HostwindsReviews of hostwinds.com

Disappointing Experience with Hostwinds We hired a web design company to create a new website for our business, and after paying them in full, we had all necessary documentation—emails, payment receipts, proof of ownership for the domain, design files, etc. Unfortunately, the company dissolved, leaving us with no one to contact to retrieve our website files and nobody to dispute the refusal of the release of our data. We proved our ownership of the website data, hosting and domain, nobody has denied it. It appears Hostwinds did not even attempt to contact Creative Web Studios to satisfy their conundrum. That would be reasonable and prudent. If there is nothing disqualifying us from having our data back, then Hostwinds a holding our data hostage for no good reason. We reached out to Hostwinds, where our website was hosted, and provided them with days of documentation to prove that the website and all related data belong to us. Despite submitting unquestionable proof of ownership, Hostwinds refused to release our website files, citing that our name was not on the account, even though we had already paid for the services through the now-defunct web design company. While I understand the need for security, I find it hard to believe they can't work with an abundance of valid proof in such a clear-cut case. They were unhelpful when we were missing just one small piece of documentation, which caused much frustration and ultimately prevented us from regaining access to our new website. Given our experience, I would be very reluctant to use Hostwinds or recommend them to others, especially in situations where you might face issues with transferring or recovering your website data. Thank you for your reply, though I have to express my disappointment. While I understand the importance of account security, it feels unreasonable to expect a small business, especially one located outside the US, to incur the costs of hiring an attorney and going through a legal process to retrieve something that clearly belongs to us. We provided ample documentation, including payment receipts, emails, and proof of ownership, all of which should have been sufficient to resolve the issue. Instead, we were met with a policy that fails to account for real-world circumstances like ours. As a customer-focused company, I would have hoped Hostwinds would have been more willing to work with us to find a fair solution, rather than simply pointing us toward legal action, which feels like an insurmountable obstacle for a small business like ours. This entire experience has been incredibly frustrating, and I truly hope you’ll reconsider your stance in situations where valid proof of ownership is provided, and a more reasonable path can be found.

We slipped into the Hostwinds trap as a VPS customer that would have landed them less than $200 a month but wasn't enough for them to be concerned about as an "Enterprise" customer. I have no idea what Hostwinds used to be or may become - my experience is just based on now. They have super cute graphics on their website - dragons, dinosaurs, monkeys, aliens in space ships - all happily sitting in front of their computers working on their websites. They have a VERY convincing about us page - how they are different as a webhosting company - will give you personalized attention at a fraction of the cost. From there - you call in as a new customer - LOVELY sales people - accommodating - everything is GREAT - they care about you and your sites and your business. You then give them your credit card information and sign up - it is Russian roulette from there. If you get lucky - everything goes to plan - if there is some weird unforeseeable issue - you are screwed. Because what they don't tell you upfront - is that the sales people - can't contact the support people - and that the chat people are separate from the sales people and the support people. And that if you have an unforeseeable problem as a customer that you will get the run around - because sales can't talk to support and support can't talk to chat and nobody has any idea what the billing department is doing. From there - largely all of their responses - are AI generated or assisted. No-one at Hostwinds is responsible - and no-one cares - AI tells them what to say in response - they hit send and call it a day. Customer be damned. Not their problem. Our experience - we knew it was not a good fit after 4 days - but then were told we were out of luck as the Terms of Use we signed up for CLEARLY stated - no refunds after 3 days. Seriously. From there - they removed the "Request Cancellation" buttons from our online account making it impossible to follow their Terms of Use cancellation policy. I'm not kidding - I have it screen captured - and then the problems went on and on from there. I am co-owner of a business that Hostwinds just completely screwed over and this is just the beginning of my take on things and what I have to say - all documented about our experiences with them. Just be warned - this is how they operate. I'm sure they will respond with an impressive - grammatically correct - politically correct response - that has NOTHING to do with the complaint.

Just don't go near them. They lie about everything. They will steal from you. They will lie again. They will deny recieving cancellation requests, lie again and try to steal from you again. And I expect they will resond to this review with more lies.

