Hostway Dedicated

URL: http://www.hostway.com
Description: Hostway offers fully-managed Dell dedicated servers with everything you need for your high performance Web site. Call Hostway at 888-874-1893 to own your own Advantage Dedicated Server. Now with double the bandwidth

Reviews (15):


 Moved it all to another host
Reviewer: Anonymous   2008-12-02
I was a HUGE fan of ValueWeb. When Hostway took over they botched it bad but I stuck with it thinking things would get better. No way. Even a letter and email to the CEO prompted no response. It's been six months and they still have yet to resolve a few of my issues. I've moved all my hosting to other sites. A BIG thank you to all the great ValueWeb people who supported me in the past and my condolences to any Hostway customers still hanging on...get a clue and move on.

 Horrible support
Reviewer: Guillaume   2008-09-25
I'd like to share some aspects of my current relationship with them. I've had a dedicated server there for almost 10 years and the service has been excellent until recently. Now some time in August I asked to upgrade php from 4 to 5. Which they did. I asked if they could upgrade MySQL at least from 3.23 to 4.xx so as to handle character sets, I received a reply telling me only MySQL 3.23 was stable and compatible with their servers. Which sounded pretty odd to me in 2008. Knowing that it's never the same person who replies to support e-mails I tried again a few days later, you know, just asking. I was told that it was no problem and that it could be done whenever I wanted. So on August 22 I asked for the upgrade. I had no answer to my repeated e-mails until around September 20 when I asked a friend in the US - I'm in Europe - to call and yell at them. There were 2 requests in my original e-mails but as usual they only do one thing and as the other was not important I decided to forget about it. Then I discovered that they didn't upgrade php from 4 to 5 on all the web sites on the dedicated server as i had requested but only on the one i was working on at the time. I asked them to do it on the other web sites, it took 3 or 4 days, each time forgetting a domain or another. Then I realized that I didn't have the root access to MySQL anymore which i used to have. They told me I shouldn't have had it in the first place. OK. So now I had to go through their admin panel to work on the databases, which was a bit more annoying than the way I was doing it before but not a huge deal. Except I then realized that in the process of upgrading MySQL, 4 of my databases had disappeared, effectively bringing down 4 of my web sites. So I wrote an e-mail 3 days ago, asking to repair that asap, I don't know but having web sites totally paralyzed seems to me a pretty urgent matter but then that's just me. I'm still waiting for an answer. I called but the guy told me he was very sorry but couldn't do anything for me at the moment! Obviously the call center has been outsourced and the poor guy had no clue but then what am I supposed to do now? Well I'm waiting. Trying to figure out if I'm their customer or their captive or something.

 By far the worst
Reviewer: Dean in Monterey   2008-07-03
I was very happy with ValueWeb. When Hostway bought them, everything -- everything -- became a nightmare. My servers were down for well over a week. No help. No communication from anyone. Stay away from these people.

 You Have Been Warned
Reviewer: Anonymous   2008-06-05
Do NOT attempt to run a business site with this host. I have never experience worse service from any company. Trouble tickets are ignored, emails not answered, phone is perpetual hold. Site outages run in to multiple days from their mistakes. I WOULDN'T HOST MY DOGS BLOG WITH THEM.

 Very poor support
Reviewer: Anonymous   2008-06-03
I lost 9 domains because they failed to send emails out, I'm sure it is because of all the changes with the registrar. Any time I need to contact them for support it's a roll of the dice if you get a person who is capable or who is not.

 hostway doesn\\\'t pay their bills to Cogent Co
Reviewer: www.xprepairpro.com   2006-08-18
Hostway failed to pay a bill to Cogent Communications in August 2006, which resulted in Cogent null routing 65,000 IP\\\'s handled by hostway. It just happened to get null routed on a friday and Hostway lied to everyone for 6 hours until Cogent finally admitted that the downtime was caused by a failure on hostways part to pay cogent for services. The 6 hour lie caused the entire 65,000 IPs to be down for the entire weekend. My hosting provider (www.kualo.com) worked around the clock to move their entire network range to a new IP range, but we were still down for almost 11 hours because Hostway couldn\\\'t fess up to their own mistake. THANKS HOSTWAY. STAY AWAY FROM HOSTWAY and ask your hosting provider if they use hostway as their BGP upstream provider. otherwise, you will fall victim.

