Webfusion Dedicated Hosting - Avoid At All Costs

First a word of warning: if you value your website do not touch Webfusion with a barge pole!

Last weekend our dedicated server which hosts a number of our larger sites suffered an extended outage.  Despite supposedly having mirrored disks, these clowns lost all our data and kept us waiting over 2 days before admitting what they’d done.

Firstly, the server was supposed to be monitored, but we had to alert Webfusion the fact it was down.  This was followed by 2 days of chasing Webfusion Customer Support for a response, resulting in them offering the unreadable disk for us to arrange data recovery (at our expense, obviously!)

Their solution was to give us a new server, minus all data - and with 2 completely new IP addresses.  That’s where their customer service ended.  We’ve had to restore almost 5GB worth of data, recreate all our accounts, email addresses, recreate and restore multiple databases and update all our DNS records (with the appropriate delay while DNS propagates around the globe).

Thankfully we had a recent backup to restore from.  Had we relied on Webfusion we would have potentially lost over 4 years worth of data, and our online offering would have been no more.

As if this wasn’t bad enough they absolutely refuse to offer any compensation, as in their eyes they have done nothing wrong - “I am sorry for the recent issues experienced on your account, however as we have provided a service in line with our terms of service, we are unable to offer compensation in relation to this” says Catherine Elliott from the ironically named “Customer Solutions” department.

Do yourself a favour and avoid these muppets like the plague.  We should have known when earlier this year their equally inept sister company 123-reg.co.uk managed to lose one of our valuable domain names!

Needless to say we are currently on the lookout for a new host.

Update 29/11/2008:
We have now moved hosts and thought we had cancelled our server with Webfusion. However, despite this they still invoiced us, not for 1 server but for 2!!

“We have been unable to debit 1973.72 GBP from the card ending
xxxx which we hold on file for your account. This is because the card has expired.”

Well thank goodness that the card had expired. One week later we are still trying to cancel our account, but it has, as ever, been a painful process. Do not trust Webfusion to do anything correctly.

Update 04/02/2010:

Thankfully we’ve had good service over the last 14 months from our new host, RealHosts.  Sadly though it seems that nothing has changed at Webfusion based on comments recently received.

Allen Ford Kettering

Today I had the misfortune to visit Allen Ford in Kettering. I’m interested in buying a new Ford S-Max, and thought I’d see what a local dealer could offer.

All was well until I asked if they could price-match an online quote from www.drivethedeal.com, a favourite site of mine. The salesman insisted repeatedly that Drive The Deal only sell imports, something I know to be untrue. He asked the price I’d been quoted (almost £5000 below list price) and said he had to talk to his manager. He returned several minutes later, “confirming” what he’d stated earlier that drivethedeal.com would supply me with a non-UK spec import!

By now I’d heard enough drivel, and decided to leave the dealership. Well Mr salesman, I suggest if you’re reading this that you take a look at their FAQs Page.

Oh, and it’s the first time I’ve ever had to pay for cold water at any car dealership, never mind a franchised dealer. 10/10 for customer satisfaction, not!