No More Bullshit Hosting
I’ve officially fucking had it with my hosting company, BlueHost.com. I’ve been using them for well over 6 years now for this site and a variety of others. I’m officially done with their bullshit shenanigans.
As you may have noticed just about any time on Sunday, SUBWAYblogger was down for no apparent reason. The site was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t even like it was showing a 404 page or anything. Instead it was just a white page, no matter where you tried to go on the site.
Nothing. Just white.
So I’m chatting up tech support and the first guy “investigates” for about 10 minutes then comes back and says it looks like a problem with Wordpress. You’re going to have to check out Wordpress.org and speak with those folks about how to fix it.
Great, thanks for the help douche bag.
So I poke around the Wordpress support forums and the web in general for 6 hours. No joke. I must have tried dozens of things including reinstalling the entire thing from scratch. Nothing.
So then I fire up another chat session with D-bag #2. He pokes around for about 30 seconds and tells me that my server is under “high load” at the moment and the engineers are actively looking into it. I tried to explain to him that the load had nothing do with my site being down. I know this because I have (had) other sites on the same server and they were working just fine. So there was nothing he could do.
Finally, I fired in an email based ticket to tech support basically asking them to do a full restore from backup. I get a response saying that they have absolutely ZERO backups of my site. That’s fucking odd because it says right here that they do weekly backups: http://helpdesk.bluehost.com/kb/index.php/kb/article/000166 . He then pointed out that the article says to check the terms and services. When you look at that, they say they are absolutely not responsible for backups and only do them from time to time! So the article says they’ll do it weekly. But if you want to dig through all the fine print, you’ll see that they’re actually not going to do it at all if they don’t feel like it. Wonderful.
That was the last damn straw.
In the 6 years I’ve been with them, I’ve had the hard drive crash and burn TWICE. Both resulted in total losses of the effected data. I literally dug through Google cached pages to dig out old posts and manually put them back. Of course, I told them after the first one that I would gladly pay a monthly fee to have them automatically run nightly backups of the site. They weren’t interested.
I’ve also had the site temporarily go down a multitude of times due to other “load” issues that had nothing to do with me.
In any event, I’m done with Bluehost for good. I’m moving on to the Cloud baby.
I’ve been wanting to move over to a more robust system like Amazon Cloudfront + EC2 or Rackspace’s Cloud files for a while now. This just gave me the extra motivation.
SUBWAYblogger is now officially powered by the Rackspace Cloud. (ooooooo ahhhhh).
Rackspace/Mosso has an outstanding reputation for quality and customer service. So far their tech people have been 1000x better than Bluehost. The hosting is more expensive, but you really get what you pay for. For $6.00 a month with Bluehost, what could I really expect? Crap.
So now the Cloud will mean that the site is infinitely scalable both in size and traffic. SUBWAYblogger can now pretty much take anything that can be thrown at it.
I’m supper pumped and glad to be back online once and for all.
- 66 Rider Opinions
- Tags: hosting
Couldn’t agree more. I used to be a BlueHost customer and had the same problems. I just can’t figure why there are still in business.
The sad truth is they’re not the only one. I dealt with a few Host companies over the years and they’re pretty much all the same. You can never get a straight answer from support when there is a problem. They always reply with vague answers not to mention that sometimes it’s doesn’t make sense. I think they’re just trying to cover their ass until they fix the problem at their end and then they reply with some bogus answer.
ReplyI feel your pain, man. I feel your pain 10 times… Because I used to work for a small webhosting company, doing customer support. I was doing exactly the same lame job as D-bags from bluehost. That’s because usually support people are undertrained for the job, underpaid and unaware what’s going on with their servers. Bottom line, any good webhosting company has to invest in their people. Otherwise we witness bluehost’s fall from being a decent hosting provider to what is happening now.
ReplyMan, I use bluehost right now for all my sites so this is scary. I do my own backups and download them to my PC, so that should help … but i’ve also noticed my sites going down for no good reason. Very frustrating. I think all of the $6-8/month hosts will have the same prob. What does it cost now with rackspace?
