Beware Free Hosting With 000WebHost.com
Written by caymanhost on March 4, 2009 – 3:38 pmFree hosting is always a contentious issue as this post will clearly illustrate. Recent experiences with a free hosting company clearly illustrate why there are so many tales of why you should think very carefully before considering it as one of your options. In this post I am dealing with only one free hosting company and am not inferring that they are all the same. However, I strongly recommend that you avoid 000WebHost.com like the plague. 000Webhosting.com are not to be trusted with your websites and are not worth your time as an affiliate. This is free hosting that you will pay a high price for.
Sometimes I get things wrong and this post has come about for that exact reason. Free web hosting with 000.Webhost.com can very possibly cause you nothing but problems, particularly if you complain or refuse to upgrade to a paid hosting account.
A short while ago I wrote a post entitled “Free Hosting With MySQL PHP Cpanel and Fantastico” where I explained how you could set up a Wordpress blog on a free hosting service, either with your own domain or a subdomain provided by 000Webhosting.com. (The post is still live but all links to the company have been removed).
I expressed the view that this would be a far better option than using the free Wordpress.com service, largely because you would have far greater control over what you could display on your site. Wordpress.com does not allow any kind of affiliate marketing content, nor do they permit things like javascript (for security reasons) and it was my contention (and still is) that this is too restrictive for anyone trying to monetize a Wordpress blog.
However, having put my “money” where my mouth is I now admit to having made a rather horrible recommendation. As part of the example I set up a WP blog on the free host and was reasonably impressed with what you got for your free membership. However, time has proved that all in the free hosting garden (certainly in this particular one) is very far from rosy.
I set up monitoring of the site with a free service and very soon noticed rather frequent emails in my inbox notifying me that the site was on error. Sometimes the notification that the site was back up came quite quickly, but others, the downtime was quite extended (hours or even days rather than minutes). Having returned home to Cayman, I decided to do a little more work on the blog as it seemed a shame to waste it. I had even secured the first advertising revenue on the site so I figured that I should pursue its development.
At around the same time the monthly downtime report landed in my inbox. Horror of horrors, 116 hours of it at the tail end of February. Sure enough, I was unable to connect to wp-admin and when I tried to view the site all I got was timeouts, except on one occasion when I got the header and sidebar but no content. As I had made no changes to the blog for about 2 months I was puzzled.
(Click For Full Size Image)
(Click For Full Size Image)
I decided to put the support desk to the test at this point and explained the problem. My conversations with them have been documented through email and screenshots, because here is where things get a little nasty. In their favor, they responded very quickly, but the positives ended there.
The first response was that they could access my site fine and suggested clearing cache, restarting my internet connection (!!) and if that didn’t work, to try connecting through a proxy server. Not very helpful, particularly to the non technical who probably wouldn’t even know what a proxy is. I did try proxies in both the US and Europe to no avail and without too much surprise.
They then suggested that I use the “fix file permissions” in my cpanel. OK, I tried it, even though the problem was obviously with the server and not my site. It made no difference. The other piece of advice was to use the “cancel/delete account function and recreate the same account again”!! What???
By now I realized I was just getting stock emails from a menu of stock emails being punted out by a non tech support person. The next one was a killer, advising me that they could not help me with setting up my website and stating “we focus on getting our servers up and running”. Erm, yeah, right. To add insult to injury they then try to upsell me on a paid hosting account. Great marketing tactic (not).
I am sarcastic when I reply, I admit it. I point out that the problem is with their server, not with my site. I tell them that a monitoring service confirms this and that I am not asking for help with my website which was fine and has had no changes made to it in weeks in any case.
In response I am told that they cannot give me a resolution to my ticket as it would take too much administration time. Yep, that’s what they said before trying to sell me a paid hosting plan again. This last mail was badly written by someone for whom English was certainly not a first language. They apologized and thanked me for my understanding. WTF?
