforcement case, to illustrate ways you can disclose a material connection between you and your advertisers. Take a few minutes to review this summary at: FatCow Affiliate Disclosure Requirements and Examples The FTC also offers a variety of resources to help make it easier for you to comply with the guidelines, including: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising Please note: These links are intended to provide guidance only. If you provide endorsements of some type, you should obtain legal advice on how the FTC rules apply to you. Please take steps immediately to make sure your site is in compliance with these guidelines. Several of our leading affiliates have already posted their disclosures, and they continue to enjoy great success. Best wishes, The FatCow Affiliate Team

So what does this email from Fatcow.com mean?

In short if your a review site, and you don’t disclose that you created your site for the purpose of making money they will remove you from the affiliate program.  Here are the steps they recommend to be in compliance with the FTC.

Frequent: Disclosures must be available on any page that has an endorsement. Clear: Language must be easy to understand; don’t attempt to hide the fact that it’s a disclosure. Conspicuous: Place your disclosure close to your endorsement or review. Differentiate the disclosure’s font treatment from the rest of your site. Require no action: The user shouldn’t need to click, hover or scroll to locate or understand the nature of your disclosure.

If Fatcow.com sticks with this, I have to commend them on doing things ethically.  I hope they did not start doing this because the FTC contacted them first.  I will be sure to contact them should I find any violators.

Be warned if you run a so called top review site, and you have Fatcow.

The first email about Federal Trade Commission guidelines was sent to Just Host affiliates.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/just-host.html

A copy of the Email from Ipower.com

Dear IPOWER Affiliate,As you may know, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has strict guidelines that relate to affiliates who offer reviews, rankings, endorsements and testimonials; and we require all affiliates of our CJ program to comply with these requirements.To be compliant with the FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, IPOWER expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and IPOWER anytime you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services. View more information about IPOWER’s strict adherence to the FTC Endorsement Requirement. WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU If you provide reviews, rankings, endorsements or testimonials about a service for which you receive commissions from us, you must clearly disclose the fact that you receive such compensation in a clear and prominent place–that is close to your endorsement. The FTC takes the Endorsement guidelines seriously and has started to enforce them for both content providers like yourself and advertisers like IPOWER. As an advertiser, IPOWER will monitor affiliate sites to be sure our services are represented appropriately. Failure to comply with the endorsement guidelines could result in removal from our affiliate program and the cancellation of commissions. FOR MAKING SURE YOUR SITE IS COMPLIANT To make it easier for you, we’ve pulled together information, based on a recent FTC enforcement case, to illustrate ways you can disclose a material connection between you and your advertisers. Take a few minutes to review this summary at: IPOWER Affiliate Disclosure Requirements and Examples The FTC also offers a variety of resources to help make it easier for you to comply with the guidelines, including: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising Please note: These links are intended to provide guidance only. If you provide endorsements of some type, you should obtain legal advice on how the FTC rules apply to you. Please take steps immediately to make sure your site is in compliance with these guidelines. Several of our leading affiliates have already posted their disclosures, and they continue to enjoy great success. Best wishes, The IPOWER Affiliate Team

So what does this email from Ipower.com mean?

In short if your a review site, and you don’t disclose that you created your site for the purpose of making money they will remove you from the affiliate program.  Here are the steps they recommend to be in compliance with the FTC.

Frequent: Disclosures must be available on any page that has an endorsement. Clear: Language must be easy to understand; don’t attempt to hide the fact that it’s a disclosure. Conspicuous: Place your disclosure close to your endorsement or review. Differentiate the disclosure’s font treatment from the rest of your site. Require no action: The user shouldn’t need to click, hover or scroll to locate or understand the nature of your disclosure.

If Ipower.cpm sticks with this, I have to commend them on doing things ethically.  I hope they did not start doing this because the FTC contacted them first.  I will be sure to contact them should I find any violators.

Be warned if you run a so called top review site, and you have Ipower.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/justhost-just-dont-a-review-of-actually-use.html

A copy of the Email from Just Host / Justhost.com

Dear Just Host Affiliate,We’ve made an important addition to the Just Host Affiliate Agreement that may impact the way you manage your online promotions.The change expressly requires you to disclose that there is a “material connection” between you and Just Host anytime you offer an endorsement or testimonial on our services. This disclosure is necessary in order to be deemed in compliance with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.View the FTC Endorsement Requirement in the Affiliate Agreement. WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU If you provide reviews, rankings, endorsements or testimonials about a service for which you receive commissions from us, you must clearly disclose the fact that you receive such compensation in a clear and prominent place–that is close to your endorsement.The FTC takes the Endorsement guidelines seriously and has started to enforce them for both content providers like yourself and advertisers like Just Host.As an advertiser, Just Host will monitor affiliate sites to be sure our services are represented appropriately. Under the updated Affiliate Agreement, failure to comply with the endorsement guidelines could result in removal from our affiliate program and the cancellation of commissions.TIPS FOR MAKING SURE YOUR SITE IS COMPLIANTTo make it easier for you, we’ve pulled together information, based on a recent FTC enforcement case, to illustrate ways you can disclose a material connection between you and your advertisers. Take a few minutes to review this summary at:Just Host Affiliate Disclosure Requirements and ExamplesThe FTC also offers a variety of resources to help make it easier for you to comply with the guidelines, including: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising Please note: These links are intended to provide guidance only. If you provide endorsements of some type, you should obtain legal advice on how the FTC rules apply to you. Please take steps immediately to make sure your site is in compliance with these guidelines. Several of our leading affiliates have already posted their disclosures, and they continue to enjoy great success. Best wishes, The Just Host Affiliate Team

So what does this email from Just Host / Justhost.com mean?

In short if your a review site, and you don’t disclose that you created your site for the purpose of making money they will remove you from the affiliate program.  Here are the steps they recommend to be in compliance with the FTC.

Frequent: Disclosures must be available on any page that has an endorsement. Clear: Language must be easy to understand; don’t attempt to hide the fact that it’s a disclosure. Conspicuous: Place your disclosure close to your endorsement or review. Differentiate the disclosure’s font treatment from the rest of your site. Require no action: The user shouldn’t need to click, hover or scroll to locate or understand the nature of your disclosure.

I have to wonder if I am going to see more letters to other affiliates, if Just Host is owned by Endurance International Group.  Here is hoping this is a trend that puts this site off line.

If Just Host sticks with this, I have to commend them on doing things ethically.  I hope they did not start doing this because the FTC contacted them first.  I will be sure to contact them should I find any violators.

Be warned if you run a so called top review site, and you have Just Host.

First let me be clear before I proceed into what I found out about the these video reviews and give you my opinion.  I do NOT think these are fake reviews.  The bulk of what I have found are still with Ixwebhosting.com at this time.

Still with Ixwebhosting.com

Here is a list of all the sites in the videos that are still with Ixwebhosting.com

http://www.ixwebhosting.com/testimonials

houndsinthekitchen.com – Created Nov 25, 2008 / Updated Nov 18, 2010 – Ohio
kellsband.com – Created Jul 21, 2005 / Updated Jul 7, 2010 – Ohio
digitaldynamicdesigns.com – Created Sep 16, 2007 / Updated Aug 16, 2010 – Ohio
yunbootcamps.com – Created May 6, 2008 / Updated May 6, 2008 – Ohio
1canalgirl.com – Created Feb 26, 2010 / Updated Jan 27, 2010 – Ohio
djscolumbus.com Created Aug 27, 2009 / Updated Aug 12, 2010 – Ohio
ryanomics.com Created Apr 25, 2006 / Updated Mar 17, 2011 - Ohio
fox-counseling.com Created Feb 13, 2009 / Updated Nov 2, 2010 – *privacy protection*
kellisautosales.com Created Oct 30, 2008 / Updated Sep 30, 2010 – garbage information entered, at risk of having their domain yanked.

