Mindshark.ca – in re-review Part 1: Did 450 SEO experts hide my thoughts?

August 22, 2012

Mindshark.ca finds its way on hosting-reviews-exposed.com because of someone whose email had been harvested by Mindshark.ca. More about Mindshark.ca and their email harvesting in an upcoming post. I think yesterday this blog experienced one of its finer moments , a moment that I am very proud of and that was the point where someone did not take mindshark.ca’s or my word (really I mean me to) in regards to what the truth was and actually kicked the tires. By kick the tires I mean check the search engine results for “Mindshark.ca”, to see if I was able to outdo them in a game of SEO. After all they are an SEO company, and I am someone that literally was poke with a stick to know what I know about seo (true story). So if anyone that should have control of their site’s search engine stats it would be a SEO company right? Mindshark.ca is also a reputation management company with 450 SEO experts, so I will not show up on the first 10 page or even 100 pages of search engine results for just the term “Mindshark.ca” right?

Here is the First Post: https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/spammer/mindshark-ca.html

Here is the Second Post: https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/scams-to-avoid/mindshark-ca-%E2%80%93-seo-marketing-experts-or-spammers-part-2.html

And what most might not know is I was supposed to do a third.

It has been a year and four months since I wrote my two posts on Mindshark.ca, I should not be anywhere to be found on Bing, Google, and Yahoo right?

On Bing, Hosting-reviews-exposed.com is on the first page 2nd and 3rd result right under mindshark.ca’s own site.

On Google, Hosting-reviews-exposed.com is on the first page 2nd and 3rd result right under mindshark.ca’s own site.

On Yahoo Hosting-Reviews-exposed.com is on the first page as the 8th and 9^th result when searching for Mindshark.ca

Honestly its been a while since I checked to see where I was on Google with Mindshark.ca though over the last year it has always been the same spot, and until last night I had no idea where I was with Bing and Yahoo.

You might also notice Ripoffreport.com is on the first page for Bing and Google results as well.

Why does it matter where Hosting-reviews-exposed.com is on Mindshark.ca’s search engine results?

If I can’t make it clear enough, I am no SEO expert. Seriously I am bumbling my way through the internet any one that was serious about this sites traffic would have had it well beyond the Alexa score it sits at today:

130,691

Seriously part of that whole ADD problem I suffer is I have trouble concentrating. Most of that SEO knowledge I have was a result of being bullied by friends. Never mind a friend still comes in and puts in most of the keywords missing in my blog. I even gets emails from other friends in the industry after I do a posts where I am asked “why oh why did you pick that as the title, its not seo friendly”.

Not to mention while I compose this post it is raining outside, and it is hard for me to stay inside and finish this as rainy days are rare in the Sonoran Desert. I do enjoy being outside in the rain. But we were not talking about the weather here right? Not to mention is there a new episode of Futurama on tonight? Oh and I get to find out what happened to Perry on Phineas & Ferb this Friday ……… No really I forgot what we were talking about. Oh yes we were talking about Mindshark.ca, and someone kicked the tires (they checked what Google said about Mindshark.ca).

But I think the bigger deal is, if I can get on the top page of Mindshark.ca’s search engine results, anyone can.

This is what the confident from yesterday had to say to Mindshark.ca

After reading the conversation you had with Benjamin and all the reviews I’ve read about your company, I’ve changed my mind about hiring you. Internet Reputation is one of your specialties, so why is it you can’t do it for yourselves???

Its a good thing I don’t do what I normally do when reading email. Which is leaning back while balancing on one wheel. Its no wonder I go through a lot of office chairs. But I am sure what I would read next would have had me fall out of my chair.

Mindshark.ca’s response

Google penguin reshuffled rankings recently , however you will see that site moved off fairly soon.

They are also being legally served as we speak.

We recently were rated #1 SEO Company http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012Mindshark_Rated/08_Top_SEO_Company/prweb9814756.htm

None of the negative comments are from any real clients. As you can see our BBB rating is A. The internet allows anyone to post anything unfortunately. We get things moved off very fast, but when google makes a change things can pop back up temporarily.

Feel free to check our case studies and testimonials to see how effective we are. We also have over 300 SEO firms who outsource all their work to us.

First off can’t Mindshark.ca just have a Google sea lion chase off the Google Penguin? Or perhaps throw Google Penguin a Google Krill? What the heck is a Google Penguin?

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

Ok perhaps I don’t get the whole gist of this (because it seems a little boring), but it seems it is for getting rid of crap in search engines. But I can assure Mindshark.ca, this site has always been in the same spot for search engine results for Google, after all Yahoo and Bing back me up here. I know this because every time a Mindshark.ca troll posted on my blog (person either claiming to be a satisfied customer that gives me a domain with an seo score as bad as freshly bought domain or not willing to provide one) I checked in some cases posted the Alexa score. On those trolls, that is the next post.

Mindshark.ca is legally serving me or Google?

If it’s me, perhaps Mindshark.ca can contact that anonymous person and they can unite against me?

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/speculation/drop-gang41.html

Than I can pretend to be like one of those super heroes with a league of super villains. Ok I kid, which brings me back to this whole point, Mindshark.ca has 450 SEO experts. This should be something that Mindshark.ca could use in their testimonial “we were able to handle a guy who gets distracted by rocks, imagine what we could do for you”. But if I am going to be served what about Ripoffreport.com?

But as for the internet allowing anyone to post anything, I know this great site and they helped a girl who had nude photos of herself that were posted online and she wanted to hide them, and that company told her she could go online and sound like an expert to get rid of the ……. Oh wait that was Mindshark.ca.

As for the BBB, that will be in Part 2 as well as the reviews, which I would like to point out don’t have any sites attached on the ones speaking kudos for Mindshark.ca. I also plan to cover Mindshark.ca’s seo from last year to this year. As for PRweb and all this stuff mindshark.ca mailed my friend, that will be Part 3 unless of course I get distracted.

As always Mindshark.ca is welcome to post their own thoughts.

IXwebhosting.com wants a blog post to be happy, apparently 1 was not enough

August 21, 2012

IXwebhosting.com was far from my thoughts (ok I mentioned IXwebhosting.com in my last post), as I already have 20 posts literally waiting for me to finish on my phone. Not to mention, this is an election year and I am hurting for free time, and I am not hurting for work. But I got this email (and others that provide me with new post ideas) just a few hours ago from Stepan who wrote me from an email address from ecommerce.com.

Email from ecommerce.com on behalf of IXwebhosting.com

Hello,

I’m currently Affiliate Manager at IX WebHosting and noticed you don’t have our review on your website! This is really sad, and I would love you to add us to your website.

You can check all our current Shared Hosting plans from the next page:
https://www.IXwebhosting.com/hosting-plans
You can even try them out for Free (7 days free trial)!

Please notice that we offer also industry leading VPS and Cloud
hosting.

What I want to offer you is not only to advertise us on your website (place review), but also get money out of it! As I said, I’m affiliate manager @IX and I would like to invite you to our Affiliate Program. You can get up to $300 per signup! I know this may sound like a lottery, but… This is the way our affiliates are earning up to $10K on a regular basis. As I see from your website – you may be one of those successful ones. You can check our Affiliate Program from the next link:

https://www.IXwebhosting.com/affiliate-program

Feel free to contact me in case you have any questions or interested
in future beneficial cooperation.

Thanks,
Stepan

So, IXwebhosting.com does not understand what this site is about?

I think most hosts would be happy not to be featured on this site. No host has received a glowing endorsement from me. I am not about to endorse any company that offers unlimited resources like IXwebhosting.com.