ReplyI have not used bluehost but I use several hosting companies in addition to having dedicated servers. A good cheap host is MIDPHASE – it’s simple and good value. Also RackForce is good for a Virtual Server but more expensive. Just stay away from GO DADDY they sucbad. Also 1and1 is pretty weak.
ReplyI’ve been on the edge with BlueHost myself for a while now. I was having issues with my Hostmonster account, and was thinking of moving to them – until I discovered they were the same company! Now I’m thinking of floating in the clouds myself too…will checkout rackspace here soon.
ReplyI feel your pain on this one! Have been host-hopping for a while before I realized that 99% of these cheapo hosts are not going to cut it in the long run. I’ll look into rackspace and other suggestions on here!
ReplyI’ve used (and still do in some cases):
- Bluehost
- Startlogic
- Host Gator
- JustHost
- SingleHop
- GoDaddy
- Amazon
- 1and1
- Fatcow
They’re all pretty much the same. Nothing really to write home about, but some of them do have more issues than others.
The problem is that they are in a race to undercut each other. So one offers 500gigs of storage, then the next offers 2000gigs, then the next offers unlimited. It’s just oneupmanship. Do you have any idea how long it would take you to fill 500 or 1000Gigs of space? If your site were that massive, you’d need a commercial host anyway.
The only one of the cheap-o hosts that I’ve liked and had no customer service complaints is JustHost.com. They’re all around pretty good. Maybe because they are British? Who knows.
My new Rackspace is costing $100/month. I big jump (that’s what I used to spend for an whole year with some accounts). Worth every damn penny so far.
I’ve also moved over 5 sites to my account. I have 13 sites I manage generating around 11 million pageviews a month. I’m tentatively making plans to migrate the others as well.
ReplyAre any of them any different? From my experience NO!!
When times are plentiful you tend to get Shite customer service, you know the thinking; one leaves two more arrive. I personally have looked east for my seo hosting (unique ip’s) and are now with India host. Great customer service, they just can not do enough for you. Tried them out with the smallest plan then stepped up twice and they had to move servers for the last up grade and they did all the moving for me.
ReplyLike you I have hade similar problems, I moved to midphase about a year ago, and the only problem I have had is with the number of emails you can send an hour, only 200 more is an optional extra
ReplyDoes anybody know anything about the jumper at the 77th street station this morning? I could see him under the train after it stopped and he was still breathing. Didn’t look like the train had run over him or anything, just knocked him underneath. Did he make it? Anyone?
Replyah! that’s why i was a half hour late today! (cool office, so no problem, but still annoying). got on the 6 at 110th, sat there for about 2o minutes, then they took all the 6 trains out of service. had to go up to 125th to get on a 4/5. such fun. plenting of F-ing briges in the City idiot, find some other way to end your misery without screwing with our day!
ReplyKnow the feeling on your hosting, my only tip with wordpress is run a good cache plugin like supercache and try out one of the widget cacheing plugin to try and reduce database load.
ReplyI hear ya! I have ZERO tolerance for bad hosting providers. I have been through more than my share in 15 years online!
Reply@dr crow: Yeah I’ve always used SuperCache on my sites. I think it is one of the most important WP plugins available. Especially now that I’m actually paying for compute cycles!
ReplyGood for you! And if they don’t like the bad publicity- fuck ‘em! They are getting exactly what they deserve. There is too much old-fashioned free market competition out there to have to put up with that sort of bullshit.
ReplyThanks for sharing this. I have been looking for a hosting service, and Bluehost was one of candidates. Since mentioning them, I have heard a few horror stories, so I’ll definitely look at some of my other options, and check out the one you went with as well.
ReplyI’m glad i decided against BlueHost…enough stories like this will keep customers away in droves…
ReplyI agree 100% with BS hosting providers. Most are just resellers who do not have a clue about managing cpanel let alone a server.
ReplyI’m not sure if the 77th street station incident was a jumper or a faller but HE LIVED! I watched him stand up on the tracks before they cleared everyone out of the station.