The thing I noticed while looking up whois dates and address information was two things.  The oldest site is 2005, and all the sites that did not have privacy protection pointed to Ohio.  Which appears to be where ixwebhosting.com is based out of.  To be exact the addresses are literary  in and around Columbus Ohio.   Which is weird because on the page says is:

IXWebHosting is trusted by over 500,000 websites and their owners all over the world.

As I have repeated many times, the number of websites does not equal the amount of customers.  But numbers are not the issue here, I have no doubt that Ixwebhosting.com may very well have these numbers if not more.  My point is that this page indicates they serve the world, yet all the reviews are one tiny spot of the planet. I am willing to bet all the videos were done by the same crew.  Not to mention the videos are hosted on Ixhosting.com, not with youtube.com which could generate traffic.  Not to mention they could feed in more customer reviews that are from around the world.  Back when my oldest host turned 8 years old we had started to ask for testimonials.  When we sent the first mail out asking for them, we did not ask everyone.  We asked people from the first year.   I did not care that they may have been paying less then $10 a month, I wanted feed back from people that had stayed with us since the beginning as who better to give a testimonial?  Made it a point to show case their site, as Ixwebhosting.com has done.  Also when they signed up, which Ixhosting.com has not done.  Granted these were not video testimonials as Ixwebhosting.com has done.  Granted the updated does not always indicate when the dns was changed, but I am willing to guess that most of these customer signed up in 2010.

No Longer with Ixwebhosting.com

esotercdetail.com (no longer exists)

servicemasterelectric.com, Site appears to be under a whois privacy, Updated April 8, 2011

nateriggs.com Updated Mar 17, 2011- Ohio

ast.edu updated May 20, 2010 – Ohio

Here are two video reviews I found on the main page that were not on testimonials page.  Which appears to be due to not being with IXwebhosting.com

Collegeprops.com *private registration* Updated Jul 7, 2011.

Mpex.com, while the domain shows a PA address, the site itself has a Columbus Ohio address. updated  April 19, 2010.

Joe Cortez, no website listed, but how ever there is a Linkedin.com profile for someone with the same name in Ohio who is a webmaster.  However I have no idea if he is still with them or if he left.  A bit bizzare considering all the other reviews list a website.

I will try to contact some of  people whose sites are no longer hosted with Ixwebhosting to get their take.

Since I can’t recommend any one, and I don’t have a top ten host list, I will give you my top ten tips when picking out a host. This will also be the start of my top ten. No, I am not going to tell you ten hosts that I think are super-duper, and get paid a nice sum for every new customer I bring in through an affiliate link. I can’t promise that I will ever recommend a host. This is the start of a monthly post I plan to do where I post my own personal top 10 suggestions, advice, and maybe something totally off topic all of which will not tell you which host I recommend. Hopefully this post and the future top ten posts will help you find a good host and perhaps help you keep your sanity.

My Top Ten is based off my 11 years of experience running 4 hosting companies, and the last year reviewing hosts that appeared on webhostingsuff.com, that spammed me, or appeared on other hosting review sites.

1. Have a plan

Honestly this is probable the weakest of my advice, as I scrambled to come up with a 10thsuggestion, which becomes point number 1. After all you should know what you want and need before you actually get service. It’s not something that applies to most people; most know what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. However I have had people contact me after they bought a domain and hosting, sometimes months after they purchased service to ask what they should do. No idea of what they were going to do, just the idea in their head that having a website means lots of money. It’s not that simple. One particular customer thought that his account did not start till he used it, and was a bit angry to receive a bill 365 days after he purchased service. I have yet to find a host that starts the clock once you start using your account. To be honest if you have no plan, and don’t know how you’re going to implement your plan you should avoid buying a hosting account.

If you have read my previous posts, you will know my first hosting company was a bust, granted it was not due to a lack of a plan. But a greedy business partner, a point I had not calculated for. Too many of the details were left in his control, and he decided to lock me and another partner out. Despite which he had no sales experience, technical experience, or any form of an idea of how to run the company as he was learning off me and the other business partner. For which he lacked a plan on how to keep what he had stolen. The host that finale took off and made it easy to start up other operations took months, and lots of capital. It took practically a year before I started to get a income off it for both me and the business partner that got kicked out of the first operation. Never mind the new business partner for the start of this operation turned out to be a mistake, there was a plan in place to replace him having learned from the mistakes of the first host. Needless to say that host is going on year 13, and almost 2 years without me.

2. Read the terms of service

If there is anything I cannot say enough, it is to read the terms of services. Often when doing my reviews it’s the first thing I go after. I can’t say it was the part of the reviews I was looking forward to. But it often served me well to read the competitor terms of service when a customer threatens to leave me for them.

Any host worth your business is going to have a link to the terms of service on every page of their site, most commonly found on the bottom of every page. Sometimes called terms of use. If you cannot locate the terms from the main page you should avoid that company, or contact them to get a link to where the terms service is. Personally I would not bother with a host that does not have an easy to find term of service.

Yes I know its long and it’s boring. Plus these days it comes in multiple parts such as user agreement, privacy policy, acceptable use policy,…… There are a lot of good reasons for reading this long and rarely entertaining jumble of words such as hidden fees, what is and is not covered by the terms of service, what may close your account, and / or if there is actually any level of guarantee. Not to mention the process one would take if a company offered a 30 day guarantee.

I have found a lot of hosts that offer a 30 day refund guarantee on the front of their site, yet on the terms of service it will state there are no refunds.

3. Don’t sign up for service with any company that offers anything less than a 30 day guarantee on their shared hosting services

When it came to selling hosting services I can tell you I preferred shared hosting, versus dedicated or vps with good reason there was a much higher profit margin and a lower amount of financial risk with shared hosting. Dedicated servers always carry a risk of finical lose as you only have one client per machine. Not to mention there was always some customer that did not know how to maintain their dedicated server. Because of the very nature shared hosting being a multiple customer setup and high income are the very reasons I don’t think anyone should go with a host without a 30 day guarantee on their shared hosting service. Granted I think the same should apply with VPS and cloud accounts as well as lot of time has passed since these services became available.

Per number 2 I recommend reading the terms service to make sure whatever shared plan you choose has a thirty day guarantee or better and is not limited to certain plans or certain purchased time periods. I approve of hosts that only allow the 30 day guarantee once per customer, also limits on the guarantee that only cover the hosting unless the host is responsible for the account being closed by offering poor service.

4. Buy what you need – don’t be too cheap or overwhelm your finances

Often I have encountered customers that bought more than they could afford, or bought a plan that was super cheap but could not handle their site. From the more then needed I had a customer that threw all his money into one of my most expensive plans at $1400 + a month. After 2 years and a project that never took off, his site maxed out his American Express card. When I had a tech look into the site, we found he could have easily kept his account on a shared environment under $50 a month plan.

I had another customer that was probable the worst of cheap skates Which is funny because I was recently contacted by one of the people that bought my share in a hosting company to find why I had black listed this individual. I banned him because he was a serious risk of crashing a server. He had made this popular free screen saver, which he used to collect email addresses with. Which was an honest way to collect email addresses. However the problem was he migrated from one hosting provider to me for my cheapest plan at the time was $14.99 a month, and thought he could use that account to mail out to his list of over 100,000 people. I believe there should be some reasonable % income that should be set aside for a business web presence especially when the site is the main source for getting customers. Naturally his account was shut down for exceeding his resources. He was also denied a refund, as crashing a server violated the terms of service. The part I thought was the kicker was he complained about losing thousands of dollars every hour that the site was down. A year before I sold my the company he signed up under another cheap plan, and he tried the same thing. Which was why I banned him from ever getting service.

5. Don’t buy an unlimited space plan

First let me point out quantity is not a quality indicator. For years I have had customers that thought just because a competitor offering more of a resource then I was for less than they were a better host. Only to come back later, sometimes because they found out that the extras cost more than just upgrading their account with one of my companies. As time went on unlimited plans came into play. Keep in mind there is nothing true about an account being an unlimited account, its merely a commercial gimmick. Not to mention the cheaper the service is the more people that are going to be crammed on to a server to make it profitable. After all the whole point of having a hosting company is to make a profit.