I shot back a rather heated email saying that I didn’t understand at all and suggesting that the free service was nothing more than a loss leader (one that they couldn’t even run properly at that) as a prelude to selling someone a hosting plan. Who in their right mind would pay after seeing these clowns in action I wondered aloud. They respond…
“The server is working fine, there is problem with your site only. I’m afraid but we do not provide any assistance building website”
Nice. Irrelevant, but really nice. I put it to them that they had said there was no problem with my site and yet now, in a complete reversal they say that there is! I’m laughing now because these people are clueless and obviously assume that their customers, free or otherwise, are clueless too.
I Googled the subdomain in question and sure enough, could not connect to a single site. I told them this and accused them of incompetence if not downright lying. It was, I pointed out, hardly the way to do business or win hearts and minds. I get another totally useless response – “we have opened your site and it shows a blank page, have you tried connecting via proxy?” I want to suggest where they put their fixation with proxies but restrain myself. I’ve had my “fun” but am hugely relieved I don’t rely on 000Webhost.com to provide my real hosting.
Finally they tell me that their data center is blocking access from some countries and that they are looking into it! Blocking access from Nigeria I could understand, but the U.S. and UK? Hardly a believable excuse methinks. Then, they close the ticket, just like that. I’m amazed and no, the site is still not accessible even after another 48 hours. I can’t access my admin area, so I can’t even begin to try and figure out what they screwed up.
I asked my followers in Twitter to try and access the site yesterday – unsurprisingly everyone who tried came up empty. The server was down and connecting to the site from any ISP in any country was impossible.
This morning I received a notification that the site has come off error after over 159 hours of downtime!! Unfortunately the reason for this soon became apparent when I tried to visit my site – redirected to a page saying that the site does not exist. I try to log in to my cpanel to receive the message that “this account has been closed. Please read our terms and conditions”. Now I’m pretty p****d because I failed to notice the section in those terms that specified “do not complain, or, if you do, pay us some money and all will be OK. If we fail to resolve your problem and you continue to request any kind of service we will close your account and delete all your files without having to give any reason whatsoever”. Silly me.
So, I log into my affiliate account and sure enough it is marked as “canceled_abuse”. I have seen many of these inside my affiliate area so here is the next warning to would be affiliates for 000webhosting.com. Don’t bother. You are extremely unlikely to make enough sales to reach their $100 minimum payout because the bottom line is that they really are not interested in providing free hosting and, it would seem, will find reasons to cancel accounts if they cannot convert free customers to paying ones but I concede that could just be me taking a cynical view. Having said that, reports of sharp business practices are scattered all over the web from disgruntled affiliates if you care to look.
Click To Enlarge Image
By supporting and promoting their services I feel cheated in a multitude of ways. If you are doing the same, or are thinking about participating in their affiliate program, I would urge you to think again. Tarnishing your reputation obviously does not concern them and tarnishing it is a very real possibility. I am deeply apologetic to those I have referred to the services of 000Webhosting.com because it was a bad recommendation. Luckily my site was really only an experiment just to put the service to the test and initially things looked hopeful. Imagine, however ,if it was your site and something you were serious about. You could lose hours and hours, days, of your valuable time, lose money and damage your online reputation by dealing with such a company. It does not matter what kind of site you are running, 000Webhosting.com have clearly demonstrated in this case that they do not offer reliability, service or customer care in any meaningful way.
So, take this as a lesson. Do not rely on 000WebHost.com to provide any kind of reliable service or support. In short, they suck and, in my opinion, the free service is nothing more than a lure to convert users into paying customers by any means necessary. Anyone who gives these people money in the face of such overwhelming evidence of their incompetence would be very foolish indeed, in my humble opinion. Take a look at their terms where they basically say “we can cancel your account at any time for ANY reason”. This should have been a big red flag at the outset and I admit to not paying it the attention I should have.
