Past Employee ( Exemployee at cihost dot com ) at: 2008-02-01
Time Hosted: 6 mo. to 1 year
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Control Panel note: | 55 out of 62 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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I was there during the great Name Server outage....it was simple, a virus was introduced into the server and opps..all IPs were detached from domain names. It took several hours just to figure out what was going on. The lower end techs were locked into the building and given a statement to read to the thousands of callers that was a flat out out lie! I don't think the truth ever did leave the building. (it was bad press to let the world know that they couldn't block a virus intrusion ) The fix was to rebuild and set up a new name server..that took some time. I do know that customers would order one thing and get another with the CEO telling us that the customer wasn't smart enough to figure it out. Boy, was he wrong.... The reason you can't get through for hours on end is because they are short handed, employees quit faster than can be replaced, and all the lies that were told are all on hold wanting an answer they can believe from someone who knows what is going on...( good luck with that ) I was told that I had to read that statement or I would be working for McDonalds...I told him " It just depends on which clown you want to work for" -- I got away from this company, I suggest you do the same.
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Bill ( unhappycustomer(at)cihost dot com ) at: 2007-11-24
Time Hosted: 1 to 3 months
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Control Panel note: | 66 out of 74 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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“INCOMPETENT” is an understatement to describe this company. I have NOTHING POSITIVE to say about this company. Our experience with CI Host has been nothing short of HORRIBLE. We opted for a 3 months trial hosting but our site never got off the ground. CI Host’s server was down frequently and someone dropped the ball at CI Host and never activated our site while we were being billed for the service.
Trying to find someone to help us with the problem was a nightmare. Everyone shirks responsibility. 24/7 tech support is 3rd party online ticketing system that never works. In order for you to use the 24/7 online support, you need a password and username, which requires you to send email to tech support for password and username, which they require you go through the 24/7 online tech support. Get the drift? It's a loop. Nowhere to go for help. Control panel is primitive and almost non-existence. Emails came back as undeliverable. Live tech support is just as bad - unprofessional and robotic - if it's not in the script it's someone else's problems. Billing practices borders on fraud.
Any disputed invoices will quickly find its way to Fidelity Credit Management collection agency. A tactic obviously used to intimidate customers into paying at the threat of ruining their credit ratings. Read ripoffreport.com and other review sites and you’ll know why this company is at the brink of being served a class action lawsuit.
CI Host is absolutely horrendous to do business with. Oh, there's one thing this company does very well - self-promotion and self-aggrandizement. That's how we got hooked, to our great regret. Don't make it yours.
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peter ( peter at palmspringsrentals dot com ) at: 2007-09-16
Time Hosted: 1 to 2 years
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Control Panel note: | 70 out of 76 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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In the past year, I have called CIHOST perhaps 10 times because my site has been down, 4 of those in the last 6 weeks. On all 4 occasions, I identified that the site was down, not CIHOST. This begs the question: How many times has the site been down and I did not notice?
It is hosted in Los Angeles on a Linux server. It usually takes a few minutes to get thru on the phone, and a few minutes after that the site is back up. In addition, I have noticed very slow service at times.
Though I am able to get thru on the phone, their technical support staff is combative, under duress, sarcastic, have an excuse for everything, have obviously been trained to be evasive, change the subject, etc. It is clear the staff has been trained to shovel BS… they are combative and well practiced. It is almost like talking to a used car salesman.
I have approximately 9 websites and 3 hosting companies. I have never experienced this type of problems with any other hosting company, from the very small to the very large. Unfortunately my primary url is hosted with CIHOST, and that will change as soon as I find the time to move to another company.
I am reluctant to name my url… for fear of retribution from this terrible host and wish I personally read online reviews prior to allowing my former IT person moving our main site to this bad company.
More Below:
I was instructed by CIHOST technical support to send an email to customerservice@hostingsupport.com which I did. Below is the email and response:
I have called CIHOST 4 times in the last 4 to 6 weeks because my site has been down. On all 4 occasions, I identified that the site was down, not CIHOST. This begs the question: How many times has the site been down and I did not notice?
I look forward to a reply.
Your ticket has not been accepted into the system. You are required to register at the following URL to submit any issues via Email: https://www.hostingsupport.com/
Once registered, you will be able to submit any issues directly by sending us Email. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.
HostingSupport
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Roger ( rsmisc at hotmail(dot)com ) at: 2006-12-07
Time Hosted: under 1 month.
