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Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)
- Hates_ 15y agoOne of the hardest things when communicating with customers is not taking it personally. Don't take criticisms or complaints as personal attacks and above all else resist the temptation to try and "one-up" your customer. Loads of times we've received pretty insulting emails, but done our best to be polite and helpful back, more times then not we've received a really thankful and praising email back in response. A lot of times customers forgot they're sending a message to a real person, and just think they're contacting a faceless corporation.
- jarin 15y agoIt's doubly worse at a porn company. People already half-expect you to be scamming them somehow, and come into it with apprehension if not outright hostility. The upshot is when you give them amazing customer service, they turn into instant evangelists :)
- geoffw8 15y ago"Upshot"
- palish 15y agoWhich porn company?
- jarin 15y agoI used to be a development manager at Naughty America, but now I'm doing consulting and development for Dirty Hot Productions (and also helping out with customer service, since it just launched and the volume is still low). I kind of wanted to avoid being "typecast" as an adult developer (I do have non-adult clients as well), but the owner of Dirty Hot Productions used to be a fellow employee at NA, has funding, and I really enjoy building products from scratch so it was hard to pass up.
- pyrhho 15y agoI'm curious how 'evangelical' someone could be about a porn company? Do you really find word-of-mouth advertising to work for you?
- robinduckett 15y agolol word of mouth
- jarin 15y agoOh definitely, most people don't go around talking about paying for porn sites, but the really hardcore porn customers (the kind who regularly pay for porn) can be extremely loyal if you treat them nicely (and vocal if you don't).
- dous 15y agoYour comment reminded me of this video by Derek Sivers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfwwHa-7Ux8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfwwHa-7Ux8
- thomaskerr 15y agoScared of the truth? http://pastebin.com/9rHuWFGw http://pastebin.com/9rHuWFGw I bet you're going to c e n s o r this hn mods are pathetic
- ZeSmith 15y agoWhat's that even doing here?
- zobzu 15y agoThat's how it should be, however, it happens the other way around too: * Company's person in contact with the customer insults the customer/make fun of him/etc (or even swear) * customer responds politely that it's wrong and uncalled for * Company respond another sarcastic comment or that it's "not insults" (even when its crystal clear) and that you're in that class of annoying customers * customer gets real angry bonus points: * company goes personally against the customer and tries to threaten him by all possible means Sounds like a true story? Well yeah, it is. ;-)
- corin_ 15y agoPretty dumb to tweet "go fuck yourself" before you've got your data off their servers - given you've only just seen that they clearly take things personally and act like kids.
- berfarah 15y agoHey - the customer in question here. I'll admit, it was really stupid, definitely a mistake - I was really angry. My friend had just told me my site was down, and I got an email saying my account had been terminated, and then to top it off, a tweet saying "good luck finding your next hosting provider". The "go fuck yourself" was a kneejerk reaction to a guy clearly enjoying his powertrip.
- ck2 15y agoTell your friend if it's on liquidweb shared hosting then there are four levels of backups with rotations on an external drive array. The data is definitely there and a reseller can get it restored within an hour for free - if they are motivated of course. If they can prove ownership of the content to liquidweb maybe they can do an end-run around the reseller.
- berfarah 15y agoThanks, I'm looking into that.
- zobzu 15y agoI had such a relation with a provider (not hosting, but anyway). The guys were obviously "bad guys" you know. Being sarcastic and all, about issues that were their and not mine. Anyhow, I played nice until I got everything, as you recommend. Once I did, I wrote that they had a very poor service etc. They pasted my communications with them where i've been nice saying that didn't reflect it etc. Moral of the story, you should do whatever you like, the outcome is hard to determine.
- jarin 15y agoI hate to say it, but when you go with bargain basement hosting, you're often going to get bargain basement quality. I'm sure we've all heard horror stories of shared hosting providers, but personally I've had one just completely disappear, taking my 2 years of prepaid hosting with them (along with hundreds of other customers, at least).
- 46Bit 15y agoI have to agree on some counts. I see a lot of people get burned by companies every year or so - often when they sell and change owners - and then jump ship to just another random more-or-less anonymous webhost. It's not so much about price as about legal status and especially that it's not a 1-man band operating a server out of their College dormroom - or residential internet. If you've a 50-man company hosting you, it's going to be more reliable in my opinion that if there's only 1 or 2 guys behind it.
