I’m not really posting this for the benefit of the regular ninebullets.net reader. I am writing/posting this for the benefit of the future person shopping for a web host who happens to google web hosting pad.

In March of 2008 I made the switch from GoDaddy to Web Hosting Pad because GoDaddy was tossing out a lot of database connection issues and overall was performing really slowly. Despite my IT guys shyness towards WHP I was suckered in by their self-promotion and signed up. Trevor moved the site and on March 27 we officially went live on WHP. Things were great…for 6 hours. Immediately after making my third post on WHP the site became inaccessible. You could browse it but you couldn’t connect to anything at all on the backend. A the time I made the joke to Trevor that 9b.net was too big and crushed their tiny server. Trevor responded, “I’ve wondered about that”. I was kidding, Trevor wasn’t. I should have listened. The broken back end persisted throughout the night but, in all fairness, was repaired by morning. I chalked it up to shit just f’ing up…it happens to everyone, even hosting companies, and moved on with a smile on my face. For the next week or so everything was pure bliss. No more database errors, the site loaded so fast. I was pleased and even Trevor warmed up to the WHP kids.

Then came the first suspension of the site.

I called the company up to see what the deal was. I am, after all, an mp3 blog. I was thinking there was a complaint about a song I posted so they turned off the site until I removed the song (I host my mp3’s on a different service). A little heavy handed, but justified. That wasn’t the case. Turned out one of the sites on my particular server was using more than 10% of the servers resources so they (whp); and this is a quote; “Turned off the top 5 sites hosted on that server until they could figure out who it was”. That’s right folks, they just shut off the top 5 cause someone was using 11% of the processor. I ask how me, a simple Wordpress blog that gets approx. 600 visits a day runs minimal plugins, barely any graphics and keeps his big files hosted in a completely different location could possibly be dragging down a server. He says he is gonna pull up my site and see. He says (I’m paraphrasing); “Yeah, there’s no way it could be you, I’m reactivating you now”. We were back online and I moved on. I told Trevor about it and laughed cause it was a good news/bad news type deal…On one, ninebullets was a top 5 traffic site on one of their servers, on the other they just turned me off. Trevor thought that was a bad sign. I, being naive, basked in my top 5 status.

Then, a couple of weeks later came the end.

I was out furniture shopping with the wife when I got a text message from my sister-in-law asking what was up with ninebullets. I fired up the iPhone and tried to get on the site. The phone tossed up an error that made me feel as if the entire network was down again so I chalked it up to instability and promptly forgot about it for the rest of the day. Later that night I went to start a post on the site and that’s when I learned that the site had been suspended again (no email). I immediately called up tech support thinking it was no big deal nad the site would be back on within the hour. The CSR was unable to find why the site was suspended and informed me he would have to open a ticket regarding the matter and that someone would get in touch with me within the hour. The next day I get the following email:

Your account has been found in violation of our TOS. It has been using more than 10% of our CPU and Memory and because this is not the first time, we will not be able to host your site.

A simple low traffic blog is using 10% of their CPU and Memory? WTF? Was ninebullets being hosted on an Amiga or something? Furthermore, the first time I was told that it wasn’t my site and nobody ever bothered to tell me any different if it was found that I was indeed the culprit. At this point I was ready to move on anyhow. In 28 days I was suspended twice and the network had suffered a total outage. I secured new hosting and asked for my files back. They tell me to send them my FTP info and they’ll upload me my files and I complied. The bulk of the day passed and I was still file free so I sent an email asking what was up. They said they would try and get me my files within 24 hours. The next day I finally get an email saying the upload process had begun. Two failed attempts later I get the following email:

Dreamhosts keeps timing out and cutting off the FTP transfer. I’m not sure how to upload it.

And that’s it. No thoughts or suggestions. No concern that they are essentially holding ninebullets hostage just a “It’s failing I dunno what to do”. At the very least this points to shitty customer service while at it’s worst it points to complete incompetence. So I respond asking for them to get me access to my files and that I would babysit the downloading of the site.
In the process of downloading the site I learned that it wasn’t Dreamhost timing out, it was actually WHP. Seems like there is some sort of anti-leech security running on their side or something because if you tried to download anything with a directory tree that went deeper than 3 levels the download would time out. Again, the WHP tech staff should know about this. Instead, they just tossed it off as a Dreamhost issue and wanted to move on. Laziness or Incompetence? Either way, I ended up sitting there and downloading the site directory by directory by directory. It was long, it was tedious but it had to be done. At noon on May 7, seven days after they turned me off, I had my files. I told them I had my files and emailed Trevor to let him know. Trevor asked if I remembered to get the database.

Shit!

Four hours after I had finished grabbing the files I sent WHP the following message:

shit.
I forgot to export the WP database. Can I get access to the site again for a few hours so I can export the DB via the phpMyAdmin.
There is no need to worry about people getting to the site. I changed the nameservers monday morning and I’m sure it’s propagated at this point. I had to use the sites IP to get into the ftp.

Another 4 hours pass and I get the following response:

As for the site, it’s already deleted.

Nothing more. No offer for a solution. No mention of the backups they obviously have. Just “it’s gone, get lost”. I asked about getting the site off a backup immediately and got no response at all. I waited for over 24 hours before I sent another email that essentially asked if they were now in the process of ignoring me. An hour later I get the following:

We do not have your files anymore.

I reply:

but, you obviously have nightly backups…
at least, you should.

Them:

There is a $30 charge to restore from backups.

Now, I am finally genuinely pissed off so I fire this off to them:

heh heh
of course there is…
well, a blog w/o it’s database isn’t anything at all. you guys have me over the proverbial barrel and nobody brought any lube to the party.
I need my database folks. If it’s gonna cost an extra 30 dollars then HEY! It’s just a little over a dollar for every day I got from your service.
sign me the fuck up. Charge the card….restore the site. I need my database.

They inform me that are gonna restore the site for free and that it will be available in a couple of hours. If this was the end of the story, I wouldn’t even be posting this at all…No, it’s what they pulled next that prompted me to sit at my dining room table and type this whole story…Those bastards went and found the backup from the day I put ninebullets on their servers and restored it. Essentially erasing the 28 days I was actually on their service. Incompetence aside, they did that on purpose and I can not be convinced otherwise. They’ve also refused to refund me my 58 dollars despite the fact that they are unable to house a simple wordpress install without blowing up their servers. With the act they pulled on the restore I am especially bitter about the money…it was flat out stolen from me. No services rendered and when we moved on we looked exactly the same we did 28 days before.

Now, if you have a web site where you post the occasional picture of your baby so your parents can look at it then WHP might be right for you…or you can get with Web 2.0 and get a Flickr account…but if your site employs any type of blogging platform or database usage then I’d advise you to steer really clear of Web Hosting Pad. They don’t have the infrastructure to support your needs and in the end they’ll turn you off without warning or notice and refuse to give you your money back.