IPower Hosting is the bane of my existence. As a webmaster, I managed about 100 accounts with them for myself and for several clients. I started doing business with them initially at a client’s request years back. At the time, they were very affordable and the service was good enough. That quickly changed and today, their prices have gone up drastically.

But the real problem is that when I have to deal with them on a problem, I spend a large amount of time on hold with them. My average hold time just to initially speak with a representative is 40 minutes. Then after I have talked to someone, they will almost always put me back on hold for some additional time.
That hold time has cost me a lot of money in the past. Both in terms of money spent on the phone calls, as well as time lost while waiting for them to pick up the line. I have estimated the cost of doing business with IPower at a much higher amount than they charge for their products. If I were to value my time at a very cheap level of $10 an hour (let’s assume I’m multi-tasking to bring the rate down), then I’d estimate that it costs me at least $50 per account per year to do business with IPower.
With close to 100 accounts that is $5,000 in lost opportunity cost for me. Now losing money on a partner would not qualify them as the ‘bane of my existence’. I give that emotionally subjective label to IPower due to their hold music.
They used to play a really really bad medley of 70’s rock and 90’s techno with very awkward transitions. Waiting on hold for 40 minutes at a time listening to this was bad. What was worse, every time someone picked up and put me back on hold, the medley would start over from the beginning.
These days they have finally changed their hold music to something that might be considered more soothing. I can’t quite place the music all though I used to know the group. I think it was some enigma b-side or maybe Deep Forest or Digweed or something, but they play the same single song on an endless loop now and it drives me nuts too!
I thought I’d share just a minute of it or so with you, so that you could decide if you wanted to deal with this over and over again for 40 minute stretches on a regular basis.

If not, go somewhere else for hosting. Or prepare yourself to sell a lot of funny t-shirts bemoaning your time spent with IPower.
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I just switched from a “Shared Hosting” plan over at Hostgator to a “Dedicated Server”, which means I went from a $10/month server cost to almost $300/month. Luckily Hostgator is sponsoring my blog with the hosting and my future …

The first article actually mirrored some decisions that I am facing right now myself, and is a good example of the evolution that many webmasters go through as they advance from free to paid hosting and then from a single domain hosted experience to a shared server or virtual server experience to a Orovo dedicated server hosting experience.

DreamHost came out of the holidays and noticed that billings were a little light.  They dug into their billing process and reran some server jobs to make sure everything had been covered correctly.  As they did this, they noticed some accounts that had not been charged.  Eventually they isolated the issue relating to a missing upgrade for 64 bit something or other, and then went back and reran the server jobs to the date when the upgrade had gone in (with the missing something or other).

The only problem with this tactic is that when they reran the job, they used the year 2008 instead of the correct year of 2007.  Their system then processed a years worth of charges in advance and that triggered  their Um, Whoops. blog post.

Now on the serious side, its good that they figured things out.  The bad thing is that a few accounts reportedly may have been shut down temporarily due to lack of payment.  Its unclear if any customers credit cards were actually billed for a years worth of service in advance.

From our perspective here, its great that DreamHost figured out the problem, its nice that they have a sense of humor in diffusing the situation, but if you are one of the customers that may have been impacted by the mistake, we hope that you get a little something for your time and trouble, maybe a discount, maybe a free month of service, maybe a free trip to Branson Missouri, but something to take your mind off the problem.

There could just be as many websites out there offering reviews of hosting companies as there are actual hosting companies.  The two are about as bountiful as all the fiber cables running through a fortune 500 high rise.

As an example I came across a new reviewing site called Hostpedia.org. They have a name that plays off of the concept of Wikipedia, but to the best of my knowledge they are not by any means a wiki themselves, just another site providing hosting reviews.  I have to give them kudos for a catchy 2.0 sounding name, although I do not necessarily agree with their push for HostGator.com.  It wouldn’t necessarily be my top choice on any given day of the week.

I had not heard of DotEasy.com Hosting services before, but came across this review of their Free hosting service.  It would appear that they provide banner free(ergo they do not advertise on your website) hosting service to people and businesses.  The primary drawback of their service per the review is their uptime reliability.

They do offer a paid version as well, which comparatively speaking, looks like last years rates. 

The Free hosting plan is definitely the better buy!  (Go figure  )

Here is what they come with in their service offerings:

Doteasy is providing Linux and Windows web hosting services, has been founded in 1999 and now it’s eigth years in business.