That said, I was in total shock at the lack of response on the part of the MTA and 1st responders. Their behavior was DISGUSTING. The conductor took 5-8 minutes to turn off the train and more time to turn off the 3rd rail. On top of this stupidity, the MTA and 1st responders were not acting like it was an emergency. A man hit by a train and laying on the subway tracks underneath 2 subway cars not an emergency? They should all be fired. I got their names and badge numbers and am sending in a formal complaint. The straphangers on the platform were more caring and responsive than these pathetic NYC workers.
ReplyThanks for the heads up. I was thinking about switching TO Bluehost…. changed my mind!! Thanks
ReplyI’m glad that he lived…it’s too bad that the MTA has to be so … what? irresponsible? apathetic? incompetent?
ReplyHosting is so key today, and very competitive. 2I am a fan of spreading your sites to many hosting companies. I like BlueHost, Host Gator to name a few. Try to always get the most inexpensive Reseller account and WHM and Cpanel.
ReplyI’m using BH too and they have let me down a few times. It’s just such a pain in the a$$ to change. Do you have any suggestions on making the switch a little less onerous?
Reply@Bill: It is definitely an investment. In my experience, you pay for what you get. It’s just so much less stressful knowing that you have a top level service right at your fingertips and you’ll never run out of storage.
ReplyHey SUBWAY blogger I have had three different hosts and they are all mystified and never to blame when you are left off line. I even been offline for three weeks at one hosting provider and they still charged me for a month’s hosting? yeah that’s bullshit too! Theres too much of that- who cares? we hold the power, we don’t even have to acknowledge it attitude. Who do they think they are Google?
ReplyCrumbs! I am with BlueHost for most of my sites and this really bothers me now.
ReplyChanging hosting is both annoying and time consuming but being shafted by an incompetent and uncaring host is far worse.
The only bit of consolation is that this will ultimately cost them when they are Hell-Bent on providing sub-standard service.
I think all of you agree that hosting is the most important part if we want to be seen on the Internet. What ever we do, we fail if our sites are down. I use several hosting companies and think that you get what you pay for, as always. Kiosk is by far the most expensive one I use but also the one I am most happy about. It is too expensive if you only use the hosting part but there are a couple of other things I find useful. Hostgator is the other main company I use and haven’t had any issues with them either.
ReplyYou’re gonna love this — I’ve been using Hostgator ever since 2003 and now have two servers running . . . both about half full, and they’ve only ever gone down ONCE in 5-6 years.
ReplyThey have a terrific guarantee which means if your server is down more than 45 minutes a month, you get the whole month for FREE.
It feels so good to be able to forget about hosting worries. I must say though, it’s reseller hosting, not that $8 a month unlimited sites hosting.
And no, I’m not on commission or anything
I’ve used Bluehost for a few years. I’ve had a few problems with them one of which was my account getting hacked and people sending spam mail. I got it sorted but had to go direct to the techie guys, first line support are no good for anything serious. Glad to see you back in action.
ReplyI have to 2nd Erika – I have used hostgator for a long period of time now and came to them from a prev. bad host experience. I just recently helped an internet marketing client get out of a crap host situation as well… its amazing some times what people will put up with from their web host.
many more blog posts like this and blue host will be on their way out. Its much to easy to see things like this go viral through the social media channels.
ReplyCongratulations on your move to the clouds! You can now have the kind of website you want to have. I wish I could do the same. Hey have you heard of Sitemasher.
ReplyIf so how does Sitemasher stack up against Rackspace?
I know Sitemasher is cloud based and in general they have search engine optimization, analytics, content management, website builder, and a ton of active software that is already integrated. For $39.00 a month it’s not a bad deal. I think I can reduce some of my production and maintenance costs. I think it’s a better way to go and besides I really like this new technology.
I think I have the same problem with you last time and I am out of bluehost. Either bluehost, 1&1 or Godaddy, there are probably the same. When you sudden hit a high spike in traffic, they suspended your account. I’ve came across those problem before and I am still looking for other alternative. It’s tired to move files here and there.