I bought a server and spoke to support. If the port was 25 open, they told me yes, it was open. I bought a server and 10 IPs. I discovered that they were in a black list. I spoke to support. They told me we would replace the IP. We added three days and I waited to no avail. I spoke to support. I could get my money back. Tell me it was possible to get my money back. But I can replace the server. I replaced the server and discovered that it is on a black list. I also spoke with support to get my money back. They told me that I cannot get my money back. Beware of this scam company 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

I recently purchased a yearly VPS plan from Hostwinds, believing it would be sufficient to run 4-5 simple WordPress sites with zero traffic. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. Despite these websites being very basic (which any shared hosting could handle), I immediately encountered memory issues. When I reached out for help, Sofia Barret from support told me to "hire a developer" instead of investigating the issue themselves. This response was disappointing, as I expected support to assist in diagnosing the problem. Upgrading to a higher-tier plan was suggested, but that’s not financially feasible for me right now. I requested a refund because the service clearly wasn’t meeting my needs, but Hostwinds refused, stating I was outside the 72-hour refund window by just a few hours. This is particularly frustrating since I feel I was misled into purchasing a full year of service. Now I’m stuck with a service that doesn’t work and no option for a refund, even though I was just slightly over their time limit. They also mentioned I could cancel the service, but I can’t do that without losing access to the server, which I need to migrate my websites elsewhere. Hostwinds left me with no real solution—just more frustration. I would have appreciated more transparency and support that actually helps resolve issues. I cannot recommend Hostwinds based on my experience.

This service is the most scammy service i ever encountered. on 2 point during my own customer experience. 1) First their operator on the live tchat told me that they had a 3 days trial plan, otherwise i wouldn't have added funds in the balance especially with prices like this, i spoke with him several times before purchasing and doing their trial, to be sure of what i would put my money in, still he didn't specify about their refund policies and what would make my payment non eligable for refund, leading me in purchasing for overall 50dollars for nothing just to fast try their VPS. 2) the first 2 times i had to top up my balance to create a server, it required me to manually do it, and it was specified that i had to pay, but when i went to create my third VPS, it didn't tell me to pay anything or that i was going to pay for something, it resulted in me paying 25 more dollars without agreeing for it. After talking a long time with support and explaning them the problem all along trying to make them understand my situation, no matter what i would say and explain they didn't want to refund me, when they obviously can, they are not a service a recommand at all, they don't care about customers and are not ready to help you, they just want to take your money and don't care, if you do any mistakes you will pay for it, now i have 50 dollars there i will never be able to use ever, its lost. Let me resume again, i payed 50 dollars i will never recover for a 3 days trial they proposed me, and didn't want to help on any level to refund me at least a part of it. Scammer is the least i can think of them. Be carefull EDIT (to answer the comment they made below this post) : So basically they try to defends themselves by saying i was informed and that i am dumb to resume without too many words, well its a lie, i had this conv with them about it and they clearly didn't inform me at all, as many services their policies are not simple to understand without further informations from support, and it took me 2 days of conversations with them to try and make sure i was informed before purchasing, but the way they communicated was missleading to push to you purchase and can't be able to be refunded, its a classic tactic they used to make me pay, when they tried to summon the same argument while we were talking i brang screenshots of the conversations where they said that they "informed me" and the screenshot clearly showed that it wasn't the case at all and obviously they dodged the topic right after i show them the screenshots, i suggest you don't listen to them as they are a bunch of liars and that they will obviously try to defend themselves on trustpilot.

The tech support is incredibly inadequate. Their tech team decided to run a check disk today without any approval or notice. This took down our web service. The only reason they knew about it was because we told them. Now we have to decide from my team what we need to do because if we tell them what to do, there is no guarantee they are going to listen because you can't talk to anyone. We are talking about major decisions about our company's data and they won't get on a meeting to scope out a fix. The communication with HostWinds is not just lacking, it is impossible to have a complex conversation over a ticket. I mean there is a good chance there is nothing wrong with our drive and it is a controller. The reason why I know this is because there are multi-disk issues in batches. But the tech that has the ability to look into the errors isn't really trying to find a solution just get the ticket completed. We had a server set up and asked for a RAID that was set up wrong. So they did the RAID again and still didn't get it right. I fell for any company that does not have an IT team because they would have no choice but to listen to what they say. They can't be trusted because they will not research or do what is asked of them. I don't like to put company business out there, but it seems that the executive team doesn't want to be reached (too much of a burden I guess). The fact that the support prompt on their IVR tells you about tickets and hangs up is a really good indicator that customer service is not a priority. I don't expect that this going to get me a meeting to discuss options but I don't have any other action with HostWinds. I would highly recommend that if you are looking for a server company make sure that you have some way to back up your data outside of HostWinds because there is a good chance you are going to need to restore your data. Peter and Dustin have been in contact with us.

I was working with their affiliate marketing program, promoting their products. Each time a sale was made, I received a notification that I had earned $65 as a commission for the sale, which was in a pending status until it was approved so I could withdraw it. However, the approval never happened; it remained in the pending status for a month or two, then disappeared. The same thing happened repeatedly over two years, during which I brought them over 10 sales but couldn't withdraw any of the commissions. Strangely, even if they didn't approve it for some reason, it should not disappear from the account without any explanation. when I asked for the reason, I didn't get an answer. In summary, this fraudulent company stole my time, effort, and money. I do not recommend them at all.