Stepan had no problem finding the contact form for my site, where I made it clear I would post emails in the interest of full disclosure. Yet I am not sure Stepan understood the nature of this site. IXwebhosting.com is not on the main page of this site, but I did a post on IXwebhosting.com in July 2011. Part of my interest in them is, like many hosts that appear on this site, IXwebhosting.com and other large commission sites are often found on so-called top 10 sites.

After all IXwebhosting.com appears on hosting-review.com’s top 10.

My other interest in IXwebhosting.com is the founder was also part of a company called featuredprice.com.

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

In short, the point of my post was I thought there was something common between all of the sites that did reviews for IXwebhosting.com. Which there was and that was they were all done in the same city, and all were filmed by the same crew. Remarkable Lisa Grice of IXwebhosting.com contacted me the next day after I did my review.

“I’m the Customer Service Director for IX Web Hosting (yup, in Columbus, OH). I am commenting here because while your post is factual – I’m confused at how we’re ‘busted’”

Despite my critic testimonial page has not much since I last reviewed. The page does not disclose the back story behind what I found.

IX Web Hosting is trusted by over 500,000 websites and their owners all over the world.

Not being the best person at marketing I think I could do a better job of disclosing the scenario by adding just this sentence. ”Here is what the people of Columbus Ohio think about us.”

What domains are still hosted at IXwebhosting.com since I looked at the videos back in 2011?

houndsinthekitchen.com – Left at least March 2012
kellsband.com – Still there
digitaldynamicdesigns.com – Still there
yunbootcamps.com – Still there
1canalgirl.com – Still there
djscolumbus.com – Still there
ryanomics.com – Still there
fox-counseling.com Left around April 2012
kellisautosales.com – Still there and still at risk of having their domain taken away because of crap info entered in the whois,

All things considered, IXwebhosting.com kept a fair number of sites that did reviews.

Lisa stopped responding when I asked why IXwebhosting.com had not joined the many hosts, such as Hostgator.com and Endurance International Group hosts, in asking their affiliates to follow FTC guidelines. I had two IXwebhosting.com customers who left comments on my blog and it looked like they could have also used some assistance from IXwebhosting.com. One of those customers seemed to be in need of industry-leading VPS service.

The IXwebhosting.com question part of the blog

1. Was this site targeted by IXwebhosting.com because it used the terms hosting + reviews?

I have had a lot of hosts ask me to do a review, but most failed to see that “exposed” part in my domain hosting-reviews-“exposed”.com. Most don’t realize this site was created because a review site (webhostingstuff.com) chose to delete my company’s positive feedback unfairly. This event made it a core mission of this site to expose the real relationship between hosting review sites and hosting companies.

2. Why is there no FTC compliance in the IXwebhosting.com affiliate agreement?

Many of the big names(Hostgator.com, Fatcow.com, Webhostingpad.com,……..) in U.S. hosting have required their affiliates to follow FTC compliance guidelines in regards to sites that make a commission based on a review or perception of a review. So why has IXwebhosting.com left that out of their agreement? Below is a copy of IXwebhosting.com’s affiliate agreement.

3. Has hostingsthatsuck.com been contacted by IXwebhosting.com as well?

I just ask because a few hosts have contacted this so-called review site around the same time they asked me for a review. As far as I can tell, they have not done a review on IXwebhosting.com. They use this whole so-called “*hostname* sucks” to get people to sign up, and I was wondering if I will be writing a third post to explain how hostingsthatsuck.com is wrong. One host, in particular, started up last year, and hostingsthatsuck.com failed to mention this was a new company. But they made it sound like a good company because search engines had no negative feedback (look up zyma.com on this site). I know a lot of hosts don’t like their methodology. Would “IXwebhosting.com Sucks? Is this Hosting any Good?” sound like a good solution for selling services for IXwebhosting.com?

4. I would love to hear the backstory of why alreadyhost.com removed their endorsement of IXwebhosting.com. Why did they lose/quit their affiliate account with IXwebhosting.com?

http://www.alreadyhosting.com/blog/tag/IXwebhosting-poor-service/

Unlike most review sites alreadyhosting.com barely tries when it comes to writing a review about a host. The review they have up on IXwebhosting.com is weak at best and I am supposed to take his word like every site (which has an affiliate program with a nice payout) that I was supposed to choose IXwebhosting.com or another site. I have seen content spinners put more effort into promoting a post. But I was in contact with one host that removed their affiliate program due to cookie stuffing.

http://www.alreadyhosting.com/blog/2010/07/mddhosting-com-review-removed/

http://www.mikedvb.com/?s=alreadyhosting.com

So it really is not hard to imagine that IXwebhosting.com removed alreadyhosting.com’s affiliate program for the same/similar reasons and alreadyhosting.com is just covering up.

I don’t have a problem with IXwebhosting.com finding new affiliates.

My concern is who IXwebhosting.com might be targeting, it’s one thing to ask internet related sites to do a review on IXwebhosting.com or place ads. It’s another to ask sites that are into reviews for pure profit like hosting-review.com, alreadyhosting.com, webhostingstuff.com, hostaz.com, hostingsthatsuck.com, and a list that is way too long. All of these sites want their viewers to think they are independent sources to trust when someone is looking for their hosting needs. Sites that want their viewers to pick hosts like ixwebhostin.com to get up to $300 commissions / $10k on a regular basis.

IXwebhosting.com seems to appear on a lot of so-called review sites.

Someone out there hates me, someone who wants to remain anoymous

August 21, 2012

Over the last 4 months I have had a legal threat. But to be honest I have not taken this threat seriously because the person on the other end will not identify themselves, tell me which post they think is defamatory, or tell me who their lawyer is. Instead their focus has been on getting my full name, phone number, and my physical address.

They choose to go through an email account that my webmaster had set up and I am not exactly sure how they determined what it was. I currently use Gmail for this site. Normally most people contact me through the contact form, and the email gets sent to the Gmail account. I can only assume that they did this so that I could not identify them. Because I think they had contacted me before and as some hosts know I don’t keep email exchanges private.

But really who exactly would be comfortable giving any detail to someone who tries to remain anonymous. In this day and age when there are a lot of people out there phising for your personal information I am not even inclined to give my first name. Yes I know my name is on almost every post I make, almost every comment which I treat like a personal letter to every response. But like many people I do value my privacy.

Is Hostgator.com threatening me?

While I have several disagreements with the way Hostgator.com is ran, the last thing I would ever say is Brent is shy. Wrong or right he will call people out on their own blogs. Which I have to admit I actually do respect that.

Is Endurance International Group threatening me?

While they are aware of me and they have read my site, I have been a grain of sand in their concerns. Mind you an irritable grain of sand.

Siteground, Ixwebhosting.com, and other big name sites?

A lot of the big names have had not problems with my site. Siteground has corrected issues that one reviewer had, and attempted to deal with another complaint. IXwebhosting has done their own pr work, and many other websites have yet to accuse me of defamation. Any big host is liable to have their own legal team that would contact me on their behalf. I seriously doubt they would play games.

So who is threatening me?

Honestly the only reason I kept responding with them is curiosity. Seriously I suffer ADD, yet nothing holds my attention span like a good mystery. The people I suspect of this are on a very short list. I am not comfortable posting without some facts to back up my suspicions. But what I will say is it has to be someone that knows my contact form tells me what the ip is of whoever is contacting me. Not like they couldn’t use a proxy. But I have had no problem posting emails from hosting companies. Some of which are not happy about that. I do it because I don’t want to engage in what appears to be back room deals. But it has to have been someone that had been in contact with me. I also suspect it may have to do with one of the posts I have as there are a few that have a growth in comments when this individual writes me.

