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.

infinitie.net – When a 2 star host is all you want

infinitie.net is my sixth host review of 8 hosts for October 2010 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25.   When I first wrote up my review for whs in late October of 2010 the first thing that came to mind was this host had a 2 star ratine, or in my own thinking a 40% approval rating.  By grade school standards that means this host is failing.  The site itself is a poor design, and it appears that there has not been an update on the site in 2 years.  But the point is they are supposed to be one of 25 so called best hosts, so I figured I should look at the reviews on webhostingstuff.

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

The complaints on just webhostingstuff.com point to tech support issues.  One complaint states having to give details that were already given before.  Nothing is more aggravating then having to state what was already given, especially if its in a ticket system.   It gets worse when it deals with down time.

Infinitie networks only has one review that puts them in a good light

Infinitie is great  (Average)

– by Marko (hostingtops.com) on 3 September 2008

This review from Marko who happens to own his own (very cluttered) webhosting review site, said they were great.  Funny thing is there are tons of hostgator  placements but nothing for infinitite.net.  Marko only gave then an average rating, since webhostingstuff is blocking me again and I don’t want to bother anyone to see how many starts this reviewer gave infintite networks I have no idea which category he rated less in.  The whois information for this site indicated there was a dns change to another host atleast in August 2010.  I have no idea if he changed his dns prior to that after his review.

What state is Infinitie Networks located?

I have been reading several places where there are claims of being headquartered in Phoenix.

“Our Support Team is located in house at our Phoenix NOC operations center, so we are in Arizona Standard Time, which as of right now is basically mountain time.“

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1001369&highlight=infinitie.net

But the problem is their domain whois info gives a Nevada address:

   Infinitie Networks
   3155 East Patrick Lane
   Suite 1
   Las Vegas, Nevada 89120-3481
   United States

Then there is this from another webhostingtalk post:
 

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1001360&highlight=infinitie.net 
IP to Ping: 208.89.218.1 (Phoenix, AZ)

So I ping it and I do a look up by IP

http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/208.89.218.1

http://www.websitefigures.com/site/infinitie.net

Once again I am brought back to Las Vegas, Nevada not Phoenix Arizona (where I am).  Its not like he could not set up a data center here.  I am not sure why someone would claim to not be from Las Vegas.  Phoenix is in many ways similar in economics, crime, and climate.  Both of which I think are ideal cities in terms having a network center as both are geo-logically stable and extreme weather is rare.

Going through their site I find a  link to the colocation facitily in Arizona http://infinitie.net/phxcolo-index.php

But I am brought back to that ip “to ping”.

Perhaps it was a mistake?   That the ip they meant to use was for their Phoenix location.  Its not like every host out there stays in one city.

But I am brought back to the design of infinitie networks

The blog seems to be the only thing with posts for this year, granted its only 3 blog posts.  The forums are far worse.

http://community.infinitie.net/index.php?showforum=39

One of the things I hate about having a blog or forum on a company site is that you have to do regular updates.   While a plus in an active blog and or forum gets a site higher search engine rankings, it means someone needs to update it.  If you guessed I was the one that got suckered into maintaining them you guessed correctly.  The rate that I put out posts for this blog would be considered barely adequate.

Looking at their announcement forum all looked well until the end of September 2008.  While there were frequent updates through 2008 to then, it just suddenly stops.  I am not sure why they stopped.  It has to be better then paying webhostingstuff to show case that even while infinitie networks are in the top 25 they have a 40% approval by customers.

3 years and counting – hosting-reviews-exposed history in summary

I am not sure why it slipped my mind but this site hit a 3 year mark last month.  If you just started reading my blog here is a summary of what started my crusade against the fake review sites.

