Webhostingstuff.com Top 25 Best Hosts for June 2010

I am starting to wonder when it is that web hosting stuff changes their rankings. It seems that it was the middle of this month.

These are the hosts that were on May 2010 top 25 list but not June 2010 list:

12 Greenville Host

14 Identity Website Hosting

17 Green Geeks

24 Netmar

25 ThePrimeHost

While they may be off the list, that does not mean I stop my review of their sites. I am still going by the order of May 2010.

Here is how the lists reads now

1 iPage

2 Just Host

3 FatCow Web Hosting

4 Arvixe Web Solutions

5 HostGator

6 InMotion Hosting

7 3Essentials Hosting was 11

8 MochaHost was 7

9 Interactive Online

10 Omnis Network was 13

11 ServersAndDomains new

12 nativespace was 8

13 Site5.com was 15

14 2GB Hosting was 16

15 Cloud.bg was 18

16 iWeb Technologies Inc. was 19

17 IoxHost was 10

18 Indichosts.net was 20

19 Scala Hosting was 21

20 Steadfast Networks was 22

21 LFC Hosting was 23

22 WebInternetHosting new

23 Plexihost Affordable Web .. new

24 Fire Dragon Hosting new

25 i7net inc. new

As you can see 5 new companies, one of which I covered earlier was i7net.net. A company that webhostingstuff.com’s own site says has no reviews and 72% uptime. Which is what caught my attention as I was looking over their list. The site has a lower rating then hosting-reviews-exposed.com Alexa rating. The domain was also registered March 2009.

My current problem is I don’t have access to webhostingstuff’s site because they seem to block you after so many visits to their site. So I can’t see where these sites rank in webhostingstuff.com’s in popularity. I was able to see that i7net.net was “unknown”, yet some how a top 25 webhost. I tend to believe that i7net.net is my hostdawgs.com. This will be a site to keep an eye on. I only have 21 hosts to go til I review it again and this time I go to the site directly.

Is Interactiveonline.com a green host, perhaps begreennow.com helps out!!!

Considering my earlier post was on green hosting, I figured I would look at the link below to see how they went green.

http://interactiveonline.com/images/stories/renewable-energy-certificate-2009.png

I admit while being a green person, I am not really aware of how many tons of carbon I make on my own. My philosophy has been to recycle, reuse, and reduce and make changes as I go. So I thought I would find out how much 8 metric tons of carbon offsets are going to effect. Turns out not much. I decided to contact begreennow.com by phone to find out the cost of 8 tons of carbon offsets. Honestly I was a little surprised at how low it was and how fast I got the answer.

Guess how much that cost them to get? 1 metric ton is $15 (though after an email I find out it was $14). How green is Interactiveonline.com? Apparently $112 worth. This does not amount up to much. You can try begreennow.com’s carbon calculator, though you better have a car that was built no later then 2000 other wise they will not have your car. Just picking the nations average on home electricity and natural gas I get 10.6 metric tons.

http://www.begreennow.com/reduce-offset/carbon-calculator/

I don’t think begreennow.com’s calculator is the best set up, but I think its safe to say that interactiveonline.com’s tree planting is not doing a lot to offset their electricity use. Though after a look through their terms of service I find:

We will plant a tree for every new direct customer that signs up for our Green Hosting package. Interactive Online does not do the actual planting of the tree. Instead we donate $1 for every new customer to plantabillion.org

Apparently Begreennow.com is not the only company they work with, so why is interactiveonline.com not showing how many trees they have planted so far? Small customer list? Or is this the Carbon Offsets they buy? So far this part of the terms of service and the link to 8 metric ton certificate are all that Interactiveonline.com in regards to information.

———————————–

RE: carbon offsets‏
From: H, Jennifer
Sent: Tue 6/22/10 12:44 PM
To: Benjamin

Benjamin,

Here is a little information of the specific offset project we have in inventory:

Tyson Wastewater Treatment Methane Capture

Description: Tyson Foods, Inc. is the world’s largest supplier of protein, operating poultry, swine, and beef processing plants. Over 100 million gallons of wastewater from these plants is treated each day at facilities owned and operated by Tyson. Traditionally held in uncovered anaerobic lagoons, wastewater releases methane (CH4) as organic matter degrades. Methane emissions trap 21 times more heat than CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. Tyson has installed methane flares at 5 wastewater treatment facilities to convert methane into less-harmful CO2. Additionally, Tyson has installed energy recovery technology at 4 out of the 5 facilities to convert methane into steam for their boilers.