Comes with:
100MB disk storage
1000MB monthly traffic
10 email accounts, with domain registration

Web Hosting Review – Doteasy at Online Business Resources

More information on DotEasy Hosting. 

The free service is supposed to be for business as wells as people.  There is a fee however if you donot register your domain through DotEasy.  If you have your own domain registered already, they charge $35 as a domain transfer fee (I suppose that is for repointing or something, which a typical person can do themselves for free.) 

Domain transfer fee can be waived if you refer 2 people.

So as I see it, if you already own a domain, this is probably not the service for you if you can not find hosting that costs less than $35 per year.  ($50 is about the average so this may be a good deal regardless for simple websites).

If you do not have a domain name yet, then this can be a good buy.

New Domain Registrations cost $18/year, which is about 3 times what I pay to register a domain through iPower ($6.50).  But iPower does not provide free hosting either.

So the important thing here is to look at the total package.  I suspect that this is a great deal for people looking to build websites that are just a landing page or maybe 5-6 page sites covering simple products or services like say plasma lift accessories for TV’s, or affiliate specials or something. 

Its probably also good for people that are looking to create a simple site, say for the kids soccer team, or a teacher creating a simple class page or something, but this probably would not be terribly great for running a dynamic site or a site with lots of images (of course images can be hosted through flikr or something for free.)

POWWEB Hosting provides hosting solutions with a shop based in California.

They offer decent support and software offerings (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and more) at cheap hosting prices.   Their primary plans for a 1 or 2 years hosting package with a free domain registration costs $5.77 per month with no setup fees.

*note the cute girl in their advertisement.  I’m not pointing that out to be crass, just pointing it out as cute girls seem to be a theme in hosting sales (GoDaddy Superbowl commercial example) 

Don’t let the Cute girl distract you from the July sale ($4.77 per month on a hosting plan normally $5.77)

Pros – Price

Those prices are charged a year at a time, so don’t expect to see a $5.77 charge show up every month on your credit card like this is an Audible subscription or something.

Here is what the 1 and 2 year charges will actually look like.

$69.24 for a year is not too bad as far as prices go even cheap prices.

Cons – Support and Complaints

Doing a little research I dug up a review by a blogger that had a nasty run in with POWWEB back in 2005.  Long story short, the blog experienced a SQL connection issue (happens all too frequently sometimes – especially with WordPress) and POWWEB tried to shut down the site.

*SQL connection issues can severely drain the resources of a server, which could impact other customers.

Our blogger tried to contact POWWEB and had some trouble getting through, so they through up a splash page on their site and invited their readers to call in to POWWEB.  (Kind of gorilla like, but I could envision myself doing that with iPower when they do something stupid next time)

When Customers fight with their Web Host – Everyone Looses

So POWWEB must have gotten slammed and they deleted the blog and all of the blogs posts.  Ouch!  Definite mean streak.

The blogger moved to a different host and now has a blog article in the top 5 of Google pointing out this lack of customer sensitivity from 2 years back.

Other reviews have mentioned issues with canceling an account.  When you cancel a registration or hosting service you need to do it in advance before the renewal takes place otherwise you will get that full 1 or 2 year renewal all over again.  This customer claims that they followed the policy and received a credit card charge anyway.  So they had to process a chargeback on their credit card for the $37.  (I suspect that POWWEB probably paid their employees more than $37 to deal with the credit card merchant services and the customer. 

The reason why the customer is always right is really a cost issue.  If you try and prove the customer wrong or even do prove the customer wrong, its probably going to cost you more than if you accept that the customer is right, even when they are not.

Overall Perspective

POWWEB seems to offer some affordable rates.  They have had a couple nasty customer run ins, but I’ve seen the same type of thing at many other hosting companies.  I’d give them a neutral rating as customer service is more important to me than saving a few bucks a year, but if you are looking for cheap rates, this may be a good fit.  Maybe you can park some of that money saved on hosting into some cheap Las Vegas Real Estate. Las Vegas has been hot for real estate but the mortage industry shake up is shaking a number of people out of their properties and creating a short term fire sale in Vegas.

Tell us your POWWEB Story

If you have had direct experience with POWWEB hosting, email us your story and we’ll publish your review with a link plug to your website or blog.

So three hours went by and I did not receive an account setup email from iPower as I was promised.

Paul S.: You will get  it within next 30 minutes.

So I tried to contact them again and did not receive any form of an answer this time.  Only a bunch of diplomatic non-answers and evasions.  I might as well have been talking with an amino acid or a peptide.