As one commenter on the original post said, never entrust anything remotely mission critical to a free hosting provider. I made the same recommendation but now, after such a fiasco, I wouldn’t recommend you host anything but a kid’s party with them (the clowns are entertaining). Even a personal website or blog would be hard pushed to survive such terrible uptime and lack of knowledgeable support. It’s a lesson learned and I apologize again to anyone who signed up to the service through my recommendation.
My recommendation to anyone using their services is to back up all your files and find a reliable hosting company to transfer your site to as soon as possible. That’s how strongly I feel about this kind of thing.
Below are the screenshots of my dealings with 000Webhost.com “support”. You can judge for yourself. Click on an image to view full size.
Needless to say I have cancelled my affiliate account and forfeited all earned commissions earned to date. All links to the company will now be redirected or removed from this domain.
Do not be fooled by stories of how great the service is. This review offers genuine proof of what you can expect and is backed with hard evidence. Incidentally, the site in question was a blog on the very innocuous subject of the Cayman Islands and any suggestion that it fell foul of their usage policies in any way shape or form would be false.
The web is becoming littered with disgruntled users and affiliates regarding 000Webhosting, so don’t just take my word for it. As time passes, I guarantee that these will outnumber those talking the company up.
Luckily, my experiment was purely that, but hopefully this will prevent some potential customers from making what could be a costly mistake.
TCH
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Posted in Free Hosting, Free Services, Hosting News, Hosting Reviews, Wordpress | 42 Comments »
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March 4th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Thank you for detailed professional review!
000webhost does not deserve to host our sites!
Michael Pekker’s last blog post..Windows Problem – Computer Randomly Reboots Itself
March 5th, 2009 at 2:41 am
@Michael
No, they certainly do not. Since writing this I have read rumors that they are under investigation following complaints about their affiliate program and non payment of commissions to affiliates among other things.
I for one sincerely hope it is true and that they will be called to account.
March 18th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
I have no idea what kind of professional support do you expect from free hosting website? I have my website with them for over 6 months now, and I never had any problem with them (expecting support). Yes I noticed sometimes some Internet service providers are blocked for some reason (in the same way your free monitoring service can be also blocked and count downtime), but I think its because all most free hosts are highly abused. Anyway you pay nothing.
I rate them 9/10. I REALLY tested a lot free hosts and 000webhost is absolutely the best.
(PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR FURTHER COMMENTS AND PROOF THAT THIS COMMENT CARRIES NO CREDIBILITY WHATSOEVER HAVING BEEN POSTED BY EITHER A PAID “SHILL” FOR 000WEBHOST OR AN EMPLOYEE).
March 18th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
@Jurius
Quite simply I expect to receive the service that THEY advertise and have convinced thousands of affiliates to advertise on their behalf with the promise of commissions. (That, incidentally, often don’t seem to materialize). Quite plainly they do not even come close to managing that.
Instead what I see is an extremely badly run and under resourced “sales funnel”.
In short, if they can’t deliver on their claims, they shouldn’t make them – it is immaterial whether the service is free or paid.
Your comment regarding the monitoring service is nonsense. Trying to marginalize it because it is free is a poor attempt to discredit the validity of its reporting. The point is, the site was inaccessible for over a week. Solid. That kind of downtime is appalling and you seem to have completely ignored the fact that nobody could access the site from anywhere, and I had people from all over the world try for me. A website, particularly one that has any kind of commercial application or importance cannot afford to run on a server that barely gives 60% uptime. Have you ever wondered why oooWebhost block access from certain IP’s as they claim? Have you ever asked why they feel it necessary to deny access to your site? Have you ever considered that just maybe they cannot handle the volume, that their servers are overcrowded, slow and under too much strain?
I’m glad that you are content and rate them “9/10″ and it’s a shame that you prefer to remain anonymous and not publish the site you are so happy to host with them. That would have at least lent a little more credibility to your cheerleading. All I can say is: “give it time old son”. It would have been interesting to know if you monitor your sites uptime and what kind of site it is too. Maybe your expectations are just lower than my own from a company that claims to be “better than paid hosting” and then tries to sell you their paid services with the promise that they will be much more reliable. Come on, don’t you get it yet?