In October 2007 after a week of being unable to get resolution with webhostingstuff.com and being blocked by them, I had to vent, so I started researching information for an anti-webhostingstuff video.  Webhostingstuff did not take into account that I am not exactly normal and a little bit crazy.  Having made videos with YouTube, I knew how well they worked at bringing in traffic.  For that matter Google gives a lot of search engine prioty to videos on YouTube.  But the further I looked into webhostingstuff.com, it became clear that they were not the only ones that were trading rankings for dollars.  I found that review sites worked in two different forms one of which was like webhostingstuff selling rankings to the highest bidder, and the other which was to rank them by the amount an affiliate pays out.  The false consumer reports sites were trying to make themselves out to be fair and honest.   Never mind most of these hosts don’t even host with the #1 host or any other host in their ranking, they want you to so they can get paid.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a capitalist among other things.  I like money and I have no problem with affiliates making money promoting a website.  But I also believe in honest ethical practices, I also believe in a reasonable payment %.  Having once owned 4 hosting companies I had affiliate programs on every one of them.  But I was not paying anyone to fake my position in the hosting industry.

For the first time ever In November 2007 I would get a domain not under my own domain registration site, and not hosted on my own servers  which is this site hosting-reviews-exposed.com and I would launch this video on YouTube. This very video:

Here is the text from the original home page.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/hosting-reviews

After I made the video and site, my venting seemed over.  While I paid for the webhosting on the site and kept the domain active.  I did little more then answer and moderate comments on youtube.  I figured in time that interested in my video would die off, but atleast I got to blow off some steam over how I was treated by webhostingstuff.

It was probable not until  May 2010 that I would take an interest in this site.  You can thank Google for that, they sent me an email saying I could make money off of hosting-reviews-exposed.com.  The first thing that came to mind was not dollar signs, which is strange for those that know me.  For that matter this is the first site the google has contacted me to get adsense on.  I was rather shocked.  I come to find that despite my neglect this site was gaining traffic.  I am no expert in bringing traffic,  I figured this site would be dead last in site rankings.  For that matter who knew that Google would contact you if your site was doing well?

So I thought I would look around and see if there was any buzz on search engine about this site.   While searching Google I found one site that show cased my video, in addition did something I should have been doing.  Which is to review the hosts that were using webhostingstuff.

Even though the host had lost intreast in keeping track of who was on the top 25 I saw that it was worth seeing who was in the top 25 and finding out why they should not be there.   49 hosts later I can say there are very few hosts that did not earn skepticism that appeared on webhostingstuff.  I also ended up adding hosts that decided to spam me, after all why trust a host that can’t get customers by honest means.  But I can’t say thats the last of what I will add to webhostingstuff.

webhostinglogic.com – Your source for over priced domains

Webhostinglogic.com is my fifth host review of 8 hosts for October 2010 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25. What strikes me about this site is that its cluttered.  I am not sure the point of putting tons of links and distracting graphics on the main page of a site.  Much of what I see on the main page of webhostinglogic towards the bottom of the screen belongs in on a package page.  The main page of hosting site should not overwhelm, but invite you to explore the site further.  Instead I find information scattered around the main page of webhostinglogic.com.

Does webhostinglogic offer a free domain or a $20 domain?

If you read enough of my posts you will know I have a gripe with cheap and bulky resource hosting.  I also have a gripe with free domains with hosting.  Mostly because that was a ploy that hosting companies use to keep customers, now they charge an obsene amount to keep the domain.  Yet I have issues with costly domains.  Paying $20 domains for a domain is like paying McDonald $20 for a cheese burger and fries.  Domains are one of those things that you can afford to go cheaper with, at this time I don’t know of many cheap domain registers expect those that offer free domains with the hosting that I would advise avoiding.  There is not much involved service level wise with a domain.  Once again I can not stress enough that its not a good idea to keep your domain with the same company that you start out hosting with.  Maybe after a few years when you decide you like your host, but even then there is that chance that the host could be bought out by someone that could care less about the management of your service.

Regardless if your first domain is free with webhostinglogic.com $20 is a lot to pay for extra domains.

So whats odd about the terms of service for webhostinglogic?

http://www.webhostinglogic.com/company/usepolicy.html

I can’t stress it enough, you have to read the terms of service with anyone you sign up  with.  Webhostinglogic is a good reason to read the terms of service.