Certification: Voluntary Carbon Standard

Locations: Illinois, Nebraska, Texas, & Iowa

You can order online at:

http://www.begreennow.com/store/home.php?cat=265

They are working on the site as we speak so 1st the cost per offset is $14.00, not changed to $15.00 yet and they are adding new security features. You should be able to order in the next couple of hours or I can take your information over the phone and mail you a certificate of purchase.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Let me know if you have any additional questions.

J Humphries
Sales Operations Coordinator, Environmental Products
Green Mountain Energy Company
P.O. Box 689008
Austin, TX 78768
Office: (512) 691-6318
Fax: (512) 691-6353

Be part of the solution at www.greenmountain.com

———————————–

From: Benjamin
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2010 2:27 PM
To: H, Jennifer
Subject: carbon offsets

Hello again Jennifer,

I just wanted to clarify that its $15 per metric ton, and do you have a link I can look at for this and perhaps order?

Regards,

Benjamin

———————————–

I am not sure I will ever look at chicken the same way again. I would have found the cost out if I would have clicked on the “Offset My Emissions” button. I am not a big fan of emissions offsets, after all Interactiveonline.com is using it to say they are a green host (despite they only show a certificate for 8 metric tons). But the truth of the matter is they are paying someone else to be green for them. Rather small amount that it is to claim they are a green company. I am not sure I am a fan of begreennow.com either, as there only method for countering pollution is to sell you the right to have someone else do it for you.

Interactiveonline.com: Testimonial – Is Interactiveonline.com good or bad?

As I get back in the swing of things with the May 2010 top 25 list of webhostingstuff.com I find interactiveonline.com in the number 9 position. This is another one of those sites when you try to do a research on the company name you get results unrelated to the hosting company. They do not appear to be registered with the Better Business Bureau, not like I would hold that against them. But it seems a bit of a desperate search for even positive reviews on this site. I found a few complaints in regards to getting a response from this company, which might have to be because there is no other contact then the support board. What reviews and for that matter affiliates sites are scattered by anything relevant to “interactive online”. So I am going to spend most of my time on their site. I am going to break this into two separate parts, the first part covering:

Terms of Service

Merchant Service

Affiliate Program

Meanwhile I have put a ticket in with them, to see just how fast they will respond to me. These days I can’t say I am too thrilled with a hosting company that does not offer chat support.

In the second part I will cover BeGreenNow.com and their relationship to Interactive Online.

Terms of Service for Interactiveonline.com

http://interactiveonline.com/about/policies

I am only skimming here, and I really am not focusing on the whole terms of service. But here is what sticks out as I skim for certain pieces such as uptime guarantee, refund, reasons to have your account shut down…….. Pardon my random approach at this.

The first thing that sticks out is “We reserve the right to remove any account without advanced notice for any reason Interactive Online sees fit. “.  That’s ….. friendly. Keep in mind this is a unlimited space hosting company.

Then there is the 90 day guarantee, exclusions apply:

Money back guarantee is only available on our Shared Hosting, cPanel Reseller, Hosted Spam Filter & Exchange Hosting accounts. Setup fees are non-refundable. The 90 day money back guarantee is waived on all Special Offers including the free membership to YouJoomla.

Please note the special offer of 25% off on their order page, and they charge a $25 setup fee if you sign up for less then 2 years. I am willing to bet they will charge you the setup fee should you cancel prior to 90 days.

Backups – While they do back ups, the restoration of those back ups are not free unless of hardware failure. Other wise the cost to restore a back up is $25. I see a lot of hosts that don’t charge for that.

Then there is their uptime Guarantee.

Interactive Online’s 99.9% Uptime Guarantee & Credits

In the event that there is network outage*, Interactive Online will credit the monthly service charge for the following month’s service as calculated below and as measured 24 hours a day in a calendar month, with the maximum credit not to exceed 25% of the monthly service charge for the affected month.

I would advise paying attention to the Service credit and Claim Review Process. In essence you have to put a ticket in to request the credit and you have to document the down time. It may take 10 days for them to accept or reject your claim.

FEES!!!

If your account with your old hosting provider does not use the cPanel control panel there will be additional fees.

