PowWeb - Reviews at Web Hosting Ratings

I left my other hosting company tera-byte because of all the things powweb was offering. I had consistant downtime with my first site but made the terrible mistake of thinking it was do to using MySql to run my entire site and their lack of keeping their sql servers running smoothly. So when I needed a second site and knew I would'nt be relying heavily on MySql I went ahead and signed up with them again.

Well, now I know it is all their servers that suffer from endless up and downtimes. One account is on their www2 server and another on their www3 server. Both experience endless slow periods.

When I finally had enough... I documented my downtimes over a few days and went to their forums to ask what is wrong with their servers and what they are going to do about it. First off, they have a announcement section, but NEVER report anything but major outtages that last days. So if your server is going up and down for 2 weeks they wont even mention it. Thus leaving you with the only choice of asking them in their forums what is going on.

I would check the server address and NOT my website address to ensure that it was the server that was running slow and not just my site. I wrote saying that their server (which was only a blank page with the name of the server) would take up to 2 minutes to load at times and this was unacceptable. I told them I shouldn't be the one monitoring your servers for uptime and that if your servers are having problems you should tell your customers about it and not the other way around. I asked for a explanation as to why these problems weren't in their announcements section.

After a few forum trolls blasted me with everything from I must not know how to make a website, I need to clear my cache to your so dumb for not telling us your address so we can check it ourselves (Even though I clearly stated I was checking the server not my website for downtime). Anyway, a employee finally answered me and in a very condensending tone explained that a user had been running bad scripts on the server for a week and his account was deleted. He then went on to call me a liar about my website on www2 having any problems and I must just be making that up. He then promptly closed the thread. I came back the next day to read this and didn't even get the chance to respond. It was rude and completely unneccasary. BTW, my problems cleared up for awhile on my www3 account but are now back again and plague my www2 account as well. I do not enjoy jumping around companies but they have forced me start looking for a new webhost when my accounts run out.

P.S. Here is how a professional company should have responded,

Dear customer we are so sorry for the inconvenience. We will work harder in the future to inform our valued customers of intermittant problems with our servers. We will look into the www2 server and make sure absolutely nothing is happening there. Once again we apologize for your inconvenience and hope to continue doing business with you in the future. LOL, good luck hearing that from Powweb.

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very dependable - Review by submitted on August 25, 2003

Customer's web site: desertwebonline.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of August 25, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: pow web

Customer service rating: 10 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 10 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 10 out of 10

very good support & site is always up & running

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Reactive, not Proactive problem solving - Review by Gaim submitted on August 24, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of August 24, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: Only plan available

Customer service rating: 3 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 3 out of 10

Cost rating: 4 out of 10

Overall rating: 4 out of 10

While their "uptime" may be close to the 99.7% that they claim, this does not take into account the incredible number of very slow server times.

And when their server grinds to a virtual halt, they never have any record of it, will not confirm it. So you're told that nothing is wrong and to stop bothering them.

Forget running a message board on PowWeb. They offer the MySQL database free with hosting. But contrary to massive amounts of confirmation, they continue to run MySQL version 4, which is well known to constantly corrupt tables. While the better web hosts have reverted back to MySQL version 3 (far more stable) until the problem is solved, PowWeb doesn't want anyone bothering them about it.

And if stable, effective email is of any concern, PowWeb will most certainly become the bane of your site's existance. In the 1.5 years I've had multiple sites hosted there, the email system has NEVER worked in even the most rudimentary fasion. Forget sending email reponses, as they never reach the recipients.

PowWeb is cheap at only $7.77 per month. You get 650Mb of storage space and 45Gb of bandwidth.

PowWeb's public forums for members seem like a great and helpful way to get quick responses to questions or problems ??
Think again.
The staff which operates on the forums are NOT the support staff of PowWeb. In short, this means that those on the forums can only guess that problems are truly being looked into.

But you get even less than what you pay for at PowWeb.

1. email never works properly
2. email spam filtering is weak and they openly refuse to improve it.
3. 200+ Mb mandatory log files on your site.
4. MySQL is a dead fish]
5. message boards can't work properly.
6. Often rude, snide and overly simplistic responses from the staff.
7. 99.7% of the time, it's all YOUR fault that an operational problem exists, NOT PowWeb's.

Bottom line...
Unless you are a truly advanced WebMaster who can somehow circumvent the great myriad of problems at PowWeb, you'd be wise to spend just a little bit more money on a web host that actually works for you.

