GreenGeeks Not for Geeks? Is it a iPage clone or just another host that sucks?

August 5, 2010

Number 17 of May 2010, GreenGeeks another greenwashed company. When I loaded this site the first thing I thought was that this company looked like another company I reviewed.

Side by side this company looks a lot like iPage. But from there I have a trouble finding any other similarities. They are owned by different entires on separate parts of the country. They are not even on the same network. Asides for the same chat program I am not sure if there is much else that would connect them. But I think there may be a connection, more then just a shared theme.

But the real problem is this is a greenwashed company, not a green host. Their big claim to being green is that they buy energy credits, but so does British Petroleum. At this point its hard to imagine BP having any positive environmental impact. There is not a lot of detail given by companies that offer green credits for sale.

Greengeeks have alot of links that are in reference to being a green host.

The first link is

http://www.greengeeks.com/going-green/new-earth-day.php

Here you find a link to this company,

www.co2NeutralWebSite.com

I am not sure if I am correct in my assumption but it looks like you pay them per every page view you get or you are paying for traffic that you get from their site. That or you can buy traffic from them. But its unclear how this offsets carbon. Not to mention this site seems to have mostly .dk / Denmark domains, which may have to do with them being from Denmark. Not that I have a problem with doing business with a foreign company, but I like to know details. For an organization that does so much, there are so few webpages with data on how they do it. Not everyone sees the green movement as a way of life, some see it as something to capitalize on. There also those that see that they don’t have to be green to capitalize off of the green sector. Those are companies that are called greenwashed. Its not clear as to what Greengeeks gets from this company other then a fancy banner, and perhaps greengeeks gets traffic.

On the same page I find their reseller program GreenResellerWebHosting.com, where you can sell unlimited reseller accounts. I have a hard time believing that unlimited hosting can be associated with quality hosting, let alone a company claiming to be a green host. Green and efficient are two words that come to mind when being eco-friendly Effiecent technology is not cheap in the beginning, and for that matter technology thats not part of the main trend is not cheap. The cheaper the hosting cost, the more customers the company needs to pile in to make a profit.

http://www.greengeeks.com/why-us/wu-green.php

They have made the claim : “It is important that this industry becomes green and GreenGeeks is the world’s most eco-friendly web hosting company” Other then a lot of pages telling people what to do and how they can be green. There is nothing to show exactly how green they are, the biggest thing that is missing are the numbers. Numbers like the amount of electrify that they use per year. Details are also missing like what company is receiving money to run wind generators. I am looking at actual hosting companies that have their own data centers at buildings built from the ground up to be green. Which include solar power straight to the source. Not buying offsets. They can be claim to leaning towards green when they talk about rigorous recycling of paper, but nothing in regards to equipment. But clearly they a recycle text from their web pages.

The finale link I am going to review is http://www.greengeeks.com/going-green/epa-partner.php

From here I find a link to the EPA.

http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/partners/partners/greengeeksllc.htm

I decided to contact the EPA, because I wanted to know if you really had to provide any proof in order to be a member.

__________________________________________________

Email Exchange with the EPA

From: Benjamin
To: Matt Clouse/DC/USEPA/US@EPA, Blaine Collison/DC/USEPA/US@EPA,Allison Dennis/DC/USEPA/US@EPA
Date: 08/03/2010 05:18 PM
Subject: In regards to green power partnership

Hello Matt, Blaine, or Allison,

I was wonder what documentation I would have to provide to be part of the green power partnership.

Thank you for your assistance.

Benjamin
To: Benjamin
From: Collison.Blaine@epamail.epa.gov
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2010 17:21:10 -0400
Subject: Re: In regards to green power partnership

Benjamin,

Thanks for your inquiry. The information requirements are included in

the Partnership Agreement here:

http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/documents/gpp_partnership_agreement.pdf

The program is designed to cover only commercial & institutional sector purchases. We’re not able to recognize residential partners at this time.

I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Blaine

From: Benjamin
To: Blaine Collison/DC/USEPA/US@EPA
Date: 08/03/2010 06:35 PM
Subject: RE: In regards to green power patnership

Hello Blaine,

I am not seeing what the EPA requires an organization to submit as valid proof of participation. From what I see you merely take the word of the submitter as opposed to any documentation. Is this the case, or do you require copies of receipts and other valid documentation?

Regards,

Benjamin

Subject: RE: In regards to green power partnership
To: Benjamin
From: Collison.Blaine@epamail.epa.gov
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2010 19:10:30 -0400

Ah. Right you are, Benjamin. We don’t require that partners submit proof of purchase. We do, however, check our lists partners with the listed providers once or twice/year: This is what we think we have, could you, the providers, please confirm our understanding of your clients’ numbers?

Hope that helps.

Blaine

RE: In regards to green power partnership‏
8/03/10
From: Benjamin
To: collison.blaine@epamail.epa.gov

Hello Blaine,

I am actually contacting you for research in regards to green credits. So far I am not finding any information from the companies that provide credits and those using the credits. One of the companies that I am looking at is listed in your Green Power Partnership. But the only numbers that are given is 300%. There is no number telling me what their on the grid power consumption is. Or what companies the credit seller is getting the wind credit from.