Real-time Block List (RBL) Fees & Fines

If a customer’s site is hacked, spammed from or there is any other reason why the server gets listed on an RBL, the customer will be responsible for all fees and fines related to getting removed from the RBLs. Customer will be billed $100 for every RBL the server is listed on.

If the customer refuses to upgrade the scripts to the newest stable version we will upgrade the script for them and charge a $25 upgrade fee. Interactive Online is not responsible for any problems the upgrade may cause.

Interactiveonline.com’s Merchant services

My first thought of signing up with webhosting company for an affiliate program is not to. You might wonder why. Looking through the list I see PayPal.com, Interactiveonline.com gets a referral fee from PayPal if you sign up under their link. I would just go to PayPal.com directly and sign up for their system. As much as I hate to say it, PayPal is a must for business. Too many people trust them over handing out their credit cards to people.

The same is true for every merchant account they get set up, and they may very well get a cut of all your sales. I first learned about this from a company called Total Merchant when they tried to get me to refer my customers to their service. It was not til I started receiving checks that I learned I was not just getting a referral fee I was getting a portion of their sales, which I am not really all that fond of the idea. I soon realized that the company that refereed me was getting a cut of my transactions. I wish I would have learned this 5 years earlier.

I soon realized it was a good idea to shop around for a merchant account every year, and even pit merchants against each other. Not to mention pit the merchant I was with to compete with them for a better offer. Sometimes the current merchant will give you a better deal if they see the other offers. Even still when they made an offer that claimed to be better then my previous offer I had to read the terms of service to make sure they were not compensating someway with a new fee.

These days it is easy to find a merchant (well easy if your in the United States), then when I first started 11 years ago. For that matter I got better at figuring out what a good service was and the last 5 merchant accounts I signed up had no set up fees. No middle man between me and the merchant service. Which is why I would advise avoiding Interactiveonline.com for merchant service if you decided to take them up on hosting I had a friend that was burned by Homestead and went from a $19 a month account to over $120 a month.

I recommend contacting your bank about merchant account, as opposed to your host. Especially looking at the some of the set-up fees here ranging from free to $949. Clearly you want to make every penny you get from your customers count, and there is no point in giving your webhost a cut of your credit card transactions.

Interactiveonline.com’s Affiliate Program

They pay $90 per referral on shared hosting

6% reoccurring fee on other services.

They have lots of wonderful “green” webhosting banners for you to use.

No secondary affiliate program that I can find at the moment.

  • Affiliate commissions will not be paid for accounts that are canceled within 90 days.
  • Affiliate commissions are only paid for new customers that are referred to us
  • Affiliate revenue will not be paid until referred customer has been an activated customer for at least 90 days.
  • Referred customers must be active, in good standing and all past due invoices paid in order for affiliate to collection commissions on the referred account.
  • Affiliates can withdrawal earned revenue once their affiliate revenue reaches $90 total
  • If an account the affiliate referred used a promo code, the affiliate commission will be discounted by the same percentage or fixed amount. If the offer is a savings percentage , then the affiliate commission will be discounted for the same percentage. If it is a fixed amount savings the commission will be discount for the fixed amount.

On that last point, it pretty much means they are not willing to pay an affiliate and discount the customer at the same time. Say for example they have a offer for 25% off:

Use promo code SAVE25 to save 25% on any billing cycle. Offer good for new accounts & first billing cycle only.

So instead of $90 the affiliate would get $67.50 that is $22.50 less.

Next stop the Interactiveonline.com ticket system

So far the only method I can find to contact this company is via this link

https://interactiveonline.com/support/submitticket.php

It took them 47 minutes to send me a response.  Timing wise its not too bad, but this is a sales question and other companies that provide chat and phone sales support are going to beat them to the sell.

One of the things I would give my techs grief for if they had done this ticket is not greeting the customer, and not closing with a signature.  I felt it was that you had to make the customer feel welcome.  Especially during the holiday season I would have everyone use something along the lines of wishing you the best in this holiday season.   I wanted my techs to look like human beings and not robots.   With this, I feel like I got a response from a robot.  No hello or anything here.  Or acknowledgement of my name.  For that matter my business partner would have sales staff give out information to entice people in, such as good reasons to sign up for service.  As you can tell from my writings I am not a sales person.

