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URL: http://www.valueweb.com   Mostly good! - email can be problematicalReviewer: Liz T 03-28-2006 During the three years I've had our company site with ValueWeb, I've seen a lot of changes, and had to use many aspects of their tech support, features and control panel. I've had a very good experience for the most part. With few exceptions their tech support has been excellent, even going 'beyond the call of duty' in some cases. It has been polite and competent for the presented issues. I've been able to use the control panel with little problem; sometimes when they are making a major change (like happened recently) things can happen, but that can be part of anyone's business upgrade. The glitches were small and fixed promptly. Once the disk failed on the server we use and it was taken care of immediately as well. We have changed domains, plans and migrated to other servers without trouble. The only reason these guys don't get a 10 is the email 'thing'. It has been better in general since their last recent upgrade, but because of all the 'anti-spamming' activity their email servers can be flaky and sometimes unreliable. Since our company does not have its own email server and uses a T1 line to the I'net we rely on Valueweb for all company email. Luckily, nothing really bad has happened to us so far in this department, but it can make me edgy at times. I have feeling if we leave VW it will be because of both the email irregularities, and the fact they don't have a Windows hosting option, which our company is moving towards (which is not my choice BTW.) Missing 1 ThingReviewer: Josh 03-28-2006 I couldn't manage/support multiple domains, all sharing my alloted space.  Valueweb is ok. Email is shakyReviewer: Andy 03-28-2006 Been with valueweb about a year. The actual webhosting part of the deal works well - good up time. Email is another matter. Over the months I either couldn't receive mail, or couldn't send it, or both. It's on and off. You never know if it's going to work. Their Tech help blamed everything but Valueweb, suggesting it was caused by antivirus software or suggesting rebooting PC to get rid of the "connection to the server has failed" messages... Consequently I'm moving hosts shortly. My business can't afford that kind of unreliability. Constant e-mail downtime, slow transfer during peak hours, would not recommendReviewer: Joe 03-28-2006 You might get lucky to access your e-mail accounts 50% of the time. The problems are constant and have not improved the entire 12 months I've been with them. While website uptime was fair, data transfer could be very slow at times especially at peak times of the day. Would not recommend to anyone as you get little value for their cheapest $19.95/per month plan. very poor service and accountability!Reviewer: Jacob Sada 03-28-2006 Over the past year we have had problems with valueweb hosting our site and our email. To resolve the problems with email we took control of it inhouse. Unknown to me or any of the other staff, that didn't have to go fight a war, we had a redirected email account that was in use by the web site. Once we realized that the account no longer worked I called valueweb to find out why it didn't work. They proceeded to explain that it wasn't there problem and that there was nothing they can do. They also proved that the email on their side actually did work but it was still our problem. The tech I dealt with was rude and tried to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that their email system worked. It took him 20 minutes and multiple attempts just to send an email to an account that was on their servers. I received no satisfaction even after speeking with a supervisor who could do nothing more than tell me that we were "lucky" that the redirector worked as long as it did. And that there is nothing they can do. Because of this issue that they are not responsible for and cannot help us with. We lost over a months worth of business. We are currently in the process of moving our domains from valueweb to another host. I wouldn't recommend anybody use them as their hosting solution, they treat you as if you are ignorant and are condescending and extremely unhelpful in resolving problems. If I didn't know what I was doing my company would be in a great deal of trouble. bad email serviceReviewer: Bob 03-28-2006 I've hosted basic and merchant accounts with Valueweb for several years and they do have pretty good uptime with site hosting. However as others here mention the email servers are horrible. I have asked for a long time about improvements and they never seem to be made. Lost mail is common as are busy servers (presumabley becasuse their open relays are being abused by spammers). They seem in denial about how important email is to a company - it's an integral part of your online presence, yet valuweb treats it as some bonus feature that can be ignored). The latest email outage lasted 3 days!! Typical Hands-off webhost siteReviewer: Kiernan Holland 03-28-2006 Valueweb allows ftp access only, no telnet access but that can be hacked using a special page with CGI access that executes commands and relays the results through the webpage. Service is normal, you can ask for help but have to wait for a callback, as last I recall.. I considered them as a scuky webhoster as they made it tough for me to transfer my host to another company. So they are very good about bringing new customers on but they would rather you not leave. However they won't hold your website for ransom like Hostrocket customers say. I switched from this over to www.phpwebhosting.com . And have been with them for a couple of years. I'm currently looking for a good server site for my realvideo files, that's why I'm up here.. I almost got on with "hostrocket", thankgod for this site, I didn't.. But I would not go back to valueweb ever, they are too paranoid someone is going to hack their servers. Also they prefer Frontpage users to Unix account users.. Last I was with them they didn't really support PHP, only Perl really. Solid company, much improvedReviewer: Pete 03-28-2006 I have 4 domains with VW at this time. Very reliable up-time! Committed to service. Valueweb has had considerable challenges with its email system. As of today I was finally migrated to the new system. Aaaaah! Thanks, I needed