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Control Panel note: | 96 out of 180 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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I have now read many reviews about this company and I wish I would have done more research. Epinions.com has many negative reviews as well. I would have never decided on C I Host if I had read these reviews. I never made it past 5 days in the trial period. My problems started when I was using their online chat with their sales person Jason Brice. After a slow response from him which I understand happens with online chat, he asked me to hold on. I waited about 15 minutes. I finally go sick of waiting so I called. They must be a smaller company then they state since Mr. Brice answered the phone. I identified myself and he stated that he lost the connection. To my surprise, I would think any good salesman would at least contact me via email stating they lost the connection since he had my email address. All was forgiven when he did help me out and get me setup but then the problems started.
After receiving my test account, and I am very glad I setup a test account instead of moving my domain over since I work of a large government organization, I found out I received the wrong “template email” as they stated. After another hour on the online chat I found out that the company is full of incompetence. I tried to attach my chat session but the system would not allow it. But I was passed around between a windows tech to a UNIX tech then back to a windows tech. They would point me to documentation that was wrong on the website. I guess I should have know something was wrong when even their sales material has wrong data like the version of ASP they are using. They may be certified with SAS 70 type II but even with that certification, the support is not worth the time.
Overall, after 3 requests for callbacks, One Mr. Brice requested, one I used their call back feature on the website and the last was an actual voice mail with their accounting department. I never received one back. Even canceling the account is a pain. I emailed Jason Brice again for a call back, I received a read receipt and over a week later I did not hear a word. Again, poor customer service. I am surprised a company that states “Bigger Network, Better Service” is still in business.
I could go on and on but I just wanted to put my 2 cents in as to why not to go with this company for web hosting.
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Victor Rojas ( vicroja(at)hotmail(dot)com ) at: 2006-12-07
Time Hosted: 2 to 3 years
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Control Panel note: | 91 out of 165 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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CiHost is the worst thing i've ever had. We have lost 12 customers for their faults.
We had a dedicated server for 1 year and the service was just ok, 4 processors, 4GB RAM, 3x120GB HD, USD$6721 and the service was just ok. And at the end of the contract, after our on-time cancellation, we were billed again. Besides we have an innovator (50/month) and 1 starter (15/month) shared plans and both of them are hosted on the same overloaded server. At least 9times/day the site is off-line and the answer from technical support team is "Your are on a shared hosting and you share the resources...", well I shared the resources and I lost customers. If you appreciate your company and dont want to loose clients, dont contract with these people.
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Jay ( jay(at)jay dot com ) at: 2006-10-04
Time Hosted: 2 to 3 years
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Control Panel note: | 157 out of 276 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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CI Host used to be a great company. I referred all my customers to CI Host.
Now it's a different story. I've had 4 outages just this year. Two of the outages were 72+ hours.
Their tech support is young, rude, inexperienced. Their admins are worthless. Usually if there is a problem I have to tell them how to fix it. They're too busy playing xbox games to help customers.
They completely lost all of the data on an 80 gig partition, and then told me that I should have purchased their backup service (which I was told was part of my contract).
Recently I discovered that the hardware they hosted me on is not the hardware that I contracted for.
All in all, I have experienced around 420 hours of downtime this year.
AVOID THIS COMPANY LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!
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Jared ( bob(at)bob dot com ) at: 2006-08-14
Time Hosted: 2 to 3 years
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Control Panel note: | 350 out of 474 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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Well, my company used CiHost before I was hired, and since I haev been hired we haev started another website with them. I have only been here 6 months, and the site has gone down for hours at a time, lost email, had files get reverted to previous versions, and other strange things. I whole-heartedly agree with everyone who says that CiHost's customer service is pathetic, every time I call I have to sit on hold for over an hour. A couple of times I was able to get a response on their online support, but other times I waited for 1.5 hours and gave up because I finally got a person on the phone.
Today was the worst. Even CiHost's site (along with ticketmonster.hostingsupport.com) was down for quite a while. Does not inspire confidence when a web host's site goes down...
BTW: when you sign up for a new hosting plan with CiHost, they neglect to tell you a few things. Like that you can't log in until you reset your MonsterControls password. Or that it can take up to a couple of weeks for billing to process your account request. Or that their service sucks (ok, so they wouldn't tell you that anyway). The point is, if I had anything to say about it, we would be switching ASAP...
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jyoung ( jyoung at njpanda(dot)org ) at: 2006-08-14
Time Hosted: under 1 month.
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Control Panel note: | 174 out of 323 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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I purchased a year’s subscription to e-Files marketed by CI Host. I have NEVER been able to access my account. Whenever I enter the account name given to me by CI Host, I receive the message that the no such account exists.
I called both toll free phone numbers listed on the CI Host web page. Both numbers were answered by the same person, who had never heard of e-Files. He said he would contact a technician who would call me back, I never received a return call.
I have received automated email messages every 12 hours for the last five days from tech@cihost.com stating, “Please be advised we are sill working on this issue and we will resolve it as soon as possible.” This email includes a like to rate the services of the support team. I have been responding “Poor” for the last two days and have received no response.
