Review about IX Web Hosting - completed on 2007-02-05 - by Rich Hummington
General Impression IX Web Hosting has been in business since 1999 and has recently made a remarkable appearance with the opening of their new data center in Hopkinsville, KY.
With a highly professional website and very attractive hosting plans, they have managed to be added to the list of companies that web-hosting-top.com is reviewing. As the months passed by, IX WebHosting continuously improved its performance in both reliability and customer service, resulting in extremely quick loading websites and high customer satisfaction and consequently mastered to be rated by our review team.
With over 170.000 domains hosted is more then obvious their value!
Price & Cost Effectiveness IX Web Hosting's plans give you an excellent value. Regardless of your needs, their plans allow you to save money right away - but the savings are even greater if you need to host multiple domain names. Their billing cycles run from quarterly, semi-annual to annual and 2-year billing cycles, the choice is yours on most plans. The longer the billing cycle, the higher the discount that is provided.
When hosting more than one domain name (multiple domain names or sub domains), you can host them all on a single plan (Expert Plan and higher). You will save a great deal of money since there are no fees at all for adding, removing, or changing hosted domains and subdomains. You can manage it in real-time via the control panel.
There was not a single billing issue with any of our anonymous test accounts, we have always been treated with great respect and fairness. There were no over- or unexpected extra on any of our hosting accounts. What is more important - when we requested a refund for 2 accounts, we were granted a full refund without questions asked. 100% money-back - including setup fees. An impressive approach towards customer satisfaction.
They will help you with CGI scripts, upload problems, even if you don't know how to use FrontPage - we were assisted kindly via telephone and their Live Chat service. This is an important aspect for a web master maintaining multiple websites, as for a busy website, there is a constant need to change your site's content and scripts used. Where else can you get 200,000MB web space for $3.95/mo, or unlimited disk space with multi domain hosting for $12.95/mo, paired with a zero-risk 100% money back guarantee.
Reliability During our extensive hosting experience with IX Web Hosting, we have had hardly any server outages. It would be a lie to say none of our 23 anonymous test accounts have never been down - however, the uptime track record for our test accounts is impressive.
The question is not IF downtime happens, the question is when it happens and how quickly your hosting company can resolve the problem. Quick problem resolution is a must, so your site will be back online in no time.
Our overall reliability experience with IX Web Hosting is positive. They claim to provide 99.9% uptime for all hosted accounts and they have a guarantee on their website proving their track record. We had 100% uptime for the majority of hosted accounts, however - 2 out of 23 accounts only had an uptime of 99.2% due to a server glitch. The glitch was resolved quickly (within 90 minutes), however the uptime amount of these two accounts did not reach 99.9% this month. After inquiring with their billing department, we have been reimbursed for the downtime that occurred with two free months of hosting service. We found this to be an adequate compensation for 60 minutes of downtime.
Data Center (toured) As the title indicates, we have personally visited and "examined" IX Web Hosting's data center. The importance of doing that is obvious. You might have heard of the "story" that 80% or more of the web hosts are just resellers, and another 10% are just co-locating in some other data center, without direct physical access to the machines. Unfortunately, that story is plain reality. We have personally verified that IX Web Hosting's data center facility actually exists by paying them a visit in Hopkinsville, KY. As the 16th data center we visited, it was a rather pleasant surprise that they actually HAVE the equipment they list on their website, as well as the security mechanisms, firewalls and CISCO state of the art routers.
IX Web Hosting currently employs five redundant fiber-optic loops to connect their data center. The fiber-optic connectivity is provided by Bell South,AT&T, Verizon and 2x bandwidth is redundantly served by Qwest Communications. They are currently busy upgrading their connectivity for future expansion.
Customer Service In my entire career as professional web master, I have never seen more responsive and technically sound support staff. I am thoroughly impressed by the technical skills of the IX Web Hosting customer care team.