Web Hosting Logic accounts cannot be transferred or used by anyone other than the subscriber. Customers may not sell, lease, rent or assign the connection or parts of the connection to any party not named in this Policy. Customer may allow ftp access to its server and host web sites for its customers without violating this Policy. Network bandwidth charges in excess of allocated amount will be assessed from access log reports generated by the HTTPD server.

So there is an anti reseller clause in the terms of service, that I can understand.  What I can not understand is the anti transfer of ownership clause.  If a customer contacted me and told me that so and so was to take over an account, I did not think twice about the transfer.  Did I say that I like money?  Allowing someone to keep someone else account and not having to register a new account is less fuss.  Its like that argument I have with the utility company when ever I paid them via phone:  They wanted me to confirm who I was, yet I could care less who pays my bill so long as they can not modify my service.  By the same token I don’t care who pays for an account as long they abide by the terms of service.

If a customer re-registers after Web Hosting Logic’s cancellation of the account without Web Hosting Logic’s written consent, Web Hosting Logic will cancel Customer’s account and all dues and fees paid to date regardless of whether service has been rendered will be forfeited. Additionally, any amounts due will be immediately payable.

Ok so your not allowed to reregister with them after they canceled your account.  So what makes them think they can bill you for service they will not provide?

At the time of account cancellation, a Cancellation Code will be provided. If accounts are billed in error after the Cancellation date, credits will only be issued with a valid Web Hosting Logic Cancellation Code. If cancellation is done in writing, it will be the responsibility of the Customer to contact Web Hosting Logic for the Cancellation Code.

Can you say charge back?  If you canceled your account, they are not authorized to bill your credit card.  Its their responsibility to not do unauthorized charges.

Use of Web Hosting Logic’s hosting services could involve listing subscriber’s participation in relevant directories, and subscriber expressly grants permission for such listings.

Does this mean that they can list you as a user for commercial purposes?  That seems like a violation of customer privacy.

Although all hosting plans contain an exceptional amount of data transfer, each plan is subject to a surcharge in the event usage exceeds the allotted free bandwidth for that plan. Customer is responsible for charges related to bandwidth exceeding the plan’s allotted data transfer.

So whats the fee for exceeding bandwidth? The last one I have an issue with is number 19, its not something that belongs in the terms of service as the victim of a copy right violation is not going to be subject to the terms of service.  This belongs in a completely different page along the lines of abuse.

Last thoughts on webhostinglogic

The question I ask is how did webhostinglogic get into the 18th spot?  After all you look at the number of reviews on webhostingstuff.com you come up with zero.  The webhostinglogic.com was registered in 2001.  Looking at the way back machine its does not appear that they are using an aged domain.  But the most commonly used review sites have nothing for this host.  Despite having a score under 1 million with Alexa I am not sure that webhostinglogic has been doing much in the way of business.

condorhosting.com – Not a very big host

Condorhosting.com is my forth host review of 8 hosts for October 2010 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25.  Another small host, granted this is not an issue because they don’t make any claims of hosting x amount of sites.  They clearly tell you they only have 2 servers.  One is for Linux the other is for Windows.   For that matter even though I see no claim of it, they appear to have been in business as early as 2002.  For that matter the only three reviews that give a 5 star rating over 3 years are still with this host.  What can possible be wrong, other then the purchase of so called advertising from webhostingstuff?

So where is the Condorhosting terms of service?

Yes once again a host that does not have a link to the terms of service on every page.  I am not sure why there are hosts that do not have a link on every page leading to the terms of service.   Having that link  available on every page But unlike other hosts you can find it on the packages page.

http://www.condorhosting.com/policy.html

Ok so I found the Condorhosting terms of service now what?

The terms of service is suprisingly weak.  But I think the point that draws my attention the most, and another reason why I urge people to do their own back ups regardless of how good the host is:

Condor Hosting is not responsible for website management or files lost or damaged by users. Website construction and management is the responsibility of the client. Client-maintained backup of all site files is recommended and should be maintained outside of Condor Hosting’s facilities. System backups are intended to be used in the event of system failures and are not intended to be accessed to restore files to individual sites. A fee of $100 may be applicable should a client require any files from our backup systems. We cannot guarantee that the files contained in our backup systems will be the most current copies available for a given site. Tape backups are rotated frequently so retrieval requests should be made within one week of deletion to ensure files are available for restoration.

