I have three of my own sites and several clients' sites on iPowerWeb. Most of this stuff is pretty straightforward, with PHP scripts providing certain header/footer functionality, etc. Some of the more complex stuff involves MySQL/PHP interaction. One site uses the native phpBB for a discussion forum. Nothing too radical.

The vast quantities of spam I get through their servers is incredible, even after I use nearly every spam killer in the world. When I tried to get an answer on whether other customers had reported a sudden surge in spam I got the runaround. They never told me one way or the other.

The phpBB forum on one site was getting blasted by 'bot entries, so I slicked it using phpMyAdmin and turned on administrator approval for all new memberships. No go. Two days after fixing up the user list it was filled with crap again. Huh?!? Server side malf, no other way.

The email seems to go up and down in the middle of the day for no apparent reason. A couple of my low-volume sites do the same thing. I wonder if they are playing with server load leveling or some such stupidity while I am trying to do my work?

iPowerWeb's service has fallen into the crapper over the last year or so. When they were small they could handle the issues pretty quickly and with reasonable technical awareness. Nowadays they have a bunch of newbies trying to provide tech support for issues that simply never came up a couple or three years ago.