They may well be the best free hosting provider, but that does not change the fact that they suck and only reinforces the point that most free hosting is not to be relied upon.
However, I remain totally unconvinced and after what I have documented here, I think it is plainly obvious that no matter what your expectations, the service is going to fall way short of what they claim to provide.
I’d love to see some counter arguments with proof of what a great company they are, rather than unsubstantiated testimonials, but until I do I stand by my position that it would be foolish to rely on them for any kind of service at all and certainly not with any site that is important to you.
March 24th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
I don’t see the problem here. What do you expect for free? Of course they can delete the free accounts at any time to make room for their paid accounts, or violations of ToS.
How much time did you expect for them to spend on you since you aren’t paying them ANYTHING? How much would you do for me (or anyone else) for nothing? How about you set up my webhosting and wesite for free? Yes, their English is a little rough, but perfectly understandable. Just my opinion. I DO NOT work for 000webhost or am related to them in ANY way.
March 25th, 2009 at 1:20 am
Phil,
Thanks for leaving your comments, astounding as your assertion is that you “dont see the problem here”.
What do I expect for free? Well, I thought it was not unreasonable to expect the advertised service from a company who claim to be “better than paid hosting”. Their words not mine.
I didn’t expect the level of support or service that I get from my costly but excellent paid hosting accounts, but I think I have every right to expect them to deliver on their claims. They don’t – end of story. Perhaps, from what you say, your expectations are a whole lot lower than mine.
Having dealt with that again let’s move on to “of course they can delete free accounts at any time to make room for their paid accounts or violations of ToS”
You’re kidding right? You honestly believe that if you were a customer and had spent weeks or months toiling over your blog or website and they shut you down without a word of warning that you would be OK with it? I’m sorry but give me a break Phil, anyone who receives that kind of treatment would be justifiably miffed.
As for the ToS, it’s hardly worth having any when you include the catch all statement that they have the right to close your account whenever or if ever it suits them, without having to give a reason or justify their course of action or even notify you. I will say it again, I did not violate any of their ToS in any way, shape or form in the example I used for the basis of this post.
I didn’t ask them to spend any time on me and never once asked for any assistance with the site in question. I don’t need help installing a Wordpress blog or getting everything to work on any kind of server. All I asked them to do was address a problem with their hardware, a problem that was affecting every single site on that server. Their response was unprofessional and unhelpful and the problem remained unfixed for almost two weeks. I can’t imagine why any website owner in their right mind would care about something like that though, can you?
In answer to your final question, no, I would not set up your website for free, nor would I host it. Then again, I’ve never promised you I would have I?
If I did, and you had spent a lot of hours lovingly adding content and building links to your new free site, maybe even selling some advertising space and patting yourself on the back for getting such a great deal, I guess you’re claiming that when I delete all your files from my server without warning, or even telling you that I was going to do it, or why, you would think I was justified in doing so? If only everyone could be so understanding.
If you seriously think that 000Webhost offer free web hosting out of altruism, you are very naive and if you didn’t notice the constant barrage of pressure to “upgrade to a paid account” in their help desk responses there is little point in me suggesting to you that all free hosting customers of theirs are frequently “encouraged” to upgrade for a better service.
But wait! This is already better than paid hosting right?
I’m afraid that 000Webhost is a marketing ploy and nothing more. A “loss leader” to net paying customers from their probably very large database of free “customers”. Added to the alleged doubts over the affiliate program and non payment of commissions I would consider myself negligent in the extreme not to highlight their inadequacies to my readership.
I can’t make it any clearer than that. Free hosting is just not worth it.
You seem overly anxious to emphasize your non-relationship with them although I have no reason to doubt you. I don’t know if you have a site hosted with them Phil, because you have not posted a URL (maybe it’s suffering a little downtime?) but if you do, I’d move it to a proper hosting company pretty sharpish, because even if your expectations are as low as you suggest, they will still manage to disappoint you.