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These people don't want to earn a living - Review by Joseph submitted on August 10, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 month - 3 months

Date when last hosted by this company (as of August 10, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: 7.77/month plan

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 5 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

I tried doing business with this hosting company. I tried paying my bill with my credit card. Then I got an email from them 3 weeks later asking that I fax them or email them a picture of the card. When I emailed them and asked them why, they finally responded that it was for security reasons. So I emailed a picture of the card, by the end of the next day they had disabled my account. I have never had trouble of this kind with a company. I was going to host at least two other websites with them, but after that I decided to go elsewhere. I'm still looking as of right now.

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Not bad - Review by Tim Platt submitted on August 9, 2003

Customer's web site: www.YourJobIsGoingToIndia.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 month - 3 months

Date when last hosted by this company (as of August 9, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: Value

Customer service rating: 5 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 7 out of 10

Cost rating: 8 out of 10

Overall rating: 7 out of 10

I have been with PowWeb for about 2 months with only 1 real problem. 2 weeks after I joined I could not get FTP connectivity to my site for about 4 days. Other than that up-time has been good, response time is good, and they pretty much deliver what they say they will. I was also happy with the price and free domain offer.

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Bad and Getting Worse - Review by Rick Donovan submitted on July 30, 2003

Customer's web site: www.lhs1969.net

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of July 30, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: Quarterly

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

Arrogant management, incompetent technical support, and intermittent e-mail service makes this a host to avoid.

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Poor Customer service - Review by submitted on July 30, 2003

Customer's web site: N/A

Length of time hosted by this company: less than a month

Date when last hosted by this company (as of July 30, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: Standard Plan

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

Mail servers down with no real explanation
Web hosting down with no real explanation or apology
Blatant lies about 99.7% up time, according to their registered server stats
Guestbook and other features removed, without any consultation
No staff seem to understand what is happening, or why
Email support technicans are hurrendously under trained

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4 weeks of problems - Review by submitted on July 30, 2003

Customer's web site: skysblueboy.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of July 30, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: standard

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 3 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

To whom it may concern:
I seriously reccommend that you do not use POWWEB. Their up time claim is a total fabrication. My clients have recieved 139 undeliverable emails from clients in only 3 weeks. I have tried everything with this company. I even have an email from a supervisor at POWWEB asking me to use his yahoo account as he is not able to get mail either. Customer service is horrible. Typical 2 day turnaround on email support and calling them on the phone is pointless as they do not take calls most times. I suggest you log into their community forum and view their announcement section. It clearly shows the numerous problems they are having and you can track the time frame on these issues getting fixed. When I explained to them that I would have to find a different provider that could PROVIDE reliable mail services (they informed me that I would have to pay a $25 cancellation fee on each of my accounts. I have seven with them. If I am paying for services that I am not recieving, why would I be penalized and have to pay $$$$. I have emails available for you to review that came directly from POWWEB demonstrating their horrible customer support, and several that admit that they know they have mail issues and they have no idea when they will be resolved. These emails are over a 4.5 week period not just one day.
Sincerely,

Heather L Robertson

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Pathetic - Review by submitted on July 30, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of July 30, 2003): Private

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

Rude customer service
I was banned from their forum for complaining

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Has become really bad - Review by Mr. Natural submitted on July 16, 2003

Customer's web site: www.gamersmultiverse.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of July 16, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: 1 year plan

Customer service rating: 2 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 2 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 2 out of 10

I have had a couple of community forums on powweb for a year and a half. Things were pretty good for over a year. But since May of 2003 there have been numerous outages, my sql database constantly gets corrupted because of the buggy version of sql that they run on their servers. This has gone on for 3 months now. To the point where I am looking for a new host and came across this site.

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Outage - Review by submitted on July 15, 2003

Customer's web site: www.oskie.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of July 15, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: 7.77

Customer service rating: 10 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 5 out of 10

Cost rating: 5 out of 10

Overall rating: 3 out of 10

Out a lot of the time. Several days at a time. If you make money on the net. Consider what several days of no site will cost you, then go find a sevice that doesnt lose time.

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So-so - Review by Kenneth Bi submitted on June 2, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of June 2, 2003): 1 year - 3 years ago

Plan used: The basic plan (1 year)

Customer service rating: 6 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 7 out of 10

Cost rating: 8 out of 10

Overall rating: 6 out of 10

Powweb has improved slowly. It has improved but perhaps not fast enough. You get what you paid for.

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By Far The Worst - Review by submitted on June 1, 2003

Customer's web site: www.manninc.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of June 1, 2003): 1 year - 3 years ago

Plan used: The Only One They Had At The Time

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

Had my site hosted with this company for only four months and moved on to a much better host that actually supplies what they "claim" to offer.

