I don’t like to cover the same sort of topic too many times in a row because it can become super redundant.
But I feel after my shorter posts on Thursday and Friday, I needed to elaborate a little bit.
I divorced my last web host.
For as long as I can remember, my website(s) have been hosted by Webhostingbuzz. For years, they have been a good web host to me. If I remember right, I was one of the early adopters of the service and I saw it grow. I always felt like I was part of a cool family. The hosting was solid, the support was excellent and everything was great.
A few years ago, I saw a serious outage and some down time. That seemed to be a downward spiral of things to come.
In November 2011, apparently my site was hacked. And they had to use a backup from two days prior to put my site back up. I had to go through some old cache things to get back a few posts I lost. Little did I know that it would be just the beginning.
Please realize that it wasn’t all bad between then and now. But periodically, things would happen — such as in December 2011, when my account got suspended.
You see, they told me something happened and I was putting illegal things on the server. This, of course, was news to me.
Things were figured out. I was back online. We were good to go – until April 2012. That’s when I was again suspended for suspicious activity. This time, I blogged heavily about it and it drew a comment from the company’s then-CEO. After a few days, things were seemingly fixed and I was again on my way.
Oh, and during this whole time period, somewhere, I also saw a significant jump in my cost. However, after going back and forth, they did give me a lower cost and it was frozen at that price. So I will give kudos when deserved, too.
Over the next few years, I’d see some down time here and there, but it never seemed to be some massive crazy thing. Don’t get me wrong, there were prolonged ones and I know I was switched to different servers more than once, such as in October 2015. That time, though, killed my theme and made it so I needed to find a new theme. That’s great and all, but I was basically down for nearly 4-5 days because of things that were fully out of my control.
The issue here was I had just upped my 1-year deal again a few months before and didn’t want to lose it, so I stuck it out, like I normally do.
And then there’s this year.
Such as in June.
Or the meltdown in July (post 1 I post 2)
That was the final straw for me. A good price is great, but if you don’t get service with it, then … is it really a good price? To be fair, the customer support was usually OK. But they didn’t always have grade-A service.
Then when I got notice that my package was coming up for renewal, I knew it was time. That July setup was awful. More than two days down. And in the end, no real explanation or apology.
That, to me, is unacceptable.
So I did what any smart person would do – I divorced my web host. I wasn’t going to pay for another full year and then see things go all wonky again. It isn’t worth it.
Let’s put it this way, since JetPack (through WordPress) started monitoring my blog in about April 2015, I have had more than 75 known outages. Some were just for a few minutes, but others were much longer. Some were hours. More than a couple went nearly full days.
For a company that guaranteed 99.9 percent uptime … it didn’t work out.
And never did we get anything back. The normal “sorry for any inconvenience” was fine the first time or two, but then it got old. Never a “we’ll credit you an extra month” or something like that. There were always excuses.
But now I’m done.
Though Webhostingbuzz gave me the ability to have multiple domains, the reality is I didn’t utilize all my other domains. And I’m not sure when I will have time to develop them. I like my blog and that’s good for me right now. So, a few of my domains will point to that domain. Also, the reason I originally had hoohaablog.com was because I wanted to do more with hoohaa.com. Unfortunately that never happened, so when I made the switch of hosts – hoohaa.com became the main domain of this blog, which is fantastic.
The first part of my stay with Webhostingbuzz was positive and worked out well. The past few years? Not so much. I feel it was the right time for me to leave and wipe the slate clean. I wouldn’t be able to recommend them to a friend anymore, that’s for sure. Instead, I move on and wipe my hands clean. I’m a very loyal person and tried to hang on as long as I could, but it was time.
The funny part is when I went to cancel my account, I finally got that “personal” apology for the downtime. The best, too, was when I was filling out the form and this part came up in regard to switching hosts:
Remember: WebHostingBuzz will work with you personally to resolve any concerns you have with your webhosting plan. Why should you bounce from host to host?
You shouldn’t, and that’s why we differ from the other hosting companies out there. We care about our clients. Please consider discussing any account issues with management, and we will work hard to be sure that you are happy.
Too little, too late.
My new hosts (SiteGround) moved my blog over to the new server and everything seems to be working well. I can’t complain as of now, but I hope this continues and I have a long and fruitful relationship with this company.
I realize that things happen in the technology world. I really do. But there are times when you have to just move on to somebody else who you believe understands things just a bit more. I believe I’ve done that and look forward to the future.
Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” A ‘lil HooHaa on Facebook!
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