Review by equazcion 
Posted: 2.6 years ago
member for 2.6 years, 14 visits, last login: 2.4 years ago
 Fresh Meadows,Queens,NY
 $16 per month (month by month)
 about 1 days
 "Lots of space and bandwidth for dirt-cheap price."
 "Bad support, overloaded servers."
 "You get what you pay for."
| Pre Sales information:
Setup experience:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
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Ok, so I'm paying $16 a month for a reseller plan with unlimited domains and a lot of space and bandwidth. I'm no stranger to the hosting community and the business, so I'm aware of what to expect and what one can and can't complain about at that kind of price.
That's why my "bottom line" is "You get what you pay for," and not "Don't use this host." While I have a lot of complaints, I recognize that this host might still be fine for some people.
Support:
The support in a general sense is not too good. The support people are pretty much there to dispense canned, almost pre-written responses to only the most basic questions. I understand the need for this, since I've had to deal with the hordes of beginners out there asking hordes of very basic questions. So this will be fine for the average beginner.
However it would be nice if, say, when someone asks them a question that shows a certain level of knowledge, that they pass the question on to someone who could put some actual thought into their answer -- instead of giving the standard response that's designed to shut the client up as quickly as possible and reduce the trouble ticket queue. It's as if the support people always keep a copy handy of some handbook entitled "How to dispense with a support request in as few steps as possible."
But, of course, for $16, can I really complain?
Server performance:
Running server-side scripts tends to make hosts nervous because scripts consume resources. However some hosts take it too far, and blame user scripts for server issues.
I admit it, I run a lot of scripts. I code in PHP for 14 out of the 24 hours in my day. However I'm smart about it. I have ways of checking the server load and the process list, and I always keep tabs on my running scripts and how much CPU and memory they're using. Many of my scripts even monitor the server load themselves, adjusting their performance accordingly. I don't have to do this. But I do it, as a courtesy to the web host and to the other users on my server.
So you can imagine how pissed off I got when I visited my domain name and found that my account was suspended for "resource abuse."
Before I go on, please note that I only found this out because I checked the domain. My account has been suspended 3 times total so far, and I have yet to get a single email telling me that something was wrong -- even though, after the first such occurrence, I clarified my email address to the support people.
So I submitted a trouble ticket, and they told me I was suspended for resource abuse. I asked which resources were being abused. They said that my scripts were using a combined total of 10-15% of CPU resources. Now that's just plain fiction. I have access to the server's process list and I can always see (and prove) that all my scripts combined never use any more than 2% of the CPU, and that's at the highest.
The server's scheduled hourly processes, now those are a different story. I set up an Ajax widget that continually monitors the server load, and if you watch it, you can clearly see that around the top of ever hour, the load spikes to somewhere between 20 and 25. That's astronomical for a dual-Opteron server. It's around those times that performance slows to a crawl. From the process list I can see that at least some of this is due to scheduled backups, which is understandable -- but then they shouldn't complain about user scripts, since it's plain to see that they aren't the cause. The cause is a poorly set-up server that's probably overloaded with too many accounts, as so many "budget" hosts tend to do.
But, at $16 a month, can I really complain?
More account suspension woes:
One of the scripts I used was a mail processing script, that takes incoming messages and adds additional text to the message body before sending the email back out again. I was testing this script, so I had to run it often, and that required having it send an email each time I tested it. During this testing, I again found my account suspended (and again I got no email informing me of this). Upon contacting support, they told me they have a "firewall" that prevents more than 200 outgoing messages per hour. Fine. But how does it prevent that? By disabling the entire account.
Now bear in mind that I wasn't sending to a mailing list. I was sending to the same address repeatedly, my address. Their "firewall" doesn't take this into consideration though. I asked if they could add an exception for that one email address, so that I could continue to test my script without being seen as a possible bulk-mailer or spammer, and they told me no -- "We can't correct the script, as we're not developers, we use ready solutions." This answer might satisfy a beginner user. However as a non-beginner, I can tell you that any spam-prevention software that doesn't feature an exception list that can be easily edited by non-developers, is software that simply does not belong on a server. So either they're using some very poorly-designed software, or they were simply too lazy to accommodate me, choosing instead to get me off their backs as quickly as possible -- a common practice among budget hosts, so neither case would surprise me.
But yet again, at $16, can I really complain?
Damn straight I can complain. $16 a month means $192 a year. That's not chump change. What am I getting for this $192 a year? A slow, overloaded server, and support that might as well be automated?
Again though, I'm one of a group of people that shouldn't be with a host like this, and there are plenty of people outside that group for whom this host will be satisfactory. If you want to make a website to show the world your collection of cute-kitten photos, or your collection of designer dinner plates, then I'm sure you won't notice any problems at all with this host. They'll be able to answer all of your questions and you won't notice any problems.
