Comments on: United Hosting UK http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/reviews/united-hosting-uk Customer web hosting reviews Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:11:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.4 By: Giridhar http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/reviews/united-hosting-uk/comment-page-1#comment-1644 Giridhar Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:00:48 +0000 http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/?p=50#comment-1644 I have used names.co.uk for the past 2 years. I fedup with those service I have lot of issues with the websites. Now i transfered to unlimitedgb.com now it is working fine. I have used names.co.uk for the past 2 years. I fedup with those service I have lot of issues with the websites. Now i transfered to unlimitedgb.com now it is working fine.

]]> By: smallbusinessowner http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/reviews/united-hosting-uk/comment-page-1#comment-1636 smallbusinessowner Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:28:31 +0000 http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/?p=50#comment-1636 Here is an experience I have had with UnitedHosting recently. Following an incident in which UnitedHosting's servers were hacked our online shop went down and was replaced by a webpage containing obscenities, which what our customers were greeted with when they tried to visit our online shop. Although understandably quite upset that this had happened, I was prepared to accept that this kind of thing can happen however what I cannot accept is the way that UnitedHosting dealt with this incident and how they treated me as a customer. Firstly they didn't seem to be aware of the problem: When I told them our online shop had been replaced by a hacker's page they told me they'd look into it and get back to me. Then they realised the problem disconnected the server from their network. I was shocked to find out that there were 400 websites sharing our server!!! This seems somewhat excessive considering we are paying them £30 per month (400 x £30 = £12,000 per month)!!! After awhile UnitedHosting put our online shop back up, and they told me to take a look, but the hacker page was being displayed, so UnitedHosting took their server (and so our online shop) again. A while later UnitedHosting put our online shop back up again but, after we conducted some internal tests, we found that it wasn't possible to place any orders through our online shop, as our site failed to communicate properly with our Payment Service Providers (we had no problems before the hacking incident). We informed UnitedHosting of this but received no response until the next day. In the meantime our customers had the frustrating experience of placing orders through our online shop, entering the card details, and then getting a worrying looking error message - just after they'd entered their card details!! By the time UnitedHosting got back to us our site had gone back down again; UnitedHosting seemed to be unaware of this (even though we'd informed them, and it's not very difficult to check!) and asked me to place a test order and give them our admin log in details!! Our online shop had now been down (or displaying the hacker page, or not functioning correctly, so our customers couldn't place any orders) for over 30 hours, and no solution seemed imminent. We started receiving worried/irate messages from the customers who had tried to place orders on our shop when it was up but malfunctioning. One of them wrote to us: "Hi, you need to check out your payment process. Just tried to buy three things via PayPal or SagePay via two separate PCs and no joy. Also three other friends have had same issue and out of frustration have gone elsewhere. You are losing out through these issues. One friend wanted new equipment, and another wanted 980 worth of accessories. Just thought you would like to know. Time to bollock your web host." UnitedHosting then sent me a message insinuating that it was only out website that was having any problems (i.e. they were suggesting that the fault was with us, not them). I then wondered if this was really true, which seemed rather unlikely to me, so I set about trying to find out. UnitedHosting don't provide any phone support whatsoever (which wasn't made clear when I signed up to their services) so all communication must be done by email; they also point you to their support forums. So, I posted a message to their support forums asking if anyone other UnitedHosting customers had been affected by the hacking issue, and if anyone was still being affected by any issues since then? To my total disbelief, UnitedHosting removed my message from their forums!!! I reposted my message, as I wanted to hear other UnitedHosting customers' stories, not just what UnitedHosting were telling me, and they deleted my post again!!! Clearly UnitedHosting don't want their customers to share their experiences with each other; they just want you to believe whatever they tell you! UnitedHosting then sent me an aggressive message accusing me of "spamming our forums", being unprofessional and "acting immaturely" just because I'd dared to ask on their forums if any other UnitedHosting customers were experiencing the same issues as we were!!! UnitedHosting then conceded that it wasn't just us that was experiencing the same issues: "around 100 of 400 sites on this single server had index files replaced... just 7... stores remain having issues. We are working with all 7 customers including yourself on the helpdesk here, they are not on our forum acting immaturely like you are. We are able to assist those other customers quicker than you, as we know they are responding professionally to our tickets, the rest is up to you." So not were UnitedHosting unjustly rude to me, they also threatened not to deal with our issue if we dared to post any messages on their support forums - great idea of support, I think not!!! 38 hours after the original hacker incident happened UnitedHosting sent me a message to say: "Can you please test this now?" I did and it appeared that our online shop was back up and fully functional again. Within minutes it was back down again. I informed UnitedHosting about this and they told me that they had taken the server back down again (they hadn't let us know about this, after asking me to test our online shop, which wasn't very helpful). Finally (hopefully!) our online shop was back up and operational again by 7pm, approximately 42 hours (at least) after the initial hacker incident occurred. It may have been longer than this, as the last order