 A crying shame
Reviewer: withheld   2006-03-01
I was introduced to their hosting services 4 years ago when I worked next to their office in London (then they were called Iarna). Their service was always stable, customisable and the customer service was second to none, always very knowlegdable and sincerely helpful. But over the last 6- 12 months it has become more and more unstable and downtime on their servers is now becoming a real issue. Customer services 1st line support is now like any help desk (UK readers, think of NTL) where you talk to a bunch of bored college drop outs who've been spazzed off their baps the night before and would rather be somewhere else because they're being paid a pittance. If you do get through to 2nd line support (most of whom were the older, better 1st line support), your problem has probably been misunderstood and given to the wrong section. If you choose many additional options, the billing process is archaic and always screws up your monthly accounting. However, Hostway are still a good host, with loads of technologies thrown in or available as add-ons. This this company once used to shine much brighter. Is it any coincidence that this has come after the merger with PIPEX? It's a real shame to watch good companies go this way.

 Downtime is completely unacceptable
Reviewer: withheld2   2006-03-01
I have been with Hostway for about 1 year and although better than my last provider, they still leave much to be desired. Start with downtime. My site is routinely unreachable for at least an hour. Tech support: same as a person before said: they change settings all the time and things stop working. (For example, Soft Artisans Fileup stopped working out of the blue a while ago and they an enterprise license for it.) When I call or e-mail I try to be as verbose as possible to speed the solution by but they NEVER completely read the e-mail so I have to repeat myself over the course of, usually, 3 subsequent e-mails. If you have a problem that does not generate an error message, you can pretty much forget getting any help within a week's time frame. Their tech support is usually about 2 steps behind any problems you have to describe. Here is a question... When a first level support guy has no idea how to evaluate a customer problem, how can that person possibly get any valuable answers from higher level support people? Such is Hostway. Good prices but don't run your business from one of their shared plans.

 Great options - poor customer service
Reviewer: unknown   2006-03-01
I've been a hostway customer for a few years now. In the last 6 months or so their servers and customer service have seemed to change. I find myself (on a weekly basis) having to call them to fix some strange thing they reset on the server (permissions, etc). Then to make matters worse, their outourced customer service keeps me on hold for 30 + minutes and then proceeds to tell me everything is fine. It's not, if it worked yesterday, it should work today. If you're already a customer, I HIGHLY recommend that you never use email customer service. You can put in giant 40pt font 'PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU HAVE FIXED MY ERROR' and they still won't tell you.

 Was better before the changes
Reviewer: j053p0   2006-03-01
Was better before the changes

 Poor support for nonstandard options
Reviewer: john   2006-03-01
Several years ago, I signed up for a merchant account through Hostway but discontinued it after a year because it was too expensive. I recently found a less expensive service and tried to use with Hostway. I have had a series of problems - first, I learned after I signed up that I needed a more expensive hosting plan. Next, I had a series of problems getting it to work with their service. The worst part happened, however, when I thought I had tested it adequately (they had no instructions for testing), but hadn't and lost several hundred $s in sales I shipped out but never received money for. They first told me they could recover the credit card numbers, then found that a default setting did not retain the credit card #s, so I was out the money. No sympathy or even an apology. With their customer service, I've found I often have to ask the same question several times. Phone calls are more effective than emails, which don't seem to be read with much thoroughness.

 Hostway drops the ball
Reviewer: jhjkh   2006-03-01
Hostway drops the ball

 Hostway is OK if you are a Windows user and sign up for extra services through their site
Reviewer: none101   2006-03-01
Hostway is OK if you are a Windows user and sign up for extra services through their site, paying rates that are often higher than elsewhere. Several years ago, I signed up for a merchant account through Hostway. I ended up canceling it after a year because it was too expensive. Recently, I found a less expensive service and tried to start up again. First, I found that I had to sign up for a more expensive hosting program than described on their web page. Next, I had a series of problems getting it set up, often having to contact their tech support several times for the same problem. The worst part came, however, after I thought I had tested the account and it appeared to be working. (They had no instructions for testing.) I lost several hundred $s in income after I shipped product without getting paid. Several of their customer service reps at first told me they could recover the credit card numbers, then they discovered a default setting had prevented the numbers from being stored. No apology or sympathy from Hostway. They just said it was my fault and they were not responsible.

 Great Company, bad plans
Reviewer: Scott   2006-03-01
Great Company, bad plans - by Scott of skarz.com on 28 January 2006: " I have used (and continue to use) Hostway for about 5 years now. In that time my website has been down for maybe 1hr from one downtime experience. Their staff is very helpful most of the time. My only drawback with this company is that their plans are too expensive for what they offer. They need to look at what others are offering an be competitive with that. My ultimate hosting company would be Hostway with plans/prices like Ix Web Hosting.

 Worst hosting service ever
Reviewer: David   2006-03-01
We were hosting 8 domains with Hostway spending over $1200.00 a year for their service. After 2 years of hosting we had no other choice but to change hosts, because they have the worst technical support, it always took them over a week to resolve a simple issue. Hostway is the worst hosting service we have ever come accross with.