Frankly if you read all my posts you would know the 5 hosts that I think are at the top. Never mind how many so called hosting review sites out there are not happy with me pulling the curtain back.

Many of the hosts that appear on here were on webhostingstuff.com’s top 25 list

Most of the hosts on the lists have had varied reactions. Some pretend the issue is not even there. Some have been in total shock not realizing the advertising was really the top 25 (not that I really buy that), others while publicly denying it are privately telling me its part of the game to stay in business and pointing me to other review sites that may very well be worse. To others that out right deny any wrong doing is going on. Those are the ones that think I am anti-business, anti-affiliate programs, and as a troll for KVChosting put it I am a loser last week.

But what most of my opponents don’t realize is how much of negative reviews I have blocked. A simple “*x host* sucks” doesn’t cut it for me. Yet there has not been one positive review for any host as long as the post is related to that host that I have not allowed. I have also approved every single insult against me. Even the ones where I am called a faggot. For those people I offered to pay for their counseling so they can come to terms with their sexuality. After all history is loaded with closet cases that scream witch, when they were the ones wearing the ruby slippers the whole time. Most of the counter arguments against what I do on this site are insults. BTW I dare anyone to try and say nasty things about my mother, you may not like the reaction.

Why would I approve all of the positives and the insults? For one comments are good for seo. A lot of the positive reviews leave me asking for a domain, and when they provide a domain I find often people just signed up and/or have no traffic. If they have little traffic I invite people back for more. As for those that provide insults, exactly how does it help a host when their troll uses an argument like I am a loser and no host would bother with me as their counter argument? Never mind if they really wanted to insult me over the last 2 years I have given out a blue print for my actual defects (hello I suffer serious ADD).

Who is drop gang41 / dropgang41@gmail.com

The first time around my web master thought he would have some fun with drop gang41. After all drop gang41 was making a so called legal threat and yet was not going to identify who they were and what there problem was. But the whole email was like a cut and paste of multiple arguments. After which he handed the email over to me.

April 24, 2012,

This email is completely confidential and not meant for distribution or posting to any other party or website. It should be viewed only by the intended recipient and otherwise destroyed or deleted.

Yeah for some reason a person that chooses to bypass my contact form where I say I will post their email, while choosing to go anonymous thinks I am not going to post this email.

Please note we have contacted several of the companies that you have been posting about on your site. We have also engaged a law firm to handle all legal aspects of our concern.

Certain information posted on your site is done so in a manner which is considered defamatory and / or illegal based on a number of statutes. Based on these varied statutes is has become clear to us that your site is violating rules on multiple accounts. We have no interest in the removal of content related to other companies, however some specific content is of concern to us as it is causing defamation of company and negative impact done intentionally and posted by the owner or affiliated individual of the owner of the site. As you may or may not know : review sites provide a forum for unbiased arms length reviewers to post their opinions and or comments. When these postings and comments come from the site owner themselves, this creates a clear intent and liability against which you would need to defend yourself.

We believe that if we now proceed with multiple claims representing the interest of various companies about whom you have posted on your site, the cost and time associated would be less than the cost of lost business that your site is causing for the companies being defamed. Based on this we are prepared to pursue all legal avenues required, and encourage all the other company owners to pursue the same.

This email is an initial attempt to speak directly to you via telephone and discuss the matter to see if an amicable resolution can be made in order the negative outcome for your business and personal financial situation if you were to lose your site and be forced to shut it down. Furthermore claims and suits typically contain clauses for damages, which, if awarded, can also cause further liability beyond your immediate capability to pay.

We are happy to identify particulars on our phone call. We are providing a window until 5 PM EST Friday April 27th 2012 whithin which to have a discussoin to come to a resolution After this period, our firm will commence legal actions. Please provide us a time and phone number where and when you can be reached to discuss

Really they contacted several of the companies I did posts on, however they are only concerned about my post on their company. So umm why bother contacting the other companies? Yet “We believe that if we now proceed with multiple claims representing the interest of various companies about whom you have posted on your site, the cost and time associated would be less than the cost of lost business that your site is causing for the companies being defamed.”. So they are with other companies? And they are threatening to take away the $128 made last month? How will I be able to afford my take out? Oh dear is me.

Do they think this is a review site?“As you may or may not know : review sites provide a forum for unbiased arms length reviewers to post their opinions and or comments. “. Really? Never mind this is not a review site, but a site that exposes other review sites and the hosts that use them. But I personally have found, many have picked out the highest paying hosting companies to present in a so called top 10 list. I have yet to see a host that did not have an affiliate program that appeared on a so called top 10 list. It would be unbiased if the sites that did not pay or did not pay as much as Hostgator.com were on these lists. Never mind some companies like one of those mentioned own their own so called top 10 sites, where amazingly guess which host is number 1? Yet I think they think I am running a review site “When these postings and comments come from the site owner themselves, this creates a clear intent and liability against which you would need to defend yourself. ”. Its pretty clear when the comments come from me, I am the ugly guy who goes by Benjamin. You know the ugliest man on the internet (yes I reserve the right to that title). They are mostly in reply to other peoples comments. Unless I took further action like say emailing someone and I post what I sent. But its pretty clear when I post a comment.

I went back and forth via email trying to get information on who this person was and who they were with. Naturally they avoided any hint of who they were. This went on till April 27, 2012 when I gave them a disposable phone number from a cell phone I keep in my car. I gave them explicit directions that they were to arrange a time to call. After all I kept the phone off; because it was an emergency phone.

Then there was nothing until…….

May 24, 2012

I was out of town for a while , and our legal letters were on the desk for our review. We were just about to send them.

I see your email now below. I will be calling you today. I will try you shortly.

thx,

They decided they wanted to call, without giving me advance notice. They just decided after a month out of the blue soon after they emailed me. Like they were the only thing I had going in my life. Never mind I canceled that phone two weeks after they went silent, as I was uncomfortable with some stranger having any phone number I had. At which point I made it clear that while they were trying to avoid me documenting this I had the ability to record my conversations. For some reason they had no problem with that yet they had a problem with communicating by email. By this point I was demanding their attorney contact information. Where I am told I will get this on May 28/29 2012. I make it clear any further attempts to get my contact information will lead to a phishing complaint to Google (referring to the gmail account they were using to contact me with).

Then there was nothing until…….

Today rolls around (8/20/2012)

Our law firm has the letter prepared. we require a physical mailing address. If we have to subpoena your host for this it will cost more, and all these will be charged back in the suit.

You can provide a phone number to call today as well to expedite this.

thx,

At which point I remind them their attorney can contact me via email, and as I warned them I reported their email to Google for phishing.

Normally I would post this whole exchange but a lot of it amounts to a lot of back and forth with nothing to gain in insight. But if any of my posts were so bad to demand legal action I certainly would not draw it out over 4 months.

Zyma redeemed or up to the same old tricks?

August 15, 2012

Zyma.com’s Khuram requested I do another review. He also wanted to give the readers of this blog coupon codes. Which in a way would mean I endorse zyma.com, right? Sorry to disappoint but there are no zyma.com coupon codes here.

Zyma.com, hostingsthatsuck.com, and hosting-reviews-exposed.com

For those unfamiliar with how Zyma.com got my attention it started last year when they sent me a request for doing a review for free hosting back in January 2011.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/unlimited-hosting/zyma.html

Like so many hosting companies, zyma.com was under the impression this is a review site. Regardless of this not being a hosting review site I have nothing I am willing to risk on an account that is at around $10/ £4.95 per year. Not to mention I have a feeling that I would not be placed on the same servers as the customers. If I was to actually do a review I would want to do it as a secret shopper. The review sites that I advise against trusting don’t feel the same way.