Then again, you could always upgrade to a paid account with them if you’re already a happy customer. That would make sense.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:52 am
000webhost affiliate program is a COMPLETE SCAM! BEWARE!
http://www.mrlen.com/forums/index.php/board,38.0.html
Please post your complaints on my forums. 000webhost owes me money and if you post about it on their forums, they delete it. They don’t answer emails, so there’s no way to get your commissions.
March 29th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Hi Leonard,
Thanks for the link, I hope you will gather more stories from aggrieved affiliates, of which there seem to be many as you say.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:47 am
Thanks for writing this post. Was just about to sign up with 000webshost and you’ve certainly convinced me otherwise. I’ve instead decided to go with some cheap hosting elsewhere with one of the big reputable companies. At least there will be some accountability.
Cheers,
Geoff
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
@Geoff,
Thanks for taking the time to leave your feedback. I think you have made a wise decision and glad that this review was helpful in the process.
Good luck with your new site
May 4th, 2009 at 2:53 am
Well, if that’s the case, their name is incredibly appropriate (zero host). I have heard only good things about them up until now, but now I know better and will not try them. It seems to me that their responses to your concern were very cliche and lame.
May 4th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
@Melissa,
Thanks for your comments. I’m glad to have saved you the possible torment of hosting with them
I think lame is a very polite way of putting it too.
Of course, as the service is free, anyone can try them without financial risk, but for anything remotely serious/valuable to you I’d steer well clear.
May 5th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I have 2 accounts with 000webhost and seem like get a lot of problems.
May 5th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
@Warren,
Well the good news is that when I clicked through to your link the site was fine and loaded pretty quickly
If you’re using their free hosting for that domain, all I’ll say is that you should be sure to back up all your files regularly and keep them safe, just in case you ever face a similar shut down without notice.
May 15th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Thanks for complete walk-through of your experience with 000webhost.
I have a very tiny problem with my current host but after reading the article and the responses, I will pass the free hosting.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
@enli,
You’re welcome and thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.
I don’t like to berate web hosts because in all honesty no matter who you choose will encounter a problem sooner or later, hopefully only a small one. That’s just the nature of the beast.
However, when I think that genuinely poor service needs highlighting I will do so and this was one of those occasions.
Glad you found it useful and hope you get your problems resolved – your blog was rather slow to load but other than that it looks good.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:49 am
I expect professional behavior, whatever people do. The same is when they offer some service to the people. I don’t care is it free or not, simply I watch can I believe to them. If they offered something for free, they will have to give profesional service for free. Nobody pushed them to offer something for free than they misuse Free option as advertisement and after it they push people (with creating of server problems: they didn’t separate without reason free and commercial servers) to transfer themselves to paid hosting. It is simply: dirty behavior. I don’t believe to dirty people and I am not crazy to give them my money. I don’t believe they will succeed in their business, they are greedy like this people who created world financial crisis. In the same way, many free web hosting companies will create crisis in their part of world. therefore I suggest to the people to create their own server at their home PC. Only websites with million users need professional web server, if you have website which is not soooo much visited, people can reach your website even it is hosted at your home PC (many people have at home fast internet connection).
free web hosting is good only for old type HTML websites but not for php, mysql, …
It will stay so, until someone start to offer free hosting in harmony with needs of people, not in harmony with profit. for me, 000webhost is result of greedy capitalism. I am not rich but one day if I become, surely I will offer professional free web hosting, just to destroy greedy capitalists.
June 25th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
@hm
Thanks for such a detailed comment.
You echo my earlier sentiments in response to the cheerleaders who try and twist the facts and claim that just because it’s free you have no right to complain and have no recourse.
Those same people post anonymously and are probably just trying a lame damage limitation exercise and consequently have no credibility. They never respond after their initial comments.