Regardless of which artificially created problem I have prompted them with, everything was resolved within 24 hours: PASIV FTP issues, CGI scripts with programming errors, PHP coding issues, ASP ODBC database connectivity, MSSQL Enterprise Manager troubles, domain-lock and expiration tricks - we were not able to fool them.
The support provided can be rated as above excellent, especially the 24 / 7 LIVE CHAT feature. We have submitted a total of 450 support requests so far in the past several months, and on 400 requests the response has immediately solved our problem. The other tickets had to be reworked to send more details to the technician. We called in via Live Chat at 3am and 5am EST several times and our requests were answered promptly and courteously. Unlike other hosts, IX Web Hosting is providing It is a true 24 / 7 chat service.
Control Panel The basis of their control panel is H-Sphere, however IX Web Hosting's programmer staff have modified it heavily. Both LINUX and WINDOWS hosting based accounts are provided and the control panel functions flawlessly with accounts on both platforms. The control panel they provide allows you to add, remove and manage your domain names, subdomains, FTP accounts, email accounts, mailing lists, auto responders, email aliases, MIME Types, Apache Indexes, PHP / ASP configuration, mySQL, PostgreSQL and MSSQL databases, SQL database users, cancelling and resuming your subscription and reporting trouble tickets from one interface. In addition to the comprehensive functionality listed above, they also offer an online file manager, an web design program called Site Studio as well as Web Mail. All these features along with the senseful customizations IX Web Hosting's programming department has applied to the control panel software have made us rate this category with an astounding 100%.
You will find now a brand new billing system, outstanding from all points of view.
The usage of the control panel it's self is very fast and reliable. The administration of your whole account is very user-friendly and IX Web Hosting provides an extensive customer guide with detailed explanations on how to use your hosting account.
Contact Information and Support
Phone 24/7 sales and support available.
+1-270-707-2051 International
+1-800-385-0450
Conclusion One of the best hosting companies we have ever reviewed. If IX Web Hosting keeps up the good work, we will consider moving our website to their servers.
Rich Hummington for web-hosting-top.com, 02/05/2007
Coupons/Promotions
Code offered by IX Web Hosting [Coupon code/Promo Code ixwebhosting.com]
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Web services details about IX Web Hosting [provided by paid service from Alexa Web Information Service]
"Since I am new to Internet business, recommendations are the first that I rely upon when looking for partners on the web. So, it was only due to the fact that IX Web Hosting was mentioned among the most reliable hosting providers that I entrusted them with my business. And I was not disappointed at all... in fact, I'm amazed at how fast my site was set up and running. Now I, in my turn, recommend IX Web Hosting to my friends."
Dave Bear ( friendlybud24(at)yahoo(dot)com ) at: 2008-04-09 Time Hosted: over 3 years General Rating note:
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52 out of 62Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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I've been with them for several years and all has been good. A few months ago, they start a policy that will be their downfall. Their servers are being bogged down and response has gone to pot. I agree with Bob that their non-response to the Comcast problem has been a major thorn in my side. I was told by their support person that they host 500-700 sites per server (aha!!!) that could be the problem.
I've recommended them for several clients and now I have egg on my face.
I'm on to research a REAL hosting company.
Bob ( bschmidtjr(at)gmail(dot)com ) at: 2008-03-31 Time Hosted: 2 to 3 years General Rating note:
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73 out of 81Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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I have been using IX for almost 3 years and actually have 2 accounts with them.
As I write this (and for a few months now), I can not send any e-mail to Comcast users from any of my domains. My largest domain is a religious organization. I have web forms on my web site for the members to submit information to me, and I have an opt-in mailing list to keep the members up-to-date on activities. I have had problems with it taking days for the webform info to get from the IX hosted website to the IX hosted e-mail server. They blame this on heavy e-mail traffic by other users who are on the same mail server. Must be the spammers that have Comcast rejecting all e-mail from their mail servers. I have several members on Comcast and have to send a separate e-mail to them from GMail because I can not send to them from my IX hosted domain. On my other domains that use e-mail, I've already moved their e-mail function to Google Apps. Their e-mail system works great, and they stay on top of Spam. The level of Spam hitting the inboxes on my domains has dropped to zero where before on IX, we were getting pounded by spam.
