Host Monster reviews

Once bitten, twice shy

We've had HostMonster for over a decade. Within the last year, we have received numberous emails about our domain being infected. After paying for SiteLock that they were upselling, we received another email about another domain of ours. Again and again they kept telling us one by one that our sites are infected and that we need to purchase SiteLock or otherwise they will take all our sites offline.
It's very disappointing to be with a provider for so long without any issues and now they are having nothing but issues.

Biggest Pro: unlimited space
Biggest Con: security

Hostmonster no longer good

I have been with Hostmonster for about 4 years now and at first I really liked them. Their support was really good and they responded quickly when I had a problem or a question setting up my site. Now, I get put on permahold when I call or when I am chating with support online they asked me if I wanted a tech to help. I said yes and then they disappeared. No one ever contacted me and the chat was closed. I'm having a ton of problems receiving emails now and it can take up to a week to receive emails from people. I would say over the past few months my email keeps going down, I cant send anything out or receive for several hours at a time. I think I'm going to do some research and find a new hosting service that has better service and is easier to use.

Biggest Con: Servers seem to go down a lot lately

Helpful and reliable hosting company

I have hosted my business site for nearly two years and I have been sufficiently satisfied with the service provided by Hostmonster.com. I have actually used them to host our church's website (www.immanuelplainview.org) since 2006. Yes, I have experienced some downtime, but, to my knowledge, nothing major (assuming server housekeeping - ussually late on Sundays). I have preveiously dealt with some nightmarish hosting companies, so Hostmonster has proven themselves competent to me. When I've had questions, I've always been able to speak with a knowledgeable, native English speaking person. I'm certainly no expert, so take my rating numbers with a grain of salt - however, they reflect my personal experience with them.

Biggest Pro: Telephone support

Bogus Excessive Usage Claims

Be very wary of HostMonster. They recently started a "Terms of Service Compliance Department" and have shut my Web site down three times in the last two months because of what they call excessive database size. The problem is that they have two measurements of database size: CPanel and phpMyAdmin. CPanel routinely reports massively larger database size than phpMyAdmin, often on the order of 2Gb larger. HostMonster has told me to use phpMyAdmin as the more accurate indicator of size, but they use the CPanel figure to shut down the database. I've kept a daily record of the differences and sent those records to them on a daily basis asking for them to help me understand what's going on and how to remedy it. They have never responded. When I call them, they talk nebulously about page cache sizes in CPanel and delays in updating, but never give any real explanantion. Ultimately, every time they have shut my Web site down, they have reopened it -- even though I have done nothing to change the size of my database. Somehow it miraculously gets smaller in CPanel just as the result of my calling them. If you don't want to get repeated, threatening emails about your database size and have your Web site repeatedly shut down, look elsewhere for hosting.

Biggest Pro: All pro's outweighed by the cons
Biggest Con: Constantly deactivating the site with no real explanation

Spamming the hell out of me.

My hosting account is nearing the end of the subscription period. I wound up not using the account because I decided to go with another concept. Now that the account is nearly expired I am getting spam email from host monster at least once per day, usually more to renew the account. I have written them and told them I don't want to renew the account, stop spamming me. They refuse to stop spamming me, sending me emails in response to my demand that make no sense. One of their reps even stated that they'd resolved the issue when they talked to me on the phone.... I've not talked to them on the phone.

This company is terrible. Often the MySQL servers are slow or down, the sites are slow to load, and customer service appears to be both on drugs and incompetent. Avoid Host Monster at all costs.

Biggest Pro: Cheap
Biggest Con: Poor hosting, horrible customer service, incoherent email replies from customer service.

The Worst Web Hosting you can ever get!

I have had a very bad experience with Hostmonster! In the beginning, they were very friendly and responsive. But after one year, and with the first problem I faced, they were totally non-reliable!

I accuse them by running some dirty business, in which they create a security problem for you and then deactivate your account. And when you ask their support to solve it, they refer you to hire a "specific" web security guy (His name is Thomas Raef, from wewatchyourwebsite.com). This guy is going to waste your time pretending that he is doing a scanning job and after 2 or 3 days, he will tell you that your site is CLEAN! But, you will end up with non-functional website and then, he will disappear. After that, you will go through a non-ending cycle of fighting with Support & Terms of Services Department to transfer or migrate your site to another reliable host.

This was my experience, and I am ready to prove what I said!

I will never recommend them at all!

Biggest Pro: Email Features and cPanel
Biggest Con: Worst Customer support, Aggressive Terms of Services Department

Can no longer trust them

I have generally been happy with Hostmonster over the past 4 years, but they just removed an option on CPanel that I use frequently.

From today, I can no longer download backups of individual mySQL databases.

Seems to me that they are getting greedy - selling services, then removing features which they want you to pay for separately.

This is a troubling sign. No explanation, and treating customers poorly.

I accept all the limitations of shared hosting, but arbitrarily removing features that were part of the service I have already paid for is unacceptable. Not that they seem to care.

Biggest Pro: Cheap & easy, good value for money
Biggest Con: Treating their customers poorly

Bad for business - Good for personal use ONLY

My name is Tim Rice with True Call International. We use hostmonster for disaster recovery purposes in the event that our datacenter has problems due to a disaster. Hostmonster servers are OVER SUBSCRIBED and over utilized. The Linux Load is very high (around 16.0 – 24.0). Typically you want to see a Linux load under 2.0. The CPU idle is about 2 – 5% most of the time meaning about 95 – 98% utilized. If you have a personal website and don't mind that it takes a few seconds to load, then hostmonster is a good solution. Don't dare host a business website (especially an ecommerce site) at hostmonster as it will fail PCI DSS scans and cause customers to leave due to load times. For business sites, pay a little extra $ and go to a provider that has a lower customer to server ratio count. Always remember, you get what you pay for (Most the time) Thanks Tim Rice True Call International – Voip Service provider

Biggest Pro: Cheap
Biggest Con: Slow as snails

STAY FAR FAR FAR AWAY FROM HOSTMONSTER!!

This is one of those companies that seem to great at first.. You sign-up, everything seems as expected, you spend months and money developing out your sites/pages and then one day they put a message on all of your pages that your site is down for some sort of bogus excessive usage.

If you have a site that gets any traffic at all they will break their agreement with you, they will NOT be able to justify their reasoning or answer your questions appropriately and then they tell you that in fine print in your terms of service it says "Hostmonster.com has the right to take your website down for any reason at any time without warning."

THE PLANS ARE NOT UNLIMITED... ITS FALSE ADVERTISING WITH A CLAUSE THAT SAYS "WE CAN TAKE YOUR SITE DOWN AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON WE CHOOSE"

If that's not bad enough, they will NOT let you back into your sites to correct their requests for downsizing files. They told me I couldn't get into my administration pages to determine which SQL databases I could afford to remove but instead should hire a web master to consult me on an alternative way to delete files while the sites are not accessible. They employ kids with terribly rude attitudes and no idea what customer service means.

They are a real piece of work and could care less if you're a loyal customer for more than 3 years. They think they are too big to fail and laugh at your frustration when they cause their customer's time and money.

.......Give them one dollar of your money and you will gravely regret it!!

Biggest Con: THEY ARE A SCAM - WILL COST YOU TONS OF TIME AND MONEY - STAY AWAY!

No security always hacked dont go here

No security always hacked dont go here,
buylowmakebig.com from los angeles, ca usa
my site is always hacked and always told to update my password. im running out of password, almost every month. have to delete everything including my data base, nothing to salvage they have no help in cleaning. now moving to ipage.

Biggest Pro: none
Biggest Con: no security always hacked