Perfect Free Web Hosting Perfect? Yeah, right

[Hamtaro 0]

Sometime last month, I tried a web host called Perfect Free Webhosting (before I decided to go with T17 again). They claim to have "instant activation," which it comes close. They also claim to have good features (never got to try them all). However, I wasn't even with them for two days, and somehow my site was deleted completely from their server. I went to their support forum, and noticed a topic about an experience similar to mine. It turns out, many members (moost of the people who post regularly there) are having this same problem. I check back on that forum a month later, and no moderator or admin has responded to the topic. Some people say that they emailed the admin about the problem, and still no reply. If you ask me, any moderator or admin that doesn't respond to something this big is up to something big. Also, the site has a lot of trouble with the FTP server (and it's hard to connect to it). This host is by far the worst I have ever seen, even with sites like GeoCities. Whatever you do, do not use this host, for whatever reason (even just for file storage of backup).

 

The site's URLs are:

http://www.perfectfreewebhosting.com/

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

I don't normally talk this bad about something, but I will not tolerate anything this ridiculous. (They even ask for quite a lot of information, like name, address, and some other info).

[rvovk 0]

Thats why we are at Xisto. It is the best free webhosting site and provider. With lot of things to do around, meeting other people and getting good free webhost. I tried lot of other, but not anyonee has become close to Xisto. This Opaques are great

[dontmaimyourself 0]

Well there you have it, proof (not that it was needed) of the excellent service that Opaque has set up here, and that he and the rest of the admin team and the moderators continue to uphold to a very high standard, I know I've never had any problems with Xisto (well, except the occasional downtime, but that was due to a server shift so I can forgive them ). Xisto is by far the best web host (and indeed the only forum I regularly visit, and probably the only forum I ever post in) I have used (and I've tried quite a few in the past) non of them offer the service and the features that trap 17 manages to offer so well. I have however not had the misfortune to try perfectfreewebhosting.com, and judging from your experience Hamtaro, I doubt I ever will, well maybe to see how bad it is for myself.

[Sprnknwn 0]

Well, before I get to Xisto I experienced something simillar with another hosting. It was free, wit only a text add in the site but it soon dissapeared. It beggined with total lack of support in the forums and finally the sites were deleted without any information.When we say how good is Xisto we are not saying it as fanatics. We are most users with previous experiences and we know that anybody offers this.perfect free...

[delivi 0]

I've tried nearly some 25 different free web hosting services, some provided hosting for free with ads and some were without ads. But as far as I've seen Xisto provides the best free web hosting service. I'm not saying this because I have my site hosted in Xisto, but I want others to know about the best things that are available online.No other free service provides us the features and addons as provided in Xisto. Moreover all the services that Xisto provides are not even available in many Paid hosting services.Xisto is clearly the leader in Free Webhosting. Xisto Rocks.

[Atthack 0]

Yeah if something's too good to be true, it's probably either

 

A: Not stable at all and will crash.

or

B: It'll drown by the massive ammounts of registrations and won't be able to keep up. (crash)

 

Problems with free hosting today is:

 

Most of them is as any other - Promise Big - Get Little. In the last years more "reseller hosts" than EVER has gone up and down during a few months, and this is really ANNOYING for us end-users who want nothing but a little space to host our sites.

 

That's why I chose Xisto in the end - Because I know I don't NEED all that "mumbo jumbo infinite FTP space" crap. Because I NEED a host that is stable and uptime can be as good as 99% (which is MAXIMUM, no matter what).

Xisto, you're already hearing this a lot but - THANK YOU :XD:

[Sprnknwn 0]

I've tried a lot of hostings before and while I'm here at Xisto (just because I needed another account and this was before qupis existed). I thought that if Xisto offered such a great service, there must be other good free hostings with at least half the quality. But I found that it's not true. You cannot find anything with php, a decent storage, stable, ftp and what is more important, some feedback. I was unable to find something similar even with ads! So nothing surprise me, no matter it's called perfecthosting, ultimatehosting, definitivehosting... lies, lies, lies. :XD:

Edited August 26, 2007 by Sprnknwn (see edit history)

[tigercat 0]

From what I have seen, most web hosts, who have perfect, best, or ultimate in them, are not really that great at all. I would say that this is especially true with free web hosts. They promise you the world and give you a penny. Many these best free web hosts are so terrible I find it better to not have a website at all. I am sure that there are some good free web hosts out there, which is one of the reasons I figured I would start posting here, but there are so many bad free web hosts that you have to be skeptical whenever you sign up at one.