Like you, I hope that the dishonesty inherent in these types of marketing tactics will eventually cause their downfall too.
June 27th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Well your uptime monitoring service you have used here must really “suck”.
I have found this service status page on their forum: http://www.serviceuptime.com/users/monitoring.php?S=6c8ef11fcca35bab3d971cdce3d7179b
Well if you say it still bad as for free host, kick me
June 27th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
2Jurius,
Believe me, you don’t want a guy like me kickin’ y’all
I’d really, really like to do it, but as we’re restricted to verbal fencing, I’m pretty damned good at that too, smiley face or no smiley face.
Firstly, you say you found this on their forums and you’re unlikely to find them posting anything but good news there are you?
The monitoring service I was using is accurate and I didn’t rely solely on that service in any case. I had over 50 people check to see if the domain was live, from various places around the world, and none of them were able to access the server. It was down for over two weeks.
The fact that 000webhost came up with all kinds of BS to try and deny that it was a problem at their end is what makes them a lousy service and a bunch of cowboys.
But hey, go ahead and give them your money, or your time and faith, just don’t come crying back here when they shaft you good and hard my anonymous friend.
For new visitors to this thread, don’t just take my word for it. Google 000WebHost scam and see what you find
http://www.google.com.jm/search?q=000webhost+scam&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=61m&start=0&sa=N
June 28th, 2009 at 1:22 am
Oh, I nearly forgot “Jurius” (sinday1939@yahoo.com) here is another link for my readers, illustrating just what a shill and POS you are for trying to come here and BS your way into convincing people you are in any way independent. Jurius is a 000webhost scammer with few morals and even less honesty.
bringalink.com is a phony testimonial site where this commenter professes to be a top affiliate for 000WebHost
Rony Size? What kind of name is that anyway? Were your parents as dumb as you are?
Please do check out the sites listed on the page and laugh. 99% garbage if they are even live at all. Certainly not something to brag about is it “Jurius”?
In the next comment readers can see what you post there in case it gets deleted….and if you think you’re big enough to fight with me in my native language, go get some more lessons because about now you are fighting with a much shorter blade than I am!
“I was paid three times already…” Was you really? You lowlife.
June 28th, 2009 at 1:26 am
(image copied from web page -yes an image, can’t even be bothered to type in the lies each time they post them)
Now you are truly busted, you are a liar and a paid one at that. Lie all you want to people who don’t know any better but don’t come here and take me for a fool. You can scam people all you like but you will get caught and exposed. I hope you get plenty of spam too when the robots harvest your address.
I apologize to my readers for this, but I’ve had an alcohol fueled night and people like this who perpetuate scams and lies make me sick to my stomach and professionalism flies out the window.
Please stop believing these paid or self serving idiots and think before becoming ensnared in their lies. This proves beyond reasonable doubt that they will stop at nothing to con unsuspecting people to further their greed and dishonest business practices.
June 30th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I had used them for quite a while and I had several problems right away. Some kind of error was occuring (that they emailed me about and said to fix it before they delete it). I was unaware of any kind of error, and emailed them to explain because I wasn’t seeing the problem. They never replied and my site seemed to be messed up from then on.
At first glance their sites seem fine, but they offered no support to me.
I’m trying to find a free web hosting site that offers something like the Cpanel with Fantastico, because I would really like to have the Simple Machines Forum. If anyone could give me information on a host that offers this, I’d be forever thankful.
- Manda
June 30th, 2009 at 11:12 am
@Manda,
This is not uncommon from what I understand.
I do not know of any other free hosting that offers Cpanel and Fantastico.
My suggestion would be to go for a budget account with someone like Hostgator. You can get what you need with their cheapest plan at $4.95 per month.
If you need a cheap domain name you can find some great deals at Namecheap too, particularly for things like .info domains.
Even if you could find another free service offering what you want, the chances are you will again run into problems, particularly running a forum that gets any reasonable amount of traffic.
