Don't use PowWeb

Don't use PowWeb. I've been a loyal customer for around 5 years. I have over 10 of their packages with half a dozen sites hosted on each. No ISP offers a better combination of low price and great features. If it wasn't for one tiny problem, I would have nothing but RAVE things to say about PowWeb.

Here is the tiny problem. The servers are shared, and whenever there is overuse of resources -- regardless of the cause or the nature -- they shut down your package with no notice. You receive an email about this after the fact. They will not talk to you on the phone. Since your package is shut down, you can't access your logs. The only thing you can do is ask what the problem was. They take 48-72 hours to reply (their claim of 24 hours is way untrue). They are unable to provide any information, except to suggest that you "optimize your scripts". They cannot tell you anything more specific than that, nor will they let you see your own logs.

So, whenever this happens, which is about once a month for me lately, expect to have no web site for 4-5 days. This last time the site was up for less than a day before they shut it right back down again. This does wonders for your Google indexing.

I am cured of shared servers. I am buying a Rackspace server and will move everything to that. It costs a hell of a lot more, but at least they care about their customers' businesses.

 

You can find shared hosting with great service. Just FYI.

 

I'm sure of it. But I am tired of being susceptible to other peoples' problems, and I'm tired of being at the mercy of sysads who work for someone other than me.

 

I'm afraid it's the kind of thing that just develops gradually, like old men who do the combover. 5 years ago there wasn't that much stuff. Now it's so complex that moving it would be a Herculean task, and it gets worse every day. Every time I sit down and start to inventory everything that would need to happen to move it all, I cry. And that's before I start thinking about things like email archives, SSL certs...it makes my head hurt.

 

Amen!

I've been moving some old sites (I've used them for 2 or 3 years) off of Powweb. I've meant to do it for awhile but with all the outages in the past month I've been expediting the process.

Simply put, they suck. Unless of course you don't care if your site stays online more than 50% of the time

 

Did you go to a dedicated server too?

 

Among other things, yes. I bought a server and am renting some space in a company I do some work for. They have a T1 that's barely being used. I won't move all my sites there but am moving the most important ones.