I find it rather disturbing that the credit sellers, the companies that buy the credits, and the EPA are not disclosing numbers, facts. documentation and reasoning that a company is using renewable energy.

Benjamin

__________________________________________________

I never got a response back to my email from the EPA. But it clear you do not have to give them valid proof to be in their green power partnership. Without numbers and other data they can not prove that they are a green host. Other then a lot of pages GreenGeeks has no relevant proof they are green,

2gbHosting Review: Is 2gbHosting a good host?

August 2, 2010

Number 16 on May 2010 webhostingstuff.com top 25 websites. This is going to be a rather short post. The reason being they have a 7 day guarantee. If a host offers anything less then 30 days they are not a serious webhost and must be avoided at all costs. There are a lot of other problems with this company such as language problems, support issues, and down time which can be easily found if you use a search engine. But there is not much reason to explore that in detail since the biggest alarm bell is there 7 day guarantee that they seem to think is a good thing.

7 Days money back guarantee

We offer no question 7 days money back guarantee with following terms

Money Back available for all shared and reseller hosting accounts.
We do not offer money back on domain registration, SSL certificate and on Dedicated & VPS server payments.
Money back is not possible if requested after 7 days of purchase.
Money back process takes 24 hrs to 72 hrs max that means if you are asking for a money back on 7th day of purchase date, you will get it before 10th day of purchase date.

Then there is their uptime guarantee that offers 99.98 uptime. I would love to show my wonderful chat in regards to what is they offer in regards to compensation, which is defiantly not money. After asking 6 times and being told to read the terms of service that do not say what you get the chat session abruptly ended. The chat operators first language was defiantly not English, nor was the person I spoke with on the phone. As the person on the phone was not direct in what compensation a customer would get for more then .02 downtime. Which equated to more time on your account.

I would avoid this company like the plague. The biggest red flag is that this company has a 7 day guarantee. If their uptime was as great as the phone operator indicated they could easily do a 30 – 60 day guarantee.

Site5.com Sucks & Problems with Site 5 Hosting?

August 1, 2010

Number 15 of May 2010 for webhostingstuff.com. The first thing that strikes me is this little link you click on in order to get more info about (How?):

http://www.site5.com/hosting/web/

Throughout the web hosting industry, one of the biggest catch phrases and movements is the shift towards Unlimited web hosting. Some of our shared web hosting plans allow unlimited disk space and bandwidth.

As the shared hosting industry has progressed, it has become apparent that disk space and bandwidth are not true indicators of how well a website can survive on shared hosting. Instead, the real indicators are server memory and processor usage!

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 am going to tell you otherwise because they are flat out lying or stupid. Granted on all but the unlimited company I owned, I never oversold. But customers who bought a reseller account were allowed to. One such customer had 83 domains. Between the 83 domains he had given a total of 23 gigs, though he was only using 2 gigs. He was on a plan with 5 gigs. But once the total space used hits 5 gigs and beyond he is going to have a problem. Normally most of my customers monitored for this, but the few that didn’t were always the first to complain about their sites not working all caused by running out of space.

In order for this not to be overselling the space provided must not exceed the space available. Unlimited meaning infinite it would still be overselling if they have every hard drive on the planet available. Overselling is done under the assumption that a customer will not use all of the resources listed. Just like a all you can eat buffet, they are assuming that your not going to eat them out of house and home. Where interestingly enough they don’t out and out say “we don’t oversell”. Though they are right unlimited is a catch phrase. But they do state “We monitor our servers constantly to ensure optimal operating performance.” some how this makes it not overselling. At least hostgator.com (Who is on the same network as site5 – Theplant.com) is willing to be honest:

http://blog.hostgator.com/2008/10/20/all-you-can-eat-hosting/

We change an unlimited plan to say “unlimited” and bam — sales increase 30%, if not more. Many people will argue that “overselling” is evil and that it’s the cause of poor hosting service. This is not the case when it’s managed correctly and the proper staffing is in place. When a hosting company hops on the overselling bandwagon, their sales usually increase exponentially. Since very few companies actually have the capacity to handle a major surge in growth, their quality of service is almost guaranteed to deteriorate.

While hostgator is willing to admit to overselling, they are also doing the whole monitoring to ensure there is not a problem. Which boils down to eliminating those that are not profitable. Before signing up with their company I would take some serious time and review:

http://www.site5.com/legal/resource-usage/

Asides for the weird take on overselling, they have ratings at a company called ratepoint.com, the strange thing when you go to the homepage for ratepoint.com you can’t search for sites or companies. There is not a listing of any company using them. This seems to be a direct company you mention on your own site, and not one that you would search for approvals.

http://www.ratepoint.com/pricing.html

I am not sure why an email list plays into review site. But clearly this is not an independent review company. Though clearly their terms of service makes it clear they do not endorse their customers.

6.2 In no event shall any reference to any third party or third party product or service (including ratings thereof) be construed as an approval or endorsement by RatePoint of that third party or of any product or service provided by a third party. Likewise, a link to any non-RatePoint website does not imply that we endorse or accept any responsibility for the content or use of such website.