Hostingsthatsuck.com was one of the first hosting review sites to jump on Zyma.com’s free hosting offer, after all they offer a 40% commission. I doubt hostingsthat suck put anything of value on this hosting plan. Hostingsthatsuck.com has an advantage over most so called top 10 sites, and that is they can write a post on any host that comes along. All of which done in a way that gets them to the top of search engine results based on “*X host* sucks” search engine results. After you hit their site they don’t want you to look any further than their site. Take their word for it if you will (I suggest you don’t).

What Zyma.com did not realize is I had my eye on hostingsthatsuck.com because I think the whole methodology of using “*host name* sucks” and some random number that is not based on the actual results to prove a host does not suck. Trust me on this when I can tell you cannot tell if a host is good or bad just based off search engine results. The one detail hostignsthatsuck.com left out was that zyma.com has just started. After finale reading what it was I had written they claimed to have killed hostingsthatsucks.com hosting and affiliate accounts. When it came to the subject of what exactly amounted to “normal usage” in to how much space a customer actually got I got some avoidance and then nothing at all.

By October 2011 Zyma.com suffered a serious outage as some of their customers came to comment on my blog about the down time. For which I had sent an email because I had customers contacting me asking what was up. I never got a response back.

By January 2012 I decided to do another review, as Zyma.com seemed to have gone through another outage. Not to mention based off the comments on my first post it seemed there had been at least three server migrations. Zyma.com customers (a few I think were trolling my blog and not really customers) mentioned being moved to a panda server, then to the tiger server.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/hosts-that-use-exposed-reviews/zyma-com-a-year-later.html

It became pretty clear that since hostingsthatsuck.com had a hosting and an affiliate account after Khuram had told me he had removed it. How do I know? Because a full year after I was told they had been removed, hostingsthatsuck.com changed their approval to a rant against zyma.com. Hostinsthatsucks.com waited till January 2012 to complain about the downtime from October 2011. Downtime that happened 9 months after I was told hostignsthatsuck.com no longer had an affiliate account or hosting plan. All because Zyma.com had canceled the free account with hostingsthatsucks.com and several other sites that got hosting for free because of a review. But in zyma.com defense there was no mention of how long this free hosting was for. Both parties were pretty devious in my opinion.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/review-sites-exposed/hostingsthatsuck-com-versus-benjamin-the-grumpy-blogger.html

Hostingsthatsuck.com’s last post they decided to tell everyone I was a grumpy blogger, and I hate new hosts. Grumpy when I don’t get my coffee, hating new hosts far from it.

Here is the latest email I got from Khuram of Zyma.com:

Hi Benjamin,

Firstly I would like to apologize for the late response as well as if I have annoyed you in anyway. That was not my intention at all. Over the past year we have made some significant changes to improve our hosting service and as a result we would be grateful if you could re-review our hosting service on your website.

I understand we did not start in the best of ways, but we would like to make amends by offering your visitors a coupon code with our new review post to show that we are not like other hosting companies, and that we do genuinely care about all our customers.

We believe in second chances and this is our way of showing yourself and your visitors that we have changed and we are here to stay. I am happy to answer any questions that you may have and I look forward to your response.

Kind regards,

Khuram

To start with I am not annoyed about not getting a response on the down time, It really is not my job to report on how zyma.com is going to handle an outage to their customers.

What bother me were all the contests for free hosting that are still going on. I am annoyed by hostingsthatsucks.com keeping their affiliate and hosting accounts. There is no telling if zyma.com removed hostingsthatsuck.com’s affiliate access. Because hostingsthatsucks.com still keeps an affiliate link up for a site even when they don’t approve of a host any more:

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

Zyma.com making amends to me by offering coupons for cheap hosting for my readers is more so to Khuram’s advantage than it is to anyone who reads my blog and wants hosting. A second chance must be earned.

Zyma.com will not be endorsed because:

Any product that gets my endorsement has to be a product I will use.
I will not use any so called unlimited hosting because I know there are limits (see the chat from the first discussion I had with Khuram). https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/unlimited-hosting/zyma.html
I do not see any significant changes with zyma.com. The only change I see is the price. Maybe now zyma.com offers 24/7 tech support?
I have seen tons of contests for free hosting with zyma.com, just do a search on Google for “zyma.com contest”.
You have awards from review sites that are on par with hostingsthatsuck.com. Which is why I wrote my first post on zyma.com. Seriously this is an anti-review-JUST-for-a-commission website.
I was lied to when I was told that zyma.com had removed hostingsthatsuck.com’s hosting and affiliate account.
No serious hosting alternative is being offered. Should a customer go beyond “normal usage” their account is shutdown.

I realize on points 4 and 5 you are trying to grow your business. But seriously contests for free accounts, when you are offering 40% commissions equals a headache at less than $10/ £4.95, or as hosting-review.com ( a site I have been meaning to write a post on) puts it less than 50 pennies a month. You literally need hundreds of customers to bust even and make a profit. The less money going to service, the lower quality service will be. That is not even taking into consideration the support headache as I am pretty sure most of zyma.com cliental are new to hosting.

As for the review sites, I am not even going to mention three of them because I don’t want to help them out on traffic their stats are so poor seo wise that a simple mention here would help them out. But I can assure you hosting-review.com is going to regret doing business with you because there is no way you won an editor’s pick based on merits. As for the reviews, one of which is from a site that shows a date of January 9, 2011 back when Zyma.com was handing out free hosting for reviews. The other site can easily be faked. For all I know zyma.com is offering free hosting for positive reviews. I see nothing from any of these reviews that prove you are a good host. Only that zyma.com is willing to try the same unethical tricks that this blog is about exposing.

Zyma.com is not worthy of a second chance, but then again a lot of crappy hosts continue to thrive.

10looniehost.ca is offline, and perhaps out of business

August 13, 2012

10looniehost.ca appeared on this site because they were on webhostingstuff.com’s so called top 25 list. But another detail that interested me back when I did my review about this company was everything indicated that they had just started up. Between webhostingstuff.com just starting to track their uptime to their alexa score. Some how just by starting up they had won the right to be called a top 25 host. However the nature of webhostingstuff.com is not that of an unbiased customer advocacy group, but a pay to play Business model.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/10looniehost-ca.html

In short they paid to be called a top host. They did not earn the title. Where is the proof you might ask? How do I know that webhostingstuff.com is hoax?

This post explains a little of what I found over a year of reviewing so called top 25 hosts:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/webhostingstuff-com/webhostingstuff-com-a-rigged-contest.html

So why a renewed interest in 10looniehost.ca?

Last week someone posted a comment on my blog indicating that 10looniehost.ca was offline. According to the Whois the domain expired back in July, and based off the update I think it is safe to say 10looniehost.ca went offline on August 7, 2012.

As the whois indicats that there was update on August 7, 2012 to 10looniehost.ca’s whois information.

At first webhostingstuff.com said that they would update the 10looniehost.ca’s uptime when they came back up.

After 5 days webhostingstuff.com stop tracking the down time for 10looniehost.ca.

I wanted to wait a few days to see if 10looniehost.ca would come back up, as this is not the first host I have been told was offline and out of business. But none of those had an expired domain and soon were up after a few hours or even a few days.