I am not sure I buy that they have been around for 13 years, or had any long periods of down time.  Perhaps they have been around that long.  I tend to doubt it as the only package I see are unlimited accounts.  I have to wonder if they were around for the last 13 years what were the packages they offered before.

My  thoughts on what I found

When I first saw the name of this company I thought I had a short review, considering search engine results are not the best for “interactive online”, the words can apply to a lot of things like games and virtual tours. But a little digging into the site and I find an overwhelming amount of detail.  Anyone that reads the terms of service would pause before ordering.   The cost of having to pay for repairs from a hacking attempt regardless if it was the customers fault or not would defiantly make me avoid the host.

In my next post I uncover claim to claim to be a green host is overboard. Details on their green program are limited at best as they have a certificate for 8 metric tons of carbon and something in their terms of service about buying one tree per customer. Looking at my email it cost them $112. There is no listing of how many trees have been planted.  Frankly based off what I found I find it hard to trust this company.

Green Hosting, Earth friendly, or Just for Show

Today I went to Burger King. Probable not the place to be while I work on recovering a 6 pack stomach I lost from 10 years of long hours in a chair. But I wanted some French Fries, and it had been weeks since I last visited BK so I think I deserve a little slack. In front of me was a guy that ordered 2 Quad Stackers, 1 large fry, 1 large onion ring, and he asked for the a large diet Coke. The single drink did not clue me into the fact this was all his meal til I saw him sitting by himself. By the time I got a medium Coke and Large fry, the guy was sitting at a bench working on his second burger from his 3000 calorie meal.

This is pretty much is what I see of buying energy credits, planting a tree, or / and claims of buying more efficient servers. Its no better then buying the King sized diet Coke that is some how supposed to balance out all those calories from the meal. Never mind the diet Coke is not going to reduce calories. I suppose you could think of it as there being less calories then that of a non-diet drink. But there is still a huge amount of calories that will have to be worked off. Going green means a total change in habits.

You see a lot of webhosts out there stating they are going green. I am not one to have a problem with environmentally friendly practices. I freely admit to being a tree huger. I get a tree every year on Earth Day, in addition to something else. I try to go bigger then previous years. Last year for Earth Day I started a composter, and about to do a second one so I can cycle out ever year. Which means no more landscape plant trimmings and food being thrown away in addition I don’t have to buy fertilizer. Between the composter and the recycling bin my trash bin gets put to the curb once a month. This year for Earth Day I switched from florescent to led lighting. I tend to do my most major changes during Earth Day, yet I also do other changes through the year. Back in December I bought myself a Kindle right after I sold one of my Hosting companies, 85 books later I have to wonder how many trees did not have to die to provide me reading material. Then there are the cloth bags I got so I don’t have to use plastic, I eat organic food, I love to bike, I could go on and on , on how I try to live a green life style. Granted these chances were costly in the beginning but the changes end up saving me money over the long run. I spent over $1000 on LED LIGHT, but in the end they will save me money on energy costs two fold both in cost of lighting, and less heat generated for my air conditioner to compensate for, a great thing when you live in the Sonoran Desert. Not to mention they have a longer life span then my florescent lights. Then there is nothing like getting a new book for practically 1/3 the cost of its hard back counter part.

Most of the webhosts I looked at seem to focus on only one or two aspect(s) of going “green”. They either plant a tree per customer, or for that matter buy green energy credits, use more energy efficient servers. There is no company wide goal to truly be a green hosting company.

Why not?

Car pooling
LED lighting
recycling trash
recycling computers and servers
skylights
solar panels
installing vampire surge protectors

………… and lots of stuff I am sure I missed.

Hostgator.com is one of the sites that buys energy credits, for that matter they claim “All of our shared and reseller servers are now 130% wind powered!”. Considering their servers are located with ThePlant I wondered how that is possible.

http://www.theplanet.com/

Network Whois record

Queried whois.arin.net with “74.54.219.180“…

OrgName:    ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc. 
OrgID:      TPCM
Address:    315 Capitol
Address:    Suite 205
City:       Houston
StateProv:  TX
PostalCode: 77002
Country:    US

ReferralServer: rwhois://rwhois.theplanet.com:4321

I am curious to know how they determine their power usage. Though I guess they could just off servers. But what about the equipment that gets the servers online?

