Webhosting & Hosting Reviews

August Update:

As of August 2005, we have officially removed Globat from our Top 10 list. This is due to the high volume of complaints we received in the past few months. Compiled below are some of the complaints we received. Globat used to be a very good host but their service has gone downhill. And we hope that they will look at it seriously and rise again one day.

My company recently switched over to Globat In June, 2005. Unequivocally, I can say it’s the worst business decision we’ve made in the last 5 years. We’ve gone from a relatively unknown provider (with little hosting space) that was problem free, to Globat.

Globat provides much more hosting space, but what good is it if it’s never available and their email service is nonfunctional. In two-and-a-half months with Globat, my email has been down, or not fully functional approximately 50% of the time. Calls and inquiries to their technical help departments go unanswered, or lead to long hold times on the phone. On two separate calls, I was put on hold for 2 hours the first time, and an hour-and-a-half the second time.

This is definitely a company that does not stand behind their promises. DO NOT sign up with this company! Their home page uses a flying pig to represent some of their promotional claims. All I can say is it’ll be until pigs fly that I would ever recommend the services of this company.

David Coleman
www.imagine-creative.com
08 Aug 2005

Wow, I never knew hosting could be so bad! I’ve had problems with Globat since day one. My site has been down numerous times. In fact its down right now and has been down for the past 4 days and they still haven’t done anything about it. Customer service is one of the worst I have ever encountered. I call, leave messages, emails and when I do get a response its almost always after a wait of over a week. They truly are an unacceptable web host. If my site was commercial, I’d have lost a lot of money by now.

Dan Sandland
undergroundjungle.com
16 Aug 2005

I have had a lot of problems trying to login and edit my http://www.atokon.net website. While I do not actually have a website there I have been using it as a holder for my JPGs for my Livejorunal blog for the last 18 months and no problem. Now I can’t log in as they no longer recognize my login and password. I have tried the online help file and get no connection with human anymore. I filed a problem ticket and got a automated response. I googled for problems and found your problems and I must concur exactly with the complaints listed. I may have to abandon my domain If I cant get it transferred.

RKC
www.atokon.net
08 Aug 2005

These guys are truly incompetent. Tickets get answered by what is in the “subject line”, if they are answered at all. Which is about every 7 days. They don’t even read what you write in them. So don’t even waste your time… A pack of trained monkeys could do a better job supporting your issues then these fruitcups.

MySQL is so slow, you’d think the web host was hosting 869 websites on the each server, Oh wait.. THEY ARE! *shocked*

E-mail is down 50% of the time. And as of 7 days ago they totally broke my website with there supposed e-mail “upgrade”. These screwball rookies broke the standard PHP mail function and have the nerve to tell me to re-upload my files and try my script again. You got to be kidding me, right? Nope.. they aren’t! Unbelievable! It was working for the last year with you guys and YOU broke it! *sigh*

These guys need to be removed OFF of every web hosting top 10 list there is. Because its complete bullshit. These guys are on the top 10 worst web hosts in my opinion and several other individuals as I’m starting to find out.

DO NOT FALL FOR THE 1.99 a month hosting! Its complete garbage. I’m moving our site this week I cant take it anymore. Were trying to run a business here. Not some play school “my first web host” crap that cant even hire people in our own country to work for them and take care of customers the proper way.

Globat gets the flying finger from me!

You have been warned.

J. Cosgrove
www.dubfx.com
06 Aug 2005

I’m glad I’m not the only one having problems with them. I use them as a host mostly for scans for a chat board I run. Over the past year and a half, they have been down for a day here and there, although a few months ago it was for five days! I almost pulled the plug then, but I had just renewed.

As I write this, my web space has been down for three days, with (of course) no response to the trouble ticket I sent. I finally decided today, even though it will cost me 4 months that I’ve already paid for, to cancel. I’m sure that will take forever as well.

At the time I set up my account with them I didn’t know how important it was to have your domain name separate and hosted with a reputable company, if I could just get them to unlock it, then it would be a simple matter to transfer it to anywhere I wish. I actually tried to do that a couple of months ago, and after numerous emails with tech support, they told me my only option was to cancel. (good idea, thanks…)

Don’t, repeat DON’T use Globat!

