Bransin Anderson

After 7 Years of Web Hosting

Hostica’s slogan on their website is, “10 years of 40,000 websites speak for themselves”. I’m one of those 40,000 and had the worst hosting experience imaginable. Far worst than GoDaddy and their crappy user friendliness. After 7 years of web hosting with Hostica, just recently I decided to call it quits with their service and move to Media Temple. I cannot tell you how much easier things have been since the switch and that I have had experienced a long and dark history with this Hostica company.

Around the year of 2003 my popular high school online discussion forum powered by phpBB was DoS attacked. Hostica reacted by giving me the boot with no explanation besides the fact that other clients on the same server were affected by this. As a client you would feel pretty confused in this kind of situation. Given the fact that they host you, your database and files. Hostica provided no backup of files or database. I lost everything. Every email I sent was avoided and they wanted nothing to do with me as a client. They never provided any evidence that a DoS attack did occur because of my domain and hosting plan. My argument is that web hosting companies on their part should plan for the unexpected no matter what their clients are running. Even if that platform has a potential security risk.

After a long stint, in 2006 I decided to give it another shot by renewing with the same hosting company for my personal domain. Years follow with people wanting me to build websites and are need of a hosting. I figured why not refer them to Hostica. Sure they dropped me in the past, but the thought I had at the time was that it’s no different than any other web hosting company. Man was I wrong.

After a few years or developing websites using Hostica’s service, never in my life have I ran into so many safe_mode quirks and permission workarounds. They now have overkill on security where you want to pull your hair out. Their knowledge base is terrible for answers, so majority of the time you need to contact customer support. Sure they are trying to protect their asses, but since the move to Media Temple and the way their servers are configured, web development is everything you would expect. You install any platform, set permissions and everything works like it should. Web hosting is a tricky business. Preparedness is key, and Hostica does overkill with security to where it’s a greater hassle for the client running any type of platform. You want to upload images and set permissions in Wordpress? Be prepared to find many quirks and brick wall security issues with these guys. There is more evidence of another Hostica customer not happy about the security and being dropped without notice here.

Here’s a perfect example of a support message I sent.

“ExpressionEngine’s support is trying to pinpoint the issues saying that this may be a mod_security issue. Do you guys run mod_security, and if so that rule is tripping on that request?”

Yes, mod_security is enabled by default. However, it has been disabled for the directory where the CMS has been installed. If any further issues are experienced, please contact us.

Do I need to contact Hostica for security permissions every time to get work done? Here is a written document titled “Hostica Spam Security Procedures” I was only able to find by Google when searching “Hostica Reviews”. Hostica never never publishes this information to newly hosted customers. After 7 years, this if my first time finding this document.

What made me finally call it quits was when I was developing the website your viewing now. The backend of ExpressionEngine was moving like a snail in server speed. Every typical website I visited was fine. I contacted customer support via email and this is the response.

It will be possible for us to migrate your Web sites to a newer server, which experiences less traffic. The process is entirely automated, and would not involve any Web site downtime. The process takes approximately 24 hours to complete. Do you wish for us to proceed?

So I pay for quality hosting, and you continue to keep me on an old server with a ton of traffic? Thanks for the heads up and making me wonder why. Funny how I get monthly email notifications from Media Temple about upgrades, security issues, and downtime but never heard a single peep from Hostica until I question what’s wrong.

Hostica’s prices are affordable, but beware of the many problems that go along with their hosting. Your website may dissipate into thin air without notice because of their own intuitions and suspicions.