Warning: A Rant: 000webhost

dave-lew99

dave-lew99

dave-lew99

Associate
Joined
14 Apr 2008
Posts
1,230
Location
Manchester
Yes i'm aware it's a rant but i am quite annoyed about this situation.

So i'm in a position where i need a temporary (12 month) place to put my website - which is pretty basic - one page of PHP + small db and Wordpress.

Ok i thought, this 000webhost seem to be alright - it's free so i was expecting it to be slow, maybe with downtime now and then - which it did.

What i wasn't expecting them to do, which they seem to do once a month is just delete my entire web site and db's under the banner 'cancelled for inactivity' inactivity of what may i ask? The site, while not overload with hits, does have a few each day, am i supposed to log into the control panel to do...what?...the site works so...nothing? There isn't anything i could find in the FAQ or the T&C.

Last night i dumped them. TSOHost £3/month and damn it's fast in comparison, no SQL timeouts, no PHP processing timeouts it just...works.

Moral of the story? The cost isn't all that relavent - the free one was slow and had issues but it did serve it's purpose and would have been acceptable until i could move the site elsewhere. Simply deleting the site without any form of warning or notification isn't really acceptable. If their service hadn't had done this i would have considered paid hosting from the same company. As it is, they lost a potential customer.

[/RANT]
 
That is pretty crazy, considering some business thrive from web customers - but saying that, if you are trying to run a business from the page, it would be worth spending a little something to give yourself peace of mind that your site wont be taken down for random reasons like that.

At least you got it sorted!
 
Well my site is far from essential, but on occasion i've been contacted through it with job offers and things so it can be useful.

Normally the site is hosted on a server in my home and that works more than well enough, it's not heavily loaded or anything.

I was hoping for a temporary solution - i wasn't paying for it to start with. Odd thing is, when i was running the site on my own server on ADSL, it was faster than it ever was with 000webhost.

I probably would have just hit upgrade in their control panel eventually. But given the shocking way they treated me, i went elsewhere.
 
I use them for test sites and learning new things, also got a personal site with pics on etc that I use for hosting a few files I may need from several locations.

I can't blame them for deleting accounts that have remained inactive for a certain period of time, i've had them do it to a couple of mine I hadn't logged in to in ages. If they didn't delete them then lots of sites would remain in the server taking up names and space.

I thought that it was around 2 months you got a warning and then it gave you 30 days to log in to save it? I've also noticed that once 'deleted' you can log into your account and reactivate it.

I can't complain really as logging in to a site once a week is hardly a big deal!
 
Well, i would be ok if they had bothered to tell me they did this.

I had no warning whatsoever, plus although you can reactivate your account they still delete all the files and db's which makes it a right pain to set up again.

If a site is still getting hits why should they deactivate it on a whim? Who really needs to log into the control panel unless making major changes.
 
They do email you. Its happened to me on two different accounts and I have got an email each time. You get a email saying what's going to happen. Honestly don't know why your moaning about a totally free service.
 
suarve said:
They do email you.
Click to expand...

Well i never got any.

I'm not moaning about the slowness, the SQL timeouts, the PHP timeouts, it's expected that their servers will be low-spec and crammed to the hilt with other sites.

I'm moaning about the poor service and they way they obviously treat some of their users. Had I recieved an automatic email i wouldn't be bothered. It's not even mentioned in the FAQs/T&C that they remove inactive accounts nor mention what they deem to be classed as inactive.

Thus they lost a paying customer and someone else got my buisness.
 
I'm with TSOHost, as ive seen it recommended quite a bit on here for £3/month.

I'll cancel it when i'm in a position to go back to self-hosting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom