PowWeb Reviews
PowWeb : PowWeb Reviews : Reactive, not Proactive problem solving
Aug 24, 2003 by Gaim (n/a)
Webhost can reply
to this review here While their "uptime" may be close to the 99.7% that they claim, this does not take into account the incredible number of very slow server times.
And when their server grinds to a virtual halt, they never have any record of it, will not confirm it. So you're told that nothing is wrong and to stop bothering them.
Forget running a message board on PowWeb. They offer the MySQL database free with hosting. But contrary to massive amounts of confirmation, they continue to run MySQL version 4, which is well known to constantly corrupt tables. While the better web hosts have reverted back to MySQL version 3 (far more stable) until the problem is solved, PowWeb doesn't want anyone bothering them about it.
And if stable, effective email is of any concern, PowWeb will most certainly become the bane of your site's existance. In the 1.5 years I've had multiple sites hosted there, the email system has NEVER worked in even the most rudimentary fasion. Forget sending email reponses, as they never reach the recipients.
PowWeb is cheap at only $7.77 per month. You get 650Mb of storage space and 45Gb of bandwidth.
PowWeb's public forums for members seem like a great and helpful way to get quick responses to questions or problems ??
Think again.
The staff which operates on the forums are NOT the support staff of PowWeb. In short, this means that those on the forums can only guess that problems are truly being looked into.
But you get even less than what you pay for at PowWeb.
1. email never works properly
2. email spam filtering is weak and they openly refuse to improve it.
3. 200+ Mb mandatory log files on your site.
4. MySQL is a dead fish]
5. message boards can't work properly.
6. Often rude, snide and overly simplistic responses from the staff.
7. 99.7% of the time, it's all YOUR fault that an operational problem exists, NOT PowWeb's.
Bottom line...
Unless you are a truly advanced WebMaster who can somehow circumvent the great myriad of problems at PowWeb, you'd be wise to spend just a little bit more money on a web host that actually works for you.