we received was more than 48 hours before our online shop was finally back up again. UnitedHosting are now trying to use this incident to up-sell me to dedicated hosting at £199 per month. I will be thinking long and hard about who I take our business to in future. The problem is, how do you tell between a good and a bad host? This seems to be virtually (no pun intended) impossible to me. I guess this is what these hosting services - like it seems many web related companies - prey upon. The only thing we can do it write reviews about our experiences so that we are all better informed. Here is an experience I have had with UnitedHosting recently. Following an incident in which UnitedHosting’s servers were hacked our online shop went down and was replaced by a webpage containing obscenities, which what our customers were greeted with when they tried to visit our online shop. Although understandably quite upset that this had happened, I was prepared to accept that this kind of thing can happen however what I cannot accept is the way that UnitedHosting dealt with this incident and how they treated me as a customer. Firstly they didn’t seem to be aware of the problem: When I told them our online shop had been replaced by a hacker’s page they told me they’d look into it and get back to me. Then they realised the problem disconnected the server from their network. I was shocked to find out that there were 400 websites sharing our server!!! This seems somewhat excessive considering we are paying them £30 per month (400 x £30 = £12,000 per month)!!! After awhile UnitedHosting put our online shop back up, and they told me to take a look, but the hacker page was being displayed, so UnitedHosting took their server (and so our online shop) again. A while later UnitedHosting put our online shop back up again but, after we conducted some internal tests, we found that it wasn’t possible to place any orders through our online shop, as our site failed to communicate properly with our Payment Service Providers (we had no problems before the hacking incident). We informed UnitedHosting of this but received no response until the next day. In the meantime our customers had the frustrating experience of placing orders through our online shop, entering the card details, and then getting a worrying looking error message – just after they’d entered their card details!! By the time UnitedHosting got back to us our site had gone back down again; UnitedHosting seemed to be unaware of this (even though we’d informed them, and it’s not very difficult to check!) and asked me to place a test order and give them our admin log in details!! Our online shop had now been down (or displaying the hacker page, or not functioning correctly, so our customers couldn’t place any orders) for over 30 hours, and no solution seemed imminent. We started receiving worried/irate messages from the customers who had tried to place orders on our shop when it was up but malfunctioning. One of them wrote to us: “Hi, you need to check out your payment process. Just tried to buy three things via PayPal or SagePay via two separate PCs and no joy. Also three other friends have had same issue and out of frustration have gone elsewhere. You are losing out through these issues. One friend wanted new equipment, and another wanted 980 worth of accessories. Just thought you would like to know. Time to bollock your web host.” UnitedHosting then sent me a message insinuating that it was only out website that was having any problems (i.e. they were suggesting that the fault was with us, not them). I then wondered if this was really true, which seemed rather unlikely to me, so I set about trying to find out. UnitedHosting don’t provide any phone support whatsoever (which wasn’t made clear when I signed up to their services) so all communication must be done by email; they also point you to their support forums. So, I posted a message to their support forums asking if anyone other UnitedHosting customers had been affected by the hacking issue, and if anyone was still being affected by any issues since then? To my total disbelief, UnitedHosting removed my message from their forums!!! I reposted my message, as I wanted to hear other UnitedHosting customers’ stories, not just what UnitedHosting were telling me, and they deleted my post again!!! Clearly UnitedHosting don’t want their customers to share their experiences with each other; they just want you to believe whatever they tell you! UnitedHosting then sent me an aggressive message accusing me of “spamming our forums”, being unprofessional and “acting immaturely” just because I’d dared to ask on their forums if any other UnitedHosting customers were experiencing the same issues as we were!!! UnitedHosting then conceded that it wasn’t just us that was experiencing the same issues: “around 100 of 400 sites on this single server had index files replaced… just 7… stores remain having issues. We are working with all 7 customers including yourself on the helpdesk here, they are not on our forum acting immaturely like you are. We are able to assist those other customers quicker than you, as we know they are responding professionally to our tickets, the rest is up to you.” So not were UnitedHosting unjustly rude to me, they also threatened not to deal with our issue if we dared to post any messages on their support forums – great idea of support, I think not!!! 38 hours after the original hacker incident happened UnitedHosting sent me a message to say: “Can you please test this now?” I did and it appeared that our online shop was back up and fully functional again. Within minutes it was back down again. I informed UnitedHosting about this and they told me that they had taken the server back down again (they hadn’t let us know about this, after asking me to test our online shop, which wasn’t very helpful). Finally (hopefully!) our online shop was back up and operational again by 7pm, approximately 42 hours (at least) after the initial hacker incident occurred. It may have been longer than this, as the last order we received was more than 48 hours before our online shop was finally back up again. UnitedHosting are now trying to use this incident to up-sell me to dedicated hosting at £199 per month. I will be thinking long and hard about who I take our business to in future. The problem is, how do you tell between a good and a bad host? This seems to be virtually (no pun intended) impossible to me. I guess this is what these hosting services – like it seems many web related companies – prey upon. The only thing we can do it write reviews about our experiences so that we are all better informed.

