I switched over to Hostmerit for some of my websites a few months ago. If you follow the blog, you will remember that I lost a week at the previous host when they shut me off without notice. I was able to resolve that, but I contracted with Hostmerit.com because they were local (Newark, NJ) and they had a good price on a reseller package. I made myself a hosting services reseller.
This has proved to be a mistake. Hostmerit is a very small shop with problems keeping their hosting service up and running. In the past month, they have filled up a disk and they screwed up the config and for the last week non of my websites have been working. My site is up and down during the week and I lose money.
They moved me to a knew machine over night and I lost 9 days of updates (including this blog). I am going to republish the blog and copy over the images again, but this is not a good turn of events. It means that I have to go out host shopping again.
I need 50 gigs of traffic, about 100 meg of storage and 50 domain names. I need php and mySql with graphics installed. Hostmerit was cheap ($12 a month), but I will probably have to pay $25 or $30 for a more stable environment.
The worst about hostmerit is the third world support desk that requires you to explain in detail several times what the problem is, and they still answer from a script about a problem that has nothing to do with what is going on.
Update:
The hosting company restored from a more recent backup, but as a result, I lost all of yesterday’s sales and updates. Damn, this is difficult! FreeNameAStar is down the tubes again and I have to re-re-re update everything.
3 Comments
Hi Keith:
I know this isn’t local but you seem to be having problems with hosting: May I direct your attention to OS Empire? They host my GL site (not doing anything with it now)
Anyway, Mark is the owner and is a pretty good guy that knows his stuff. I don’t know if he’ll give you the space/rate ratio you need but the link for OS Empire is in my Blog sidebar.
it might be an option for you.
I second Hostmerit STINKS!
Constantly being blocked from FTP usage. everytime I contacted support about the problem, they would tell me
nothing was wrong. even after telling them what I thought the problem was. It would take 3-4 times contacting
and responding to them before they would figure it out and temperarly fix it. access would be lost up too a
couple of days.
Sites where down a couple of times due to hardware issues.
Billing was handled by PayPals auto Billing. When the credit card that was used was compromised, I was forced
to update the auto billing information with a replacement card#, in the process auto billing was canceled. and
the way they have it setup, all my sites went down and I was unable to access them. even though I was paid up
for the remainder of the contract.
So once again I contacted customer support and Billing, No response from Billing, but the support dept did
respond once telling me that they where passing the information “that my sites where down” to a higher up
because they couldn’t give me a good answer!?
So after many more attempts to contact explaining what had happened and to put my sites back up and to allow me
access, I started getting upset. so my messages began to reflect my disappointment and concern, moreso after
loosing a sale to a customer with whom I just got off them phone with when my sites when down. This cost me a
SALE!$$.
I did get a short email form the owner… AKA the Billing Dept, a day or so later, stating that he was in a
fender bender and that he didn’t understand why I was so upset. I responded to him explaining myself and I
haven’t heard from anyone since. and so you all know, I gave them my Cell phone #, and they have my e-mail
address as well.
Now 2 weeks later and still no responses to my questions, I have been forced to purchase server space with
another host and rebuild all 3 of my sites! They won’t even allow the transfer of one of my domain names!!!!!!!!
Its for my store and its costing money!
So before you go for the lower cash price, consider the higher price you will be paying letting them “and
I use that word loosely” host your site.
The previous comment sounds like a rant, but Hostmerit really does suck, especially the customer support. The offshore group tries to solve the tech problems, but the real problem is the owner making bonehead mistakes in the server config, backups and maintenance.