June 30th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
@ caymanhost
Thanks so much. I appreciate the link you gave, and am greatly considering it.
I’ve also checked with a few friends and one of them said they were in with the affiliate system and had never been paid. I’m sure you can understand how angry he was. I definitely DO NOT recommend 000webhost to anyone.
Thanks again for the help.
- Manda
June 30th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
@Manda
You’re more than welcome, I hope whatever you choose you will enjoy your new forum
Hostgator are a popular choice for new webmasters and offer a lot of features for the price. Support is good enough most of the time.
The affiliate program with 000Webhost has caused a lot of anger and resentment as many people promoted the service and racked up good commissions most of which have allegedly never been paid and, I suspect, never will be.
Aside from liars who are obviously posting on behalf of 000Webhost in a pathetic damage limitation attempt, I have yet to see one affiliate who has confirmed that they have been paid.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
I really wish I would have seen your review first, before having to experience it myself.
They cancelled my account, and I have FOUR WEBSITES that I coded by hand!! You have no idea how p**d off I am!
They have given me no valid reasons for shutting down my website, and have not answered my emails thus far.
DO NOT HOST WITH 000WEBHOSTING.!!!
July 14th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Hi Kiarra
Understandable and unsurprising I’m afraid. I’m sorry you found us too late as well, but thanks for leaving a note of your experience.
caymanhost´s last blog ..DDOS Attack Update
December 9th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I’m sorry if you left a comment here recently and it has disappeared. Long story short we suffered some data loss due to a hacked server and the comments were one of the casualties.
Having said that, there was one very telling comment made by an experienced internet security professional that clearly warned of this allegedly being a phishing scam and honeypot so please consider this warning carefully.
If you find this post useful please link to it and let others know if you have had problems – it has cost us a lot of trouble to keep this post and comment thread online
caymanhost´s last blog ..Globat Hosting Affiliate Program Scam
December 17th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Here’s my experience with 000webhost:
1) their affiliate program is a scam
2) their hosting is much faster then any other free hosting I tried, so you can use them AS LONG AS you don’t need database (MYSQL). Having 2 sites with mysql with them I was receiving “your sql query to slow, please optimize your query” email notifications from them about simplest queries like “select count(*) from mytable” whenever there SQL server was hosed. Then after few warnings they canceled it “for abuse of resources”.
3) downtime largely depend on what server you are (they have about 20). So deleting and recreating account (hopefully on another server) may be not such a bad idea
4) Don’t push them by complaining too much if the service is down – this way is to get you account canceled (with no trace of data just as described by other posters – so backup, backup, backup)
For anything more reliable, my suggestion is to go with paid hosting. At $4/month on a 2 year plan my own host is really affordable, has guaranteed uptime, and does not have any hassles of free hosting.
December 17th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I fail to see how you can come here and post a comment in any way suggesting that people should consider using these fraudsters for anything at all – not if you have read any of the discussion thread at all.
There are far more serious risks involved than having a bad hosting experience – there are suspicions and allegations of phishing, malware and compromised personal information being discussed around the web.
As for speed of service I think you must be confusing them with someone else!!!
Please do not try to spam my comments section for the sake of free advertising – you do not need to post multiple links to your site – you would have had a link had you used a proper name as opposed to keywords and URL’s in the comment field. If you want to advertise on my pages my rates are very reasonable
caymanhost´s last blog ..Globat Hosting Affiliate Program Scam
December 17th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
this was my honest review of my experience with 000webhost. I still use them (for small crappy sites) and I use the $4/mo paid hosting for more serious projects.
As for 000 speed compared to others I tried aokhost and 110mb and they were like dialup.
As for spamming, that would be submitting something like “great post, here’s my link” instead of writing few paragraphs about my experience with the very subject of your article, wouldn’t it be?
December 17th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
@arvixehosting
Thank you for coming back and setting the record straight.
There is a fine line between what appears to be comment spam and what isn’t so if I misjudged your initial contribution I apologize.
