Webhosting Review – SpaceForHost.com
Website: www.spaceforhost.com
Pros:
– Server speed and uptime is excellent (when accessed from the US)
– Really reasonably priced (starts at $8 per year!)
Cons:
– Customer support is almost NIL
– Support tickets are never looked into
– Only way to get in contact with them is via Yahoo messenger
Review:
I have been wanting to write this review for quite some time. But I did not want to write as long our domain was under their control. I have recently managed to transfer the domain name to GoDaddy and so with a sigh of relief, I am writing this review.
The Timeline is given below:
– Feb 2002: Bought SpaceForHost 10mb Windows 2000 webspace ($8) + domain name ($7)
– Feb 2002 to Dec 2002: Site is running great.
– Dec 2002: Site becomes unavailable for about 10 days. No response to my emails to customer support. An email is received a couple of days later with username and password on the new server. The old data is completely gone! It seems they changed their reseller hosting provider. But they did not inform us at all. Luckily I had backed up all the website data a couple of days back.
– Dec 2003: I should have realized by now that it was going to happen again. They have shifted their servers again and this time I had not backed up the data for the past one month :(. Our’s is an alumni database website and so users update frequently. Lost about 15 days of data. Also, I had backed up the database but not the code for the website š :(. The code I could find right then was about 6 months old. Had a tough time searching my backup CDs for the more recent code.
– Jan 2004: Realized that on the last renewal, they had renewed the domain name but had changed the domain registrant information to theirs!!! Even the admin email was changed to theirs. So I could not transfer the domain even if I wished to!
– Jan 2004 to April 2004: Sent them almost 20 emails, created at least 10 support tickets but absolutely NO response from them. I am not even sure if they check their email properly or not.
– April 2004: Decided to contact them via Yahoo Messenger. This time they responded. But it took about 15 chats (over a period of two and a half months) to get things corrected.
– June 2004: Whois records updated. The first thing I did after that was to transfer the domain from Directi to GoDaddy. Took some time since the domain was a .org one.
Bottom Line:
– The best approach is to register the domain with a registrar (recommended: GoDaddy in USA or Net4Domains in India) and then host with SpaceForHost.
– Back up your entire website at least once every month. SpaceForHost has a bad habit of shifting their servers without moving the data and without informing the customer in advance! Happened to us twice – once in Dec 2002 and again in Dec 2003.
– Don’t expect much customer support from them.
Useful, Informative, Interesting
I’m Mohan Das, Admin of http://www.jalanidhi.com. I’m dealing with Spaceforhost for the past 3 years and their service and support are very good.
I had booked a domain with them for Rs. 350. I sent them the same amount for renewal. They did not renew it for about two weeks, and then sent me an email– just two weeks before expiry of the domain, demanding Rs. 450. I cancelled the order, but they did not return the money. They also locked the domain. They did not respond to my emails in this regard.
They are resellers of directi.com, and so, I sought intevention of directi and got the domain transferred to another reseller. Directi declined to intervene regarding refusal to refund the money and suggested that I approach cyber police or Consumer Forum.
Spaceforhost.com has since refunded the money paid by me (Rs. 350).
I also have a bad experience with these guys, very unprofessional in after-sale-service. I own the site http://www.icsrdc.com, for the last 6 months, this site will be unavailable at random point of time, whenver contacted for reporting the same they said that they are able to get the same I am not because my ISP is different or the update of server records is happening slow for my ISP etc. In reality the site’s DNS server will be out of service and it takes some time to update the same, its really foolish to host a site of commericial value with these people… ITs a price I have to pay for the lower cost that they ofered. Many a times the mails attached with this domain also bounces
Sir,
I want the details abt buying a domain and hosting pls send the details as sonn as possible
by faitfully
Arun Sasi
I am very new to this site. I have a problem with the hosting company spaceforhost.com. I have hosted 4 sites with this company.
During the last 3 months I was facing problem with them. Sometimes site is not available or email is not accessible. Now my site is up without header and footer. I called them up and no response.
They claim to have online technical support but no one will be available, if anyone comes they do not respond well.
Today I called their office twice, wasted my money. One fellow just kept phone down. They did not even bother what I wanted to say. Now they just say that they are not responsible for the data. If I need the website, upload all the things again.
Do you people think it is right attitude to say this
Whenver problem tickets are raised, the usual status even after long time(one month or more) will be : > > Query not responded yet..
