Ok well after a few months of hell with webserve.ca hosting I have had to bite the bullet and switch to a new hosting company for my business, clients and personal sites. Consider this post a review of the shoddy service provided by this filth that masquerades as a hosting company. Where do I start?
Customer Service:
This topic is unknown to webserve as they don’t actually provide any. Anyone you can actually get on the phone is actually an outsourced call center you are just glorified human answering machines that take a message and send it off to “someone” at webserve who if they actually exist will choose to ignore the message and not get back to you.
After months of hassles, a 7 day stint with no service I opened a Better Business Bureau complaint which webserve chose to ignore also. After a few months someone from the company finally contacted BBB to inform them that they had just credited my account 2 months. WOOHOOO two more months of crappy service and downtime.
Service:
Well were do we start? There were weekly downtimes where the server was down for 15mins to 4hours at random intervals. There was a 2 day downtime when a RAM module went. There was 1 week downtime when the OS got corrupted. Most recently there was a week of downtime when the server got hacked, when they finally got the server online again they disabled the ability for anyone to log into blogs, forums, CMS or anything with a submission field. Did I forget to mention that this was all within a 6 month period. Here is the best part my home IP address yes MY IP ADDRESS was put on a black list because I accessed multiple sites on the server via FTP, and HTTP, POP3 and logged in to my forums and blogs. Is there any web developers out there that can manage 9 websites on one server without showing you IP accessing the server multiple times. Oh and doing all this without checking email. On numerous occasions I was not able to upload files to the sites because the HDD was full however my allocated 12GB of space was 10% used so how could the HDD be full. I never used more than 2GB of the 1TB of allocated bandwidth, I never even came close to using the allocated 12GB of storage for the RESELLER ACCOUNT that I had with them. I did not even host all of the 10 allocated domains.
Tech Support:
OMG here is where it gets interesting, these incompetent outsourced glorified answering machines using scripted messages to send you when you open and ticket or god forbid actually get a rep on live chat. They don’t know anything either other than to tell you:
“We are Sorry for the inconvenience caused”
“The issue should resolve within few hours”
“We are aware of this situation. Unfortunately [SERVER OR SERVICE] is down but we are working to resolve this issue ASAP. As with any service we provide we realize it must meet the expectations of our clients. Rest assured that we do take the business of hosting people’s websites seriously and are constantly upgrading our systems and services to address any points of failure within our control. We also review all service interruptions and outages for ways to prevent such problems in the future. Again I do apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your business. Our technicians are working on the issue but at present we do not have an estimated time to repair. Your patience and understanding is greatly appreciated.” – This particular blithering ID10T did not even have the common decency to choose an option SERVER or SERVICE before pasting this script into the chat window.
The Worst part of all:
I opted to upgrade to a VPS account after finally talking to a director in the company. Yah I know stupid me why stay with them? Well I have 9 websites all with CSM and or complex MySQL Databases and settings/permissions. I figured a VPS would cure all. I asked to have my accounts transferred over and was told they would. The account comes with 5 IP addresses but they only alocated 1. I had a domain transfered over to webserve and asked that it be added to my billing account DUH not rocket science. Well 3 months later I still have 1 IP address. The only domains on the VPS are the 2 that I managed to make the time to transfer myself and the original server is spending more time out of commission that actually up. And I cant find the billing information for the domain transfer anywhere. I did remind them on a dozen occasions that these simple processes needed to be done.
Conclusion:
BEWARE OF HOSTING THROUGH WEBSERVE.CA FOR ANY REASON THIS COMPANY GUARANTEES 99.9% UPTIME BUT DELIVERS NOTHING CLOSE TO THIS. THEY HAVE NO CUSTOMER SERVICE OR TECH SUPPORT AND REALLY DONT CARE ABOUT THEIR CUSTOMERS AT ALL. OUT OF 10 I GIVE THIS COMPANY A RESOUNDING 0 A COMPLTE WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY DONT’T EVEN CONSIDER THEM FOR ANYTHING LARGER THAN A PLACE TO MAIL YOUR MOST TREASURED FINDS IN THE KITTY LITTER!
I have been using HostGator for many of my sites lately and I have been more than happy with the service they provide.
