About AptHost
AptHost makes numerous, enticing claims: no hidden fees or contracts; 99.9% up-time guarantee; instant account activation; FFmpeg hosting capabilities; 24/7 customer support. If one simply looks at their website for information, they seem like your standard cheap hosting provider, offering shared hosting packages starting at $3.95 per month. Also offered: semi-dedicated hosting, virtual private server hosting, and dedicated server hosting.
Then you look to the sidebar, where they feature their 45 day money back guarantee (“no questions, full refund, no hassle, valid on shared & reseller hosting.” Looks like if you have other hosting options, VPS and dedicated, this does not apply to you, but you probably aren't comprehending this. You're just seeing 45 day money back guarantee.)
There is also a featured customer review from cybertation[dot]com, stating that AptHost is “the most responsive, helpful, up-to-date hosting service provider there is.” Seems like a pretty good company, right? It should be noted that this review is the only one featured on every page of the site. There are no more reviews available but this one.
HostJury Weighs In
HostJury offers not only numerous reviews from real customers on their page for AptHost, but a scorecard as well. On a scale of 0-100, this is how AptHost ranks: 24 for uptime; 33 for support; 49 for features; 57 for price. So it looks like they are a cheap hosting provider, but you get what you pay for.
One reviewer pleads with readers not to use the hosting provider. He was webmaster for a local school, losing his job due to AptHost's errors when performing server migration. The company alerted customers the migration was to take place, and that it would not affect customers whatsoever. The next day, parents called in outrage due to the fact the site he ran (and all others he was responsible for managing, all on the same server) featured hardcore porn.
He contacted AptHost and they admitted a DNS error was made during propagation. They resolved the issue within 24 hours, but he still lost the school contract, as well as being admonished on numerous sites and almost finding himself in court!
Numerous others accuse AptHost of costing them thousands of dollars due to downtime, while others say corruption of their data is a big problem. Almost all of them agree that support is the biggest problem with this company.
HostingThatSucks' Thoughts
This site discloses that you need to look at both positives and negatives when choosing a site. They state that opinions can vary, and one person's bad experience can cause them to embellish things a bit. However, their recommendation, based on the fact they discovered 3 positive pages and over 200 negative pages when Googling AptHost, is to find an alternative hosting provider.
If you read the customer comments below, you'll find a couple of positives and then a barrage of negatives. One person even goes so far as to say “The good comments about AptHost are probably mostly done by aptHost themselves.” They are accused on this site of lying, cheating customers out of money (mostly those who upgrade plans and are charged for the upgraded plan but still receive the services of the cheaper plan, or those switching to dedicated servers who find out it's not dedicated at all), and providing horrible support.
One commented relays his experience about the service being down more often than not for a gruelling three months. During those three months, no support is provided whatsoever.
After searching for positive information and coming up essentially empty handed, it's safe to say that AptHost is a company you'll want to avoid at all costs.
It just goes to show you that you need to conduct your research, combing through all information you can find meticulously, in order to determine whether or not a hosting company can be trusted to take care of you. Don't trust the good or the bad on first glance: read it over, and think it through. Some people post bad reviews for silly reasons. Others have more valid concerns. The more you dig, the more you'll have a clear picture of the hosting company in question.
Have you ever had a bad experience with AptHost? Do you think the exact opposite? Or is there another hosting company that is just as bad you'd like to reveal to readers? We'd love to hear your experiences!
Hosting Company To Avoid
We review a lot of great hosting companies. But something we don't do a lot of: point out which hosting providers to stay away from.
This is a tough thing to do, for a simple reason: even negative reviews can sometimes not be trusted. There are those out there that are just never happy. They have a problem with a hosting company that might be out of the host's control, and take to the internet for a digital rant against that company. There are even sites set up just for that purpose, such as hostingthatsucks[dot]com and hostjury[dot]com, where users can weigh in with their thoughts on a particular hosts, or respond to negative comments in an attempt to dispel them.
Let's look at a hosting company that both user review sites feel is a company to stay away from, AptHost.