My question is does this company allow you to delete feed back, or for that matter approve or decline reviews before they are even online. I know there is a lot of complaints about this company, and this site shows a larger ratio of positive reviews then negative in comparison to other sites. I tried calling ratepoint and the first thing I get is someone that works at a call center for them and other companies. Apparently I need to call 8 – 5, Monday through Friday. But chances are I will still get one of these call center operators. When I called I had selected the sales dept, but before I could ask any questions I got asked my name and phone number. I stop the call operator after she asked me the phone number, as I thought it was strange a sales associate would ask me questions before I could ask my own. It looks like I will email them to find my answers. So I may have a later post about them.

I-dentity.com, generic host or the best host

July 30, 2010

When it comes to reviewing sites I can honestly say I look for what is wrong. Because I have a beef with webhostingstuff.com. All the hosts I am reviewing are or were on webhostingstuff.com and bidding for their position. Which brings me to number 14 of May 2010. At this time they are no longer in the rankings. At first glance and a long break from looking at hosts the only thing that struck me is that the site was not an interesting one. Looking at the terms of service while short, but not too short I could find no real problem. I found a few oddities in the awards page. Asides for awards page that has broken graphics to webhostingstuff.com (which may have to due with no longer bidding on a position). There is this with their awards.

The BBB, they have an A+, but they have no complaints in the last 12 years. Which is a little strange. The more business my sites have done the more chances I have of meeting a disgruntle customer that can not be appeased. I have one company that has no complaints but its because it never got past the 500 customer mark. I tend to wonder exactly how many customers it has now and how many it has served in the last 12 years.

SaaS Directory June 2009, There is no reason given by SaaS as to why they received an award, and for that matter they have no interview (which they have a spot for).

eliteweb.cc, clicking on this award brings me to nothing relevant to i-dentity.com. For that matter I can not find anything relevant by goggling eliteweb.cc and i-dentity.com

comparewebhosts.com, another no reason given for why they gave an award to i-dentityhost.com

Findmyhost.com. Has a grading system but no grades. So basically no reason for giving an award.

BOTW Directory – does not even list i-dentity.com

seoinpractice.com- points you to a certificate for a coarse, and is not an award.

Looking at the awards is enough for me to label this company a scam, most of the links lead to nothing that even mentions them, one case is not even an award for a certificate for a coarse, and what few sites that mention them. Then there is the graphics /awards links with webhostingstuff.com

Should you trust Host review sites?

July 28, 2010

There are some people out there that no matter how much of a valid argument that you provide they are going to continue to go with a false concept. If you don’t believe me all you have to do is look up the percentage of people that think British Petroleum is innocent of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For that matter there are still people out there that think we have not gone to the moon and the Earth is flat. You could shoot those people to the moon to see the flag that was planted and they would still claim no one has been to the moon and that the Earth is still flat. I say this because of a comment I did not approve on YouTube from user xXZarlachXx.

the most top hosting review looks at the price.

the affiliate links/referral links is the point with inviting people to new websites.

they want to get something for telling others what websites is good.

I did not approve it because frankly YouTube was not going to let me post a lengthy response. Also I am not sure if he or she is an agent for one of these “top hosting review” sites. I have no problem with affiliate programs as long as their incentives are not along the lines of giving away the farm (i.e. payments that are more then 20% of the first payment via the customer). This weak argument is not enough to stop me. As I have yet to see a correlation between price and ranking. Price does not determine rather a hosting company offers a quality deal. The level of service received is what determines rather hosting is “good”.

What I see is a case where many of these so called review sites show case hosting companies on commission junction, where they get between $60 – $125 and beyond for a sign up. Many of these companies do not trust the direct affiliate program of the hosting company they show case. For which I point to alreadyhosting.com’s comments on webhostingpad:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-934275.html

Even though alreadyhosting.com had a problem dealing directly with webhostingpad’s affiliate system they have no problem still referring people to their company through commission junction.

While at the same time most” top hosting review” sites do not host on the companies in their recommended list. Hostaz.com owned by the same guy (Michael Low) that owns webhostingstuff.com does not host with any of the hosting companies that he recommends, nor do webhostingstuff.com and hostaz.com have matching top lists. Because hostaz.com works on the principal affiliate commissions. Webhostingstuff.com works on the principal of bidding on positions. Most sites that work on affiliate commissions have most have no well written review to tell you why you should sign up, and to be unbiased to tell you the cons in additions to the pros of signing up with any company they recommend. When do have cons its always far less then then the pros of signing up for service. Or for that matter any proof that they tried the host that they recommend. Most of the hosting sites I have reviewed have a lot of complaints, or their search engine results are so obscure that its hard to find cons or for that matter pros. One example is the next on my list i-dentity.com.

The bottom line is these sites are in it for the money, their not in it to refer people to good hosting companies.

Omnis review. Does omnis.com suck? Omnis Web Hosting Review

July 22, 2010

Next on the list was number 13 in May 2010, but now they are number 8 with webhostingstuff.com. The first thing that strikes me is webhostingstuff’s information on omnis,

Site Established: 18 Jan 1996 (14 years and 179 days ago)
Traffic Popularity: #200 of 10,292 companies

Then there is this on omnis.com’s site

Serving over 200,000 accounts since 1999.