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Down all the time and they HATE business sites - Review by Diana submitted on May 21, 2003

Customer's web site: N/A

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of May 21, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 2 out of 10

Cost rating: 3 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

I had a business site hosted with powweb for a little over 6 months. I didn't have any problems at first until..... i started monitoring the sites uptime, that is when i found out that my site was down at times for more then 5 hours a day! And down at least once a day for some period of time. After about the first month my email didn't work right. It kept going back to the sender undeliverable. Customer support would even answer emails concerning the matter. Everything just got worse from that point on until finally the site was down for 12 hours straight one day. I tryed to call support on the phone and i only got a recording saying to email them! I did. I told them my site was a business site and i needed the site asap! Within 24 hours they canceled my whole account without warning or explanation. I have heard from several other webmasters that do NOT like high traffic sites. My site was far below the 30 gigs of data transfer i was allowed. My site was only using around 13 gigs per month on average. I think powweb might be ok for a small personal site that doesn't have much traffic and don't care about the down time and lack of customer support but if you have a business site RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN to another hosting company!!!
I wouldn't recomend this host to anyone though. A free Yahoo site would most likely be a better choice.

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Untitled - Review by Anonymous submitted on May 13, 2003

Customer's web site: N/A

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of May 13, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

Technical support is as bad as it can be. Nothing is ever at their end. Replys come after a long, long time. They are condescending, to say the least, often just plain rude.

Changes are implemented WITHOUT telling users, as it happened to mySQL and PHP recently. Don't waste your time asking them - it is ALWAYS because YOU did something wrong ...

Stay away from them.

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very good service - Review by submitted on April 29, 2003

Customer's web site: www.didicomputers.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of April 29, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: $7.7/month

Customer service rating: 9 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 9 out of 10

Cost rating: 9 out of 10

Overall rating: 9 out of 10

Until now I didn't have problems with them. My site was offline one time in the past 8 months for about 1 hour.
They have a very useful Customer Service section on their site, a very good forum with a lot of good information about almost everything that you need to know.
Overall, a very good service for less than 100$/year.

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Continuing illegality - Review by Russ Carroll submitted on April 21, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 month - 3 months

Date when last hosted by this company (as of April 21, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: Basic

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

Powweb has continued their scamming.

After my incredibly bad experience, I tried to get my money back...after all they have a 30 day money back policy...but they will not refund the $20 I spent to set up two mySQLs.

I also asked them to add the limitations to the FAQ that they have on mySQL that led me to take my site elsewhere, but they will not.

Reason why? They are stealing money. You sign up. You cannot run your site. You leave, they keep the money b/c what are you going to do sue?

Stay away! Stay far away. They are beyond bad...they act illegally!

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Good response time - Review by McBiz submitted on April 18, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of April 18, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 8 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 8 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 8 out of 10

Host user interface comfortable to use. Few email problems and quick response to queries.

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Very reasonable - Review by Anonymous submitted on April 17, 2003

Customer's web site: N/A

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of April 17, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 9 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 9 out of 10

Cost rating: 9 out of 10

Overall rating: 9 out of 10

They have been very helpful, and only had a tiny bit of downtime. Great value for the money.

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Love it - Review by Anonymous submitted on April 2, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 month - 3 months

Date when last hosted by this company (as of April 2, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: what is was over a year ago.

Customer service rating: 10 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 10 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 10 out of 10

I have been with Powweb for almost a year now and have had only a few outage problems. Once they have changed over their connection back in Nov, I have only had 1 outage lasting 20 minutes. I have had no problems with their Tech Support. Fast emails and fast service if I call them. Also, when I signed up a year ago, I think I was getting 100 Megs of space and 5 Gigs of transfer. Now, they are up to 500 megs and 30 gigs and still the same price. :)

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Forget using mySQL - Review by Russell Carroll submitted on March 31, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: less than a month

Date when last hosted by this company (as of March 31, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: basic

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

Have been using powweb for two of my sites.

The first one has been a great thing, without problems...the reason? It doesn't really get any traffic.

The second has been a nightmare. 3 days after setting it up, the mySQL went down. Powweb denies it, but in their forum, there were more than 20 posts of people on that same mySQL server who were down. We all went up and down together over the next two days when something must have been fixed.

However, the limitations put on mySQL keep it from being of any use at all. If you have a website that gets ANY real traffic, you will go over their mySQL limitations many, many times a day...doing so causes them to shut down your web site until the hour is finished.

