Review of HostPaPa hosting

It was the most horrible experience I had, I must say; and I will never go back with HostPaPa.

-Wrong choice

I was using BlueHost for a couple years; service and quality were all good. The only thing I didn’t like was that the exchange rate of US-to-Canadian was quite high. So when my contract with BlueHost almost ended, I tried to search and see if there is a better hosting located in Canada.

Therefore, I went to Google and search “top 10 Canadian Hosing”; here is what I could find when I clicked on the first link (Please note that it is a “Sponsor Link”, so I think someone paid for the top link.)From the “Customer Support” column, seems like HostPaPa was the only Canada-based hosting on the list, and that was one of the reasons why I chose it; my wrong decision led me to a nightmare of experiencing website down time and bad customer service.

-Start with HostPaPa

Story began in April; I switched from BlueHost to HostPaPa, hoping I could get better hosting service and reduce the annual fees I had to pay. Well, truly, with my registration in HostPaPa, they are giving me a domain “free for life”, but eventually you will have to pay more, which they never say the condition before you placed an order with them.

-Power-down issue

While my hosting all set up, it runs alright with my site as I have relatively small websites. I thought I could rest back and develop my sites. Yet in early September, I experienced a couple down-times WITHIN A WEEK. I tried to get support, so I log on hostpapa.com ; the funny thing was that I could visit none of their web pages except the front page. I guess they separate the front page from the main site server and keep their front page visible all the time. But as customers, we might not be so lucky. I have heard the same problems from some of my friends who has sites hosted in HostPaPa for their clients. I couldn’t submit a ticket nor could speak with a representative at that moment. So I sent them an email regarding the server-down issue. They replied me the next time, saying that their area where the major servers were located, Ontario, had a serious power-down because of the storm; and that was out of their control. But they told me the issue was resolved and all service were back online. Yes, for 2 days. The 3rd day after they said the issue were resolved, I couldn’t visit my sites again. Later on I received an official email regarding the problems they had within those days.

I actually were OK with that because I knew things happen and sometimes you just can’t do anything but sitting there and wait for everything back to norm. However, if they chose that area as their server location, don’t they already know that there would be a chance of major power-down issue since they claimed they had so “many years of hosting”. If they realized the problem and make a backup plan when it happens, I won’t possibly put this into my review. To me, nothing much was lost during this power-down issue except a chance of presentation; but if you are a serious business owner who is going to put your business online, how will a 1-day-off break of your site affect your business? You could have lost up to tens of thousands dollars of orders, or even new and returned customers.

-Choosing JustHost

After this issue, I considered switching back to Bluehost. At this time, JustHost came to me with a very aggressive price, just $3.45/month. Well, I knew I would need to sign up for a 2 or 3 year contract thing, but comparing to HostPaPa, I save about $2 a month and it’s like almost 40% off after all the tax calculation.

This time, I was more cautious about what I am reading; I just didn’t want to become a victim of another HostPaPa again. So I read reviews online, tried to ask questions and visit sites that are hosted with JustHost. My feeling was actually positive, but I was kind of being in a dilemma of choosing between Bluehost and Justhost. I must say, they have a lot of similarities like providing unlimited hosting space, bandwidth and tons of other free stuffs. I had been with Bluehost for so many years and I always knew they had good quality of hosting, but Justhost’s service really impressed me. They answered of my questions, both within 20 minutes, and those are not auto-robot-type of replies. So I decided to go for JustHost.

-Nightmare with HostPaPa in transferring my domain

My domain rockia.com was transfer to HostPaPa because they provided “free for life” (JustHost does too.). As I am no longer happy with HostPaPa, I decided to transfer this domain over to JustHost.

I first filed a ticket on Oct 17th to request a transfer on my domain, at the same time, the support team at JustHost help me submit a transfer request. I received it through HostPaPa so I click onto the authorization form and approve it. I thought everything will be automatically processed, so I wait and check my DNS every day.

• Oct 23rd, I was getting impatient, so I replied to the ticket again and request an EPP code.

• Oct 24th, checked my inbox, no reply; talk to a rep at JustHost and find out the status of the domain transfer. They told me the transfer was canceled, so I submit my request to the ticket AGAIN.

• Oct 27th, they billing department finally replied me and saying that because my domain was free for life, if I need to transfer it away, I have to pay $24.95 + tax = $26.20, and transferring my primary domain, they will have to cancel my account even though my service was good till April 2010. To be honest, I don’t understand and I didn’t remember they stated this policy on their site. So I email back and asked the reason why; I specifically tell them that, I will just need to change the DNS to JustHost and could live with HostPaPa still being my domain registrar.

• Oct 29th, They just simply sent me back a nice “NO” in a better way to request the $26.20. I was pretty tired with HostPaPa’s customer service already, in order to get away  from them, I just paid the invoice and sent my request to them AGAIN.

• Oct 30. Good. I talked a rep called Paul L. who is pretty nice and told me the to-do-list in their billing department is quite long. What did it mean? It just meant that I will have to wait.

• Oct 31st, talked to Tim. He told me that Sherry at the billing department was away so my request couldn’t be process. I was like, what? So you don’t have another staff in the billing department? And one of the fact is that they all could see my payment was received. Tim promised me that I would get reply by the end of the day, which was not happening.

• Nov 1st, maybe they are annoyed by me. In order to let me close my month, they sent me an email saying that Thank you for your payment. Your support ticket has been received and has been forwarded to our Domains Department to assist with your request and answer any questions you may have. To me, this email is just useless. Plus, my ticket was kicked from support to billing now back to support.
• Nov 2nd, I got my domain transferred and my account was shut down.
• GOODBYE, HostPaPa.

Just a note to those who would like to use HostPaPa’s service

- Get ready to the “Please be patient” notice while you are trying to get “Live Support”;

- Weird company policy which they wouldn’t tell you when you are going to sign up for their service;

- Promises won’t come true ( I guess they will never use the word ‘promise’ if they see this post);

- More pain when it’s out of their control for the power-down

If you are really looking for good hosting service, I strongly recommend BlueHost and JustHost to you. I had been with Bluehost for many years and will rate them 9.8/10, and I would rate JustHost 9.9/10 (No one is perfect, right?) The reason why I rate JustHost a bit higher than BlueHost is because of the price advantage and the “Anytime Money back guarantee” policy.