Here is the review I posted on http://www.000webhost.com/directory/reviews/hosting24.com
(note the name of the host! they basically host a whole website, where they "review" their own service!)
Needless to say, my review was removed from their site within hours, ALONG with about 50 of other negative reviews, where people described their experience with these fraudsters. They also blocked my IP, which tells a lot about their intelligence as well - apparently, these people, pretending to run a "hosting service", have never heard about proxy servers :)
hosting24.com is run by the same company as 000webhost (this website). They are reviewing themselves here basically! :) See for yourself. Come back in a few hours, and this review will not be here. They will remove it, because, they don't like reviews showing honest information to show up. There were several pages of VERY negative reviews here on Saturday, and see what's left now? Just the fake praises they post here themselves. They even nuked all the neutral ones! So much for objectivity. This fact alone should tell you enough about what kind of business they are running.
They also blocked my IP, which tells a lot about their intelligence as well - apparently, these clowns, pretending to run a "hosting service", have never heard about proxy servers, dynamic IPs, AOL network etc. :) (if you subscribe to their service, none of your users who happen to use the same proxies I use, or simply uses AOL for ISP will be able to access your website :).
This is very indicative of the company in general. They will trick you into subscribing to their service promising all kinds of wonderful features they don't really, and then, when you start asking about all that stuff you were promised, they'll just ask for more money. And more money. And even more money.
And that's not even the worst of it. If they simply don't like you, they will not only close your account, and take down the site without any warning, but also DESTROY ALL YOUR DATA, so that you can't get anything back from your site. Backups do not work either. So, do not think, you'll just backup periodically and be all set.
If you sign up with this hosting, you should GIVE UP ANY HOPE OF EVER GETTING THE DATA YOUR WEBSITE COLLECTS back from them.
Here are some links to detailed accounts of people's experiences with this fraud. For your own sake, if you are considering subscribing to this service, be sure to read these first:
http://000webhost-scam.blogspot.com/
http://www.thecaymanhost.com/hosting-reviews/beware-free-hosting-with-000webhostcom/comment-page-1
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Here is another horror story about this scam business
These people are on the roll. I can't say it enough - AVOID THIS SERVICE AND ALL OTHER SERVICES RAN BY THIS GANG for your own good!
Read this. Some comments there are really eye opening:
http://www.thecaymanhost.com/hosting-reviews/beware-free-hosting-with-000webhostcom/comment-page-1
Read this. Some comments there are really eye opening:
http://www.thecaymanhost.com/hosting-reviews/beware-free-hosting-with-000webhostcom/comment-page-1
There is a fairly representative collection of other people's opinions about this "service" here:
http://www.hostoogoo.com/000webhost-28.html#comment-62
http://www.hostoogoo.com/000webhost-28.html#comment-62
BEWARE of 000webhost - they will steal and destroy your data
So, the features they advertise do look pretty good, but for your own sakes DO NOT FALL FOR IT. This "service" is a DISASTER from beginning to end, it is simply unbelievable that a "service" of this quality and this much contempt and disrespect to the customers is still around.
First of all, you'll be lucky if your uptime is 60%. Yes, half of the time you or your users try to access the site, it is down. Disks fail, servers shut down ... and on, and on and on ... The other half of the time, it is up, but you have to be REALLY patient to get the page loaded, it is so slow, I sometimes think they are just typing the content in by hand as it is loading. I was running a standard BB engine there, nothing fancy.
You think this is all? Oh, no, just wait, this is only the beginning. So, if you get some kind of traffic coming in (and I mean just SOME traffic - maybe, 100 hits per DAY, nowhere near real traffic), their puny servers start to collapse, and come down to a CRAWL. And then (get this!), they blame YOU for your db queries being "slow"! My 12 year old PC runs these same queries in milliseconds (not tens of milliseconds, single digits).
So, they let you run this parody on a website for a while, and accumulate enough users, and user-contributed data, they just ... shut it down! Yes, without any kind of a warning or anything, in the middle of the day, the site just disappears, and all your users start getting redirected to some stupid and irrelevant upsell page for the webhosting, instead of the site they were looking for, without explanation or any message whatsoever. And they won't tell you about it. You'll have to wait til one of the users thinks about notifying you to find out your site is gone.
Naturally, when this happens, you login to your account to see what is going on ... and that's when you find out that your "slow queries" violated their TOS. Needles to say, there is nothing in TOS about "slowness" of your "queries", I mean, one would have to be a complete idiot to put something like that in their TOS ("our servers are way too weak to sustain anything remotely resembling a database, you are better off hosting it on your damn laptop").
Anyway, so, what do you do now? I suppose, write them a polite letter where you apologize sincerely for inadvertedly straining their "servers" with your "slow queries", promise, that it will never happen again, and humby point out, that there is actually nothing in the TOS speaking to the effect of the speed of the db queries, and thus technically you are not even in violation.
At this point, you are, probably, not even interested in reinstating your account anymore. I for one, had enough of this "service" by now. It's nothing but trouble, problems all around. NOTHING works as advertised ... So, I don't even ask them to reactivate the account, just give me my data back, simple enough, isn't it? Let me download the content of the database, and I'll be out of your hair. Simple enough, isn't it?
Well ... that's where the most interesting part begins! The response I got from their "support" person, states that:
accounts that they THINK are in violation of something, are cancelled immediately
Once the account is cancelled, all data pertaining to it is DESTROYED, not just on the server disks, but even in the backups, and there is absolutely no way to recover it.
