A customer of mine recently purchased web hosting services from Hostway, and it’s been a nightmare since the moment the purchase was made. The salesman repeatedly assured us that we would have Cpanel access, and it’s not even available. They assured we could install a shared SSL through them…..it turns out you can, so long as you email it to them every year and get them to install it. I don’t trust their ability to install it based on what I’ve seen so far though.

From the very moment we purchased an upgraded plan, we hadn’t even logged onto the site yet, they took down our original website and hosed our email settings. In the middle of the business day.

For several days I was unable to upload my index.html file, I had to send it to them and ask them to do it. The other files upload fine, just not the index file. At first they attempted to blame FileZilla for the problem, then finally got a workaround where I upload the file into my images folder, contact them, and they move it into the root directory. Not satisfactory, at all. I still am unable to edit my own htaccess file, and it doesn’t look like they care much about fixing that either.

This started last Friday, and today is Tuesday. I have spent literally hours on the phone and in chat with them trying to get this ironed out, and as of 5pm Tuesday it still is not fixed. It takes as long to explain the issue as it does for them to look through their documentation for an answer, because they are not even minimally competent with the technical workings of a server.

Maybe they do okay with Wordpress, I don’t know, but unless that’s your thing steer way way clear of this company.

I’ve developed a Wordpress/WooCommerce site for a client under Hostway since the owner refuses to change to a more compatable environment. Hostway is running PHP version 7.0.33+ (debug version) which is very outdated. It’s been lagging behind for some time, but everything’s stayed relatively stable. An outdated PHP means a less secure environment, which is a major concern.

WP and WC are on the verge of new updates that will push everyone into PHP v8 and above. As long as nothing is updated on the back end, his site will stay up and running; however, plugin developers will soon stop supporting older PHP and require updates for their software to remain functional. If updates are based on PHP v7.4 or higher requirements, which will no doubt be the case, it’ll effectively bring his whole site down.

According to Hostway, they’re running the latest PHP version they support. I ask every week or so when the warning pops up. It’s extremely frustrating to get the same “we’re working on it” response every single time.

Also, Hostway's server is very slow, with a TTFB of over 3 seconds and a fully loaded time of over 8 seconds. Considering the tiny size of my client’s website (~12 pages), this is an abysmal byte rate. Potential customers will click off long before 8 seconds have elapsed. I’ve tried to optimize the site as much as I can (e.g., reducing image sizes, removing older posts, etc.), but I can't speed up the TTFB since it’s reliant on the server specs. I’ve talked to Hostway about this, too, with no resolution.

Just for laughs I pinged a friend and had him plug the site into his servers just like it comes from Hostway without any optimization or caching configured. The normal TTFB on his servers is around 300-400 MS, as a comparison. Just abysmal all the way around, but I can’t get my client to switch and I refuse to use Hostway’s web developer, which will only add to my client’s ~$400 annual hosting fees.

Deployed new email hosting interface before adequate testing. LOTS of BUGS.
Hostway recently migrated to Open-Xchange App Suite for their customer email hosting interface. IT is a disaster! Among the issues I experienced were
1) sitecontrol link to OXAppSuite blew up
2) Cannot log directly in to OXAppSuite with any of my passwords
3) Contact migration process fails
4) "Password recovery" process does not work at all, and you can't suppress it.
5) "change password..." button in Basic Setting does nothing - it's bogus, the changes you make here affect nothing.
6) chat support staff hasn't the vaguest clue of how email works and kept on going off on irrelevant tangents.

Support and management of service is bad. Once you sign up for services through their portal you can not stop them except by a phone call with limited support hours and long wait times. Not good business ethics. Support, even over the phone is not helpful, they do not seem to know how to support their own portal and services. Do yourself a favor and take your business somewhere else... Anywhere else.

Hostway employees have little to no internet technology knowledge at all. They’re rude and can only answer “l don’t know “ when you ask for assistance. It took 32 day to get my domain name transferred to another host provider. Stay away from this service.

Hostway has the worst support of any supplier I've ever worked with. We're currently averaging 10 days for any response.

service cancelled as not working and not as purchased. then they charged me hundreds of $ with no service as required. still trying to get my money back. bad customer service.