- samarudge 15y agoA few months ago, I was told by Rackspace that "We're not responsible for looking after your hardware" after they'd removed, and destroyed, a working hard drive from a dedicated server instead of replacing the disk that had failed, regardless of the price, all hosting is 'bargain basement quality', some are just more bargin than others =)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jsharpe 15y agoIsn't "looking after your hardware" exactly what they're responsible for? Why else are they being paid?
- epochwolf 15y agoI know that rackspace isn't responsible for data loss caused by hardware failure or an accident on their part. A number of rackspace employees have told me (on irc) that I'm responsible for my own backups. Perhaps it was a misquote?
- innes 15y agoWhat are the twitter accounts of the customers? All I've seen here is a couple of DM's from the host and a couple of emails from the host.
- laCour 15y agohttps://twitter.com/berfarah https://twitter.com/berfarah & https://twitter.com/boriskourt https://twitter.com/boriskourt
- innes 15y agoUnprofessional behaviour from the host, but these guys should perhaps have employed a bit of professionalism too - I wouldn't be surprised if the 'perpetually indignant' twitter mode of address, and the tendency to want to summon up mob of the righteous whenever possible, has spilled over into their dealings with this company. Seems like twitter has given every angry person the opportunity to wave a banner of Truth and Justice 24/7. However, even seeing the twitter streams, all the facts are not out in the open, so this is just my unscientific take on it. I expect it'll be an unpopular view.
- jarin 15y agoI think there's some truth there. Both sides acted like children, but the reason the focus is more on the hosting company is that they abused their power. As far as the attitudes go, when you're reselling $2.95/month hosting you're going to get $2.95/month customers. In my experience, cheap customers are the most likely to squabble and gripe and moan over tiny things and drive you crazy. But hey, you make your bed and you gotta sleep in it. And don't delete your bed's data and backups over a twitter hissy fit.
- AlexC04 15y agoand on that $2.95 your profit is $1.50 a month ... that doesn't buy a lot of "taking shit".
- tormentor 15y agoYou better believe everyone will hear about this and drop them. Very unprofessional for a grown man to act like a child.
- jdelsman 15y agoYou are assuming he's a grown man.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- burgerbrain 15y agoEven more unprofessional to allow a child to do your customer service, so assuming he's a grown man is really giving them the benefit of the doubt now isn't it?
- thirsteh 15y agoReason #3 in "Why we're so good" (http://www.thiswebhost.com/reasons.html http://www.thiswebhost.com/reasons.html): "We want to help. Customer service is very important to us, so we'll treat you like a valued client and not like a number."
- Jabbles 15y agoHow many people do you think "we" is? Could the person that runs the twitter be an employee? They advertise 24/7 customer support. Even if it is an employee, and he is terminated because of this, would that allow you to trust the company again? If it turns out to be the founder/CEO, then we have no hope for the company. But how devastating would it be for your startup if one of your employees did something like this, without your permission. We all know how difficult it is to recruit the right people, but should a mistake like this be un-recoverable?
- citricsquid 15y agoI did some looking. The Twitter account appears to have been used by their "Technical Director" Jules. Jules is the same person who replied to the tickets. I then got ahold of their company documents, Jules is not listed as a company owner (or Director) whereas 3 others are. Therefore I am making the assumption that he is indeed only an employee and not someone associated with the higher up management.
- jarin 15y agoJules is also listed as the company owner on the reviews: http://www.webhostingreviews.com/thiswebhost-reviews.htm http://www.webhostingreviews.com/thiswebhost-reviews.htm And is the registrant of the domain name (and the only contact).
- samarudge 15y agoWhoIs lookup shows him as the domain owner Registrant Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson () Fax: South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB Administrative Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson (domains@thiswebhost.com) +1.5555555555 Fax +1.5555555555 South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB Technical Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson (domains@thiswebhost.com) +1.5555555555 Fax +1.5555555555 South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB Also he appears to be using a fake phone number on the WhoIs, am I right in thinking you're not allowed to do that?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- _delirium 15y agoSeems like an unwise legal move to make it look like you deleted the data not out of policy, but out of a desire to harm the (now former) customer.
