This review is a tad long, but I assure you it is worth your time. I am convinced that most poor reviews are written in a fru
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strated and heated moment, however, my review is going to calmly explain my full situation so that you can make an educated decision for yourself.
I own a small web design and hosting company. As a start-up we used self-managed VPS machines to host our client websites. However, we found that most of our time was dedicated to system administration rather than the business itself and so decided to find a company we could partner with to manage the overall support for system/server side of things. In other words, they handle the server and we handle our business. Unfortunately, from day 1 it was nothing but problems with their customer and technical support.
We purchased a 1 year pre-paid plan (bad idea since they have a NO REFUND POLICY). We asked if we could use Plesk instead of cPanel with our server. They said it was impossible to use Plesk and use the server OS we had. This was not true since we were using it on another server just fine. After about 30 mins of transfers to different level technicians, they finally agreed it could be done. We then asked for them to install CloudLinux and we went through the same charades to get it approved. Once it was approved they added a $20/m fee, even though a personal license is only $14 from CloudLinux directly. Since I had my own license I asked if I could just use that instead and they refused. Obviously an upsell tactic, but poor service in my book.
After the server was all established we were assigned an Account Manager since we were considered a part of their "Partners" program. The Partner program is nothing more than a few videos and write ups on basic web hosting and server management. However, you apparently have access to a Dedicated Account Manager and a free WHMCS license. At first, these two things caused me to feel valued in our pursuit to build a relationship with another company. However, I requested the WHMCS license several times and never received an answer. My account manager was also difficult to get a hold of and gave empty promises when I asked to expand our relationship.
As an example, they had a new years sale and we decided that it was a good time to expand our capabilities. We contacted our account manager and asked if we could upgrade the server we had just purchased and pay the difference for the upgrade since it was less than 30 days. This would have resulted in doubling our initial investment with them. He agreed and asked me to contact sales and let them know that he approved it. I did as instructed and not only was I told he did not have the authority to approve it, the representative was short and rude. I attempted to get a hold of my account manager to discuss the issue again and he never responded back.
During this time I was charged $70 with no explanation. I opened up a chat to discuss the charges and they said they had to elevate it to a ticket. I waited 4 days without a response and had to open up another chat to get it looked at. It was "corrected" and funds credited to my account, but still no explanation of why it happened, what was corrected and only half the charge was credited. A month passed and I was not billed for anything, however the following month I was billed for $20. I asked for an explanation and they said it was the CloudLinux fee. I explained that during the process of installing Cloudlinux I asked to be taken down from Fully managed to Core managed, which was reflective in tickets/email and lowered the price. They said there was no record of the conversation, even though I had it in my email as proof.
Other issues I have:
Their dashboard is slow and clunky. Its hard to navigate around. In fairness, they are undergoing some changes but their new dashboard (which you are redirected to for support tickets) looks and feels worst than the old one. It feels messy, lack of design and color. Not a big deal, but for a big company I see it as cutting corners. Additionally, the graphics and data blocks don't give much detail into the statistics of your server.
For a VPS, my websites run slower than they should. At times it feels as if I am on shared hosting but Im only running a few very low traffic websites, I should be experiencing better speeds. I received better performance from the $5 DigitalOcean droplets and I spend more than 7 times that with LiquidWeb.
To conclude, I am patient and reasonable, but Liquid Web has poor communication among themselves, overall poor customer service and subpar server performance. I will say I had one tech that was excellent when installing Plesk but my experiences are based on multiple encounters, multiple tickets and many more conversations with them. If you have a choice, I suggest finding another company that offers a refund policy, because once you pay these guys you are stuck with them...
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