I realize 10looniehost.ca is the first host out of the some 60 I reviewed on webhostingstuff.com to go offline. One host does not equal a disaster but this is not the first host with problems that were called a top host. But it is one in many that form a pattern in hosts that were not vetted to be a top host. 10looniehost.ca was defiantly not a time tested solution at less than a month online there was no way of telling how reliable they would be.

Yesterday I contacted one of the two customers that left a review at webhostingstuff.com. I was unable to reach the other as they have no contact details on the Whois info, and their site is offline. The customer I was able to contact said their site was still hosted with 10looniehost.ca. That he was not aware that 10looniehost.ca was offline. He also said over all he was happy over all with the service. Both accounts appear to have been on the same network as they both share dns with the same domain name. yet slightly different dns. Which means the other customer did not pay or continue their hosting, or 10looniehost.ca let the server that account was on lapse.

I have contacted the original the person who had originally contacted me from 10looniehost.ca but I do not believe he will respond. As always 10looniehost.ca and any host are always allowed to post comments on post relevant to their company. I will not delete or modify comments even if requested so please think before you post.

Personally I do not think that 10looniehost.ca will be back online.

Boobs, Elephants, and PIPA/SOPA …. Yeap that means Godaddy.com

August 1, 2012

This post on godaddy.com has been sitting on the back burner for a while. August I plan to ramp up posts in hopes of building traffic for a special announcement. I apologize if my thoughts on Godaddy.com seem scattered.

Godaddy.com has been an odd pairing for me. I say that because normally I look at a company before signing up with them. I did not know about their commercials, or even take a look at what Bob Pasron was doing. It just seemed like a good idea at the time because Godaddy.com was not on webhostingstuff.com’s top 25 list nor were they on hostaz.com’s . I was looking for some place to host hosting-reviews-exposed.com other than my own hosting companies. In short I failed to do what I asked other people to do and actually kicked the proverbial tires. They were not really considered a competitor as there were other hosts dominated in the web with their own ads. Sure Godaddy.com had ads online but you were more likely to see one from hostgator.com.

My short history with Godaddy.com

Seriously if I had been paying attention I would have gone elsewhere. But when I signed up for service November 2007 I had a rage against webhostingstuff.com, and all my energies were focused on creativity. For 2.5 years I really had no reason to pay attention because the hosting was only handling a single simple html page. On top of that I did not keep track of the up time. I have no idea how many times if any the site was offline. Not like now where I actually do pay attention to the traffic. Once I started a blog for hosting-reviews-exposed.com it would only be a few months before I would move off iatemple.net (August 2010), than off to Rackspace.com this year.

In the beginning my only complaint was their shopping cart reminded me of shopping at Fry’s Electronics. Their checkout lanes have a maze of shelves you have to go through before you can reach a cashier. Those shelves have tons of items that easily get someone like me to leave with more than they were planning. During the holiday season you would be surprised how fast they get people through the lines. However the products that Godaddy.com tried to push on me are less interesting than low cost Godzilla movies, video games, Iron Maiden cd’s, flash drives, almonds, Coke, and sd cards that Fry’s Electronics tried to push on me.

So only one issue with godaddy.com?

I wish I could say that the only reason I had left Godaddy.com was simply that they were just best as a started solution. But the problems I had with godaddy.com made it impossible to want to keep any site that had any good momentum behind them. By the time I had sold off my hosting companies and started the blog I was in need of hosting for several projects that I had started up. I bought 3 VPS containers as I figured why not try Godaddy.com (yeah I had no idea of how well the servers were working as stated before). Getting a stable server was a roll of the dice. One third of the time I would be placed on something problematic. The worst of it was getting support to actually do anything. At one point the ips that was assigned to me became unbound to the VPS container, and my webmaster was often referred to F.A.Q. sections. This repeated as often as 5 times before the tech on the other end actually decided to look and always they found the issues was on their end. Plus if I wanted timely support I had to call in. Seriously I hate talking to people on the phone for a variety of reasons (doing customer support, dealing with companies like Bank of America to name a few) After two months of this, and the coming realization that hosting-reviews-exposed.com was performing slower everyday under the shared account it was on. It was clear my time using Godaddy.com as a hosting solution was done.

Didn’t I try to promote Godaddy.com?

I made a post which had affiliate links to Godaddy.com, in other words you bought an account through that link I got paid:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=316

I could not in good conscience give them a ringing endorsement; at best I could say they were a solution for starting up a site. Because at worst that really was all that Godaddy.com was good for. Clearly I encouraged no one sign up with halfhearted review about Godaddy.com, as I never made a commission.

Skip this if you already know the details of Godaddy.com’s history

If I knew what I know now I would never have signed up with Godaddy.com. No I am not here to bash godaddy.com, but I have for some time held off on my criticisms of this company all because they hold control over this domain. But recently I had read that Warren Adelman is taking the reins of Godaddy.com after a $2,250,000,000.00 deal with SilverLake, KKR, and Technology Cross Ventures. From everything I have read he is trying to redeem the soul of Godaddy.com and encourage the tech industry (geeks and nerds like me) that Godaddy.com is a place to do business. Sometimes I do get contacted by hosts, even so far as the owner of the company such as Hostgator.com’s Brent Oxley. He is as any host represented allowed to voice his or her two cents. This brings me to the whole point of this post which is what I think is wrong with the company. Half of the problem is Bob Parson. Despite him not having the reins of the company any more his blog can still be found on Godaddy.com.

Bob Parson shoots an Elephant

I had kept the kids gloves on in regards to Bob Parson’s elephant hunting fiasco.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2056

For those wondering if the cat was adopted, yes she was. Her new family found her through this blog.

The claim was that Bob went to Africa to help people in need. So why all the focus on the killing of the elephant if he wants to turn the spot light on those in need? There is a Christian phrase that comes to mind here and that goes something like this: Give a man a fish feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life time. Never mind killing one elephant every year seems like a small amount of effort (especially after a week or month stay?), after all there are other alternatives to keeping elephants away. Not to mention I am more than certain if people in Zimbabwe are happy to get an empty plastic bottle, they would be ecstatic over a water filtration system. Frankly I could write a whole counter argument to Bob Parson’s claim that could take a few posts, bottom-line he did it because he has the money to do it. Wrapping it up in the guise of charity is what made it blow out of control. Just like me visiting a client in his home state for a few hours just because it was on my way to spend a week with my grandmother does not make my trip business related.

Godaddy.com has a breast fetish

Don’t get me wrong Godaddy.com had a client base that made mine look small. However from the beginning they seemed more interested in being a cheap solution. Despite my partners looking at them as a competitor, I looked at companies like Rackspace and Amazon with envy instead. So I really had no interest in seeing godaddy.com’s advertising. Not to mention the ads did not appear on channels I watched such as Sci Fi, cartoon network, bbc, the history channel, and well a lot of channels that there new target audience were likely to watch. Sure there are geeks out there that watch sports. In fact it was not until 2009 that I actually saw one. It was because while I was getting my hair cut the lady who was cutting my hair had to ask what it was I did. As always I had to explain what webhosting was. Being that we were in Arizona I figured that Godaddy.com would be the best example. I had asked her if she had seen one of their commercials, and yes she had seen them. She thought Godaddy.com was a porn site. After watching some of the commercials I can understand where she got that impression. After all “There is more at Godaddy.com” followed many advertisements of what insinuated girl on girl action.

For some out there they can see the appeal of half clad women, but seriously what does that have to do with web hosting? Sure I get seeing half clad women doing a vacation commercial, lingerie, car commercial, weight loss, and a variety of other commercials. But hosting, well of course it depends on what kind of cliental you want to attract. After all you advertise to who you want to bring in. How many professional women, you know the gender you portray in less in nothing in sometimes girl on girl action are going to be sold on your service based on that? Still those ads are running as I saw one last week.

