This site WAS hosted by IX Web Hosting and was hacked 5 times

Posted: November 25, 2009 in IX Web Hosting
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Hahaha.. I know it is really not funny, but sometimes you just have to laugh…  The above screenshot is from www.examinarse.com  Seems like the owner packed his / her bag and left in a hurry..

While I’m here, I might as well post a few recent comments from HAPPY IX CUSTOMERS.

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I hope Google ranks this website in their top search results for anyone wanting to know more about IXWebhosting. I had been with that webhost for more than 4 years and changed all my sites to a different host just last week. IXWebhosting is the most poorly managed, technically incompetent and frustrating company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.

Why have I been with them for 4 years?
Their webhosting plans were at the time and still are pretty cheap when compared to other competitors. But its true, if you throw peanuts, you’ll get monkeys. You are ok till the time you have a website with only static (html pages). That’s what I had for 2 years. The moment you have a dynamic site, have anything to do with databases, use pages in asp or php… God save you. I’ve had nothing but trouble for the remaining 2 years pulling my hair out with every trouble ticket raised.

Customer Service
Its the most slowest, incompetent buffoons I’ve ever interacted with. Every ticket raised takes a minimum of 14 hours to be verified. Their typical replies are “everything’s ok at their end”. They do not understand your query, nor can they understand any technical issues.

Spam-
I lived with spam in each of our mailboxes for all the time I’ve ben with IXWebhosting. Spam is like its brother. Besides having issues with our mail disappearing from our mailboxes (their backup could only restore some of it as it was infrequently taken), I had to put up with tons of spam. At the time of writing this, I believe they have made the web access to the email accounts over https, but still, my experience with them was ghastly.

Server Security-
My websites were hacked many a times. Their servers are easily vulnerable to anybody. I will rate my expertise with networks and security at advanced. To test the security I have hacked into my own hosting webserver and seen the list of domains, their entire contents by simply installing a ridiculous script. I raised this issue in a trouble ticket and the response was.. you guessed it..”everything’s ok at their end”

Their famed easy to use preloaded scripts (Easy Apps collection)-
It is user friendly to install, I’ll agree. But every one of them is completely outdated, buggy to customize and of course vulnerable to hacks. Their excuse- Its the entire collection of scripts that they install when they update the server software (maybe years before). The scripts in them cannot be changed or upgraded.

Final Comments-
If you have a simple website with a couple of html pages and you don’t mind spam, if your wesite is hacked or defaced, its good value for cheap hosting.
Otherwise, Avoid Them Like The Plague… as someone else wrote in here.

I am not affiliated with anyone or anything from anywhere and all the experiences above are my own.
Archie H

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We have been using IX for a long time. First thing that happended was that they allowed my EX-Wife access to my account after we were divorced because she has paid by her credit card at one point for one domain name. They changed the admin panel and allowed her full access to everything because she did not pay for her domain and called them! MORORNS! We have a pro business account and they allowed her access to customers account info, OMG what a night mare! Finally after getting the police involved they fixed it. Now 3 out of 7 of our accounts have been hacked… We have not done or changed anything, in fact the accounts that have been hacked are just place holders for domanins… I have asked it to be fixed from backup 4 times so far and as of yet nothing… I am just in the process of moveing everything to a new local box and say GOOD BYE loosers!
Michael

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Server vulnerable to hacking, infected our site, IX Web Hosting refused to acknowledge or address, arbitrarily shut us down. Luckily, we had just completed set up with an alternative server and this didn’t cost us the significant downtime, money and trouble it could have. AVOID them like the plague!
Dayl

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In the beginning (up to a year ago) everything was fine. Now I have had so many problems that today I have changed my hosting company and left ix-webhosting and went to BlueHost.

My problems:
1. extremely slow server response (average response to a simple html page over 5 seconds). Regularly browser says: no server response. My customers are complaining. Maintaining my blog is almost impossible
2. ftp regularly does not work (complaint by server: too many clients, but I have just one ftp connection open)
3. average response time of trouble ticket about 24 hrs
4. tremendous problems in upgrading from php4 to php5 (I had to change ix-webhosting servers), without any help from them. They offered me help but that would cost me over 200$
5. their mysql server is slow

When I complain to them they tell me these problems are temporary and that they are about to improve it all.
Ad

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Once again I have had a horrible experience with IX WebHosting. Here is a list of issues that I exprienced over the last year of being with them:

1. The password to the control panel keeps getting reset and I know for a fact that only a select few have access. Any changes made by those few are logged and disseminated to the rest. When I ask I am made to look like “what’s the big deal?”

2. They NEVER return calls and almost never update tickets except to close it and say that it was your fault. They refer you to the “system admin” who is a ghost as far as I am concerned then are quick to tell you that they can’t do anything else to help you.

3. Press as you might the cannot suggest when the problem can be fixed. It is like they think that your business and clients that are affected by problems don’t matter.

4. Their first level support are unskillful googlers who waste no time in presenting irrelevant rubbish explanations that clearly shows that they have missed the basics of training.

Most Recent Exerience:

Unfortunately they host my mail (haven’t gotten around to hosting my own as yet). One of my customers suddenly cannot send me any mail from their domain, at least I no longer receive it on my domain hosted with IX Webhosting.

My customer had a recent SPAM issue that was resolved however they were not blacklisted. All this time I was receiving mail fine. However a while after the issues is resolved I cannot receive any mail from them.