05 Aug 2005

I have been hosted through Globat for almost 2 years now on several websites. This past year has been horrific. Constant downtime, lack of support, and no answers to my questions has forced me to find a new host. I have had several instances when my website has been down for over a week at a time. This past week it has been down for 48 hours and counting. I just debuted a massive update to my website, as well as the information about our church’s yearly convention in September, and the website is completely down.

Unfortunately I am fed up with Globat. It is apparent that they are trying to hide their horrible service with cheap prices. However the gig is up, and I’m jumping ship before the Titanic goes under.

Dan
www.maklink.com
05 Aug 2005

We took some Globat accounts with plans to switch our publications over from apollohosting, which worked well enough, but cost more.

First we couldn’t get an IP address to FTP too. They don’t work that way.

Then we had to contact tech support several times, which is a real ordeal, to find out how to access the MySql through MySqlAdmin, though we really wanted to use DBAcentral. Only MySqlAdmin works though, so we had to do much more work directly in SQL commands to upload our content.

Chat support took nearly half an hour to respond on several occasions, and generally wound up pointing out that whatever we wanted to do, being only stuff we’d done on our current host, couldn’t be done here.

Finally, when we got it all working, the load times for our publications turned out to be on the order of 20 seconds or more as compared to a second or less (really) for apollohosting.

I’m still in the 30 refund period, and it’s pretty unlikely at this point that we’ll go ahead with the switch.

Ernest Lilley
Editor - TechRevu
01 Aug 2005

Add one more complaint to your list. I was working in FrontPage one night when the program aborted, leaving the services.lck and frontpg.lck files up on my site. I started a chat session with a tech to get the files removed (for some reason their admins have locked the _vti directories from user access.) When I asked the tech to remove the files, he condescendingly informed me that _vti folders were part of the FrontPage Extensions.

Reader’s Digest Condensed Version: the techs have been sitting on a trouble ticket about this for six days now. I tried contacting one of their Marketing people but the address I had was for one of their ticketing systems for billing, which I’m sure will be put in the “pending” files. If you can get this info over to their CEO, I’d sure appreciate it. I’ve been with them for two years, but I’m seriously considering another provider.

One piece of advice for Globat: put an email to someone in charge on the home page instead of email addresses to ticket bots - otherwise it looks like you’re hiding from your customers.

Tony Cheek,
Galleons.org
20 Jul 2005

Domain address is schurchofchristsermon.com I have tried to get resolutions to no avail! I had a professional try to upload a file for me today since I keep getting cut off! He said the error should not come up as such. He said his DSl is 100MPBS and the cut off was not due to time outs. He got 181Mb of data uploaded and got the error 452 Transfer aborted. No space left on device. He said this is totally unacceptable because I pay for 5GB of space which should be more than sufficient! He said it is a problem with Globat’s servers! Please help! They seem to not be any at Globat!

schurchofchristsermon.com
18 Jul 2005

My old registrar (globat.com) charged my CC for a domain (overzone.net) that I transferred to GoDaddy several months ago. They never bothered to even answer my emails.

I canceled my annual hosting package, but seeing how they behave, I’m certain they’re going to try to charge me again for their hosting service. Seems like they’re trying to squeeze money out of anyone who ever did the mistake of dealing with them.

I’m very angry, these people kept spamming me over and over, even thought I transferred my domain to GoDaddy.

I’d be grateful if you can help me sort out this issue.

AG.
overzone.net
18 Jul 2005

The domain is www.eosclan.com it’s an online gaming community that me and a few friends started up. You can check out the site and see for yourself the service issue. Their SQL servers are horrid, we’ve been complaining to them for months about the lag, and it’s becoming unbearable. One minute its flying, the next it’s like a flashback to 28.8. At first it was the entire site, we complained and they did something that fixed the html side… but the SQL part hasn’t improved at all.

They’ve stopped replying to our support tickets (probably cause I was submitting them twice a week since they’d reply saying the issue was resolved telling me to resubmit again when the problem comes back up) They claimed to be working on the problem in one response, but I never heard anything back after replying to it.

Another time I needed help from them I was actually on hold waiting for a support representative for over 2.5 hours one night… oh, I forgot to mention, they contract out overseas for support at night… so it was VERY difficult to communicate with the representative. Accents were very thick, and hard to understand… not to mention the representative knew nothing about service and how to support it. The list goes on. I have it all documented somewhere around here…. but rather than talk your ear off here.

