Just registered a new domain name to philhosting.net 2 days ago. I have not started yet but was confused, The server is down???! I think it’s better to look for another webhost to avoid headaches in the future. Better safe than sorry.

Other comments:

yatot: September 15th, 2007 at 11:27 am
tsk tsk tsk… you’ve named it already! cheers to you! *sipping wine*

P.I.N.O.Y.U.N.I.T.E.D:September 16th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
sorry to hear this mate. the only solution is to move to another hosting. the cheapest is not always the best.

Allen: September 16th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
The only thing that keeps me from leaving completely is that I still have 4 months left in the 6months that I paid for. haha

benj: September 18th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Down din website ko for 3 days. Tsk. Same host.

What users say about Philhosting.Net Philippine Web Services:

by Adrian Lucas of baliwagtransit.net on 24 Nov 2007:
" server is down! fuc*ker! worst web host i ever encountered! ,,!,, 8====

Subject: An Rotten company
  - by denny Chavez of www.filipina-dream.com on 23 Nov 2007:
" I have never in my life seen an company that wourse
as philhosting,no 24 / 7,no real data or bandwidth they are just a bunch of thiefs.
And incompetent lazy service what react after day`s and day`s.
Do Net spend your time or money to this useless hosting company "

Subject: philhosting sucks!
  - by philhosting client of lupus.ph on 06 Jul 2007:

" 1. my first two weeks was worst! 50% downtime.
2. they change permissions of my files/folders without asking or informing me.
3. no 24/7 support
4. even at office hours, no one’s answering. it seems there is only 1 or 2 staff there.
5. my queries arent answered, needs constant followup.
5. they are hard to contact. they say they are moving to a new office. they dont publish their tel# anymore.
if you’re looking for a hosting, this is the worst! "

Subject: Philhosting Sucks
  - by reah bunsoy of reah.info on 07 Jun 2007:
" Poor Hosting And Customer Service. Do Not Dare Try This Company.Poor Hosting And Customer Service. Do Not Dare Try This Company.Poor Hosting And Customer Service. Do Not Dare Try This Company.Poor Hosting And Customer Service. Do Not Dare Try This Company.Poor Hosting And Customer Service. Do Not Dare Try This Company.Poor Hosting And Customer Service. Do Not Dare Try This Company. "

Philhosting.net … *headaches* Dec 7, ‘07 8:07 PM

The server is down again (well what do you know?). I opened a ticket and received their auto-email asking me to wait 24 hours for a reply.

Just to follow up on it, I am currently trying to call them today, and it keeps ringing with no one answering. Just when I thought that no one was in the office, the line became busy. And then after a few minutes, it was ringing again. So here I am, still trying to contact them. (EDIT: now the line is "not accessible at the moment". Patience, patience.)

Sometimes, you do get value for your money. And I currently have the cheapest package from the cheapest hosting in the Philippines. What was I expecting?

Oh well, I have to cheer up, Angel’s birthday party is coming up!

I Learned Some Valuable Lessons May 28th, 2007 - 2:59 am

I moved my hosting from dotster.com (while still leaving them in charge of the domain name) when I moved my blog to philhosting.net. Philhosting.net had "email only" customer service and support. That would have been fine if they actually answered their email. I finally received a response when I accused them of not being able to read English. The support person then accused me of deleting their responses or not checking my spam folders. Ahem. I’m very observant and never received anything, even as spam, or I wouldn’t have been complaining. There was nothing but praise in the testimonials on their website. Who did they pay to write them? That was my first lesson. I have since moved the hosting to hostnine.com and have had zero incidents since starting with them. They answer online chat quickly and support emails fast — even on this holiday weekend.

Re: Philhosting.Net - a newbie’s horror story

Let me just say something about these guys: Bad customer support. They’re not the worst, but they’re not very good either.

I tried the P30 a month plan initially and was going good. Then, I upgraded my plan two times within a short span of time due to the increasing traffic that my site was getting. That’s when the trouble started happening.

