PowWeb was established in 1999. They are developed by the same company that is owned by Fatcow, Dot5Hosting, Hostgator, and Apollo Hosting. They are an EIG (Endurance Internet Group) owned company. A lot of small businesses are reluctant to go with PowWeb. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reviewing them many years ago. At that time I had nothing but kind words to say about them. Boy has times changed! However, as this PowWeb review will clearly show I have removed them from recommended to a service. I now longer recommend them.
Why the switch and why do I no longer recommend PowWeb?
When I review a web hosting company, I like to look at many different things. I like to check out their features, uptime, dependability, customer service, and last but not least their price tag. Then when I factor all those together, I can either A recommend them or B recommend another service over them. If you’re looking at choosing a web host I have developed a checklist for picking the right one for your website.
After reading this full PowWeb review, you will see why I no longer recommend them. Well, grab a cup of coffee and get ready to learn why PowWeb is a company you should avoid.
PowWeb Features
PowWeb does look appealing; I mean they almost mimic WebHostingHub in the image that they only offer shared web hosting. Their prices are pretty decent. So this is why small websites would be drawn to researching their company. I mean everything is “unlimited” with them (which is just a sales pitch), respectable hosting companies like GreenGeeks use this tactic too, but I will go over some of the reasons on why I don’t recommend them.
One Plan
PowWeb offers one plan to its customers, with one price. This plan is all-inclusive, with full service for an affordable price. Included in the PowWeb package are unlimited disk space, data transfer, and bandwidth. They use load balanced technology to avoid service interruptions. Also, your web address and their simple website builder are included in the package free of charge. This package is eCommerce ready, with SSL and a built-in shopping cart that is set up on site. The package also allows you to accept payments through PayPal, one of the most preferred methods of payment on the internet. Right now, one year of PowWeb is available for $4.18 per month, which is a 54% discount. The two-year contract is also 54% off, but comes to only $3.88 per month, while the three-year contract is the same price as the two years.
Control Panel
PowWeb has their own control panel, much like DreamHost, Homestead, Network Solutions, Servage, and Web.com. Their control panel is called “Member Operations Center” which they have fully customized for their website. I do like the colors, but sadly this is not a fashion show. In turns of functioning correctly, it does do that to some degree, but if you are used to cPanel or Plesk you will find this to be odd because everything is tucked away in its category. When you first log into PowWeb’s control panel, you will see 6 tabs/panels. The first on is “Main,” obviously this like the homepage which does have a lot of useful FAQs, support tickets where you can get your questions answered, or possibly if you want to contact billing or support for any issues you might be receiving. The next is the “Personal” tab which is pretty self-explanatory (you update your personal information there, name, address, etc. The “Accounting” tab is just a place where you start new billing, see your payments, as well as their amounts. You can add/remove them pretty easily. The “Package” tab is where you will spend most of your time setting up email accounts, adding/removing FTP’s, managing your databases, and the whole nine yards. Lastly, the “DomReg” is where you register your domains.
Script Support
You have your selection of scripts from PowWeb. You can use Joomla for your content management or WordPress for your blogs. There is many other CMS you can install, as well. Images are handled by Coppermine or Gallery2. You can have your discussion board with phpBB. You can even establish a guestbook to expand your contact list through GBook. Groupware is provided by WebCalendar, and you can select either AgoraCart or osCommerce for your e-commerce. X7Chat is available, also, if you want to have chat capabilities with your customers.
Email Through PowWeb
Your email is with POP3/IMAP and SMTP. You will have a secure login, along with forwarding and aliases available to you. You can greylist senders, and the spam filters are set the way you want them. You also get DNS text record/SMTP+SPF with your email. You can access your email, schedules, contacts, and tasks from anywhere, including your smartphone. You can also share information such as schedules and emails with others.
Security
Security and web hosting seem to go hand and hand. PowWeb has partnered with SiteLock which is a service that helps safeguard your server so that you’re not prone to malware. SiteLock can even recover your files if you do get infected with a virus.
Clearly, PowWeb will have everything you need to start a website. Ok this is where my review of them turns south, so keep reading.
PowWeb Uptime/Performance
Your website will load very slow with PowWeb.
PowWeb has gone downhill over the years. Their uptime is guaranteed to be “excellent.” For the most part, your server will be up all the time, pretty close to 99.9%. But, what are webmasters saying about their uptime and performance? Quite the opposite, in fact, they are experiencing lots of slow loading times. It’s gotten pretty awful over the years. For instance, people are having issues with their MySQL databases (they don’t support external MySQL connections). Their servers are below average at best. To show you why I state this, please see the image down below:
A lot of hosting companies are migrating to SSD hosting. Sadly, PowWeb hasn’t made this move yet. SSD hosting is much faster than solid state drives.
PowWeb Billing Issues
PowWeb has lots of billing issues. Over the years people have been using their service after falsely thinking PowWeb was a lot larger than they are. As we all know our debit/credit cards go out of date from time to time. Well, people are reporting that they have lost their card associated with their account with PowWeb, and within the next time, it was time to pay the their bill there card was denied. Now, I have had some card changes in my day, but never has a hosting service closed my account and told me “Sorry buddy.” Well, that’s what they do. A respectable web hosting service will tell you your card was denied; would you please update your information with 3-5 business days before we terminate your account. They certainly, don’t operate that way, and one longtime (10 years) user got his account terminated and closed down. He lost his data and had to completely start all over again. Wow, that is bad! There are lots and lots of similar stories like that, and they make their way around lots of web hosting review sites just like this one. One service that comes to mind is 1and1 because they are notorious for having billing issues just like PowWeb.
PowWeb Customer Support
PowWeb has issues with customer support.
PowWeb has lacking customer support. As you might guess this is a big deal with me and a lot of other webmasters. When our sites have issues/problems, we want answers. Why because our clients are worried about what is wrong with their site and we have to get the answers. If there is one thing you get from this PowWeb review it’s simply this; their customer support is very lacking. Well, when PowWeb closes their doors for live help a red flag goes off. Let’s say you notice a big problem at 9 P.M. on Friday. Sadly, they only help with technical issues between business ours. So if something happens and you need assistance over the weekend “to bad wait until Monday and we will help you.”
I hadn’t talked to their customer support in some years but, when I did they were helpful. However, over the years people are reporting they are either getting canned answers or nowhere with their assistance. Unfortunately, PowWeb seems to be loaded with apologies and excuses on why stuff doesn’t get resolved.
PowWeb Summary
PowWeb is just a complete waste of time. Take your business elsewhere there are plenty of web hosting services that do not have loads of billing issues and customer support that only works during business hours. True, PowWeb used to be OK, but more and more people are just reporting complaints with them. I used to recommend them to anyone looking for a good web hosting service, but I no longer do.
I would highly recommend you use InMotion or GreenGeeks if you are looking for a good dependable web hosting company. I would like to hear your responses preferably from PowWeb staff, but please leave a comment up above to contribute to this review. Feel free to share my PowWeb review down below at your leisure if you did find this helpful (there are some buttons you can push down below this review). Thank you for reading.
PowWeb research.
Interviews with PowWeb Customers.