Bounceweb.com – When 2 out of 5 Star support is all you need

Bounceweb.com is my Fifth and finale  host review of 5 hosts for January 2011 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25.  With this host I finish off webhostingstuff’s top 25 hosts for January 2011.  Luckily I have found enough free time between my current projects that I will not be finishing up this in March 2011.

Since I did my intial write up of January 20, 2011 I have been from time to time peaking in on Blounceweb.  Mainly because when I first went to their site the sales chat was offline.  I wanted to see when it would be online.  I pretty much visited at random hours in my 18 hour day.  I have yet to see the sales chat to say online.  But the question I have is how did a host that averaged 2 stars in the last 6 months become one of the top 25 hosts with webhostingstuff.com.  Granted I know the answer to that is because of their “advertising” fees with webhostingstuff.  Below is a snap shot of the reviews that webhostingstuff collected on this host.

Bounceweb.com is trusted by over 57,000 sites around the globe

It seems like a big number but the number represents sites, not customers.  Never mind that many of their customers might have signed up for their reseller program and I have had customers that have had a 1000 or more domains on a reseller account.

http://bounceweb.com/reseller-web-hosting.html

Which offers unlimited domains.  My own experience with plans that offer unlimited domains is that they can house any where from just 1 domain to as many as 5000.  The number does not tell you how many active customers they have.

Yes they have good search engine ranking, not to mention an Alexa score of 67,148.

Also all of those wonderful reviews they have all but one site is still hosted with them.

http://bounceweb.com/testimonials.html

Bounceweb.com has facts on Green Web Hosting

Here is another company that buys energy credits or offsets, and they do……… nothing else.  They give a half hearted effort to try and make up some facts but they do not back up their sources.  I know that 90% of people are not concerned about global warming, all you have to do is look at the latest polls to see they are wrong there.

http://bounceweb.com/green-web-hosting.html

  • Datacenters take 4% of the world’s electricity.
  • Global warming is a concern for 90% of people.
  • Only 3% of web hosting companies are going green.
  • Going green costs 31% more than using dirty electricity.
  • Being socially responsible is cool.

I am not sure how being socially responsible is cool is a fact.

But there not any clearer on how they are greener on this post:

http://www.hostreview.com/news/090518bounceweb.html

Bounceweb.com has awards

http://bounceweb.com/web-hosting-awards.html

Web-hosting-top.com

About that “Web Hosting Top – Award Winner since 2006”.  There is nothing to prove on web-hosting-top.com has given an awarded.  I am not sure how the word “since” applies as its not been going on every year.  The only award I can see is  Listed and Verified since 2006.

Where webhostingstuff.com has 17 reviews, web-hosting-top.com has 16 reviews.  The average rating is 2.1 out of 5, which pretty much mirrors webhostingstuff.

http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-hosting/web-hosting-top.bounceweb.com/type/add-review

Hostreview.com

There is no direct link to these awards by hostreview.com

Asides for a ton 7 pages of search engine results the best I can find is

http://www.hostreview.com/company-profile-awards/bounceweb

Which of coarse does nothing to prove that this is a fast growing company.  Its one of those “take our word for it” kind of deals.

Webhostdir.com

Once again no direct link.

http://www.webhostdir.com/search/profile.aspx?spid=10564

I am not sure the point of not directly linking to the site, as there is nothing negative to hide.   But this is another of those “take our word for it” kind of deals.  They don’t think you need to see data.

Findmyhost.com

Once again no direct link.  Here is what I can find, but there are no customer reviews.

http://www.findmyhost.com/reviews/bounceweb.aspx

Despite the claim “BounceWeb has passed stringent tests to become an approved host which proves our business has met AND exceeded the qualifications needed to stand out as a web host.

Truth be told: “Support is available via online support system only. We’d like to see more options made available, perhaps live chat support and toll-free phone.

Comparewebhosts.com

Of coarse no direct link.  http://www.comparewebhosts.com/ReadReview-WebHost-Bounceweb-CID-5650.htm

Also nothing that indicates that they have any awards.

Webhostingstuff.com

No direct links, but its not like that matters.

Even though they only had three reviews to get an average of 2 stars out of 5 in a 6 month period of time.  The average of all 17 reviews has support at 2 stars out of 5, or 40% which is failing in grade school terms.  On webhostingstuff the complaints are in regards to support being slow, accounts being shut down because of resource usage, and billing issues.

Alreadyhosting.com

No direct link, and Alreadyhosting.com does not have a search that requires me to use a search engine such as Google.

Advertisements

http://www.alreadyhosting.com/reviews/BounceWebReview.php

Lets review why this site gave out an award:

http://bounceweb.com/web-hosting-affiliate-program.html

  • 1-15 sales a month – Earn $35 for each sale!
  • 15-30 sales a month – Earn $50 for each sale!
  • 31-45 sales a month – Earn $75 for each sale!
  • 46+ sales a month – Earn $125 for each sale!