Me I look at everything in percentages. One being that there are more women than men on this planet. So in short I like to offend as few people as possible. Which means you have to look at how you can make sure you appeal to everyone. Having half clad women in commercials seems like it would repeal professional women. Despite the rumors yes the female persuasion is online, they play video games, (take it from the only guy in a 10 man raid group in World of Warcraft) and they also form businesses. Which means the female persuasion has money.

Godaddy.com and PIPA/SOPA

Back when this blog went black in protest, I had joined giants, business rivals (former and new), and many others in protest. There was only one hosting company that stood out in support of these ill thought out laws and that was godaddy.com. Never mind some of those giants like Rackspace.com or godaddy.com competitors like Hostgator.com were against it, Godaddy.com was for it. I am pretty sure there was no host that was not a firm believer in copy right protection.

Constructive Criticism for Warren Adelman of Godaddy.com

The safe guards I have placed to keep the domain have made it pretty hard to transfer elsewhere. This is pretty much the opportunity to get me to stop transferring . Granted all I have with godaddy.com now is this domain. Yet I am always looking for other hosting solutions. At this point I am not inclined to move hosting-reviews-exposed.com off of Rackspace.com as I am happy with their services. But my design clients are not always willing to pay what I pay for a hosting solution.

The other problem is support, the problems I have had are similar to those that people complain about with outsourced support. I recall one time it took me 6 call in attempts to get godaddy.com support to actually check and issue where ips were not binding to an account. Keep in mind i hate to call in for support but that seems the only way to get expedited support.Those 6 phone calls totaled about 2 hours (including wait time), not to mention all the time waiting I had between calls. Never mind that is a very encouraging factor for looking at other hosts. godaddy.com is paying a tech for the time that they dealt with me be it failed or successful service. Failed attempts to get support done right are costly. It would have taken less time and capital to get done right the first time.

Another thing I find annoying is calling in everything is a matter of top security. Case in point I had a friend that registered a domain with you. Never mind I have my own domain register, and have done countless hours of free work for this friend. I ended up getting dragged in to doing godaddy.com‘s support. Because my friend got a phone call dealing with his domain. The person to call left little details as to the nature of his call. My friend’s domain had 4 years, and he received no notice about anything being wrong via email. No notice of what company it is, and calling the number that called my friend I got someone not willing to identify themselves. But they want my friend to identify who he is by asking for his account information. This just screams phishing. So we hung up on the guy and called godaddy.com from the number they had listed on their site. In order to confirm if the phone number was with godaddy.com or not we had to verify the account. Seriously why does anyone have to confirm their account to know if a phone number belongs to godaddy.com? Upon confirming the account we were told there was no problem with the domain, and no she did not answer the reason we called. After 10 minutes of explaining my friends concern it became clear to her that she should see if the number belong to godaddy.com. While waiting (another 15 minutes), searches on the number through google reveled lots of complaints and one site listed it as number to avoid, even though it was located in the same geo physical area as godaddy.com. Finale we found that yes the number indeed belonged to godaddy.com. Is it any surprise that there number is listed as possible fraud? We still do not know why godaddy.com called about my friend’s domain. I can only assume it was to get him to buy more service.

The clear thing to do is actually check into the very nature of a customers problem. The first case the tech should have looked at the ips, but no he blindly went with the standard cut and paste response. The lady in the billing dept. could have skipped sending us through hoops and made sure that someone was indeed not trying to scam my friend out of his domain or money. I would say I was persistent because I was patient, but the truth is I can be stubborn. Not everyone that is looking for a serious hosting solution is going to be as stubborn as me and move after the first few failed attempts at getting support.

The next issue I have is the actually product. Which is hosting be it shared, vps, or dedicated. I can’t say I have been impressed with the speed. Hence why I don’t tell people godaddy.com is long term solution. In order to be a long term solution godaddy.com needs to offer the ability adapt. I can’t say I know of any company that offers so called unlimited hosting, that offers the ability to adapt. A friend of mine (the one that wrote the hostgator.com review) is in the progress of leaving hostgator.com because they shut his account down due to exceeding resources under their Seo plan. Never mind that any thing dealing with seo means you are interested in lots of traffic. rackspace.com instead of shutting my account down will just bill me for the extra resources needed. I realize there are a lot of customers out there that do not want to pay a lot for hosting. But there are people like me who realize that pennies a day service rarely means you have successful site.

Godaddy.com has a long ways to go to be up to rackspace.com‘s standards. But there are things that Godaddy.com can do to offer hosting to existing cliental as well as those who need serious hosting solutions.

Webhostingreviewz.com gets an open answer to their partnership request

June 17, 2012

This week I received a request with a hosting review site called webhostingreviewz.com, this is my letter to someone calling himself Alex.

In short Hosting-reviews-exposed.com is not going to partner with webhostingreviewz.com

Looking at the first 19 hosts on your blog (webhostingreviewz.com is powered by WordPress), there is a pretty clear reason why these hosts have your attention.

Company / Commission per sign up

Inmotionhosting.com	$50 – 100
webhostinghub.com	$100
iPage.com	$105
Justhost.com	$60
UK2.net	35% – 60%
Fatcow.com	$100
Codero.com	$100 – 200
Superb.net	10% – 120%
Eleven2.com	$75
Greengeeks.com	$50 – 100
Netfirms.com	$60
Networksolutions.com	30% or $150
1and1.com	up to $300
webhostingworld.net	25%
register.com	Up to $750
midiphase.com	$100
anhosting.com	$100
reliacloud.com	$25
webhostingpad.com	$75

Once again I don’t have a problem with Webhostingreviewz.com or other sites making money, but I have a problem with the methodology of webhostingreviewz.com and a clear lack of ethics.

So why would webhostingreviewz.com want to partner with hosting-reviews-exposed.com?

Despite my lack of work on this site (after all I do this in my free time), it has a some pretty good traffic stats in regards to many terms used in hosting, as well top spots on many top big and small hosts with search engines. It’s why many hosts have contacted me for a review, and just like webhostingreviewz.com they do not bother to see what this site is about.

In short hosting-reviews-exposed.com is about exposing sites like webhostingreviewz.com that promote hosts for the sake of a payout.

I am not sure why you have not read my blog, as clearly it would indicate that you should try to steer clear. The review site (webhostingreviewz.com) that you presented to me for partnership goes against everything that hosting-reviews-exposed.com stands for. Webhostingreviewz.com even proves my point that people with your mind set will do anything to make a buck even if it is unethical. For which I refer to your latest tweet.

webhostingreviewz.com – Unnatural growth

Hosting-reviews-expoosed.com is not my first site, so I am familiar with how sites grow. There are a lot of things that do not seem right with webhostingreviewz.com. Totaling all of your ratings together you have at last count 56. 54 positive and 2 negative. I have gone through the first 5 pages and the last 5 pages of your site and it seems that the reviews are limited to the first 4 pages. Nor does it seem that your site is entirely dedicated to hosting reviews, but also to reviews of web sites scripts (which in turn also have affiliate programs).The last comment appears to be around August 2011. Due to the way you have posts set up on your blog I am not sure when the latest post is, as it seems you have posts in order of most comments which would be inmotionhosting.com. I see you have a post on Hosthttp, I first found out about them February 2011 (https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1940), which I find funny the only thing negative you can say about them is they do not have background information on their site. They probable have limited details because they just started just weeks before they got on Webhostignstuff.com’s top 25 list. Since I first looked at your site, your Alexa score has dropped by 40,000. It was around 520,000 when I first looked. For so few negative reviews, I find it odd that your score is this low and dropping. But that might be explained away since I know services that I know that can drop your score down to 100,000 for $40 a month. I can assure if Google and other search engines find out you have done this they will remove you from their search engines. I for sure will report you if I find any of what I believe are true.

