HostWinds started in 2010 with very aggressive web hosting strategies and I got to know about them in 2014 after they acquired weloveservers.net web hosting company. I am sharing this review after testing their Managed cloud VPS for more than 2 months with a small amount of traffic on the hosted websites.
You are reading this review that means you might already buy web hosting from HostWinds or you are willing to give a try…
The story which I am going to share with you will change your mind for hosting your valuable assets on their servers especially if you are not willing to burn your hard-earned money.
HostWinds $100 Credit
I am an active user on BlackHatWorld Forum and in partners section, there is a deal from HostWinds of $100 credit for new customers. I used that deal and signed up for their 1GB Managed Linux Cloud in November 2019, I tested few things then decided to set up (Host) a website on that VM (Virtual Machine) and utilize the resources.
HostWinds Support
No doubt you will get the very prompt response for your basic queries over the chat but anything that requires any modification you need to submit a support ticket for the same that usually responded within 2 hours.
In December 2019 I opened a WordPress migration ticket with them asking “Install WordPress on LEMP environment and migrate data” they shifted the website within 12 hours but after I changed the nameservers website went offline first time it was SSL issue so I asked them to install LetsEncrypt for the same.
HostWinds Uptime & Server Reliability
Few minutes after they install LetsEncrypt SSL Certificate website went down due to Database connectivity issue (MySQL was down – Upon checking), I asked them to look into this they restarted the MySQL and informed my website is working just fine.
After 1 hour or so website went offline for the same issue, MySQL was down, they just rebooted the machine and confirmed that the website is online again but as the root cause wasn’t fixed it happens again and for next 48 hours blog with hundreds of visitors were offline.
When I reported the same concerned again one of their staff told me that the VPS running on Apache not on NGINX as requested multiple times.
HostWinds Upgrade and Downgrades
After having a terrible experience with their Level 3 support I decided to get the refund of management service and upgrade the resources with the same credit.
But instead of giving me the refund credit the pulled $109.33 from my PayPal account which was shocking to me. I logged to my account and saw that there was an invoice created while I was checking the available upgrades options with the refund credit which I supposed to be credited.
HostWinds Billing and Refunds
They have a well-crafted refund and billing policy and they don’t provide call supported for the queries related to billing.
I asked opened another ticket requesting for the refund for this amount as there was no intention for spending this amount from my pocket but they denied to refund as per their policies.
Then I decided to open PayPal dispute but just after I filed a dispute against that particular transactions for the upgrade which wasn’t applied till now, they suspended my services associated with my account under their chargeback policy
These things made me a freak and place real chargeback from my credit card issuer, within 15 minutes they terminated my services.
Final Words about HostWinds Hosting Services
If you have enough time to read their non-refundable policy which is basically different from the other hosting providers in the industry, and you do not have any issues if your website or blog is offline for more than 2 days then they might be good hosting provider for you.