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View Full Version : DO NOT use IPower Web !!!



glennn.php
06-27-2006, 11:28 AM
http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/reviews/ipowerweb-reviews.htm << of 166 reviews, only 32 are positive.


I've been developing for 6 years, have encountered IPower SEVERAL times over
these years through many clients who've unwittingly signed up for their
services. From the very first (a few years ago), i've experienced the worst
service and incapabilites i could ever imagine; VERY LONG
phone holds, and very APATHETIC AND RUDE customer service. // Over the past
several months my experiences with them have become nightmarish. To name
a few:

1) they're offering very inexpensive domain purchases -> i've taken
advantage of these "bargains", with gritted teeth, and EACH time i've ordered a domain, the administrative email for me to manage my domains has taken
three or four days to arrive (when most resellers can automate such an email
within MINUTES). Even after a phone call or two, this considerably important email would take another day or so. Invariably.

2) more than once the email contained BROKEN LINKS to an administrative area, (i.e. 169.125.000 - three groups of digits in an IP address, for instance) - a phone call to tech support gained me a link to their NEW, all inclusive Members Admin Area that was
supposed to consolidate a customer's accounts. I administered my nameserver changes, only to find two or three days later that the changes didn't take).

3) i installed a VERY SIMPLE PHP mail() function on a webiste for a client of
mine that refused to work on their servers. It worked on my own machine, it worked on all the
other servers i tested it on, but it didn't work on IPower's servers. Tech
Support, once i got them on the phone, told me that they don't offer Script or
Code support for web designers, and i had to CONVINCE them that the error was
SERVER SIDE. It took a half an hour for support to decide to "escalate" this
to Tier 2 support. >>> I NEVER HEARD from tier 2 support. The script never worked
for that particular client. I was able to convince him to move to another HOST where his website works just fine.


4) A salesman from IPOwer called me once, and i asked him to order three domains
for me, since my CCard was over the limit. he said he could do so by check
online and that the domains would be registered. When i never received my Admin
Email, i WHOISed these domains and they were still available (never ordered). I called to find
out why and he said "oops" and then talked to someone and then told me that he'd
taken care of it, my CC was good by then so i glt hime use that. three days later
the domains were STILL available, so i ended up on the phone with the Sales
Manager, Robert Johnson, who DID act like he cared and got me on the phone with
someone who took my credit card # and promised me that the domains were NOW
registered. I got my Order Confirmation email, but the Admin Email for my DNS Admin took two days and was
the one with only three groups of numbers for an IP address. --- ALL THIS just
to register three domain names ---.

5) i called the office of Thomas Gorny, the
President, and got his Amin Asst. who promised that she'd email management in
Tier 2 support to get back with me on this (one of these problems, i forget
which one now). It took A WEEK to hear from this person and i had by then forgotten
which problem was at issue at that point.


***** 6) At this moment i have another
client whose site is on their servers - there are PHP/Zend Opt/dll errors all over her website and in their own phpMyAdminand she has NO
ENCODED SCRIPTING IN her site that would need Zend - no scripting in her site that is causing these errors, particularly since the same errors are showing up in IPower's own MySql AMIN area!!!

Friday, June 23 - i submitted a ticket AND called THIS MORNING (the
girl told me she'd "Escalate" this ticket) and it's been all day so far; my
client has errors all over her site and i can't work on it. I called back a
second ago and the Tech couldn't find the previous Ticket. so he started a new one and told me he'd "escalate" it.

UPDATE Monday, June 26 - Still have heard NO WORD from them. I wrote their Marketing Mgr., Joanna Leblang, 'jleblang@ipower.com' and their President, Thomas Gorny, 'tgorny@ipower.com' Friday and again Monday. Have heard NOTHING.

Tuesday - NOTHING.

There are so many more issues i've had with this group of complete incomptence and apathy,
but this is all off the top of my head. IF anyone is to consider using IPower
Web, rest assured you'd rather stick needles in your eyes.

glenn nall
atlanta codeworks.com

cbdarts
07-18-2006, 12:27 PM
My gosh, this is amazing & terrible - I dont know how they manage to sleep with the kind of horrors they inflict on the clients...

I know a client of mine who could not SLEEP till his site was running correctly, and all he had was a simple error in the PHP script (the coder had mistakenly placed a + instead of a . for string concatenation). I shudder to think what would happen if he had taken i****powerweb. No offence.