I try chat support who quickly tells me that I need to call in to report the problem.

ok I call and some guy is trying desparately to convince me that there is a problem with the MX records of my client. And even though I tell him that mxtoolbox gives me a clean report and also that my hosted mail is the only domain that is not receiving mail from my client along with other information he refuses listen. Eventually he gets tired and tells me that he has to get a system admin to call me back.

24 hrs later no call from any admin and I decide to log a ticket myself and describe the problem – no response.

I call back again and a young lady informs me that the issue was left untouched, whatever that means and puts me on hold after every question I answer. She then routes it to the “correct” queue and pomises me that I will receive a call.

24 hrs later no call and no update other than hers that says the call is on hold.

I update the ticket to ask what is going on?

12 hrs later no response so I call and was informed that since I updated the ticket to ask a question it was reverted to the end of the queue. Apparently I was punished for quering the status on my issue….

Another young lady can give me no indication as to an estimated resoution time or at least response time.

I ask for her supervisor who refused to give me his name but was quick to tell me that I would have to wait until the admins got around to looking at the problem.

He didn’t think it was reasonable for them to at least update the ticket and was quick to tell me that “we are just the phones” and that they couldn’t escalate beyond redirecting my problem to the admin queue. They would get to it whenever they can and I would have to wait…”there are other customers ya know?” so I have absolutely no idea how long I will be in that queue. His entire tone suggested that he had worked a tripple shift and was tired and grumpy or he simply couldn’t be bothered. Meanwhile I embarasingly have to tell my customer that I am in the process of moving my mail services which after this I definitely will.

It really upsets me when companies like this get away with such horrible service.

The least you owe your customer as a service provider is a timely and honest update(s) especially when there is a problem. Lack of communications leaves people to assume the worst and suggests that the customer is not important. It does not matter where the fault lies – you are providing a service and it should be your obligation to protect the reputaion of that service by open communications to the client at all times. As an IT consultant I can personally attribute the retension of my business not to my knowledge as much as to ensuring that my customers are always informed and have open access to me. Many times it has been my saving grace during the few hiccups I have made over the years.
Anson

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Ordered web hosting form them on Thurs. pm, finally setup on Fri. However, could not upload web since FP extensions were not installed; I installed them from the panel. Long story, several calls to tech support, they can not get the FT issues resolved; moved up to admin. Called over the weekend and told it would be 24 hours…I had to wait in the queue. On Monday afternoon I was told give them another 4 -5 hours. I cancelled later that night about 10 pm…issue not resolved. Tech support was useless. They did offer 2 months extra time if I stayed. After 30 days I would have los the $$; they did refund my $$. I had used them for a couple years in the past without too many issues, site did go down several times. Not recommended.
Rick

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And the list goes on and on and on, but that makes good posting for another time.

Comments
  1. weises says:

    if they have some 120,000 users worldwide then they should have enough money to hire real IT geeks to fix this service up

    after reading this , I will be only using there unlimied services as templates and will host clients sites elsewhere

    cheers

  2. neogeo says:

    We host a fairly high volume, database driven site (smartphonecandy.com) with IX. Our biggest issue is that some ‘other’ user on the same server keeps triggering the app-pool to recycle, dumping our caching which means we have to hammer their database on reload. They did setup a dedicated app pool for us but the site just doesn’t load in it, with a random error that only their techs can retrieve. My workaround was just to put in a http monitor on another server to access the site every 5 seconds – if the app pool recycles it is forced to respin pretty much immediately. Seems to work pretty well.

    Personally I feel IX are pretty good value for money but I wouldn’t feel comfortable hosting anything larger than the smartphonecandy.com site there at this stage. We’re looking at Rackspace for a future project purely because of uptime concerns (new project is high transaction value, low volume so we can’t afford it to go down mid execution)

  3. bb says:

    The reason IX got hacked more than the rest is technically obvious: the refuse to install mod_security on their Apache. “overloading the shared server” that’s their excuse.
    If you push them further they will ask you to move to VPS – the usual classic upsell scenario. -not happy-

  4. someone from the ukraine says:

    Hey,

    Although everything of the abovementioned looks pretty much like scam, having customer service in the Ukraine doesn’t mean a website is a scam.

    I seasonally employ 50 to 500 people as independent contractors. Nearly 30 of them are Ukrainians. I must say, these are the best employees. They are professional, keen, always shoulder to the wheel, you know.

    So, just my two cents about professionals from the Ukraine… Don’t be biased.

  5. Bijoy says:

    We have hosted in IXWebhosting.com and we have been hacked 2 times. last time by Pakistani Hackers. WHAT THE WORST AN INDIAN CAN GET!!!. Which is the best site to host?

  6. Wallace Goh says:

    I have use ixwebhosting until 2009.The reason i stop using ixwebhosting because my 10 website was hacked.I try to recover the data from backup and their are fail to do it.But lucky because i have previous own backup at few months ago.Cause me not only lost data and also lost money.Then,i still have little confident and use for two months.Two months also became my nightmare.Because their keep saying my account was overload and overload.Until suspend.I try to fix the problem but their are not care for my effort.Their suspend my account.Then,i ask for get my data back.Their claim when suspend my account and their are delete all the data as well.
    My nightmare was gone after use better webhosting.

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