Webhostingstuff.com

    Wooservers.com – A BurstNET reseller

    Wooservers.com is my forth and last host review of 4 hosts for November 2010 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25.  What I find interesting when I saw this site is its a little over a year old, yet they have 7 reviews with webhostingstuff.

    http://www.webhostingstuff.com/review/WooServers.html

    Those 7 reviews came over a 5 month period of time (August – December 2010).  I can tell you right now that only 3 of the those 7 reviews are on the same network as Wooservers.  One of the reviews may very will be a fake, as the domain for the review does not exist.  Even though they are only a year old they have a rather impressive Alexa score of 70,193.  Its taken me 3 years to get down to 241,000.  Keep in mind I am no SEO expert, my skills in the hosting industry are primarily customer service, dealing with suppliers, and staffing.

    Despite having reviews that leave me skeptical about this company, thats not the biggest concern I have about Wooservers.com.  My problem is I see BurstNET as the  network provider.

    The Wooservers.com – BurstNET connection

    I had to wonder why I was seeing burstnet network behind 3 of the reviews.  Honestly I had thought all of the reviews may have been fake.  But then I found this:

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=919430

    It appears that Wooservers.com is a reseller for Burstnet.  Normally I would not make it a point that someone is a reseller, unless I thought there were a hosting reseller on a shared hosting account or abusing a system that they are using.   But this is different, this is simply one of the worst companies that I have ever dealt with.  Back in the early part of the last decade they were my third attempt at finding a viable cPanel provider.  Viable is not a word that is fitting for BurstNET.  The first time I was with them it was like pulling teeth to get support.  After three months I had canceled the two servers I had with them after it took them 7 days to restore a server.  I am also not sure if they had caller id or what but most of my calls met with an answering machine, some times it was full.  Despite my objections my business partner decided to try them for a second time 2 years later.  That lasted 2 weeks, as the server we got with them had 2 consecutive defective hard drives.   My business partner got to find out first hand what I had to go through to get someone on the phone and agreed with me that this company needed to be on a permanent ban list.

    My own history with BurstNET is a blog post in itself.  I am honestly surprised to see that they are still in business, it boggles the mind how anyone that practices business like they do can stay in business for almost 10 years.  If you doubt that I know what I am talking about I suggest going to any search engine and enter “burstnet sucks” or any other combination of a negative word with Burstnet because you will find tons of reasons why you should avoid anything that involves Burstnet.

    Despite being at least 5 years since I have been with BurstNET it does not appear that they have changed at all.  For that matter the site seems to look like it did when I first signed up.  I don’t know the full details of the relationship between BurstNET and Wooservers.com.  It safe to say that if Wooservers.com is reselling any BurstNET service your not going to get timely support.

    But there were those Wooservers.com reviews…….

    Despite having burstnet on 3 of the 7 reviews, there are 4 reviews that also leave me skepitacal of this company.

    axiohost.com – appears to have moved 03-dec-2010
    thevixe.com  – appears to have never been on Bustnet
    nastyhobgoblins.com – no one owns that domain
    actionptc.com –  appears to have never been on Bustnet

    Due to the relationship WooServers has with BurstNET I have to recommend avoiding them like the plague.

    Siteground.com – Will they surprise bill you?

    Siteground.com is my third host review of 4 hosts for November 2010 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25.  To be honest on the surface there is not a lot that I can tell you. This has been a bit of a stumbling block and the reason I have not posted in a while, as this was a host that was not going to take my usual 2 hours of research.   It may very well be a site that deserves to be in a top list.  But I have to ask why are they on webhostingstuff.com?   I could go on about their affiliate program, but it seems a fair program.  The design seems bulky.  Not to mention I really hate the little pop up window the terms of service are in.

    So what is wrong with Siteground.com?

    Even though siteground.com links to a site that has no negative reviews about them, they are out there.

    http://www.besthostsdirectory.com/siteground-reviews.htm

    One complaint I see is in regards to reoccurring billing.  In the hosting industry this is not exactly uncommon.  But the problem I find is where they are billing 15 days in advance of the due date.  Then there is their latest special where they offer 5 free gifts.  The problem is they are only free for a certain amount of time, and not all of them are for a year.  Its unclear that after the free period is up that you may get billed for those services, and if so what terms will you be billed for Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-Annual, or longer?

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

    For that matter you can find alot of anti-Siteground sites under a search of Siteground sucks.

    Siteground.com / Besthostdirectory.com connection?

