Moving My Web Hosting Company

[granz]

I AM ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS WITH BLUEHOST.

They keep getting my site on black-list sites, saying that my site/files are dangerous. I just checked, and there are NO files on there other than what I put up. Bluehost has a monitoring system, that I just activated, but it does not monitor things like my files, or faith sub-domains. When I go to add those sub-domains, it offers two options: free, or paid. It tells me to choose one, but the only one that is possible to choose is the paid one. I'm already paying several hundred dollars per year, and don't want to pay any extra.

Chris, you said that you were happy with your new provider. What was your new provider's name, agian? Did you have any troubles with migrating? Did you migrate your e-mail? A couple years ago, I tried moving to another provider, but when I tried to migrate my mail, it worked for a few hours, and then only moved a tiny part of my mail over to the new provider. I ended up going back to Bluehost.

[Chris Savage]

I AM ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS WITH BLUEHOST.

OUCH! I didn't realize you had Bluehost! Part of the reason I gave up on my original website was everything going wrong in my life at the time, but I did try twice to resurrect things, but Bluehost ruined that! So I quit!

They keep getting my site on black-list sites, saying that my site/files are dangerous. I just checked, and there are NO files on there other than what I put up. Bluehost has a monitoring system, that I just activated, but it does not monitor things like my files, or faith sub-domains. When I go to add those sub-domains, it offers two options: free, or paid. It tells me to choose one, but the only one that is possible to choose is the paid one. I'm already paying several hundred dollars per year, and don't want to pay any extra.

There were three strikes to me giving up on Bluehost.

• First my vBulletin got corrupted because they kept updating mySQL and PHP and vBulletin was slow to update to support the new version, causing my database to get corrupted. There was a point where the damage was irreversible.
• Then I tried to put up a Joomla site and that's when they discontinued my protection, which had been FREE after I posted what was happening to my site on Twitter at the time and they wanteded me to stop (1500+ followers at the time). So the Joomla site kept getting infected and shut down, and they wanted $30.00 / month to stop that. They claimed Joomla was prone to hackers.
• So, I switched to WordPress, only have that site get infected and shut down. Once again, they blamed WordPress. So I went on Twitter and posted what kept happening and several people reached out to me and set me straight about Bluehost.

Chris, you said that you were happy with your new provider. What was your new provider's name, agian? Did you have any troubles with migrating? Did you migrate your e-mail? A couple years ago, I tried moving to another provider, but when I tried to migrate my mail, it worked for a few hours, and then only moved a tiny part of my mail over to the new provider. I ended up going back to Bluehost.

Skystra reached out to me and told me about their service and asked me if I wanted to switch. I told them I would, but I didn't want to have to start over again. I had put a lot into restoring my site and was worried about migration. They offered to transfer my site for FREE, including my email. I have been with them since then and my site has been clean from malware. I'm happy with them and would recommend them to anyone. If you contact them, tell them I sent you!

[granz]

Skystra reached out to me and told me about their service and asked me if I wanted to switch. I told them I would, but I didn't want to have to start over again. I had put a lot into restoring my site and was worried about migration. They offered to transfer my site for FREE, including my email. I have been with them since then and my site has been clean from malware. I'm happy with them and would recommend them to anyone. If you contact them, tell them I sent you!

Skystra looks pretty good, and the price is very low - even the five domain plan is much lower (with the daily B/U and the advanced security) than the base price of Bluehost.

Some more questions, if you don't mind:

• Does Skystra offer multi-year plans?
• Does Skystra offer Linux command line login via SSH, or anything?
• What is the bandwidth limit (if any)?
• What apps do you have installed?
• Did installing any of those apps give you any troubles?
• Did you switch before your Bluehost renewal, or wait?
• If you switched before renewal, did Bluehost refund pro-rated payment?
• What is the link to your referral page? (So you get credit for me switching.)

Thanks

[Chris Savage]

Some more questions, if you don't mind:

• Does Skystra offer multi-year plans?
• Does Skystra offer Linux command line login via SSH, or anything?
• What is the bandwidth limit (if any)?
• What apps do you have installed?
• Did installing any of those apps give you any troubles?
• Did you switch before your Bluehost renewal, or wait?
• If you switched before renewal, did Bluehost refund pro-rated payment?
• What is the link to your referral page? (So you get credit for me switching.)

• I have inquired with them on this question. I just get auto-renewed every year for hosting and each domain when due.
• They have a cPanel interface. I haven't looked at all the options. Don't really use much anymore.
• No limits on bandwidth that I am aware of. Unlike Bluehost, I have never had any overage charges.
• I don't have any apps installed. They offer scripts to auto-setup several packages. Primarily WordPress, but I did use their script to set up the forums as well. There are utilities in the cPanel interface I have used on occasion.
• No troubles installing anything that I have used.
• If you want them to transfer your site, you need to leave your Bluehost account active until the transfer is complete. My websites were locked and they were still able to move them as well as remove the malware that Bluehost, err, hackers had installed.
• I think I switched in the middle and didn't want to fight with Bluehost.
• No referral page. But you do get three free months when you sign up.

https://skystra.com/#pricing

[granz]

No referral page. But you do get three free months when you sign up.

Okay, thanks. I was hoping that you would get some kind of credit for getting me to sign up.

Looks like I will be going with Skystra pretty soon.

[Chris Savage]

Okay, thanks. I was hoping that you would get some kind of credit for getting me to sign up. Looks like I will be going with Skystra pretty soon.

No credit that I know of, but they've taken good care of me. The few times I had an issue or question it was a super-fast response and they once even gave me an extra domain name FREE because I had 1 more than the plan allowed, but I had already planned on shutting that one down. It was savageprojects.com from when my domain name got hijacked and squatted. But, since I got it back, I no longer needed the other.

[granz]

Well, I just got another complaint: a guy on EEVBlog Forum was interested in an old National Semiconductor computer that I had, but he cannot see the pictures - BLOCKED because of Bluehost's incompetence. 

I will definitely be moving my hosting. We are planning a trip this weekend, up to Ashtabula, OH to meet up with our youngest son's (Peter) fiance's family. we'll spend the fourth with their family, then that night at a motel, and hopefully spend Saturday with the new couple.

When we return, I'll start working on moving to a less customer-vicious hosting company (Skystra.)

[Chris Savage]

When we return, I'll start working on moving to a less customer-vicious hosting company (Skystra.)

That's awesome, granz. I am happy with them for several years now. Hopefully you've found a new home as well.

[granz]

When we return, I'll start working on moving to a less customer-vicious hosting company (Skystra.)

That's awesome, granz. I am happy with them for several years now. Hopefully you've found a new home too.

Thanks, hopefully they will be good for my site as well.

I was working on saving up $50 per month for my Bluehost hosting. It would be good if I can do that for a couple years and pay like ten years at a time.

I remember, several years ago, I called Bluehost tech support, and told them that the installer program that they had just started using was horrible, and that they needed to get rid of it. The tech grunted a bit, and then admitted that it was their program. That should have tipped me off as to where they were heading - as in, terrible support for anyone not wanting to toe-the-line with Bluehost's ideas of how a web site should be set up. HTML is NOT that hard to do   - let me do MY site the way that I want it done.

[Chris Savage]

Thanks, hopefully they will be good for my site as well.

Were you able to get things figured out with Skystra?

[granz]

Were you able to get things figured out with Skystra?

Not yet. I have a budget of saving up $50 per each mid-month payday for hosting. I now have a grand total of $50 in my hosting "account" (actually an envelope in my office.  ) Another two months and I should have enough to be able to register for the advanced plan. Although, if I get many more complaints, I may just go into our savings account and switch immediately.