Then there is the claim of servers running 35% more efficient. I don’t see anything on the blog or forms about a switch on equipment, or for that matter anything about Earth Day. I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and interrupt this to mean that they started using these servers on all new accounts, perhaps even a slow migration to avoid interruption in customer service.

Though it is worth noting that the author of their blog post: http://blog.hostgator.com/2008/08/25/whats-lean-mean-and-now-green/

Has a website on a domain that will expire tomorrow (June 23, 2010):

iemarketservices.com

Buying green energy is a start, buying more efficient servers even better, but also only a start.

I see nothing in regards to recycling, or for that matter what happens to the servers once they are no longer fit to house clients.

FatCow States:

We’re Green!

And our prizes are too! All FatCow datacenters and offices are run by 100% wind energy. Well okay, we don’t have a wind turbine on top of our buildings, but we do purchase Renewable Energy Credits to offset 100% of our power use!

Keep in mind FatCow is part of The Endurance International Group, Inc. This includes servral other hosting companies such as ipage and ipower. https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/fatcow/fatcow-sucks-beware-read-this-fatcow-review-first-before-buying.html iPage.com mentions nothing about green power. However ipower does http://www.ipower.com/green/ . I am not sure why The Endurance International Group, Inc does not have all their 33 + companies listed as green companies.

Greenville Host Guarantees:

  • 200% green with certified wind energy credits
  • State of the art, energy efficient data center

Wind Energy Facts:

In 2009, wind energy supplied an estimated 73 billion kilowatt-hours or enough energy to power 7 million U.S. homes. Web hosting datacenters are responsible for 1% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Each megawatt of wind produced electricity translates into an economic impact of $1 million. Wind energy has the potential to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 1/3 in the near future.

A few points of interest on Greenville

Network Whois record

Queried whois.arin.net with “!NET-204-93-163-0-1“…

CustName:   Webhostingpad.com
Address:    5005 Newport Dr.
Address:    Suite 503
City:       Rolling Meadows
StateProv:  IL
PostalCode: 60008
Country:    US
RegDate:    2010-03-08
Updated:    2010-03-08

Webhostingpad.com (greenville’s data center) does not show case the “State of the art, energy efficient data center”

The interesting thing is the % on how much data centers changes a lot between hosts. With FatCow it was 1% with another company I looked at it was 15%, then its 8%. I would love to see the real percentage for this. Not to mention the energy credits cost more then actually energy. Something else that is going to cut into that fee that customers pay for their hosting. On the plus side it helps encourage environmentally friendly energy. On the negative that even more money that’s being diverted from customer service.

Who do I recommend?

I would like to thank Edd and TG who recently visited the contact page of my site for the idea for this post.

Ever since I posted my YouTube Video I have been getting the following question:

“Who do you recommend?”

In prior years I must admit I was tempted to say my own companies, but I felt that would ruin the effect of my video. Such a recommendation would be no better then those paid review sites. Not to mention I was not the only honest host that was effected by sites similar to webhostingstuff.com. After 2 years I see a lot of webhosts posting my video on their site. Even though they were competitors, we shared a common problem that would not be solved by ownership of a video that was better left to informing the general public. I owe many hosting companies in part for my search engine rankings and the multiple sites that housed my video. Frankly I owe every individual that posted my video to their site. But I don’t think a simple thanks is enough.

But now things are different and I am not in the hosting industry, and I am not about to recommend my former companies. After all there are non-disclosure agreements. But I am now in a better position to be unbiased. But I can’t recommend any hosts at this time. It may be months before I can say a host is worthy. I have only reviewed nine hosts out of thousands. I am still getting my feet wet so to speak in how to go about reviewing sites. As you can see from my iPage.com and justhost.com review there was a 7 day gap. Because I kept finding out info on Justhost.com. Because of this I had to set a limit on how much time was spent on researching a company. My limit is 2 hours per company / per post, while leaving myself the possibility to come back to that company at a later time for further review. At this point my main focus is on webhostingstuff.com’s top 25 list.  They started me on this so its only fair I give them first coverage.    I am eager to see one of two options happen to review sites as a result of reviewing the hosts that pay for their “top”  spots.

  • They reform and become a true unbiased hosting review site
  • They are put out of business

I would prefer the first. The second only if they refuse to find a conscience. I think every one deserves a chance. After I have finished the bulk of  my reviews for the companies that use webhostingstuff.com’s top 25 I plan to go after other review sites.

