HostForWeb Reviews – Been Getting Mixed Feedback On Them

HostSearch.com

HostSearch does in depth reviews of different web hosting services, like tbwhs.com does. Their site gives you the overall scoring, as well as scoring for such things as uptime, tech support, customer service, price, and server speed, all right up front. Users have even left their feedback on their experience. They rate HostForWeb, too. In this case, we’ll look at their reviews of HostForWeb.

Overall Score

HSR gives HostForWeb four and a half out of five stars. They give five stars in the price and value for the money category, and four and a half stars on the reliability and uptime, technical support, billing and service, and network speed. That’s a pretty good score, indicating a good hosting site for an affordable rate.

Customer Reviews

Most customer reviews of HostForWeb are quite positive. They say that they have experienced very little down time, and that the server speeds are very fast. These customers also say that their businesses have grown and given their web host credit for that. Some of them do international business, crossing several continents, and say that their service is great.

The script installer is quite helpful, sign-up was easy, and transferring websites seem to go smoothly.

Customer service gets good reviews, with customers saying that response is quick and knowledgeable. The discount codes available also make this a popular solution for the expense of establishing and maintaining a website.

In all, HostForWeb seems to do the job quite well for an affordable fee. So far it looks like 370+ people have commented on HostForWeb.com and rated them. They get 4.5/5 stars for reliability/uptime, 4.5/50 for technical support, 4.5/5 stars for customer service and billing, 4.5/5 for server and network speed, and 5/5 for price and value for money. Since they get such positive feedback on HostSearch I am adding this piece of content to my positive section.

WebHostingTalk.com

There was a post on May 24, 2006 that asked the question, “HostForWeb.com Reviews, Any Good?”. The original poster thread handle was “bubazoo”.  This person was looking for a VPS hosting server because they were new to VPS hosting.  HostForWeb appealed to them because they don’t charge extra for cPanel and support isn’t located in the “Neitherlands.”  No that isn’t a typo 🙂

A user “i-debs” stated he does have managed hosting for VPS.  With them you should be able to rely on customer support.  This person has only used two to three host, so they don’t have a lot of experience. They did migrate their reseller plan over to HostForWeb.com.  They have had very little downtime, HFW does not get a lot recognition that a lot of other host get, but they haven’t seen a lot of negative post on HostForWeb.  “I-debs” does note that they updated their plans with more storage and bandwidth, but didn’t increase their price.

“Quuipo” did leave a comment showing that they use the VPS-2 plan.  They state that support is very quick to answer questions, and very helpful.  You can get ahold of them through live chat even during the wee hours of the night.  But, the speed isn’t great.  In fact, “Quuipo” states it’s terrible.  HostForWeb states that there are no problems or issues though.  They suggest that they upgrade to a  different plan that can support more resources.  The user did upgrade, but it didn’t solve the problem.  They have had three crashes.  HFW did give them a month refund for their forum that was down.  They are in the process of moving to another host (the name they did not specify).  They don’t feel HostForWeb is stable anymore.

One of the members of HostForWeb.com team did pop in and leave this comment on “Quuipo’s” reply.  “We upgraded our plan and we see that you’re still a client of ours”.

“i-devs” said that for the most part HostForWeb has been very helpful over the years.  There is a lot of positive information on them.  They have been using them for 2-3 years.  They have had some minor problems, but for the most part they are very helpful.

“wallywalt” has a VPS with them and isn’t really that happy with them.  cPanel runs very slow.  The server only has 2-4% of memory available.  They own over 180 domain names and customer support blames it on that.  The user states that most of the domain names are “placeholders”.

In conclusion there are mixed responses about HostForWeb.com.  It’s mostly good, but there are couple of complaints from their customers on this thread.  Hence, why I have filed this article under my neutral section.

WebHostingReviews.com

WebHostingReviews is a site that, much like tbwhs.com, does reviews of various web hosting sites. When you go to their website, you’ll see scores for the website being reviewed. This score is a ten point scale, and covers price and value, customer service, uptime, tech support, and speed. The site gives customer reviews, and each customer ranks the web host according to this scale. This is followed up by an overall rating and whether or not the customer recommends the host. There is no expect review on WebHostingReviews.com, though. Here, we’ll see what WebHostingReviews.com says about HostForWeb, a hosting site that has been around for several years.

