Hostway

In all, when things are working, Hostway tends to have fairly good uptime. If you have any problems though, god help you. Email support is utterly useless. If your problems are easy, they may get fixed, but if you have any problems requiring a system admin, which are usually the more severe problems, it might be easier migrating to a new hosting company. Personally, if I ever get a problem again that requires a system admin, I will simply switch hosting companies as it will take less time and frustration.

My exchange has also been affected by this recent outage. I had 7 days without email at all (27th June 08 - 4th July 08) and now we are all still waiting for our folders to be restored - check their status page for their vague explanation. Dreadful support and poor timescale for their two-bit recovery process. I can't understand why there are not more people complaining about this outage. My business has suffered but I doubt I'll get a response if I complain (which I intend to do WHEN they finally restore all my mail folders)

I have several sites with Hostway and want to move them all.

My SQL servers suddenly stop working, sites have been moved to new servers without my knowledge or consent, email is often down, I have been billed for cancelled sites, etc. Tech support is poor. My last support phone call was 90 minutes long as they passed me around and disconnected me twice. I have been promised call-backs several times and have never received a call. My last trouble ticket was in the cue for a week before it received proper attention.

It's time to move on.

Hostway was my first hosting company, so I stuck with them for a long time...I guess out of sentimentality. I can readily find invoices in my Inbox from them for the last 6 years, although I may have been with them longer. I wanted a month-to-month hosting service, so Hostway fit the bill. And when I started, I thought they were attentive to my newbie needs. Over the years, I learned more about web pages and wanted mine to do more. The final blow was when I found out in January of 2007 that my plan was supposed to include, among other things, php and a my SQL database. I had to write to their support people in order to get those added to my account--when I had been paying to have those items for God only knows how long! Then, I was told they'd need to move me to a newer server to get the rest of the services I should have had. They finally did this a month later, or so they claimed. I changed my mind on the software that needed all the services, but those were services I was paying for each month, anyway, so I left them. At that point, something happened, and I was FTPing into two separate places--one place when I used the Hostway web based FTP tool, and another when I used third-party software. The items I FTP'd with their web based FTP, which I had to sign into my account to reach, would NOT even show up on my web page. So, I just used the third-party software, and didn't really have a problem doing that, until I needed to use ssh. So, I logged into my account and used their web based ssh, and that didn't work for my site, either. Nothing I did from the Hostway web-based tools would show up on my site files when I look at them through third-party FTP software, and vice versa. Then, they shut off my FTP capabilities, claiming I had too many files. (Almost nowhere else you look for hosting has a limit on the number of files you can upload, but Hostway does--even if you are nowhere near your size limits, they will cut you off for the number of files.) I told them I was convinced they had doubled the files for me, because of the FTP situation. They NEVER figured that out, for the rest of the time I was with them. In March of 2008 I finally began using the services which were supposed to be active on my account, since the change of servers in February of 2007. I encountered tons of problems and spent days trying to figure out what was going on. I'm still mostly a newbie. I had relied on the fact that all the services I needed had been set up in 2007, so I had ruled that out as a problem. When I finally did email Hostway about my difficulty in March of 2008, I learned that MY ACCOUNT HAD NEVER CHANGED SERVERS AND I DID NOT HAVE THE SERVICES THAT I'D BEEN PAYING FOR AND BEEN TOLD WERE ON MY ACCOUNT FOR THE LAST ENTIRE YEAR. Again, they never fixed the problem with their own web-based tools for my account, so I couldn't even access FTP and SSH through their site. I had to do everything on my own. They never even let me pick out a password for my own Mailman Mailing List...they did this weird thing where the password gets listed in the URL of a separate window that opens up for Mailman Admin. And there were no instructions telling me this, I just had to email them for support, every time I needed something. This meant a wait of three days at the very least. I told the technical support people how angry I was, and that I didn't want to quit them, but I would have to if they didn't shape up. They didn't really seem to care. So finally I transferred my domain, and told them I wanted to cancel my account. They are now trying to extort me into CALLING them to cancel, even though I have already given them the information they asked for in email, to cancel the account. Bottom line, what did I hate about Hostway? Having to deal with them, it was always a huge waste of my time. And being lied to, and fraudulently billed for services I was supposed to have on my hosting plan (and didn't for at least a year), according to their terms of service.

Uptime has been great and we have not had any problems with our website not email during our 4 years as customers.

Domain management has been very good. We had one problem at renewal, but we were served well by customer support to resolve the issues.

They have been adding more features and services, and they are a great hosting firm to work with