I decided to write a little mini-review updating my experience so far with HostiCan. As I wrote 29 days ago, I switched from Siteocity to HostiCan because I wanted to use ActiveCollab. I was also having some issues with Siteocity’s uptime—it seemed I was down at least twice a month and I just can’t have that being a freelance web designer. I had mentioned they have a feature called “SwitchNow” that transfers your site from one host to another and it worked flawlessly.
One of the many complaints I see when it comes to hosting providers is their lack of customer support. Well, I’m going to give HostiCan a 100 out of 100 on this one. Everytime I’ve needed to speak with their support staff they’ve always been quick to respond, whether it be email or telephone, and extremely pleasant. These folks are just nice and know what they’re doing. I was having an .htaccess issue and the gentleman that helped me ferretted out the problem within 5 emails in a matter of a half-hour. In my experience, you can’t ask for much more.
I’ve experienced one moment of downtime since being with them and it lasted all of 3 minutes. I’d say not bad considering that most downtime lasts much longer with other hosts I’ve had. I thought I was having another moment of downtime prior to that but my cats had actually put my modem on standby, so that was a false alarm. I haven’t had the pleasure (or displeasure, however you want to look at it) of having been dugg, so I can’t speak about their capacity for that experience. Though I did have a day where I had a comment that generated a lot of traffic (for my site anyway) and it held up just fine.
As far as speed goes, I’ve actually experienced better speed with my site since switching hosts and I couldn’t be happier about that. There’s nothing I hate more than having slow load time of a page that isn’t that large and I experienced that quite a bit with Siteocity.
I know 29 days isn’t much to go on and I’m sure I’ll be posting something again in the future when I’ve had more experience with HostiCan but for the time being I feel I’ve made a good decision and recommend them at this point to anyone looking for a host. I also feel good about the fact that I’m supporting a business within my community (well, sort of, they’re located about 60 miles away from me). So if you’re looking for a decent host with good customer service, check out HostiCan.
My name’s Jen; I’m a cynical, sarcastic, ex-drummer who is fond of dark humor. I've held way too many factory & retail jobs but finally found my calling one Christmas holiday in a dark, musty basement. I am now a CSS & XHTML web standards looney and can be found daily—when I’m not at my Mac—at the local fair-trade coffee shop buying an iced-soy mocha no matter the temperature.
I am also the owner of Pop Stalin Design specializing in CSS & XHTML web design as well as custom WordPress themes.
I was with them for 2 weeks. Then my site started getting plagued by resource errors. The support staff ignored my support tickets. Live-support chat was stuck on “Your chat session will start shortly.”.
HostICan is fine if you have no problems. But if you do, you’re stuck.
Fortunately I was still within my 30-day refund term; after two more weeks of frustration, I left. But there were literally dozens of people on their support forums complaining about the same issue, and they weren’t as lucky. They couldn’t get their money back.
My experience with HostICan has been very unsatisfactory. I’d say BBB’s assessment of them is quite accurate.
I’m not Gene but these things have been filed with the BBB. However, that said, I’ve been with HostICan for a year now and have had absolutely no problems. None, zip, zilch, nada.
@Gene:
That BBB page does look convincing.
“Reliability Report for HostICan
BBB Accreditation was revoked on 9/19/2007″
“Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau due to an unanswered complaint and an unresolved complaint.”
Are you saying this information is incorrect?
FYI: “Paul” or Dennis (his real name, evidently) has been spamming the Internet for days with the same false complaint (and when you catch him he denies it).
He even spammed HostICan’s own message boards with about 10 copies of the very same thing.
It’s unfortunate that some embittered people have nothing better to do than trash a company without reason.
My friends at HostICan provide first-rate service, with terrific performance and uptime. That’s the way it really is!
Peace,
Gene
Paul:
I can’t say I’ve had your experience. This is probably the best hosting experience I’ve had. The one call to customer service I had to make was answered quickly and my issue was resolved under an hour. I’ve also used their email support and had the same experience.
Just because someone is a reseller of hosting services shouldn’t be held against them either.