    It should be no surprise that I look at the whois for any domain some how linked to a domain I am reviewing.

    Here is what I get when I do a whois on besthostdirectory.com

    Registrant:
 Contactprivacy.com
 96 Mowat Ave
 Toronto, ON M6K 3M1
 CA

 Domain name: BESTHOSTSDIRECTORY.COM

    No surprise there.  I tend to think that if your a company that you should not get domain privacy and that should be for indivduals only.  You might say on one hand that this is good they have Siteground.com on the number 1 spot, and if you look at there network info they are indeed hosted with Siteground.com.

    So what about their previous history?  When I look at the wayback machine guess which host is number 1 every time:

    http://web.archive.org/web/*/besthostsdirectory.com

    Siteground is number 1 and LunarPages is number 2 in every snap shot.

    Ever hear of the company called featuredpricehosting?   This was a hosting company that ran there own top 10, they ended up getting busted over this.  Granted I don’t know the full story but its on my to do list.  But I suspect that Siteground.com is the owner of besthostdirectory.com.   Even if they do not own it, it oddly has no negative reviews about siteground.com.

    What about the free Siteground.com stuff I told you about earlier?

    Being its now January 7th I find it odd that there still using Santa, but then again when I ran 4 hosting companies I had a New Years graphic up.

    Now what is not clear is when you will be billed and how much for.

    Standard SSL Certificate

    This is the only thing that I can say with some certainty that this will be billed under no less then annual terms.  However I can tell you that you can get SSL certficates for as low as $20.   I can only assume it costs them $10, which is why they offer it for free the first year.  Just as I can believe that it only costs them $5 for a domain.  So if you do choose to go with Siteground.com for a ssl use it for the first year, but go else where to get a cheaper one after you exhausted your free time.

    Spam and Email Virus Protection

    At $5.50 a month that is $33.00 for 6 months, despite having 6 free months that only costs $24.

    Website Wizard

    If it was billed monthly it would be $3.50

    Premium Support

    There is no clear mention of how much more time you would have to wait if you did not pay $5.95 a month for priority support.

    Daily Backup

    I don’t what the maximum is of back up, this after all is a unlimited package.

    Trying to go back to the main page of Siteground.com I get this popup window:

    I figure the best thing to do to get my questions answered is to get on  their chat support to find out what they bill for.

    The SiteGround.com chat session

    Martin: Hello Benjamin
    Martin: Welcome to SiteGround.com Hosting Services!
    Benjamin: Hello Martin,
    Benjamin: I am interested in your current offering
    Benjamin: I see that the “gifts” are only free for a certain time and I would like to know if they are subject to auto billing?
    Martin: Glad to hear about your interest, allow me a quick moment please
    Benjamin: sure
    Martin: I will now transfer you to a specialist in the field of current promotion and he will be happy to help you further
    Benjamin: Thank you

    This chat session has been transfered to Levan [sales]