- mikey_p 15y agoAs someone who runs his own consulting business, if I had clients who didn't know what they were doing and abusive towards me, I'd drop them in a heartbeat. The original poster on reddit isn't going to garner any sympathy from me.
- tomkr 15y agoThere's a difference between dropping a client and treating them disrespectfully. At the very least, the bad publicity isn't worth it.
- X4 15y agoSorry, but there was a guy earning millions just because he had the worst customer support. That was his job, to be rude, aggressive and an ass to customers. Really google even changed it's algorithm due to people like him. Telling everywhere, that domain abc.org sucks would result in domain abc.org beeing ranked top, heh. At least it was a creative way of fraud and motivated google for a move, otherwise google would have lost reputation due to that guy too.
- jarin 15y agoApparently the owner of the site in question has the same mindset: http://i.imgur.com/gYcys.png http://i.imgur.com/gYcys.png
- X4 15y agoSorry don't judge without hearing an opinion. I don't share that guy's mindset. I've just pointed that the bad guy business model exists due to google's ranking algorithm, which has changed recently. However it's clear that this is very bad practice and shouldn't be tolerated by the public.
- wanorris 15y agoYes, and that guy (Vitaly Borker of DecorMyEyes.com) has now pled guilty to two federal counts of sending threatening communications, one federal count of mail fraud and one federal count of wire fraud. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/business/13borker.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/business/13borker.html Do not try this at home!
- rmc 15y agoIt irked me that he didn't seem to care about lost customers He doesn't sound like a good customer, I can understand why a company would want to ditch him. Companies shouldn't try to keep all customers all the time. Just read the blog http://notalwaysright.com/ http://notalwaysright.com/ which is full of anecdotes of stupid customers.
- oomkiller 15y agoFiring customers/clients is fine, but not like this.
- FeministHacker 15y agoI am of the opinion that businesses are defined by how they handle the exit of customers more than by how they handle take-on of customers. A customer being difficult to manage or not profitable still deserves a professional exit. These sorts of customers are not, however, automatically "stupid customers". They are "difficult" or "non-profitable". In my experience, a user simply being "stupid" doesn't in itself mean that you shouldn't work with them - in fact, often with a little bit of work, they might even become a reasonable repeat customer. Like a lot of people who have had customer facing roles, I have enjoyed reading notalwaysright (and the older http://customerssuck.livejournal.com/ http://customerssuck.livejournal.com/). But I have found over time the postings to have become more deliberate funny-making or actually problematic from an equality point of view.
- rmc 15y agoThese sorts of customers are not, however, automatically "stupid customers". They are "difficult" or "non-profitable". Yes. notalwaysright.com is funny, and I'm sure some are good customers. However it's a good 'ammo' against the idea that "The Customer is always right" (a corrollary is that businesses should care about losing any customers).
- bane 15y agoRight...what's the metric? 10% of your customers will consume 90% of your customer handling resources?
- X4 15y agomeh, that sucks. A 1and1 employee once ripped a domain from me. I was bored and bought top10.eu, a minute after I got a call from that company telling me that he is going to own that domain and I cannot buy it. I told him, you're late my friend, refreshed the browser to be sure about it, it was all ok, yes I owned it. Refreshing my account again revealed that there was no such domain anymore. So much for trust. He called again and said, sorry but you cannot own that domain, I own it now. Man was I pissed. Trust nobody, even if it's nobody. Do your own backups regularly. Daily and hourly.
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoboriskourt: "That's not cool. Suspending a friends account because of a minor PayPal dispute? When did you get into doing that?" This seems to be about a web host not accepting people not paying their bills. It's not really the web hosts problem if you can't pay, doesn't matter if you've a dispute with paypal. Don't pay and they're in their rights to cease providing service. Don't pay, then bitch about them not providing your service, then provide profane public responses and post a call on Reddit to try and get the company destroyed ... well is it a surprise that they delete your data at that point. Aside: berfarah needs to read up on the Gunpowder Plot.