I can tell you what to do and to look out for as it seems most of the webhosts (at least out of the first 9 I reviewed) have the same flaws.

  1. The first thing I would do is to see how much their affiliate payouts are paying. I consider anything above 20% of fees too much, and a good indicator that companies are more interested in new customers then retention of old customers.
  2. Read the terms of service. Yes they are long. I usually look for certain key words on the terms of service such as “refund”, “responsible”, “usage” and “shut”. I usually find enough in relation to those four words to determine that I do not like a host. If you still like the host after that perhaps you need to read the whole terms of service. A good thing to look out for is when they state that they are not responsible for anything, even problems that they might have caused themselves. “Unlimited space” companies have plenty of wiggle room to get out of having to give service.
  3. Call them, chat with them, email them. This will give you a sample of how fast they are, and not to mention their grammar. Honestly I would never sign up with a webhost til I reached someone.
  4. Avoid any company that has a “unlimited” space package. There is a limit, sometimes outlined in their terms of service. My suggestion is to look for a hosting company with a hosting package with the amount of resources you need, and will allow you to upgrade according to your needs.
  5. Look for complaints, examples of which is “host company name” with sucks, fraud, refund, downtime… via Google. However keep in mind complaints or praise are not always valid. After all someone that just signed up with a company is not going to be the best person to tell that a company is a good company to be with, where as someone thats been there 3 months or longer is a much stronger candidate for a glowing endorsement. Where as complaints about company sucking, and no details on to why the company sucks is not a valid complaint. Problems can be seen when they document their complaints by sharing emails and chat sessions. They document their complaints. Then there is where you start seeing customer complaining about the same thing like with mochahost.com multiple people complained about the company being rude and poor support. It only got worse when a representative of Mochahost.com decided to go after one of their customers religion and other rude taunts with other people that complained.
  6. Awards? There are a lot of websites that have awards. But the problem is most of these awards are from sites, whose best interests are in referring people to the host. Like webhostingstuff.com, hostaz.com, any site that says top 10, and the list goes on. Most of them will have a coupon code, I have yet to find a valid review site that does not have a coupon code to “save”. I am not saying there are not valid review sites out there. Hostgator.com is a great example of awards that are all paid for either by ranking or by affiliate commissions.

I don’t think most people spend more then 10 minutes trying to find a host. Rarely when I was in the business would people ask questions about the terms of service. There were always questions about “do you allow porn sites?”, clearly the terms of service would have a solid no on that. Its easy to get drawn into a site that promises you tons of free stuff, cute cartoon characters, pretty women, and flashy graphics. Somehow $500 or more in free stuff for a $72 a year account. The allure of getting more then your dollar is worth is not something even I can resist. But as my Grandmother would always say, “You get what you pay for”. Seldom in life have I gotten something worth more then what I paid for it.

When you find out how much these freebies cost for the hosting company to get the stuff to begin with, its clear that its not really costing much of your account.. Advertising credits are free, Google actually allows you to take a test, and pay a minimal fee to give out free adsense credits to your customers. It actually works in Google’s interests for hosting companies to give these credits out as this gives Google more customers to use adsene. Free WordPress? Not really, WordPress is also free. Perhaps if they had some customer for that host only themes it might justify WordPress. Free domain? Chances are they are not paying much at all for that, and its their way of keeping you from going to another host. I know a lot of customers that think you have to have your domain name and host at the same company. I am here to tell you that is not true.

My advice on free domains, you are better off getting the domain from a third party in case things do not go well. I would not get a free domain or transfer my domain to a webhost. Your simply better off with a second party that is not involved with the webhost. Many companies will charge you more then you could have got the domain from other companies. Claiming that this is how much it costs them to buy the domain. I can tell you now they are paying less then $10.

I know that many would like me to give a simple answer as to a actually company name, and perhaps in the future I might actually start endorsing companies. But they have to have the same ethics I have when I ran my hosting company. I felt the customer came first, not short cuts to getting my company to the top. In a lot of ways I considered my customers friends. Granted it became harder to remember who was who the more my company grew. It was easier to remember the people that came in 10 years ago versus the ones that came in towards the end of my time in the industry. But I have to wonder does your webhosting company know who you are?