Mark Lustgarten
www.eosclan.com
29 July 2005

Visitors to my site were not allowed to view some of its pages. It was random. Some times you could pull a page up and sometimes you were given a “You are not authorized to view this page” message.

For a full day I could not get in touch with Globat Customer Service in any way (chat room, telephone, service ticket). By the second day I found the warning message on your website that you were no longer recommending them and knew that this was a big problem. I was finally sent a generic e-mail from Globat in response to my e-mails that said :

“We have informed our IT department concerning the intermittent service with email, FTP, Globat Command Console, stats, slow up/down loading and read-only servers. We have staff working on a resolution, we are positive that results will be forthcoming promptly.”

By the end of the second day customers were calling me to say that it was impossible to place an order on my site. I am currently in the process of transferring back to FatCow whose service is moderately OK but at least they answer their phones.

I would really like to know what happened at Globat. They never attempted to use their website to pass on information about the problem. They just left me wondering if everyone had left the building.

Pat Johns
www.patjohnsbooks.com
28 Jul 2005

Our website fairygothmother.co.uk has an opt-in/opt-out newsletter/mailing list feature. Globat in their wisdom, have taken a complaint from someone that we are spamming. I raised a support ticket about this and was told if I complete a Bulk emailing Exemption form and fax it back to Globat then the restriction would be raised as the form would have proof we have an opt-in/out policy.

At first, I emailed the form back as my location does not have a fax, we use email for communication. Then when this got us nowhere, no response, I faxed. I have now chased 4 times, talked to the Live Chat support but nothing. This issue started on the 1st July.

Globat’s support response is rarely good, but on this issue it is non-existent. We are a customer genuinely and totally opposed to spamming, wanting to email our opted-in customers about some great savings (JUST LIKE GLOBAT HAVE BEEN DOING FOR PAST FEW WEEKS AND I DON’T REMEMBER OPTING IN TO MARKETING EMAILS FROM THEM!!!)

For what it’s worth, I honestly could not recommend GLOBAT Hosting to anyone outside the US. Phone calls are just queued, and you sit on the line for hours waiting for a response (expensive from abroad), email support tickets are automatically responded to with minutes and then nothing. I have raised many tickets over the past two years and I could honestly say that no more than 10% get a response without me chasing!

They may be good value hosting, but are expensive when you take into account the amount of time lost in chasing support.

John
fairygothmother.co.uk
13 Jul 2005

I have been with the company for over a month now. when I called the sales department to set up service, I was told that average download speeds are between 80k-120k.

I have NEVER been able to get over 40k, I have tried at all times of the day, and from at least 5 different networks.

I called the support department and talked to Cindy who told me, “that’s just the way it is”

I then called the sales department again and spoke with Brian who told me that it was 100mbit download! 100mbit!

I can not get any help from this company, but I feel I was given the old “bait and switch” scam. Before I file a complaint with the BBB, I thought I would try this.

Thanks

below is a transcript of a chat I had with Brian.

Chat Information Please wait for a site operator to respond.
Chat Information You are now chatting with ‘Jimmy’
Jimmy: Welcome to globat saleschat!
Jimmy: How can I help you today?
tim: I am trying to clear up a sales/support issue. what is the download speed that I can get from your servers?
Chat Information Please wait while I transfer the chat to ‘Brian’.
Chat Information You are not currently in a chat session.
Chat Information You are now chatting with ‘Brian’
tim: brian, you told me that I could download files from my website at 100mbits is this still your position?
Brian: 100 megabits per second
tim: so, from your position, if I am only gettint AT MOST 40k download 24/7 then there is a problem
tim: because your support department, states that 40k is standard
Brian: 100 megabits is this sufficient for you
Brian: if they say that…you can rely on that
tim: no, I’m trying to find out where the break down in communication is. you say 100megabits, the sales person who sold me the service stated 80-120K, and support states 40K
tim: I wasn’t sold 40K I was sold 80-120K is this a bait and switch scam?
tim: so your stating that you are incorrect?
Brian: 100 megabits= given to me by tech agents when you called me
Brian: if you wish…go back to support and advise them what i offered you
tim: I have, and they state, that the sales dep doesn’t quote speeds
Brian: i got suggestion
Brian: as a customer…contact quality assurance….
Brian: Art extension 237 or Luis 229
tim: can you provide the phone number those extensions belong to
Brian: 1877.2456228
tim: thank you, I will keep a copy of this chat for record.
Brian: your welcome….
Brian: Any time….My Pleasure!
Chat Information Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.

