Looks like iPowerWeb likes to keep their servers crowded as well.

At this point you may ask, why are we making such a big deal out of this ’server crowdedness’ section? Well, it’s about the probability of damage that an account can cause. Imagine this: you live in a house with 300 neighbors (ouch!), what’s the probability that someone will disturb you? Now, what’s the probability that someone will disturb you if have 700 neighbors (very ouch!)? Obviously, the chances of being disturbed are higher with higher number of neighbors. To see an example of what kind of disturbance you might get, scroll down to the Neighborhood section.

So, what about iPowerWeb? Good news first: we found a server with only 2 sites. It didn’t seem like a dedicated server as the registrants to both sites seemed non-related. Which means that this idyllic situation won’t last long as new accounts are added and the server is turned into a monster ‘apartment complex’ with 1080 sites like the server iPowerWeb called ‘host96.’

With this comes a rating of 2 stars.

This is a tough one, like always. We can distinguish quality as it relates to customer service, and as it relates to technical aspects of hosting.

Customers are supported 24/7 by email and live chat along with 24/7 telephone support. We came across complaints that some people are experiencing very long wait times on the phone.

iPowerWeb is aslo a member of LA BBB, so we glanced at their file. Take a look yourself.

They didn’t seem to have a forum, but we found a dedicated site for help with tutorials and what not.

We also quickly scanned web hosting forums, and the results seemed somewhat worrisome: you better do your research! Our overall impression was that the customer service used to be good but has gone downhill fast. But this could be a misconception because with hundreds of thousands of clients you also get a larger number of complaints.

And since their servers were down during the blackout in Sept. 2005 (what happened to the concept of back-up power at a 300K customer company?), we cannot help but give a 3 star rating in this category.

Why is turnover important? In our opinion, it gives a feel how the company is doing. It really makes sense only if monitored long-term because this gives a trend whether the company is loosing or gaining customers.

Since no company is going to volunteer this information, we can only guess what the actual turnover is. For guessing we look at how many domains are pointing to the hosting company. Dailychanges.com gives a list of 500+ most active name servers, complete with new additions and deletions.

Anyway, today, 11/17/05, iPowerDNS (domain is registered by iPowerWeb) shows a total gain of 167 domains today even after 211 domains were deleted and 127 moved out.

They seem to have a total of 276,475 domains. If it is indeed true that this total number reflects the number of hosting accounts, then that is somewhat less than what they claim on their web site.

Rank Name Server New In Out Deleted Gain %G All
69 IPOWERDNS.COM 367 138 -127 -211 167 0.06% 276,475

Because this is such an uncertain area, we don’t give any ratings in this category.

iPowerWeb seems to offer a 30-day money back guarantee. However, some fees that might be incurred during the sign-up process are not refundable (like the set-up fee).

Keep in mind though, that if you cancel the service after the 30-day period, you might be required to pay a $50 termination fee.

Be sure to read their Terms of Service for all the fine print. The document is easy to read, at least as far as legal documents go.

For this category, we give iPowerWeb a rating of 4,5 stars.

Your existing site will be transfered to iPowerWeb for free as of this writing. If you have a big site, it might be a good idea to check with them first.

The Acceptable Use policy nor the Terms of Service do not mention whether adult sites are allowed or not.
However, one of the FAQ’s mentions it, and the answer is no, adult sites are not allowed.

We couldn’t find any mention of proxies in the Acceptable Use policy either, but we bet they are not allowed either.

We did, however find that at least one of their servers — host17 — was blacklisted for spam at the time of this writing.

This is what you get on crowded servers — someone will do something that affects everyone’s accounts, the more there are users the higher the chances for this to happen.

And how are other accounts affected when someone sends spam? Well, we’d like to hear from people with experience, what happens to your email when you send it from a server that is blacklisted for spamming?

With this we bestow a 2.5 star rating in the Neighborhood category.

Something that we came across on the forums is that iPowerWeb doesn’t upgrade existing clients to new features/servers.
This claim obviously needs more research, which you should undertake if you’re considering their services.

In iPowerWeb’s protection we can say that this does make economic sense, at least in the short term. Imagine upgrading 300,00 customers every time the marketing department comes up with a new trick to attrack new customers.

There can be other things to know, so you better read the terms and conditions and ask questions, including on forums!

In conclusion, iPowerWeb is definitely a huge web hosting company. Frequent comments about poor support do rise concerns, however. Keep in mind that the bigger the company, the more you hear about them, both negative and positive.

The bottomline is: do your home work before signing up with iPowerWeb, or, for that matter, with any web host.