000webhost.com, its really not a good idea to spam on my YouTube account

For some bizarre reason today I find three attempts to put affiliate links in the comments on my video. Clearly affiliates of 000webhost.com are not paying attention, especially since I decided to go after whybluehost.com (I am actually not done yet).

What I am trying to understand is if you give free hosting away with no advertisements, how can you afford to pay $5 per referral? Their website while clear on pointing out referral payments does not state costs of any other service.

Clearly the free service is not worth the effort of even looking at the site:

http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-hosting/web-hosting-top.000webhost.com/type/add-review

http://www.thecaymanhost.com/hosting-reviews/beware-free-hosting-with-000webhostcom

But I see no terms of service on 000webhost.com

However on the paid site http://www.hosting24.com/tos.php

There are no guarantees at all that you will have service.

Plus this is some interesting legal mumbo jumbo:

Clients are encouraged to pay by credit card as it is the easiest way to handle payment at this time.

These companies should be avoided.

I7NET.NET, webhostingstuff number 25 host of June 2010

I am in the middle of doing a sheet with a comparison of the new 25 for June 2010. The problem is I7net.net.

First of all lets look at the whois:

Queried whois.internic.net with “dom i7net.net”…

Domain Name: I7NET.NET

Registrar: MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE

Whois Server: whois.melbourneit.com

Referral URL: http://www.melbourneit.com

Name Server: NS1.DNSEXIT.COM

Name Server: NS2.DNSEXIT.COM

Name Server: NS3.DNSEXIT.COM

Name Server: NS4.DNSEXIT.COM

Status: ok

Updated Date: 30-mar-2009

Creation Date: 30-mar-2009

Expiration Date: 30-mar-2014

So it’s a little over a year old. But that’s not the most damming thing.

72.62 % uptime / zero reviews.

Due to being blocked once again by webhostingstuff.com, I have had to engage friends in getting me screen shots to show this unbelievable mess.  I believe the blocks are caused by how much snooping I do on their site now, as I did not go to their advertising page.  However to keep me out they would have to block the world at large as I know a lot of people.

If you don’t believe this company is selling its spots here is some clear proof in the screen shots below.

i7net.net fishy 25 ranking

The page for i7net.net shows no uptime, or for that matter a start date.

From below you can see Hosting-Reviews-Exposed has a Alexa ranking of 3,321,283.  Not bad considering this was a one page website for two years until last month.

Now you see that I7net.net has a Alexa rating of 10,583,515.   This is terrible for a website that is supposed to be the 25 most popular webhost out of 10,293 webhosts.  There is no proof to back their claims that this is a popular webhost.

Now you see Hostgator.com has a rating of 385 (webhost # 5 with a popularity rating of 5 out of 10,293 webhosts with webhosting stuff.com)

Seriously Michael Low of webhostingstuff.com, how do you explain this?

nativespace.co.uk good or bad host? Read my review and decide for yourself!!!

Webhostingstuff’s Number 8 and with a popularity ranking of 2633, which is the lowest of the top 10.  Its not exactly a company that has unreasonable space and bandwidth, or for that matter a high Affiliate payout (15% is actually reasonable).  Perhaps there are complaints as its not exactly easy to find results that only relate to nativespace.co.uk.  Some of my search results bring up British politics, things in relation to native space (though non-internet related).  I have found complaints, but none of them convince me there is a problem with the host.

My problem with them is they are on webhostingstuff.com 8th spot out of 25, don’t be fooled this is a paid spot.

I am going to take a bit of a different approach with this company since its not so easy to find fault, and I welcome this host to explain why they are with webhostingstuff.com.  Unlike the first 7 I reviewed which had tons of problems and flaws, I am just not seeing them with nativespace.co.uk.

This is going to be a short post as the furthest I am going to go, is I am actually going to go to their contact us link: http://www.nativespace.co.uk/why-contact-us.html and I am sending them this link giving them a chance to explain what they are doing on a paid spot.  They can tell me that it is not a paid spot but I actually applied for the spot.  I need to repost the original emails I got from webhostingstuff.com but you can see samples of those emails in my YouTube video.

The only reasons I can see not to sign up with this company would be for one webhostingstuff.com and:

1. No contact other then a contact form

I don’t see a huge problem with a not having a phone number, I ran a hosting company that only did chat, email, and support login.  Phone support always takes longer then the other two forms.