I have also been replying to the automated messages with copies to sales@cihost.com and neworders@gotomyfiles.com requesting that my account be cancelled and my credit card be credited in full. I have received no response to these emails.
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JordanCP ( jpeterson169 at comcast(dot)net ) at: 2006-07-11
Time Hosted: under 1 month.
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Control Panel note: | 197 out of 309 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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On July 4th a guy that I was helping get a site up asked me to setup an account with CIHost. Went through the online purchase... but never got any confirmation email from them so that I could activate the account. Called sales (they are quick to answer!) to see if the order had going through and it had, but they said I had to talk to Tech support to have them resend the activation email. I've contacted them twice now by phone and I think 3 times by email. Still nothing. For paying $200 I'd have thought we'd have at least got an account setup. Pitiful service!
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Former CI Host Employee ( blah(at)blah dot com ) at: 2006-06-09
Time Hosted: 1 to 3 months
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Control Panel note: | 302 out of 448 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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As a former CI Host employee from a few years back for a few months in their sales department, I can confirm the low opinion of CI Hosts services from the previous reviewers. In my short time there I was witness to some of the worst business practices I have ever seen or even heard of. The short list: knowingly failing to cancel a customer's account upon request, complete failure to back up customer drives when they have paid for said service, actively waving off customer complaint calls when the customer has a valid concern and is trying to rectify their situation.
CI Host has not shown itself to put the customer first, which is why I left the organization and have recommended other hosting providers to all my clients and friends.
Their business practices may have changed, but beware their long and storied issues going in if you choose them as your hosting provider.
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Jeremy Wanamaker ( jeremy at tiedyeguide(dot)com ) at: 2006-05-08
Time Hosted: 6 mo. to 1 year
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Control Panel note: | 163 out of 304 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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My company switched to CIHost because they were local and offered a good deal. We got on the shared server plan and use very few resources.
As time went on, I started hearing complaints from our 12 person staff that it seemed we were losing a lot of email on the outgoing side. Hmmmm....
After 6 weeks of escalation, 1-3 hours at a time on hold and 10 service calls, we're simply changing hosts.
I have been told that we don't delete all the old email regularly enough, that someone on our server was using it to spam so it was under maintenance, that there had been a power outage overnight and not everything was rebooted yer....
Today, 90 minutes into holding for a manager, I'm being told that there is simply a high server load and I should try resending in an hour or two, because the load is decreasing now. The sad thing is that we don't know where our email goes...
I press send, it says sent. I press send, it says sent. I press send, it says smtp connection not available. Repeat 12 times. 1 of the emails MIGHT get delivered and the rest simply vanish.
I STONGLY advise against cihost.com.
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John Swales ( jswales(at)sigmapi dot org ) at: 2006-04-25
Time Hosted: 1 to 2 years
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Control Panel note: | 199 out of 313 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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We have used CI Host now for two years and it is quite easily the worst company that I have ever dealt with in my life. You will spends HOURS not minutes on hold for any type of question. My site has gone down four times since January of this year (It is now April so you do the math). When you do finally get to talk to a representative, this is exactly how the call will go:
"How can I help you?"
"My companies site is down"
"Well, let me start a work order"
"Do you know what is going on with my site?"
"No...."
"Does anyone?"
"Our webmasters are working on the issue. I do not have a ETA for resolution"
Their "technical" support team might as well be a pack of trained monkeys because they have no knowledge of any systems or web issues.
As soon as our company is through our contract with this company, we will switch web hosting companies and NEVER come back.
If you care at all about you company and the capabilities of online functionality, you will run far far away from CI Host.
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DisGruntled ( dontwantthemtoknowmyname at example dot com ) at: 2006-04-10
Time Hosted: 1 to 2 years
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Control Panel note: | 201 out of 321 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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Have been moving away from this host. Today, a power outage has caused server outage for the entire day. Power has been up to the facility, but DEDICATED SERVER STILL DOWN 4-6 HOURS LATER!?!?
They don't seem to live up to what you're sold:
- Backup generators???? NOT
- 24-Hr Tech Support???? NOT (try calling after 9pm EST and you'll literally wait 'till morning). Their "Online" tech support NEVER gets answered (I've waited 10 hours before just to see).
- Continuous issues with installed features / nobody seems to be able to fix
They used to be great, but now they're horrible!
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( bd1 at fellowshipoftruth(dot)org ) at: 2006-03-10
Time Hosted: 6 mo. to 1 year
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Control Panel note: | 391 out of 505 Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful!
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Hosted a couple of sites with this company and found that the plans are over priced and the service is minimal. The company had charged for two years when the site said it was a one year charge. So maybe some oversights on the dev team. The package was the Shared Linux starter.
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