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Web Hosting Reviews

CI Host
http://www.cihost.com/



There are 30 hosting user reviews for CI Host

Average Jury Ratings & Reviews of CI Host

       
2.8/5
1.9/5
1.7/51.6/5
Reliability
Support
Pricing
Overall


Below are some verdicts that users of our site have given to CI Host . If you would like to submit your verdict about CI Host please use our submit page to review CI Host.

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Date Submitted : February 21st, 2008
Length of time hosted by this company : More than 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 4 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 2 out of 5
Verdict : The ski club had been with CI Host for a number of years.

We had no problems with them until we started upgrading the site. We needed much better eMail list support than they had available and javascript support for photo gallery's.

Their tech support staff was clueless regarding javascript support.

They do have policy of escalating support tickets to "the president" after 2nd level support fails to resolve the problem. The same person is probably doing 3rd level support. He was equally clueless.
Submitted By : GuyJr
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 68.94.55.207 
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Date Submitted : November 2nd, 2007
Length of time hosted by this company : 1 - 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 1 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 2 out of 5
Verdict : This company is incompetent and ran by crooks!!! Stay away!!! This company is all hype and false advertising to get you to sign up. Once they get you, watch out because your nightmare begins!!! A year after we canceled their very poor hosting service, we got a mail from a collection agency,Fidelity Credit Management, about an unpaid balance on our account. CI Host did nothing to settle or check their records before turning us in to the collection agency. Our online account info shows a balance of 0. Yet their billing dept. insist on us paying a balance. All attempts to settle with CI Host billing dept. were met with hostility. Emails were not return. This is the worst experience we ever had with any hosting company. Others have similar experience. Read more on:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/252/RipOff0252592.htm

http://www.epinions.com/inet-Web_Hosting-All-C_I_Host/sec_~opinion_list/display_~reviews/pp_~3#list

The Texas Attorney General should investigate this company for fraud, among others.



Submitted By : Barona
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 209.242.173.32 
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Date Submitted : September 16th, 2007
Length of time hosted by this company : 1 - 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 1 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 2 out of 5
Verdict : In the past year, I have called CIHOST perhaps 10 times because my site has been down, 4 of those in the last 6 weeks. On all 4 occasions, I identified that the site was down, not CIHOST. This begs the question: How many times has the site been down and I did not notice?
It is hosted in Los Angeles on a Linux server. It usually takes a few minutes to get thru on the phone, and a few minutes after that the site is back up. In addition, I have noticed very slow service at times.

Though I am able to get thru on the phone, their technical support staff is combative, under duress, sarcastic, have an excuse for everything, have obviously been trained to be evasive, change the subject, etc. It is clear the staff has been trained to shovel BS… they are combative and well practiced. It is almost like talking to a used car salesman.

I have approximately 9 websites and 3 hosting companies. I have never experienced this type of problems with any other hosting company, from the very small to the very large. Unfortunately my primary url is hosted with CIHOST, and that will change as soon as I find the time to move to another company.

I am reluctant to name my url… for fear of retribution from this terrible host and wish I personally read online reviews prior to allowing my former IT person moving our main site to this bad company.

More Below:
I was instructed by CIHOST technical support to send an email to customerservice@hostingsupport.com which I did. Below is the email and response:

I have called CIHOST 4 times in the last 4 to 6 weeks because my site has been down. On all 4 occasions, I identified that the site was down, not CIHOST. This begs the question: How many times has the site been down and I did not notice?

I look forward to a reply.

Your ticket has not been accepted into the system. You are required to register at the following URL to submit any issues via Email: https://www.hostingsupport.com/

Once registered, you will be able to submit any issues directly by sending us Email. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

HostingSupport
Submitted By : Peter
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 66.15.50.25 
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Date Submitted : June 23rd, 2007
Length of time hosted by this company : 1 - 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 2 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 4 out of 5
Verdict : CI HOST IS HORRIBLE.