Jason R.: Thank you for contacting IPOWER Live Chat. How can I help you?
Brett Bumeter: Hi Jason, I contacted support about 3 hours ago, following up on a request from yesterday.
Jason R.: Hi
Brett Bumeter: I registered a domain on Thursday and never received the account setup email
Brett Bumeter: There’s a ticket number *** Nubmer Hidden forPrivacy***
Jason R.: I’ll be happy to assist you.
Jason R.: Let me check it
Brett Bumeter: When I checked earlier today they told me I should receive an email in 30 minutes. That was about 3 hours ago
Jason R.: Thank you for holding. I appreciate your patience.
Jason R.: We have checked your account and your account is in the process of setup and as soon as it is done we will send the welcome email with all the correct login details to manage your domain
Jason R.: Till then we need you co-operation.
Brett Bumeter: My customer is waiting as well. Any reason why its taken a day longer than promised?
Brett Bumeter: I have multiple accounts with iPower and need to understand your reliability
Jason R.: We do apologize for the inconvenience faced by you.Please be assured we are doing everything we can to solve the problem/resume your services.
Brett Bumeter: So Paul S at iPower told me 30 minutes earlier today. Can you give me a time frame or is that impossible and Paul S was just making something up earlier?
Jason R.: The issue will be solved at the earliest and be rest assured of the same.
Brett Bumeter: So when do I need to ask for my money back? 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, 4? At what point do you recognize that this is unacceptable?
Jason R.: Please be sure you will get the welcome email with all the correct login details from our billing department as soon as possible from now
Jason R.: Thanks for your patience and understanding.
Brett Bumeter: Thanks I guess, you tried but you did not give me any information.
Jason R.: Thanks for your co-operation for this time.

Stuck With Ipower on this One

So now I’m stuck waiting and I can only complain about Ipower. I can’t get a refund as they are qued up to purchase the domain registration that I need. If I back out now, I will not own it at all. I have to wait for them to bungle through things. Now its possible that they are going through some problem resulting from another party as well, but they have not indicated that nor anything, so I’m left to look at things as if they are to blame.

I’ve ordered many domains through iPower over the last year.  They give very good rates, but there are times when the cheap price is almost not worth it.

Case in point

I registered a domain with them on Thursday.  They billed my credit card, sent me an email receipt, and I received my automated Whois protection email with sign up details.

Typically, when things go right, I’d also receive an account setup activation at about the same time via email.

Every now and then they take a couple hours, but when it works right you should be able to buy a registration and have the account setup within a couple hours.

Note, I’m registering with them and going to direct the domain at my virtual server.

Their email receipt indicates that the account setup should be received within 24 hours.

At 26 hours, I had nothing so I replied to the email and was given a ticket number an hour later.  (mental head slap!)

That was Friday, today is Saturday and I still have no account setup.  It had been almost 48 hours now, so I went to the iPower site and went through the tech support instant chat and had this conversation:

Paul S.: Thank you for contacting IPOWER Live Chat. How can I help you?
Brett Bumeter: I registered a domain with iPower 2 days ago , I received the receipt but the account has not been setup yet. I contacted iPower yesterday (after 26 hours) and only got an automated ticket number ***numberdeleted for this blog***
Paul S.: I’ll be happy to assist you.
Paul S.: May I place you on hold while I check your incident ?
Brett Bumeter: sure
Paul S.: Thanks

Short pause while I apply some skin care products to my face, play with my daughter and pet dogs.  The pause was only a couple minutes long and by iPower standards it doesn’t get any better than that.  I’ve had to wait on chat hold multiple times in the past, sometimes for more than 30 minutes at a time.  I was prepared for a longer wait and pleasantly surprised with a short wait.

Paul S.: Brett,  we are sorry for the inconvenience faced by you , you will get the account setup letter at the earliest. I will appreciate your patience until then.
Brett Bumeter: When is that? Its already a day late.
Paul S.: You will get  it within next 30 minutes.
Brett Bumeter: Excellent, Thanks Paul

So now I’m waiting for the email, I sure hope it comes in 30 minutes at the earliest.  I would point out that its very important to document your conversations with your host and make sure you lock down deadlines and time frames whenever possible.

UPDATE

I published this around 1:30 PM, a few minutes after the chat conversation with iPower.  Its now 2 hours later and I have not received the promised account setup email from iPower.  Past experience has taught me that all their emails tend to go out in batches.  The tech support crew can’t seem to be able to go in and find an actual message and personally deliver it directly to me.