Strength in Service

Most of the positive reviews of HostForWeb mention the customer service. Even customers who were unhappy with the host service say the tech support people were very nice. However, I should note that their customer support got a rating of 5.48/10.

All Over the Place

Ratings for HostForWeb are all over the place. Some people are thrilled with the uptime and speed of the service, others hate it. The overall average on server connection and speed is 7.3 out of 10 points. They are using SSD Hosting though. If you have a high traffic site, this may not be the host for you. You don’t want to lose customers because of so-so download times.

Uptime and reliability of HostForWeb is only 6.8 out of 10. This is a red flag! This means that you could run into some downtime issues with HostForWeb. Even rounding up, the best you get is 70%.

There price for value is another drawback. This got 6.39/10. This could be referring to one of the shared hosting plans which is $12.95/month.

Really it’s just hit and miss with HostForWeb.com. There are customers that love them, but then customers that even call them a scam. 5 of the 9 people that have used them would not recommend them to other webmasters. To be fair to HostForWeb I should mention that they only received 1 positive and 1 negative review in 2014. The other reviews are from 2007-2012. Since, their rating is pretty low on WebHostingReviews.com I am filing this in my neutral section.

WebHostingJury.com

WebHostingJury does reviews of web hosting sites, much like tbwhs.com does. They give an overall ranking for each web host they review based on a one to five point scale. Readers can contribute their own reviews, with scoring on the amount of time they have been with the hosting service, their overall ranking, the reliability of the site, quality of support, and pricing. Then the reviewer gives their summary of their experiences with the web host. In this case, WebHostingJury has reviewed HostForWeb.

Overall Scoring

WebHostingJury gives HostForWeb an overall score of 2.8 on a scale of one to five. This is a pretty neutral scoring, barely over 50%. Reliability, support, and pricing were three or above, a little bit higher than the overall score.

Customer Reviews

Most customers who have been with HostForWeb for some time say that the service has declined. They say that when they have technical problems, they get a runaround from tech support. Some report that their server has gone down several times, and that performance is quite erratic. Others also report that when they purchased added features, several others got bundled in, inflating the prices.

Other customers have the opposite experience. They say that they have good results with the ticket support system, and their sites have suffered very little to no downtime. These customers also say that they have tried other web hosting services, and prefer HostForWeb.
Customers also like the lost cost of hosting with this system. Some have multiple sites, and say they have no problems.

This piece of content just shows that people are either loving or hating HostForWeb. There is really a mixed bag of responses from a lot of webmasters. So far it looks like 24 webmasters have taken the time to leave feedback on HostForWeb. Since there is such a mixed feedback I am adding this piece of research to my neutral section.

I received a comment from Issa Ndiong on January 12, 2015.  I wanted to speak with them more on their experience with HostForWeb.com.  

Here is the interview down below:

What plan did you sign up with for HostForWeb?

I signed up for the standard host with them. It was on a shared server.  I needed a cheap shared server.

Level 3 support what is that?  How do you feel about their customer support?

Level 3 is the highest level within HFW support. They handle critical and complex tickets.  It is the highest level of support you can get with them.

So, they performed migration?  You stated there have been 4 days of downtime; what does HostForWeb say about the problem?

I guess, they were migrating some websites access servers I guess. The downtime was not at their server level rather my site that was affected and was unavailable for 4 days.

In the years you have been with them, what has your experience been like?  Please provide some details.

It’s been okay. Nothing  exceptional however their support used to be good at responding to requests. But this time around the response came very very slowly.

Do you recommend HostForWeb to others looking for web hosting?

Well yeah, somewhat because their prices are reasonable. But I’m sure there is better web hosting out there. I’ve been with them for almost 7-8 years.

Response from tbwhs.com

Really, I think 4 days of downtime is insanely to long.  I realize that host are going to have issues from time to time.  This honestly, reminds me of Hostgator and how they have had so many blackouts in 2013- 2014.  Sadly, they would leave their customers in the dark.  As you stated HostForWeb is ok, but there are much better options out there.  Support is one thing in the web hosting business that you need to be able to rely on.