I haven't moved the e-mail for my organization to Google Apps because Google doesn't have an automated opt-in mailing list function. It looks like I will have to bite the bullet and move it anyway, and maintain the mailing list manually.
Tech support used to be marvelous with IX. Over the last several months, they are hiring people whose English skills are less than useful, and their understanding of the systems is even worse. It takes at least 2 days before anyone even looks at trouble tickets, and then they tell you they have requested a whitelist but it never occurs. When I contacted the live chat I was told there was nothing they can do.
My advice, if you have simple web pages only you need to host, then IX is a bargain. If you need e-mail support for your domains, go anywhere else. They refuse to help.
Bob
R Tee ( rt101 at hotmail(dot)com ) at: 2008-03-30 Time Hosted: under 1 month. General Rating note:
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63 out of 66Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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As a potential hoster, I asked IXHosting if they had a security policy regarding their employees being able to access sensitive information on websites hosted with them - they dont have one !!
So, in theory their employees can access information on websites hosted with them (possibly credit card details) and IXHosting will not give any assurances that this information wont be misused ! - not good !!
kenneth fieldsten ( ken_fieldsten at fastmail(dot)co(dot)au ) at: 2008-03-12 Time Hosted: 6 mo. to 1 year General Rating note:
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74 out of 77Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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IXWEBHOSTING is possibly one of the worst hosting services that you can use.
My site is down virtually all the time, the customer service doesn't exist, the control panel is down more times than the site is.
STAY AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bob ( plumsteadbob at gmail(dot)com ) at: 2008-02-26 Time Hosted: over 3 years General Rating note:
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94 out of 103Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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Long time customer. Serious problems began last year. Spam is off the charts. IX Mail Servers blacklisted by Comcast, ATT and others. I am so tired getting the same old run around I am giving up. I always recommended IX for their value and good service. You can't have value if the product just doesn't work. Email is hopeless. I am not suprised they are blacklisted their email servers are totally compromised and their spam control is useless and not controlled by the customer.
will ( willkiel at yahoo dot com ) at: 2008-02-19 Time Hosted: 2 to 3 years General Rating note:
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66 out of 75Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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Over the last year things have got markedly worse. I have uploaded zencart and the site can take 30 seconds to load a page. They blame the software. It has only 40 products with about 40 attributes so each page should take well under second to load.
They moved me to a new less crowded server with not much improvement. They then started claiming they could load the pages in 2 to 3 seconds. I have had it checked by friends in Oz , Nz, USA and UK all with 5 to 30 second download times. Even when I send them a video screen grab of the pages taking forever tehy email back saying at there end it is all fine.
Trouble is they will not be th ones trying to buy my products.
I am looking for a new host.
Will
Aaron Y. ( 23pangbourne at gmail dot com ) at: 2008-02-13 Time Hosted: 2 to 3 years General Rating note:
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92 out of 93Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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After two years of solid hosting, the service at IX has gone into the crapper. The server they have my sites on now goes down regulary and they seem either completely helpless or totally indifferent to bother do anything about it. They appear to be dead set on losing my business. I wonder if they will actually match their offer of a credit for excessive downtime?
Sarm ( sarm_designer at hotmai dot com ) at: 2008-01-03 Time Hosted: 6 mo. to 1 year General Rating note:
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83 out of 85Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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I am using IxWebHosting since 7 month and not happy with it. Down time is a lot but IxWebhosting is not accepting it. Your site will down a lot, just 2 or 3 second.
Many time i accessed my site and server not giving any response and page saying CAN NOT FOUND. I know this problem is not with my internet. I have good speed internet and mean time i can access other sites but not my own site which hosted on IXwebhosting.
Support service is really bad. They don't know at all how to fix problems.
I am trying to find out another good hosting.