2. Their terms of service are bit weird, look for yourself to see:

http://www.nativespace.co.uk/why-terms-and-conditions.html

Now lets see if I can get a response from nativespace.co.uk.

Whybluehost.Com, Is Not The Place To Try And Be An Affiliate For Bluehost.Com

Checking my YouTube account I find another business offer this time from whybluehost.com.   Problem is they want to rip you off $43 per referral.   I suppose the offer of a free iPad would make the  difference though you could proable just go directly to bluehost.com and use the extra  $1075 to buy a Apple iPad Tablet (64GB, Wifi + 3G).  That does not even cover the the next 25 sales where you could buy your friend one. Sell 500 accounts and you can buy 20 iPads and have an iPad party with 19 of your closest friends with the extra money, if your an affiliate of bluehost.com.   Then again you could be a chump and let whybluehost.com have an extra $21,500.

Below is the email they sent me and my response to them:

______________________________________________

Date:  Jun 05, 2010
Subject: Buisness Proposal

Hello,

My name is Chris. I am the head of a marketing team trying to promote a new site (http://www.whybluehost.com). This site offers reviews and
hosting advice for anyone looking to buy their hosting service from Bluehost (one of the premier web hosting services on the net today). In an effort to crank up our promotion we have decided to give away a free iPad after the first 25 sales are completed. The first 25 people to purchase Bluehost hosting through our site will be entered into this contest.

I have contacted you today, because I would like your help to promote our new site. Using your YouTube account I would ask you to promote this FREE iPad giveaway in anyway that you can.

So your probably wondering “Why would I want to do that? There is nothing in it for me.”

To that I would say, you will be paid for each sale you direct us. The more traffic you send to our site the higher your chances of getting a sale. So tell everyone you can about this and you will be rewarded for your hard work.

I have broken down the payment information in the section below.

BREAKDOWN

25 sales $550
20 sales $450
15 sales $330
10 sales $225
5 sales $112
1 sale $25

You can potentially be paid anywhere from $100 to $500 just for taking ten minutes out of your time to post a link on one your popular videos about our giveaway. (Your iPad and high view count videos preferably)

Remember the more traffic you send to our site the greater your chances of being paid.

Now your probably thinking “Wow this is a good idea but how will you track our sales?”

When all 25 sales have been made we will go down the list and track all of the sales from a special HTML link we will provide you with to put into your video. From there we will add up the amount of sales you have provided us with and send a payment to you immediately.

All that will be required from you is to have an active paypal account (they are free to make). Also, you do not have to worry about time constraints on this promotion. This offer will last until we reach 25 sales.

There are many ways that you could increase your chances of getting a sale. Here are a few examples off of the top of my head.

* Put a link in the description
* Add a thumbnail to the video
* Talk about it in a video
* Put a thumbnail on multiple videos
* Make a video about it
* Tell your friends

If this YouTube promotion proves to be successful there is a high possibility that we will do this same promotion again with a different product.

If you are interested in helping to promote our site and the free iPad for the first 25 sales email me and I will provide you with a special HTML link. (This HTML link will basically send the watchers of your videos to our site but the special code that we will provide you with will tell us that you referred them to our site thus giving you credit for the sale.)

Here are my personal emails if you are interested.

sighter777@gmail.com
christopherseiter1@gmail.com

I would like to thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Chris

______________________________________________

My Response to Chris of whybluehost.com

Chris,

You clearly are not paying attention to what my site is about or watched the video, nor have you seen that I recently added a blog.

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

If I remember correctly bluehost.com was also a user of webhostingstuff.com, not exactly a company that gets any high marks with me.

Secondly you do realize the more I refer to you the less I get paid right?  By the time I get to 25 sales I am getting $22 per sale.  That’s an extra $75 for you to keep.  After all I could by pass you and go directly to bluehost.com for 65$ per referral.  $1075 extra I would get for not using you to refer people to bluehost.com, that I could use to buy myself the best possible iPad that is available.

Thanks for giving me more content for my next blog post.

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

Best Regards,

Benjamin

______________________________________________

Bottomline: Don’t send a business proposal to a website with a blog that is going after those that use fake reviews, fake ratings, and high affiliate payouts.  Your likely to be their next blog post.

The worst part: is whybluehost.com is not even hosted on bluehost.com, but hostgator.com.  Seriously why should I host on blue host if they don’t?

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