And I heard from people that their service is good... Well maybe the are just a bit partial to some clients and not others?

Oh well. I know I am more careful than that.

Regards,
Chaitanya

glennn.php
07-18-2006, 12:37 PM
they're pathetic - the only thing worse than complete ineptness is complete apathy, and they've managed to excel at both.

and it's not my personal opinion - EVERY client i retain who is dealing with them is more than glad for me to get them moved (sometimes at my own expense, in fact).

i offer IPower customers FREE hosting for the length of the remainder of their contracts with IPower, with EQUAL amenities, just so some will see how bad they are...

TriRyche
07-18-2006, 02:25 PM
I am beginning to shudder a bit now.

I have been hosting at iPowerweb (aka iPower) for several years now.
Granted, my demands as a consumer have been very few
and I have almost never needed support as a result (read: semi-newb here)

I am now waiting to get a simple update on an 'Addt'l Service Request' - that I submitted 4 days ago.
I am so glad I manage my domains elsewhere from what I have been reading this afternoon.

iPower used to send-out 'head's-up' billing emails to customers 15 days (or similar)
when hosting fees were going to be charged to the card they have on file.
This was a courtesy feature I have gotten used to from other website-related vendors.
It seems I no longer get such emails from them. Only a confirmation email is sent after my card is charged.

I get the same email reply when I ask about it, each time that it occurs -
"could be a system glitch we were having but the problem has been fixed" ...
"could be from a small glitch we had in our system"
" ...you are sent renewal notices 3 times a 60 day, 30 day, 5 day notice."

Still not fixed, it seems.

Glennn.php (http://forums.hostsearch.com/member.php?u=1531) (so that you don't get flamed or cited for spamming or similar)
I'd really appreciate you PM-ing or emailing me the names of a few web hosts
that you feel I should consider investigating at this time.

What originally lured me to iPowerweb, back in the day, was that they were one of few
that offered low pricing and unlimited actual email addresses
(at a time when it seemed most hosts offered less than 15, as I recall)


-TriRyche

colorteck
07-22-2006, 06:53 PM
Everyone has their own opinions. Some may find them excellent and others may find them terrible. They must be doing something right to stay on top of the hosting world. When you have 100's of thousands of clients you can expect bad reviews. Maybe they should increase their staff and resources.

glennn.php
07-22-2006, 09:27 PM
well,

a) these are incidents that really occurred, upon which my opinions are based - i am relating my experiences as well as my opinions.

b) i regularly encounter "customers" of theirs who are only too happy to move. did you follow the links above? they go to other threads in other forums written by other people who clearly hold the same experiences and opinions.

c) if IPower is so big and wonderful, why do they need you to defend them?

colorteck
07-22-2006, 09:38 PM
well,

a) these are incidents that really occurred, upon which my opinions are based - i am relating my experiences as well as my opinions.

b) i regularly encounter "customers" of theirs who are only too happy to move. did you follow the links above? they go to other threads in other forums written by other people who clearly hold the same experiences and opinions.

c) if IPower is so big and wonderful, why do they need you to defend them?


Nobody is defending them if they where is bad as some say here they would not be in business very long. Granite you had issues with them but some have never had any issues with them at all.

I have heard both bad and good and this goes the same for any web hosting company.

dogotek
07-23-2006, 03:51 AM
I have used them with no problems in the past. I have never written or praised them for giving me good service because that is what they are supposed to do! In business when you give great service the average customer may tell two or three people about it. When you drop the ball occasionally the customer may tell hundreds about it. This is why customer service is so important. Great service is nice but not as memorable as bad service. Fair? Maybe not but the market will always weed out the truly bad companies.

Great Offers!
08-18-2006, 04:34 AM
Wow.. thanks for the heads up.. my freind was looking into them...

jimmycricket
08-20-2006, 05:10 PM
yikes...thanks for the warning! :-O

WireNine
08-24-2006, 01:00 AM
With the prices they offer, no doubt you had a bad experience.

DamirG
08-24-2006, 01:18 AM
as many customers switched from them. and i guess they oversell they servers

HosTechS
09-01-2006, 12:26 PM
But how come still it is number 1 hosting company in reveiws.

Martie
09-05-2006, 05:54 PM
But how come still it is number 1 hosting company in reveiws.


Most likely a paid slot. Anyone can "buy" a number one slot in the host directories.

trocobob
09-12-2006, 04:27 AM
Ohh .i didnt thougth that they was at this nivel
thanks for the warning

glennn.php
09-20-2006, 11:34 AM
But how come still it is number 1 hosting company in reveiws.

A) they SAY they're #1 - doesn't mean they ARE.

B) they ARE near the top only because they flood the market with ADS. internet business is different than normal commerce. If Levi's makes a bad product, the word is everywhere and EVERYBODY stops buying Levi's.

when a company like IPower provides bad service and product, word cannot get to their potential customer base in the same fashion, so they continue to sell and RELY on the unknowing customer - the market is 1000 times bigger than that of Levis' or Kroger or Amoco - and growing, so really a company who doesn't give a damn still can't lose. for every unhappy customer there's a new one coming along not knowing any better.

the ONLY way word gets around in this arena is by forums like this, customers like you and i who care about our peers and don't want OTHERS to be crapped on by IPower.


for those morons who defend IPower by saying "i hear good and bad reviews of them, nothing serious", i say "19% approval rating by CONSUMERS (the people who really know) >>> http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/reviews/ipowerweb-reviews.htm"

to which the morons have little defense.

glennn.php
09-20-2006, 11:36 AM
Most likely a paid slot. Anyone can "buy" a number one slot in the host directories.


BINGO - and Thomas Gorny is more than willing to do this.

mic123
10-06-2006, 02:44 PM
NEVER USE IPOWERWEB

I signed up with Ipowerweb in 2002, it was pretty good at that time, I don't have much problem on their host, however from this year their service is awful, they upgraded their server and control panel from "cpanel" to "vdeck", as I am an old customer, my website is hosted on cpanel, this admin panel has lots of problems and broken links since they use vdeck, I contacted them many times but every time except saying " I do apologize..." they did nothing. On August 18, 2006 their server was hacked by "turkish..." it's about one week I cannot receive/send email, after that email works occasionally, I cannot stand for it, and moved to another host service.

Also terrible "money back"--- on their website it states "unconditional money back with 30 days", I have a new website launched this August, I signed up with them for 30 days trial, however after experiencing server hack and bad service, I decided to cancal my account and request refund within one month, however I didn't receive refund so far(one month passed), and my account is still alive. I contacted them serveral times everytime the reply is "I do apologize...your account will be closed soon" but nobody takes care of it.

It was pretty a good host but now it's so bad, at least customer service, I have been with them for 4 years but now no longer trust them.

DO NOT GO WITH THEM!!!

glennn.php
10-06-2006, 02:52 PM
email jleblang@ipower.com - she seems to be the only person accessible who really gives a shit - she'll hopefully get you through to the right person.

guy named Jerry is a supervisor at Tech Support. try HARD to get through to him. get your money back and steer clear of IPower. and tell everyone else the same thing.

MXHUB
10-06-2006, 09:58 PM
more and more people reporting about ipowerweb. Look like they are really giving their clients a hard time.

All the best, glenn & mic.

NFH-Andrew
10-07-2006, 04:40 PM
I had used them before, definatley not up to par. Their support is lacking heavily.

ASP-Hosting.ca
10-16-2006, 04:43 PM
I know that iPower have very active affiliate program, that's why they have great ad exposure. As some of the guys here have learnt, big ad exposure is not always equal to quality service...

smokey216
10-16-2006, 09:04 PM
STAY AWAY FROM IPOWERWEB! I just lost my entire website, that was scheduled to launch today...because ipowerweb's servers crashed last Thursday, and they were unable to recover any lost data. Meanwhile their story is that I should have been making my own backups, even though they advertise "offsite tape backups" and redundancy and mirrored content at different Network Operations Centers and I was never advised I needed to do my own backups.

They offer Daily tape backups in their package description, but then do not want to take any responsibility for lost data and can't recover anything.

I was never told to do my own backups, and even their sales rep didn't know backups were not being done. Then I was told backups WERE being done, but on the SAME server but on a different drive and both drives failed.

Their only response to the situation has been...sorry for the inconvenience!! Meanwhile I have lost 8 months worth of work on my business website and have to start over now.

Their offer of compensation was 6 months of free hosting (worth about $300) and then they offered me a year...as if I EVER want to do business with them? They are criminally misrepresenting themselves and they are falsely advertising...BEWARE! Do not host with them! They think nothing of a client having to reconfigure a server midstream and lose business...

I have also experienced the long hold times (20-30 minutes each time) plus conflicting information from their technical support. Not to mention rude tech reps who disconnect during a chat, and no one ever seems to know what is going on.

It is a disaster. If you value your clients and/or your business, do yourself a favor and stay away. I have just switched to Rackspace, who comes highly recommended and I have confirmed they do nightly tape backups.

NS-Icon
10-21-2006, 07:41 AM
I have almost registered with Ipowerweb but Im glad I have decided to go with http://spacetitan.com

How have you managed to decide to host with yourself? You have the hosting provider listed in your signature as well, what domain do you host? And you do realise that forum rules state no self advertising?

MXHUB
10-21-2006, 09:55 PM
I have almost registered with Ipowerweb but Im glad I have decided to go with http://spacetitan.com

This is self advertising. Definitely not allowed here.

glennn.php
10-24-2006, 11:21 AM
"new" webhost company, Startlogic, IS IPower Web - same POOR Cust Service. AVOID them, AS WELL!

Apparantly Thomas Gorny has seen the need to disguise his operation with another name as it's LIKELY that the name IPOWER is beginning to get the negative attention it so richly deserves.

grandpa
11-10-2006, 12:27 PM
I have had an i-power VPS for 8 months, and it has been a problem the whole time. Downtime is averaging about 30 hours a month. Here are some specifics:

-- I usually have one day out of the month that the server is down. Today, they claimed a momentary power outage at the data center shut down all servers. It has so far been 7 hours, and my server is not back on yet.

-- They claimed that my server crashed a month ago, and all data was lost. Luckily, I keep all of my customers' sites on my computer. I am still not finished rebuilding everyone's sites, and I have had 6 outages since the "crash".

-- On the rebuilt server, PHP was configured incorrectly, rendering it useless. They continue to maintain that it is configured correctly even though I have shown them where the problem lies.

-- I transferred two domain names to i-power. On one domain, they changed the nameservers and did not get me the information to administer the domain until 5 weeks after the fact. They are being billed for that customer's hosting for that month.

-- I have been on hold with i-power for as long as 90 minutes (and the tech support guy insisted that I had only been on hold for 15 minutes). Conversations with their tech support representatives show that they have minimal knowledge.

Do not do business with i-power.

frenzy
11-26-2006, 09:53 AM
maybe they have too much clients :)



__________________
Bulletproof Hosting (http://www.bp-server.com)

ASP-Hosting.ca
11-26-2006, 04:39 PM
They have lots of clients, but this doesn't mean anything. There are big hosting companies with bad service and there are big hosting companies with good service...

thegambler
12-09-2006, 09:24 PM
From what i researched IPOWER, Startlogic and Dot5 are all owned by Mr. Gorny and their live chats and most tech emails are answered by two companies in India. Dont expect any help when you call techsupport they are actually called Telesales now. If you want to double check yourself look at the Arin record when you do a whois search, and you will see the same name for all 3 hosting companies. Oh and Btw dont order a ded serv unless you want to wait 3 weeks or so as a friend of mine tried to have his setup before Thanksgiving and is still waiitng.......:(

pbuenaventura
12-12-2006, 11:33 AM
Hi
I signed up as a reseller with IPOWER about a year ago so I could offer the hosting and domain registration as part of website design package. I haven't had any trouble with them yet and don't need to (have enough trouble chasing down a client that hasn't paid me since May). Well, maybe I have to take that back. I found you guys when trying to find a forum for support concerning SPAM and a better method to ban specific countries' IPs. It's been awful; I have spent days cleaning out my email, my husbands and another client's. The only way to add an address to the SPAM list is to actually click it; which I've read only increases the problem since it can send this back and you end up with more. Constantly monitoring IPs and adding to the ban list is time consuming.
My question is, who would you recommend as a reseller? I'm not looking to be a "hosting company" I just want to be able to provide the hosting to my web design clients. Or if you could recommend a website that offers "honest" reviews, I would really appreaciate it.
Thank you and sorry if I rambled

NS-Icon
12-12-2006, 11:44 AM
Hi
I signed up as a reseller with IPOWER about a year ago so I could offer the hosting and domain registration as part of website design package. I haven't had any trouble with them yet and don't need to (have enough trouble chasing down a client that hasn't paid me since May). Well, maybe I have to take that back. I found you guys when trying to find a forum for support concerning SPAM and a better method to ban specific countries' IPs. It's been awful; I have spent days cleaning out my email, my husbands and another client's. The only way to add an address to the SPAM list is to actually click it; which I've read only increases the problem since it can send this back and you end up with more. Constantly monitoring IPs and adding to the ban list is time consuming.
My question is, who would you recommend as a reseller? I'm not looking to be a "hosting company" I just want to be able to provide the hosting to my web design clients. Or if you could recommend a website that offers "honest" reviews, I would really appreaciate it.
Thank you and sorry if I rambled

Hi there, I know what you mean when you refer to SPAM its extremely terrible, our support used to be clogged full of SPAM making it really difficult to support our clients. We now use MailShield at http://www.mailshield.com.au/ its reduced almost all of the SPAM, we hardly get anything coming through these days, if you are still troubled, I would strongly recommend them.

With regards to hosting, try HostNexus.com, they are very reliable and have been going for a considerable time.

Best of luck.

felosi
12-15-2006, 06:59 PM
yeah they are a joke and most of the staff dont know their *ss from a hole in the ground I once had a customer getting ddosed by some vps' from ipowerweb, I called them and could have killed myself at aggravation at these people.

First it was "Well them servers arent even online" then it was "you are responsible for your servers, if they get hacked its your fault " --implying I was calling saying the vps were mine and hacked.

the idiots could not grasp the concept that they have some hacked machines sending attacks.

After investigating this I come to find that they have some holes in their network management and more then one group of hackers have network level access to their datacenter. One guy I talked to in IRC once had access to over 50 ipower servers and vps' Thats a big problem there, I sure as heck wouldnt host anything there.

But I guess worst of all they are idiots, I guess they must hire anyone off teh street and try to train them because I didnt find an educated one in the bunch. I eventually had to add all of their subnets to my hardware firewall.

aloha2
01-10-2007, 05:52 AM
when a company like IPower provides bad service and product, word cannot get to their potential customer base in the same fashion, so they continue to sell and RELY on the unknowing customer - the market is 1000 times bigger than that of Levis' or Kroger or Amoco - and growing, so really a company who doesn't give a damn still can't lose. for every unhappy customer there's a new one coming along not knowing any better.

the ONLY way word gets around in this arena is by forums like this, customers like you and i who care about our peers and don't want OTHERS to be crapped on by IPower.

2s2mad
01-17-2007, 10:57 PM
My Mail and Web dedicated server has been down for 33 hours now...
I have contacted support every 3 hours and everytime they told me that they are working on the problem (level 1, level 2, level 3, Sys Admin, level 2, Whatever!).
They never told me what it was. I asked for the 5th time to have some details on the issue and they told me "we cannot ping or traceroute your server!". Imagine 33 hours to get to this conclusion!

I am so upset!!!

One year ago my server crashed may be because of Hackers so I had to re-install everything (the famous "You have to do your backup" Try 3Go backup on DSL...)
It seems that their servers are really the target of hackers and are unstable.

I am going to switch to someone else as soon as I can get the data back (I hope)

mikelc2
01-20-2007, 05:57 PM
My question is how does a business this bad keep so many customers? I mean this is one of those companies that should just be shot down and burned for the rest of their existance.

rookfile
01-27-2007, 06:52 AM
After hearing lots of warnings about Ipower, I transferred to Livehost just in time for it to be sold! :eek:

In fairness to Ipower, I'd had no problems with a simple html site that used no server side features. Email was dependable for two years. Can't say the same for Livehost.

So, now i'm searching again.

harrysmith
01-28-2007, 12:47 PM
My Mail and Web dedicated server has been down for 33 hours now...
I have contacted support every 3 hours and everytime they told me that they are working on the problem (level 1, level 2, level 3, Sys Admin, level 2, Whatever!).
They never told me what it was. I asked for the 5th time to have some details on the issue and they told me "we cannot ping or traceroute your server!". Imagine 33 hours to get to this conclusion!

I am so upset!!!

One year ago my server crashed may be because of Hackers so I had to re-install everything (the famous "You have to do your backup" Try 3Go backup on DSL...)
It seems that their servers are really the target of hackers and are unstable.

I am going to switch to someone else as soon as I can get the data back (I hope)

Before switching to any other try to visit our website and just take some feedback from our clients at our forum at ....

fritz
05-21-2009, 08:27 PM
Before switching to any other try to visit our website and just take some feedback from our clients at our forum at ....

have had so problems w/ipower especially w/PERL and PHP that I can't
wait to switch but that's almost impossible thanx to their affilliation
w/TuCows an almost impossible company to contact