If they r not responding to tickets, why should they have facility like this…. its really waste of time
Hi guys,
I am also having some bad experience with spaceforhost.com , For the first time I host my site with spaceforhost.com (only because their price are so cheap, and I didnt update the nameserver records to them, because I want to test their quality) and for the first 1 week, the server load was normal. After 1 week, they suspend my account, I have send many support tickets, but no response. Then I chat with them via yahoo messenger and they told me that they will unsuspend only if I point the nameservers of my domain with them. Their support team are really fools and having no standard. I asked via chat for atleast 2 weeks and atlast they unsuspended my account. I am a freelancer and I stored many of my projects on their server. One day, I tried to log in to my account, but I couldn’t. I have send many support tickets again, NO RESPONSE. Again, I approached them via yahoo chat, they said simply “datas gone”. I asked the reason, but no response.I asked them to retreive the datas from their backup, their reply was “no backup”. I lose $800 by that incidence. It is better to save our datas to a broken harddisk than save to their servers.
I request you all the people, please dont host or register your website with spaceforhost.com They have the worst support in the world.Beleive me!!!
Suresh,
Spaceforhost did it again! A couple of weeks back, our site went down. I chatted with them and the customer support was really rude. They told me that they would activate the account. I waited for a couple of days and nothing happened. Finally, I decided I had enough and I shifted our website to another server. I had learnt from my previous experiences and used the backup I had taken a couple of days back.
Bottomline: Take backups regularly. I take backups at least once every week or every two weeks.
Yeah, SpaceForHost sucks – big time!
– Bobby
Hey guys,
If you are that much serious you might have gone with some dedicated servers or something. What all things you are expected to do with these pea nuts amount (~400 bugs)? Simply making baseless allegations against our company.
Mr jinson karedath, We are supposed to provide only hosing not correcting your program. we have informed you before itself that the problem was with your include. If you don’t know programming don’t blame us.————Mr SKJ,We notified you many times regarding the virus affected files uploaded on your space. We were forced to delete that. Still you are blaming us?——Mr Suresh,
Your account was deleted because of non payment of your dues within the specified time limit. It is not our fault.
Thanks everyone for your comments !!
I thought it was just me having problems, as I am not all that “web site” savvy. And thought I may be asking silly questions, that they decided to ignore me?
MY advice also….. As my site has been down for over twelve months now………….. Leave Spaceforhost.com alone………
If anyone can offer any help whatsoever, my e mail address is nigelwalford2002@yahoo.co.uk
Thanks in Advance
Nigel
SPACEFORHOST IS WORST! DO NOT EVER host websites with them. Their support staff is SIMPLY IDIOT! I am planning to take legal action against them.
You people just keep an eye on your newspapers. I am sure the person running the spaceforhost will be making a news in Cyber Crime one day for fruad.
Hello all
i am frightened with all ur replies since im planning to host a site with spaceforhost.com.Already bought domain name..but …?
I too had the same problem with space for host. There is nothing such as uptime guarantee or customer support for these guys (not these just one guy is behind this). He never takes his phone or replies to email when server goes down.
One time he even deleted all my websites overnight saying that I havenāt made the payment. I submitted all the proof including bank statement to prove it, but for nothing. I lost all my data at their server. 10 sites …. you cant imagine how harsh he was at that time. All my hosted data, my Database files .. all
They have given office address in banglore and other parts. And one day after days of down time I called the so called banglore office and found that itās another webmaster whose website was hosted for free at spaceforhost.
Even if you have domains registered with spaceforhost, donāt worry you can move to any other host like squarebothers.com. Just get registered with them and from their control panel you can move the site to their control. Of course you will loose the hosting space. Guys at squarebothers.com where really helpful in moving all my sites to their domain.
With about 10 years of hosting experience, I would say space for host is the worst guys I have ever worked with. To all of you guys trust me never register with them.
Recently discovered that they resells UTI banks payment gateway too.
If you want to register a domain register with trust worthy sources like Yahoo or Google. It will cost you 10$, but peace of mind. Then decide the host. I would say go for godaddy.com. They got some excellent offers. If you are ready to pay 6$ a month you can have unlimited sites hosted under them. But have a check on the supported functions and all before hosting. Like they care security a lot and has disabled some php functions, same for mysql.
So domain name go with Yahoo
Hosting go with GoDaddy
Emails go with Google Apps
Payment Gateway Paypal or at the worst case CCAvenue
But never ever SpaceForHost
Rathish
I had posted here sometime back.. it seems not yet moderated
this is to tell u about another space for host issue
Their customer details posted freely on the web
http://spaceforhost.com/cart/tempf/
Check it out… My details are also there …. STRANGE GUYS
Rathish
Hi
I can\’t 100% Agree the comments from these guys. I am doing business with spaceforhost for last 5 yrs.All are complaining regarding data loss in spaceforhost server. Sometimes it happen But as a serious customer we should atleast maintain our website backup.
But for customer support it is true , The customer support team is not thechnically sound. And in sundays tre is no online customer support and nobody will take phone.
Rgds
sreejith Nair