Hosts We Don’t Recommend
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As we’ve mentioned many places on this site, there are a lot of unethical web hosting review sites that will promote a particular host based solely on their commission structure and nothing else.
Many of these sites and bloggers are just out to make a buck and won’t actually tell it like it is! We wanted to make WebHostingBuddy different, and because of that we give honest reviews and breakdowns that aren’t influenced in any way by affiliate commissions. Yes, you may see affiliate links on this page in the sidebar or on other pages of this site, but understand that these do NOT affect or influence reviews.
(A quick little note: if you do happen to purchase hosting from one of the hosting affiliate links on this page, we might get a commission. This doesn’t affect our reviews at all—we will call junk out when we see it! We just believe in transparency and thought you should know 🙂
We created this page to help people understand which web hosts we think should be avoided. You’ll notice that some of the hosts on this page (such as iPage) page offer (or have previously offered) huge commissions ($105 or more per referral) but we absolutely do not recommend them. If you search online for “web hosting reviews” you may have seen see iPage at the top of many review sites over the years—we believe this is solely based on the commissions that they pay, NOT because they are a good web host in our opinion (they’re actually quite terrible, again, in our opinion).
The list below contains a variety of web hosts that we think people should avoid. We have personally used each of these hosts and can attest to them being a poor choice based on our experience and in some cases the experience of our colleagues who have also had a bad experience.
Without further ado, here are the hosts that we think everyone should avoid:
Laughing Squid
We have never been more frustrated with a web host in our lives. They have awful support hours (9 – 6 p.m., what is this a bank?) and it took months to get an actual response from them.
They accepted payment from a client of ours and then never provided the hosting account credentials, despite multiple emails and calls. We ended up having to remove the credit card from their billing system just to get them to stop trying to collect more payments, and that was the only thing that eventually got their attention. By then, we wanted nothing to do with them. We have no idea how they ended up on the WordPress recommended hosts page, and they seem to care more about their blog posts and social media accounts than they do customer service. Avoid them at all costs.
iPage and iPage-Like Properties (FatCow, PowWeb, Netfirms, Globat & others)
It’s absolutely crazy to us that the same company that owns HostGator and Bluehost (EIG) also owns iPage and their similar clone hosting companies. HostGator and Bluehost are great hosts, but iPage absolutely stinks. FatCow, PowWeb, Netfirms, Globat and some others that we’re probably forgetting are what we call “iPage-like properties” because they all use the same crappy interface and are all owned by the same company.
From our experience and our colleague’s experiences, they are slow, expensive, their support sucks, and collectively, we’ve had the most sites hacked on iPage & iPage-like properties than anywhere else. There are so many better hosts for the money and we can’t recommend them at all. We honestly think that the people who sign up with them at this point are either coming from an affiliate site or are just not very savvy in terms of the hosting options out there. Their interface is clunky, cumbersome, and just plain stupid.
If you’re considering iPage or an iPage-like property, please consider a different host. The good news though, is that now, they have been shut down as independent companies by EIG, and their home pages just redirect to Bluehost (which is much better). It seems they are still supporting accounts if you had one in the past, but new customers are redirected to sign up for Bluehost.
1&1 Hosting (IONOS)
While they’re ok for domains (free privacy for the win), their hosting interface is just the crappiest thing ever. It’s so cumbersome and confusing we have had to call customer support just to figure out simple things.
If you’re looking for a domain registrar, they’re not bad, but there are many better hosting companies out there. We literally have no idea how they got so popular, because their hosting sucks in our opinion and there are so many better options out there.
Deluxe Hosting
We’ve had the misfortune of finding out about Deluxe Hosting after Liquidweb cancelled their shared hosting plans.
Liquidweb rocks, and had a good shared hosting plan for years. However, they decided to stop offering shared hosting and migrated all of their clients automatically to Deluxe Hosting. Let us tell you—this was a huge mistake. We’ve had some of our own sites and colleague’s sites that were down for days and their support was ridiculously unhelpful.
Getting login credentials was a huge pain and so was migrating the sites off of Deluxe Hosting. Liquidweb could’ve done a much better job choosing a partner and picking Deluxe Hosting was a big mistake. Liquidweb still rocks, but stay away from Deluxe Hosting. Slow servers, terrible support, and a problematic interface.
Valice
They are a small hosting company in Idaho and while their support is fairly responsive, they have been extremely rude—probably the rudest tech support people we’ve ever dealt with.
Their servers were fine, and the response time in terms of support was good, but they were so rude that we’d have to recommend staying away from them.
Acorn Host
In order to get in touch with someone who can troubleshoot your issue, you’re funneled through multiple people. Additionally, they are rude and have a lot of hoops that you need to jump through (which are completely subjective) in order to qualify for their nonprofit web hosting.
On top of that, they were expensive than SiteGround and other popular shared hosting companies with support that is many levels worse. Stay away.
HostMetro
We’ve been in multiple arguments with HostMetro about renewal pricing as they are completely inflexible about renewal rates (this is unheard of in the hosting industry) and are extremely rude. If you try to negotiate with them they will essentially tell you to get lost in an extremely rude way. We had this experience and so did a colleague of ours who had multiple accounts with them.
WestHost
In our experience working with a colleague using WestHost, their servers were extremely slow and their customer support was extremely unhelpful. We can’t recommend them by any means.
CrocWeb
They are a “budget” host in our opinion that charges way too much when there are better options. They sort of play of the “HostGator” image with the alligator which we also think is a little cheap. Their hosting was ok but their renewals are too expensive when there are better options out there.
Hawk Host
They are another “budget” host in our opinion and we have had issues with sites we’ve hosted there sharing the server with too many spammy sites. We didn’t like the “neighborhood” on their servers and wouldn’t use them again. Support and performance were good, but due to the “neighborhood” concerns, we couldn’t recommend them.
Hosts We DO Like
As you can see on this site, there are a lot of web hosts that we do like. Among our favorites are:
WP Engine
Flywheel
Liquidweb
SiteGround
HostGator
Hostinger
Bluehost
Cloudways
You can click on any of the links above to learn more about these hosts!