If a company tries to tell you that unlimited hosting is not overselling, they really should be avoided. Overselling is selling more then you actually have, where commonly no one ever uses all of what is available. So if a host tells you this they are either dishonest or idiots.

In most cases the terms of service will tell you that the so called unlimited plans are not unlimited. Most will tell you what you can have on your account, such as not using it to back up your computer onto. Some only allow domains that belong to you, or in other words no reselling. In rarer cases they will tell you what the limits are that will get your account shut down. Such as processor usage. None of them will tell you exactly how much space you get to have before they shut your account down.

What I consider the biggest nightmare is unlimited reseller plans. I had a few customers that were on such plans with other providers, only to have their accounts shut down. One such reseller caused quite a mess as he refused to respond to his customers. He also refused to respond to my phone calls and emails until weeks after his site was shut down. So his customers did a dns check and found my company. They ignored the fact that the dns was recently changed. I did a further check to find the original host that offered unlimited reseller plan. These unlimited space customers under an unlimited reseller plan came in by chat, email, and by phone. I think over all it was about 200 people who were taking time away from paying customers. So his site was disabled, and a special notice was put up on the site of which host he had come from and who to deal with.

6. Don’t sign up for 1 or 5 years for the first time, sign up for a month

If your happy after a 30 day period of time sign up for longer terms for maximum savings. Even go so far as to see if the host will credit back the difference on the first month for going to an annual plan or cheaper per month plan. It’s something I did, and it was a great way for me to get skeptical customers to sign up, and often they did pay for a longer term. I am not saying that other hosts will do it, but it never hurts to ask. Are you 100% certain your plan has a 30 day guarantee? This is why I say to read the terms of service, many companies have it in there terms of service that they do not offer any refunds after 30 days. So you may be stuck with a company, or worse out of money and a host. But if you pay for a month and find you do not like the host you will only lose a month. Not to mention while you may consider doing a charge back, I don’t recommend it. The only time I ever won a charge back against a client was when they did too many charge backs. A charge back should be used only as a last resort. If its $20 or so, don’t bother you may have to do a dispute at a later date for a much higher amount, and you don’t want a $20 charge to be the reason you lose a charge back against another company for a much higher amount.

7. Avoid “free” domains, and other freebies

Chances are if you do not like the host keeping the domain is going to cost you more than getting it from a third party. Not to mention the issues you may have in getting the domain transferred to a different register. One of which most hosts will not allow a transfer until 2 months or longer after the domain is purchased or renewed due to the possibility of a charge back. This is why I recommend going with a domain register independent of your host. Often it can be a lot cheaper than what it would cost to retain the domain with a host. Especially since there are a lot of hosts out there that only give you one year on the domain only to charge more than independent register would.

As for the other freebies back in December 2010, I took a look at Siteground.com. They had this offer of free services for “x” amount of months. What it was not clear on was when they would bill customers, or how much they would be billed. Siteground.com made it to clear to me after I contacted them by chat that the services would indeed be billed after the “free” time was up, and they would be billed for the full amount, not a prorated amount to match up for the hosting renewal. Which meant 4 different individual billing date through a year for the same account. They also indicated that they would send notices out, but I have had people contact me and tell me they did not receive the notices.

But if you must have the freebies, be prepared what it may cost at a later date.

8. Contact them by chat, phone, email, and whatever else

Honestly I would never deal with a host that does not offer 24/7/365 support. After all the only reason I have a cell phone is to get alerts if a site was to go offline. I am not talking about paying extra for what a host may deemed after hours service (I cannot say enough, read the terms of service to see if they do charge for off hours support). There is no better way to get a feel for a company then by engaging the people that involved in the daily activities of site. There are plenty of questions to ask, many of which from points in this top 10.

You would be amazed by how many hosts have the live chat graphic up, but when you try to reach them you’re sent to a contact form and not a chat operator. If they say a live support is online, yet take you to a contact form you should avoid that host.

9. Understand your relationship with your host

There is a good chance that whoever read this is not looking to pay more than $10 a month for hosting. I could be wrong, but most people that ask me what host I recommend, ask for a cheap host. In most cases this is what your host is not:

Your webmaster

Your business planner

Your web designer

Your programmer

Your business partner

Your teacher

11 years in the business I have encountered a lot of people that thought this was part of their hosting service. Yes some thought I was their business partner. Granted in some cases some of these points were offered, but it was at an extra cost, which I can tell you it was rare for anyone to purchase a $10 a month plan and to add that on to their service. I am going to repeat myself here, your hosting provider is in this to make money. This was the point of them starting a hosting operation. Ask yourself how much are you willing to offer for what you paid? Would you and could you offer what you are asking for at the amount you are paying? Your host’s chief responsibility is to provide uninterrupted hosting service, timely support, and to make sure the server is kept up to date. If you buy a script from a third party, its not your hosts responsibility to make sure that it works as its not their responsibility to make sure your graphics are in the proper folder to show up on your website unless that is what the package says it offers.

I am actually borrowing my train of thought on this from Michael of : mddhosting.com

http://www.mikedvb.com/2009/08/10/are-you-a-host-jumper/

“The hosting provider is usually not your webmaster or designer and if you find yourself submitting tickets asking your host how to do things with your site then chances are that you are in over your head and you may want to look for a webmaster. “

10. Be skeptical of reviews

If you decide to see what other people have to say about a company use caution. Keep in mind some sites are purely created for the purpose of making a commission, and not giving an unbiased review of a host. No I am not saying that affiliate programs are bad, as I am often accused of. Regardless if the affiliate program was there or not, I am sure these people would find a way to make a buck rather if it was unethical or not. Many of these so called reviews never actually use the hosts they recommend. Like take for example hostaz.com and webhostignstuff.com, none of these “review sites” have ever actually use any of the top hosts they recommend.

One way of looking to see who they use is a tool I like to use:

http://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.aspx

From this you can find out thing such as were a site is located, not to mention how long they have been at their current location, and better yet how old the site is. So if a host tells you they have been in business for 10 years, you can see if the domain has been around for that long from the creation date.

Another tell-tale sign is that they if they are in it for the commission is if they offer a coupon. A coupon is very enticing, after all who does not like to save money? Which is one of the gimmicks these affiliates use, to get people to click on a link and have a affiliate cookie placed on your machine to get a commission. Granted not all of these special offers are legit as some review sites like alreadyhosting.com have links to sites that do not have any special offers.

Then there are sites like hostingsthatsuck.com, which work on the basis of trying to prove to you a site does not suck based on the word “(host name) sucks”, which would work if not for the fact that sucks is not the only negative word in the English language that could be applied to a company. In some cases this was a paid spot by new hosts like zyma,com. Which hostinsthatsuck.com does not bother to disclose the reason for the lack of “sucks” results is that the company just came online. Not to mention I have often found more results off the first page for “(hosting name) sucks” in search engines then they claim are in all results.

I am not saying all the reviews that you see out there are fake, I am saying that you should be cautious. If someone tells you they just signed up and they love the host, it’s not giving you what you need which is a long term view. If all they tell you is the features, you should wonder if that is not the host creating a review.

Not to mention some review sites are owned by the very hosting company that appears on top all the time.  One example is Siteground.com being the owner of besthostsdirectory.com.

________________________________________

On a side note a new company is not a bad thing; we all have to start somewhere. This is why I recommend that on the initial sign up that you do no more than 30 days the first time around, and sign up for more time later on. Also a new company may be more eager to work to keep your business, where as a large establishment may consider you more of a number.