Sarm
will ( ) at: 2007-12-04 Time Hosted: 1 to 2 years General Rating note:
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95 out of 98Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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I have used IX webhosting for almost 2 years now hosting multiple domains with one hosting plan. While there have been issues, sites taking forever and occasionally timing out, these are infrequent and generally short lived problems. It did seem to take IX forever to upgrade to PHP5 and MySQL 5. When they did they didn't inform me as an existing customer but started offering it to new customers. To take advantage of this I had to backup everything and move it to a new server. I have used Live chat frequently, often talking to advisors for who English is clearly not the first language. However, regardless of advisor the responses have always been professional and helpful, the same can be said for all of the support tickets I have raised.
With crontab available, the only thing missing from IX is SSH, while the webshell is very useful, it is often much easier and quicker to use a command, although I fully understand the reasons for not including this.
Although I don't think I'll be jumping ship when this billing period expires in 4 months, I am starting to look for what else is available and have yet to find anything that comes remotely close to what IX offers for the price.
Alex ( blatasa(at)hotmail(dot)com ) at: 2007-10-22 Time Hosted: 2 to 3 years General Rating note:
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81 out of 84Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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This webhost is the WORST I ever had.
I've used it for 2 years now, and it's terrible.
A lot of downtime, websites time out a lot, and when you try to solve things with the helpdesk, they either don't understand, or they cannot help you.
Better said: Yesterday, downtime. Today: DNS problems because of the downtime yesterday.
Today: I contact helpdesk, I tell them that one of my subdomains forwards to an entire different website, not mine for sure, and at the moment of typing, a Russian, who doesn't understand me completely, is still 'checking'.
He has been checking for 20 minutes now.
I was enthusiastic when I started with this host, but now I am planning on moving to another host. I rather pay more and get less bandwidth/diskspace, but then I at least get quality service.
My advice: Don't use this webhost.
Pickett Huffines ( masprema at gmail dot com ) at: 2007-07-07 Time Hosted: over 3 years General Rating note:
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65 out of 75Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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I have used IXWebhosting since 2000. They are terrific. Questions are answered, problems resolved. I have now 9 domains with them, with different hosting plans, and am very happy.
Jorge ( jplayermx at yahoo dot com ) at: 2007-05-14 Time Hosted: 1 to 3 months General Rating note:
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73 out of 172Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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I've been using IX webhosting services for about 3 months and all is perfect as of today. My websites have been down only 2 times for about 5 minutes during these 3 months, nothig considerable.
Some misundesrstanding with the chat live support but at the end I could find someone professional to resolve my requests.
I'd recommend IX!...100% reliable.
Mario J. Fachler ( amelcocr at gmail dot com ) at: 2007-02-01 Time Hosted: 3 to 6 months General Rating note:
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96 out of 185Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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I have hosted with different companys for over 7 years, but never, ever, have I found such an outstanding company.
They are not only good, they are simply and plainly THE BEST.
kiran ( kiranmasr at yahoo dot com ) at: 2007-01-09 Time Hosted: 1 to 3 months General Rating note:
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94 out of 200Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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Hi, IXWebhosting is great. I would recommend everybody to try ixwebhosting one and decide your self. Thanks
Bill ( pub at leflyinfish(dot)com ) at: 2006-08-17 Time Hosted: 1 to 2 years General Rating note:
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192 out of 341Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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I've been using ixwebhosting for over a year now, and so far I'm quite satisfied with the service.
Pros:
Customer service is pretty fast in responding to my inquiries;
Web server is very stable, I have yet to see it go down once;
Control panel is easy to use, though I can not compare it with others.
Cons:
Sql server sometimes overloads, causing all interactive(forums and alike) pages to fail;
Speed is far from great, I can usually only manage to get about 15k/s download from my site and 5k/s upload through ftp;
No shell access.
Angie Little ( Webmaster(at)EdwinMcCainMusic dot com ) at: 2006-07-28 Time Hosted: 1 to 3 months General Rating note:
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187 out of 334Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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This company is nothing short of AMAZING! I just posted the folowing on my web forum for all to see:
Let me give you a heads up again about my hosting company. NO, I get nothing for recommending them! I've just gotten out of hosting hell with someone who wouldn't even answer my emails or return my calls!!!
