CI Host

[aptimass]

I have heard rumors of bad things that CI Host has done, but can't seem to find anyone willing to discuss their experiences.

I have used dedicated servers with CI Host for 3 years now and have never had a problem. A middleman I was dealing with at the time changed upstream providers and couldn't get my data. I am currently spending over $600/month on hosting, and every dime of it goes to CI Host.

As a disclaimer, I do have a reseller account with them that I use to get a discount on the dedicated machines I have with them. You will not find a link with an affiliate code in any of my posts though. I guess you could call them my upstream provider. I am pretty certain that they do not have an upstream provider for hosting, so I don't think I am dealing with a middle man.

In my experience, they provide incredibly affordable and highly reliable hosting. I of course get root access with all of my dedicated servers, but I even get shell access with shared hosting accounts. I do not get crutches like cpanel or plesk, but I do get to use the tools they developed to administer all of my websites.

I keep hearing horror stories, but would like to get the experiences of people on this forum, whom I trust a great deal, so I can better understand what people are complaining about, and whether I should consider taking my business elsewhere.

I would appreciate any personal experiences.

Thanks,
Bill

 

[JMJ]

In short

I searched for what I thought was the best host. Not for price but a host that seemed to be doing big business. I came across cihost. Their site was exceptional compared to most others back then and claimed to have hundreds of thousands of customers. I didn't however at the time as this was my first venture online do any research via search engines or forums etc. I soon learned that nice things don't always come in pretty packages.

I signed up paying for one domain which was suppose to be registered through netsol and picked a decent sized hosting account. I don't remember the plan or pricing but I do remember all of this came to about $150 and some change including the domain $35. This was suppose to cover three months of hosting aswell from what I remember.

First problem to arise is they registered the wrong domain. It seemed their signup form was removing one letter from every piece of information I filled in for the domain. After calling them and thinking I had this all fixed I was relieved. I go on about my business building my site.

A few weeks go by and I get a letter in the mail saying my bank account was overdrawn. This account was setup primarly for the site and I only kept enough funds in it to cover whatever it was I spent on the site. After checking the account cihost had double billed me for all of the above services. This lead to several other checks to bounce all in all costing me another 100+ in bounced check fee's etc.

I called them to point out what they had done and instead of checking their records they asked me to get copies from my bank to verify they had done this and fax it to them. I did so and they sent me back the amount they over billed me. I called them back and asked them what their intentions were with the $100+ other charges they caused me to lose and they seemed to think it wasn't their problem.

At this point I was furious. I told them to cancel my account after the time which I have pre-paid for passed. Satisfied with my decision I went about my way to find a new host.

I ended up getting my own server and began to set it up while waiting out my paid time. When this time came I went to change my name server information and couldn't because of two things. 1. cihost had put their information in all of the fields except registrant info. and 2. remember what I said earlier where cihost had left 1 letter out of all of my information "including my email" so I couldn't change anything or receive any sort of emails regarding my existance. It seemed odd to me they had my address correct enough to contact me when they wanted to.

I called network solutions and they said the only way they can do anything is if cihost would fax them the authorization forms to do so since they were the only reachable contact fields. Well you can guess how eager cihost was to do this. To make over a year long story short. Eventually I ended up essentially "stealing" my domain back from both cihost and network solutions "3 months after it had expired " 1 year and 3 months from the beginning of this whole experience. They actually never even let it drop which is what I was waiting for after a long time of trying to get it away. They kept my site active the whole time and domain but I never had any access to either even after the supposed expiration.

 

[aptimass]

They did overcharge me on one occasion as well. To the tune of more than $4,000. I had bought some extra IP addresses and was paying for them for a year at a time. Well when it came due, they charged me for another year, but they multiplied the yearly cost by 12 instead of the monthly cost.

I suppose if it had been tied to my bank account, it would have caused a lot of problems. As it only charged my credit card, it was really only a minor inconvenience.

I had Discover card process a check one time for $4,000 when I had written the check for $1,000. Needless to say, this caused trouble with my bank account. The check didn't bounce, but several did afterwards. After a week or two contacting the bank and Discover card, I got my money back, but from what I remember the bank is the one that refunded my bounced check fees, and not Discover.

If I had been in your shoes, I would likely have done the same thing. Nowadays, I am a much more patient person. I give most companies a lot more leeway than I used to. I have yet to find a company, especially in the service sector, that does everything perfect. I have had problems with my phone company, my cable/satellite company, my cell phone company and my ISP. However, I am glad that I stuck with them as they all provide exceptional service.

Bill

 

[Axioma]

They are banned from many web hosting forums. I've read too many horror stories about them, but never used them, so all my experience is through other people's posts.

 

[JMJ]

They did overcharge me on one occasion as well. To the tune of more than $4,000. I had bought some extra IP addresses and was paying for them for a year at a time.



Bill

Think about all of those companies who have employees paying their bills and these accidents go unnoticed. It happened to me, it happened to you, do you think it could of happened to that other person too? Hey I just wrote the beginning of a rap song. lol