Having said that, I honestly think you should reconsider your involvement with 000Webhost – if the warnings in this thread do not concern you they should.
It is unfortunate that we lost the comment from a web security expert regarding their operations which was quite specific in its allegations of cyber crime but there are still too many red flags here – ignore them at your own risk is all I will say.
December 21st, 2009 at 9:50 am
I have seen these guys recently and came across your post. Thanks for the heads up I will warn other people about this so called service
January 12th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
OH yes you have had the same trouble that I have had I had trouble saving html code to there system. ITS MY FAULT LOL. I got the same UPSELL spill you did moving out of that trap once and for all
January 13th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Hi Roger,
The quicker you get away and change any personal details you gave to them the better!
Sorry I had to strip out your link, but your domain is still pointing at their servers and I don’t want anything linking back to their domain from my pages.
January 25th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
they dont really offer cpanel, or fantastico, or anything like that, just something similar, anyone who has used the real cpael before will notice a big diffirence betwen the two, if they offered real cpanel hosting this is what the url would be to acess 000webhost.com:2082
but instead it is members.000webhost.com, and trust me, you people who think that you cant get real cpanel hosting, your rong, i am on free cpanel and whm hosting, 000webhost lies about everything that they give
January 25th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Hi Kyle,
They did actually “offer” Cpanel and Fantastico for a short time but have since stopped for whatever reason.
Presumably it was just one more carrot to drag in more unsuspecting victims. As for lying, yes, the whole scam is just one big lie – they don’t provide anything other than a honey pot for their own nefarious agenda.
March 5th, 2010 at 6:15 am
000’s backup service is yet another scam. It crashes in the middle of a backup. Here’s the alternative:
- Log into phpMyAdmin from their cPanel for your MySQL databases and click the Export tab and download it as a .sql.gz file to your pc. If you cant read the file you will need to download something like WinRAR.
- Use an ftp client such as FileZilla (try not to use Windows Explorer or Finder, they seem to stop downloads half way) to download your site to your computer.
Also, if you are just using 000webhost to test PHP and MySQL functions, etc. you might as well just install XAMPP on your computer and do your testing on your computer where your web host cant shut you down (because you are your own host when you use XAMPP!)
http://xampp.sorceforge.net
if that link does not work just google “xampp”.
March 5th, 2010 at 10:18 am
Hi Adam,
Thanks for the comment and the useful tips.
If anyone wants to know more about installing and using Xampp, you can read watch the instructional video at the following link:
http://www.thecaymanhost.com/wordpress-videos/installing-wordpress-on-your-pc-using-xampp
March 11th, 2010 at 6:34 am
Hi all, first time on the site after looking at a yahoo answer and saw your link.
I would like to say a couple of things both for and against 000webhost, yes they are this bad on their free service and yet their paid service is not much better.
I have used the free service and ran into few road blocks, techy side was pathetic and i just figured the rest out myself.
The paid service i thought would be better but after a month a quite and moved on. TRUST ME WHEN I SAY DONT BOTHER!
Although, please DO NOT CONFUSE 000webhost with another one very similar i think it is 000space who are quite good, although paid not free as the free envolves some questionaire every month to keep your account i dont knwo why stupid if you ask me!
But thanks for this review/re-traction as it shows you are willing to be genuine to you followers, which you do not see much on the internet these days.
Thanks for looking!
Vril
March 11th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Hi Vril,
Thanks for your feedback. As I keep stressing here, the problems with the site are a lot more serious than just a totally useless free hosting plan. The site is linked to some very shady operations and whilst the allegations are just that, they must remain a cause for concern for anybody thinking about providing information to them online.
As for the other free service you mention, and I am not familiar with them, the comment you make regarding the monthly questionnaire is probably a simple one to answer. My guess would be that each questionnaire is a CPA offer and that they get paid each time someone completes it – it would be one way for them to generate some money to help them go on providing a free service. Just my best guess.