ReplyI’ve come to trust GoDaddy with all my hosting needs. So far, they’ve been extremely helpful in all my issues, and I’ve never experienced any downtime yet (or at least not with my knowledge). Hopefully, they’ll remain the same as the years come by.
ReplyI am suspecting that all those positive reviews about Blue Host are due to the good affiliate commissions – 60$ they are paying to affiliates for refering a client. And so affiliates ranking this company as #1 or #2…
ReplyGoDaddy does not have a good Statistics available, and it is a must for me. With the Hostgattor my uptime was bad… Will try JustHost.com Thank you!
Way to go, man. You just can’t put up with bad hosting, it hurts you in so many ways – it’s not worth the aggravation.
ReplyI have been dealing with hosting nightmares for weeks, one host everyone needs to cross off their list is Host Gator. I have been with them for years but it seems the tail wags the dog there when it comes to support. I have read tons about Blue Host and will be trying them out next, the only hard thing will be the moving of over 100 sites over.
ReplyHi! I just read through your post. I have been using Bluehost for about 11 months now. I can remember two specific incidents when all my sites (about 25 I think) just went down. I asked them if this was the 0.01% of the 99.9% of the time that they were supposed to be down. I’d say about 2 or 3 times I was told, “Sorry, try Google”. Rrrr…that’s the worst. Another thing I don’t like is that they offer very little support for website security. I have 4 sites down – I admit my fault for not keeping my Wordpress updated. But, they should also have more measures from preventing sites from getting hacked. So, I set up an account with Hostgator. For now I’d say their service is better (good team of computer geeks ready to answer questions) and it seems the two sites I already made there are loading faster. Thanks, David
ReplyI agree with Alex, the good review about blue host because they get paid for high affiliate commissions. Sometimes we can find honest and actual review from forums, and some from blogs commenting like what happened over here.
ReplyAnytime you go with a large hosting company, like Bluehost, 1and1, HostGator, etc. you sacrifice a cheaper price for cheaper service. In the hosting industry especially, you get what you pay for.
You made a good move when you jumped onto Rackspace, they’ve been the primary provider for premium hosting for the past 10 years or so.
ReplyI know how you feel. I used to be with an absolute Shit*er of a host company but then I swapped to Servage. They are relatively unknown but the service is fantastic and Ive had less downtime with them than I have at HostGator…(also a great host).
ReplyThanks for the heads up on BH. Im surprised you have hostgator in the same list as used hosts since i just starting using them and heard so many good things about them. You know, there are some big shot online marketers that have hundreds or thousands of websites and i bet you money if the sites go down even for 15 min they lose hundreds of dollars in sales for that visitor could be the one ready to actually buy when the site is offline. Anyway, i think it comes back down to, you get what you pay for. Don`t expect such robust reliability for 10 or 15 bucks a month. Most of what they advertise they can`t deliver. Its just propaganda to make max sales.
ReplyI’ve used 5 hosting companies, and HostGator, HostMonster, Kiosk have proved themselves with customer service for me. The fees vary, but I use these three to have different IP addresses for linking. Works great!
ReplyJust curious how it’s now working out for you, and if you are using Cloud Sites or the Cloud Server with Rackspace?
I do website development (in addition to other things), and just setup a Cloud Sites account for several client websites. Don’t even get me started on my old host. Yes, there was a time when I couldn’t understand why people would pay for expensive hosting accounts.. a few years later I have to say that I agree. You do get what you pay for when it comes to web hosting.
Cheers.. J.
ReplyFor me. I’ve tried few hosting company and they are hosted in different countries like US, Europe, China and some famous offshore hosting in Amsterdam. So far the best hosting I got is hostgator. Superior uptime with no downtime at all so far after 3 years of hosting.
no comment given for bluehost or dreamhost. May be I could give it a try.