For the full discussion with winhost.com:

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/winhost-com.html

Got to love it when a host tries to do a rebuttal without any proof they are right.  For some reason I am not allowed an opinion, but hosts like this are allowed to do business with sites that claim they are one of the best hosts without any actually use. Regardless of the whole “what top 25 list”,  I have tons of screen shots that showed there was one, and I offered to send winhost.com the unedited ones.  I don’t post full screen shots of webhostinstuff.com for a very good reason.  There is a lot of blank space on the bottom of their site.  Below is an example.  Perhaps I am guessing they want to give you a spot to make notes if you print it out, that is if you can get past the blocking.

Per usual when I asked for where the ppc (pay per click) was located the discussion ends rather quickly.  At first I was told  it was like Google, though if it was I would be able to see where the ppc was.  Interestingly enough you browse through webhostingstuff.com enough you will find Google Adsense.  Which is a bit odd that they participate with Google’s ppc while having their own so called ppc system.

Webhostingstuff.com claimed:

“We are Show casing 25 of the best web hosting companies from our directory of 16,654 web hosting providers.“

Never mind that webhostingstuff.com has never from all the sites I have seen owned by Michel Low used any of the hosts that appear in the top 25.   As Softlayer seems to be the only host that webhostingstuff.com trusts for their hosting needs. So now the list is gone…….. Well gone if you consider not refabricating the system into something else.  However I feel what Micheal Low has done will hamper hosts ability to have effective so called PPC, or as Jixhost.com put it advertising. Which is interesting as I thought the point of advertising was to reach as many people as possible, like the ads you see around this post.   With the new system where it winhost.com appeared on 10th spot so it was on the first page.  Under the new system its on 5th page.  As it appears there is three hosts per Never mind the chance to be blocked if you do too much research.   You buy from those ads I get paid,

Before

After

In addition to changing how the top 25 works, categories have been added such as type of host and a few countries.  It seems like a half hearty attempt to deal with other countries as opposed to a focus on U.S. hosts.  Though it ultimately ignores several countries that are growing in their need for hosting.

I have to say that this is a victory in a minor sense.  But then again the increase in blocking is a victory.

Since November 2007 I have trying to disprove the ranking from from webhostingstuff.com, this is the claim is

HOW does WebHostingStuff rank web hosts?

WebHostingStuff ranks web hosts using WHSRank™ – a powerful ranking algorithm that ranks web hosting companies based on the quality of services they had provided to REAL customers.

The main engine behind WHSRank™ are the verified customer reviews published on WebHostingStuff.WHSRank™ uses these customer reviews to calculate a quality score for each web host.

When customers write their reviews, they are asked to rate web hosts based on service quality factors like:

• Uptime and service reliability
• Technical support
• Customer service

WHSRank™ uses these quality signals to calculate the quality score for each web host. Other quality signals used by the WHSRank™ algorithm include uptime performance.

So how is it that i7net was on the list, as well as other hosts that had no reviews get on this top 25 list if they don’t have any of these factor?  Many of the hosts that appeared on that list had:

• Unsatisfactory reviews
• downtime
• no reviews
• just started

Which is still going on, but the new system only encumbers those that bid for top spots.

Endurance International Group is back on Webhostingstuff.com?

I suspect even though there is one host (ssa host) on the new front page that is clearly not a top host.   Most of the host that appear on the main page have a decent to high pay out affiliate program.   I believe that the Endurance International Group hosts are only back up on webhostingstuff.com because they are up for affiliate commissions.   Since I am blocked from my home its just a theory as I am unable to actually see if any cookies are put in my browser.  I have long suspected the only reason Hostgator.com has been on this list is because webhostingstuff.com is a affiliate and is not getting paid for the so called ppc system.

Webhostingstuff.com is no longer my main focus, but that does not mean there will not be random reviews.

As I stated in my last article, webhostingstuff.com has some pretty serious search engine ranking.   More people may know what they are up to, but there are still many that do not.  Regardless with how the system is now, I think it best to put my efforts in to other review sites.  I am not saying I am no longer going to do reviews on webhostingstuff.com or the sites that appear on them.  I am just saying its going to be random.  There may be one or more months I don’t cover whats going on, on webhostingstuff.com.  I may spend a whole month on webhostingstuff.com.  But for now I think webhostingstuff has started what may be the end of their ppc system.

I am pretty sure all the marketing experts I know are going to cringe with my first mail out.   24 hours after this goes out I am sure they will be telling me everything I did wrong.  The same people back when I was first starting pretty much drove me nuts on all things seo.  Last month one of my previous business partners and good friends found out on webhostingtalk.com that I had yet to actually use my mailing list.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/off-topic/hosting-reviews-exposed-com-exposed-on-webhostingtalk-com.html

Regardless of having paid him to install it for me, keep in mind it was his idea to install that and the pop up window which asked that for people’s email addresses.  I was the one to get grief over not using the mailing list.  To deal with my lack of understanding of how mailing list programs worked he migrated my mailing list and installed a new program that would function with WordPress.  Plus that annoying popup window is gone.  My previous experience with mail outs was I wrote up a customer mail out and gave it to a tech.   This truly is my first mail out, and where I probable got every thing wrong.

I wanted to thank the people that have contacted me over the last few months after I was supposed to have been exposed, I think the exposers have exposed themselves. I have gotten a lot of email, which I am still working on addressing.  So much so that I have not really had time to write up new posts on review sites and the hosts that deal with them.  Plus the work that pays the bills tends to take priority over what does not.

To those that did not get a personal response from me

I apologize for not contacting everyone.  I have read each every email that has been sent to me.   Some of the questions I was not sure how to respond too.  So I am going to take a mass attempt at it.  I really hate giving copy and paste responses.

To those that want to know who I recommend as a host

I am sorry to say but I am not prepared at this time to recommend any host.  A hosting recommendation especially from a site like this is a huge responsibility.  Let me be the first to say that you should still be skeptical of who I recommend, a little skepticism can be a healthy thing.  Any host that I recommend would have I would have to actually use, not to mention fully disclose any and all activities. Perhaps in the near future I will be able to start recommending hosts, but no guarantees that I ever will.

Regardless I will be posting tips for finding a host some time this month.

Is there a site that offers reviews that I would recommend?

There are no review sites I would recommend.  As every site I encounter are in it for one and one reason only, which is to get paid regardless if the host is good or not.  Other sites such as webhostingtalk.com may be a good site to find what people may think of a host, but even the positives as well as the negatives can be faked.  I have been contacted by a lot of review sites some asking for me to put my name behind them (or asking me to sell my site).  But the biggest problem is they recommend the same hosts as other sites, ones that offer high affiliate pay outs.  Frankly to be unbiased review sites should list the hosts that pay very little or nothing at all in addition to the high payout hosts.  A simple list of a few hosts does not cut it.

Webhostingstuff.com is no longer going to be the main focus

I have had a lot of hosts and people tell me that webhostingstuff.com is no longer relevant.

Before you say reviews about this site are pointless I would like you to look at:

http://www.websitefigures.com/site/webhostingstuff.com

I for one would love to have the  search engine ranking that this site has.  With stats like that the site is very relevant.   There also a lot of people out there that do not know the truth behind review sites like this.

However things have changed.  The drastic changes to the top 25 have become cumbersome for any host that pays to get the exposure they desire.   On top of that add the blocking that occurs if you do too much research on companies on any site that appears on webhostingstuff.com.  I am now going to limit my reviews to those that appear on the main page.  More details on that in my next post.  I may even just collect sites that appear and review them every couple of months.

You want me to do a review of your company

I have to say that this is the most mind boggling of requests I get. There are at this time only 3 providers I use and I don’t exactly have nice things to say about them.  I stopped using godaddy.com because of the very flaws I mentioned, because I don’t think they are for a long term solution for a serious site.   There is no host that I have had a positive review on, here or even on my personal blogs.  There are only 2 hosts that I have done a review on per request, only because I found these hosts also contacted review sites to do the same like hostingsthatsuck.com.  The reviews were disingenuous, because they did not take into account that the hosts had just started, but clearly the only thing this review site cared about was a commission.