    Levan: Hello Benjamin
    Benjamin: Hello Levan
    Levan: The “gifts” are indeed for a certain pre defined period.
    Levan: Sort of a trial for the extra services
    Levan: And yes, as any other service we offer they would also be renewed automatically, if of course you do not choose to cancel them first.
    Levan: Of course you will get quite a lot of notification before that, to make sure you remember.
    Benjamin: Can you tell me when they would be rebill and for how much and under what terms (i.e. monthly, quarterly, semi-annual…….)
    Benjamin: I suspect the ssl is once a year
    Levan: which one would be interested in, or all of them?
    Benjamin: all of them
    Levan: Fair enough.
    Levan: The SSL is indeed on a yearly basis
    Levan: $82 per year.
    Levan: Premium Support is $71.40/yr
    Levan: Daily Backups are $71.40/yr
    Levan: Spam Killer is $42/yr
    Levan: Website wizard $42.00/year
    Benjamin: This is not pro-rated to match the account?
    Levan: If you could elaborate, please.
    Benjamin: Example I buy today
    Benjamin: 2 months from now you bill me for the back up
    Benjamin: but only at 10 months
    Benjamin: so that I am billed the same time as my hosting package
    Levan: No the services would be rewed at different times, when the trial for the specific service has lapsed.
    Benjamin: ok
    Benjamin: do you offer a 30 day guarantee?
    Levan: Yes, indeed a 30 day refund policy does come with the package.
    Benjamin: In regards to the free domain, is that for the life of the account?
    Levan: Yes, as long as you are hosted with us
    Levan: the domain name will remain free
    Benjamin: ok
    Benjamin: how much would it cost to retain the domain if I decide not to keep my hosting account?
    Levan: the standard domain registration fee with us is $14.95
    Benjamin: cool
    Benjamin: ok one last question
    Levan: So that would be the it , yup
    Levan: As many as you need.
    Benjamin: its in regards to the premium support
    Levan: ok
    Benjamin: what is the difference in the premium and non-premium support
    Levan: There are 2 main differences, one would be the average response time
    Levan: Standard is around 15
    Levan: Premium lowers it to 5 min
    Levan: the second one is the ease with which you can post general issues.
    Levan: Let me elaborate.
    Levan: Basically the normal ticketing system is divided into categories.
    Levan: So you need to navigate to the category at hand, and post the issue there, and it goes to the specialist in the field.
    Levan: Example
    Levan: Domain problems
    Levan: Into the domain/DNS category
    Levan: With premium you get a direct drop down meny
    Levan: With a quick option post the matter immediately.
    Levan: So it makes it a little harded for us
    Levan: But easier for you.
    Levan: That’s about it.
    Levan: Of course with the trial
    Levan: You get to experience that first hand.
    Levan: Given that you do not have many requests
    Levan: As mostly service runs smoothly.
    Levan: No actual need for premium to be honest.
    Benjamin: too many requests?
    Levan: Simply for more dynamic users, in need of constant info
    Levan: It’s better to go for premium
    Levan: kind of beginner vs experienced user
    Benjamin: Ok I think that will do it for me I will chew on this for the next hour and then decide if I will sign up. Thanks for the info.
    Levan: Most welcome, glad I could assist you.
    Benjamin: Have a good day
    Levan: And if you need anything else , just come by. We are here at all times.
    Levan: Thank you, have a great one as well!

    In sum what this siteground.com chat boils down to:

    Over 6 months if you choose all 5 so called “freebies” you will be billed $262.20 with 4 billings over the coarse of 6 months.  After the first year you will be billed $344.20 4 times over the coarse of 6 months.  The sales operative told me that they send notices to remind you before you are billed

    Also the support service seems a bit wonk, after all why should someone that does not pay for premium service not get this pull down menu support?

    Either way if you choose Siteground you better be prepared to watch your email for what may be a surprise bill.

    Webhostingstuff.com – December 2010 top 25 list

    I find 4 more hosts on Webhostingstuff.com that I have never reviewed before.   Hostgator stays at number 2, and Siteground is here for another month.  But I7net is missing, well more like deleted from the directory.  It seems almost like an attempt to sweep this mistake under the rug and hope that many people did not notice this mistake.  It may very well be over looked.  Its not like I have huge amounts of traffic coming in, and truth be told I may be the only one that finds I7net fascinating.  Traffic is not that great on this site, for the matter one of the worst topics for bringing people in is I7net.  I can not help but say that I7net was the dead canary no one bothered to look at while browsing for a host on webhostingstuff.com.

    Here is the video summary for this month:

    Also see if WHS uses any of these 25 hosts – hint: they don’t.

    Webhostingstuff top 1 – 10 most popular hosting companies

    Nothing new here, but…..

    I don’t think Hostgator is purchasing “advertising” from Webhostingstuff.com

    This has been a thought in the back of my head for some time now.  Why would a host like Hostgator bothered to buy, especially when all the other big names hosts have jumped ship.  I think the simple answer to that is that a simple commission of $125 per sign up is enough reason to keep a host on with people that pay for this unseen advertising.    Plus while the negative reviews are slim for hostgator, the new reviews are not coming as fast as they are for other review sites.

    Webhostingstuff top 11 – 20 most popular hosting companies

    Site ground is still in the “top 25 list.  While I am still working on my November 2010 list,  this is the host that holds me up from finishing it.

    After that there is Layer Seven Hosting.  I find it interesting that there is no reviews for this site.  Compared to many this is a hosting company that does not offer a huge amount of resources.

    Webhostingstuff top 21 – 25 most popular hosting companies

    Three sites find themselves in the 21 – 25th spots of webhostingstuff.com’s list.

    Infuse Web which has had only 1 review and that was in January 2008.

    Phastnet which has had only 1 review and that was in September 2008.

    The last host is Avahost with a 60% approval rating (3 out of 5 stars), which means they are barely passing.  I will defiantly be going through the reviews for this host when I do my own review.

    and then

    And then Webhostingstuff.com deleted I7net

    Aquariusstorage.com – Will they share your information with a 3rd party?