Tim
13 Jul 2005

I purchased the Globat site for the Lord’s Church, for uploading sermons to be freely viewed by web onlookers! I can not get a Divx 39mb sermon loaded before it cuts me off! Much less with all that web space and transfer space, I was hoping to upload good quality sermons with 221Mb of space! Needless to say; so far this site is useless at the Churches expense! My domain is schurchofchristsermon.com and my e-mail is . Please help or send this to Ben! Thank you!

Whitley
schurchofchristsermon.com
12 Jul 2005

I have been using Globat for over a year and I have found their hosting service has gone downhill fast. The wait time to get to one’s email is averaging over a minute and I have cable access not dialup. Their customer service department sucks.

I wanted to downgrade my service and have not been able to get in touch with a person. The woman I emailed, emailed me back and told me I can pay my bill by changing my credit card number in their system. I have stopped paying for their service and am currently looking into other services. Oh they were also nice enough to put a marker up on my site that I haven’t paid my bill. I have never had this with another service.

It is impossible to reach their billing department. You get a recording that says leave a message and someone will get back to you, only they don’t. I think you should do another review of this company, because they are by far the worst I have to deal with. As I also manage other sites for various businesses, I am speaking from experience. BTW I am using a generic email, because it takes too long to access my Globat mail. Which is Thanks for listening

Rose Dreiss
www.pix-li.com
23 Jun 2005

I have been trying for weeks to get my rebate status resolved and keep receiving, “We will call you back” responses.

My domain name is practicalbudgeting.com and receipt number is RD10055961.

This was purchased on April 25th.

Thanks for your help!

David
practicalbudgeting.com
10 Jun 2005

How in the world can you recommend these people. They are terrible! My site and email have been down all the time. I’m trying to run a small business but as soon as I start working with a customer - boom we’re down again. ZERO response from customer support:

I’ve been having trouble for months with the website and pops going down. I send customers to help pages and nothing! Standard response has been “must be a problem on your end”

Now it is “we are working on it but but don’t know what the problem is or resolution or time”.

Killing Me!

Mark Zeck
zecksystems.com
07 Jun 2005

Hi, I see you rate Globat as being one of the top 10 web hosts. Between my own account (ocean-dating.com) and clients accounts, we have about 25 hosting plans with Globat. I recently installed new software for my dating site, only to find that Globat doesn’t allow cron jobs and I now have over 200 emails backed up in the system.

I contacted Globat immediately and arranged to have my domain moved to a new host, Globat assured me that the transition would be complete within 24 - 48 hours. When the 48 hours had passed, I checked with Whois and the domain still hadn’t been transferred, I contacted Globat by email on 5 subsequent occasions and they didn’t reply so I decided to use their live chat facility. Admittedly, their support staff were as helpful as they could be, but they told me that the matter hadn’t been addressed and that at the very earliest, it would be looked into after the weekend.

Is this the way a top level company is supposed to conduct itself? I signed up for my hosting with them on a weekend and there was no problem setting up the DNS then, so why would there be a problem now?

I suggest that people should find out exactly what they are getting when they sign up for hosting with Globat and in particular, they should read Globat’s user agreement, as it basically absolves them of any and all responsibility towards their clients.

When I signed up with Globat, they advertised their servers as having 99.9% uptime, this wasn’t the case, within the first few weeks, their servers were down on at least 4 occasions and have been down on numerous occasions since, but if after the initial 30 day period, you realize as I did, that their servers are overloaded, slow and frequently down, you will discover that you have no recourse, in fact, if you then decide to move your hosting to a new company, Globat state that they will charge you $150 to do so and hold you in breach of contract.

I think people should be aware of this prior to signing up with Globat and needless to say, when my own and my clients accounts with them have expired, we will be moving to a less unscrupulous hosting company.

Regards
James Mulheir
A very annoyed Globat customer
ocean-dating.com
04 Jun 2005

For monitoring the users/traffic I need either log files or the “Authenticated users” feature on the AWSTATS software.