During that transitory period I was updating ESD heavily - 5 times a week. Now, involved in these upgrades was moving my account - account info, content (databases, files, etc.) - to different servers (as different plans mean different servers). It gets mucky here.

During the first few days of the transition from the basic account to the higher accounts, I still kept on updating daily. This basically meant that when I updated and they moved my account, I lost one day of updates (since their site backups are one day old). Being very new (and thus very clueless) to paid webhosting (as I was used to Geocities, Tripod, etc.), I had no idea just what was going on. So I panicked naturally, and emailed tech support to try and know what was going on.

They did not give me a clear explanation that would make it clear what was happening. They could have told me that "this is expected, since we’re moving your account to another server, you should perhaps refrain from updating during so-and-so days to avoid data loss". Unfortunately, this was not the case. Customer Support was inept enough to omit this useful bit of information that would have prevented me from further updating and thus bringing further frustrating myself, since I did not understand what was involved in the process.

You could say it’s my fault for not knowing - partly, maybe - but the fact that this repeated itself more than once and CS failed to at least try to explain what I should and should not do/expect says a lot about them. Good customer support should do more than just write "don’t worry sir, we’ll fix it for you". They should consider the not only the technical problem at face value, but also the customer’s situation and give the appropriate and useful response. They didn’t do that.

In short I lost close to about a week’s worth of data (including a laborous site overhaul), and I wasn’t happy with their customer support. So I switched to bluehost, a US-based webhost that’s gotten awards for customer support (and more). And upon calculation, their basic account gave me more bang for my back than some of the higher-tier hosting options PhilHosting gave me. I made the switch, I couldn’t have been happier… for a few more months. Than Philhosting came back to bite me in my newbie ***.

When I switched, I failed to cancel my account, as per the Philhosting license agreement. Fair enough, my bad. So they continued to charge me every month even though no bandwidth at all was consumed, and they didn’t even bother to email me "sir, we find it anomalous that you’re not consuming any bandwidth and that you have redirected your URL to a different nameserver. Have you moved? Should we cancel your account so that you won’t be kept being charged for nothing?". Granted, they’re obviously not legally obligated to do that, but it would have been very much appreciated if they did so. It became very apparent that **** would hit the fan as soon as I recieved a billing statement a few months later.

While I was happily coding away in my new host, Philhosting sent me a billing statement for a few months where I had not consumed any bandwidth. So I sent them an email saying that I wanted to cancel my account. When I did, they hijacked my domain name and told me until I paid them for the said months, I wouldn’t be able to use it. Even though I didn’t use any bandwidth from them.

According to their license agreement when I signed up for their hosting package, there was no provision included there that would let them legally hijack my domain and use it as a hostage should there be some problems with an account. So it would have been illegal under the old Terms of Service.

But they also had a provision that would let them change the TOS anytime and anyway they see fit. So they changed the TOS, and during the time I had this problem with them, they could legally screw me over like they did until I couged up the dough.

Very sneaky, eh? And apparently (recently) very legal too.

In short, I paid up just to end the ordeal and didn’t try to fight the moral injustice I was experiencing anymore, because I couldn’t - thanks to the new TOS (I actually had a lawyer friend of mine examine the Old TOS which Philhosting sent me when I applied for the account and then the new TOS which was silently changed and posted on their website). Very suspiciously changed at quite a convenient time, I must add.

After that I dove into bluehost’s knowledge base to read up on relevant material and hope to fully secure everything critical to my site’s function.

I know enough now not to make a fool of myself and not to get screwed over again.

Cheap prices can only keep a customer in for so long. I’d rather pay more for a host that really takes care of the customer and doesn’t act like a cold, corporate entity. I will take good customer service over cheap prices anytime.

I’m not saying these are bad guys, but they aren’t good. Sure, they host big philippine companies. But what about the little guys like us? Go with a US-based webhost. Better bang for the buck, and their basic hosting already kicks way more *** than most of Philhosting’s basic to higher-tier hosting packages.
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"Without struggle, there is no progress." - Frederick Douglass (1818 - 1895)