Ok they charge $100 for a back up that may not be a current back up.  But they said they use tape drives, which is not what they said on the about page “Data is backed up nightly onto a separate hard drive“.

Condorhosting seems to have some rather outdated plans ………….. Maybe

Keep in mind they claim to have 2 servers, they also claim on their about page “State of the art Intel Dual XEON™ 2.6GHz [with Hyperthreading] servers with 2.0GB ECC RAM, 3 x 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drives with Hardware Raid-5, Hardened Secure Kernel and Redundant Power Supplies.”

I am not sure of the last time I had a server with 2 gigs of memory unless its was a customers dedicated server.

‘

If looks like the space on these packages is in kilobytes and the bandwidth is in megabytes.  But looking at the packages page I think the decimal points was a mistake. Frankly I don’t see enough in service to justify the pricing for low space and low bandwidth at these prices.   Granted the 3 sites that had reviews with condorhosting.com are still with them (atleast I hope they are associated with condorhosting as customers).  But packages have to adapt.

Condorhosting may not be a bad host, they may have just made a mistake in judgement when they when with  webhostingstuff.

Cornhuskertech.com – Do they offer 24 / 7 support?

Cornhuskertech is my third host review of 8 hosts for October 2010 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25.  It feels a bit weird to do a post on a webhost that is a local host that also does computer repair.  Despite the fact that they have webhostingstuff graphic posted on the site.  A site I might add that is in need for improvements.  The design is outdated, and considering the amount of themes out there it does not take much to update a website to a more modern look.  After all how can you trust a host to be up-to-date with current technology if their webdesign is not up-to-date themselves.  After all a site is a representation of the company it represents.

Why CornhuskerTech?

http://www.cornhuskertech.com/articles/25-why-cornhusker-tech.html

Cornhuskertech: First, with Cornhusker Tech you are dealing with a local micro-business in Omaha, Nebraska. Buying hosting from Cornhusker Tech directly supports a local individual who in turn supports the local economy.

Yet Cornhuskertech has no problem paying a website that belongs to someone in Singapore for “advertising” to promote his site.

Cornhuskertech: Second, with Cornhusker Tech you are dealing with a local individual who knows who you are. The national hosting providers such as GoDaddy only know you as “number 9876543” when you contact technical support or place an order. With Cornhusker Tech, you are recognized as more than just a number.

What Cornhuskertech does not tell you is that both ThePlanet (I actually was several different numbers with them) and the host that they are really with do treat you like a number.  But I have to wonder by “individual” does that mean only one person is performing the support?

Cornhuskertech: Third, with Cornhusker Tech your hosting fees go directly to a local business operation focused on providing quality service to clients. Unlike some of the others, none of the proceeds will be going to trying to outdo the previous year’s almost-too-racy-for-TV ad during the biggest football game of the year.

Considering part of the customer fees go towards the top 25 positioning on webhostingstuff, its not just supporting the local economy.  Also I have to ask is it better to be with a host that gets people to tattoo themselves as well as get them to change their name to the host name?  No I don’t mean ThePlanet.

http://www.cornhuskertech.com/articles/25-why-cornhusker-tech.html

So is Cornhuskertech with ThePlanet?

Cornhuskertech: Finally, you may be wondering if Cornhusker Tech really has the bandwidth and reliability to host your site. Cornhusker Tech is a sole-proprietorship, but I lease space in one of the country’s premier datacenters (The Planet). Neither Cornhusker Tech nor The Planet practice overselling, or the practice of setting up more accounts than the server has space or bandwidth to accommodate. So you know that whatever disk space and bandwidth you have paid for will be available to you. The Planet is connected to multiple major IP backbone networks, so is not some small operation dependent on one local ISP throughput. Rest assured that despite the small local operation here in eastern Nebraska, your data is safe in a world-class datacenter.