I can only take two things from this. First of all what about the time between 1996 – 1999? The second is exactly how many accounts is currently hosted with them. Sure they have served 200,000 accounts since 1999. Its like how many McDonalds telling you how many burgers they sold. While the strategy works for McDonalds as you can see their fast food chain every where. Nothing near that level of visibility with this webhosting company. There is nothing indicating how many accounts / customers / domains are currently hosted with the company.

But that is not really got my attention, what got my attention was that they have an asterisk next to the free domain on the first page.

* Free domain name offer is limited to 12 month or longer hosting packages for the initial year of domain name registration of TLDs priced at $8.95 or less per year.

Its not exactly clear, but I think its safe to say that the domain is only free for the amount of time paid for on the first payment. In other words you buy one year, you get the domain free for the first year. Every year after you are charged for the domain. This has to be the first company that I have seen do that. But there is a real problem with buying a domain with this company:

http://www.omnis.com/dnregistration.php

Domain name registrations do not auto-renew upon expiration. Renewal must be explicitly requested through the current renewal process prior to the expiration date. Domain name registrations will be deleted 30 days after the expiration date. Deleted domain names may enter a Redemption Grace Period status. The Redemption Grace Period provides an opportunity to restore the domain name and retain ownership. Restoration from the Redemption Grace Period requires a fee of $50.00 in addition to the renewal fee and must be paid prior to a domain name being restored from Redemption Grace Period.

This is a rather absurd policy. Its practically begging for a $50 retrieval fee. Perhaps this is where I don’t play customer advocate. But if you don’t want to manage your domain you should not bother with hosting. You might as well be on some obscure directly or sub-domain by some free hosting company that makes its money off of advertising on the content you create. I realize this is not much of a point as I own hundreds of domains. There is not a week that goes by that I don’t pay for a domain. I make it a point to review the domains that will renew in the next 30 days to decided which will be renewed and which will be allowed to expired. Out of most of my business expenses domains are the lowest cost, but most worth keeping on automatic renewal.

This is another company where they create a lengthy multi-segmented terms of service. Frankly I tend to think customers that buy unlimited space hosting are going to pay as much attention to the terms of service as they paid for their hosting account. But here is the part I find funny:

Omnis Network provides no guarantee or assurance to the time in which a new order will be processed.

Located at http://www.omnis.com/policies/hosting.php

I find this absurd, there should be a max amount of time of when to accept an order no matter how cheap it is.

On the same link I also find

Omnis Network uses Network-attached storage devices to store Customer’s files. The nature of this type of storage requires that Omnis Network limit the number of files Customer can store with the hosting service to prevent exhaustion of the total number of files permitted on the storage device. This limit is 81920 files. Customer acknowldeges that this limit exists for all hosting service and can not be adjusted.

There way along with CPU usage another way they use to close accounts down, but I tend to doubt they have ever shut account down for reaching the file limit.

Also here is a reason to maintain your own back ups if you decide to host with them:

A fee of $100.00 may be charged should Customer require any files from system backups. Omnis Network does not guarantee that the files contained in the system backup are the most recent copies for a given site. System backups are available for at most 6 days.

The omnis affiliate program

Is another high payout, at least on the hosting account which they hand out $75. On domains a more reasonable $1 per domain.

This is the first company that I have seen, or perhaps I missed it when reading the terms of service for other companies, but they do not allow you to use their name in search engine marketing strategy:

Affiliates are prohibited in utilizing our protected keyword “OMNIS” or any variation, misspelling or combination of words with our keyword, in advertising and search engine sites.

This means I should not find any sites with does omnis suck? Read my review to find out.

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

I know to many hostingsthatsuck.com appears to be a webhosting review site. But underneath the surface they are really an affiliate that is better served by making companies appear in the best positive light. By the domain name I would assume this would be the place to go to find webhosts that do indeed suck. After spending an hour on their site I am having a hard time finding anyone that they don’t approve of. But they are clearly violating the affiliate terms of service by utilizing Omnis in their search engine results.

Are Greenvillehost.com and Webhostingpad.com the same company?

July 10, 2010

In May 2010 Greenvillehost.com was number 12 on webhostingstuff.com’s top 25 list. Now they are not on the list. That does not mean I forget. This is another so called green company. Their focus is on green energy credits, going paperless, furniture from renewable or recycled materials, and energy efficiency compliant technology. Though I am, suppose to take them at their word from this page with limit information to prove they are green.

http://www.greenvillehost.com/greenhosting.html

Plus a few well known green facts that seem more like fillers to make a full page then actual facts on what makes their company green. To me it seems they are using “green” as marketing gimmick. There is nothing in regards to recycling of old equipment or details in what makes their data center green. While many companies such as my bank don’t send paper statements, that does not stop them from sending marketing to my mail box, nor is it going to stop employees from bringing cans of soda to work. The one word that does not come into play is recycling. There are a lot of elements from the periodic table in computers. Some of which you don’t want to end up in a land fill.