They have taken my site(s) down with no prior notice. Once, I had a site down for 2 weeks; they admitted to DELETING MY CONTENT. This was due to a billing error on their side. They also wanted to charge me for retrieving my data from backup!

They've double-billed me for an entire year's server costs.

I've received invalid collection notices (even filed a complaint with the FCC and Better Business Bureau).

Most recently, one of my credit cards was stolen, so I called them to give a new number. Not only could they NOT find my account, but they ended up removing the domain I was hosting from their servers! Luckily, due to past experience, I was only down for a day because I had moved the entire website application to a "real" host.

DO NOT USE CI HOST. CHECK OUT THEIR HISTORY AT BBBOnline.com before you use them!!!!! They are consistently horrible at hosting and billing!!!
Submitted By : Mike
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 70.63.101.174 
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Date Submitted : May 29th, 2007
Length of time hosted by this company : 1 - 6 months
Overall Rating : 5 out of 5
Reliability : 1 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 3 out of 5
Verdict : More than 4 years ago I helped a small company set up a website using CI Host as the web hosting provider. CI Host's service was extremely poor - lots of downtime and horrible customer service. Before the contract was due for renewal, I moved the website to another hosting provider and canceled the account via phone.

After not hearing from CI Host in 4 years, on May 25th 2007, I received a debt collection notice claiming I owed CI Host over $525. Close to $400.00 of this was for one year of hosting, and over $125.00 was accrued interest. This supposed year of hosting never occurred - I never received any service for the year of hosting they are claiming I owe them for.

Do not use CI HOST!! Their service and support are horrible, and then they try to come after you years later for non-existent debt.
Submitted By : cmselmer
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 68.50.153.157 
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Date Submitted : May 29th, 2007
Length of time hosted by this company : 1 - 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 1 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 1 out of 5
Verdict : I hosted several websites with Cihost from 2002-2005. All of them were on the low cost shared server linux plans. Their uptime was spotty, with some very large outages, one I recall over the winter holidays for 3 days straight.

CIHOST is terrible when it comes to customer service. Below is what I experienced as their client.

They hired an employee in 2005 who ended up stealing my credit card on file, buying thousands of dollars of computer equipment online, and shipping it to a border town just north of Mexico. When I found this out, I confronted CIHOST who insisted their systems are secure and it "could not have happened". When I discovered the actual name of the employee (who stupidly bought a plane ticket on my credit card), I confronted CIHOST again, at which point a VP called me back and expressed her regrets.

This would have been a fine resolution for me as they apologized and I got my money back, except recently in May 2007 I received a credit collections notice from Fidelity saying I owe them for a portion of the charges this employee of CIHOST had stolen. When I called CIHOST (this week) they refused to talk to me in any way on this issue, insisting I only talk to the credit collections agency. The credit agency will look over the police reports I have on file, but are under no obligation apparently to not try to collect on this.

This issue is still being resolved. Needless to say, I would not recommend them to anyone.
Submitted By : neveragaincihist
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 128.32.187.163 
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Date Submitted : May 23rd, 2007
Length of time hosted by this company : More than 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 1 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 3 out of 5
Verdict : This was the worst co-locator I can imagine. I've gone down a total of 36 hours in one month, and am down at least 5 hours per month. They promise level three techs always on site, but once they didn't have a tech there for seven days because everyone quit. Of course, that's when my server went down, and there was no one to hear me scream....

Run, don't walk from this co-lo!
Submitted By : Bob
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 129.44.141.37 
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Date Submitted : May 22nd, 2007
Length of time hosted by this company : 6 - 12 months
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 1 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 4 out of 5
Verdict : We have 2 dedicated servers at COHOST, really feeling bad for signing up with this company. there customer service is horrible. we are going through problems

the bandwidth we are getting for deicated server is much slower than a dsl connection. always hangs when a users try's to work with an application onserver. always gets stalled. they know about the problems at there bedford datacenter, received an email from Michael calmes( chief network architect), saying will be fixed same day end of business. that was 2 weeks ago still we do have problems, tried to send emails no response.

now they say we are on contract and we tried to lookup on the contract any where have they mentioned about the bandwidth's guaranteed, they have'nt mentioned that means we have to live up with what ever we get. Damn.

our servers are extremely good intel dual xeon 32. ghz with raid 140 GB. 2 numbers and now e feel terrible. it is really bad.