But if you're looking to do a bit more, look elsewhere.
I know the webhostingbuzz people tend to read these reviews, so if any of them are reading this, this is for you:
Please at least send out some emails. I've yet to get a single email that wasn't a useless monthly newsletter, and even those stopped coming after october of last year. Email is a cheap way to at least create the illusion that you care about your customers. If there's a problem with a site, don't just suspend it and wait for the client to ask. Send them an email. Despite the cheap price they're paying you, some clients do still consider hours or days of downtime to be a bad thing.
And today.... today was a nightmare. It seems your entire network went down. Repeatedly. My server was down and your website was down, and the support site was also down. DNS wasn't even functioning. I'm surprised you don't keep your main site off-location as a backup, in your own interest. But in the interest of the clients, at least your support site should be kept somewhere else, so that you can keep in touch with your clients despite the current state of your network. And lastly, even without that, such a major occurrence should at least warrant a mass email to everyone telling them what the situation is.
That's it.
Followup comments:  equazcion
join:2007-04-24
Fresh Meadows, NY
2 edits | More downtime Just wanted to add a bit to this. The downtime has continued into today. It's now 1pm. WHB has a forum at whbstatus.com. Although it appears that site, too, is in the same network that keeps going down. Not only that, but even when it's functioning, the support people tell us absolutely nothing about what's going on. This has gone from annoying to frustrating to almost humorous.
I invite anyone who's curious to come check out »www.whbstatus.com/showthread.php···7&page=1
That is, if it's not down. Which at the moment it is. | |
|  | fiberguy
My views are my own.
Premium
join:2005-05-20
| Re: More downtime Sounds like a dedicated server is more up your alley and not a shared hosting environment.
Care to guess how many customers reside on one server at a time?
You are right.. when you pay $16.00 a month, for a reseller account no less, you can't expect a powerhouse of a service.
--
"Complaining is the least path of resistance for the self-reitchous and lazy..." | |
| | | equazcion
join:2007-04-24
Fresh Meadows, NY
2 edits | Re: More downtime I don't think what I've described really qualifies as requiring an entire dedicated server. I'm running PHP scripts. You shouldn't need a whole server for that. That's why PHP tends to be installed even on shared servers 
But I agree on what to expect for the price. | |
| | | | WHBCTO
join:2006-04-27
UK | Re: More downtime I didn't hear from you yet, and I'd like to get this resolved. My personal email is matt[at]webhostingbuzz.com | |
| WHBCTO
join:2006-04-27
UK
| WHB Response Firstly, we have 3 canned responses in the entire helpdesk. These are for when the ticket changes department. No other response is canned, and all are custom written. We do make an educated guess at user experience but if you explain in the first point of contact that you are an experienced user, then we can talk to you on a more complex level.
Whilst I do not doubt your ability to code PHP scripts, we also run 100 servers 24 hours of 24 hours each day. We know what to look for and we only suspend accounts when we are absolutely sure that they are the culprit.
Obviously you read our explanation at whbstatus.com, so please get in touch with me directly so we can look at the suspension issues of your account, and what we can do to either help you find a more suitable solution or repair our business relationship. | |
| | 
lmnop
@rr.com
|  Re: WHB Response
| |
| | | WHBCTO
join:2006-04-27
UK
| Re: WHB Response The original poster is now satisfied with WebHostingBuzz. There was some element of misunderstanding, but I believe everything is now resolved to both out satisfactions.
Our suspension policy, unless it's gross breach of terms of service (eg child porn or hacking), is always to email first and only suspend if we do not get any response. If a runaway script is at fault, we'll always try and suspend that script and not the entire account.
Our goal is to work with customers to be succesful - this helps us both.
Matt | |
| | | | equazcion
join:2007-04-24
Fresh Meadows, NY
4 edits | Re: WHB Response I got a couple of instant messages asking me to confirm this comment, so I thought I'd clarify:
The misunderstanding had to do with a continued complaint I had after posting this review. I was complaining to Matt via email for a few days about an issue that I thought had to do with server performance, which I turned out to be wrong about. The server actually seems to be performing rather well lately, and the hourly load spike I described in the review seems to no longer occur.
The events that I describe in the review, however, were no misunderstanding. If they had been just a misunderstanding then I would have deleted the review altogether.
The truth is that although those things did happen, everything is running smoothly right now, and have been since I wrote the review. My account hasn't been suspended again since, and I haven't needed to submit any support tickets; so I can't comment on the status of email notifications or the quality of support. There also hasn't been any significant downtime since (at least not on my server).
I hope that helps. | |
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