Powweb in their forums states that they expect to only lose a small percentage of their business b/c of the limitations on mySQL...however, the reality is that do not allow any real "business" site to run due to the restrictions. The only websites that will not go over their restrictions are the ones that do not get any traffic.

If you have a website that no-one goes to, and you don't want anyone to go there, powweb is a great host.

If you are using mySQL, don't even think about using powweb...unless again you don't expect anyone to visit your website.

(oh and don't think about service being useful...they replied to my emails with cut and paste answers)

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Untitled - Review by Anonymous submitted on March 27, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of March 27, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

In one word.... AVOID! I have quite often had to use the services of my free Yahoo box to send mail as the mail services at Powweb are pathetic! Their customer service is basicly crap and limited to placing complaints on a public forum.

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Horrible Service - Review by submitted on March 26, 2003

Customer's web site: www.point-blank.cc

Length of time hosted by this company: N/A

Date when last hosted by this company (as of March 26, 2003): N/A

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: N/A

Technical quality rating: N/A

Cost rating: N/A

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

Actually, I wouldn't have minded Powweb. However, we got DoSed by some random person, and instead of doing anything to stop it (it went on for 2 days STRAIGHT) they blamed us. Then they told us to go "play in the sandbox". Then they deleted our account and one other. Its sad.

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30 days of near constant problems - Review by Travis Prebble submitted on March 12, 2003

Customer's web site: www.fithlan.com

Length of time hosted by this company: less than a month

Date when last hosted by this company (as of March 12, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: PowValue

Customer service rating: 2 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 2 out of 10

Cost rating: 7 out of 10

Overall rating: 4 out of 10

I joined up with PowWeb on January 21st, 2003. I moved there from another provider because of two things: greater drive space and much lower price.

In the 30 days I had my site with PowWeb, I experienced web server outages, PHP mail outages (which they blamed on the use of a script I didn't even use - I had to create example PHP scripts to PROVE that the problem was with PHP mail itself), MySQL outages, MySQL query caps, unannounced upgrades to MySQL and PHP, and possibly the worst tech support response rate I've ever experienced.

Now, it could be I caught them on a bad month, but after all that, the $7.77 a month was no longer a draw.

I moved to a new provider and am much happier for it.

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nothing but problems - Review by Anonymous submitted on March 12, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of March 12, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 2 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 2 out of 10

Cost rating: 3 out of 10

Overall rating: 3 out of 10

Powweb recently decided to implement hourly mysql database usage limits without any warning. This has caused my site and many others to be down constantly throughout the day. When I call tech support they say nothing can be done and I should find a new host. This wouldn’t have been such a problem if they had emailed everyone telling them they may be affected by this and have a certain amount of time to find a new host before the limits go into effect. But they didn’t mention anything and offer no solutions. This is a terrible way to do business.

I would never recommend powweb to anyone who runs any kind of web based business. When you need them the most they are NOT there for you!

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They were rude and did not want busines users - Review by Ian submitted on March 6, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: less than a month

Date when last hosted by this company (as of March 6, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

After signing up for two accounts with mysql databases, I quickly found out that my sites were not staying up.

I am a business users and run two MySQL driven web sites with light to moderate traffic.

When questiong what was going on and asking I found out from another user that they place severe limits on MySQL usage. Their support forum is riddled with people commenting on these limits and how their sites are down every hour.

I made my first post on their support forum detailing my problems, and mentioning that I would be asking for my money back. I was then immediately banned from the "support" forum, and the administrator said "Ciao!".

In my opinion, it looks like if your web site is anything other than a couple of html pages, they do not want it! They are happy to take your money though.

Steer clear at all costs! Don't be sucked in by there amazing deals or offers.

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Overall, Close to Outstanding - Review by B. Bancroft submitted on February 22, 2003

Customer's web site: www.dfwsabr.org

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of February 22, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: Standard

Customer service rating: 6 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 9 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 9 out of 10

I switched to PowWeb 5 months ago on a whim while trying to find a cheaper host. Not knowing what to expect at first, I've been very pleasantly surprised. My site has been up almost all of the time (only one prolonged downtime comes to mind - and by "prolonged" I mean a few hours) and they really have outstanding forums, where you can ask any questions you may have about account setup, implementation, web design, etc. They also offer an inordinate amount of space (recently raised to 500 MB and 30GB of bandwith a month. For $7.77 a month, PowWeb is tough to beat. The only reason I give them a 9 instead of a 10 is that it has taken them a day or two to reply to e-mails a few times (not a problem because I can almost always get an answer from a PowWeb representative within minutes in the forums).

