Netfirms Hosting Review | Why Netfirms Company Rated Like That!

Offering support to over 1.2 million websites, Netfirms has definitely done well for itself.
The values adopted by Netfirm have proven the backbone for their success over the years ensuring they maintain healthy growth levels while pushing quality standards to the limits.

Netfirms has been there through the years to equip small businesses with the necessary technologies to make the best of opportunities available in the business world that is fast becoming technical with each passing day.
Customer reactions to Netfirms services have been varied to say the least.

Of late they have attracted criticism over poor support services, SQL database limits and inaccessible websites. It’s up to the staff at Netfirms to pull up these small glitches before they ruin their reputation.

I am starting to become very unhappy with Netfirms.
Netfirms hosts my site(s), and I publish using Netobjects. Currently I can’t publish, and Netfirms says it is their issue. Below is the last reply I have received from them. I have not sent 3 other emails to them, with no reply. Called once as well, and they said they are working on it. Incredible.

From: Netfirms Support Team
To:
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 11:06:48 PM
Subject:

Hello,

Thank you for your inquiry.

We have identified an issue between us and Netobjects.

Our system administrators are working on the issue and we expect to have a resolution for you as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience.

Regards,
Philip
Netfirms Support Team

Tutorials, demos, and answers to over 90% of your questions may also be found immediately at our Self-Help Support Centre: http://support.netfirms.com

I’ve been with Netfirms since 2006 and I’ve given them a lot of chances, but I had enough and I decided to go with a dedicated server instead. The hosting

package I am subscribed to is Netfirms ADVANTAGE™ Web Hosting.

Here is a list of major problems YOU WILL ENCOUNTER:

=SUPPORT=

* Their support is horrible (assuming it exists). And I don’t mean not calling back only – they don’t fix jack sh**!!! I called and opened a ticket about

being unable to view my mysql DBs (just disappeared from my DBs management page in the control panel) about a week ago and I didn’t even get an e-mail

confirming that they opened the ticket! The guy on the phone told me that he simply has no idea when they it will be fixed and that he can e-mail me when

it’s done.

* There hasn’t been a month without issues. I have some inside information regarding their practices from a friend worked at a relatively high position at

Netfirms Canada – in a nutshell: they just don’t give a fu** about their customers anymore and they will even be rude on the phone if you PUSH ON GETTING

WHAT YOU PAID FOR.

* A year ago you’d get somebody on the phone right away even during regular business hours. Now, you call at 5am and you wait at least 15 minutes – seems

their volume of calls greatly increased!

=UPTIME/RELIABILITY=

* Another, very annoying thing is that they will randomly take your website down without a prior notice and just show a message on your site that it is

undergoing maintenance, which puts bad light on your business – especially since you are not doing any maintenance.

* The networks they use might be semi-decent but on average the sites load supers slow – and that’s simple HTML files only – with Joomla installed it is even

slower.

=ACCOUNT/BILLING=

* They will try to auto-renew your hosting a week or so before it is due, so be careful with leaving your credit card info on file.

* If the prices of the package you use drop down, you won’t be notified – you will be billed the same amount you paid last year, unless you call them and say

“Hey, don’t you think it’s a di** move to charge me $150 for something you list now for $125?”

=OBSERVATIONS=

* They have recently introduced design + SEO services (with typos on the page), which in my opinion proves that they are not making enough money with their

current services – reason? They suck and more and more people are starting to realize it!!! (I am glad that you’re becoming one of them!)

* They spent over a million dollars in 2009 on improving their infrastructure and rolling out the VPS offer, but it seems as if things went down a steep

slope in the past 2 years anyway.

* Quite often (once every 2-3 weeks) your e-mail will stop working for a day or so. You will get prompted (in Outlook/Outlook Express) for the password over

and over again and although you insert the correct password it is just not accepting it. Then you have to go to webmail (which is very obsolete-looking) and

try to respond to e-mails – in my case it is a major headache, since I have to be copying and pasting a lot of addresses and signatures.

=SECURITY=

* Another very big issue I have with them is that they allow maximum 8 characters password on anything!!!! That includes all e-mail accounts, main control

panel account, ftp accounts, etc.

* My account got hacked once and ALL OF MY DATA WAS REMOVED. I didn’t have a fairly current backup, because I was swamped with work and had created A LOT of

content in a form of 4 new, fairly large Joomla websites. So, one day I try to view one of my websites and there is a default Netfirms page showing. I call

them and tell them THAT I GOT HACKED, which I was able to prove and the response I get is: well, sorry to hear that, but we can’t do anything! So I spend

another week or so going through multiple “escalation” trying to talk to different people, including the manager and all I’m being told is that “we don’t

have backups of particular accounts – we only do entire server backups, so we can’t help you”. Very frustrated, with 4 months of my 40h/week work being just

gone I decided NOT TO GIVE UP. Another week passes, more hours spent on the phone/email and they finally put “enough effort” to get a backup copy for me…

from 7 months before!!!!! They said they couldn’t restore anything more recent, because their most recent backup of my site contained MALWARE!?!?!?!?! WTF,

right? If there really was any malware in my directories, how come it wasn’t a problem for them before? Isn’t there an antivirus running on the entire

server? Interestingly, my databases were restored too and they were very recent. Nevertheless, after 2 weeks of literally begging, 10 packs of smokes, a few

fights with people around me I got a 7 month old backup and a week old mysql backup – and that was their fix for an issue that was caused by poor security in

their own system.

=ANNOYANCES=

* Something that also became annoying at one point is inability to create your own mysql usernames/passwords, so if you import a website/application with DB

configuration hardcoded, you are screwed.

* FTP accounts – forget about setting up your own username/password. If you want to setup an account for John Smith, jsmith for example, you can’t. Instead

you will get something like yourdomain.1 as the user and a random password.

* Their control panel doesn’t work in Chrome – it will randomly freez, show blank errors, etc.

=CONCLUSION=

* I would NOT RECOMMEND this company to anyone – there is many, many more options out there that are a) better b) cheaper c) more customer-care oriented. I

am an IT specialist and I’ve analyzed hundreds of internet businesses and Netfirms places on the bottom of the list, so do yourself a favour and stay

away!!!! Netfirms is just horrible – the worst hosting company I used in my life. Not worth your time, money and nerves…

Quite a reliable service. I’m totally satisfied with it. Support is excellent though responses are not always as fast as you expect them to be. A hosting you can rely on.