4 Month Review

[calum]

Hello.

I wrote a shorter review a little after I joined HG but now I have been a member for 4 months I am going to write a better review.



I started off a little bad, my confirmation email with my account details didn’t arrive even hours after I had paid, but after a quick chat with live support it quickly arrived in my inbox.


After I had got my details I pointed my main domain to HG’s name servers and then created another add-on domain. I managed to transfer all the things from my old hosting to my brand new HG account. I transferred SQL Databases, files and email things with ease.


After that I checked over my main domain’s sites to make sure everything worked, and it worked fine.



Next I started to set up my computer forum (www.computalk.net), it started off running MyBB with a few members and I was very surprised at how fast it loaded for me, even though I lived in the UK and the server was in the US.


Gradually I got more members and more posts, if I ever had a problem, even if it wasn’t hosting related, I could get support on this great forum.
I also read a few posts about what you could call “hidden” limitations of HG accounts, such as inodes and memory usage.


I created a file that checked for inodes and I was far below the limit at only 17,000, whereas the limit is 50,000 and even then you don’t get suspended.


The next thing I did was request memory usage using a support ticket. Within 30 minutes I had my memory usage and I was also far below the limit (I can’t remember the exact number). I was happy about this and would have been annoyed if I was close since I only ran two very small sites.



The next month went on as usual; I added more content to www.calumneilson.com such as my blog at www.calumneilson.com/blog
I also created a directory site at www.izdirectory.com which worked perfectly and was also very good.



Then in October the only big problem with HG started and it involved my sites being down for around 1 week and 4 days. I went on holiday in October (it was great) and in the first week I had no internet access.


About 6 days into my holiday I got access to the internet for a while. The first thing I did was check my forum at www.computalk.net but to my horror it has been suspended, and replace with a HG suspended page and some strange ads. All my other sites were also suspended which was worse.


I had no access to the email I used to sign up with HG since my ISP don’t offer webmail so I logged into the HG Ticket system to find a ticket waiting in the “abuse” section. The ticket contained some newsgroup/usenet message logs from Google Groups claiming that I had been spamming my websites on to Google Groups.


The message showed someone advertising my website on Google Groups, which I found very odd. I replied saying that I didn’t post the message, I was on holiday and that it is possible for anyone to post messages on Google Groups, it wasn’t like an email was sent from my email account.


When I came back from holiday I spent 4 days talking to HG through tickets, because their phone support won’t speak to me about abuse because they need logs of everything that I said, I suppose they didn’t think of recording it.



Anyway I eventually got my sites back up and everything went fine, until 3 days later they were down again. Same reason, but a second wave of spamming. Another 3 days later they were back up and they have been up since then.


My only advise to HG is to not be so hard on suspending, hire more abuse staff (the under one hour they usually take to respond changed to days) and to let me talk to them on the phone.



Everything has gone fine since then and recently I upgraded my forum to vbulletin so now www.computalk.net is running vbulletin.


It runs well and everything is great.


9/10 for HG





Calum

[GatorWesley]

Thanks for the in-depth review!

[GatorBrent]

The reports we received about your forum spamming from google required us to suspend the account. I wish we didn't have to but the complaints were serious enough we had no choice. Thank you for understanding! If there is anything I can do for you please let me know.

[calum]

Originally Posted by GatorBrent

The reports we received about your forum spamming from google required us to suspend the account. I wish we didn't have to but the complaints were serious enough we had no choice. Thank you for understanding! If there is anything I can do for you please let me know.

Yeah ok I understand that, except I didn't post them but I do understand. I only posted that part because someone said that most hosts wouldn't suspend you for that straight off. But anyway it is still an amazing service

[calum]

Ok, now to add a little negative part to my review.

HG seem to suspend/terminate accounts for things completely out of peoples knowledge or control.

Today my whole account got suspended again, for sending over 200 emails per hour.

Now I knew about this limit, except I thought it was only for sending emails through scripts like using php mail().

But I got suspended for receiving emails, and having a catchall set up on one of my domains.

I read, and it says NOWHERE that you aren't allowed a catchall email thing on your account.

So for domain.com I actually only have webmaster@domain.com

But I also have other emails, but they don't exist, they just use a catchall. So whenever I received an email it counted towards me sending an email :?

So I received over 200 emails in an hour, many of them spam, so I got suspended.

I read nowhere in the ToS or mail policy that I wasn't allowed a catchall email. I have also looked through again now and can't find it. But now all my websites are down.

Hi Calum,

You are permitted to use catch alls - we just recommend not using them. We do disable them when an account goes over the sending limit because of how frequently people are using them (and don't remember setting them up) in conjunction with boxtrapper - which sends an email for each email that you receive from a source that has not previously verified.

We did not count the emails you received towards your sent mail unless boxtrapper was enabled.

Your sites should be back up again, as I see that David removed the suspension them earlier. If you are still having problems with them, please let us know so we can get things fixed.

[calum]

Originally Posted by GatorMary

Hi Calum,

You are permitted to use catch alls - we just recommend not using them. We do disable them when an account goes over the sending limit because of how frequently people are using them (and don't remember setting them up) in conjunction with boxtrapper - which sends an email for each email that you receive from a source that has not previously verified.

We did not count the emails you received towards your sent mail unless boxtrapper was enabled.

Your sites should be back up again, as I see that David removed the suspension them earlier. If you are still having problems with them, please let us know so we can get things fixed.

Hello.

I am not using boxtrapper and never have been using it on any domains, I am just using a junk mail filter in my email client.

But I am 100% sure some of the emails in the log that was posted were sent to me and not from me.

For example I saw the subject of an email from iStockPhoto which I signed up to a few days ago, I never sent any emails to them.

Yeah my account is back up

Calum