1] They allow you to call anytime and request a specific tech! If he is there, you get him. I know of NO company that does that. Because of that, I can call the same person; he knows my site now like it's his own. He and I have developed a partnership and I NEVER SPEND TIME TELLING A NEW PERSON SOME LONG HISTORY! I have a list of 4 of the best guys there!
2] The guys that work during the day are understandably busy, but they never seem rushed. Because the nights are slower, they go after the reallly tough problems, and they are relentless. They just will NOT give up. The only thing they won't help with is actual web design issues.
3] With the toll-free tech number, I sometimes call in and will be maybe the 3rd one on hold, but the wait is never long.
4] They do whatever they need to do to fix your problem or escalate it up to the next level. And that is NOT stall tactic like in some companies. They are back with me within 24 hours with a solution!!! But to be honest, it's been within just a few HOURS everytime. The longest I've waited is just until the evening when the night guys come on. They do the more time-consuming work.
5] I have NEVER heard, "Oh, that's a Windows/Microsoft/software, etc. problem... not ours."
6] The technical department is open via phone AND online 24/7. You can use the online access, but you get MUCH better service if you get the guys on the phone. Use the online method only if you don't have time to stay the course with them on the phone.
THE HOSTING COMPANY IS: www.ixwebhosting.com Okay, off my soapbox, and on with my Edwin McCain Band Promo hat. Remember, we are the HEART of the future of EMB. Let's spread the Ed and share the best music on the planet!!! Thanks for supporting EdwinMcCainMusic.com. You guys are the best!
*Laughing*_________________
Have an Edwin Day!
Administrator
That sums up the service. The price is great... all of it is top-notch. I KNOW that when a few people have problems, THEY are the ones who seek out the forums to complain. The HAPPY ones don't often do that. So, I tend to realllly listen to them. The only complaints I have had are that I wish they offered more goodies like I had on Fantastico. For someone like me who knows "just enough to be dangerous," I need those "canned" features. The other one is this: Honestly, I am not impressed with the LIVE online help. It is outsourced to India and some of the calls go there. Those are not helpful. I just pick up the phone and get the help instantly.
Thanks for letting me share my experience. The ones I've had in the past with an UNNAMED host and Bravenet .... well, I'm a VERY happy camper!
ASHL
sunny ( sunbird_0(at)yahoo dot com ) at: 2006-04-09 Time Hosted: 1 to 2 years General Rating note:
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210 out of 340Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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IX is very useful for the person studying programming using php, postgresql, cgi, javascript, apache, including email.
IX has been reliable.
They have improved the interface over the last two years.
The price is very reasonable for the environment provided.
Fdb ( webmaster(at)tidalrange dot com ) at: 2006-01-18 Time Hosted: 2 to 3 years General Rating note:
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179 out of 315Web-Hosting-Top users found this review to be helpful! Did you find this review helpful?
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I have been using IXwebhosting for a little more than 2 years, and found them to be a reliable host with great customer service.
Any problems I encountered or questions I had were answered or solved withing 1 hour after submitting a ticket.
The uptime of my sites are excellent, and I did not experience any major downtime. Just a few minutes here and there, and the average uptime is more than 99.9%. (I make use of a remote 3rd party monitoring system to monitor uptime.)
I have upgraded a few times, as my sites grew and I needed more features, and all went smoothly.
The scripts of my sites make use of Perl, PHP etc. and for databases I use both the MySQL and PostgreSQL. Again never had any problems or database downtime.
The prices of the hosting plans are just right.
The tech support is top notch and the 'live help' personnel have a good knowledge and understanding and strive to solve problems completely. Thanks guys!
It must be taken in account that the support people are there to help with hosting related problems, and not program your site for you. Nonetheless, they always helped me where they could.
I am 100% satisfied with IXwebhosting and gave them 9/10 because I believe there is always room for improvement.
