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Servlets.com | ISP Reviews |
Reviews for ISP: CWIHosting
The following comments have been recorded for "CWIHosting".
Average Overall Score: 2.1
Average Features Score: 3.3
Average Reliability Score: 2.3
Average Support Score: 1.9
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Overall 2
Date: February 1, 2002
Reviewer: Jim Swartz
(jswartz@one.net)
Reviewer site: http://jk-lines.com
Overall: 2
Features: 3
Reliability: 4
Support: 1
They provide little support. I have sent 5 emails on the same issue and get no useful info back from them except that it is my error not theirs (even though every book has the exact same code in it that I am using). I ask questions and they answer questions I don't ask (I never get an answer to my question). there is no live support - only email.
Lots of features at a great price, but support is so-so and they can terminate service without notice (see below).
Date: February 17, 2002
Reviewer: Stan Kole
Overall: 3
Features: 5
Reliability: 4
Support: 3
The good:
Servlet 2.3 using Resin and MySQL support – easy to administer. Lots of storage and bandwidth at a good price. Reliability is above average. Server speed is average.
The bad:
Support is via email only. If your Java application consumes too much resources (which is undefined) they will kick you off without notice. This happened to me, one day my application was down, only after 8 hours and many emails did I find out that they shut me down. I was not given a second chance to correct the problem (I had some unclosed database connections, easy to fix).
Summary:
Lots of features at a good price, but not recommended for mission critical applications as management is a bit finicky. Very hard to communicate directly with management and technical support.
Confusing
Date: March 13, 2002
Reviewer: Neil Macaskill
(neil.macaskill@npower.com)
Overall: 2
Features: 2
Reliability: 2
Support: 2
I had 2 plans with these guys.
They insisted I wasn't on "autobill" and claimed I was making payments on the internet when I was not.
My Amex statement proves that they took 12 monthly payments automatically.
They switched off my website without warning (a customer pointed that out to me).
Hopefully things are now sorted out after numerous emails to their CEO, who got a little cross with my repeated enquiries.
Run for the HILLS!
Date: September 25, 2002
Reviewer: David Dalton
Overall: 1
Features: 3
Reliability: 1
Support: 1
I have just spent a year stuck with this pathetic excuse of a hosting company. I webmaster 12 servlet sites (1 on their servers...thank god) & folks I have to tell you these folks havent got clue one about what they are doing! Their "tech support" (he said laughingly) Will email you back 4 hours after you email them to tell them the site is down & will say "There is nothing wrong with our systems" WELL HECK NO, there isnt anything wrong now....that was 4 hours ago. Then you look in the log files to see they rebooted the system. They must also be paying their bills at the last minute because every month the control panel lisence is expired & you have to email them about that. The only thing good is their 50% refund policy if the site is down for more than 20 minutes....you can almost be guaranteed that you will be paying half price at LEAST every other month. The site I was handling was down at least once a month, several times for 6+ hours & once for 12 hours!
In all these guys think Java comes from Dunkin Donuts so if you are serious about servlet development I suggest you contact Microsoft....they would get it before these people would!
Do not recommend for critical applications or for business!
Date: November 23, 2002
Reviewer: Dmitry Skavish
Reviewer site: http://www.jzox.com
Overall: 2
Features: 4
Reliability: 2
Support: 1
My servlet was eating a little bit more ram than it usually does mainly because there were a lot of users on my site. They shut my account down and that's it, no second chance, nothing.
It was my business, so I lost two weeks while I was moving to another ISP. It's terrible!
By the way my current isp is mmaweb.net and I would recommend it for business applications!
One word: Terrible
Date: February 12, 2003
Reviewer: David Cheong
(david@pointstorm.com)
Overall: 1
Features: 1
Reliability: 1
Support: 1
CWI hosting is such a terrible provider. Their support is almost non-existent and there were lots of issues that needed support.
- they periodically bounce their servers but for some reason they don't start your servlet container when they bounce.
- they locked us out and terminated our account on the spot without warning or even a chance to correct our problem... they don't state what too much ram means and only after many emails over several weeks did we get a response.
That kind of service provider you are better off avoiding.
site was down 3-4 times per week
Date: February 13, 2003
Reviewer: Keith Wood
Overall: 1
Features: 4
Reliability: 1
Support: 1
I've never had so much trouble dealing with an ISP. Their tech support ALWAYS said there was nothing wrong with their systems. I wrote letters to their CEO & CTO, and never got a straight answer.
They don't do backups!