that. Much improvement! And the migration went flawlessly! No, they are not the cheapest, but what they do, works. And they fix things that are wrong, if you document it properly. You don't want a provider that reinvents the wheel every tie a customer whines a little. I have had them do several system-wide changes in response to problems that came up. They made ajustments that benefitted all users. Very flexible for a big outfit. In fairness to the comments of others about tech support... Yes, like ANY big company, you have to get through the "junior-birdmen" techs, before you get help with higher level problems. But having had a few of those real odd problems, I now know who to call for that kind of stuff, and the senior techs are VERY good. They call when they say they will and do what they say they will! If you want everything on the planet for $60 a year, and dont' want to spend the time to do things right, don't go to VW. But if you want good service, for a fair price from a solid host, ValueWeb is for you.  Run Away!Reviewer: Timmy 03-28-2006 I had my site hosted with Valueweb for almost three years. During the last year (2002) they merged with some company I don't even remember the name (Netaffinity, probably) and the service quickly became terrible. You know, email was already useless and slow to begin with, but then they added overloaded servers (don't even think of Valueweb if you need Php or Perl for your site!). I called them many many times, and they answered it was my fault, because obviously the error I was getting (503: server not available !) was generated from a buggy script. I moved my site, keeping all the scripts the way they were, and everything suddenly worked again... I am even getting my email, which wasn't usually possible with their overloaded mail servers, and I am sending my newsletter without problems (and I always thought that the problems I had were coming from Mojomail, the perl program I use to manage the newsletter....). Please, do yourself a big favour: run away from Valueweb! Email slow and unreliableReviewer: rb 03-28-2006 I've had sent emails just disappear - no bounce, no nothing, just not delivered. Emails to my site sometimes bounce with a 550 error (user unknown). This gives your customers the impression you've moved or no longer in business. POP connections to check email are regularly refused. To get an idea for yourself, try "telnet mailhost0.valueweb.net 25" at a command prompt on your computer. This will connect you to their SMTP mail server. See how long it takes to get a prompt The best I've seen is about 30 seconds. Now try this with any other hosting company, or even Hotmail or Yahoo mail. Strictly speaking, this isn't a test of email delivery, just the response time of their server. But it's one symptom of a much larger problem. Apparently, Valueweb doesn't place any "value" on email. I've heard stories about this being fixed for about six months, but it seems to be getting worse, not better. If you don't need email, their service is OK - some downtime on my site, support/control panel slightly better than average, 1-4 day response to emails. My site was there for six years.  ValueWeb - Very PoorReviewer: Danny 03-28-2006 Their e-mail problems are ridiculous. Always at least a 1 hour delay even when sending to someone else in your company at YOUR domain hosted at Valueweb. Ever had e-mail delayed 2 - 3 DAYS? I did with Valueweb and it's not getting better. They said e-mail server was being upgraded soon but two months later the problem is still the same. The Miva Merchant cart is great but the server can't handle traffic. Have had numerous complaints from people trying to order and can't get the order completed, server response stops and you're back at square one entering your info again. Had staff members try just to be sure and had the same problem. Other Miva providers let you use their SSL certificate and send you to a URL like "secure.hostingprovider.com/...." so no Security warning comes up when it's time to order. Valueweb doesn't do this so when you try to order you get a warning that the Site Certificate doesn't match the domain. They are selling Thawte certificates and want you to buy one from them (which will take appx. 1 week to 10 days according to tech support). Moving to a competent host made more sense than ordering anything else from them. Their support people are mostly novices, I'd say a one in 10 shot of getting someone who actually knows anything. One actually tried to tell me that the e-mail problem is caused by someone sending the mail to our domain and using upper case letters in the e-mail address. We'll, e-mail addresses are NOT case sensitive at all. When I told him that, his response was "Can I help you with anything else today?" Just because a company offers phone tech support doesn't mean the guy on the other end of the line is qualified to help at all. This is only a small part of what I encountered when dealing with Valueweb. If you have doubts about any of this, call their tech support and ask if there are any e-mail delays? or sign up and try them for yourselves, then come back here and post your experiences which I'm sure won't be positive ones. The only reason I didn't give them a rating of "1" is because the site did actually remain online and accessible for browsing, I thought that deserved at least two points. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. I'd "Value" having everything work...Reviewer: Ed Behr 03-28-2006 ValueWeb's merchant hosting at $74.95 per month looked like a good deal for my startup publishing company--good storage space, data transfer, MySQL, Trellix web software, MIVA Merchant storefront, credit card processing, support 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and best of all, setup in only 15 minutes! Wonderful. Except after you sign up you find that domain name transfer or registration takes at least 3 days, so "setup" only consists of you being able to start building web pages, not actually having a functioning domain. Fine. So I'll just download the Trellix software and build my pages. Except the link to Trellix doesn't work. Their on-line "help" guy tells me there must be something wrong with my connection. How it's possible that it works fine for everything else, he doesn't know. Fine, they also offer Verisign site building software, so I'll just try