- samarudge 15y agohttp://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/jk195/stay_the_fuck_away_from_this_thiswebhostcom/c2csnv7 http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/jk195/stay_the_f... He explains that there was a valid reason for not being able to pay the bills (I.E. PayPal having a problem). This* then suspended all of his accounts (Including the ones that had already been payed for) and, from the looks of it, were very unhelpful in resolving the situation. Yes, if the PayPal payment didn't come through the domains should probably have been suspended as they hadn't been payed for, but not the entire account and certainly not denying access to backups
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago>there was a valid reason for not being able to pay the bills (I.E. PayPal having a problem) // It's an excuse, but it's not payment. Continuation of the contract would presumably require payment. A clients inability to pay ends their right to receive service. Sure a larger company can usually manage to give grace in such situations (but often won't) but small businesses, as this appears to be, seem to suffer a lot more with cash flow problems. So the story goes: 1. customer doesn't pay 2. customer and friend argue that not paying shouldn't get their account suspended 3. customers friend tells company to FOAD (or whatever) 4. company terminates all services 5. customer and friend start internet campaign I'm really struggling to see how the company are supposed to have acted so badly - is it really considered such a crime to not let people have service without rendering payment? Of course, as ever, there's a lack of detail as to the amounts left unpaid and the nature of the PayPal issue and so none of us should really be offering ludicrously emotional and dramatic judgements about either party.
- shabble 15y agoFrom http://www.thiswebhost.com/reviewus.html http://www.thiswebhost.com/reviewus.html : "It's no surprise that when things work as they should, people rarely talk about them. When things don't work, however, people are often very quick to criticise, condemn and even publically discourage the use of the service or product. Fortunately for us, there's none of the latter - and we hope that remains the case for as long as we're in business. Unfortunately for us, because of an excellent proven track-record, there's relatively little in the way of comments or reviews of this* on the Internet. We'd like to ask for your help to change that. If you're happy enough to write a review for us, here are some of the best places you could do so: [ ... ] Social Networks - everything from a quick Twitter message to a forum post on any of the forums you frequent. Every little piece of exposure is appreciated!" Isn't that pretty much...what he did?
- patio11 15y agoThere are better ways to handle one's customers than displayed by the CS employee here, but be that as it may: think long and hard before you get into the business of taking $3 a month from people who are demographically similar to Redditors.
- richarmstrong 15y agoIndeed. Also, companies get way too worked up about people "trashing them on Twitter". People are going to say crappy things about your company/product. And nobody cares except you and the person "trashing" you. Getting worked up just makes your company look stupid.
- hyperbovine 15y agoRedditors are demographically distinct from the average purchaser of web hosting? I'm suspicious.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- hollerith 15y agoGrandparent (patio11) has not implied they were. Are you assuming that selling web hosting services for $3 a month must be a satisfactory business model?
- notatoad 15y agoi think the point the parent was trying to make is that there's a couple million redditors - they aren't demographically distinct from anybody. he could have said "the general public" instead.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rmc 15y ago* They are usually much more price sensitive and want things as cheap as possible * The are usually not running businesses (ergo don't have a lot of money) * They are very used to the free offers like gmail et al., and think since you're charging that you should be better. * They also are a strong believer in getting justice if people (incl. them) get screwed and will readily post things like this in public fora.
- atourino 15y agoA couple of points: - Backups are your responsibility. Not the hosts, not the government. Not anyone else. You. Period. - Cannot pay with Paypal? Paypal HQ spontaneously explodes into a huge ball of fiery death? Find another way to pay. It's your responsibility to hold your side of the contract.
- samarudge 15y agoFrom the looks of it, the company offers no other payment options other than PayPal and didn't provide any information otherwise (I.E. "We need this now, please wire us the money, here's our account details")
- savramescu 15y agoAnd when they only accept Paypal? What do yo do then? I don't care if I have backups. Such a termination of services and further purging of data is a big no-no in my books.
- praptak 15y agoThis makes me wonder. What's stopping Google from implementing something like "social scam warnings"? It would be nice to see something along the lines "1 of your friends thinks this site is bad" with the search results. It wouldn't even have to be Google - anyone with a huge social graph (LinkedIn, Facebook et al) could implement "check your friends' opinion on X".
