Almost everything is sub-par. I'd give it a C-.

I joined netfirms because they were the first web host my brother had. My brother is a freelance web designer and systems architect- and a good one at that (apparently)- thus, when I'm working with this field, my first thought would be "What would he do?". Of course, having heard him talk about netfirms in the past, I figured netfirms was the best thing out there.

Maybe five years ago. Back when I was 14 and building cheap-o websites to give myself a new method for presentation of various school projects, it was great. Free web hosting and they only put one small banner ad at the top of your site that markets their site.

Now that I'm out of college I'm looking to build an online portfolio to impress potential employers and (hopefully) land myself a job. Of course, the first place I go is netfirms.com. Great $7.99 price for the full first year, and even once that expires the price is still great, considering what you're getting.

What they fail to mention is that they still intend to plant banner ads on your site.

That would be fine if I were once again building a website for a small school project or whatever; in this situation, this website will (ideally) directly correspond to my future. If a potential employer scrolls across my website, the first thing I want him to see is my clean website design, THEN notice how well thought-out the site is, and THEN notice how great of a potential employee I am. What I do not want him to see is a BANNER AD that implies that I didn't pay for the domain. To me, this would scream "Wow, this kid doesn't care enough about his future to pay a small price for a decent web domain."

Of course, I e-mailed netfirms support on the issue, but just reading the list of other reviews will give you a generally adequate idea of how well netfirms's support actually operates. I'm guessing they have two support representatives somewhere getting paid to sit around and watch youtube.

I e-mailed a similar hosting service, justhost.com, to ask them about their procedure with "banner ads" about two days after I e-mailed netfirms with no response whatsoever. justhost.com responded within an hour and a half; netfirms still hasn't e-mailed me back and at this point I'm requesting a refund.

That's right. Netfirms.com has such bad service and overall quality that I'm actually requesting a refund on $8.00. My online portfolio is important to me, and if I'm paying for a webdomain, I want to be in charge of the content, even if I'm only paying $8.00 for a year and then $55.00 every year afterward. Their forced advertising indicates to me that they don't care so much about my business, and chances are they don't care about yours; they just care about their own (which is really bad business practice in their position, seeing as their business is to support the website of your business...).

It's really quite unfortunate that netfirms hasn't learned any better. Five years ago they were one of the top names in web hosting. So much for that; they had me as a customer for all of a week and already I'm pulling my services and going elsewhere. And I'm not a customer who's easy to scare off.

Biggest Pro: Their home site is pretty and professional-looking!
Biggest Con: FORCED BANNER ADS.

If you have Frontpage, do NOT use Netfirms!

Netfirms claims to have Frontpage Extensions, however their "extensions" messed up my site. I wasn't able to use Frontpage for an entire month, because my site wouldn't open due to "time out" errors that had to do with the extensions. Their tech support people gave me the run-around, telling me that it was my program that wasn't working. However, I design sites for other people and I was able to open their sites easily using my Frontpage, just not my own! They wouldn't own up to the problem, and I am currently looking for new hosting!

Biggest Pro: They pay you $25 per referral.
Biggest Con: The server times out all the time!

Great web host

I've been hosted around 7 months by now and I have no complaining at all. The customer supports it's really fast and they answer all my questions really fast. I have around 5 more domains on 2 different accounts and the websites have never been down. What I liked the most is that I got a deal with them of $10 for one full year of Netfirms Advantage Hosting!, 2 FREE domain names, 250GB of disk space, 2000GB data transfer per month, Host unlimited websites with a single account!

Biggest Pro: Got a great deal (hosting & 2 freedomains only $10/year)

Netfirms: Tech. Support? What's that?

Per recommendation of a trusted acquaintance, signed on with Netfirms in early Dec. 2007 for a small family memorial site. Static text + WordPress for the Guestbook.

Signup: easy and fast.
Initial site upload: went smoothly.
Static HTML performance: no complaints: seemed fast.
Their WordPress: Old and hopeless.
Technical support via email: Horrible to None. Template jockeys hurling canned responses, often irrelevant and/or seen before.

Details:

Netfirms supplies a one-click installation of WordPress (hereinafter WP). Installed it, and within the first few minutes of setting it up, got "Click here" if you're the site owner. Did so, filled out the support form.

Response: Bad dog: you're eating up too much CPU time. Thing is, i was not making any of the errors listed on this response template. I was merely trying to set up *their* installation of WP on *their* servers following *their* instructions. Replied, politely, explaining this situation. Response?: None. Not in days. Not in weeks. (And not in any of my spam traps, as they were whitelisted and i looked in the traps.)

