STEER CLEAR of webhost.uk.net

[RBS]

Guys,

Just want to share my very bad experience with(unfortunately) forum members service.

My best friend urgently needed a domain with hosting for his company, but because he doesn`t know anything about these things, he asked me to help him out. My first idea was "Well, easy, GoDaddy, he will be up and running in minutes". But then I thought - why don`t I help forum community and use one of the services here. What a mistake it was.

First of all - after signing up and making a payment, no email was received with Plesk or other control panel login details. Spoke to the live support - "It will take few hours, it needs to be approved". When I asked how many? 6-8 hrs. I wouldn`t call it few. They are misleading/telling lies to customers.

Next morning we get login details. Created email. Two webmail software packages offered - one of them doesn`t even work.

Tried sending test email to gmail - bounced back. Tried sending to @outlook.com, bounced back. Contacted live support and it turns out gmail is blocking their IP or something. I wonder why? Because they are blacklisted? Spammers? Distributing malware? God knows.

My mate decides he can`t afford to loose business because of non working email and wants to get refund. The fun starts here. We were told by support to send email to billing@, which we did. What we got back was anything else, but not a refund or even mention of it. "We will look into email issue" "we will talk to gmail" "we have resolved an issue"(emails do not bounce back now, but recipients not getting them anyway". My mate sent few emails saying refund is an issue now, not email, and asks for refund again. Webhost keeps ignoring him and pretend they didn`t read that part of email. Luckily he paid via PayPal - dispute filed to get partial refund - for hosting package.

I now feel so bad and stupid by trying to help out my mate, but ended up causing him unnecessary stress and inconvenience. And more importantly he was so desperate to send out few emails from his new company email asap.

I hope Google indexes this post as soon as possible so that people do not same mistakes I did. Should have gone with GoDaddy and wouldn`t have a single problem, but hey - we live and learn.

And what I also now have found:
http://asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2012/11/WEBHOSTUK-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_207547.aspx

Hoping for PayPals help to recover money paid to those cowboys. How come such service providers are allowed to promote here on forum...?!

 

[Cromulent]

GoDaddy is like the worst web hosting imaginable. I wouldn't trust them at all. I don't even trust them with domains any more and happily made the move to Namecheap instead.

Email is one of the hardest services to provide when it comes to web hosting. Keeping your email servers off blacklists, making sure everything works, ensuring customers aren't misusing their email services. The list goes on and on. Frankly anyone who seriously requires email wouldn't use a web hosts email services anyway. 99% of them don't even support DKIM signing for domains. so you can't use DMARC. Almost none of them tell you how to configure SPF either. SPF, DKIM and DMARC are essential for anyone who really cares about email.

Do your mate a favour and get him to pay for an "enterprise" (yes I hate that phrase as well) class email solution like Microsoft Hosted Exchange Online or Google Apps for Business.

As for the refund difficulties. That sucks but it sounds like you are doing OK now.

If I were to recommend hosting I'd always point to Linode as the best in terms of price versus performance (with RamNode and Vultr being a couple of others I would recommend). Of course you need to know what you are doing with these providers. But if you want something good sometimes you need to do it yourself.

 

[Faevilangel]

Don't use Godaddy, they are really bad (and not UK based).

I use Vidahost, forum members and UK based with excellent support @Dominic Taylor @Seb de Lemos are the 2 co-owners.

 

[ServWise]

So sorry you have had such a bad experience with this host, certainly not the norm I would think and certainly not the way we handle things here. If you want to try a free trial with us let me know by PM and I will sort you out.

 

[mit74]

I highly recommend Vidahost. I have several reseller accounts with them and any problems they'll go out of their way to help.

 

[EpicWebs]

Sorry to hear that, I can highly recommend NameCheap for domains and for cheaper hosting Site5 is great, it monitors resource usage across it's shared hosting so that one person can't slow down others. So as long as your site is suitable for shared hosting it's a pretty good service.

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your and your friend's trouble with that web host. Whilst they may be a UKBF member they're more of a corporate than the other names mentioned or us.

Unfortunately service like that is quite common with the larger names, and whilst ServWise, VidaHost, us, and few others have been active members for years, there has been a bit of an influx of hosts on here that aren't really of the same mould.

