Stay Away From Powweb

[gforce75]

I just switched away from powweb and won't state to who to keep this neutral. Anyways, I had them for the last month and they were horriable. I have been on and off with powweb for 4 years, but whatever merger they got into... they've been running pretty bad.

See, the customer support is great, the moderators on the forums help you..., but they have these nightmare of a cgi/mysql upgrades for over a month and people complain about it over and over again. When you first complain, they tell you it's the cache and ip and etc., but overtime.. you figure it's them. You post on the forums, you call them.... they are very great..., but they really don't do anything.

It's like playing a good game of good cop - bad cop. I mean they are great for support, but in real terms, they have been down insanely. I actually felt bad moving away from them, but in the end, they need to work on their quaility issues. When I started filing complaints on their fourms, oh yes... it was me who was the problem. The irony is that I defended them for over a month for users who complained like me. Don't get caught up in them for awhile. Again, powweb was once great before, but whoever took over them seriously needs to work on some quality time.

Eric.

PS - I post this because I read through all the forums here for the hosting and at least wanna help for the short run. Maybe in a month or two, they'll probably be better again... but just goto their forums, create a user name, and observe the outage issues for a few days. If you say anything... well not in their liking, expect to have your post moved!

[Calash]

I migrated from them a month ago. Since the merger the support and quality of service has been declining rapidly.

[Nutz]

I've been using PowWeb for a few years now, and yes its true; old PowWeb > new PowWeb :(

I miss the old irc chat and friendly staff that would try to help you :\

Thanks,
Mat.

[gforce75]

Thanks, I thought it was me at first, but they are really going down hill. They now offer a deal where additonal packages cost 4.77 a month, but what good is it if your orginal goes down?

[Calash]

To be fair, they just completed a migration to a new CGI platform. Some clients have reported improvements because of this. My issue was never with the CGI, but with the MySQL servers...something that became more of an issue as the CGI got updated.

I did like it there...had been there since 2001, but the health of my site became an issue...had to move to something more stable.

[gforce75]

I don't mean to add this as an additional post, just more info... but go to their forums and read problem section over several days. You will see more post like this. Again, this is just based on my experience. The server I did swith to is dreamhost and got that 555 deal and man, it works great. Everything loads fine and seen it go down only 5 minutes in the last few weeks I have had them.

[Nutz]

I just moved to site5.. so Im done with them :\

[UltimateOreo!]

Haha, I was just reading a review on here with site5 on it. Really crappy reviews, they apparently don't allow damned shoutboxes! I'll link ya' here in a second.

Here you go-https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=148603

[Nutz]

Shout boxes are pointless imo :) ...
I would rather have speed and reliability over toys

Thanks,
Mat

[giovannicosta]

Thanks for the heads-up ;)

[transitbus]

I have to agree here. I finally got rid of them after a year. About 6 months ago my site got so slow it would time out and all my users hated it. The last straw was when they dumped another hosted site's database into my hosted database. I had complete access to another person's data and they did not care (powweb not the user)

I have since switched and things are back to normal.

[JamieLee2k]

Just don't even get me started, I started out with them in 2001 and it was great, and now it's just problems after problems. (I am still getting them now)

It all started 3 months ago when my site gave me a 500 error and after contacting tech support they told me they the same crap, it's my fault, I have done something wrong, so here is a snippet from my email:

I have uploaded a test PHP script at http://jlrforum.powweb.com/testphp1.php and it was also generating the 'Internal Server Error' error message you were receiving at the forums http://forum.full90mins.com. So I have renamed .htaccess to .htaccessold which was affecting the PHP scripts and the test PHP script gave the following error:

The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.
The script had an error or it did not produce any output. If there was an error, you should be able to see it in the error log.

Now to me this tells me the cgi isn't working, but that morning it was fine and all of a sudden it went down, so after a week of them telling me it will be fixed and that it was my fault they switched me to PHP5 which worked but then when I was putting in mods it was failing, so I told Powweb to sort this out, 3 weeks later all was great, over the past 2 weeks I have been still getting 500 errors now and again, a few refreshes and all is ok, sites been a little slow at times but working.