]]> By: bard http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/reviews/united-hosting-uk/comment-page-1#comment-1122 bard Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:01:05 +0000 http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/?p=50#comment-1122 Hopeless! No phone support. Long waits to get imprecise email answers - avoid. Hopeless!

No phone support. Long waits to get imprecise email answers – avoid.

]]> By: Mike http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/reviews/united-hosting-uk/comment-page-1#comment-19 Mike Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:41:54 +0000 http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/?p=50#comment-19 I moved to this host a little over a year ago having been with another host who continously let me down. Service, support and level of features with United Hosting is absolutely fantastic - they even tailored a specific, smaller reseller package to suit my needs and my lower budget! Downtime (as mentioned by Helen and Siver) is virtually unheard of and support (via either their forum, support ticket service or live chat is very concise and friendly). I moved to this host a little over a year ago having been with another host who continously let me down. Service, support and level of features with United Hosting is absolutely fantastic – they even tailored a specific, smaller reseller package to suit my needs and my lower budget! Downtime (as mentioned by Helen and Siver) is virtually unheard of and support (via either their forum, support ticket service or live chat is very concise and friendly).

]]> By: Siver http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/reviews/united-hosting-uk/comment-page-1#comment-12 Siver Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:08:18 +0000 http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/?p=50#comment-12 I used to use United Hosting for a website I run. As the above reviewer noted, they are spot on on the service and downtime is indeed almost unheard of. Ultimatly though they are a little expensive and I since moved to hosts to TSOHOST which I can highly recommend. I used to use United Hosting for a website I run. As the above reviewer noted, they are spot on on the service and downtime is indeed almost unheard of. Ultimatly though they are a little expensive and I since moved to hosts to TSOHOST which I can highly recommend.

]]> By: Helen http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/reviews/united-hosting-uk/comment-page-1#comment-8 Helen Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:25:53 +0000 http://www.mywebhostingreviews.co.uk/?p=50#comment-8 Excellent. Downtime is virtually unheard of and support is second to none. Possibly not the cheapest but I've been down that road and there is no contest? Excellent. Downtime is virtually unheard of and support is second to none.
Possibly not the cheapest but I’ve been down that road and there is no contest?

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