Switching from WebHost4Life
I just finished moving most of the existing functionality of WiredPrairie from WebHost4Life. Finally! I waited till it was time to renew my account and switched. I won't talk too much about my new host yet, until I've given them the 'shake-down.' So far though, I can tell my web site is faster and the response time for service requests has been much quicker than WebHost4Life.
Why did I switch? Here's a brief summary/review of why:
WebHost4Life review:
Consistently poor speed on my shared hosting web site. Not until my web site had been down for several days did they offer to transfer me to a new machine. They claimed I wouldn't have any troubles after transferring, yet oddly, I spent days trying to get things back to normal. (security was wrong, etc.) RocketPost hasn't worked properly since the move (although I don't know if that was a coincidence or not). My e-mail has been down on multiple occasions for hours and days. My second move resulted in a slightly faster web site, yet still I noticed in the last month that it was down for several days at a time (it just happened to be during a blog-free period).
Their control panel, which must be custom written (I can only hope), suffers greatly from usability issues. Everything is scattered about with a variety of different techniques for getting the job done. I've been very pleased with the change at my new web host - very slick and efficient generally. I can find things quickly, unlike WebHost4Life, which is more of a 'hunt and peck' operation. Webmail is decent with WebHost4Life -- better than others I've seen.
Although they offer 'unlimited' bandwidth use for a web site, it's clear that you'd really need to work their system and servers extremely hard to approach any sort of unreasonable and unlimited bandwidth-usage amount.
The only pros I can see is that they offer Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2005 (upon request) hosting at a reasonable price. Other than that, they've got nothing special going for them.
Out of 5, I'd give them a 2.
Comments
I switched to WH4L in January because I wanted a Windows-based site and WH4L was recommended. Well, their own web site is terrible. For example, they refer to a "Control Panel", yet you never get to any page by that name. The software they have for uploading files would not run on my machine. I have 4 domain names for different hobbies. Not until after I paid and got set up did I find out that I could not aim my 4 domain names at different folders without paying more. (My prior host did not charge.) Then I tried to transfer a domain name to WH4L. They charged my credit card over 2 weeks ago, but still have not transferred it. On their Help page, they list an 800# to call for Help, but when I call that number, they say they can only provide help for hosting, not for domain names, yet the 800# is shown on the domain name help page. When I call the 480#, I can never get through to anyone. When I emailed them, they did not respond.
Posted by: Nelson Ford | March 6, 2006 7:59 AM
Thanks for adding that Nelson. There are far too many upcharges with WebHost4Life that aren't clear when you sign up. I'd like to think that you get what you pay for, but in WH4L's case, I don't think so anymore.
Posted by: Aaron | March 7, 2006 7:11 AM
I have very good experience so far with webhost4life. The reason I went with them was their customer testimonials at http://webhost4life.com/testimonial.asp
I havn't see any other host with these kind of testimonial on a daily basis.
Lucky enough, I did got the same excellent service from them.
Posted by: Masud | May 28, 2006 1:35 AM
Since they won't publish the anti-testomonials like this on their web site -- I have no idea how many people really are happy with them. Lots of people (like myself originally) were hooked by lower prices. The best web host is the one where there aren't problems and you don't need support. Ones where they are proactive and you don't every know you're web site was down for an hour, etc.
Posted by: Aaron | May 29, 2006 4:08 PM
I don't think any hosting company will post any negative comments. But I have good experience from webhost4life so far. My DNN site works just fine as well as the email part. Speed is fast.
I hope I'll continue to get good service from them. I hope the same for everyone else =)
Posted by: Masud | June 6, 2006 3:01 AM