I can not monitor the users of a protected area right now and log files are not available. The support on this subject is zero.

Why is Globat on your list of the top ten?

Thank you

Eckhard Stauss,
02 Jun 2005

I have contacted Globat at least 5 times about why my website is not up. It takes them forever to email me back and the phone goes to a message or is busy. I am totally not impressed. Its been over a month. I want someone from the main office to contact me. My domain name is eightmillionstories.com.

Brent Marley
eightmillionstories.com
24 May 2005

Today is the 7th day I have not received any email. I filed 2 support tickets (1 of which was finally answered today - 5 days later), and the message didn’t tell me anything about if when I might see these emails again. I have called the support number numerous times, and each day I’m simply told it will be soon. I even tried the Live Chat option, and was only told they are sorry, but are working on the problem.

I have been with Globat less than a month, and no email for 7 of those days. The business I am losing is terrifying. I am stunned by their poor customer service. At this point I am researching a new host provider, but would like to retrieve my emails from the last week first.

Lori Gordon Auffhammer.
www.lorigordon.com
20 May 2005

Well, my email has been down for.. what is this…day 6, now. My website was up and down for 3 days.

I spoke to the quality assurance manager, Mike Reno, who promised resolution by Tuesday (5/17). He also promised to call me back to follow up on Tuesday. I’ve yet to hear from him, despite several polite messages left on his voicemail.

BTW, you should read the Globat user agreement. It leaves no recourse for customers experiencing the kind of problems I’ve faced this week.

You might want to let him know that his promises are some what empty, in my experience.

Cheap web hosting…wow. I’ve already paid full price in lost email and website downtime.

Thanks so much.

John Majhor,
Charleston, SC
majhor.com
19 May 2005

My company is with Globat. We are:
www.1stavemachine.com

My Globat email has been down for 4 days! And my business is losing money because of it. Every time I call they say they are working on it but they don’t have an ETA. This is outrageous. Just imagine a phone company having a 4-day service outage!

Please help!!

Best wishes,
Serge Patzak
www.1stavemachine.com
18 May 2005

I respect your reviews about web hosting and actually have 3 accounts with Globat that I subscribed to over the past 60 days. With such great recommendations I thought how could I go wrong. Well, I think I did! If you guys have a direct connection to Ben, I suggest he get involved in the company.

I have had several down time incidents, problems with ftp, and did I mention terrible customer service. In a company I assume is relatively large, it is quite disturbing to me to call tech support and get the same inept person every time. In addition, when I call the sales department I get the same guy…that sounds like a very small company to me. I really don’t have an issue with small responsive companies, but those that do not take customer service seriously, should issue refunds and get out of the business.

Thanks,

Lenny Abbott,CEO
CastleShield.com
06 May 2005

Globat has been horrible. I have had nothing but problems with them, and they have not shown the least effort to get my problems resolved. NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS AND LACK OF RESPONSE FOR MONTHS NOW!

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND ANYONE TO GO ANYWHERE ELSE!

Finally I am going to leave, even though they will not refund my money despite all my problems. Today, a bug in their system caused me to lose ALL of my emails stored on the server (webmail) when their Webmail system was the only reason I switched to them. I was told someone would call me about the problem, but no one did. 8 hour later, I called again and was told that this was a known bug they were working on (?!?!??!) and there was nothing they could do.

03 May 2005

I got rid of them like the plague. Of course it was after the 30 day money back guarantee so no money back for me! My loss entirely. The site suffered, the users were frustrated, and my nerves were rattled. Constant down time, and when the site was up, it was terribly slow… 30 to 60 seconds for a single page to load was very common.

Steve Hopkins
www.buggynews.com
28 Jul 2005

Globat is having many many problems with their email service. Often the email is out or extremely sluggish or even out for 12+ hours straight.

I just changed from my previous provider and am sorry I did. It has cost me money and time due to inability to access my emails!!

Kevin
studiobert.com
28 Jul 2005

There are two main things: They can not provide log file downloads as agreed on sign up and there has been several server downtimes. I canceled all Globat accounts I had so I don’t know if the server problems remained but there is still the log file problem.

Eckhard Stauss
28 July 2005

This was taken from: http://www.10-cheapwebhosting.com/hosts/Globat.php