The Worst Web Host Imagineable

By all means avoid freehostingweb.com as a web host. (they are also known as aaa-webhost) I hosted with them for 2 years, got simply pathetic service, and ended up almost losing my domain name because they would not transfer it as promised in their contract.

My site was hosted there for 2 years. The first year was reasonably good, but then they came "under new management". From this point on service deteriorated remarkably.

Uptime plummetted: while before they had been reasonable, they began to go down for several days at a time with no warning. As monitored by easymonitor.com, uptime was just over 85% for the last 6 months I was with them. That means they averaged being down a full day a week for half a year.

Their support was nonexistent - literally. Shortly after the takeover the support link broke, and remained so for several months. At that point it was removed! Really - check it out, there is no support link on their site.

With no support link I tried sending emails. They were ignored - I got no response from them. This went on for months before I traced their provider and started copying them on emails. They finally said they would unilaterally transfer my account to their servers if my emails continued to get no response, at which point I got a "Hey, do you have a problem with us?" email from aaa-webhost. I responded, and never heard from them again.

I decided to get out from those losers, but found it was not so easy. Despite retaining rights to my domain name according to the contract, I found if there is no way to contact them ownership is a moot point. The only email address on the site, support@aaa-webhost.net, returned an automated reply for solving a problem, apparently so common that they set up their autoresponder to explain it. Not much help when it wasn't my problem though. A thorough web search turned up bill@aaa-webhost.net (spammers take note:), who ignored me until pressure from their provider forced him to transfer me over.

Oh yes, one other thing - their ads still say "free, no monthly, no annual, only a $35/year registration fee". Somehow though when it comes time to renew that magically turns into $49.

This was an extremely unpleasant and timeconsuming experience. I had researched them before signing up, and found that (pre-new management) they were reasonably highly rated. Indeed the first year service was OK for a low-priced host. I changed to ICDSoft, and the change has been such a relief. In the 3 months I have been with them easymonitor has reported a single ping has failed (99.97% uptime), and all my support issues have been answered satisfactorily in 10 minutes or less. This is the way hosting is meant to be.

Here is a site which monitors uptime for web hosts. (the rating is for aaa-webhost, not my server). When I added it here the uptime was 84.0%! What is it now?

For contrast, here is ICDSoft: 99.9.