Now, I don't know about you, but I found this "policy" absolutely EYE POPPING. Not only, they shut you down whenever they fell like it, but they will allso INTENTIONALLY and WILLFULLY DESTROY ALL OF THE CUSTOMER'S DATA. Not because of some catastrophic failure or an act of sabotage, but AS A MATTER OF POLICY.
"Hosting service", destroying their customer's data on purpose? That's a new one ...
I just could not believe my eyes when I read their reply. I figured, there must be something I am missing, misunderstood, it just cannot be true. So, I write back, and ask for a clarification. Here is the exact reply I got back from their "suport":
--- QUOTE
Hello,
Your account is gone. Nothing can be recovered. All backups are removed. Any or all data is gone. I don't see why you are nit picking at everything.
Regards,
Damien | I hate signatures
--- END QUOTE
Now THIS left me speechless. Just WOW.
Perhaps you are thinking something along the lines of "well, this will never happen to me, because I always make backups". Think again! If you have more then 10M of data, the db backups won't work with this hoster either. They crash in the middle of the download. I tried many times and not once was able to download successfully. And when I asked "support" about it, I got a reply to the effect that "yeah, we know, it does not work".
Well, enough said. I hope, I was clear enough to persuade you to stay as far away from this "service" or from any other "service" ran by these fraudsters (notably, hosting24.com is their creature too - I urge you to stay even father away from it!) for your own sake.
There are plenty of hosting choices around the net, and this one is BY FAR THE WORST ONE!
First of all, you'll be lucky if your uptime is 60%. Yes, half of the time you or your users try to access the site, it is down. Disks fail, servers shut down ... and on, and on and on ... The other half of the time, it is up, but you have to be REALLY patient to get the page loaded, it is so slow, I sometimes think they are just typing the content in by hand as it is loading. I was running a standard BB engine there, nothing fancy.
You think this is all? Oh, no, just wait, this is only the beginning. So, if you get some kind of traffic coming in (and I mean just SOME traffic - maybe, 100 hits per DAY, nowhere near real traffic), their puny servers start to collapse, and come down to a CRAWL. And then (get this!), they blame YOU for your db queries being "slow"! My 12 year old PC runs these same queries in milliseconds (not tens of milliseconds, single digits).
So, they let you run this parody on a website for a while, and accumulate enough users, and user-contributed data, they just ... shut it down! Yes, without any kind of a warning or anything, in the middle of the day, the site just disappears, and all your users start getting redirected to some stupid and irrelevant upsell page for the webhosting, instead of the site they were looking for, without explanation or any message whatsoever. And they won't tell you about it. You'll have to wait til one of the users thinks about notifying you to find out your site is gone.
Naturally, when this happens, you login to your account to see what is going on ... and that's when you find out that your "slow queries" violated their TOS. Needles to say, there is nothing in TOS about "slowness" of your "queries", I mean, one would have to be a complete idiot to put something like that in their TOS ("our servers are way too weak to sustain anything remotely resembling a database, you are better off hosting it on your damn laptop").
Anyway, so, what do you do now? I suppose, write them a polite letter where you apologize sincerely for inadvertedly straining their "servers" with your "slow queries", promise, that it will never happen again, and humby point out, that there is actually nothing in the TOS speaking to the effect of the speed of the db queries, and thus technically you are not even in violation.
At this point, you are, probably, not even interested in reinstating your account anymore. I for one, had enough of this "service" by now. It's nothing but trouble, problems all around. NOTHING works as advertised ... So, I don't even ask them to reactivate the account, just give me my data back, simple enough, isn't it? Let me download the content of the database, and I'll be out of your hair. Simple enough, isn't it?
Well ... that's where the most interesting part begins! The response I got from their "support" person, states that:
accounts that they THINK are in violation of something, are cancelled immediately
Once the account is cancelled, all data pertaining to it is DESTROYED, not just on the server disks, but even in the backups, and there is absolutely no way to recover it.
Now, I don't know about you, but I found this "policy" absolutely EYE POPPING. Not only, they shut you down whenever they fell like it, but they will allso INTENTIONALLY and WILLFULLY DESTROY ALL OF THE CUSTOMER'S DATA. Not because of some catastrophic failure or an act of sabotage, but AS A MATTER OF POLICY.
"Hosting service", destroying their customer's data on purpose? That's a new one ...
I just could not believe my eyes when I read their reply. I figured, there must be something I am missing, misunderstood, it just cannot be true. So, I write back, and ask for a clarification. Here is the exact reply I got back from their "suport":
--- QUOTE
Hello,
Your account is gone. Nothing can be recovered. All backups are removed. Any or all data is gone. I don't see why you are nit picking at everything.
Regards,
Damien | I hate signatures
--- END QUOTE
Now THIS left me speechless. Just WOW.
Perhaps you are thinking something along the lines of "well, this will never happen to me, because I always make backups". Think again! If you have more then 10M of data, the db backups won't work with this hoster either. They crash in the middle of the download. I tried many times and not once was able to download successfully. And when I asked "support" about it, I got a reply to the effect that "yeah, we know, it does not work".
Well, enough said. I hope, I was clear enough to persuade you to stay as far away from this "service" or from any other "service" ran by these fraudsters (notably, hosting24.com is their creature too - I urge you to stay even father away from it!) for your own sake.
There are plenty of hosting choices around the net, and this one is BY FAR THE WORST ONE!
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