    Aquariusstorage.com is my second host review of 4 hosts for November 2010 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25. When I saw this site and hostinglocker.com, I had to wonder if these were webhosts or data storage sites.  Its safe to say despite their names they are indeed webhosts.  This is a site that while only 2 years old, I can say has accomplished more in traffic rank then most hosts I have seen do in 2 years.  After all their Alexa ranking is around 500,000.  Most that I have seen that are 2 years old are in the  millions.  I can say the design impresses me, though I guess it gets the job done.

    For that matter there is not a lot to dig up on this host.  Yes Aquariusstorage.com offers unlimited plans.  Of coarse that is something I against as no host can truly offer you unlimited, and there fore are overselling.    I suspose I could complain about them having a post office box, which is where they want you to  send your DMCA complaints.  Frankly I would prefer to send them via email.  Not to mention if I had to mail it I would probable use FedEx, for which you can’t send to po boxes.

    Then there is this part:

    http://www.aquariusstorage.com/privacy.php

    Use of Non-Personally Identifiable Information

    We may share aggregate statistical data about our customers with third parties, such as advertisers or suppliers. This aggregate statistical data will not identify you personally.

    I have never been comfortable sharing my customers information even if it does not identify them personally.  As long as my customers did nothing illegal I would not provide their information to anyone.

    So when was Aquariusstorage.com formed?

    According to the whois, its creation was on November 29, 2008.

    What about Aquariusstorage.com’s review?

    I am not sure how a site that has not had a review in almost 2 years gets a top spot in the t

    The intresting thing is as I review this November Top 25 site, my timing seems perfect.  It appears that Quantawebdesign.com changed their dns today.

     Updated Date: 20-dec-2010

    While Aquarusstorage is with Softlayer, Quantawebdesign.com is now with PWEBTECH.COM.

    I can’t really say why they left.  After all this is the only review I can find.  I have to say I am a bit suprised to not find more

    I was about to go to the terms of service  for Aquariusstorage when I found this:

    John Smith who is not the owner of randomdomain.com is not hosting with AquaruisStorage.  I tend to wonder if this was a design error.  Clicking on the link in the testimonial takes you to the same page you are on, and not to where you would expect to be taken to more testimonials.  After all this is something that the designers did with my companies, they used generic names and such when drawing up the site.  However that was for heads of the company to see.  So while I got to see names of people on the initial draw up, customers and would be customers would not.

    Personally I do not think Aquariusstorage should put up testimonials until they get some from current customers that are still with them.

    hostinglocker.com – Creation is all that is needed to be a top host

    Hostinglocker.com is my first host review of 4 hosts for November 2010 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25.  At first look I saw there was no reviews for this site.  Unlike usual when I was doing the initial write up for the hosts to be reviewed for November I decided to look at whois information.  I was a little surprised to see that a host that ranked number 11 out of 25 hosts was actually created the very month it won (sorry I mean acquired “advertising” from webhostingstuff).  Then again i7net has not been online and they are in the 21 spot, so I suppose this host is a step up from i7net.  The design is not bad compared to many of the companies I have reviewed, it may be a bit on the clunky side.  But its not overwhelming with detail.

    Then there are the hosting plans, three total.  But no mention of unlimited space.  With that I can say I am not focusing on the plans at this time.  I think the true focus is when this company was formed.

    So when was Hostinglocker.com formed?

    This might be a bit of a confusing statement:

    HostingLocker – established in 2001 as parent company, iNetdog. HostingLocker’s plans are simple – every hosting package contains all of the great features available. The only differences between hosting plans are the disk space and bandwidth allocations. HostingLocker does not oversell either disk space or bandwidth, so your site is protected and guaranteed the best performance possible.

    http://www.comparewebhosts.com/GuaranteedHost.htm?C=6077

    Now to be clear this is when the domain was created October 22, 2010:

    The parent company appears to be inetdog.com which was formed August 26, 2001:

    Combined with the whois information and a look at inetdog, I can tell you that inetdog is a reseller for Godaddy’s Wild West Domains.  After all you clearly see:

    Registrar: WILD WEST DOMAINS, INC.

    In both domains whois.  Then you can go to inetdog and see a Wild West Domains template.  A template that obviously not been modified since they first signed up with this Godaddy reseller program.

