This is just a heads up to everybody,

I found Powweb about 3 years ago and decided to go with their Unlimited hosting package for the very low price of 4.88/month. You know when they say if things appear to be too good to be true.. well, you get the idea.

Let me tell you why Shared hosting is usually a giant ripoff.

First off, if you take a look at their hosting package it appears to be the holy grail of hosting with everything you can possibly need.

That's what I thought.

It wasn't long before they shut my website down because I "repeatedly used max database connections" which is BullSH*t. They said they have a max database connection allowance of 10 at a time. This is ubsurd! They give you up to 75 MySQL databases but you can only have 10 connections at a time?

Not only do they not mention this anywhere on their Hosting Plan, but how on earth are you supposed to use even 2 percent of your allocated bandwidth if you can't have more than 10 people connecting at once.

PLUS, I signed up as an affiliate to their referral program and sent thousands of visitors to their site through word of mouth, banners and text links and I never received ONE commission payment from them.

My website has been shutoff for months losing tons of traffic and they won't turn it back on. When my hosting is expired next month you can bet your AZZ I won't be using them ever again.

If you plan on having a website hosted somewhere else, you'd be better off using someone else.

DO NOT USE POWWEB HOSTING, I REPEAT DO NOT USE POWWEB HOSTING.

They give you up to 75 MySQL databases but you can only have 10 connections at a time?

While 10 connections is arguably on the low side, you typically can't expect much more than 25 connections in a shared hosting environment, unless your data transfer is severely limited (say 20Gb per month or even less).

10 simultaneous Mysql connections would mean 10 visitors requiring data from the database at the very same time (fraction of a second). This is unlikely to happen unless the site is quite popular, which would imply that better than $5 hosting is not only affordable, but recommendable.

With other hosts that are more lax in the connections department you can still run into CPU/memory related issues before your reach the database connections limit.

My website has been shutoff for months losing tons of traffic and they won't turn it back on.

That is likely to have severely affected your SEO rankings. Don't let your site stay offline for that long. Cut your losses and change hosts if a conflict/situation takes days to solve, and always maintain a backup of your data.

Best of luck!

No host can actually provide unlimited resources. How could anyone do that? Shared hosting accounts with a static ip are still a good value if exact resource specifications are stated and there is an easy way to up all resources through the web hosting control panel. You get what you pay for with true business web hosting.

Just be careful while reading the TOS It seems that you have been in luck for the past 3 years till the present moment

That's true. It's not possible to provide unlimited resources. The basic reason is "nothing comes for free". Even the allocation of bandwidth to the shared server. They have to pay to their ISP's for the same and if they are providing you with unlimited resources means they are definitely over-selling the hosting package.

I assume that story has another side as wel so that would be interesting to here that as well

You have been happy with them for about 3 years.... Maybe that worth to give them another chance?

Shared Hosting = Hostgator.com, nothing else, because they are on High Speed Planet Servers. I'm also a big hater of GoDaddy - the Hype!!!!

I can understand your pain brother ... better you try semi dedicated servers ...

If you say like that then now one can provide you originally full features. They can use to attract customers for there advertisements.

You may also use cheap dedicated servers to satisfy your needs IMHO.

What would have been even worse is if you just prepaid for three years and you just figured this out. I'd never recommend that anyone prepays for three years in advance. One year is more than enough.

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/web-ho...hosting-i.html
that is about unlimited resource..

I think it's always best to pay monthly. I am sorry to hear about your bad experience. I have seen bad reviews about PowWeb on other forums. I hope you find the right host for you. Have you considered HostGator?

It is recommended to think twice or thrice when ever the word "Unlimited" is found in any webhosting plan. Everything has cost. Shared Hosting is based on the assumption that each website will utilize the resources below the threshold. Every host will try to sell the upgrade plan whenever one account crosses the threshold.

"unlimited" is just a marketing tactic to drive the sales.

Boy, and I thought FREE HOSTING was bad...

I have a question: why did you stay there for 3 years? $4.88 a month does not buy a lot of CPU /RAM power

The only thing unlimited is maybe the number of people who take this term literally:-)

Originally Posted by Brian07002

Boy, and I thought FREE HOSTING was bad...

Free hosting is not bad after all. It only becomes bad when your site is always down. That is the main side effect of free hosting.

Sorry to hear about your unfortunate experience. That does happen frequently these days when a user absorbs the majority of resources on a server. Every host will do that in a shared environment. Your best bet may be to upgrade to a VPS or try a host that allows for a business type hosting plan where you have less users on the server. That will allow for higher usage. I would inquiry with everyhost regarding the terms of service and what exactly means using up server resources. Best of luck to you.