ReplyI know how you feel. You’re not the first person I’ve heard with a horror story about Bluehost…I have used Host Gator and Host Monstor – these are probably two of the most common hosts out there and have a pretty solid reputaion behind them…
Replyhey – just wanted to update you, ive started using “web hosting pad” and so far its going really well. At first I couldnt work out how to reset my wordpress password but the support desk helped me in UNDER 10 MINUTES! Incredible response. Anyway – just wanted to let you know that this is another option…
ReplyI had been considering using Bluehost but your post has put off that idea completely. I read above that Hostmonster gets a good write up and they are pretty cheap. I thought they were a sister company to Bluehost? Has anyone else heard that, not that it matters I suppose if they give a good service?
ReplyWhy do so many of these hosting companies startout OK, then as the base gets bigger fail to increase customer support? I guess if you pay more, you get a better service????
ReplyHey Brittany, that’s common nowadays … those companies can provide very good service during startup but once they have enough customer in their list, they would just maintain and not going to improve it. But those who improved it would definitely get a good credit.!
ReplyI have been advised to spread any sites I have over several hosting companies in case one of the hosts doesn’t deliver and then as the saying goes ‘all my eggs will not be in the one basket’. Proves more expensive getting your hosting this way but I guess it could limit troubles in the future.
ReplyAnother benefit to spreading over hosts is that you can start building an internal linking network – great for SEO
ReplyI am using GoDaddy for the 4 sites that I run. Fairly low traffic sites but I have had no problems. Are they really that bad? Worth me changing host?
ReplyIsn’t Hostmonster also a BlueHost company? I had issues with them as well. I guess it is true, you get what you pay for.
ReplyI used Blue host for about 1/2 of one subscription. I had my site supposedly hacked twice in about that many weeks. I had never had problem with Host Monster in the years I had been with before Blue Host. I moved my whole show over to Jaguar PC and have not had a problem one with them. They have been absolutely great to me. And they claim unlimited space also.
ReplyI guess it must just be the way you hold you nose.
Bluehost is nothing but a nightmare, I had run ins with their tech support on a regular basis so I said some harsh words to them that I probably shouldn’t have and then swapped to Hostgator (awesome customer service and no BS)
ReplyAnybody here got similar experience with ANHosting.com? Kind of scaring the shit out.
ReplyBluehost is nothing but a nightmare
ReplyAt least you still had your own backups to fall back on. Unlike 1999 it’s so cheap and easy now I keep 3 copies of my website on my harddrive, 1 on my backup drive, 1 each on thumbdrives and … get this … I keep a final copy at bluehost. My main site is Hostway which is just “meh” IF … IF Hostway has a backup I count it as icing on the cake.
Remember, ” a fool and his data are easily parted”
ReplyI think all of the $6-8/month hosts will have the same prob. What does it cost now with rackspace?
ReplyYah!! we have the same quetion..Is i Hostmonster a BlueHost company?We have all the same experience in the BlueHost…
ReplyI have been using hostnine with not too many problems.. but even their work sucks when it comes to maintaining back-ups.
ReplyIve heard rackspace are pretty good
ReplyI’m glad I didn’t use Bluehost now. I was about to because Wordpress recommend it on their site. I’ve been using uk2.net and Wordpress was easy to set and their customer service has been good.
ReplyNot sure about others but I’ve used godaddy shared and the virtual servers. Both services from goddady sucks badly. I currently use virtual servers from Spry and it works fine.
ReplyI’m not one to recommend because I haven’t used that many hosting companies. But I’ve never had a problem with seo hosting and they are quite friendly.
ReplyA hosting company is just that they host your information. They don’t provide help for something that is ‘your’ problem for one reason or another. I’ve been with 1and1 for years and have only called them a couple of times with stuff they probably shouldn’t have helped me with but they did. I am looking at Bluehost for all the additional features they offer that 1and1 doesn’t . I feel loyal to 1and1 for the help they’ve given me over the years but business is business so you’ve got to make business decisions some times. The prices of all the hosting is coming down with the economy it seems now, so it is a good time to get a great deal.
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