    While inetdog.com is a Godaddy reseller, hostinglocker is a customer of CLOUDFLARE.COM.  Which is  new company to me, though I have to wonder if cloudflare.com allows reselling.

    I find this part of cloudflare’s terms of service intresting:

    SECTION 9: RECORDS OF YOUR VISITORS

    As part of the CloudFlare Service, you may choose to monitor the traffic to certain websites. In doing so, you acknowledge that CloudFlare acts as your limited agent (and data processor in the EU context) to you for the purpose of providing Internet data and optimization services. You acknowledge that it is your responsibility to ensure that the use of CloudFlare’s Service is permitted under the laws of your jurisdiction and you agree to indemnify and hold CloudFlare harmless if your use of the Service is in violation of local law. Where required by law, you agree to post a privacy policy on any that, at a minimum, discloses any and all uses of personal information that you collect from users including any information collected via the Service. You agree to indemnify and defend CloudFlare from and against any and all claims stemming from your failure to comply with this provision and/or your failure or refusal to abide by the terms and provisions of any applicable privacy policies.

    http://www.cloudflare.com/terms.html

    I can’t seem to find a privacy policy on hostinglocker.com.

    So its been 2 months and Hostinglocker.com has testimonials

    I am not familar with Martin-Group or The RedStone Group, but I doubt that Sony America is hosted with them.

    Then there is this statement from Hostinglocker.com

    http://hostinglocker.com/faq.shtml

    Why don’t you offer unlimited disk space or bandwidth?

    Actually it is not possible for any hosting company to offer unlimited disk space or bandwidth. This is typically an advertising gimmick that is cleared up when you read their Terms of Service. All of them will have a clause where they can terminate your account for excessive disk or bandwidth usage, usually without defining those terms. HostingLocker actually reserves the bandwidth and disk space you pay for to keep your site performing well and insulated from other users who may be abusing server assets.

    Which is true, but I tend to wonder how anyone can trust hostinglocker when they use webhostingstuff for “advertising” and have testimonials that are questionable.

    webhostingstuff- October 2010 top 25 list in review

    October 2010 left me with 8 hosts to review from webhostingstuff that were never reviewed before by me.  Granted I am scrambling with what free time I have to get the all the new hosts with 2010 wrapped up before the end of the year.  7 of these sites I am certain are small companies.  But there might be 8,  despite having 4 reviews on webhostingstuff, they have a vast amount of reviews on sites that don’t take include websites that were hosted by the site being reviewed.

    Despite being pressed for time, I decided to increase my own work load by doing videos about the reviews.   So much for free time in between my work for new income sources.

    Webhostingstuff top 1 – 10 most popular hosting companies

    The only new introduction on the top 25 in the 1 – 10 spot is a host called Cirtexhosting which is in the 5th spot.

    https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/cirtexhosting.html

    At first glance they had a 3 star review, but further review showed they only had a 1 star average rating for the last 6 months.   Though as I compose this the rating is now up to 2 stars.

    There was a lot of testimonials on Ciretexhosting’s site, but most of those reviews had migrated.  All but three sites remain.  1 was under the Cirtexhhosting’s ownership, 1 only had a landing page, and just one site is active.

    Webhostingstuff top 11 – 20 most popular hosting companies

    Three new hosts in the 11 – 20 spots Snapblox, condorhosting.com, and Web Host Logic Inc (not highlighted).

    At number 16, we have snapblox

    If you noticed I highlighted that they have no reviews. https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/snapblox.html On top of that this a company claiming to be 6 years old, too bad the whois does not back that up.

    At number 17 we have Condorhosting.com

    https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/condorhosting.html

    Despite the fact they have a full five star rating (from just three reviews), they have not received a review since July 2008.  You would think they would of had some positive feed back in at least September to earn that October 2010 slot.  This is a bit of a strange host, they don’t try to hide the fact that they are a small company.  They clearly tell you they have only 2 servers. Plus their plans seem to be stuck in the past.

    Not to mention the graphics need work.

    At number 18 we have Web Host Logic Inc

    https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/webhostinglogic.html Just another site that proves you don’t need customer feed back to be on webhostingstuff.com’s top 25/ Despite some odd ball point in the terms of service that says you can’t transfer ownership of an account to someone else (keeping a customer is just not that vital). They give fee domains with accounts, but charge $20 for addtional domains.

    Webhostingstuff top 21 – 25 most popular hosting companies

    4 new companies in the top 21 – 25 spot.  Infinite Networks, GigaPros, YASPE. and Cornhusker Tech.