Days later, once i was ready to deal with this level of idiocy again, i repeated my query, politely, via the web ticket system. Got back, within a few hours, an email response of the nature of "oh yeah, others had that sort of issue too... it was us and we fixed it". Good!: a seemingly honest answer and a resolution! But no... i was still getting kicked out of the WP admin. in about 25 min. of use... no improvement at my end.

Responded again to the Click Here on the "access denied for the next 2 hours" page. I included the Netfirms case numbers for the correspondence with them to date. Received the same template email i got the first time... the template jockey who received my polite email with the history either chose to ignore the history of the problem or was instructed to hurl the same irrelevant template at me to stonewall.

Netfirms seems to have forgotten that the S in ISP is for Service, and concomitantly, Support. Denial, finger-pointing, and ceasing to respond to inquiries problems do not constitute support.

If you are willing to roll the dice and hope that nothing ever fails and that you never need to contact Support, you may love Netfirms to pieces: the servers seem fast, the knowledgebase web support files are informative and easy to navigate, and the rest of the very few services i used seem fine. The Billing department *is* responsible and they did eventually fully refund all charges (we registered the domain elsewhere) as we were within the 30 day trial period. Yet if there is a problem, and especially if it is their problem, you may never hear anything meaningful from them. You have been warned.

Luckily, my site is a family memorial site, so having a major part of it unavailable for the better part of a month was a problem yet not a disaster. Given their lack of accountability, i cannot imagine hosting a critical site, such as a business site, with Netfirms... making their company name especially ironic.

Biggest Pro: Billing is honest and does give a full refund
Biggest Con: Technical support: Zero except HTML self-help

Netifrms Is The Best I Have Seen

I have been using Netfirms for almost 2 years and 95% of my web sites are hosted here. A few months ago I upgraded my plan to the Enterprise Three hosting. This plan covers me for up to 100 web sites. I have a dedicated IP address, 150 gb of storage and 2500 gb of monthly transfer. The system is based on clustering technology that gives me amazing scalability. I am also very impressed that the system gives me both Linux and Windows on the same account. This means I can run php scripts on one site, and asp on another site. It's really amazing.

The only problem I have ever had with Netfirms is when I wanted to open my youtube clone. I asked them if they would install ffmpeg on the server for me and they refused. The actual statement they gave me was that they will consider it if there is ever sufficient demand. I pay $130 per month for what is almost the most advanced package they have. The only way I can do it bigger is if I get my own server. For that kind of money, they should install anything I need on the server, not tell me that they don't feel there is sufficient demand. I was completely in shock that I had to get a separate account at another host over something so small as ffmpeg, and I nearly transferred all of my business away from them over it, but I am glad I didn't.

Other than that one problem, I have never encountered anything negative at Netfirms. They are literally the best host I have ever had, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

Biggest Pro: Competitive pricing and high quality of service.
Biggest Con: Would not install the server side scripts that i needed

NetFirms Very Reliable

I have 5 domains hosted with Net Firms servers.

Overall experience with them is great since i got the hosting advantage account for very less and i got lots of space and bandwidth.

The over all prices are great and cheap, not too many difference between other companies on products else then Domains and Hosting.

I never had a bad experience with this site.Very good uptime of 99.9%.

However saying that i have been generally pleased over the last few months especially since i'm currently running more than one site on my server.

All of their hosting packages come complete with the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, Joomla, phpBB, Wordpress etc... They support server side includes as well.

My Overall rating is excellent.

Biggest Pro: Control Panel
Biggest Con: They accept only CreditCard payments

Nice service

This hosting is really a value for your money.

I don't think any other hosting could provide as much value as netfirms provide for such a low price.

I generally find that netfirms DNS propagations occurs more faster than the other DNS propagation.

So far I never found my site down which is really a big thing.

Netfirms is ideal for all kinds of sites,either smaller or bigger.

I do prefer netfirms always,

their packages are also too god to use.

Netfirms Advantage Hosting

I have been a customer of Netfirms web hosting for the past 2 years. Their control panel and administration area is second to none. From the administration area, you can manage all facets of your domain and website, including, email, databases, scripts, file manager and much more.

All of their hosting packages come complete with the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, Joomla, phpBB, Wordpress etc... They support server side includes as well. The speed that my website loads is average for its size and the number of graphics on it.

The one downfall to this provider is its support. They typically reply to tickets within 24 hours, but depending on the issue, this could be too long to wait. Their replies are generic, similar to pre-typed responses that are copied and pasted. Most cases, their reply doesn't help much as it isn't unique to your case.

They do however, have an extensive self help FAQ database with video tutorials and step by step instructions, so most times you will find the same reponse they email back to you in this database.

For the price and exceptional control panel and administration area, I am extremely satified and plan on purchasing more packages in the future.

Biggest Pro: Control panel
Biggest Con: generic support