Date: February 14, 2003
Reviewer: Stephen O'Young
Reviewer site: http://realgamer.com.au
Overall: 1
Features: 4
Reliability: 1
Support: 1
I've been with these guys for nearly a year now (holdling two accounts) and have been tolerating their incompetence in silence. But early this week something happened that was absolutely inexcusable:
One of their hard drives failed so everything was wiped. Fine, I thought, they'd just restore it from a backup, no big deal. Well no. They then enlightened me to the fact that they DON'T MAKE BACKUPS. They provided a backup tool on the web and expected the customer to back up regularly! I pointed out that their web site stated that they DO do backups and the their response was that only their "new" sites were backed up!
Also, don't bother with their 99.99% uptime guarantee. They'd be lucky to get 90% on a good week and when you ask for your uptime refund they tell you the server has never been down!
Stay away from these guys. I am in the process of finding a host. As soon as I have finished setting the new one up I am giving CWI the flick.
SEE Comments
Date: April 3, 2003
Reviewer: Kabal
Reviewer site: http://kabal-net.com
Overall: 4
Features: 5
Reliability: 4
Support: 4
A great hosting service if you are looking to use JSP/Servlets on your site. Provides e-mail based support, but had most of my problems answered (and fixed) within 4hrs tops. About 95% uptime. I have used a few other hosting services which are cheaper, but don’t the quality of service CWI has provided me. Not to mention haven’t find a better one that provides private JVM and resin for its customers.
Good for personal stuff -- not production level though
Date: October 17, 2004
Reviewer: Jim Cook
(jimcook@bellsouth.net)
Overall: 3
Features: 5
Reliability: 3
Support: 3
I chose them for my personal site because I wanted tons of space and bandwidth for a cheap price. They provide that in spades. However, for the most part, they are not the most reliable service around. It seems like once a week I need to restart my servlet engine manually and it is getting a little frustrating. If you can live with this problem, then the bandwidth/space for the price is hard to beat. Great for non-critical sites. If you need production quality hosting, go with Kattare.
Worst ever
Date: February 3, 2005
Reviewer: R
(Murray)
Overall: 1
Features: 1
Reliability: 1
Support: 1
Thought they would improve over the years they were bad but seems they are even worse.
Rather not go into details but stay away.
You get what you pay for
Date: September 23, 2005
Reviewer: Justin
Overall: 1
Features: 1
Reliability: 2
Support: 1
CWI is pretty cheap but not all that great. Their support is so-so at best and they always close your support ticket before you get to respond back.. And any problem that occurs with your site is never caused by them -- ever!!
Justin
CWI Has Terrible Service
Date: November 22, 2005
Reviewer: Chloe Sowers
Reviewer site: http://www.oliveyou.net
Overall: 1
Features: 2
Reliability: 2
Support: 1
True, they do not provide refunds for downtime, even though it says so on their site. CWI often closes trouble tickets before they are actually fixed. The service is horrible. CWI suspended my account without notification. They didn't even bother to notify me, neither before suspension, nor after. They claimed excess server use, and too many connections. They tried to upsell me a $200/m package. This was even after I referred my friend's web site here and built her site with CWI Hosting. I suspect the motive was extortion. I would not refer anyone else here in the future. They did let me run the JVM with 'nice', and make code changes, but they still claimed excess server use. They didn't tell me the program they used to show process load, so I could not test for myself. I find the claim unbelievable, since there had been no code changes for 6 months, and all of a sudden, they claim there was a problem. I even showed them data to discredit their assertions. I even checked the access logs and found no spikes in usage.
features so-so, support so-so
Date: January 29, 2006
Reviewer: Joe
Overall: 3
Features: 4
Reliability: 2
Support: 2
I've been with this ISP for sometime now, and it reminds me of someone running their ISP from the basement. Now, their uptime and response has been fantastic, there are still some flaps. The spam prevention doesn't really work to well. You'll have to tag everything with a spam header, and force clients to delete the mail. The ideal solution would be to stop the email, rather than simply tag. The other posts were correct about closing tickets before resolving the issue. I know this happened to me at least once, however hasn't happened recently (fall'05, or '06)
Excellent performance and service
Date: March 30, 2006
Reviewer: Jon Batcheller
Reviewer site: http://www.mockcrest.com
Overall: 5
Features: 5
Reliability: 5
Support: 5
These guys must have really cleaned up their act since the earlier reviews, because their support has been top notch. I have made many requests with my 13 domains, mailman, jsp, servlets, etc, etc. and they have been on it. Performance very good. I have tried 4 others on this list, so far, these guys are it!
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