Hosting problems with HostGator and BlueHost
So, after 3 months of hosting, HostGator today decided that my site was no longer worthy of their hosting services. I am now looking out for alternatives. I decided to go to BlueHost. They did not let me buy an account until I buy for an entire year. I did that.
Now, last 4 hours. I am waiting for them to restore my backup from my old server. No response. No reply. No action taken. This is after I paid for an entire years worth of hosting. And I read so many promises on the blog of the CEO of BlueHost. Help me please…
Update: Just got a reply from BlueHost. They suggest that if I want immediate response to my problems, I should make a call to them instead of sending in email support queries. Looks like international customers would have to actually pay to get fast support on BlueHost.
Update 2: Still no response to my mails to the support. Uploaded my files manually. Uploaded my database manually. Made the subdomains manually. Fixed the paths in zillions of files and uploaded them manually. Now, waiting for the DNS server to propagate so that I can see what all is still broken due to non-restoration of the original backup.
Update 3: 10 hours and still no answers from the support team at BlueHost. And now I found out that I cannot edit the .htaccess file lying in the base folder. The server just comments any line I add to it!
Update 4: I got the response to my first support mail after a record 24 hours. And it came after I mailed them asking for a refund. And the mail from them was to help me get my site up! Awesome. Did some more research and found out that not many WordPress users are happy with them. And they are one of the highlighted recommended hosts on the WordPress site. Maybe, it’s related to how much commission they give on each sale.
I guess getting a sale should be complimented with quick support to restore the site for the new customer. This would help them a lot in the future.
I am definitely not wasting my time posting my own reviews for this company. I just hope I get my refund and I will move on…
Update 5: Got my refund. Yohoo!
May 25th, 2006 at 08:14 am
[...] Work is down. Eating habits worsening. Smoking continues. And the latest headache to hit my head is the hosting issue. BlueHost certainly seems to have something against me coz I get no responses to my queries while my friend sitting 2 feet away from me gets answers to his queries in minutes. [...]
May 25th, 2006 at 08:29 am
[...] This isn’t related per se to Broadband access but well Indians are being derided all over the Internet for all their “ingenuity” for technical solutions. Sushubh had problems with the hosting solution which seems to be solved somewhat. A bit more “research” and Sushubh pointed towards a direct review of the dudes in Bluehosting here. What pormpted this entry was the mail from Blue Host. It just reminded me that since BSNL support guys (or top dogs) read this blog for the “honest kickbacks”, they should make their “customer care executives” learn this by rote: [...]
June 13th, 2006 at 09:48 am
[...] I am surprised and shocked that most hosting companies I have tried in the recent past take more than just a couple of hours to setup new accounts for new customers. BlueHost responded to my queries after more than 24 hours and today I registered at CHIhost and I am still waiting for my account details. [...]
September 30th, 2006 at 05:43 am
I’ve been with bluehost for a year now, hosting 3 sites, one for my own artwork and sculpture, one for the artist studios and events i help coordinate, and one as a more general arts network pages for Sydney and Melbourne.
Up until last week I’d had relatively few problems with them, their support seemed to be faily prompt when I needed it, they obliged quickly when I said I needed more mail traffic, and had experienced a couple of periods of downtime, but nothing major and a vast improvement on the Australian based host I was previously with. All in all I felt I was getting a reasonable sevice for the money.
We recently restructured how we do our banking, closing down a couple of peripheral accounts to stream line the accounts. one of these accounts was the one that bluehost was billing.
Unfortunatly, rather that do us the courtesy of notifying us of a billing problem by email, thus allowing us to login to our bluehost account and update the relevant information, and sending us all on our merry way, they decided just to delete my entire account, webmail, php the lot, and then not even inform me of this action - I found out when I couldn’t access my @mekanarky.com mail accounts, had to mail them through yahoo and wait 36 hours for a response. Being based in Australia, trying to sort things out by phone is not economical or practicle, the response i recieved was a very brisk “sort it out with billing” from a mister Jay Ward. Billing is now shut till monday, leaving me with at least another 2 days downtime, for me, the forum, several dozen artists that use our webmail, the mailing list and newsgroup etc. etc.
I now have to figure whether it’s worth rectifying the situation with Bluehost, even just to retrieve the site arcitecture and mail info, which I’m informed “might” be backed up, or to just screw the whole deal and go with a more obliging host that has abit more respect for it’s clients, but face the somewhat daunting prospects of filling in the gaps in the sites (mambo, blogs etc.) and trying to compile a list and contact the various people who have lost their email accounts (numerous irate phonecalls have helped with this to some extent, but some of the crew are overseas, hard to contact and relying on their email).
Bluehost can rot in hell.
October 28th, 2006 at 07:08 am
HostGator was a nightmare, even after I left. Besides the owner of the company slandering me in a forum, they attacked the domains I had moved elsewhere with ICANN complaints. On HostGator, my sites were down just about every single day during peak periods. Technical support was a joke. Right towards the end they went in and chown’d scripts to make them unusable, then claimed they were “RSS” scripts and were not allowed. Needless to say, HostGator brought my sites crashing down, so I had to move in a hurry. Everytime I spoke to them about server issues, they blamed me, inviting me me leave. I swear, it’s like dealing with a bunch of children, especially the “get even” mentality of slandering in a third-party’s fourm, and attacking the sites. This is not the company to deal with, not the kind of people you can depend on for anything.
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:33 pm
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April 7th, 2007 at 03:40 am
son, so which host did you end up using?
April 7th, 2007 at 04:04 am
LayeredTech
November 11th, 2007 at 06:21 pm
Hostgator,Bluehost,Startlogic,Globat all bad for serious webmaster.
June 19th, 2008 at 01:17 am
The truth is this if you have a mission critical website and or your a developer why are you messing around with a hosting account. Get a dedicated server. Nothing is more streamline than being about to make changes to a SERVER then trying to get a hosting company to make changes to their live server which could house 1000 of clients. I have 2 server with Server Intellect. One is live server which houses all of my live clients. Then I have a small vps for testing and productions purposes. If something goes bad on the VPS I wont effect my clients or projects that are running live on my server. In the long run it is production effective and you lose less sleep. Yes you pay a bit more but think about how many times you have changed your host or days you spent moving to different host?
June 22nd, 2008 at 09:57 pm
i have been on a dedicated since the last 2 years… has been tough but better than shared.