    At number 22 we have Infinite Network

    https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/infinitie-net.html

    Clearly the problem with this host is despite having a two star rating, webhostingstuff felt that it was fitting to put this host in a top 25 just because they paid for “advertising”. Because it was on the list, and has 2 stars I figure the best place to look for problems is on the very customer reviews that people put on whs.   The problems are technical in nature.

    At number 23 we have GigaPros

    https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/gigapros.html

    Here is the strange thing about this host,  on Webhostingstuff they only have 4 reviews.  Yet on their own ratepoint ( a company that I find fishy) account has 149 reviews, no negative reviews.  Even though webhostingstuff has one negative review.  Web-hosting-top.com has a ton of reviews as well, including a few negative.  I suspect its because whs keeps track of domains associated with customers that complain or praise a host.  Never mind there are still people that fake their reviews on webhostingstuff with domains. On top of that they want people to beleive despite offering an unlimited package that they do no oversell. Honesty is the key to any successful business. We do not hide any tricky limitations in our Terms and Conditions page. Instead, we show you the exact resources that you are buying from us. And that’s the base of our Zero Overselling Policy. You fully get what you pay for! No excuses, no gimmicks, no lies This site has alot in common with site5.

    https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/site5-sucks.html

    At number 24 we have YASPE

    https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/yaspe.html

    They claim to have 20,000 clients.  But they only have one review with webhostingstuff despite 10 years of service, their parent comapany LIQUIDNETLTD.NET (who is actually younger then them) has no reviews despite having 25,000 customers.  I can not find reviews for either on other review sites.

    At number 25 we have Cornhusker Tech

    https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/condorhosting.html This would be the first host to actually agree with me after a post.  So I don’t feel there is a point in beating a dead horse.  I have actually offered a re-review in 6 months.  I am hoping that he will use some other company then hostgator for reselling.

    Webhostingstuff had i7net at 21 in October 2010

    As I write this, I can tell you now that the i7net entry has been deleted.  After doing a snap shot of Decemember 2010, I found no mention of this host.  I wanted to look up some info on i7net, and its gone.  For that matter they seemed to have trimmed down the number of hosts 12,789 to 12,007 in a 24 hour period of time.  Perhaps its a hick up, but once again I am being blocked for doing 12 inquires. For full details as to why I find this odd you can go to https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/i7net.html for full details on a webhost thats not been online most of this year.

    It really does appear that its going down hill for webhostingstuff

    Currently there is only one webhost of any ranking on webhostingstuff (hostgator), all the rest are just host trying to hang on or just a fly by night operation.

    Yaspe.com – Do they have 20,000 customers?

    Yaspe.com is my Last  host review of 8 hosts for October 2010 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25.  On the surface they are 10 years old, yet they only have 1 review with webhostingstuff.  Other then that I can find no other reviews.  Perhaps that might be because they are from Spain, and appear to from the Way Back  Machine to have been a Spanish site.  What little I know of the Spanish Language is not enough to help me in looking up results in Spanish.   But here is the thing that strikes me, they claim to have 20,000 customers.  Yet their Alexa rank is 1,812,782.  Even with 300 customers on the last host I created the score was below seven hundred thousand.   Thats also considering even though the domain was 13 years old, it was only being actively used for less then 1 year.    I have several domains that are 10 years or older then have ten million or higher on their Alexa rating because they have been doing nothing.

    You would think that Spain would show up in the Traffic Rank, especially when they have 20,000 customers.  But I suspect they are counting sites not customers.

    Despite my lack of search engine optimaztion skills, I have gotten hosting-reviews-exposed.com to around 250,000 on Alexa.  Keep in mind before I had a blog my score was above three million.  That only took me 6 months.

    What about the video on YASPE’s home page?

    Its strange there is only one website on the video, and its not yaspe, but lightvocalgroup.com.

    YASPE’s website is located in the United Kingdom, however the lightvocalgroup.com is located in Bulgaria.

    I suspect that YASPE is not the only host using this video, and going through the domain whois and the terms of service my suspicion is proven correct.

    It appears they belong to a network that belongs to:

    LiquidNet Ltd.
    OrgId: LIQUI-20
    Address: 1040 SE 7th Court, Apt 307
    City: Dania Beach
    StateProv: FL
    PostalCode: 33004
    Country: US

    Then there is this from their terms of service

    http://www.yaspe.com/?lang=en&action=terms

    The Service that is subject to the following agreement is provided by YASPE in association with LiquidNet Ltd., a company registered in the United Kingdom, registration No. 4654498. YASPE and LiquidNet Ltd. will be referred to as YASPE for the sake of brevity in this document.