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Great! - Review by submitted on February 19, 2003

Customer's web site: www.stsf.net

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of February 19, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: PowValue

Customer service rating: 10 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 10 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 10 out of 10

I've been with PowWeb for over a year and a half.

They've increased my package several times for no cost while also improving reliability and service.

They've increased customer support hours via phone, and made many improvements during my time there all without charging me a cent more.

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I don't recomend them for business sites - Review by Anonymous submitted on February 18, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of February 18, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: The only one

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 3 out of 10

Cost rating: 4 out of 10

Overall rating: 3 out of 10

I have 3 domains with them. One for a couple of years that i didn't have much trouble with. Another i have had about 3 months. The first couple of months went ok. All of a sudden though the site down as much as it is up. And customer support doesn't answer emails any more. Being a business site like mine is,,,,i highly can't recomend this company for that. I can say this about powweb, their price good if you only have a small personal page that can afford to be down alot.

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Domain Renewal Billing Errors - Review by submitted on February 17, 2003

Customer's web site: www.wiesners.net

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of February 17, 2003): 1 year - 3 years ago

Plan used: Basic

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 7 out of 10

Cost rating: 5 out of 10

Overall rating: 4 out of 10

My e-mail and site went down for 4-5 days. PowWeb did not renew my domain registration although they charged me for it. The techs did a good job of correcting the problem, but billing did nothing to correct their mistake but point their fingers at me. When I quoted the dollar figures from my on-line account statment, they agreed that they made a mistake, but offered nothing - not even an apology. Very poor customer service.

e-mail chain from billing is at www.wiesners.net/powweb.htm

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Poorest service I've ever seen - Review by Randall J. Berry submitted on February 17, 2003

Customer's web site: www.mdgps.net

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 month - 3 months

Date when last hosted by this company (as of February 17, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: the worst and only one

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

Powweb is by far the worst service provider of any kind I have ever dealt with. Thier tech support is practically non-existent. What little bit of help you get is excuses, or out right lies. Thier incompetence caused more downtime than I have ever had in my entire career on the internet. In my short term of 3 months I spent on thier servers I had more problems with my website than I have ever had from any provider on any long term contract.

Their administrators are never there, even if they are they don't care. The typical response time to fix server issues is usually 12 or more hours. If you have a problem Tech support can't help you because an admin is not around right now.. When you ask, when will they be around the typical answer is "I don't know". Email support is equally useless you'll have to wait 2-3 days for a reply,(unless you consider a robot a reply) if you get one at all.

Don't let the prompt replies from thier sales staff fool you! They're more than willing to rope you in and rip you off! Thier online forums are edited from people speaking the truth about thier poor service. I have seen this done on many occasions on posts from several people.

All of these problems I have had with PowWeb are documented and available for review.

Honestly, I'm not sure how anyone other than a throw away website could ever consider them reliable.
They report a 99% uptime, but just because their servers reply to a ping does not mean they are functioning properly. Yet as far as they are concerned the servers are up and they are not responsible if your site is down.

The worst fact of all is that several times my website had been down, or inoperable due to thier own mistakes and they offered no concern, or credit to that fact. Even though the website is totally dead, when seconds ago it was working fine without any changes. Even with thier own mistakes just because the server responds to a ping they consider it still up so they figure thats all that matters.

The fact that the majority of golden reviews to balance things out are from people who moderate thier forums should tell you something! Even one of thier admin had to cast a vote!

How honest can they be?

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Good Host - Review by submitted on February 4, 2003

Customer's web site: www.websiterepairguy.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of February 4, 2003): 3 months - 1 year ago

Plan used: 7.77 per month

Customer service rating: 10 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 8 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 10 out of 10

Powweb had a lot of downtime in September of 2002. This downtime generated much negative commentary in the reviews here.

I've not noticed significant downtime before or since. The downtime mentioned above was very significant.

My experience at Powweb has been quite good. I particularly like their user forums and their website management interface. The interface is very well thought out.

I've only used the email support but have found the replies I've gotten back to be fast and effective. I've never waited more than a few minutes or hours for a reply.

I've worked with other hosting companies but I find Powweb's interfaces to be the most forward-looking and well thought out.

One thing I do appreciate about Powweb is that they tend to let you do things that could be problematic for them. They seem to take an innocent-until-proven-guilty approch when allowing things that other hosting services might not offer such as cron jobs.

I do get the impression that they are constantly upgrading their service and putting a lot of thought into their business model.

