About a year ago I started surfing the web looking for a web host to host my blog, my fiance’s blog, and eventually the Bloggerstock website. Spent some time on Google and I landed on JustHost.com. They gett pretty high ratings when you search for hosting reviews. Almost always in the top 10 if not in the top three. They offer a pretty darn good price for unlimited everything (which isn’t truly unlimited), and they make some pretty bold claims about their customer service right on their homepage. They even provide a “secret link” at the bottom of their page which if you click, will get you a discount on a few months of hosting (oops, it no secret anymore). In my humble opinion, all this comes with a giant BUT….
Over the past year I have not really had any cause for concern with my web hosting. Everything was working, the sites were up, and life was pretty good. The backend was a little tedious, but many hosting companies use the same c-panel software, so there was no reason to really care about that. Once I had the sites set up and working I rarely went into the back end other than to make backups.
Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I started getting emails from JustHost.com telling me that my account had been suspended and that I was violating there TOS. How? Well, apparently something in my account was using too much processor time. Somewhere in the TOS is a little line that tells you how LIMITED you actually are when you pay for UNLIMITED. Of course, instead of just putting a CPU limit on your account, they actually just suspend your account if you spike over 10% CPU usage. They don’t provide a means to monitor your CPU usage, nor do they give you any warning. It’s just BAM! “Sorry, we suspended your account.” Of course this means that you can’t even log in to make adjustments to try to correct the problem.
The first time this happened, I replied to the email and the tech asked for my IP address so that he could open up access for just me. Response time was fairly quick, within an hour or so. Fine. He also sent some suggestions, but nothing really useful. I followed all the suggestions he gave, and they re-opened my account. However, they forgot to reset their monitoring software so within two days I was locked out again for the same exact case.
This time, I called their 24/7 support phone number. Guess what, I got straight through to a real person! But, hold the phone, this person could not do anything but tell me that I should send an email to their support team! WHAT!? So, I tried their online chat support. Again, got right through to a support person but the answer I got was exactly the same, I had to email support. Can someone please explain to me what the point of having on call support people readily available if they can’t help? I would rather sit on the phone for an hour to talk to someone who can help then instantly talk to people who can’t.
So, I fire off more emails to support. It took an entire day this time to get a response. In fact it seems like it took a little threatening to leave their company. At this point they said that it had been a mistake, that they had not reset the monitoring software and that my account would be re-opened immediately. While this made me feel a little better, I was still very frustrated by their support system.
Which brings us to the end of last week and this weekend. Once again I get an email about server overload and my account being suspended. I am sorry, but while I would love to have tons of people visiting my sites, it just doesn’t happen. I haven’t changed the code here beyond updating to the latest version of WordPress, so I just don’t understand what changed. In any event, since friday, my account had been suspended and despite my multiple emails to JustHost.com support, I received to a single response until the wee hours of this morning. I talked to two online chat techs who both claimed to elevate my case to highest priority, but nothing came of that.
One tech actually told me that the only way you can ever talk to a high enough level support person is through email. I am sorry, that is just no kosher. If I can’t actually talk directly to someone who can help me then your support system is flawed. I don’t care if I have to wait, I would rather wait if it meant getting the service that I need.
So, with a few quick clicks I had a brand new hosting account with GoDaddy.com. With a little bit of fighting with JustHost.com I was able to get them to give me a download link for a site-wide backup of my account. The domains that I purchased through them are being transferred to GD, and my blog is up. My fiance’s blog is back up, and bloggerstock is coming back soon. My account with JustHost will be cloased, and in theory I should get some money back. I better get money back or I will make their lives miserable.
Moral of the story, don’t always believe internet rating sites, and don’t use JustHost.com unless all you need is hosting for a super simple website and you don’t want any kind of customer support. They are temptingly inexpensive, but not worth the frustration in my book.
While I don’t normally advertise on my blog, I kind of want to rub this in JustHost’s face. So, to show how happy I am with Godaddy.com:
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