Web Hosting Lab

Page 2 - ixWebHosting benchmark results

ixWebHosting hosts more than 170 000 domains. Their site is so well arranged that it made me think whether they’re offering the best web hosting service out there. Everywhere there are praises and only good words. For example:

"IX Web Hosting Does Not Make Claims.
We Make Promises, And We Guarantee Them!"

"Reliability Rests On The Ownership
Of Our Own Data Center."

"Why IX Web Hosting?
Because You Deserve Only Reliability."

It was while I was browsing the page and collecting quotes that all of a sudden www.ixwebhosting.com disappeared. I don’t know the exact reason for this, maybe some 3rd party ISP was responsible, but I failed to listen to the audio address by their CEO. It’s a pity. Anyway, I will return later to hear it.

The order procedure went smooth and fast. I received the welcome email immediately. A few weeks later I began my tests. I manually ran the files, which I had uploaded, through FireFox – the MySQL and PHP tests worked fine, albeit a little slower compared with the other hosts. For your information, a single PHP test run took 1.2-1.3 seconds to be completed, while a single MySQL test run - 4.7s to 5s. In other hosts’ cases where the speed was average or above average – the PHP test was completed for about 0.7 seconds, and the MySQL test – for about 2,5 to 3 seconds. I started the first test with the 5 concurrent PHPs. But it turned out that I had made a mistake and ran 5 MySQL tests simultaneously, while there had to be more than 500 successful tests completed on the whole. This is a pretty heavy test and it undoubtedly increased their server load very much. After about 2-3 minutes, the test, while it was running, stopped unexpectedly. I ran it one more time but it wouldn’t start again. While I was trying to find out what was going on I received an email. Its subject line said: Suspension of your hosting product. The email read like this: "You violated our terms of service. Please contact us for further details." The email contained no additional information. On top of that, when I logged into the CP I was once again informed that the account was suspended and that I had to contact them. I followed the "contact us for more info" link, which took me to a vicious circle. The Control panel is buggy if you have a suspended account. The links are not correct. Anyway, I used the other link on the left to get in touch with the support team and opened a ticket. 5 minutes after I opened the ticket I received an answer that my question was forwarded to the right department, which would give me an explanation. The next reply came 5 hours and a half later. They told me that the account was suspended due to a script I had run, which used too much resources. I had to fix the problem first and they would activate the account again. I was also advised to pay attention to the terms and conditions section to get to know how much resources I could use. I checked the terms and conditions section and… surprise – there wasn’t anything specific written on the subject. It said:

"It is acknowledged that any single account is entitled to utilize the server resources, within reason, up to what is allotted or by what is physically available. If resources become scarce, IX Web Hosting reserves the right to limit users of the affected machine to a lower limit to preserve the effectiveness of the service for all users. If a particular user is in extreme excess of what the average users of the machine have in use (actually used) of their resource allotments, that customer may be asked to remove content, cut resource usage, or relocate to a dedicated service provider. This policy only applies to web sites that are considered to be abusive in service, disk space or resource consumption and where it is evident that the "fair-use" of resources among customers has been breached, particularly in regards to disk space, bandwidth or CPU processing power utilization"

This is very general. I couldn’t find out what the actual usage limit was. Since they are so strict and quick to block accounts, they should have specified the exact resource usage limits. Be it CPU percentage usage or anything else. How come I don’t know how much resources I can use at all?

Anyway, I answered that I had fixed the account. 8 hours later they replied and thanked me for the quick reaction. Respectively – it must have meant they had activated the account. But when I checked (2 days later because I went on a vacation), the site read that it was suspended. I had to write to the support team again to ask them why the account was still suspended after I had told them that the issue had been fixed. After another 18 hours they replied and activated the account at last. All this resulted in a 3-day downtime due to their slow reaction in spite of the fact that I had already explained to them that the problem with the script overloading their system had been fixed.

It turned out that all these promises and sweet slogans on their site were nothing more than a sheer marketing strategy. They boast neither a fast hosting service (having in mind that the usual PHPs were executed 2 times slower compared with the average speed hosts), nor the ability to take up server load, even if it’s only for a few minutes.

I wonder how they managed to collect 170 000 domains to be hosted with them!? Obviously the website itself and the marketing are of a great importance. And by the way – don’t be fooled by the cheap price of $3.95/mo – this plan DOES NOT include a data base whatsoever.

I will mention one more thing. After a certain research with Google, I found out that the owner of ixWebHosting was once also owner of Feature Price hosting, which stopped offering hosting services. I read on the internet that Fathi Said’s partner managed to somehow appropriate the whole company and then lead it to bankruptcy. I cannot comment on what happened then, but I can’t help worrying either.

Pros:

I personally couldn’t find any! Other hosting companies too had previously blocked my accounts with them due to excessive CPU usage (see the AceNet review), but they reacted quickly and the problems were solved.

Cons:

- you’d better read the whole review so that you don’t get caught in this trap like I did

Page 2 - ixWebHosting benchmark results