HostwindsReviews of hostwinds.com

Very helpful and thorough!

I have received my order within 12 hours. Thank you

Hostwinds support is fantastic! We had trouble setting up our server correctly, but Hostwinds support was available to help us. They're easy to get a hold of (immediately available over chat), knowledgeable, and also very friendly and helpful. Nathan was particularly helpful, tracking down the answers to our strange questions. I highly recommend Hostwinds based on our experience so far!

I work as a freelance computer consultant and over the years have used Hostwinds.com a number of times. Things have started to slip over time. What was once pretty good support turned into no support unless you paid for "Managed Hosting." I had a client who went with "Unmanaged Hosting" and when he logged into his VPS his Chrome was in Arabic. Support wouldn't do anything of course, but it seems like it ought to atleast start off in English. I told that if he didn't need the managed hosting to just move to servercheap.net. The math is simple. Servercheap.net 4 CPU Cores 8GB RAM 200 GB SSD disk $18 per month Hostwinds.com 4 CPU Cores 8 GB RAM 150 GB SSD disk $45.89 per month So, with Hostwinds.com you get less for about 3 times the money. That's a no brainer. But the end of my dealings with Hostwinds.com came over a billing issue. On 9/21 I had a server bill coming due on 9/25 for a VPS. I was trying to make the payment early and I had some gift cards from clients that I was going to try and use the small remaining balances on. I attempted to put $5 on a credit card and it was declined. Unbeknownst to me, that attempt caused their system to create invoice 1633041 for an additional $5. I attempted to put $11 on another credit card and it was declined. That attempt caused their system to create invoice 163943 for another $11 I made a few more attempts and each resulted in an additional invoice being generated. I eventually just put the original invoice on an actual credit card so the $46 for the server was paid. But what I didn't know was that their system had created an addittional $67 in invoices on top of the $46 that I just paid. Their system decided that I needed to pay all those other invoices too and in accordance with their TOS, it went and found a previous payment through PayPal that had been made by a company I had done some work for months earlier. It billed their PayPal account an addittional $67. That company was upset and called me wanting to know why I used their PayPal to pay my server bill. I explained that I didn't, it was a mistake. I contacted a accounting who said that I would have to pay them an adfittional $67 on a credit card before they could refund the $67 PayPal amount. Back and fourth we went. I didn't owe the $67 in the first place. My server bill was not even due at that point, and when it became due it was already paid on a credit card. The $67 taken from the PayPal was not being applied to any service, it was just sitting as a surplus. I didn't want a $67 credit in my account, so why would I pay again just to get that money refunded? Accounting maintains that it wasn't an error, that the only way to generate an invoice is through the client portal. True, but my attempts to load money do not create a debt that I need to pay in addition to my server fees. I eventually just canceled my service entirely. I figured this would solve the problem as the money that was taken from PayPal was just sitting in a surplus account and should be refunded. Turns out, not so. Money seems to make a 1 way trip when it goes to Hostwinds.com. My last email from them said "Dear Jeff, Thanks for following, upon your request. After a review of services, there are no applicable refunds owed at this time. You can find full details about our Refund Policy here: [redacted] Should you have any additional questions or suggestions on how we can improve, please feel free to contact us.  Best Wishes, Vivian" So, they collected $143 and I got 12 days of use of a $46 server. A quick review of their terms of service shows that paying them sets up a billing relationship that allows them to go into any of your past billing methods to collect their invoices, including ones created "in the client portal." Their client portal will just generate random invoices though. If you owe $100 and try to put it on a credit card which gets declined for whatever reason you now owe $200 because it will generate another $100 invoice on top of the first one. If you try to pay the original $100 on a different card that gets declined you then owe $300 because it will create yet another $100 invoice. Even if you pay the original $100 they will still go collect that $200 if they can, and according to them they get to keep it, even if it doesn't get applied to any services. Here is a video of me trying to add money to my account. It doesn't take me to the credit card screen to enter my info, but it does create an invoice. Even though I don't have any services with them at all, it now shows I owe them $550. And they tried to search back through all of my past payment methods to try and collect it. Had they been successful they would not return the money, so watch out. After months of runaround I've had it with Hostwinds.com, but if you want to give it a shot, ALWAYS use a prepaid credit card with that exact amount in there so they can't just charge you crazy amounts for arbitrary "invoices."

Great customer care service

Hostwinds have been very accessible and responsive whenever I have had need to contact them.

all good. They were very helpful with the purchase. Their shopping cart is a little hard to work with. I ended up duplicating two of my orders because it wasn't clear services were being added to the cart and the interface to paypal is really slow, so if you don't wait until the screen comes back, you can enter your order twice, as I did. The other thing I didn't like the billing for additional VPS space. The plan I originally selected turned out to be two small, so I upgraded my space and that came in at the full price, even tho it was within 24 hours of the first purchase. I could have cancelled my account and purchased the larger space plan, for the discounts, but that was going to be way lot of extra work duplicated. The could be a little more forgiving in this billing during the first 30 days. As there is always a settling in process when setting up a new server

After we ordered, it didn't take long to set up our order. If we keep getting satisfied Hostwinds might soon have a permanent customer! I give Hostwinds an A+ rating. Keep up the great work Hostwinds team!