Interestingly enough they bought their domain in 2008 and they have no problem with stating that. To forgo the problem of not using an aged domain they claim to be formed by “web hosting industry experts”. Which I assume would be webhostingpad.com. Webhostingpad shows up on the network whois, and when you go to webhostingpad.com you find a similar single unlimited package. No signs of the ability to resell on their network. I think the finale part that tips me off is the award(s). http://www.greenvillehost.com/awards.html

This link takes you to http://www.upperhost.com/webhostingpad_web_hosting_review.htm

Greenville hosting has no awards of its own. Not even the one from webhostingstuff.com on their site, though that might have to due with greenville no longer being on the top 25, no telling as I did not review the site before they were off the list. Webhostingpad has a bunch of awards from paid spots as well as their affiliates. If I was to choose who to be an affiliate for it would be greenville for a $100 per sign up, versus upperhost which is $75 per sign up.

But lets get in to my phone call and there terms of service. Clearly when any company tells you they are unlimited, their not being honest. Here is the dandy I found in their terms of service.

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

Server Resources
Any Web site that uses a high amount of server resources (such as, but not limited to, CPU time, memory usage, and network resources) will be given the option to reduce the resources used to an acceptable level, or upgrade its service to a VPS plan. Greenvillehost will be the sole arbiter of what is considered to be a high server usage level. Please see ourabuse terms for a detailed listing of our resources. Any Web Hosting account deemed to be adversely affecting server performance or network integrity will be shut down without prior.

And at http://www.greenvillehost.com/billing_policy.html

VPS Server Billing

VPS servers are billed on 1 month or 3 month cycles. Payments are made in advance based on the billing cycle selected. Accounts are automatically renewed at the end of each billing cycle for the next cycle to avoid interruption of service.

To cancel service, you must confirm the cancellation by completing our cancellation online cancellation form at
https://secure.greenvillehost.com/cancellation.htm

In the Reason field, please state”Canceling VPS service”. No refund is issued for cancellations or for termination of VPS account.

Here is the thing I find fasinating, while the terms of service mention VPS, there is no vps plans listed any where on their site. I called them because there were two things I wanted to find out . 1. How much it cost to keep the free domain if you planned on leaving (which is $14.95). 2. Specs and a page for the vps plan listed in greenvillehost.com. On number 2 I pretty much stumped the new sales person. It took 8 minutes to find out Greenvillehost does not offer a vps plan, or remedy should you go beyound the unwritten resource limit. I decided to go to webhostingpad.com and find that unlike greenvillehost.com they do offer chat. I did a screen shot of this rather slow chat. I was able to get a link to the vps plan but it did not cover quarterly billing.

http://www.webhostingpad.com/vps-package.html

I think the most disturbing thing is that when I click on the bbb link on the bottom I get the following screen:

Going to the BBB’s site I get an even less favorable view of webhostingpad.com:

http://www.bbb.org/chicago/business-reviews/internet-web-hosting/web-hosting-padcom-in-rolling-meadows-il-88274902

Looking for greenvillehost bbb I get this interesting link:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-934275.html

I too have had a lot of trouble with the WebHostingPad affiliate program, I have not been very impressed with them in the past but recently they got a new affiliate manager. The new manager seems to respond a lot more quickly than the old one; however, I still think they have a lot of work to do.

What I find humorous is that alreadyhosting.com (in my sights) a company that works much like hostaz.com (Also owned by Micahel Low of webhostingstuff.com) a site that claims to be “AlreadyHosting.com is an independent web hosting review site.” is complaining about webhostingpad.com.

04-21-2010, 09:50 PM

04-22-2010, 03:58 PM

Hi,

I also agree that you better join an affiliate network like Commission Junction. The commission rates at CJ are higher than those inhouse affiliate program of Web Hosting Companies.

I would have to disagree.. I really dislike CJ. A host that I deal with has a CJ affiliate program as well as an in house affiliate program. They ran a test and estimated that affiliates who chose the CJ route lost about 15% more sales than those who did the in-house program.

NOW.. If you have a dishonest host you would be better off going with CJ.

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

“WebHostingPad recently was moved up to the #3 spot on our site! WebHostingPad.com is known for their affordable web hosting package that includes a free domain. Web hosting for only $1.99/month!”

Is 3essentials.com essential to your hosting needs, read to find out!!!

July 8, 2010

When I first started the reviews I thought I would do 1 or 2 a day and spend no more then 2 hours per post. But here I am at number 11 of 25 for May 2010 of webhostingstuff.com. Way over the thirty days I intended to have this all done. As of this weekend I had learned that webhostingstuff.com is having people bid on spots. I learned this from one of the hosts that are on my lists. I am debating as to rather posting that email even though they asked me not to. But there is indeed a post tomorrow in regards to what they have told me. They told me that they are contacting webhostingstuff.com to remove them from their list, I have advised the host that they can plead their case on my site.

Anyway, number 11 of 25 for May 2010. As of today they are now number 6 host. 3essentials.com is not exactly a site that I find appealing. But then again some of the best sites are not the best design. As with some of the other sites in the top 25 doing a search on 3essentials does not lead to results unique to 3essentials.com. So for this review I am going to stick to the webpage, perhaps in the future I will do more of a

The first thing that grabs my attention is a bunch of links at the bottom of the page where normally the terms of service, about, and contact links are. Instead they are amongst these links.

Most of those links look like they belong in a faq section and not at the bottom of the website. Though I do find a rate our service link an appealing idea.