I please insist everyone if you decide to go with this company make sure to have them write all the details on contract.

please do not signup with this company.

you can email me in case you need any more info to prove we do have servers.
Submitted By : Reddymade
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 65.8.44.64 
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Date Submitted : February 4th, 2007
Length of time hosted by this company : More than 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 1 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 1 out of 5
Verdict : This company has the worst customer service ever. Clueless staff, no return calls. They make promises that they don't and refuse to keep even though records of the arrangement are in your account. Pricing is outrageous - uptime is pitiful. AVOID AT ALL COSTS
Submitted By : ci host sux
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 24.45.107.182 
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Date Submitted : December 15th, 2006
Length of time hosted by this company : 1 - 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 2 out of 5
Support : 2 out of 5
Pricing : 1 out of 5
Verdict : These people ARE MORONS!!!
They use Vonage for thier phone system which means most time you will be disconnected or not even able to call in. Their staff acts like they are in a prison. Good luck if you get a hold of someone when something important needs to be handled. They have "scheduled" maintenace ALL the time with less then 24 hour notice. Most times the staff will hangup on you or "trasfer" you then you get hung up on.

For personal use, you're safe. For business go ahead and file for bankruptcy now.

I can't BELIEVE they have stayed in business this long.
Submitted By : Caiapfas
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 24.167.25.247 
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Date Submitted : December 7th, 2006
Length of time hosted by this company : Less than 1 month
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 3 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 4 out of 5
Verdict : I have read some of the reviews here and I totally agree. Epinions.com also has some detailed reviews that are about 90% negative. I would have never decided on C I Host if I had read these reviews. I never made it past 5 days in the trial period. My problems started when I was using their online chat with their sales person Jason Brice. After a slow response from him which I understand happens with online chat, he asked me to hold on. I waited about 15 minutes. I finally go sick of waiting so I called. They must be a smaller company then they state since Mr. Brice answered the phone. I identified myself and he stated that he lost the connection. To my surprise, I would think any good salesman would at least contact me via email stating they lost the connection since he had my email address. All was forgiven when he did help me out and get me setup but then the problems started.

After receiving my test account, and I am very glad I setup a test account instead of moving my domain over since I work of a large government organization, I found out I received the wrong “template email” as they stated. After another hour on the online chat I found out that the company is full of incompetence. I tried to attach my chat session but the system would not allow it. But I was passed around between a windows tech to a UNIX tech then back to a windows tech. They would point me to documentation that was wrong on the website. I guess I should have know something was wrong when even their sales material has wrong data like the version of ASP they are using. They may be certified with SAS 70 type II but even with that certification, the support is not worth the time.

Overall, after 3 requests for callbacks, One Mr. Brice requested, one I used their call back feature on the website and the last was an actual voice mail with their accounting department. I never received one back. Even canceling the account is a pain. I emailed Jason Brice again for a call back, I received a read receipt and over a week later I did not hear a word. Again, poor customer service. I am surprised a company that states “Bigger Network, Better Service” is still in business.

I could go on and on but I just wanted to put my 2 cents in as to why not to go with this company for web hosting.
Submitted By : Roger
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 67.91.46.195 
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Date Submitted : November 6th, 2006
Length of time hosted by this company : More than 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 1 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 3 out of 5
Verdict : My webmaster recommended this company to me 3 yrs ago. The first year was great, but after that it has been a deluge of problems. Right now I am holding for tech support (33 minutes already and it is 3:46 am) for the 2nd time in the last days because my email is not working AGAIN. I have had constant email problems. When I tried to get some kind of credit, all I got was the runaround. The tech guys used to be great, now it is a crap shoot. The only thing about them is that their tech support does speak english. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to deal with so many issues, so my rec. would be to STAY AWAY.