- amitagrawal 15y agoFatCow isn't different. I've promoted their hosting services and they've consistently refused to pay me around $1K. The only reason I've not brought their actions to light is that I still have some months before my account there expires and they can terminate the account without any reason. But after reading this I'm very motivated to bring their shady tactics out before they make a buck more by scamming their own evangelists.
- tampaflori 15y agohttp://pastebin.com/9rHuWFGw http://pastebin.com/9rHuWFGw Ycombinator CENSORSHIP you can delete this comment too because you guys are so concerned about the truth getting out.
- mbrzuzy 15y agoIs this company run by 15 year olds? This behavior is just ridiculous. Completely unprofessional to delete someone's data in a fit of rage. I seriously hope people boycott this company.
- markprovan 15y agoThat's the thing about customer service. People are gonna call you out, but professionalism is in not rising to it.
- iphoneedbot 15y agoSome of the comments here are very disturbing. Right or wrong , customer or proprietor - you just dont talk to people that way.. especially so if you are a business. It doesnt matter if you are only making $One Dollar from a customer -- a company or individual should not engage in open and public shit flinging. What makes this grotesque is the way the company taunted the customer. What is really shocking are some of the responses and the notion that since the customer didnt pay or had a problem that the company was entitled and near obliged to dish out such treatment.
- jrockway 15y agoTLDR, someone told a hosting company to fuck themselves on Twitter, so the hosting company canceled their hosting? Nice DoS vector; all I have to do is claim I'm foo.com on Twitter, then I just tell foo.com's host to fuck themselves, and then foo.com is gone forever. It also sounds like a good way to cancel unwanted credit cards. Instead of waiting on hold for hours to talk to high-pressure "you don't really want to cancel, do you" guy, just tell your bank to fuck themselves on Twitter, and your account magically goes away. Somehow I feel I'm missing something here...
- berfarah 15y agoLet me be clear (customer here) I told him to go fuck himself AFTER he cancelled not only my account, but that of my friend's. And he did this on a few tweets, based on our Twitter handles - had we been using pseudonyms, that could have been a whole different can of worms. Yes, I got really riled up. Yes, I'm not free from blame. It's kind of ridiculous to delete someone's account based on a personal dispute with no prior notice.
- Vivtek 15y agoSo you supported your friend on Twitter, he cancelled your account, you really took exception, and he deleted your backups to put you in your place. It boggles the mind. Personally, in my book, you are free from blame. My wife would have had him bleeding from his eye sockets and watching dark corners for the rest of his life.
- jrockway 15y agoYou did nothing wrong. It's the Internet: people say fuck. Some sort of legal action should be brought against your host.
- techiferous 15y ago> Some sort of legal action should be brought against your host. No. Legal action is hell for both parties. Why put yourself in hell? Especially for a $3/month hosting service?
- kassak 15y ago:)
- leon_ 15y agoI won't judge This* without knowing the whole story. From experience I know that customers can get really retarded PITAs and waste all your time with nonsense.
- Isofarro 15y ago1.) Monthly web hosting invoice unpaid 2.) Customer informed and appropriate action taken for unpaid accounts (suspend account for non-payment) 3.) Customer's friend makes a public complaint on Twitter 4.) Web host responds badly (but perhaps with some justification, outside parties getting involved in disputes, where a simple pay-the-outstanding-invoice would have resolved the situation) 5.) Non-payee gets abusive 6.) Web host deletes the account for abusive behaviour. Apart from point 3, everything else seems in order. The customer's friend was provoking a reaction in public. What did he want, the webhost to publicly state that his friend's account had been suspended for non-payment? That seems worse than a firm private message to butt out of a contractual matter. Suspending the customer's friend does seem harsh, but taken from the view that he's complaining publicly about a problem that doesn't involve him, it might be a long term justification of ejecting bad customers instead of just tolerating them (perhaps there's more to the story). That sort of approach is recommended by things like The 4-hour work week, firing your worst customers. The guy should have paid his bill, either on time, or as soon as justified. There was no reason for his friend to escalate matters, there was no reason for the non-payee to escalate matters. You pay for the service, you get the service. You don't pay, then you get no service. Yes, the web host can be more lenient, but it's not something you should feel entitled to. There are a number of extenuating circumstances that can warrant or could result in one or more of these points being appropriate responses. And look at it, it's a cpanel / shared-hosting reseller - those margins are razor thin to non-existent, even loss-leading. If you're not paying at least $7 a month for a cpanel account, then expecting the host to be lenient for non-payment and subsequent abuse from the non-payee is unjustified.