    Off to the whois once again.

    Queried whois.internic.net with “dom liquidnetltd.net”…

       Domain Name: LIQUIDNETLTD.NET
   Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
   Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
   Name Server: DNS1.SUPREMECENTER.COM
   Name Server: DNS2.SUPREMECENTER.COM
   Status: clientDeleteProhibited
   Status: clientRenewProhibited
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Status: clientUpdateProhibited
   Updated Date: 06-jul-2010
   Creation Date: 19-aug-2006
   Expiration Date: 19-aug-2011

    And what does webhostingstuff have to say about liquidnetltd.net

    With its more than 22 500 customers, fast and reliable client support team, necessary know-how and superb technical equipment, the LiquidNet Ltd brand is fast becoming a household name in today’s hosting industry.

    Interestingly LIQUIDNETLTD.NET claims to have 2500 more customers then YASPE,  yet has a lower traffic popularity then it:

    Site Established: Unknown

    Traffic Popularity: #8,860 of 12,007 companies

    When I did my snap shot YASPE was 3,955 out of 12,789 hosts.

    Its appears that webhostingstuff is clearing house, more on that in a later post (one where I say good bye to i7net).

    Its also my opinion that this may be a reseller on a program similar to Wild West Domains (the Godaddy reseller program).   Though there is not enough there to confirm that its a reseller.

    YASPE the host that makes you read

    Going through yaspe, I find a lot of quirky English.  Granted I don’t really like pointing out a host for having bad grammar.  As I am not exactly perfect in my own English, especially before I have my morning coffee.

    TECHNICAL SUPPORT FOR EXISTING CUSTOMERS

    To open a trouble ticket and receive a solution to your problem from our technical support in less than an hour, you have to read the instructions in the YASPE Ticketing System.

    I am willing to bet that yaspe is not the only company thats a part of LIQUIDNETLTD, if they have 22,500 – 20,000 customers.

    But with no brainer lines like “Having a website of your own would be unthinkable without a web hosting account at hand.“, you have to wonder why anyone that reads would buy from yaspe.

    GigaPros.com – Ratepoint and Limited Unlimited

    GigaPros.com is my seventh host review of 8 hosts for October 2010 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25.  This is another host that uses Ratepoint.com to show case reviews.  In the back of my mind I tend to wonder about what the angle is with Ratepoint.com.  In the last post I did about a host that used them(https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/site5-sucks.html), I had a rather quirky conversation.  On the phone they told me I could delete the negative feed back as long as I made some effort to appease the customer.  But my email told me an entirely different story that it would not be deleted.  Gigapros.com has an amazing amount of reviews, and per usual no negative reviews.  My first thought was to look for negative reviews on other sites.   They are out there, suprisingly only a few negative reviews, yet a surprisingly large number of positive reviews.  Yet unlike webhostingstuff that has only 4 reviews, they do not have the domains of the sites like webhostingstuff.com.  There is nothing to validate these as real reviews on the sites where there is a huge number of reviews.

    I have to say that this has only made me more curious about ratepoint.com.  Rumor wise here is what I have to wonder if its true.

    • The terms of service listed on the site is not the same as the one they impose.
    • During the trial negative reviews are deleted
    • Ratepoint customers can choose rather negative reviews show up or not.

    So how old is GigaPros.com?

    Honestly I would have thought that the site would be older then what I had suspected based on what Alexa tells me and the amount of reviews.  A whois tells me its only 2 years old.

       Domain Name: GIGAPROS.COM
   Registrar: DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM
   Whois Server: whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com
   Referral URL: http://www.PublicDomainRegistry.com
   Name Server: DNS1.GIGAPROS.COM
   Name Server: DNS2.GIGAPROS.COM
   Status: ok
   Updated Date: 14-mar-2010
   Creation Date: 05-mar-2008
   Expiration Date: 05-mar-2012

    What I find strange is that a company that is only 2 years old has a ton of feed back on 2 sites their own paid for Ratepoint account, but only 4 on webhostingstuff.com which they are one of the top 25 hosts for October 2010.

    Interesting tidbit there about GigaPros being slow.

    GigaPros.com promises no overselling……..

