27th March 2009

WebFusion decided to change the interpretation of their T&Cs leaving clients abandoned. A very poor recession beating business plan IMO.

Previously Reseller Accounts could have non-localhost access to MySQL databases.
Now any Advanced Resold or Simple Resold cannot.
The solution (in Webfusion’s mind), under a weak clause of security) is to force every account / client to pay £25 and upgraded to an advanced Resold count and transfer all the databases across to a localhost MySQL access situation.

This was done without any warning to Resellers (or clients). The systems simply stopped working at approximately 3pm UK time.

This coincided with the trashing of all FTP account access, all of which has to b rest.

You can imagine the amount of web site that went down or stopped functioning.
You can imagine the amount of time this takes to setup again.
The cost, at £25 per account per year, becomes a lot of money for a Reseller to have to take a hit on, instantly for their clients, a cost that cannot be passed on fairly.

This outrageous action was only surpassed 3 years ago when WebFusion changed all their servers without telling anyone and web sites we down for 1-2 weeks.

No actually the worst one was also when WebFusion took their online support offline for almost 3 weeks to ‘improve their services’ and left everyone hanging for support. Naturally the phone lines, for some reason, were inaccessible too.

I would strongly recommend anyone to steer clear of a company with such Draconian tactics. You will not make any money as a Reseller if this is the scenario’s you are expected to accept, often. ‘Your’ services will not be reliable. The support is poor at best.

Finally, after asking to speak to someone who can action a resolution one is simply told to write in. I have done this before and been given a blank faceless written reply that does not even acknowledge any issue at all.

Time for everyone to vote with their wallets.

In addition to the above, which BTW was after a long discussion with one o their tech support representatives, is that the effect appears to be totally random as well.
Some Simple Resold accounts work in accessing the Reseller MySQl, some don’t.

So what we also have here is their own tech support guys not knowing the real situation or issue.

Even more worrying IMO.

To leave webfusion is not easy in my opinion.

Read Webfusion terms and conditions carefully if you are thinking of signing up ( personally and in my opinion I would not advise it). They could get very forceful and include the use of debt recovery and addition charges if you don’t toe the line.

A 30 day cancellation policy is enforced harshly even if you write in a letter of complaint they will still threaten if not take debt recovery action against you adding to the costs without even replying to your letter.

It seems in my opinion that subscripton to Webfusion is easy and takes just a few minutes online but when you want to leave faithfully you must expect it to take 30 days minimum. If that time period runs over the 30 days to expiration you become liable for resubscription no iffs or buts.

Be warned.

These guys really are awful. Their support staff give one word answers – usually ‘no you can’t do that’.

the cp on the dedicated servers is a joke.

steer well clear, they may look like a good deal but that’s before you have to deal with them

can I give them no stars ?

The problem with review sites like this is that they tend to only attract people with grudges.

Sure, I’ve had some problems with Webfusion. In March 2009 I became aware that many of my sites right across the myserverworld.com platform had been compromised and was told that this was a security issue at my end (trojans sttealing passwords or something similar). I reset all passwords and it happened again. 24 hours sfter a second reset Webfusion admitted the system had been compromised and disabled all FTP passwords, resulting ina third resdet being required. This took up fdays of my time.

So – Webfusion – wake up and listen to your resellers, some of us know what we are doing.

Having said that, myserverworld.com is a seven year old platform and is now obsolete. The new reseller account is much better value, with no charges for domain mapping. Resellers should be migrating to the new platform for increased reliability and greatly reduced costs. If they are not prepared to do so then they must suffer the consequences of persisting with an elderly platform, which is at least still supported.

Now the good stuff . . . support is available 24/7/365 and 90% of the time you get someone who is really on the ball. They are invariably helpful and friendly and many of my problems have ben solved on the spot. If it has to go to second line support then the online ticket system is pretty good.

I suspect that a lot of the whingers about Webfusion have very little knowledge themselves re. how the system works. The new reseller package offers a lot for the money, and if you expect more you should move to a VPS or a managed dedicated server.

It seems to me that many people expect something for nothing in the web hosting world. I think Webfusion are good value for what you get; there will be the odd glitch, and if you expect anything different with ANY hosting company then you should perhaps not be in hosting / reselling.

- N

5 Seconds to sign up – An expensive mission if you want to leave.

Forget webfusion. terms are unfair and if you try and leave you end up paying for another years subscription.

online chat never works – telephone customer accounts and never get through – what a complete joke.

FORGET THESE MONKEYS.

poor service. set up the account on december 24th (today is january 11th) and still don’t have the login and password to enter.
definitely NOT recommendable. I will make use of the 30 days money back guarantee

Our Web Fusion VPS went offline last week. At the time of writing (7 days later) it is still offline.

We have used Web Fusion for the past couple of years and this was the first major problem we have encountered. My experience has shown up some major problems with the Web Fusion support.

Firstly, the on line ticketing system is OK for simple problems that can rectified immediately. However, if they reply asking for mor information, your response goes to the bottom of the queue.

Secondly, if you call the support number you have to deal with the person who picks up the call. This means that there is no continuity and you will end up explaining the problem over and over again.

Thirdly, when things are taking too long to be resolved, there is absolutely no mechanism for escalating the problem into the management structure.

Lastly, although the support is 24/7, don’t expect anything other than relatively simple queries to be handled outside normal office hours.

I have had a very frustrating week with my most recent problem but I have tried to be objective. I would definitely not recommend this provider but I’m not sure that any of the low cost providers are much better.

Finally, be aware that there is no SLA attached to their VPS configurations so if it fails there can be no claims for downtime.