Bounceweb.com – When 2 out of 5 Star support is all you need

January 30, 2011

Bounceweb.com is my Fifth and finale host review of 5 hosts for January 2011 webhostingstuff.com’s top 25. With this host I finish off webhostingstuff’s top 25 hosts for January 2011. Luckily I have found enough free time between my current projects that I will not be finishing up this in March 2011.

Since I did my intial write up of January 20, 2011 I have been from time to time peaking in on Blounceweb. Mainly because when I first went to their site the sales chat was offline. I wanted to see when it would be online. I pretty much visited at random hours in my 18 hour day. I have yet to see the sales chat to say online. But the question I have is how did a host that averaged 2 stars in the last 6 months become one of the top 25 hosts with webhostingstuff.com. Granted I know the answer to that is because of their “advertising” fees with webhostingstuff. Below is a snap shot of the reviews that webhostingstuff collected on this host.

Bounceweb.com is trusted by over 57,000 sites around the globe

It seems like a big number but the number represents sites, not customers. Never mind that many of their customers might have signed up for their reseller program and I have had customers that have had a 1000 or more domains on a reseller account.

http://bounceweb.com/reseller-web-hosting.html

Which offers unlimited domains. My own experience with plans that offer unlimited domains is that they can house any where from just 1 domain to as many as 5000. The number does not tell you how many active customers they have.

Yes they have good search engine ranking, not to mention an Alexa score of 67,148.

Also all of those wonderful reviews they have all but one site is still hosted with them.

http://bounceweb.com/testimonials.html

Bounceweb.com has facts on Green Web Hosting

Here is another company that buys energy credits or offsets, and they do……… nothing else. They give a half hearted effort to try and make up some facts but they do not back up their sources. I know that 90% of people are not concerned about global warming, all you have to do is look at the latest polls to see they are wrong there.

http://bounceweb.com/green-web-hosting.html

Datacenters take 4% of the world’s electricity.
Global warming is a concern for 90% of people.
Only 3% of web hosting companies are going green.
Going green costs 31% more than using dirty electricity.
Being socially responsible is cool.

I am not sure how being socially responsible is cool is a fact.

But there not any clearer on how they are greener on this post:

http://www.hostreview.com/news/090518bounceweb.html

Bounceweb.com has awards

http://bounceweb.com/web-hosting-awards.html

Web-hosting-top.com

About that “Web Hosting Top – Award Winner since 2006”. There is nothing to prove on web-hosting-top.com has given an awarded. I am not sure how the word “since” applies as its not been going on every year. The only award I can see is Listed and Verified since 2006.

Where webhostingstuff.com has 17 reviews, web-hosting-top.com has 16 reviews. The average rating is 2.1 out of 5, which pretty much mirrors webhostingstuff.

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

Hostreview.com

There is no direct link to these awards by hostreview.com

Asides for a ton 7 pages of search engine results the best I can find is

http://www.hostreview.com/company-profile-awards/bounceweb

Which of coarse does nothing to prove that this is a fast growing company. Its one of those “take our word for it” kind of deals.

Webhostdir.com

Once again no direct link.

http://www.webhostdir.com/search/profile.aspx?spid=10564

I am not sure the point of not directly linking to the site, as there is nothing negative to hide. But this is another of those “take our word for it” kind of deals. They don’t think you need to see data.

Findmyhost.com

Once again no direct link. Here is what I can find, but there are no customer reviews.

http://www.findmyhost.com/reviews/bounceweb.aspx

Despite the claim “BounceWeb has passed stringent tests to become an approved host which proves our business has met AND exceeded the qualifications needed to stand out as a web host.”

Truth be told: “Support is available via online support system only. We’d like to see more options made available, perhaps live chat support and toll-free phone.”

Comparewebhosts.com

Of coarse no direct link. http://www.comparewebhosts.com/ReadReview-WebHost-Bounceweb-CID-5650.htm

Also nothing that indicates that they have any awards.

Webhostingstuff.com

No direct links, but its not like that matters.

Even though they only had three reviews to get an average of 2 stars out of 5 in a 6 month period of time. The average of all 17 reviews has support at 2 stars out of 5, or 40% which is failing in grade school terms. On webhostingstuff the complaints are in regards to support being slow, accounts being shut down because of resource usage, and billing issues.

Alreadyhosting.com

No direct link, and Alreadyhosting.com does not have a search that requires me to use a search engine such as Google.

webhostingsearch.com

It does not appear there is a direct link for this on Bounceweb.com or webhostsearch.com. Using the search feature on webhostsearch I am brought to this link:

http://www.webhostingsearch.com/search?searchString=bounceweb

Clicking the only search engine result brings me to just a single link that takes me back to bounceweb.com