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Poor reliability - Review by submitted on February 2, 2003

Customer's web site: binladenisdead.net

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of February 2, 2003): Private

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 2 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 4 out of 10

Cost rating: 4 out of 10

Overall rating: 3 out of 10

They have good "Uptime" but just because the server is up doesnt mean it is working properly. Constant problems with pretty much every service they provide. Mail bounces for hours, php errors go unfixed, etc. Customer service acts like they shouldn't have to bother with you.

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No major complains up to now - Review by Hans submitted on January 30, 2003

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of January 30, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: They have only one

Customer service rating: 7 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 10 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 9 out of 10

I am on Powweb for almost 2 years now and had two sites hosted. Except their moving time, everything worked well up to now and their customer service reacted reasonably fast.
The control panel is quite handy and worked very well for me up to now

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Excellent Host! - Review by submitted on January 9, 2003

Customer's web site: zsector.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of January 9, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: PowValue

Customer service rating: 10 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 10 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 10 out of 10

I've been with PowWeb for a long time now and they have been great. They have upgraded everybody's account many times and the value you get for the price is better than any host I've ever seen. They even have a community forum which has been a big help. Try PowWeb out--they have a 30-day money back guarantee if you don't like it, but I'm sure you will. You have nothing to lose, why not give them a try? Visit my website, you will find a PowWeb link at the bottom.

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Complete Incompetence! - Review by Tim Ward submitted on January 4, 2003

Customer's web site: www.tmphotography.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of January 4, 2003): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: $7.77/month - yearly paid

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 2 out of 10

Cost rating: 2 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

We've been with Powweb for a year and a month. After renewing for another year our site was disabled. I contacted 'tech support' and was told that they had accidentally disabled the account, but that it was now turned back on. A few hours later the site service was back on but our site was gone. When we contacted them about this issue they skirted the issue and avoided the question. Our site was gone with our SQL database and cgi scripts.

It's going to be to much work to put everything back the way it was and we are going to leave. The 'tech support / customer service' has always been horrible and now this gives us a good reason to leave.

My suggestion: If all these bad comments about this company don't lead you to go with someone else... DON'T SIGN UP FOR A YEAR IN ADVANCE. For the time being we'll leave Visa handle them on getting the money back for the year we just paid.

Tim

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Untitled - Review by submitted on January 3, 2003

Customer's web site: N/A

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of January 3, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: 250MB plan

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 5 out of 10

Cost rating: 6 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

Don't be fooled by their 24hr customer service offer. Their entire customer service department consists merely of automatons cutting and pasting from standard scripts. No real work is ever done to solve any problem. If you want cheap and do-it-yourself they are ok. Otherwise, you should pass.

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Yep, Theyre Pretty Good - Review by Anonymous submitted on January 1, 2003

Customer's web site: FunkyTimes.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of January 1, 2003): Current customer

Plan used: The Basic

Customer service rating: 7 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 9 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 10 out of 10

Weve had a very positive experience with Powweb thus far. Running a site which was doing close to 9000 uniques/day at the time I thought Powweb would be a risk, and people warned me against using a budget host but our previous host was terrible so we took the plunge for what we thought would be a "temporary" solution.

Our site was pulled once for a few hours when some unscrupulous spammer decided to use our email as a return address in an attempt to discredit us. I wish we had been consulted before we were pulled but then again, spam is a big issue and Powweb simply demonstrated their non-tolerance of it.

After corresponding with Powweb and explaining the situation they were completely understanding, helpful and they put us back online immediately. They kept in touch with us on the issue and in the end we were able to find the culprit and report him. The problem ended with the spammer being pursued legally. Starr Pierce was the guy I dealt with and he was superb - he even offered to waive some fees if I wanted to switch sites. This was a minor issue in the course of things.

Overall, we have had a very good experience with this company. Better than they claim and the server is FAST. I really cant complain and I dont see how anyone else can. At under $8 you get a service thats worth "at least" twice as much and weve used inferior services in the past that have charged three times as much.

We've been with Powweb for 3 years now and still are. No major problems and so far, so good.

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A little better then a year without much trouble. - Review by submitted on December 13, 2002

Customer's web site: randyandrews.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of December 13, 2002): Current customer

Plan used: The basic plan "they now have two"

Customer service rating: 4 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 9 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 8 out of 10

I have had my site for a little more then a year with one down time for a few hours. I now have a second domain with them (sixteenmodel.com) and have had it for about one month. So far they have been alright. The only thing that could be alot better is the customer support. It normally takes them at least a full day to answer an email and in the past month i have had one email that was never answered. All in all though, i think they are at least average. Most companys these days just want your money and few have excelent customer service.