Regardless in the interest of improving my search engine rankings by viable content, I will be in the very near future do reviews for hosts that request it.  I am actually in the progress of working with someone to do surface reviews which will be terms of service, support, and design.  More details to come shortly.  As  soon as  my new content writer is done redoing all the hosts I reviewed in the past, they can go over your site to find flaws.  I will make it clear that the host requested this versus being found on a fake review site.  In which case you can see where your site needs to improve.

To the hosts that have given me new leads

While I am not going to name hosts that have contacted me on this post.  I want to personally thank you for providing me with details I never thought to look for.   When I used the information you gave me I will of coarse post you as my resource, or quote you as a silent witness.  I am not going to claim anything as my own, when I don’t deserve credit.

To those that want me to expose their host

Now this does not apply to everyone that wrote me.  There are many people that have valid complaints, and actually responding to my email exchange.  But there a lot of people that have contacted me to expose a host without giving me a valid argument or nothing at all.

The problem with exposing a host or doing a review is I need reasoning and evidence.  I can’t simple go after a host because you don’t like them.  This is something I do in my spare time.  Spare time being the reason for me getting out of the hosting industry,  as I had very little of it when I was running 4 companies.  I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful it is to wake up in the morning and not have to go to my desk to make sure other people’s sites are up.  Simply wonderful that I can take a cup of coffee and my kindle outside on my back patio to start my morning.   Of coarse you can argue I get paid to do this, with $56 last month (meaning no paycheck from Google next month) clearly money is not the reason to do a negative post.  You can’t just send me an email and not return my replies and expect me to spend that precious  spare time on writing up reviews with little to go on.

One particular person wants me to bust a company because he bought a domain that was too similar to the host, and signed up as a reseller plan similar to what Wild West Domains offers.  Which in all honesty he is lucky that having his domain taking away was the only thing that happen.   I am not going to defend what amounts brand deception.

Then there are people that have lost all the data because they relied on their host to secure it.   I can fault a company for not having quality servers, but being responsible for backing up your data is not something I can hold a host responsible for.  Every time I do a post, every time I approve comments, and every time I write a response to comments just for this blog I do a back up.  Which then goes to several drives in my house, on my parents computers, and with third parties such as Amazon cloud.  My friends refer to me as a data hoarder as I have stuff I wrote in dos back in the early 90′s.  I even have a safety deposit box I exchange usb drives with once a week.  Either way if this site was to go down I have multiple back ups to bring it back up, I am not going to rely on Media Temple or any provider to be my sole source of back up.   If your data is too valauble to lose, you can’t trust a single source for back up.  Which I have yet to find any serious host that does not have a clause in their terms of service that they are no responsible for data lose.

There is a phrase that comes to mind that that I always considered an idiot statement, the customer is always right.  If you ever have the opportunity to to work a minimum wage job doing retail, you will know how untrue that statement is.   During my college days I had that opportunity and worked at Wal-Mart in the pet department for a year. One particular episode comes to mind where I had to accept a refund on a dog chain that was clearly really old as the red plastic was sun bleached white, and the steel was heavily tarnished.  The guy claimed that it was defective and he purchased it last week.  Regardless of the evidence I had to exchange his old dog chain with a new one.   My manager was with me on not issuing a refund up until he started making a scene and other customers started to notice.  I have never

What is in the future of hosting-reviews-exposed?

There are a lot of sites that offer reviews in exchange for an affiliate commission.  Hosts that create their own fake reviews site(s).  Hosts that spam or gain from their affiliates that spam.

I have only just started my reviews.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/off-topic/hosting-reviews-exposed-com-exposed-on-webhostingtalk-com.html

Never mind there are ads on my site, some how a hypocrisy has been in the works.   Have I been using hosting affiliate programs to make a buck by making claims of some host was the best host?  Read enough of my posts and you will see that the answer to that is no.

Yes Google occasionally dishes out ads for webhosts, I actually screen a lot of the ads.  Never mind that a direct affiliate link will pay out more then what Google will pay me. There are no claims that any host despite having a affiliate program or not are a top host here. But your not going to find any where I say hate I hate affiliate programs.   I do point to a lot of affiliate programs that do payout in some cases most of or more of the initial customer payment.

There also a lot of hosts that I have reviewed that have low payouts, or no affiliate program at all.   In which case why would I do a review about a host that does not have an affiliate program if I my main focus was affiliate programs. This site is about  exposing hosting review sites, and the hosts that use them.   Some how  I have yet to encounter a so called review site that was no bias.  Either they get a paid amount for the 1  - 1o spot.  But in most cases they just go to sites like commission junction and pick out different hosting affiliate programs, or go directly to the host (which is what alreadlyhosting.com perfers).   I can’t look into the minds of host’s owners and tell you if they created the high payout affiliate programs to create a very saturated so called review industry.  I know some hosts like siteground.com and fused.com own their own so called review sites, where amazingly they are the top hosts.  It does not take much imagination to see where most so called hosting review sites got their business idea from.  In up coming months I will be looking into the ethics not to mention the legality of running a review site

So do I hate affiliate programs?

Truth be told, I like spending money more then making it.  I have a huge music obsession, not to mention my many other hobbies.  So where does the money come from?  While a big part of my income comes from graphic design,  part of it comes from affiliate programs from others sites.  There is a huge difference in what I do and what hosting review sites do, what I do is advertising.   Where you see content you might find ads from Google adsense, or banners for tigerdirect.com, Adobe, and Coral.  Companies I actually buy from.  I don’t tell you that so and so is the best, unless of coarse I actually use their product.  Any recommendations I have would be if I  actually use the product, which I do pretty often in my personal blogs.

If you read enough of my posts, I have yet to put my name behind any host. I engage in true advertising.  I don’t create a so called top list and claim that any host is a the best host.  If you read that post on webhostingtalk.com you will see jixhost.com claimed that they were advertising.  If your familiar with Google adsense, as winhost.com tried to say webhostingstuff.com was doing, where is the ppc ads at?  Advertising is not what the so called top sites call it.   Webhostingstuff.com even claims that the top 25 positions were not for sale.   While Jixhost.com (who was all over the place), did not claim they paid for the top 25 spots, they did not deny they were. They don’t want you to know that they are rather bias about who is on that list, and most of that has to do with if a host has an affiliate program or not.

To be honest I am not big on the idea of programs that pay our more then 20% of an initial sale.  From a business stand point every dollar you spend on a affiliate commission is a tax deduction.  Not every sale is going to come from affiliates, not to mention not every sale that comes from an affiliate in certain circumstances awards a commission.  Like for example, if a customer decides to go away from a page they get this pop up window that will knock off 50% off the cost of an order.

When I was a hosting provider I would rather focus on other forms of tax deduction that improved services.

Affiliate programs are not evil

I tend to think of affiliate programs as neither good or evil.  But I do blame hosts that do nothing about a top ten site that features their site.  Which have no proof a host is number one, or for that matter not even hosted with any of the top 10.   Regardless if they turn a blind eye to these sites they are still responsible for their unethical nature.

Lets face it, even without the affiliate programs the people who make review sites would be doing something else regardless of any ethical issues.   One review site that most of my efforts into actually has other ventures, which is webhostingstuff.com.  Micheal low is actually an affiliate of several other companies that are not even hosting related:

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/w3centric.html

Despite his top 25 being a pay to play system, he seems to be removing it to add hosts that pay out affiliate commissions.

Either way the reform of hosting review sites don’t need to come from affiliate programs, but the hosts that turn a blind eye to their affiliates and how they bring in customers.

Bottomline is I have no issues with affiliate programs, as I am an affiliate.

but more about that in another post.

For April 2011 there were three new hosts, and one host that had 2 of its negative reviews removed.