Well today I finally got hold of a human being at webserve to find out that they have lost one of domains in “LIMBO”. And that they had buggered up another one now it also is in LIMBO for 24hrs while it propagates the DNS again.
Utter incompetence with these people thank god I am almost done moving sites away from this poor excuse for a hosting company.
Well here is another update to the Webserve.ca fiasco, they have now screwed up the renewal of one of my clients domain names and the site is down. The domain is now lost in limbo and my client has no site up. Can I get hold of anyone in the company to help me. NO OF COURSE NOT. NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH THESE PEOPLE THEY HAVE THE WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER!
Matthew, I wish I’d read your post *before* purchasing a 1-year subscription for a VPS Linux Starter package with WebServe.ca. I’ve only begun dealing with them and already I’m frightened about their poor customer service. What a foolish decision, choosing to go for the full-year payment mode in the hope of saving a few dollars. I think I’ll ask for a full refund, first thing monday. I just don’t want to risk going over the 30-day guaranty period to realise that I’m stuck with them for 11 more months…
You did mention switching to a new web hosting company. May I ask which company that is and what was your experience so far?
Thanks for posting!
I switched to I-Web http://www.iweb.com although the control panel is not as easy as plesk the service at this company is awesome. When I had a question I called tech support and low and behold I got a human being who was an actual employee from the company at the data center. The tech was help full and friendly and solved my question on the phone with no message or call back required.
Good luck with your hosting requirements and I am glad that this post has saved one other person from the torment of dealing with webserve.
Hey, thanks for the quick reply! I’ll take a closer look at I-Web and see what they have to offer.
In the end, I think there’s nothing like word-of-mouth to set your mind straight when it comes to choosing a service provider.
Cheers
Interesting Matthew Chitty great post!
I’m another webserve.ca customer learning the painful lesson. My two sites have been down most of today with no response. I think it’s time to leave.
I’m also interested in any suggestions anybody can make regarding good hosts.
I have switched to I-Web and they seem to have much better service. They have had some minor down times but they last no more than 1 hour and customer service is located in their data center so the support provided is very good.
I have also had major problems with webserve.ca. Our site, email and FTP have been down for 4 days now! It is almost impossible to talk to a tech. I do not think they actually have any on staff. When I called back for the 6th time they said they will have to page a tech and they should get back to me in the next 12 hours. No guarantee, nothing.
I have also switched to iWeb and am happy so far.
Stay away from Webserve.
I sympathize with you on the issues you are having with webserve.ca. Their call center is not in fact with the data center in Vancouver, they use an outsourced call center. If you want to reach someone in the webserve office call the regular line and select billing as the option. The billing department is in the office in Vancouver. There is no tech support in Vancouver.
I have been using webserve for the last 3 years. It’s a hobby thing, nothing major. I got started because issue with email and I wanted my own domain name. I eventually moved up to webhosting so that my wife could do her blog and we could be in control of it. Of course it took 3 months for billing to be worked out completely. I have had many billing issues with them for that same period of time. IT’s very annoying when I make a payment via my bank account, and it takes 3 months, everything other payment i’ve every made to any bill that i own, has never taken more then 7 days. The went as far as to tell me to fax them proof .. uummm noooooo…. I refused to do that after I had talked to my bank, and they confirmed that the information i was sending them was no different then what they would send.
Recently, since the fire in Vancouver that brought down the data center that Webserve uses… i have not been able to get ahold of any tech support. I realize it wasn’t really their fault, but as an IT professional, I would think they would have a server back up to switch to when things happen. At least that is what I was taught when I was learning about all this. And furthermore preach to anyone who has anything to do with computers. So, now it has been 5 days since the fire, and I can not access FTP all. well, oky, for about 10 minutes this afternoon, i was able to do my wifes blog up grade. I logged off ftp, and went to go back on about 30 minutes later, and it’s gone again. I sat on online last night for an hour, refreshing their online chat, and nothing. During that time, and email came in for a support ticket, and, (this is really funny)… it said my issues was resolved. UMMMMMMM the heck it was …
Unfortunaltly due to finanical issues(ie not having a job right now)… i have to wait till i can switch to someone else, also i have to find someone who takes paypal, or internet bill pay.
To say the least, i am sooooooooooo fed up with webserve…i can’t wait to move ..
