Gearworx, or Gearbroke?

I've unfortunately found out just how nasty cheap website hosting can be: enter gearworx.net

Some reasons I went with Gearworx:

• they supported ColdFusion development
• they were cheap with a price-freeze policy
• they supported, on average, more ColdFusion tags and functions than other similarly priced packages with other companies - CFRegistry, CFExecute and CreateObject(COM and JAVA)
• during the sign-up phase the responsiveness was great from their support team - very helpful.

Once I finally agreed to give it a go, paying for 12 months up front (as you do), I started to notice the cracks.

Plesk Panel was bulky and slow. But aside from this I found that after all the back and forward confirmations I'd insisted on before purchasing the package, they had still managed to mess up my account settings. My quotas and limits were wrong. I couldn't add domains, datasources ... I really couldn't do anything. Plus, Plesk was so slow!

Luckily this was resolved and I was able to get this site up and running... 5 days later.

Being inexperienced with shared hosting I was then very disappointed to realise that there was no way for me to access any generated ColdFusion site specific log files. Of course there are ways to get around this so it's not such a loss after all.

Next came the straw that broke the camel's back.

Completing the initial requirements for a site for a  friend's new business venture I obviously thought it logical to launch the new site under my hosting account with the appropriate domain name. This should be simple - especially since my highly featured 'Starter' package has the options for me to add a bunch of new domains and databases without having to worry about hitting my quota.

But no.

Registering a ticket to support on July 20, 2009, briefly describing that I had been receiving quota related errors when attempting to add a new domain, I received one reply from support requesting my control panel username (which seemed odd as I thought my ticket should have been tied to all those details in their system). Then silence. I cancelled this ticket and started a new one with a much more detailed description of the error I was receiving - on July23, 2009.

I have now been chasing a resolution for this ticket from July 23 till now (coming close to 2.5 months). Aside from this, their support ticketing system has this neat feature whereby if you do not keep your own ticket active yourself it auto closes after 72 hours! I have had to go in every 72 hours or so for the last 2 and a half month just to keep my ticket active so that they might notice it and pay it some attention. Sometimes I'll come in after a weekend away and realise that it's been closed, so of course it must be re-opened. It's endless.

Out of desperation my last resort was to join Twitter and see if I could follow Gearworx on there and find out if there was a possibility that my ticket might have a look-in one day. Another waste of time.

All they tweet about is system/hardware upgrades - none of which I have been able to notice (although I have noticed Plesk is now running faster yesterday. Big w00p.) Other than that, just about every Tweet directed at them is negative and a complaint - to which they usually reply with sarcasm or dismissal. I honestly don't know why some companies expose themselves on Twitter - it's a social network, people are going to talk socially about their experience with the company and express their frustration in any way they feel comfortable - gearworx for some reason thinks that it is the victim and that they have a wonderful support system in place.

Any support responses I have ever received from them are signed by "Will" - is it a one-man-company?? If so, no wonder the company gives their customers the silent treatment, he probably cannot keep up with it all!

Anyways, this is enough of a rant - I think you get the point. I am officially NOT RECOMMENDING gearworx as a quality website hosting experience. If you do have a Twitter account, do a search for "gearworx" and let me know if you find one Tweet praising the company's services.

PS. @gearworx: A support phone number or multiple avenues of contact for support *might* be a good business move as far as customer service goals go. Unanswered support tickets and a rude Twitter rep. just don't cut it.

Edit [24 Feb 2010]: Received a lovely email today from Gearworx stating: "Please remove the Gearworx logo from your blog. You have not been authorized to modify our logo without approval.". They also thought it important enough to contact my new Hosing Provider and urge them to force me to pull the image down - before I'd even had a chance to respond to them and let them know I would. It makes me laugh, but this is so typical of their behaviour and treatment of people that I experienced while with them. I'd bet they would not request an image be pulled down if this post showed them in a positive light. Feels like I've received more attention from Gearworx since writing this post than I did when I was their paying customer!

Share|

Web Hosting with Gearworx = regretful

Comments

The Dentist wrote on 10/07/09 10:33 PM

Yah, I know what you mean regarding cheap hosting - Dreamhost is killing me... thought the price was phenomenal but the hosting service is sub-par :(

Steve wrote on 10/08/09 12:11 AM

@The Dentist: Thanks, I had looked at DreamHost a little while back and forgot about them. Think I might have a look into GoWestHosting.com and see what they have to offer. I've decided to narrow hosting companies down to those who own and run their own data centers... might be a safer bet :)

Tim wrote on 12/30/09 6:35 PM

Yup, found this out the hard way as well. I am now migrating everything over to CrystalTech. Just doing a search for "gearworx" on twitter might tell you enough, as well. We certainly are two amongst quite a few.

Steve wrote on 12/31/09 10:42 AM

@Tim
Yeah I direct anyone who brings up Gearworx to a twitter search too. It's the best way to convince them not to go with them :)

All the best with CrystalTech. Hope it works out better.

Gearworx wrote on 02/23/10 6:08 PM

You are posting a blog entry about our web hosting services in the effort to critique and scrutinize our services. That is great! You are not permitted to post the Gearworx logo, which is a registered Trademark on your website without the consent of the company.

There are always two sides to every story. It would be irresponsible of us not to discuss our side and to keep you in the dark.

It goes without saying that we are more than apologetic about your poor experiences, Unfortunately, the common denominator in your problem, as well as Tim, MikeSpringer and the many others that suffered of this issue was Plesk Expand (no longer in development), which failed all of us miserably. That's why it isn't being used any more.
We have corrected. All the issues with Plesk and/or lack of web hosting support services. We dropped Plesk in favor of another web control panel software...

Steve wrote on 02/23/10 7:00 PM

@Gearworx

Thanks for the clarification comment, sounds like you are really investing in getting it right and I wish you all the best.

Steve

Leave a comment