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Overall pretty good - Review by submitted on December 7, 2002

Customer's web site: N/A

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of December 7, 2002): 3 months - 1 year ago

Plan used: only plan they have

Customer service rating: 8 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 10 out of 10

Cost rating: 9 out of 10

Overall rating: 9 out of 10

We have over 35 accounts with PowWeb, currently, and are very happy with their service. Their reliability is exceptional - only a couple times have we ever had to contact tech support for anything.

One one site during a server move, it was out for 15 hours instead of the 3 hours they estimated. What did they do about it? How about six months free hosting (I didn't even call or email a complaint, the credit just showed up on my account and I called to find out why...)

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Don't waste your time - Review by Walt Felix submitted on December 4, 2002

Customer's web site: WWW.C ruiseNights.Info

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of December 4, 2002): Current customer

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 3 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 5 out of 10

Cost rating: 3 out of 10

Overall rating: 3 out of 10

Claims 99.? uptime as a network however, individual servers are NOT factored into that figure. I experience frequent outages for my site. Poor Customer service and a take it or leave it attitude when you complain. I will be taking my business to another host.

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Very Good - Review by alphadesk submitted on November 21, 2002

Customer's web site: alphadesk.net

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of November 21, 2002): N/A

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 10 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 9 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 9 out of 10

Several accounts with PowWeb and when there was a problem it was solved very quick. They have one of the best help forums on the net today that you can get answers from other members and PowWeb admins.

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Powweb Review - Review by Deb submitted on November 11, 2002

Customer's web site: dreamworkdesigns.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of November 11, 2002): Current customer

Plan used: I use the only plan they offer.

Customer service rating: 6 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 9 out of 10

Cost rating: 9 out of 10

Overall rating: 8 out of 10

Powweb has awesome connect speed and really good features for the package they offer. Support can be lacking at times, but at other times the support is quick and thorough. I would recommend Powweb to anyone who is doing a personal website, commerce sites might want to look elsewhere.

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No problems - Review by submitted on November 7, 2002

Customer's web site: www.acadisc.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 month - 3 months

Date when last hosted by this company (as of November 7, 2002): N/A

Plan used: Powweb Value

Customer service rating: 8 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 9 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 10 out of 10

I've been live with Powweb for about two months. I have had no major problems whatsoever. On top of all of the other services they offer, they have a very nice Web Forum Community and and minor problems I've had have been easily solved there. Great value.

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bad host - Review by submitted on November 7, 2002

Customer's web site: www.baseboard.net

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 month - 3 months

Date when last hosted by this company (as of November 7, 2002): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: single plan host

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 1 out of 10

Cost rating: 6 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

powweb is a prime example of a bad web host, just like the unlimited/umertered hosts that kick you off if you exceed their hidden allowances, powweb will do the same.

they are out for a profit, their support system is terrible, they have many server outs, and do not fulfil their advertised up time even remotly.

they remove negative posts from theirt support forums to give a biased view of their service, they also ban members (customers) from their support forums for asking simple questions, that they do not wish to answer.

i've never come acros such a two bit oporation such as this.

let me state that after being kicked off by powweb, we recived a full refund, that means full, everything we paid, including the money for the months hosting we had and the non refundable mysql set up fees .. they piad us off because they we're at fault.

base

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Non existant Customar Relation Management - Review by Anonymous submitted on November 4, 2002

Customer's web site: Submitted but not made public

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 year - 3 years

Date when last hosted by this company (as of November 4, 2002): 1 year - 3 years ago

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 3 out of 10

Cost rating: 7 out of 10

Overall rating: 2 out of 10

One of the many complains:

Well I've endured various downtime issues here. I've always thought to myself "Well if I can tough it out, the network will be better in the end and even more worth my 7.77/mo" But today when I tried to check my email and then tried changing the pass to what it was before and it still doesn't work. Well I'm done. Even though my account was renewed on 9/28/02 and I still have a year paid for I'm done here.

I'm going to share some space with a client of mine in turn for helping them out with paying alittle of their monthly hosting bill. So I will end up with the same amount of space and everything I have here and alot more (ie: SQL DBs that I don't have to pay setups for). It'll take me awhile to get my clients site nailed down and ready to be online but it will be before my hosting is expired here.