James Evans
theevansfamily.ca
Par for the course with webserve I am sad to say. There was so many issues with them when I was there. Server HDD going bad (7 day outage), Memory Module going bad (2 day outage).
Its always one thing after another with them.
Dear God – I pray that you force Webserve to die and have them refund everyone who’s ever been with them!
This is – by far – the worst company I’ve ever dealt with. Matthew, I’ve had the exact same experience with them. God forbid I ever speak to a real person! I had that exact same cut and paste response, but the reject who did it this last time gave me the courtesy of filling in the blanks.
I was so looking forward to giving my money to a reputable Canadian hosting company, but to date I haven’t found anything that remotely resembles one.
For those looking for an alternative hosting company, I’ve been dealing with Lunarpages in California for many years now and even with their lowest level Unix hosting plan, I’ve never had any considerable downtime, reliable servers and a (*gasp*) working cPanel with with full top-level access. Their data servers are fully redundant (and it’s been proven)… a much better alternative, in my opinion.
I sympathize with anyone who’s had to deal with these unprofessional wannabes. I’m not even convinced they wanna be, period. Bastards….
matthew, we have talked before, please get in touch, have NB info to share
jane
I also use Webserve as hosting for couple years. They are good in the beginning. But the hosting service they provided in the last 2 years is totally useless. Website will go down everyday (short down time), and every 1 months, there is a more than 16 – 24 hours down time. So in my opinion – STAY AWAY FROM WEBSERVE. THEIR HOSTING SERVICE IS THE WORST YOU CAN FIND AROUND THE WORLD. STARY AWAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Does anyone here think about legal action against this company (Sue webserve)? If yes, count me in.
When I first started with Webserve about a year or so ago they were really good but after about a year it seems as if I have become a underclass citizen.
I have support tickets still unresolved after seven months and they can’t seem to understand the basic principles of hosting. For example, I want a folder for Access Jet databases NOT under the http root but in a parallel folder to http. They can’t seem to comprehend that this is a more secure option.
So hosting some ASP pages which require some sort of database access is out of the question after all of this time. As I say, the last ticket open is still seven months old and numerous requests for them to resolve this are being ignored.
Whilst I can live with this (I’ll shove the database stuff elsewhere) what is worse is their continual downtime. Part of this domain is used as a data store for my business. It’s bad enough the random outages from time to time but now my whole site has beeen down for the second day.
eMails to the support team are not even generating tickets any longer and I am reduced to filling in a web form telling them that the site is down. One of the questions on the form; “Do you have a connection to the internet?” I would imagine that most people filling in that form would.
Anyway, I am going to have to look for a hosting service elsewhere. Because of the volume of data I can’t have it in Europe (we don’t have the concept of massive hosted sites yet over here for some odd reason) and since the site is horse racing related (I produce ratings and this site contains the archives of our data) we can’t have it in the USA so we’re stuck with looking in Canada.
As for their claim that they are 99.9% up is baloney. I would say that about 20% of the days there’s some sort of downtime, even if it’s for an hour or so. But this two day downtime that we have is totally unacceptable.
I will be moving as soon as I can find an alternative elsewhere. Suggestions gratefully received.
having trouble with them too. currently my entire site and all users erased! tech support ran me around but eventually told me to open a ticket. how long will that take!?
crossing fingers waiting to see if they have backups of everything…
Unless you are using the backup feature on your control panel then you are S.O.L. A ticket will take anywhere from a few hours to indefinitely. Sorry to hear about your problems with them, I really hope people that are thinking of using them read this also.
Thanks for the comment, I hope they fix your issues and compensate you for your problems.
I have just discovered my site is down – for the third time. But what really ticks me off is I just bid on two contracts and referred the potential customers to the portfolio on my web site which, apparently, just vanished into thin air. I’ve sent two e-mails to Webserve’s Help Desk and have received no response…not even a confirmation of receipt. I tried the “live help” but no one is there. I’m paid up until March of 2009 at Webserve so I’m thinking I will just go to another company and suck up the loss. I wish I had read your post before signing on! But better late than never…
I have 17 websites hosted with WebServe for the last 3 years. Since July 2008, dealing with WS is a nightmare. As of this morning, I have 8 websites that are down since Friday, October 31st and all are on NS 66 NS 67 servepower.com. Tech support is non existant; flurry of emails unanswered, only way to reach someone is the local phone number, billing dept. However, any answer you get from there is evasive and useless.