[Forbez 0]

Got to be careful with host providers which promise free hosting, infact free anything. There is always a catch. Whether that be ads, or limited bandwidth and such. But at least with Xisto you know where you stand. You get the best free hosting as long as you continue to post. It's a fair deal which works perfectly.

[Spyda 0]

Wow it says 1gb of bandwidth per month, if you tell me this has to be one of the worst hosts possible, along with your complaints, and the lack of features. Thank Goodness for Xisto :XD:

[Atthack 0]

I can't find a SOURCE but I DID read that nowadays "Reseller Hosting" is appearing and disappearing more than ever.

With the easyness to get your own "RESELLED" account to sell hosting, it's really hard to say:

 

"Is this hosting with a REAL company, or simply a 15 year old kid signing up for reseller and acting like a huge company with 'too good to be true' offers and 'insanely low' prices?"

 

Yeah - You gotta ask yourself that!

So here's some hints:

 

1. Always test a host's support before joining them!

2. The truth to why many hosting plans are scams.

3. Be careful of hosts that force yearly payments!

4. Never purchase your domain name from your host.

5. A few tests you can run to check how good a host is.

6. Why hosting directories lie, and the truth to customer testimonials.

7. The truth to a hosts uptime and guarantees.

1: Do not join a host without testing out their support first. The best way to test out a host's support is calling in. You'll be surprised how many hosts with an 800 number never answer their phones, or have long hold times. E-mailing a hosting company or submitting a ticket to their sales department is not the way to test a host! Many of the companies have incredible response times when contacting their sales department, very few have good times when contacting support. After all they don't make money by supporting you. They only make money by selling to you.

 

2: If it sounds too good too be true it usually is! All hosts have the same basic limitations when it comes to server resources and specs. There is no magic server that has a never ending supply of RAM and CPU. If a host ever claims to give unlimited space or bandwidth DO NOT JOIN THEM. The thing to remember is that the average web site uses about 50 Megs space and less then 1 gig bandwidth a month. So what hosting companies do is they lie! They make up scam plans with tons of space and bandwidth for around $8 bucks a month. It's a numbers game... Only one or two of every 100 people that signup on the plan are going to use all the bandwidth advertised. So what do they do? They usually terminate the sites that use it saying "your site is using too many resources." They aren't lying about the resource usage. IT'S the truth! Most people don't realize that bandwidth and space used have nothing to do with the server resources being used. Resource usage has to do with the amount of CPU and RAM a site uses. If a site uses a lot of bandwidth they aren't kicked for using their bandwidth they are kicked for using up most of the servers cpu and ram. Another thing to remember is that the cheaper the plan is, and the more space / bandwidth included the more sites per server the host will have to pack in to make their money back. So the lesson here is don't shop for a host based on their plans! You should shop based on recommendations and experience!

 

3: Another thing you'll notice is that most of these incredible scam plans force you to pay for a year up front to get the good pricing. Why would a hosting company care if you pay monthly or yearly? After all if you're happy with them you're going to end up staying much longer than a year. Merchant fees aren't that much so why? It's because most have horrible support, slow servers, or even tons of downtime. If you were paying month to month you're not going to stick around, but if you paid for a year up front what are you going to do? You won't get your money back so you have no choice but to stay with them. ONLY PAY MONTHLY! We have one plan that requires a year payment up front (hatchling) Why? because most hosts advertise a low monthly fee if paid yearly and a much higher price if monthly. We still need to be competitive so we made one plan showing this option. We would however prefer you sign up for a monthly plan. Remember paying yearly to anyone is always a bad idea, but the choice is yours. We would do everything in our power to honor the year but anything can happen to anyone. The state of Texas where our servers are located could be wiped off the face of the earth. If this happened we would most likely be out of business instantly and have no way to honor your payment. All we're saying is no matter how good a company is anything can come up, and you could lose your upfront payment.