Need I say more?

webhostingsearch.com

It does not appear there is a direct link for this on Bounceweb.com or webhostsearch.com.  Using the search feature on webhostsearch I am brought to this link:

http://www.webhostingsearch.com/search?searchString=bounceweb

Clicking the only search engine result brings me to just a single link that takes me back to bounceweb.com

Is bounceweb.com for you?  Perhaps you should look at webhostingstuff.com and web-hosting-top.com customer written reviews before signing up for bounceweb.

4 COMMENTS

  1. I can well believe that Bounceweb sucks on every single level, and that advertising fees were all that got them propelled into the top 25 list.

    I received multiple pieces of spam from an individual with multiple websites (when the first piece of spam was rejected by my email system, they sent a second via a different email address from a different website). I looked them up and one of the sites was hosted at bounceweb. So I went to their website and per their own “abuse” instructions, emailed them at abuse@bounceweb.com. I got back an automated email telling me that they couldn’t accept abuse reports via email (then why does your site tell me to do that?) and that I had to open a ticket to report it. Problem is, they won’t let you open a support ticket if you don’t have an account with them (or possibly even if you do, for all I know.)

    So I’ve done the exact same thing you did, visited their website multiple times over the course of the past day or two, online chat is never “on”, I’ve called their toll free number and everytime I request customer support, something you think they’d be interested in providing, the system cuts me off and won’t let me leave a message, never mind actually letting me speak to a real human being.

    So I ran some searches with their name and variations on the word “spam” and found a site where one of their disgruntled users complained that when they found him a little too troublesome, they claimed he was spamming and terminated his account. Pretty ironic, given there is no way for anyone to actually file a spam complaint. How would they know about it if no one can complain to them about spammers on their servers?

    Then I found this page, and wasn’t at all surprised to see that you couldn’t find any instance of there ever being a human being on the other end, because I haven’t found a single way to actually contact them, either by phone, email or internet support, much less communicate with an actual human being.

  2. *comment retracted by Benjamin*. They used to be respectable about 5 years ago when I first signed up with them. However, as of now they are basically holding my domain name hostage. I received a notice that it would be expiring. OK, no problem, I will just renew it. Well, despite being a long-term customer, I was never given a support account after they revamped their whole site and have no way of filing a ticket or accessing my domain renewal page. The domain has now expired and is stuck in limbo. It can’t be transferred to another registrar without someone from their end giving the release code, and there’s nobody there to give it or renew it (helloooooo, take my money please!).

    There are two phone numbers on their website. One is a toll-free number and connects you to an automated system that never leads to a human being. It also seems impossible to leave a message. The other phone number belongs to some poor, unsuspecting guy that angrily informed me that he has nothing to do with Bounceweb and that they need to take the number off of their site.

    The email aliases are worthless. The support one just bounces back saying that you need to use the support system on the site. I have not received any response from any of the other aliases. So, none of my email accounts are functional now since they are associated with an unregistered domain. I guess I can try to wait MONTHS for it to be released and hope I can re-register it before the bots steal it.

    I believe that they owner is Will Clayton, and their tech guy is James Willit. I dealt with James years ago, and he seemed helpful and polite. Now, I have no idea if either of them still works there, but at this point I am finding it impossible to reach anyone there.

  3. I am also a client of bounceweb and I have been going through exactly as the previous person described. What makes it more unfortunate for me is that I live overseas and there is no way for me to trace this guy or get in touch with them in any other way. I am stuck with no response from them and what’s more annoying is that they have charged me 3 times for one-year’s fee and there is NO WAY for me to get my money back. I only want a logon to get into the system (site) and retreive my files so I can go to another hosting company but I cant.

    I wish I lived in the US and I would file a complain for theft with the police…

  4. I would just like to add a follow-up to my last review (mods, can you make a note of this at the top of my last post?). I have made contact with them and amazingly, things are working out fine now. It is sort of convoluted how I did it, but it worked after a week without any response via phone/email.

    Since I did not want to lose my domain and risk having to pay snatcher-bots unfair sums of money to get it back in 3 months, I opted to sign up for a new account with Bounceweb through their online store. With a *comment removed by Benjamin* I paid $6.95 and instantly had an account there with a client/support portal login & everything. From there I logged a ticket regarding my domain. James, the IT guy, renewed my domain at no charge and is working on transferring it to my new Bounceweb account and closing out the old one (I backed up all of my data via FTP). So, these issues are mostly from them failing to migrate legacy accounts to the new system.

    It is largely inexcusable that there is no way to contact them via published phone numbers and email addresses, but if you have an account in their new system, support responses are timely and helpful (tech support within an hour or two, domain/SSL stuff within 24). I have read other reviews that indicate that they do not respond well to threatening or rant-style support tickets, so if you can write the support request in a polite, professional manner you’ll get a lot further.

    Yeah it cost me $7, but it is a heck of a lot cheaper than the alternative. If you are having this problem, drop the $7 to get support and then request the EPP transfer code and take your business elsewhere.

Comments are closed.