What I think was fabricated and regurgitated at webhostingreviewz.com

I find it amazing that less than 100 reviews webhostingreviewz.com has significant numbers in social media. But like Alexa there is a work around.

Twitter, I think your first tweet for webhostingreviewz.com explains where all of your Twitter followers came from. One method I know of is where you have software that picks out other people that automatically follow other people. You can also of coarse buy followers on twitter.

Also I don’t think it helps your seo to spam your jewlery site on your hosting review twitter account.

Facebook, I find it hard to believe that you have 3,300 followers. Seriously you have less than a 100 reviews on webhostingreviewz.com. Which last I checked you can find people on Fiverr.com that will get you 600 followers at $5.

A lot of your content looks like it was regurgitated and respun material that comes from the hosts. I can’t count the number of ways you have stated in one way or another that how a host made 99.9% uptime their core mission. Yet your claims of a host being good lack any credible proof of use. Perhaps you used webhostingpad.com, as only two negative reviews as enough to justify banning them, even though you seem to think it was ok to still post coupon codes for their site. The grammar makes my pre morning coffee iPad post look flawless. Normally I am not one to point out grammar, but the wording for many of these are not even like me making mistakes of using then when I should have used than.

Your video looks like it was done by someone on Fiverr.com. After all look at the little white bar on the bottom of the video, a lack of a company logo. If this was done in house it would not have been hard to remove the white line on the bottom and add a company logo.

webhostingreviewz.com lacks FTC compliance.

Last year Hostgator.com, Endurance International Group (comprising hosts like fatcow, ipage, justhost, bluehost, and 40 or more hosts), inmotionhosting.com, and many other hosts sent out a compliance email. In hostgator.com’s case they require that you have disclosure right next to any endorsement that you get paid for referrals. There are a few review sites such as yours, and I am hoping to put more effort into that at the end of the year

webhostingreviewz.com is a polar opposite to hosting-reviews-exposed.com. Which is why this site will not partner with a so called review site like webhostingreviewz.com.

Top 10 things to do now that you have cheap hosting

June 4, 2012

The big problem with the cheap hosting industry is it presents people with the idea that web hosting service is more than what it is. Worse are those hosts that engage in a false package called unlimited hosting. Creating a façade that you can do anything with a package that costs less than $10 a month. Most hosting companies do nothing to change that image. As I frequently state a hosting company was formed to obtain profit. If you become a customer that becomes an expenditure a host will find a reason to cut your account off.

When it comes to an unlimited package, there is little room for competing other than to lower the price and offer tons of gimmicks that are rarely ever used.

So if you have a cheap hosting plan these are my recommendations:

1. Do your own Backups

I cannot stress enough that you should not rely on any single source of back up. I try to make it a common theme in all my posts especially when dealing with unlimited hosting. Regardless it does not matter which company you are with, the best insurance you can have for protecting your data is to do your own backups and store in at least more than one place.

One of the biggest complaints I see between reviewers on this blog and elsewhere are complaints about data lose. Sometimes the client does something that screws the site up or worse the host has a disaster that can last for mere hours, to days, to weeks, or worse just never come back up. Sometimes when the server comes back up data lose happens. Or perhaps your site was hacked. You can ask any company how much compensation you will get for loss of data, at best you will get the equivalent to what you pay in a month, at worse you will get nothing. Is your site worth thousands of dollars and you only paid $5 per month on your hosting plan? Your host will only give you $5 back.

Even Rackspace offers a limit on how much they will give back. So if your data is worth time and /or money do your own backups.

I also recommend investing in a network or usb drives.

http://www.amazon.com/mn/search/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=benjaspide-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957&field-keywords=network%20hard%20drive&url=search-alias%3Daps&sprefix=network%20hard%2Caps%2C212

2. Don’t Panic

Pardon me as I reminisce on Hitch Hikers Guide to Galaxy. No I am not going to tell you to have a towel ready, though it may help. In short I am going to say not to sweat the small stuff.

You read many hosting reviews; you will see a lot of angry people. I am not saying there is no justification for it. But too often I see anger consume a lot of productivity. One particular person I am dealing with now is on a vendetta with a host and has even gone so far as to create several anti-sites against the host in question. They say they will remove it once they get their money back. I am not sure how much they earn an hour, but I can tell you by minimum wage standards they could have gotten back their $130 doing something more productive. In the end I am sure the host can contact these places and claim defamation and blackmail to have all this work removed, and this angry customer will not get their money back.

If you are with a big host you are just a number, and you may be dealing with outsourced tech support. Or perhaps your dealing with a small company just getting its feet wet and you may serve as their training. Maybe perhaps they are small and suffer stagnation and have been at the same point for 10 years. In most cases cheap hosting is not going to result in a sales rep that contacts you on weekly basis to strategize, nor send you fancy gifts to endear your loyalty.

But don’t panic.

While not every large/small, established /new host is going to treat you as a means to an end, even good hosts have their bad days.

But don’t panic.

I know in the past I have brought up that a hosting company is in this to make money, but too often people really stress over an account that cost less than $5 a month. In most cases the stress is with lose of time invested into work, which is why I stress doing backups. Granted there is also lose of visitors and paid traffic but at that point you should not be on cheap hosting. So if all fails take a deep breath. Failure is a fact of life, and you can either adapt to it or freak out. Not much is ever accomplished by freaking out.

Now zombie invasions, there is a reason to panic.

3. Don’t make tech support your first destination

With most cheap hosting companies support is not always going to be immediate. Sometimes it may take a day or two especially for non-urgent issues.

If there is anything that is going to make you less of a customer and more of a charity case; that would be relying on support to do everything for you. I am not saying there are issues such as a server being down that doesn’t require you to contact support. Though perhaps instead of going straight to support, perhaps go to the notifications area to see if there is scheduled maintenance or perhaps there is an outage.

I seriously advise against asking talk to the tech that is handling the down time. If any company is willing to humor you with such a request run, don’t walk to another hosting provider. As I have told many customers in the past you can either talk to the tech that is fixing it, or you can let them fix the server.

A lot of solutions for support can be found by search engines, F.A.Q. (frequently asked questions) sections a host provides, and not to mention information can be found in most webhosting control panels.

4. Have a backup host ready.

I can never hammer home enough, do your own backups. So let’s say you have a critical issue for days being it down time, ip configuration, database issue, or whatever else that could affect your site and they have ignored your pleas for help over a day or more. This is the point where you have other hosts to move to, my advice on finding a new host can be found at:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2351

It’s better to have a backup host picked out before a service disaster then during,

5, Prepare to get bigger

The biggest failure I find most sites go through next to doing little to no work to grow is the failure to pay for a bigger solution. One of my former clients I have talked about before, he made a Christian Screen saver. All people had to do to get it was give them their email address. For which he was clear that he would be marketing Christian related offers to them. Using such methodology he grew his mailing list to over 300,000 people. However when it came time to take advantage of that list he thought it might be ok to do this on an account that was less than $14 a month, this of course went against the terms of service. Safe guards that were put in place suspended his account before he could crash the server or slow the server down to a crawl. Despite having his account shut down he came back another three times before ultimately being banned from service for the same issues. I have to wonder where this guy would be if he had been willing to buy a solution that would work for his needs.