Next stop is the terms of service for 3essentials.com. Here are the parts that stick out for me.

6.e. Maintenance. 3Essentials may, at its own discretion and without notice, temporarily suspend all service for the purpose of repair, maintenance or improvement of any of 3Essentials’ systems. 3Essentials shall restore service as soon as is reasonably practicable. Client shall not be entitled to any setoff, discount, refund or other credit, in case of any service outage which is beyond 3Essentials control or which is reasonable in duration.

I wonder what does not qualify as “ reasonable in duration”

7. Auto Upgrade Of Plans. Client agrees that in the event the clients plan exceeds its allotted data transfer or storage that 3Essentials may automatically upgrade the clients plan to the next plan that will cover such transfer or storage. 3Essentials agrees that in the event of such an upgrade notice shall be given in the form of email. In the event the client does not receive the email, the client shall not hold 3Essentials liable. Client further agrees that no refund(s) will be given.

What bothers me here is that it seems there is not a method to stop a person from using more space then they have paid for. Instead there is monitoring so they can charge you should you go pasted a given amount of space. IT was pretty much my operation that person could not use more space then they paid for. To use more they would have to pay for more. No surprise bills.

9.b. No refunds will be given, for any reason, to accounts that are older than 30 days, this includes, but is not limited to data loss, server or systems being unavailable, or websites being unavailable.

9.f. Pre-payment. Accounts that pay in advance for a specific period are not eligible for a refund if the client cancels the account prior to the renewal date, or the account is terminated by 3Essentials due to a violation of these terms.

9.h. Auto-Renewals. Client agrees that the term of the plan automatically renews on the renewal date for the same term. Cancelations that are received after the plan automatically renews are not subject to refunds.

Translation no refunds regardless if 3essentials is at fault or not. Something I am finding in a lot of terms of service for cheap hosting companies. I am tempted to say to avoid companies that state no refunds regardless of the hosting companies fault or not should be avoided. My own policy was to charge a customer under monthly terms if they broke quarterly or longer commitment after the thirty day guarantee. Then provide a prorated refund. No refunds were issued after 6 months. I have to wonder if merchant providers are willing to back them up on this. Generally the max amount of time to pursue a charge back is no later then 3 – 6 months.

According to the BBB they only have 3 employees and they have been in business since 2004. Unless this is just a failure to update details, this is a good indicator that this company is not growing. I know that Fat Cow and iPage who are own by the same corporation have several employees, and clearly so does HostGator. Yet back in May 2010, 3essentials with three “essential” employees was six spots away from Hostgator.

Their profile page on webhostingstuff.com is no better then the one written for ioxhost.co.uk.

http://www.webhostingstuff.com/company/3EssentialsHosting.html

Here is the thing I find interesting:

How We Operate

3Essentials takes pride in providing quality support to our customers. Our technicians are available 24×7 via email or online chat to resolve problems that our customers may experience. Each ticket is read by our staff and the problem is researched to determine the correct method of assistance to provide.

With three employees they have to research issues. I don’t recall my techs having to do research every time they had a ticket. Perhaps that’s because they had experience to deal with issues and rarely had to learn on the job. Most of the learning came from new things. I am not sure I would be in business if my techs had to “research” all the time “to determine the correct method of assistance to provide”. I would sooner have an experienced staff over staff that has to learn as they go.

3essentials affiliate program is a bit more interesting.

http://3essentials.com/affiliates.asp

You get up to 50% of each sale, but the commission would be no greater then $100. I feel that there is a play on words in the affiliate. It seems they are implying that if you make 20 sales you get $2000. But clearly you would have to sale 20 packages that ensure you get $100 each. Their lowest package is $24.96 for 1 year the personal Linux Hosting, which has a $15 setup fee which I am sure there is no commission on. That’s $12.48. commission. I decided to chat with them to make sure there is no commission on the set up fee. I was correct.

3essentials.com chat session

Benjamin: Curious about commissions through your affiliate program.

You are now speaking with Paul of Server Sales.

Benjamin: Hello Paul

Paul: Hi Benjamin.

Benjamin: I was wondering if I would make 50% off of all sales I refer to you, including setup fees

Paul: Affiliate commissions are 50% up to a maximum payout of $100 per sale

Paul: hosting plans must be active for 90 days to receive the commission

Benjamin: yes I can see that, but I do not see what is considered a commisioned item

Paul: any item that is purchased via your affiliate link can earn comission

Benjamin: including the set up fees?

Paul: ah.. good question. you are not payed 50% of the setup, just 50% of the hosting plan price.

Paul: the setup fee is passed to the customer to help us pay your omission.

Paul: *
commission

Benjamin: is there a link to fine print for your affiliate program?

Benjamin: ie terms of service

Paul: not that I am aware. we do have a general TOS for all “3Essentials Customers” but not for affiliates

Paul: If you have a specific question about the affiliate terms, please send an email to sales@3essentials.com

Paul: the questions will be directed to the manager in charge of that program

Benjamin: ok thanks

Benjamin: how long have you guys been in business?

Paul: since 2001.

Paul: and a BBB member since 2005

Benjamin: and where are you located?

Paul: our coorporate offices and staff are in NC.

