Valueweb Hosting Review

Unfortunately it isn't always fun to deal with hosting companies. 90% of the time we have no problems, it's the other 10% of the time that can eat hours upon hours of our time. Valueweb happens to have made this list and is thus the subject of this unflattering review.

Our client needed a Windows-based hosting solution (yes I know but that isn't the point). We were asked to find a suitable host that could, for a variety of reasons including their SSL certificate, deal with a 301 redirect from the non-www of their domain to the www. Basically all we need to do is to facilitate that when a client enters domainname.com they are automatically redirected to www.domainname.com. Sounds easy enough right? Well it is and we were quite surprised that our client's current host couldn't do it but there you go.

So we called around and found Valueweb. After chatting with one of their sales-folks (oh god - not them ;) we were sure that we'd found a solid solution that could do what we needed. Only after spending hours migrating the site, countless hours wasted on the phone with tech support (do I get to bill them for that?) am I pondering calling it a day and going on the hunt for yet another hosting company. That's right - they coulnd't do the simple 301 after all (even after I offered to have one of my geek friends call them up and walk them through it).

The worst part of this isn't just what it's cost me and Beanstalk but the countless hours it's cost our client. Thanks Valueweb - our recommendatation wasn't just bad - it made us look bad and wasted our time. And that's why theyve earned themselves this review.

Friendly-enough staff but oh my god - that doesn't come near close enough to making this issue better.