 

4:Do not join a host that includes a free domain name with their hosting package, and never purchase your domain name from a hosting provider, unless you are positive they will be putting your information in the WHOIS (We do, most don't). If your information isn't in the whois they could blackmail you into staying with them. For all technical purposes whoever has their information in the whois is the owner. A domain owner doesn't go by who paid for it; it goes by whose information is on the whois. To check a whois on the domain go there and type "domainname.com" and click submit. Whoever's address, email, and phone number shows up is the domain owner. We recommend purchasing a domain from https://www.namecheap.com/ or https://de.godaddy.com/ after you purchase the name all you would do is put your host's dns in and your domain name will then point to your hosting company.

 

5: Do a whois on their domain name. Then look for the creation date of the domain name. If the domain name was created less then a year ago it's more of a risk to join that hosting company. They could be a great host, but considering more then 95% of new hosts go out of business within a year that really isn't something you should be taking a chance on. It's too easy to become a hosting company. All someone has to do is join our reseller plan and they are now a host. Sure the hosting may be good, but that doesn't mean they are going to provide good support nor does it mean they are going to pay their hosting bill. We end up kicking resellers of ours all the time for not paying their bills (after many warnings) and in many cases their unsuspecting customers lose their site.

 

You could also test the speed of a host's network to your location by...

 

Clicking start > run > type in "command" enter, and then type "ping hostdomainname.com" wait for it to finish and look for the average ping. The lower the number the better, and chances are the faster your site will load if you should host with them. Any number around an 80 average would be good. Anything over 100 is very bad (unless you're living in another country from where the host is based.)

 

6: Don't believe anything you read on the hosting directories. They don't care who they recommend as they are all paid listings. The highest bidder gets the spot. What you should do to find reviews is search google using the company's name. If they have been around a year you should find many real reviews of people who use their hosting. Another good place to check would be the company's forum, but don't always believe what you see. If someone writes something bad in the forum most hosts will delete their post and ban the user...

 

7: If a hosting company claims 100% uptime they are lying. All servers need to be rebooted every now and then for security and software updates. If they never reboot that means their server is insecure and they will eventually be hacked.

 

When a company guarantees an uptime, that doesn't make it true. A host has as many uptimes as they have servers. It all depends on what server they put you on, and how well they manage it from the time you're put on it. We guarantee a 99.9 uptime but that does not mean we will hit it every month for eternity. Our guarantee means we give you a 100% refund for the month if we should not hit it. Many hosting companies will give you a prorated refund based on the amount of downtime. So say you pay $10 for a month of hosting and your site is down for 24 / hours. They will refund you for one day of downtime which ends up being about 33 cents. A guarantee is worthless! What is worth something is how they define the guarantee, and if they do in fact honor it.

 

^ Thanks to HostGator for the info ^

[jack2794 0]

Perfect freewebhosting is dreadul, they claim to be so "fantastic" but they are not! I am definetly glad that I am with Xisto.com. No other provider is half as good and I have tried quite a few.

[g3place 0]

Well why would you sign up to there in the first place. Space and bandwidth are low, not many features. I love Xisto because of PHP safe off, which is only available in pay for hosting websites. It looks pretty bad, even from the index. Its badly designed, and you can even see them being desperate to advertise another host.

[Forbez 0]

Not so perfect them. If they don't have a active staff, moderators and admins and such. Then there is no point joining it, this accounts fro EVERYTHING online. There is simply no point,y our not going to get any OFFICAL help from anyone so you always have to hope nothing goes wrong.I think they just used perfect hosting for a promotion reason. Get their name, or another companies name out their. Thats why after 2 days they deleted your account and lost ALL contact with you. That way you think you get something for free, but they take it from you but still did their purpose, to promote. Crafty plans which seems to work.I'm glad you stick with Xisto, they are a very good company for free webhosting. I'd like to see anyone find another company which is better.

[hitmanblood 0]

Firstly, I must say that I agree with other users here that Xisto is the best free web hosting around. And I spent a lot of time trying to find better but you just cannot Xisto is the best and it offeres more features that are better then the features which are provided by some paid hostings.Secondly, why the hell did you in the first place went from Xisto.And thirdly I tried to open web site but it seems like it times out so I cannot access it so much about perfect web hosting. This is my humble oppinion keep up the good work.