So is Cornhuskertech with ThePlanet? Yes and no.  This site is not a direct customer of ThePlanet.  Instead they are actually a reseller for HostGator, a direct customer of ThePlanet.   Not the first time I have found a host that was with HostGator (https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/webinternethosting.html).  Hostgator has no problem with overselling, for that matter they celbrate it.  http://blog.hostgator.com/2008/10/20/all-you-can-eat-hosting/ Frankly most of the complaints that I have seen from Hostgator seem to be a result of having too many accounts on a server.   Granted I have never used any of ThePlanets shared environments as all the servers I had with them were for my sole use, so I have no idea if they over crowd servers.

As you can see with the above graphic the  cornhuskertech domain is registered with Hostgator, and the dns is with websitewelcome.com which is the dns that hostgator gives customers.   However I can see that cornhuskertech actually has their own private dns, which I am not sure why they are not using.

Does Cornhuskertech offer 24 / 7 support?

That I can not tell,  for that matter I suspect not because of this page which seems the only way to obtain support:

http://www.cornhuskertech.com/contact.html

Cornhuskertech: Email is the preferred means of communication. Calls will probably go to voicemail but all legitimate calls will be returned quickly. If you do not reach me by phone, please leave a message so I know who to call and what the call is regarding.

I can understand why people would not want to be considered a number.  I can also understand ranting against godaddy (even though their Football tv ads are a real form of advertising, and using webhostingstuff is not)  But I also know that when it comes to webhosting the ability to get 24 / 7 “+” 365  support is vital.  No visible customer login area is also something that bothers me. I can not find anything in regards to when you can get support.

Finale thoughts: Cornhuskertech has a beef with FinallyFast.com

http://www.cornhuskertech.com/articles/24-finallyfast.html

So computer repair is part of your bread and butter,   it can’t be comforting when software that fixes registration issues puts out a TV commercials offering a cheap fix.  Perhaps he is correct in that FinallyFast.com manufactured the evidence, but it is a commercial.   What I don’t find is that there was any actually trying to see if the software works. Complaints about his customers that used it only to make it harder to fix the pc’s he gets in.  But between his rants about Godaddies and finallyfast.com commercials I have to believe he has a problem with companies that advertise that he is in competition with.  Granted I have no idea if FinallyFast.com works, I use Uniblue to fix my registry issues.  But there has to be a better way for Cornhuskertech to bring in computer income then to go after a commercial.

snapblox.com – Party like its 2004, or more like 2007

Snapblox is my second review of 8 hosts for October 2010 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25.  At first look I have to say that I can admire the design of the main page.  Its simple and clean, unlike the last host I reviewed there was a lot of clutter on the main page.  The design alone is enough to make me think there is nothing to question about this webhost, but there is that simple fact that they appear on 16th spot of webhostingstuff’s top 25 for October 2010.  Then there is zero reviews.  Sort of strange for a website that claims they have been around since 2004.  Search engine results bring me even less, esspecially with alot of the common hosting rating sites.

So how old is snapblox.com?

According to their about page http://www.snapblox.com/aboutus:

“SnapBlox was formed in 2004 to fulfill a market need for reasonably-priced web hosting, design, and backup solutions that also deliver superior customer service and satisfaction.”

Does the whois info for snapblox.com back that up?

Clearly the whois information does not back up their claim that snapblox.com has been around since 2004, as the whois information says July 2007.  I am not sure why some hosts claim they are older then what their domain says.  If you read my post on iweb.com https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/hosting-reviews/iweb-technologies-inc-iwebs-com.html.  You will see while they did not admit that their site was not “a trusted name since 1996”, they removed it off their banner.  Some hosts that existed under other names and other forms of business take the start date form their previous operation for their hosting company, regardless if they were not into hosting before.

For that matter the earliest results for snapblox from the wayback machine is:

The earliest results that can be found are for 2008.