Paul: our servers are in Dallas texas

Paul: we also have hardware techs on site in Dallas

Benjamin: ok

Benjamin: have a good day

Paul: you too

Paul: thank you.

Paul: and let us know if you have any more questions.

Paul: bye.

Your party has left this session.

As you can see the chat operator did not bother to read my initial question. Anyone that has worked with me knows better then to pull such a stunt. You answer the initial question, if you feel there is something else to add you do it after answering the question. When someone does not answer my question, I tend to wonder if the person on the other end knows what they are doing or if they understand English. There is no agreement for the affiliate program that outlines the affiliate and 3essentials parts in the affiliate program. Something that would outline setup fees are not part of the commission program. Not to mention that making it clear that the affiliate can’t make claims such as buying hosting will make them rich, cure baldness, make you thin……….

Well the chat operator did not know what he was talking about as I did find Terms and Conditions:

https://partner.3essentials.com/scripts/signup.php

If your reffering from a free hosting account you may want to pay special attention to the terms of service.

3. Commissions. We will pay you a commission of %50 of the plan price.

There is nothing in here about $100 cap, or for that matter nothing in regards to not getting a commission on the setup fee. So this is where I stop on the review of their affiliate program as their staff and the initial page to get you to sign up do not agree with the conditions.

Their are alot of things that strike me as quirky about this company, such as this text I received while waiting for someone to chat with me:

Welcome Benjamin! Please hold while we contact a representative. If a representative does not respond in a few seconds, then he/she is not available at this time.

Who is ioxhost.co.uk?

June 28, 2010

If you have not figured out by now the titles from my blog posts on hosts have been adapted from affiliates trying to sucker people into buy so they can get a Juicy commission. But the more I look into this host, the more I ask myself who is ioxhost?

Number 10, ioxhost.co.uk. The first red light that comes up for me is:

Domain Whois record

Queried whois.nic.uk with “ioxhost.co.uk”…

    Relevant dates:
        Registered on: 06-Mar-2010
        Renewal date:  06-Mar-2012
        Last updated:  06-Mar-2010

This is a company that was supposed to be the the number 10 host out of 25, and now 17 out of 25. For that matter Alexa lists the Traffic Rank at 1,476,372. Which by webhosting terms is not impressive.

Going through the site I see several things that are not right. For one you can’t actually login to the customer service area. My browser tells me there is a error connecting or no such page.

Then there is this the top right hand part of the site:

1-505-796-8710

LIVE HELP (LEAVE MESSAGE)

Clicking on the live help takes me to a chat window that quickly turns into a UK version of the site with a UK number. Clearly things are not what they appear. I gave them a call. I guess I woke someone up after 10 rings as I got a hello, and then a “uh” when I asked if this was iox hosting. After bringing up the login not working for the customer service area I am refered to cPanel. Honestly it did not seem worth it to go any further so I just hung up.

Here is the thing that puzzles me. Webhosting stuff.com claims to have monitored 520 days since Jan 2009. Then there is review:

IoxHost Hosting is excelent (Excellent)

– by Carlos (guaridaarcana.com) on 22 January 2009

The domain name is expired. Three review from April of this year, and one from May 2010. I can’t help but wonder since the domain whois info says created March 2010 if Webhostingstuff.com fabricated the data then. When I first started my video I tried looking for ‘webhosting reviews exposed’ and ‘webhosting review scams”, back then it was hard to find people who complained about sites like webhostingstuff.com. These days sites like mine are appearing in the top of search engine results. I am more then certain that the hosts that use services like webhostingstuff.com are starting to realize that its not a good idea to be associated with webhostingstuff.com. Which might make web hosting stuff more inclined to fabricate information in addition to deleting positive feed back for those that would pay for top listings. But I am not beyond thinking that the domain register for ioxhost screwed up some how. After all according to webhostingstuff.com ioxhost.com was down for 41 hours in February 2010. Perhaps they forgot to renew their domain name. I am not sure that recovery of a .co.uk domain work the same as a .com in terms of recovery. Out of the 2 domains I have recovered they did not lose their creation date.

But there is also this, a site they link to that shows you their uptime:

http://www.pingdom.com/reports/puq9oug0dofg/check_overview/?name=IoxHost+Alpha

It starts April 2010. Asides for a review from 2009 and uptime history from webhostingstuff.com I have doubts that this host was a round last year. Then there is the company profile on webhostingstuff.com as well as http://ioxhost.co.uk/about.html which switches between first and third person perspective.

About IoxHost:

We provide low cost and reliable webhosting to customers across the world,

Established in 2006, We have never faulted in providing the high level of quality customer service and product that customers have come to expect.

We are a team of experienced web developers who couldn’t find reliable web hosting service to host our websites so we founded our own business.

It has been a great success right from day 1 with more and more clients joining us every day.

IoxHost still has the clients they started out with in 2009, which just shows the commitment to their customers.

We caters to the needs of every client, our sales team are professional, well spoken, understandingly sympathetic and knowledgeable – they make great first impressions, that last. Have a problem? Have a query?

Our sales team are very happy to converse with you to get everything resolved, it is afterall in everyone’s best interests.

We have big plans for the future to expand on our business to suite our clients needs.