[gforce75]

Site 5? Ya, you just moved from one bad apple to another one. I had dreamhost for one month now and again has been running smoothly. I went to the powweb forums and the moderators are still removing complaints here and there. What's sad is the mods really don't work for them. They are customers who pretend to know it all. Powweb's support is seperate from them and occasionally, the powweb staff chats, but remove posts they don't like. They always say "keep this a happy thread". Hmm... if we have to keep this a happy thread, don't you think there might be too many pissed of customers? My friend from ffusite is about to leave them. I occasionally goto the forums to stir them up, but they used to be quality. Dreamhost does have a 3 month refund policy... so if you wanna play your cards, try them.

[Antivirus]

I don't like to dis anyone publicly, i usually prefer to not comment rather than do so, however... I dealt with Powweb a couple years ago and they were a total nightmare. I have never in my life come across such an incompetent an company as them.

[Frozen Tears]

I had them as a host a long time ago, but they had tons of downtime for seems like no reason. It almost was like they didnt even know it!

[gforce75]

What kills me is searching through my post, I recall complain about their 99% uptime. Well, most site live up to that or give you a refund if there is an issue. They told me the 99% uptime is their whole network, not your site. So your site can have 2% uptime and you cannot get your money back after 30 days... because technically, their site and their networks is nearly 100% :(

[Nutz]

Site 5? Ya, you just moved from one bad apple to another one.

what's that based on?

Thanks,
Mat

[G0F0RBR0KE]

I'm still with powweb.com. It's the only site that said that keeps me away from DDoS users.

[gforce75]

Site5 Review by SJ
Negative Review of Site5 (Downtime) from 7-3-06

SJ left this very negative review of Site5:
Site5 has REALLY let themselves go. They use to be the best hosting company I'd ever used, but starting in 2006 things have gone down hill.

I have expereinced ridicilous downtime, as well as excessive server load resulting in intermittinent email loss and time-outs.

They did try fixing the problem by switching my account to another server. That did fix the problem for a few weeks (note: The incompetent techs boched the site transfer and had my site offline for a 2 days because they weren't communicating).

Even with the new server, problems have came up again and I'm experience more and more downtime. The only reason I haven't switched to another host is because I'm carefully researching my options before jumping ship.
Doesn't sound good, hopefully this is an isolated problem.

[Nutz]

Site5 Review by SJ
Negative Review of Site5 (Downtime) from 7-3-06


SJ left this very negative review of Site5:
Site5 has REALLY let themselves go. They use to be the best hosting company I'd ever used, but starting in 2006 things have gone down hill.

I have expereinced ridicilous downtime, as well as excessive server load resulting in intermittinent email loss and time-outs.

They did try fixing the problem by switching my account to another server. That did fix the problem for a few weeks (note: The incompetent techs boched the site transfer and had my site offline for a 2 days because they weren't communicating).

Even with the new server, problems have came up again and I'm experience more and more downtime. The only reason I haven't switched to another host is because I'm carefully researching my options before jumping ship.
Doesn't sound good, hopefully this is an isolated problem.
meh you can find 11 month old negative 3rd party reviews about any host and to quote the site you got that from...

'Positive Site5 Reviews (15) - Negative Site5 Reviews (2)'

[gforce75]

Well, I read tons of other postings. Was lazy to find more. Check this link

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=144806&highlight=site5

[Nutz]

Well, I've read tons of positive reviews and got my own personal experience (so far) to go on, so we will have to agree to disagree ;)

[columbonet]

I've been putting it off, but it's time to join everyone else.

[memorex]

man... Its really hard for me not to scream obscenities when talking about powweb. I agree they are horrible, I am currently looking for a new host and really have no idea how to do the move. I'm gonna take the risks though, its worth losing everything to start fresh new somewhere else if I must. I doubt I could even download the backups of my site due to connectivity problems.

[gforce75]

Check out my message about Dreamhost now

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=1346919#post1346919

Man, I love them 10000% over powweb. I still have a powweb package and not using it :p