So, I'd have to say that if you are looking into getting hosting here, to realize that I'm willing to lose money to have a host that really does have 99.?% uptime. Not like powweb where they consider uptime to mean when their severs are turned on and everthing should be working. I understand that powweb is attempting to fix these issues but Powweb's inability to address us themselves and tell us what the hell is wrong and an estimate as to when it will be fixed is more irratating than the downtime itself.

And AlphaDesk I appreciate your input and help trying to get things resolved but even you can only do so much. Thanks though.

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Total Fraud. Dont waste your money - Review by submitted on November 1, 2002

Customer's web site: www.sphereserver.net

Length of time hosted by this company: less than a month

Date when last hosted by this company (as of November 1, 2002): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: 1

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 7 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

On 09/30/2002 I decided to find a new host provider for my site (http://www.sphereserver.net). It requires MySQL, PHP, sub-domains and roughly a 1GB transfer per day. After a thorough search of the web using host tools like www.hostsearch.com, I found POWWEB, the self proclaimed "perfect host". Not true. Well their web page sounds really great. They offer full services and 30G transfer per month for cheap. Don't be fooled! As far as I can tell they have no intention of actually honoring that agreement. In my case, the site had been running tolerably for 2 weeks, one day I found the site not working. After days of trying to contact the admin I finally got the explanation it had been turned off for "resource abuse", not for data transfer but CPU usage. Not so much as an email. In fact it took 4 days before they even responded. The site had been running for over a year on other servers without a hitch.

Evaluation: Read the fine print in the agreement. It turns out they can turn you off and keep your money for ANY reason. (and do) It seems they overloaded their servers. When they discovered this they simply picked the top 2 sites on the server and turned them off. Sounds like good business to me, makes room for more paying customers with less popular sites. They already had my money anyhow. I had foolishly paid for a year in advance. Well hopefully a few people do a search and find this page before going to POWWEB.

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POWWEB sucks, worste service, total scam - Review by submitted on October 28, 2002

Customer's web site: www.sphereserver.net

Length of time hosted by this company: less than a month

Date when last hosted by this company (as of October 28, 2002): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: Only have 1

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 8 out of 10

Cost rating: 1 out of 10

Overall rating: 1 out of 10

I decided to find a new host provider for my site (http://www.sphereserver.net). It requires MySQL, PHP, sub-domains and roughly a 1GB transfer per day. After a thorough search of the web using host tools like www.hostsearch.com, I found POWWEB, the self proclaimed "perfect host". Not true. Well their web page sounds really great. They offer full services and 30G transfer per month for cheap. Don't be fooled! As far as I can tell they have no intention of actually honoring that agreement. In my case, one day I found the site not working. After days of trying to contact the admin I finally got the explanation it had been turned off for "resource abuse", not for data transfer but CPU usage. Not so much as an email. In fact it took 4 days before they even responded. The site had been running for over a year on other servers without a hitch.

Evaluation: Read the fine print in the agreement. It turns out they can turn you off and keep your money for ANY reason. (and do) It seems they overloaded their servers. When they discovered this they simply picked the top 2 sites on the server and turned them off. Sounds like good business to me, makes room for more paying customers with less popular sites. They already had my money anyhow. I had foolishly paid for a year in advance. Well hopefully a few people do a search and find this page before going to POWWEB.

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Good company! - Review by submitted on October 24, 2002

Customer's web site: www.whereinlosangeles.com

Length of time hosted by this company: 1 month - 3 months

Date when last hosted by this company (as of October 24, 2002): Current customer

Plan used: One Plan

Customer service rating: 8 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 8 out of 10

Cost rating: 10 out of 10

Overall rating: 8 out of 10

I've been with PowWeb for several months. Changing to PowWeb from another very bad experience with another company, the improvement was very noticeable.

They had a bad week not long ago when they moved their servers. Other than that, I've been really happy so far with them. They have been responsive to complaints and setup and site management was pretty straight forward.

I'll keep my fingers crossed, but so far, no problems.

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Very Poor - Review by Anonymous submitted on October 23, 2002

Customer's web site: N/A

Length of time hosted by this company: 3 months - 1 year

Date when last hosted by this company (as of October 23, 2002): Less than 3 months ago

Plan used: N/A

Customer service rating: 1 out of 10

Technical quality rating: 4 out of 10

Cost rating: 5 out of 10

Overall rating: 2 out of 10

Been with them for about 6 months. Was OK til 6 weeks ago and then they did an upgrade without telling anyone and of course it went wrong. Don't use community forums they are heavily vetted and bad comments are removed. If you keep posting they ban your IP and your user name. Another upgrade earlier this week and again problems. Moved Site.

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