We take all suggestions seriously and actively encourage our customers to tell us what they would like us to improve on and what suggestions they may have.

Here are the parts I have trouble with asides for this not being a well written or thought out company introduction:

Established in 2006

So far there is nothing that shows that they were around before 2009. What evidence there is that they were around before 2010 seems dubious at best.

IoxHost still has the clients they started out with in 2009, which just shows the commitment to their customers.

This is where they switch to third person. What about the customers from 2006, 2007, and 2008? Are they trying to say they did not lose a single customer from 2009? What about customer that wrote the review 2009 on webhostingstuff.com whose domain is expired? Frankly even the best companies are going to lose customers.

Our sales team are very happy to converse with you to get everything resolved, it is afterall in everyone’s best interests.

That statement brings to mind movies about mobsters, but then again I have a very vivid imagination. But still its not something I would use in the wording of an introduction to my company.

Then there is the show case on ioxhost.co.uk

http://ioxhost.co.uk/showcase.html

There is only one site there rmb-scripting.com, which changed their dns to ioxhost this month. Never mind there are 4 glowing reviews with active sites on webhostingstuff.com (though I suspect those were from the employees, friends, and family). But their sites are not show cased on iox.

Then there is the ioxhost terms of service:

http://ioxhost.co.uk/termsofservice.html

This has to be one of the shortest terms of service. But I think the most mind boggling part is:

Change to the Terms of Service by the Company shall not be grounds for early contract termination or non-payment.

They offer a 99.8% up time. I am not sure most people do the math but .001% down time is 43.2 minutes. Ioxhosting.co.uk can have 1 hour 26 minutes of down time, but there is no clarification on what iox will do to remedy any down time suffered beyond that. Most hosting companies do not consider maintenance such as hard ware upgrades and reboots in the percentage.

Refusal or Termination of Service

ioxhost.co.uk reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason not prohibited by law. We reserve the right to terminate service to any Client for any reason not prohibited by law.

Any deliberate attempt to cause damage to ioxhost.co.uk or any other Internet servers may result in immediate account deactivation without prior notice. No refund is given in this case.

I am not sure anyone at this company bothers to read what they post online. Clearly there is no formatting, broken English, and in this case repeated text. For a terms of service its surprisingly small.

Funny thing is a chat window opened up while I was looking at the terms of service, the chat operator’s name is Daniel. Which is the same first name for the owner of the domain ioxhost.co.uk.

Just a simple chat with Daniel of Ioxhost

I decided to chat with Daniel, whom I assume owns the domain ioxhost.co.uk. Unfortunately I lost the chat session. Daniel claims that they are a small company with a small customer base. This was in response to a question about his showcase where he disclosed the only site on there rmb-scripting.com is his site. Which apparently is where they started hosting sites on from 2006 til 2009 where they bought ioxhost.com and then replaced it with ioxhost.co.uk. Keep in mind that ioxhost.com is not coming up with a webpage at this time, but appears to have had the dns changed this month. This information does not make me any more confident in the company. As it has gone through three name changes in 4 years (if what he told me is correct). I can see starting up a domain dedicated to selling hosting. But starting another domain up after a year and abandoning the one that was started last year seems like a bad idea. I would have atleast taken a few years to migrate people to the new domain, and have the old domain redirect to the new one. The annual fee of a .com is easily a small cost to pay to not have customers wonder what is going on.

Odd relate search engine tidbit that some how relates to ioxhost

http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-hosting/web-hosting-top.firstnetserv.co.uk-reviews

May 11, 2010

Daniel ( daniel[at]ioxhost[dot]com ) Very abusive kid, (child) threats to ddos.

Reporting to police and the datacenter you co locate in.

All do not choose this host if what he says about dept collectors are true

60 out of 68 Top Web Hosting users found this web hosting reviews to be helpful!

First i must add, i am not a child, Second your Customer ID isnt in my database so i prosume your review is Incorrect. Do you have any proof of the Threats? I certinaly dont know you. And why do you bring the dc into this, they cannot do anything, And yes i do use collections do you have a problem with that? Feel free to Contact the police. as you have no proof or evidence. Once again who are you and what is your customer domain? You may contact me @ 0843 289 6357, ow i have also taken a record of your IP address incase of any future abuse towards my company.

Have a nice day…

— firstnetserv.co.uk representative

I am not sure what to make of that at all as it seems Daniel of ioxhost is making a complaint against firstnetserv.co.uk.

Finale Thoughts on Ioxhost

I have a feeling this is a one man operation. As for the reviews being solid on this company I could go 50 / 50. Reviewing the site does not give me any confidence. Broken links, poor formatting, incomplete pages, a phone operator that may very well may be Daniel himself as he seemed to be the chat operator, and a customer service area that when you attempt to use takes you to a page not found screen. This is one of those cases where I kick the tires and I am not happy with the reaction I get from a car that falls apart. From the 4 reviews I can see on webhostingstuff the dns was changed in the last few months, possible due to dropping the .com in favor of .co.uk. If that is not the case, these people did not bother to look and see if the site was legit before signing up. I would love to hear why webhostingstuff.com justified this being in the 10th position and then the 17th position. Clearly they were paying less for their advertising.

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