Does your friend have one of their Windows hosting packages, as you mention Plesk?

If they're using cPanel then fortunately you can very easily move your hosting account to another host that also runs cPanel. Otherwise any host like us that provides a more personal service will happily do this manually for you.

If you're using Linux hosting then cPanel is definitely the preferred choice over Plesk.

Unfortunately it's a bit late this time, but if you do a search on the forums for a host's name then that'll quickly give you an indication of what they'll be like.

If your friend's still looking for a new host then we'll be happy to help. We've been hosting a number of UKBF members for years and regularly move clients from poor hosts to us.

Good luck.

All the best,

Dan

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

Guys,

Just want to share my very bad experience with(unfortunately) forum members service.

My best friend urgently needed a domain with hosting for his company, but because he doesn`t know anything about these things, he asked me to help him out. My first idea was "Well, easy, GoDaddy, he will be up and running in minutes". But then I thought - why don`t I help forum community and use one of the services here. What a mistake it was.

First of all - after signing up and making a payment, no email was received with Plesk or other control panel login details. Spoke to the live support - "It will take few hours, it needs to be approved". When I asked how many? 6-8 hrs. I wouldn`t call it few. They are misleading/telling lies to customers.

Next morning we get login details. Created email. Two webmail software packages offered - one of them doesn`t even work.

Tried sending test email to gmail - bounced back. Tried sending to @outlook.com, bounced back. Contacted live support and it turns out gmail is blocking their IP or something. I wonder why? Because they are blacklisted? Spammers? Distributing malware? God knows.

My mate decides he can`t afford to loose business because of non working email and wants to get refund. The fun starts here. We were told by support to send email to billing@, which we did. What we got back was anything else, but not a refund or even mention of it. "We will look into email issue" "we will talk to gmail" "we have resolved an issue"(emails do not bounce back now, but recipients not getting them anyway". My mate sent few emails saying refund is an issue now, not email, and asks for refund again. Webhost keeps ignoring him and pretend they didn`t read that part of email. Luckily he paid via PayPal - dispute filed to get partial refund - for hosting package.

I now feel so bad and stupid by trying to help out my mate, but ended up causing him unnecessary stress and inconvenience. And more importantly he was so desperate to send out few emails from his new company email asap.

I hope Google indexes this post as soon as possible so that people do not same mistakes I did. Should have gone with GoDaddy and wouldn`t have a single problem, but hey - we live and learn.

And what I also now have found:
http://asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2012/11/WEBHOSTUK-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_207547.aspx

Hoping for PayPals help to recover money paid to those cowboys. How come such service providers are allowed to promote here on forum...?!

This forum is open and many service providers you probably want to avoid self promote on here. That includes those with poor track records, those that mislead with advertising (they just resell other services but claim their own datacentres/24x7 teams, etc), those that aren't a real limited company / business entity in the UK etc etc.

As a guide, look at the following when considering a hosting co:
- Reviews (Google their name). Expect to see most positive with a few negative for someone good. All positive is unheard of, it means they are writing their own good reviews
- Length of time in business
- Does the business actually exist (limited co / partnership / plc / sole trader)?
- Own infrastructure / reseller (and are they upfront about it?)
- Active social media (i.e. other customers that actually use their service)?

This should get you started.

 

[Bill1954]

A very sad tale. We had similar issues with this bunch a few years ago. I also notice that none of their people have commented in this thread, if you had been looking for hosting they would have been here like a shot.
Lesson learned, just because it's advertised on UKBF doesn't mean it's good

 

[Burtech]

That's a real shame to hear stories like that, hopefully you have not lost faith in this community.

 

[alistairm]

I use webhost.uk.net among others and not had a problem in about 3 years with them although I've never had a reason to contact support so I couldn't give an opinion on how helpful or not they are. I also use Vidahost and would probably recommend them myself. I once contacted them about one of their other customers using my content on their own site (although spun) and they had it removed the same day, in fact it was probably in under an hour so very good support in that case.

I also haven't and wouldn't use GoDaddy for hosting.

 

[RBS]

We also chose Vidahost, got setup within minutes, so good so far, impressed.