Hosting review summary for April 2011

When I first wrote up my hosting review summary I found 2 hosts that on the surface looked like they had downtime issues.  Another host did not have much on the surface.  Frankly if they did not send some unnamed rep the post would have been a pretty dry and stale one.  I do appreciate that hosting companies take the time to read my hosting review. I hope that they can take something from it, and that it will discourage them from using fake review sites, and engage in honest marketing.  Even still if they don’t agree with me, it often enhances a post.  I am willing to let Michael Low comment as well, his counter argument has always been welcome.   Because unlike him, I am not going to block him from visiting my site, and commenting on my review of his hosting review site.

Summary Hosting Review for Premiumwebdesign.com

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/premiumwebdesign-com-hostgator-com-customer.html

This is one of those hosts that I feel will never get beyond being anything more then a small host.  There are too many quirky things that will keep it from being a mid level host.  For one the allowing comments all over the site, lacks a degree of professionalism.  Ordering an account seems to be a confusing process as it is not exactly not up front clear where to go to order, which makes me wonder how anyone can order an account.  I suppose you could argue that it cuts down fraud, but not every one likes to contact someone to order, especially legitimate people.  The terms of service are buried deep in the ordering process, and not linked on the bottom of every page like most hosts will do.  But the hidden terms of service get worse when you find that its broke up in to several parts on other pages, I can only guess this was done to increase search engine ranking as a privacy policy is clearly visible, from what I understand Google is supposed to like those when spidering your site.   Every hosting review I see seems a bit forced, not to mention repeated over time.

As I stated before I feel that the reason I found this host on the top 25 had to deal with up time as webhostingstuff.com indicated.

I also get the feeling based on the owner being the only one to respond to comments through various parts of the site that this is a single person operation.

Summary Hosting Review for Winhost.com

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/winhost-com.html

I have to say that this was not a host that I found interesting while I did  a review on them, for that matter it seemed pretty dry.   The funny thing is the same day, right after I got my screen shots they got a second review.  Which is a good thing considering the first one was over a year old, and the domain was expired.  But while there was only one positive review on webhostingstuff.com at the time, there were 17 reviews on web-hosting-top.com where 7 good, 9 bad, and one neutral.    Though in my opinion its 10 negative as the neutral reviewer migrated to another host because of the issues they had.

This is another of those hosts that use webhostdir.com, and they feel there is no need for you to see numbers, or data of any other kind to prove they are a top host.

I think the most interesting thing about this post was not the post itself but that I got a comment from some unnamed rep from winhost.com.  As he/she was not willing to point me to where this ppc / advertising was taking place at.  Also that webhostingstuff.com does not claim to be a review site, without an individual customer hosting review webhostingstuff.com would have far less pages.  Just guessing but I suspect over 90% of the content is customer reviews alone.  As for dealing with clients, I have to wonder how long a defensive measure with customer complaints will serve them.  But this was the host that had me going back to webhostingstuff.com to find out what happen to the top 25, and for one page only I got to see from my home location that the top 25 was gone, after going to a friends house I found that there were definite changes that I will cover in my next post.

Summary Hosting Review for Jixhost.com

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/jixhost-com-home-of-the-very-limited-guarantee.html

This is a host where its pretty clear that webhostingstuff.com rounds up on its hosting review(s),  despite 2 negative reviews and one positive review this company gets a 3 out of 5 star rating.   9 out of the 10 reviews are negative, and 7 out of the 10 are in regards to down time.  Though it may very well be 10 as I did not want to trigger another block by trying to look at each review in detail.

What bothered me with this host was the claim of :

No risk 30 day Money Back Guarantee!

But the terms of service which could easily be found, and in my opinion lacking detail state:

Our 30 day refund policy excludes reseller plans, vps, servers, domains, SSL certificates and plans paid for longer then 1 month and accounts that are suspended or terminated for abuse. We can not refund unused portions of your plan;

Which clearly meant that only on a certain plan, and as long as you did not pay more then a month you got this guarantee.  If you found the service not to your liking during the 30 days and you purchased more then a month or a plan not covered by the guarantee (which appears to be only their business plan), your labeled a host jumper.  This was explained to me by the a chat operator.  Frankly people who I consider host jumpers were more likely to purchase monthly plans then they were to purchase longer terms.

It has been fun debunking the top 25 hosting review(s) of webhostingstuff.

http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/winhost-com.html

More about that in another post.  Off the top of my head I suppose I should be reading the positive reviews, but there is only one, and it appears that they changed their dns the same day as the review.

Jixhost.com has down time

Like the first host this host had signs of downtime.  Which does not show up on the webhostingstuff.com tracked down time. But its in the reviews.  I think its safe to assume that this host keeps its main site separate from its customers, unless of coarse the downtime some how happen in between the gaps of when webhostingstuff.com pings.  From March 2010 to Febuary 2011 there are 10 reviews, and only one of them have anything nice to say.  Since Webhostingstuff.com triggers a block if too many inquiries are done I can only see 7 out of 9  of the negative reviews complain about down time.

I figured I would go to web-hosting-top.com to see if the same is true.  Between January 2010 to present there are three complaints in regards to downtime and I find 6 complaints.  But I find myself questioning the legitimacy of the negative reviews.   Not because of another host with a Generic Rep that too often states “The above is not a valid review due to the domain and name never being a client of JixHost. – jixhost.com representative“.   That just points out there lack of being able to deal with customers on a public forum.  Its the broken English, and no not the broken English that happens with many of my posts where I do things in a hurry and not like I did when I was in college and feared bad grades from my professors.   Maybe I am wrong and these are non-English Customers.  After all I had a lot of customers that went to Google to translate, while Google is great at translating a lot is lost in translation.

But there are two things the reviews tell me to do

• See what I find when I search for results on Google – “Search and read about Jixhost.com over the internet just to see how bad is the service“
• Try out the chat system because “Live chat = live silence! You“

Chat with Jixhost.com

Chat sessions for me have been a point where I am not sure how to proceed.  At some point I hope to have a formula set up when I do chats.  But its not always so simple, especially with this host.  This is the first chat where I see:

“If you have general questions and would like to chat with our representatives, feel free to do so below.”

But the site did give me a a question to ask.

Benjamin:Am I correct in reading if I purchase more then a monthly plan I will not be eligible for a refund?

JixHost:Which plan were you interested in?
Benjamin:I am looking at your terms of service
Benjamin:which clearly state: 7. Our 30 day refund policy excludes reseller plans, vps, servers, domains, SSL certificates and plans paid for longer then 1 month and accounts that are suspended or terminated for abuse. We can not refund unused portions of your plan;
JixHost:correct
Benjamin:so if I purchase a year, there is no refund possible
JixHost:Correct
Benjamin:thats not a very good selling point
JixHost:tHERE ARE REASONS FOR THAT
JixHost:sorry
JixHost:for caps
Benjamin:and those reasons are?
JixHost:In the hosting industry there are whats commonly known as “host hoppers”
JixHost:We prefer to spend our time and resources with serious clients
JixHost:this is why we have the policy in place.
JixHost:It deters
Benjamin:well there are people like me that generally stay with a host until things go wrong, and usually I pay annually or better.  But I can’t say this part of the terms of service encourages me that nothing will go wrong
Benjamin:and a host hopper is just as likely to jump on smaller terms
JixHost:One can choose to go monthly
JixHost:We do not require any duration
Benjamin:Well thank you for your time, but your reasoning does not convince me to try your program.
JixHost:ok, have a good night.
JixHost:”try”
JixHost: case and point
Benjamin:pardon?
JixHost:Its works
JixHost:
JixHost:Is there anything else?
Benjamin:No, have a good day.
JixHost:You too. Good bye

The chat with Jixhost went a little funky if you ask me

I have been bothered by their guarantee system because on the main page they say:

Just a few of the many reasons why you should choose JixHost as your hosting provider!

• Over 5 years in business!
• FREE private name servers!
• FREE billing system (phpcoin)!
• Powerful CloudLinux 4 CPU core servers!
• No risk 30 day Money Back Guarantee!
• Over 99% uptime track record!
• FREE Templates, Softaculous, Fantastico, RV Site Builder PRO and more!
• 24/7/365 Email, Ticketing & Live Support!
• SSL Secure environement!
• Complete backups of your data on a seperate drive!
• FREE instant setup on all accounts!
• FREE domain reseller account with it’s website!