You now expect an overall rating, don’t you?
Here at Best Web Hosting Provider, we don’t give overall ratings because we believe overall ratings are…well, overall — they’re not precise, and often misleading.

So, that’s it. Let us know if your opinion differs, or you uncover useful information about iPW.

For now, take care, and come back for the next review.

Well, well, Lunarpages claims they host over 80,000 web sites, and this definitely shows on the amount of sites hosted per server. For instance, their Neptune server hosts 1154 web sites as of this writing and their Galaxy server hosts ‘only’ 625 sites, which, we think, is still a bit too much. In our opinion, 300 sites per server is alright. But, with new technology, perhaps our opinion is outdated.

Now, we have to admit that the two sites we looked at were very fast. One of them, hosted on Galaxy, is a site with 1,710 members and a fairly active forum, and still most pages load without much delay. So go figure…

Anyway, we give them 3 stars for this category. After all, we are talking of crowdedness, and 1000+ sites is a bit on the crowded side.

This is a tough one. We can distinguish quality as it relates to customer service, and as it relates to technical aspects of hosting.

Customers are supported 24/7 by email and live chat along with telephone support during normal business hours.
They also have an online forum with thousands of posts.

Lunarpages is a member of the LA BBB, so we took a look at their file that seemed OK, considering they have thousands of clients.

We also quickly scanned web hosting forums, and the results seemed encouraging: mostly good reviews, with some bad ones mixed in. One problem that surfaced is that their email service may not always perform as expected.

Another thing that came out from the forums is that there might be some “weird storage rules” and you may not be allowed to host vBulletin or IPB scripts. If you’re considering Lunarpages, drop them a line about this, and do your own research!

So, overall 4 stars for this category.

Why is turnover important? In our opinion, it gives a feel how the company is doing. It really makes sense only if monitored long-term because this gives a trend whether the company is loosing or gaining customers.

Since no company is going to volunteer this information, we can only guess what the actual turnover is. For guessing we look at how many domains are pointing to the hosting company. Dailychanges.com gives a list of 500+ most active name servers, complete with new additions and deletions.

We’ll have an account turnover tracking utility based on the domain name changes in place soon — stay tuned!

Anyway, today, 11/16/05, Lunarpages shows a gain of 126 domains, and it seems they have a total of 71,774 domains. If it is indeed true that this total number reflects the number of hosting accounts, then that is significantly less than the Lunarpages’ claim of 80,000 sites on their web site.

Rank Name Server New In Out Deleted Gain %G All
70 LUNARPAGES.COM 94 73 -29 -12 126 0.18% 71,774

Because this is such an uncertain area, we don’t give any ratings in this category.

Lunarpages seems to offer a 30-day money back guarantee. Check their specials page for an extended guarantee.

Be sure to read their Terms of Service for all the fine print. And don’t hesitate to ask questions because the refund part was pretty unclear to us after reading.

For this category, we give Lunarpages a rating of 4,5 stars.

Your existing site will be transfered to Lunarpages for free as of this writing. If you have a big site, it might be a good idea to check with them first.

Lunarpages does not allow free adult sites. The question then remains, do they allow paid access adult sites?

We couldn’t find any mention of proxies in the Acceptable Use policy, but we bet they are not allowed either. So, unless you’re an adult webmaster, you’re good to go.

Also, as of this writing, none of the servers were backlisted for spam. Another good news for you.
With this we bestow a four star rating in the Neighborhood category.

It seems that Lunarpages won’t let you downgrade your account if your site doesn’t fit the resource allocation of the lower level that you want to switch to. This actually makes total sense as it protects the sites on the lower level from a resource hog.
Nevertheless, it’s something to keep in mind.

Another good thing to know is that they have a specials page! Check it out for the current offers! At the time of this writing they were offering a 90-day money back guarantee and free site transfer and more for qualified accounts.

Here’s one more thing you should be aware of: you get disk space in increments if you meet certain requirements. This point was also reflected on the forums as mentioned above in the quality of service section. Here’s an excerpt from their Terms of Service:

“Shuttle accounts come pre established with 1,000 MB of storage. Voyager accounts come with 1,500 MB of storage. Enterprise accounts come with 2,000 MB storage. If requesting the additional storage offer at no additional charge, you agree that you must 1) be already utilizing 90% storage capacity with the files being stored directly utilized for the website 2) not be utilizing storage capacity for emails 3) must request the increase in writing to support@lunarpages.com and 4) agree to have storage increased in 500 MB increments up to the alloted maximum free storage offer. All requests for additional storage are subject to approval.”