- vitalysh 15y agoThis is the story from the guy who originally had a dispute with hosting provider. http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/jk195/stay_the_fuck_away_from_this_thiswebhostcom/c2csnv7 http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/jk195/stay_the_f...
- davidandgoliath 15y agoOdd, from what I've read all the accounts were paid up to date -- but paypal had taken a particular payment back for some new service (a domain name or something to that effect). #6a) Hosting provider deletes the backups as well.
- davidandgoliath 15y agoIt's easy to see where both sides originally began from: As a web hosting provider owner myself, I can see where the default assumption that paypal disputes automatically equal fraud originates. Sadly though it's not the correct stance to really take -- and one has to distance themselves emotionally from every situation (particularly as 'Director', in this case, like Jules) otherwise it'll turn into a shitstorm just about 100% of the time. Allowing it to descend to the point where backups were deleted is just an absolutely appalling situation though. I've given clients the boot before, but descending to the point where removal of their backups occurs after suspending them is just wrong. As a provider you're the technical link between someone and their content, and your goal is to protect that content with everything you've got: Destroying it yourself is simply disheartening. It's sad to see that thiswebhost* has arrived at this point, but the good news is all it will take is some effort & 'emotional distancing' to really improve. I know not many years ago I was in the same position as a fledgling company owner where it's very easy to take things to heart. Hopefully thiswebhost* can dig through some backups (assuming they still have some) and provide the users with their content.
- cwilson 15y agoThis is why, as a startup or small business, it's crucial to have that guy/gal on your team who is just superb at support and dealing with customers. They should be the type of person who has the ability to not take insults or criticism about the company personally, they should have a very thick skin, and generally they should almost always be happy and upbeat. It's rare to find this person but even more rare for them to be one of your founders. If you're in the business of having customers who require support I suggest hiring this person before almost anyone else when you have the ability to do so. It's a game changer.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Shenglong 15y agoI fear some of the negativity might trickle down, considering this* is a reseller as mentioned. I poked LiquidWeb, so they should be aware of the issue.
- laCour 15y agoLatest update from thiswebhost.com: http://www.thiswebhost.com/blog/2011/08/16/the-reddit-incident/ http://www.thiswebhost.com/blog/2011/08/16/the-reddit-incide...
- wanorris 15y agoI understand where this* is coming from, but I personally still wouldn't do business with them after this. Yes, these customers did lots of things wrong. But a provider that was more committed to customer service would have tried to be constructive in the way that they handled things anyway. Even if you want to fire this customer, "No soup for you!" is not the right way to do it.
- laCour 15y agoTheir response, this time not from Jules: http://www.thiswebhost.com/blog/2011/08/16/moving-on/ http://www.thiswebhost.com/blog/2011/08/16/moving-on/
- ZoFreX 15y agoI think the Redditor complaining isn't being entirely fair (shock horror, wronged customer doesn't represent both sides of the issue), and I think they handled this the best way they could once it got so big by issuing that statement. That said, it still positively reeks of unprofessionalism, from the smilies in the text to the inarguably weak reasoning: > It is our policy not to discuss client accounts with anyone but the account holder. I have unsuspended your account and hope that this allows you to retrieve any data required. Pretty sure that I'm not the account holder, and yet he's discussing the details with me? I would certainly think twice before considering them as hosts.
- samstave 15y agoBOFH much.
- joshu 15y agoDo we really need a third thread about this?
- girlvinyl 15y agoMaybe I'm old fashioned but I really hate the idea of using twitter as a customer service and account management vector.
- alanh 15y agoI will take this opportunity to warn everyone about BlueHost.com. Three knocks against them: 1) Most importantly: They store passwords in plaintext and require the last four char of your password whenever you contact support. I kid you not. 2) Almost as important: They shut down customers when they disagree with them politically — this is a Salt Lake City outfit, and therefore extremely anti-gay, and you will be paying people who take down pro-LGBT websites simply for being pro-LGBT. 3) Terrible tech documentation (they "support" Rails but it’s quite difficult to actually use).