It has no walls with any partner,

sometimes you get them on a bad day and they just can’t picture problem. Maybe you just got the luck of the draw and pick the one tech support person that didn’t know what they were doing, or maybe they didn’t understand your problem or you or the way that you described it, maybe they weren’t able to re-create the problems that you’re describing to them and they can’t truly troubleshoot until they see it. Regardless, you’re probably going to run into situations someday some time someplace with a host company where they can’t solve your problems.

How fast do you jump ship and change hosting companies?

That raises the question of how fast do you jump ship and change hosting companies? to give them a second try, do you call that later, future and talk to them through a chat or look through their forums, do you perform a Google search on them and see if other people that a similar problem that went unanswered, or since hosting is so cheap you just decide to pack up your website luggage and hit the road.

There are more hosting fish in the sea after all.

I was doing a little bit of light research looking at OneWebHosting.com. To read a review about a person that it had problems getting their e-mail to function correctly through this hosting service. Big contacted OneWebHosting.com and did not get their problems fixed to their satisfaction, so they jump ship and went to a new hosting company.

Now in this review the person mentions that their hosting plan was up within the month when they had this problem, and based on the write up is a little difficult to tell if they had e-mail problems for months and months and months and they just finally lost their patience with the host, or if this problem popped up right at the end of their hosting plan they decided to change anyway.

OneWebHosting.com does not maintain a presence on the Better Business Bureau website and it looks like they’re trying to make efforts to satisfy their customers as far as I can tell by looking on the websites. I dug further back and I found a person that highly recommended them back in 2002. The thing is hosting companies do change over time especially when they churned through people and tech support, not to mention servers and systems and their own providers. So that raises a good question, how fast should you jump ship?

I don’t have the answer that question, jumping ship is a great deal of work especially if you have multiple websites and or databases. Changing registration information around in a number of other things can be extremely annoying even with the best web hosting firm, it’s often very difficult to get the information that you need to make the transfer completely, especially as hosting companies typically are losing money with you as you’re on your way out the door, and providing you could support on the way out the door is financially not in their short-term interests. For the long term it probably is in their interest to help you get out the door so that you don’t write up a big long nasty review about them and about how the hosting company let the door hit you on the rear end on the way out!

Then there are also those situations where you never quite get your foot in the door before you turn around and run back out. Sometimes the door can still catch you on the back side in those scenarios too. Its never good when a hosting company makes a bad first impression, but sometimes it might be better to work with them to get things fixed and develop a more personal relationship.

If you want to make sure that your business is successful or help make the transition from a brick and mortar business online, then you must build a solid foundation with your website and pick a reliable host.

Our sponsors at VillaDirect.com offer Orlando vacation home packages and they know the lesson of utilizing a good hosting service.  If you want to successfully operate online, you to need to find a good host. 

We all benefit from sharing our experiences.  Check out some of our Hosting Company reviews, or share your own, both the good, the bad and the mixed.  We can help each other identify the good hosts from the bad, the right host for one type of job versus the right host for another type of job.

GoNomad.com is a travel site.  On their blog they offer an interesting article, almost a case study on selecting a hosting company.  At a high level they are suggesting that small businesses should avoid the cheaper is better sales pitches that many hosting companies provide and instead look to the hosts capabilities and determine how those fit your goals as a company and the amount of money you have already spent or intend to budget for the creation, maintenance and marketing of your website.

Make the right choice and you will be happy and successful of course and off enjoying cruises regularly in the Carribean.  Choose poorly and your site will rarely function, you will likely be surprised with unexpected charges, and get a comfortable headset for your phone, because you will spend a great deal of time on hold!

They break down in their article a case study of what it would take to run a hosting company.  From a business and equipment perspective their case study seems solid.  The intangible item in the equation is the experience of the team that will keep the equipment running.

I like to put a second callout to ask for more Web posting stories from everyone.  E-mail us your Web posting stories and will publish your story on our site.  Please include a link to your blog and will include a reference to your first name in your last initial along with a link to your blog.

Keep those stories coming, there’s a lot of web posts out there and we’ve only touched on a few so far.  We also definitely want to hear multiple perspectives on what about so if you see us do a story on a web host we’d still like to hear from you in your perspective with that web host.  He might have the same perspective or a different perspective or something entirely different but send us your e-mails to stories@top-5-hosting.com.