I am switching today to iWeb. Enough is enough. I still cannot understand their business model.
Fastest growing company in BC, great… but I could not care less. I have been had and the next few days will be spent migrating websites. Financially, this migration is costly and I have absolutely no recourse against WS.
Please, stay away from WebServe …
I too have had my share of problems, more than my share actually. My site is still today (72 hours now) and has been down for for than 48 hours on two other occasions last month.
They were bad in the bginning and have gotten worse
I, too, am a victim of this company. I can’t seem to close my account online. The terms and conditions of the contract states that there is a form to fill to terminate our contract. However, this online form doesn’t exist or very difficult to find. As well… no support. I am still receiving invoices.
Well, what a to-do. It seems that Webserve migrated my site to a different server or to a different path on the same server and that broke it even though the virtual paths through the site are the same.
The problem is that my site is generated by ASP scripts and when I want to do refer to a different folder, such as where the file containing the header text, the CSS file or whatever I am, most incredibly, not permitted to use relative paths. So, rather than using ../ in my scripts to indicate a parent folder I am forced to use the absolute path names on the servers.
This is contrary to good software practise and we can get away with it providing no-one moves anything.
Of course, Webserve have moved a few folders to another disk. After WEEKS of firing off eMails I eventually stopped talking to the robot called Nicky (who only seems to dole out the same reply; the one where everything is working at their end!) and I got a few eMails from a chap called Sam.
After a few days he fixed things. Yes, I think that they have changed something so that all of my paths now work (I think they edited the scripts for me) and, yes they do.
Now, in case you’re wondering why I couldn’t just have done it myself rather than to moan and to make a fuss? Well, the simple reason is that I can ftp into the top level of my area and then into the httpdocs folder where all my stuff is kept.
I cannot ftp any lower than this one, so that means that I cannot update anything on my website at all.
I think it’s really poor that ftp doesn’t work. And, again, all eMails are being ignored. If ftp doesn’t work then how on earth is one going to get a site going?
It’s now mid-December. We’re coming up to the first anniversary of an open ticket which I am waiting to be resolved.
This lot are truly useless. Do avoid them.
yes – I would compare this company to sh** but that would be an insult to sh**. The later actually serves some purpose in this world. How they stay in business is beyond me. Terrible terrible terrible company. Must be a drag to work there – if in fact they have staff. Perhaps it’s just some guy with a couple of machines in his apartment – would explain much!
They wasted my time…tons of it…my money…charged me over $120.00 / year and I now have the same service elsewhere for under $10.00. No cosomer or tech support EVER but lots of terrible piano music while waiting to talk to someone at the “call center” ya right push 2 to speak with someone at teck support…no wait after 20 minutes i get a call center who promises someone will call back within 24 hrs and presto chango..my call is NEVER returned… the ship is sinking swim for your lives…ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I signed up with them 2 years ago. After just 2 days it was clear that their service and tools available were completely inadequate for my
needs and I switched hosts. They refused to give me a refund for the full year of hosting I had paid for.
I gave up trying to switch my domain to another registrar after becoming frustrated and decided that dealing with the issue wasn’t
worth the stress. After all, even though their hosting and customer service suck, how could they go wrong with the simple task of
keeping a domain name registered?
Now, they have taken a payment made to them for the purpose of renewing my domain name and used it to renew a domain forwarding
service they hooked up to my account once I’d canceled my hosting with them and established hosting elsewhere. Unfortunately, I
learned about this only now that my domain name has expired.
I’m out of business. No website. No ability to receive email. If there’s even a 1% chance of this happening to you or your business,
would you risk it?
Unfortunately with webserve the percentage chance of having problems is much higher than 1%, the risks involved in dealing with webserver far out way the benefits. They have a data center in Vancouver which is what originally impressed me.
However when ever I needed to call tech support (and I use the term loosely) I was routed to some call center god knows where. It was virtually impossible to reach anyone at the actual office.
I am glad you have found other hosting that meets your needs.
don’t even get me started. I’ve just spent a week and a half rebuilding everything from ground up so that I can transfer and get the hell out of webserve!