But here is what I find weird, while I have a much higher Alexa score then snapblox, they have far more back links then hosting-reviews-exposed.com.  But from every site I have gone to they appear to have almost no traffic.

http://www.websitefigures.com/site/snapblox.com

Perhaps snapblox.com has a problem with being a new guy?

There is nothing wrong with being new, we all have to start some where.  For that matter the last host I started was back in 2008.  Strangely with all the domains I had, I purchased a aged domain.  Granted it was not because it was a old domain, but because it was a really short easy to remember domain.  Frankly the $1,000 I paid was a steal. The value in the domain was is that it was short and easy to remember.   Granted I can not reveal the name because of the non-disclosure agreement.     I never drew attention to the fact that the domain was over 10 years old, for that matter I left the age of the site out of the information of the site.   My intention was to put the age of the site after it reached the 5 year mark. If people asked, I let them know the start date was 2008.  Yes I was asked if the site would be around next month, but at least there was no one around to draw attention to the fact that I lied about the age of my site in their blog post like I have done with snapblox.

One finale thought on snapblox.com

While the below image is fond on the main page…….

I can not find snapblox on webhostingsearch.

Manashosting.com – A Second Look

You would think with my last post on manashosting that I would be done with this hosting company.  But if your anything like me, your a terrible multi-tasker and tend to have a ton of browser sessions going on.  Usually I restart my machine to clear my screen after having so many windows open.  This time around I just closed out the tabs as  I had a lot of work to sort through. So I went about closing all of the sites that I was not looking at any more and I came to the manashosting.com tab.

I found what appears to be a last chance effort to get me to sign up.

I guess it kicked in because I did not do anything for well…….. 6 days (yes I can actually keep a website tab open for that long).  Though it probable happen a few hours after no further navigating through their site.

The part I find hard to understand is you pay extra to get 2 years “free”.  Its not like buy 1 year get 2 free.   Simple put Free = not paying 500 rupee (thats assuming Rs equal rupie / India Currency).

Trying to close the site I get the following screen:

Manashosting is giving 3 years webspace free? and/or 50% discount? and/or 1 year free webspace renew?  I don’t quite understand this message.

Many hosting companies this last chance offer to keep you on the site. Some even void out an affiliates commission to salvage a sale.  However there usually a coupon code offered or better yet the host’s site keeps track of the discount that is offered.  But this discount / last ditch efforts are not clear.

Manashosting.com may be the worst webhost out there

At first I did not think that Manashosting was a site that this site would go after if they had not spammed me.  But upon reviewing the reviews its pretty clear they fake their reviews.  Its funny how many of the reviews start with “I”.

Better yet here are 2 reviews that stand out:

Reliable Hosting – manashosting

 

Our servers are located in a us, and we use the latest technology in server equipment, lines, back-up features and more.
. Reliable, fast server equipment
. Secure, state-of-the art data center
. backup power feeds direct to our data center
. 24/6 Monitoring to help ensure that your website is up

If that is customer feed back I am the proud owner of ocean front property in Arizona (which there is none).

Before this “Postive Feedback”

6REASONS TO CHOOSE MANASHOSTING
. Reliable Hosting – 99.9% Uptime
. Website Maintenance
. unlimited webspace and bandwidth
. Search Engine Submissions
. Website Traffic Stat Monitoring
. Real people who provide live customer support

But I think the most telling sign is that every time negative feed back fills a screen, wave after wave of positive feedback comes in.  Its almost as if they were trying to drown out the any negative feed back.   I have never seen a host that has this much feed back in such a short period of time.

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

Ordering from Manashosting.com? -DON’T!!! – They do not have a secure order form!!!

I decided to go through the order form to confirm the discounts from the two screens.  Sure enough they do not show up on the order form.  But thats not what bothers me.  What bothers me is they collect contact details in an unsecured area.

They also do not process your payment, you have to go through a company called ccavenue.com to pay your bill where you have to reenter card information.  Fortunatly they do have a secure area for accepting your credit card information.

If you are ordering from Manashosting, I have Ocean front property to sell you in Arizona.

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