that. Except the link on the Verisign site doesn't work. Okay, back to Trellix. The next "help" guy gives me the FTP address of the software so I don't have to use the link. Great, I download the zip file. Except when I try to unzip, I get a "corrupt cabinet" error. Back to on-line help (same problem, third time). I keep getting put on hold, so I send an e-mail to their customer support which usually responds “within 24 hours.” Except 24 hours later, nothing (in fact, 24 DAYS later, still nothing). Fine, back to on-line help. The next help guy tries to run it himself and says "You’re right. I get that error too. Tell you what, I’ll send you a copy of Trellix on CD.” Fine. Four days later, 8 days after I signed up and they took my money, I have the software I should have had on day one. So I start to use Trellix. I need some help, so I click on the on-line help link and find that Trellix was taken over by CuteSiteBuilder and it appears I have to purchase a support plan, but we’re all just a little foggy on this. I decide it’ll be easier just to figure it out myself. Fine. I spend the next couple weeks building and publishing my web site. Eventually I reach the point where I want to use MySQL. I click on the links to activate my account. I go to their startup guide and carefully follow the instructions. Get a “Can’t connect to host: Access denied for user” error. Log onto on-line help three times, am put on hold all three times because nobody is available, give up after long wait each time. Send e-mail to customer support to get response “within 24 hours” and am still waiting, right now, over 40 hours later. Oh, and did I mention that they have no help files on their site--that’s right, none--but have substituted an enormous FAQ sheet consisting of hundreds of questions and answers coupled with a search engine that frequently returns things that have nothing to do with the subject you entered. It’s obvious to me that ValueWeb was only interested in getting my money. I’m shopping for another host and I wouldn’t recommend ValueWeb to anyone. Stay awayReviewer: Anonymous 08-01-2006 Absolutely horrible. We chose them because they had this great backup utility - that continually went down and was unavailable. Then when we had a system failure, they said they couldn\\\'t even access the backup unless the server was up. Then we requested the drives to be shipped to us - 3 days later they have no record of the request. Hopefully we will get our data back eventually. Stay away. Problem with SSLReviewer: Anonymous 09-27-2007 BIG PROBLEMS with Valueweb. For months some customers have been calling telling me that the web browser freezes when they click the checkout button (clicking checkout routes you to the secure server with Thawte SSL certificate). Problem only exists with some customers and not all. Brought it to the attention of Valueweb during countless telephone calls where I get a different person each time who doesn\\\'t read the notes or has no notes to read from the previous calls. Almost impossible to speak with someone who has authority and accountability. Was informed countless times is was a Thawte Certificate problem so finally spoke with Thawte (in Switzerland) and was told its a Valueweb issue. Haven\\\'t gotten call back from Valueweb again. Horrible. When it works it works great, no problems with e-mail just the Miva Merchant hosting. Get a discount through Costco so its financially attractive, but you get what you pay for and even if it were free Valueweb is no bargain. Absolutely The Worst Service and Support.Reviewer: DisgustedwithValueweb 05-29-2008 Valueweb, a part of the Hostway famly of sites had severe connectivity issues...we were told. Our site went down (along with 80,000 others), including the Valueweb.net and Affinity websites. We all thought they went out of business, which may not be a bad thing in the long run. After 6 hours, Valueweb and Affinity were back up but none of the sites they Hosted. Do not even try to contact Tech Support. They refused to answer and shut down the Customer Service call center. They did finally get everything back up this morning and after FINALLY reaching someone in Customer Service, I was given a one month credit. Let's see...60.00 credit for 90,000.00 in lost revenue. We are leaving them after 10 years. Stay away from Hostway, Affinity and Valueweb. They are simply awful. Tired of my websites and email being down.Reviewer: Anonymous DC 05-28-2008 Today is the last straw. I will host my 8 websites elsewhere. What a nightmare it will be to remove my business. However my main money making website has been down now for 36 hours. There is no excuse. I see that Hostway has purchased valueweb.. well thats nice, but they won't get my business either because somehow I know they are involved. What sort of piece of crap hosting company lets online businesses go down for 36 hours (still down so might be more)? Their phone support message says they can't give an estimate for the site to be up!!!! This happened last year too. It won't happen again. Someone else can have my $300/month. I will say that their tech support has been help full in the past, so I have no gripes with the grunts! Its the company itself that is incompetent.. how can you not have a backup plan for a network failure????????? Internet Entrepeneur  Valueweb down for 12 hoursReviewer: Anonymous 05-28-2008 Normally this is a pretty good service, but since about 5:30 PM (PST) they have been down--just when I have freeway billboards out there advertising my site. Beware: pricing is good but service and quality sucksReviewer: More ValueWeb downtime california 05-28-2008 Well its 5/27 and ALL of ValueWeb hosting customers have been down for more than 6 hours. The company has no response (phones were down for first 4 hours) and doesn't know what the problem is yet. customer service has hung up on at least 3 others i know that use the service. They claim the Frequent Severe OutagesReviewer: Anonymous 05-27-2008 Valueweb suffers frequent total outages -- email, webpages, the whole deal. Avoid this at all costs. ftp still not working after 1 week; emails delayedReviewer: Anonymous FL 04-27-2008 We've had ValueWeb for about 5 years. It's worked OK, but we have had email problems on and off. Never thought it was them; only the Pres/CEO |
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