    Absolutely No Overselling

    At GigaPros, we enforce ZERO Overselling Policy. So, you get 100% guaranteed server resource allocation at all times. No overloaded server means high reliability & more uptime for your website.

    So if you decided to use 20 trigs of space it will not over load GigaPros server all for a whopping $3.99.

    How is GigaPros Different?

    Honesty is the key to any successful business. We do not hide any tricky limitations in our Terms and Conditions page. Instead, we show you the exact resources that you are buying from us. And that’s the base of our Zero Overselling Policy. You fully get what you pay for! No excuses, no gimmicks, no lies

    http://www.gigapros.com/portal/index.php/products-a-services/linux-web-hosting-comparison.html

    Honesty is not always the key to a successful business, after all this is the same company that is using webhostingstuff for “advertising”, could someone please point me to their advertising?

    Here is what Wikipedia says about Overselling:

    Overselling refers to selling of a volatile good or service in excess of actual capacity. In the travel industry, the term overbooking is used instead. In telecommunications, sometimes the term oversubscription is preferred. The practice occurs intentionally where sellers expect that some buyers will not consume all of the resources they are entitled to, or that some buyers will cancel.

    Which means that “Honesty is the key to any successful business” is not what Gigapros is practicing.  Here is what Wikipedia says about the term in relation to hosting:

    In the web hosting industry, the term is used to describe a situation in which a company provides hosting plans that are unsustainable if every one of its customers uses the full extent of services advertised. The term is usually referred to the web space and bandwidth transfer allowance. A hosting company may offer unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth, however, they put other restrictions in place such as CPU usage or inode limit. They may have onerous restrictions and one-sided contracts that lets them cancel the hosting of anybody that puts a strain on their system or fully uses their claimed allotments.

    This practice usually incurs little ill-effect since most customers do not use any significant portion of their allocated share. If a customer has a small, low-traffic site serving static HTMLpages, few resources will be used. If a customer wishes to run a high-traffic, professional, or business website an oversold hosting account can be detrimental. In these cases, a shared hosting provider that does not oversell, a virtual private server or dedicated server is a preferred option.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overselling

    I don’t agree completly agree with the hosting description for overselling on Wikipedia.  But in essence if a hosting package says that its unlimited then yes it is being oversold.

    The funny thing is that in my review of site5.com they not only used ratepoint.com just like Gigapros.com they think you can offer a unlimited plan without overselling:

    It is important to remember that “unlimited” does not always indicate “oversold”, so do not let anyone tell you otherwise! We monitor our servers constantly to ensure optimal operating performance.

    I will tell you that unlimited access is clearly overselling.

    https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/site5-sucks.html

    I have to wonder based on the tons of postive reviews, ratepoint.com, and the belief that unlimited hosting does not mean overselling if there is not a connection between these two companies

    This GigaPros post could be longer, especially the part where they compare themselves to other hosts.

    Hostgator.com – Black Friday Spam

    The week after Thanksgiving I found tons of spam in relation to hostgator and Black Friday.   It was everywhere email, this blog, my personal twitter account and my YouTube videos.  I suppose its not all Hostgators fault.  They did say not to spam forums and email.  Though I did get spam by email, and so far my forum seems to have been ignored.  Yet they offer a super cheap package which is hard to resist when you don’t understand the ramifications of overselling.  After all a three year unlimited account for roughly $36 a year, and yet still get $50 – $125 per sale.  Even some one as bad as marketing as myself should be able to manage a few sales with that kind of a deal.

    The pre-Black Friday Hostgator Promotion

    Be ready to see a huge amount of activity and unbelievable sales numbers that will only come around once a year!

    Here’s what we want you to do:

    Post about the promotion on your blog
    Post on Twitter and Facebook
    Post about it on forums (follow all forum rules and don’t spam)
    Tell your E-mail lists (Again, no Spam!)
    Refer friends and family
    Push all of your hosting related traffic to HostGator and EARN BIG!
    Tell everyone you know!

    Which leads to hostgator spam

    Spamming a blog is ok, because Hostgator did not say you couldn’t right?

    I suppose hostgator can use the argument that their terms of service and their mail outs stated not to send spam via email and forums.  But this line motivates people to get a high payout “Any commissions earned during our Black Friday special will receive a FULL commission!“.  Top that off with Shared hosting” $4.95/month AS LOW AS $0.99/month.  How hard is it to resist doing spam for an offering that is super cheap when there is a chance for a big pay out. It may be questionable if Hostgator intended for there to be spam, but its clear what happen.

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