Which is not honest, its only to non-reseller plans and only if you purchase under monthly terms as I clearly showed on what I think is a really weak terms of service.  If you pay more then a year and find their service is bad then there is no recoarse.  I have to wonder how many charge backs they have incurred because of their anti-host jumper philpospy.

Do they have over 5 years in business?

Well the domain is just shy a few months from 3 years.  I would love to hear the story behind that, not to mention why there is a video on Jixhost for Softlayer.

Search engine results bring me to:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=718377

http://www.ecotarget.com/technology/internet-technology/web-development/never-host-with-jixhost-com

There are other things I have found but I am not sure I would rather repost the links,  I looked by just jixhost.com and jixhost.com sucks.  I think its safe to say that I have not seen the same results on any other host.  Jixhost is on my watch list.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1043419

Because of this post I have been rather busy communicating to several people, some of which have given me some interesting things to look for that I would never had thought to look for.  Which is part of the delay on getting posts out, that and there have been significant changes at webhostingstuff.com.  Frankly before this I did not have much reason to communicate on webhostingtalk.com, as I was not sure any thread I would start would be blocked or removed.  I found out about the post because of Google Alerts, and I was pretty much going to say nothing until they got off topic.  It was some how the opinion that I wanted a government hand out because of some 14 year old I allowed to make a comments on my video.  Even though I made it clear by my own comments I did not agree with the poster about having the government provide free hosting level services.

Why I don’t believe in free hosting and domains

Just in case its not enough for me to say that I believe by paying for your service, you are going to be  more inclined/obligated to actually do something.  Clearly with a hosting bill thats around $2,000 a month I am very motivated to get something out of my service.

Recently I read a post from one of the people that posted on that forum topic above that demonstrates one of the big reasons I got out of the hosting industry, and why I am not for giving out free service.

http://www.mikedvb.com/2009/08/10/are-you-a-host-jumper/

“I have found in my personal dealings in the hosting industry that the less a customer pays the more they tend to expect out of the provider and the less they understand the provider/client relationship.”

This is from a hosting provider with a little over a 3 years of experience running a host, granted this was in his first year. I can tell you with my 11 years of experience that that it was a fact with my first  long term company.    When I first started out I was offering packages for $500  or more a month, barely ever heard from these people.  Many of them had their own private webmaster, or paid my company for web master services.  Webmasters seem almost as rare as blacksmiths these days. By 2005 we started offering a $1.99 package. On average clients that paid $1.99 a month were 6 times more likely to submit a ticket then a customer that paid $25.99 a month, $1.99 a month customers were 14 times more likely then someone that pays $49.99.  Its one of those facts my business partners over looked as they sought to compete with cheaper/unlimited markets.

I think it was 2006 when one of my companies started a 90 day free trial, which I can tell you was the start of me wanting to get out of the hosting business.  It was not so much that we were giving service away for free, but that these people would make us work for a probable sale only to cancel at the end of 90 days and run off to another company that offered a similar trial, off the top of my head I would say a lose rate of over 70%.   Generally if they stayed they did not upgrade to anything beyond the 1.99 month plan.   At this point I adopted the theory that at least 5% of all customers were evil, and perhaps only because of good genes I still have all my hair.  That or killing the 90 day free trial after 14 months is what saved my hair.

Any way back to webhostingtalk.com

I decided to make a response that was non-aggressive as possible, and I was aware before I posted my first response that this was a review site who lanched a debate against me, and decided not to point that out.  I wanted someone else to point that out. By the end of the post I think it became clear how little the person who had started the complaint understood the hosts he had called top 10.  His research involved copying someone else’s top 10 list, and that was the sum of his efforts over a 3 month period of time to make a 3 page site.   He also was not aware that his host used the same data center as hostgator.com.

“And review sites like mine research, find and then list the best top 10 hosting providers. That way they save their time and able to find the best suitable host.

I guess some Small/mid size hosts do not like review sites because they don’t see their site in the top 10 list.”

By that statement he has clearly ruled out seeing if  small to mid size hosts are viable options, which I think was his biggest mistake.    What he admitted to only proved why you should not trust his list.

“No, i have not used any host in the list.“

and

“I have taken the list from some other review site“

Doing just as much research on me as the very hosts he claims are top hosts he claims:

1. he is a hypocrite. According to him affiliate marketing is evil but himself making money with adsense and affiliate marketing. you can see banners at his website.
2. He is making his living by bashing others. I am not a regular member of his blog so can’t say how accurate his finding are.

The very meaning of the word hypocrite:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypocrite

A person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

Here is what my site does:

• Busting review sites that created top 10 lists based off of companies that offer only high affiliate payouts.
• Busting hosts who spam.
• Busting hosts that own their own top review list, only to appear on the top of their own list.
• Busting review sites that take payments under the table to claim a host a is a top host.
• Busting hosts that pay review sites regardless if they earned the right to be a top host.
• Busting hosts that appear in top 10 sites because they offer a high a affiliate payout.
• Busting review sites that have other devious practices of making money, more about that in a later post.

To be a hypocrite, I would have to do what I am exposing.

Now to be clear I have no issues with affilate programs, as I am a member of several, some of which are through Commison Junction (cj.com).

This is where I try shamelessly to encourage you to buy something.

When it comes to the Amazon Kindle I like to think of myself as a walking billboard for a reason to buy one.  I got mine as a gift to myself for selling off my first hosting company.   Partially because before I got into webhosting I used to read tons of books, some times as many as 20 in a month.  But as 2009 came to a close I realized that my most extensive reading came from reading contracts, terms of service, and customer/supplier emails.   Customers emails can sometimes be entertaining I will admit, but I had not read a single book by the time  my Kindle arrived on November 30, 2009.  The first book I choose to try and finish off was Stepehen King’s Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, Book 4).   I had actually bought it in hard back, then paper back, and from another ereader on Dell’s abondoned Axim hand held device.   Honestly the first 3 books were the best in that series, the 4th was the worst with its long winded back story.  The last three were ok, but I proable would not have finished if not for the first three books.

While I am not back to reading 20 books a month, I have a digital library of over 264 books.   I do catch a chance to read.  While I can also read the same book and keep my place between my iPad and Kindle, I much prefer to read from the Kindle as the battery life far surpasses the iPad, not to mention I can not read my iPad in the sun.

I recommend the 3g model over the wifi version if you travel like I do.  While I have the Kindle2 3g, I got to try out the Kindle 3 with wifi that I got my brother for his graduation.  I found it some what annoying to set up the connection.  But the print was finer, thinner, lighter then the Kindle 2.  I might actually get the 3 later on to have a Kindle to leave in my car.  Not to mention the Kindle 3 actually has page numbers where as the 2 does not ( I am not sure why it does not).   But I will defiantly purchase 4.

Currently I am reading The Elfstones of Shannara.

Back to Webhostingtalk.com, do I hate affiliate programs?

The above is an example of actually promoting a product that was actually used.   If you need more reasons to actually buy a Kindle I will happily give you more reasons to do so.  What I hate is review sites that tell you that a host is one of the top 10 best hosts out there, yet they never tried any of the hosts they recommend.  Just like the host that thought they were exposing me on webhostingtalk.com.  10 hosts, and the one host he was using was not on that list.   Never mind that the payout for the company he was with was just as big as the companies he had listed.  It would have made more sense if he actually promoted them.  Granted there are many sites out there that promote only one host, but they don’t really tell you what they actually have hosted unless of coarse its the very site that tells you to host with the host they are promoting.  One paticular hostgator.com affilate comes to mind that does nothing more then spew out details about every faucet of what makes hostgator.com, it seems more of a f.a.q. section then a affiliate.