I am looking for somewhere new- any suggestions? joe@joesgrille.com

Thanks
Submitted By : wendy
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 24.193.99.165 
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Date Submitted : October 4th, 2006
Length of time hosted by this company : 1 - 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 1 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 1 out of 5
Verdict : CI Host used to be a great company. I referred all my customers to CI Host.

Now it's a different story. I've had 4 outages just this year. Two of the outages were 72+ hours.

Their tech support is young, rude, inexperienced. Their admins are worthless. Usually if there is a problem I have to tell them how to fix it. They're too busy playing xbox games to help customers.

They completely lost all of the data on an 80 gig partition, and then told me that I should have purchased their backup service (which I was told was part of my contract).

Recently I discovered that the hardware they hosted me on is not the hardware that I contracted for.

All in all, I have experienced around 420 hours of downtime this year.

AVOID THIS COMPANY LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!
Submitted By : Jay
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 64.132.114.242 
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Date Submitted : September 29th, 2006
Length of time hosted by this company : More than 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 1 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 2 out of 5
Verdict : Over the past year I have been very dissapointed with CIHOST. As a reseller, many of my clients have been complaining that they are not getting their mail, or if they do it takes anywhere from 2-24 hours before getting it.

I have called tech support, and all I ever get is "ITS NOT US, ITS THE ISP". When I explain that I have 5 different clients all screaming at me about the same problem and they are have different ISP, I ask point out the only common denominator is CIHOST. Again all they say is "ITS NOT US". I have lost 4 cleints so far and now forced to consider changing, which having over 30 clients is a NIGHTMARE to think about.

Phone Tech Support used to be less than 5 minute wait, but this past 6 months I have waited on average 30+ minutes.

A very dissapointed CIHOST Customer!!!!
Submitted By : Chris
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 69.37.84.161 
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Date Submitted : June 26th, 2006
Length of time hosted by this company : More than 3 years
Overall Rating : 2 out of 5
Reliability : 1 out of 5
Support : 3 out of 5
Pricing : 3 out of 5
Verdict : I had to call CI Host tech support all the time because I couldn't get my email to this account, as well as to another account I had with CI Host. Emails would arrive hours or days late, or not at all.

I would get various excuses for the email delays/failures, but the most common is that the queue is full because of too much traffic on the server. This has happened on three different servers, over and over again.

In my opinion, they are overfilling their shared servers, resulting in traffic overloads.

The hold time for their tech support is pretty long, too. Sometimes 15 minutes or more. Which is unpleasant when you have to call them several times a month just to get your email.

Their technicians were always friendly and helpful, but not able to solve my problems.

This company was good years ago, but they have totally fallen apart in the last 6-12 months.
Submitted By : Chris
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 68.219.202.195 
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Date Submitted : May 21st, 2006
Length of time hosted by this company : 1 - 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 2 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 2 out of 5
Verdict : Avoid at all costs!

The only phone that will ever be answered is sales. Tech support is an absolute nightmare! The phone rings and rings; no answer, even on the emergency line. Tickets opened on their automated ticketmonster are often closed without a resolution or return contact. The only way we have found to obtain any type of response is to write direct e-mails to the CEO. Customer service is not in their vocabulary. We had a recent service outage that was bad. The electrical infrastructure in the CI Host Bedford TX site was damaged and our server was offline for an extended period of time. When it was brought back online, it randomly crashed. Only thru CEO intervention and a painful week was tech support really working the problem. I cannot truly think of a single postive attribute.
Submitted By : Mark
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 65.82.206.178 
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Date Submitted : April 28th, 2006
Length of time hosted by this company : More than 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 2 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 4 out of 5
Verdict : We have been hosting with this company over 3 years. They have been getting worse and worse. Forget technical support - forget opening tickets - billing is a nightmare. You are on hold forever for everything except sales. That's not the worst though.