There can be other things to know, so you better read the terms and conditions and ask questions!

In conclusion, Lunarpages seems like a nice place. Or at least it’s worth investigating their offers. After all, the next time there’s a power outage in LA it’s good to know that your site is still online. That is, if the folks at Lunarpages keep up their good work.

You now expect an overall rating, don’t you?
Here at Best Web Hosting Provider, we don’t give overall ratings because we believe overall ratings are…well, overall — they’re not precise, and often misleading.

So, that’s it. Let us know if your opinion differs, or you uncover useful information about LP.

For now, take care, and come back for the next review.

Taking into account that HostingZoom most likely practices overselling , the servers can get pretty crowded. Fortunately, they’re still somewhere near the industry average for shared plans — their Apollo server, for example, hosts about 381 sites at the time of this writing. By the way, according to their web site, the semi-dedicated plan has 90% less users than shared — you got a choice there. So, we give them four stars for this category.

That one is always hard to judge. We can distinguish quality as it relates to customer service, and as it relates to technical aspects of hosting.

Customer Service

Customers are supported 24/7 by email and live chat along with telephone support during normal business hours.
Our quick scan on the web hosting forums did not reveal negative incidents with customer support. Just in case, do your own research.

Reliability

Hosting Zoom’s About Us page claims that they use equipment consisting of Dell, Intel, Cisco, Juniper, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Their “network is fully meshed and redundant with 10 tier one backbone providers with at least 1Gbps or greater uplink which includes AboveNet, AT&T, Broadwing, Global Crossing, Level3, nLayer, Sprint, Time Warner, UUNET, and Verio.”

What this means is that if one of the connections fails, the others take over. This is a standard set up and expected. However, believe it or not, you’re site may still be offline.

There’s more about their network here: http://hostingzoom.com/network.html

So, overall 4,5 for this category.

Ouch. No one wants to disclose this. Fortunately, you can get the idea by visiting this little page http://www.dailychanges.com/ and searching for nswebhost.com. You get the latest movements of domain names, in’s, out’s and totals. We’ll try to get some sort of monitoring utility in place, so that you could track the hosts of interest. But for now, you simply have to visit the pages regularly to get an idea of where the hosting company is moving.

No rating here, as we simply don’t know much about HosingZoom in this regard.
Anyway, they were on position 57 of the most active name servers on 11/15/05:
57 NSWEBHOST.COM 86 31 -31 -5 81 0.32% 25,598

With 25K+ domains on their servers, you can assume they’re doing alright.

Their Terms of Service say it best:
“Without waiving any of its other rights under this Agreement, Hosting Zoom offers to its Customers a 30-day money-back guarantee on fees for hosting services only (the “30-Day Guarantee”). If for any reason you cancel your account by filling in the account cancellation form and submitting it to Hosting Zoom, within thirty (30) days of the beginning of your service, Hosting Zoom will refund your money with no questions asked; provided, however, that you have never previously obtained a refund under the 30-Day Guarantee. If you have ever previously obtained a refund under the 30-Day Guarantee, your account will be canceled, but no money will be refunded to you.”

So, at least two points to keep in mind. One: your setup fee is not refunded (they charge $19.95 set up fee on orders less than 12 months for shared hosting). So, it seems like that if you want to move after 30 days and you paid for a year, you won’t get a refund.

Two: You have to fill in the cancellation form. And where’s the form? Well, try finding it on their web site. It’s there!

Our rating? Taking all this into account, we give them 3 stars.

Hosting Zoom provides a website transfer service. It seems like it’s free, but please check directly with them to make sure it is. Once again, we challenge you to find the Website Transfer form. OK, OK, it’s accessible from the Contact button, under Forms and Documents. It seems that the only hope in finding anything on the site is to use the Sitemap feature.

Hosting Zoom does not allow adult sites. We couldn’t find any mention of proxies in the Acceptable Use policy, but we bet they are not allowed either. So, unless you’re an adult webmaster, you’re good to go.

Also, as of this writing, none of the servers were backlisted for spam. Another good news for you.
With this we bestow a five star rating in the Neighborhood category.

In conclusion, Hosting Zoom comes across like a reputable place to host your site. Or at least it’s worth investigating their offers.

You now expect an overall rating, don’t you?
Here at Best Web Hosting Provider, we don’t give overall ratings because we believe overall ratings are…well, overall — they’re not precise, and often misleading.

So, that’s it. Let us know if your opinion differs, or you uncover useful information about HZ.

For now, take care, and come back for the next review.