6. Nothing big happens over a single day of work

Back in 2000 when my first successful hosting operation took off, a strange thing happened. A few people had contact me within weeks of our starting up complaining about not making thousands of dollars. Needless to say I was perplexed as I had spent thousands of my own money over several months (not mentioning the other money from other partners and from a loan) and had not planned getting an immediate payback. Most of these people had what barely amounted to a construction page up. Keep in mind we had paid for advertising to bring people in. As I stated in the beginning of this blog we also had a failure under our belt. Despite now 2.5 years out of the hosting industry the 4 companies I left behind are still up, and still a work in progress with constantly evolving advertising and working constantly to bring in new customers.

Even when success comes, it does not stay without vigilance.

7. Track your uptime / downtime

Before I start into going with a third party to check you’re up time, let me be clear no third party uptime checker is fool proof.

Despite services like pingdom.com not being flawless, they serve an important function. Not always will your hosting provider be honest, nor do they always track up time. On the other side of that option no one has a internet provider that is up 100% of the time or problem free.

8. Social Media

If in the past few months you picked up a Time magazine you might see an internet sensation named Oscar the blind cat. This amazing cat got his start as an internet sensation on YouTube, and through other social media such as Facebook; Oscar and his adopted brother Klaus found their way to Internet fame through a video of Oscar fighting a hair dryer.

There is a lot to learn from Oscar’s adopted parents asides the more important lesson of adopting pets with special needs has its rewards. Which is the value of using social media to bring traffic to your site. Not to mention the best part about social media is it is free.

There is not a popular web host out there that you will not find on Twitter. Often people such as myself follow companies like Amazon.com for special offers such as their retweet for $1 or more towards a purchase. The other value in social media is in search engines.

This site owes its start to YouTube and the many people that shared my video.

9. Keep your site fresh and up to date

This is a gripe of mine I often have when I looked at hosts, they choose to not bother with updating their site. Like one that was listing an outdated version of Windows NT. Upon reading my article they confirmed they were still using it, despite every expert I know advising against using it for serious security issues.

There are very good reasons behind this point. You watch enough advertising you will see that commercials are design to get your attention. A web site is the most critical form of advertising for any web based business. If your site does not capture a possible customer attention, someone else’s web site will.

10. Secure your site

The last if not least of my ten points is securing your site. While your web host may do a lot to secure your site there are things that you will need to if you cannot afford a web master. Such as updating scripts and other aspects of your site, hackers are constantly looking for weak points.

Another part to this point in security is your password. Change it often and make your own system for a complex password. The lamest excuse ever for a simple password such as ‘password’. Seriously I cannot tell you the number of times I have found hacked accounts that had this password or perhaps one that is the same as the user name for an account. You have no one to blame but yourself if your account has been hacked and no host good or bad host will take responsibility for your account being hacked especially if the fault is yours.

I could go into a whole post on methodology to create your own password just to remember it. But the best I can do is to recommend one that is a combination of things, stay away from small easy ones. Granted no password is perfect but a simple one is just an invitation to a hacker to make your day miserable.

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On a side note: The image that often comes to my mind is an episode of the Simpsons when I think of the cheap hosting industry and the practice of over selling so called unlimited space.

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

In short Homer offers to do things that go way beyond that of a sanitation department. Which bankrupts that department, and he has to allow other cities to dump in Springfield to make up for the inflated budget. The show ends with the relocation of Springfield.

What webhost do I recommend?

May 21, 2012

Since I started this site and the video on YouTube, the single biggest question I get asked is ‘who do you recommend’. As time passes, I find my mailbox stuffed with emails asking that very question, and I usually don’t have the time to answer everyone. This is my attempt at a prefabricated response. This, of course, will not stop people from writing to ask me. But it does tell me who is paying attention. My intention with this post is to let people know where I stand, so instead of waiting for me to write back, you get my reasoning behind not recommending a host.

The problem is I am not very comfortable recommending anyone.

I still wrestle with the very ethics of recommending a host. Yes, you may see ads on here for hosts. But that is just advertising, and the ads really do not bring in the money I could make is a direct affiliate of many of the companies that I did a review on. Not to mention you’re just as likely to see advertising for something else you were searching for, especially if you are logged into a Google account. Since I am searching for a home, I see many ads for real estate appear on hosting-reviews-exposed.com.

Perhaps in time, I may change my mind, or worse yet (for those in the hosting review industry), I will start my own hosting review site. I am confident I could make more money than sites like webhostingstuff.com while not selling my soul in the process.

I have minimal long term experience with cheap hosting.

Most people want me to tell them who to host while wanting a plan that is less than $10 a month. The trouble is my own sites are on $150 or more a month. Except for this site, none of my sites have been on a cheap plan. Unless you count my GeoCities website from back in the ’90s, I made the most unusual transition from free hosting to my own dedicated server with Virtualis. $0 – $400 a month in less than 6 months.

Sure, I do design work for people that end up choosing plans with companies like Fatcow, iPage, hostgator.com, and a variety of cheap hosting solutions(despite my objections). But for me, I am only there in the beginning at the point where a site has no traffic. Sure I can see how fast I can FTP. Compatibility with anything I install. How well the support is while I am uploading and fine-tuning. Not to mention how quickly the site loads when all is done. Generally, I only spend a week or two at best. However, when working with a cheap host, I may have dealt with a host during a good month or a bad month. I have yet to encounter anyone who wants me to rework their existing site while running off a cheap solution. But when they contact me, it’s generally about migrating the site(s) to a new hosting company.

While I have an idea of how things may be initially, my opinion really does not express a long term experience of a cheap host. In short, I am just one step above that person that signed up less than 24 hours to post a positive or negative review when I express my opinion on a host.

My only real experience has been with Godaddy.com, which really I did not pay attention to how well it functioned for the first 2.5 years I had that account (you will find there are a lot of hosting customers that really do not keeps tabs on how well their hosting works). By the time I got a fair amount of traffic less than 3 months after I had started a blog, this site had needed something more, which jumped from a $3.99 a month plan with Godaddy.com to a $40 a month plan with Mediatemple.net and in January of this year this site went to a plan with Rackspace.com at $150 a month.

The people who drive me nuts want cheap solution to their current cheap solution. The one they claim lost them thousands in income. Which begs the question, why would you trust a site that makes thousands a month to a less than $10 a month account? Seriously if your site is your source of income, it is no better than the hosting plan it’s on.

Should you avoid cheap hosting?

No, we all have to start somewhere. Yes, I stated that I went from Geocities to Virtualis. From free to $400 a month. In a way, that was a mistake as I took my first design check and went for an expensive solution. When I could have settled for a plan that was 25% the cost, frankly, if you don’t have a bit of experience with web design or hosting, you are better off with a small plan with a company like Hostgator.com or Godaddy.com. But the moment you start to understand what you are doing and your site is making a profit, it is time to start thinking of a more prominent solution. Generally, my hosting is 10% of my income. After all, my income depends on my online presence.

So you should avoid every host that I did a post on?

Okay, okay, I realize many of the big and small-time hosts that appear in the posts on this site come under a negative light. Ones that appeared on webhostingstuff.com seemed here because I wanted to find a reason for them not being a top 25 host.

Does that mean you should not choose them?

In short, no, but I want you to be aware that these hosts have engaged in questionably unethical behavior. Most of which have appeared on a site called webhostingstuff.com. I could go on and on about how they and other review sites are biased based on who pays for a top position but I think there are more than a enough posts to explain why. The best explanation can be found at: