Unfair Billing Practices and Poor Customer Service

The hosting itself was adequate, if a little pricey. They're billing and customer service are awful. I set my account to not renew before the renewal date and was billed anyway. I made a support request and was told I would have to call in. Called spoke to someone, cancelled the account and was told the amount I was billed would be refunded, received an email from easy cgi saying "Your EasyCGI Account Will Be Canceled Immediately." 2 weeks later I still haven't received a refund so I call in and am told that someone from billing will contact me within 24 hours. 2 weeks later I call and am told that the cancellation is pending and that if I want to cancel it it will cost me $35.

Biggest Pro: They have web servers
Biggest Con: Awful customer support and billing practices

email from hell

Folks,
The only issue that I have had with easyCGI is email down time and their tech support's total incompetence and unconcern, which should be enough to make everyone avoid them like the plague. But I must admit that I do find support's waspy sounding names quite humorous.
Rudy

Biggest Con: email and tech support

Pretty Awful - then you have to pay to quit

I got stuck with EasyCGI because I was a WebstrikeSolutions customer - and they got bought. Webstrike was great - EasyCGI was awful. Slow tech support / bad tech support / very unclear control panel.

Then, when I decided to leave - they stuck me with a $139 "Cancellation Fee" - so please consider THAT before you give these guys your credit card number.

-Chris

Biggest Con: Cancellation Fee is $139

Poor Hosting - Avoid EasyCGI

Extremely poor tech support, frequently rendering website totally inaccessible for 3 or more days!!!!

Don't be fooled by the many features they offer (and they really exist) or the moderate prices--nothing is like sitting there in front of your clients with a broken website with NOBODY to help. Their 24 x 7 support is only for chatting, but never do anything useful--they just relay your request to others through a support ticket that nobody ever reads. They seem to be packing to drop the business completely--but have been like this for over a year now!!!!

Avoid EasyCGI completely.

Biggest Pro: Hosting package full of features
Biggest Con: Website can stay down for several days with nobody to help

Really disappointed

Like many of the other reviewers, I had been many years by webstrikesolutions and was very happy with them, but since they were bought by EasyCGI, I have had many problems and I am really disappointed.

For instance, they restored a two weeks old Access database containing members posts, making off course many posts disappear. It took me more than one week to make them understand the problem was on their side and resolve it !

The people that respond in the 24/24 chat are really neither competent nor service oriented. I am now clearly looking for another hosting company.

Biggest Pro: No idea...
Biggest Con: Technical support is really bad and not AT ALL service oriented

If you end up with EasyCGI Start Packing to Move!

11 Years with Webstrike Solutions as a happy customer. Very few problems but if one did occur their tech's fixed it immediately.

Webstrike was bought out by Easy CGI in March. When they migrated my 14 sites they gave me a manager I could talk to if things weren't going well, also pretty good tech service. Then the migration finished. My GOD! Every day there were sites or part of sites down. It looks good today, tomorrow disaster. PHP support all of a sudden quit working on several sites. Write a ticket and it is answered in 10-12 hours telling you either it's something you did or your imagining a problem! The site manager went away but I could get him back for so much a month! Try to increase the priority on a ticket and they want to charge you several dollars to do that. I have had several sites down for 5-6 days trying to get them to fix them. Easy CGI is totally unconcerned! If you call or go to on line chat to report a problem you just end up with someone writing a ticket for you, but doing such a bad job that the first reply is "What exactly is the problem?"

Easy CGI is the worst place to do business you can find! I'm moving my sites now as fast as I can. I'll eat the cost just to get them back on line where they will work. The servers might have 99.9% up time but the websites seem to have about 60% up time. I could go on but you get the drift. Don't be fooled by their chrome plated web site and 250 meg site spaces. Under that chrome it's brown and smells.

Biggest Pro: I haven't noticed any
Biggest Con: Unstable servers and the worst tech support

Incompetent, Evil, or Both

Like other reviewers here, I signed up for a Webstrike Solutions account and received great service until EasyCGI bought it in March. After the move, nothing ever seemed to work right. The stats page, for example, didn't even show due to an error in the configuration file. For a while, however, things were ok ... my low traffic php-based website worked, albeit slowly (my MediaWiki installation did and still takes anywhere from 10-30 seconds to load a single page).

Then in May, my site went kaput. Nothing. My site refused to show up at all, any request for a PHP page resulting in an HTTP 500 (internal server error) status code instead of the page. When I contacted online chat support, I realized that the live chat techs aren't allowed to type their own messages! It looks to me like they are forced to choose from a list of predefined messages when speaking to you, and simply open a support ticket if your question can't be answered with one of the predefined responses. After a week, my site was back up but not working because the 'fix' involved switching from php 5 to php 4, breaking my scripts. Halfway through rewriting my site's scripts to be php4 compatible, I discovered the problem: their php.ini had an open_basedir restriction preventing php from accessing files in my site's folder. Of course php wasn't working!

They have since fixed my site's php installation, and things are slower than ever. Logging into the control panel a month ago, I was greeted instead with an ad telling me that site loading speed is what makes or breaks the experience for my users and I should pay EasyCGI an extra $5 a month to put my account on a 'preferred' server, lest potential customers get impatient and leave. That's when it hit me -- the servers are most likely being throttled on purpose, holding users' websites ransom for this $60 a year charge.

Overall, EasyCGI smells bad. It looks to me like one of 'those' companies, where the people that know the technology and understand what they're doing are not the people in charge. I give the service 12 thumbs down and strongly encourage anyone looking into EasyCGI's services to look elsewhere.

-Dave

Biggest Pro: Lots of space and monthly bandwidth; PHP works when it works
Biggest Con: General incompetence, malfeasance, or both

NOT RECOMMENDED

I'm yet another VERY UNHAPPY ex-WebStrikeSolutions customer who feels screwed by the EasyCGI takeover/buyout/plunder or whatever the hell it was. I was with Webstrike for nine years and they rated 12 on a scale of 10. What a shock to go from their excellence to the pitiful hosting provided by EasyCGI. The sever speed is eratic. It isn't down very often, but it was NEVER down with Webstrike. The email service is a joke. It consistently takes several hours for emails I send to arrive at their destination. CGI must mean "Complete Gross Ignorance". I will be leaving in November when my current yearly payment expires.

Biggest Pro: They don't have one
Biggest Con: Erratic service

Worst host ever

Server is always going down, displaying pages unbelievably slow, or not displaying them correctly. Phone support puts you on hold for an hour. Online chat support... not too bright. I explain that I am a web developer and all of my resold accounts are suddenly displaying errors. Support responds that I should consult my web developer. I fill out a trouble ticket, but I can only send it as normal priority because they charge extra for high priority. So, after about 2 days they fix the errors and then respond as if I were crazy. They have know idea why I'm having troubles. Everything appears fine on their end. Isn't it funny that the server errors magically go away on their own just before they respond to the ticket? Be prepaired. This will be the process at least once every two weeks.

Biggest Pro: It serves up ERROR pages fast.

10 yrs good service gone overnite

once the company was sold in october nothing was ever right.

data deleted from server
double billing
billing for no reason
websites vanishing or suspended for not paying phantom charges

calling or emailing a waste of time

dont even consider

Biggest Pro: none
Biggest Con: everything