The bottom line is unlike Consumer Reports who tests countless products, the review sites offer no proof that you should trust their opinion, they ask you not to kick the tires so to speak.   They throw up a few details and try to tell you they have other reasons that they don’t list.  Unlike these sites,  I want to compel you to kick the tires and ask questions, there is a point where a little skepticism is a healthy thing.  After all if it came to actually buying  a car are you going to let the sales person pick the car for you?

Now to be honest I can’t say I get much enjoyment out of making money, but I sure do enjoy spending it.  I think affiliate programs can help to promote products.  Like say a band that I really love but I don’t think gets enough exposure such as Faithless.   If there is anything I hate about affiliate programs is those that payout as much or more then what a customer paid.  I actually plan to talk with an accountant about this to see how this effects the taxes a hosting company pays.

On Webhostingtalk.com I was called a hypocrite, is that true?

In order to be a hypocrite I would have to engage in the same activities that I am trying to bust other companies for. While I have Google Adsense and affiliate programs for non-hosting related items up, you are not going to see me put my name behind any host with out actually using their service and a lot of work to prove why.  Granted its been a year of blogging and I have yet to find a company I would fully endorse. I am willing to tell people who I use and why they are adaquate and why I am not happy with them (Media Temple, Rackspace, and Theplanet (bought by softlayer)).  I’ll even tell you who I have used, and why I would never use them again  (Burst.net and Layered Tech).

Winhost.com has one and only one review

Well they only have one review with webhostingstuff.com, but that review was over a year ago.  Also the domain is expired.   Clearly the only reason that they are on the top 25 has nothing to do with being a top host as the reviews are slim.

Winhost.com has 17 reviews with web-hosting-top.com

According to web-hosting-top.com:

“There are 17 total Win Host reviews and this company is listed on web-hosting-top.com since 2009. 7 customers found winhost.com a good provider and 9 as bad (1 were neutral).”

So 9 out of those 17 reviews are negative.   The one review that counts as a neutral review, really does not seem to be neutral as it made the reviewer choose another host.   Though I suggest checking those positive reviews, because they have 2.5 stars in some areas like support making me wonder why there was no questions to people that posted the low rating on what could be done to improve things.  One review in particular sticks out to me.

http://www.web-hosting-top.com/reviews/winhost.com/14295

For some reason the rep of winhost.com is under the impression that the downtime that was complained about happened the day before the complaint or only a short time.  If anything this is a rep I would not have doing damage control as too much time is spent in trying to make it look like its the customer.  Though I am sure with the details in the email and the first name of the customer should be some clues to who the customer might be.

And the webhostdir.com award goes to winhost.com

Web hosting directory seems like a scam, after all the one thing they do not provide is numbers, details, or anything that validates why someone got an award.  While winhost.com is willing to post the awards on their site, they don’t link directly to this link:

http://www.webhostdir.com/search/profile.aspx?spid=16999

Where you find they have won the “Most Popular” August 2009 – March 2011.  You would think that would be something to brag about.

But if you look below you see this option to vote now where you give a name, email, and comments.  I have to wonder if this is one of those things where you can pay someone to create fake votes.  You can do with YouTube videos.  For that matter I know a company that sales you people to like your company on Facebook, I think it was something like $35 to get 500 people to like your company.  There are even ways to fake your twitter followers.  Which is far cheaper then trying to do it the right way.

Now while I do not know that the reviews were faked on winhost, I don’t see anything such as dates when posted and domains hosted to prove they are real.

The Premiumwebdesign.com / Hostgator.com connection

If you read my initial thoughts I thought that this host may very well be a reseller for hostgator.com.

To be honest I am not 100 percent sure they are a hostgator.com client, but the network whois tells me a bit of information that makes me think its hostgator.com, which is websitewelcome.  There not the first host to have that in their network whois.  Webinternethosting.com, has the same network whois and they are a hostgator.com customer.

If you visit Hostgator.com you find they made a claim to websitewelcome:

http://support.hostgator.com/articles/private-name-servers-setup

“Many resellers choose to have their own name servers for appearance reasons. Using our anonymous name servers of ns1.websitewelcome.com and ns2.websitewelcome.com can be less professional looking for a hosting company.”

I am not sure that by definition that websitewelcome.com is anonymous, as a simple search via Google.com I found that link.  That and I really do not think that most people look at the dns of most sites unless they are a host.

While I am not sure if Premiumwebdesign.com is on a dedicated account, I am certain of what they are not on because they have their own private dns.

“If you have reseller, SEO, VPS, or Dedicated, you should have those IP’s listed in your welcome email. If not, simply contact HostGator so we can provide you with the correct IP’s.”

Here is why I think Premiumwebdesign.com is on webhostingstuff.com

As I stated in my initial write up, the down time webhostingstuff.com may be greater then what is actually listed because they ping only once every 6 hours or greater.

Premiumwebdesign.com has all 5 star review from all 14 reviews

Clearly on webhostingstuff.com, which seems to be the only place that has reviews for this hosting company are all 5 star reviews.  The last host to do a review with them is still with them.  But the last review was May 14, 2008.  Worse yet That site is not active.

“Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@rjlmusic.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.”

Google cache shows a site under construction page.

The other sites that are on webhostingstuff.com have me wondering the legitimacy of the reviews.  Because some of the same people have posted a review, granted it may be years later.  Then in February 3rd and 4th of 2007 they got 6 reviews.  But thats not all that makes me wonder.

But my biggest gripe with Premiumwebdsign.com – No up front terms of service

From the main page clicking on the “Services” tab and picking “Web Hosting” it took me 7 pages to find, but it turns out I could have found it on the first page I came from the tab.   Most companies that don’t have the terms of service on the main page tend to have it on the same page you enter your credit car at.

http://www.premiumwebdesign.com/wordpress/services/web-hosting/web-hosting-terms/

Where you find that the terms of service has been cut up and placed into several pages.  This is the amount of text that they have before sending you off to navigate to pages that have no links to the other terms of service:

“Premium Web Development, L.L.C. has a responsibility to protect each of our clients and provide the best service possible. The customer is expected to have a basic knowledge of how the Internet functions, the types of use which are generally acceptable on the Internet, and the types of use which are to be avoided. Common sense is the best guide as to what is considered acceptable use. Also, common sense is the rule when uploading files during high traffic usage times on the Internet. Premium Web Design and Hosting offers space for your site on our servers and has nothing to do whatsoever with your access to reach our servers or the time it takes to upload, etc. The following guidelines were designed to ensure these services”

Most hosts have the bulk of their terms of service, they don’t piece meal it through the site to make multiple pages.  But I think I know why it was made in to separate pieces.

My personal take on Premiumwebdesign.com

The design and the domain are defiantly not choices I would have made.  Regardless of it being a wordpress site, the design seems out of date.    I don’t like turning a hosting site into a blog, where comments can be posted anywhere.  A blog can defiantly enhance a site, it defiantly does that for hostgator.com.  I am not sure I would want to make the main page of any site the place for anyone to post their comments.  Esspecially with a comment such as:

“Hi Glennette,

I notice that from your greeting on this page (Dear Christian Business Owner,) you assume that everybody is a Christian. I have nothing against any religion. However, do you require all your clients to be Christians?

Regards,

Jim”

While it appears the greeting has been removed, the comment is still there.  Which leads into my whole separation of religion, politics, and business.  Seldom do the three mix well together.  Here you have Religion and politics on the main page.  Clearly allowing the comments is for the sake of increasing  search engine rankings.

The hosting packages are not even up front.  I can’t imagine many people can find out where to order a package on this site.  Clearly they need to look at the competition to see how to actually sell hosting, as opposed to purchasing fake advertising from a so called top host review site.

The terms of service is in my opinion a big problem, its not upfront its spread out to too many places when it should be linked to every page and the content for the terms of service should only be on one page.     Its not easy to access as the “About Us” tab that takes you to a page that is just about one person.  Which tends to make me wonder if Premiumwebdesign is a one person operation.