We hired a security company to audit our website to be compliant with credit card guidelines. CIHOST didn't pass. We told them what needs to be done and sent them reports from the security company. No action was taken. Finally we sent an email (in our fury) requesting action or we would need to talk to credit card companies about this. They immediately terminated our account without notice - they hung up on us when we called time after time saying "you threatened us and there is nothing to talk about". They wouldn't even listen.

We are very glad it happened - we finally moved and our new hosting company is far better.

Needless to say, do not even think about it.
Submitted By : t-dev
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 207.180.131.163 
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Date Submitted : April 7th, 2006
Length of time hosted by this company : More than 3 years
Overall Rating : 3 out of 5
Reliability : 3 out of 5
Support : 2 out of 5
Pricing : 4 out of 5
Verdict : I've used CI Host since 1999 and have had 10-15 websites on their shared Unix servers at any given time and must say their hosting and reseller plans seem quite the bang for the buck, but CI's customer service is sorely lacking to say the least.

The Sales department does not respond to email; at least not to the sort of routine questions you may have that the tech support department can't answer (so tech support passes you -- and the buck -- to the Sales team who doesn't reply).

Tech support (via email) is reasonably fast to respond these days, but it's clear they don't take the time to read and investigate trouble tickets. After myriad server glitches throughout the years with various CI-hosted websites, I've learned that their stock response is "your site seems to be working now." It's only until a trouble ticket is re-opened again and again that tech support might get around to addressing the issue; and when they finally do, there is indeed a problem with the server in question.

The Billing department, which must consist of only one or two people, doesn't respond to email.

That CI hasn't been on the receiving end of a class-action lawsuit for their billing practices is amazing. Every few months or so, they'll assess a "card declined" fee of $1; this has happened many, many times to me and I finally got them to reluctantly admit a couple of years ago that they've got a billing problem in their system. Still, I have to do battle with their unresponsive billing department quite often to get those charges reversed. One has to wonder how many of their customers just don't mess with getting those $1 charges reversed, it's a huge waste of valuable time. And this is not just happening with my company credit card; I know of an ad agency who has the same billing issues with CI and they are in the process of transferring all their resold hosting accounts away from CI. I'm about to do the same and I'm kicking myself for sticking with them as long as I have.

And don't just take my word for it; go to the BBB site and find the report on CI Host in Bedford, TX.
Submitted By : H. Scott
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 65.6.71.157 
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Date Submitted : February 1st, 2006
Length of time hosted by this company : More than 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 3 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 2 out of 5
Verdict : I've been using CI Host for 6 years, but the mounting problems have now caused me to move to another service. CI Host's billing department is completely incompetent, and their technical support staff would rather not be bothered by you. Overall, a terrible hosting service -- avoid at all costs.
Submitted By : Stephen
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 67.161.188.103 
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Date Submitted : August 14th, 2005
Length of time hosted by this company : More than 3 years
Overall Rating : 1 out of 5
Reliability : 2 out of 5
Support : 1 out of 5
Pricing : 1 out of 5
Verdict : Site needed to be restored from backup, which was included in our hosting plan. The backup failed, and after 2 months, they refused to give us any refunds or anything. The servers were slow too.
Submitted By : Charlie
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury
Submiter IP : 68.76.104.91 
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Date Submitted : July 8th, 2005
Length of time hosted by this company : More than 3 years
Overall Rating : 3 out of 5
Reliability : 2 out of 5
Support : 3 out of 5
Pricing : 3 out of 5
Verdict : I've stuck around with CIHost for far too long not wanting the hassle of a switchover. But it's time to go. The final straw was them moving me to a different server without telling me. Once the problems started they clued me in. Each problem ticket is not done or checked thoroughly. Mail redirects break frequently causing loss of email. Webmail is horrible. Very limited on features for the price. Only good thing is there was never a catastrophic failure they didn't recover from.
Submitted By : Brian
Submitted From : Web Hosting Jury