Hostpapa Inc

HostPapa advertises "unlimited storage" as part of its hosting plansThey also claim no responsibility for lost data and recommend customers make backups of their site data, which can be done through cPanel
What they don't advertise is that making a backup of your site constitutes use of the storage space that is "outside use" and they will shut down your account and your site if you don't delete any backup quickly
We asked HostPapa for enough time to investigate and download any backups before deleting themThey shut down the account without further warning, meaning the website was offline, hurting sales
***

I've used other hosts in the past 15 years, but I needed one based in Canada for some business sites. I signed up for the 3-year plan, which contractually says that after 30 days they had my money no matter what. Needless to say, things worked swimmingly in the first 30 days. Since day 31 however, it's been a different story. Slow load times, server errors, server time-outs, database errors, you name it, I've had it.

So, I contacted support. The support was as slow and unreliable as the hosting was. Naturally everything that was going wrong was my fault. I hadn't optimized my site (caching and [redacted] notwithstanding, I guess); my database wasn't optimized (yeah, it was, weekly), there was never anything wrong at their end. They checked all the logs, and everything was working perfectly. Yes, they used the word "perfectly" when my site monitoring service (and a number of clients) had reported numerous "website unreachable" and assorted server errors DAILY. I guess their definition of "perfectly" differs somewhat from the one that everyone else uses. You can clearly see this trend by reading the myriad complaints to Revdex.com where they're always blameless, no matter what the issue.

I then, foolishly, tried to buy an SSL certificate from them. The first time around they issued it for the wrong domain entirely. Amazingly, support responded to that ticket in a mere 3 days and gave me a refund. I then, even more foolishly, tried again. Yes, they issued it for the right domain, but it wasn't a certificate, as advertised, it was a voucher for a certificate. The certificate wasn't created until the voucher was activated. And where, I hear you asking, can that voucher be activated? Certainly not on the host running the website it was purchased for. The phone number is just an answering machine that essentially says, "Leave a message. We'll call you." Is anyone surprised that I'm still waiting in vain for a response there, too? It took 14 days of ignored support tickets and escalating the situation to a claim through [redacted] to get a response. Again, they were condescending and were "making an exception in my case".

I eventually got my money back for the useless non-certificate (thanks to [redacted]'s intervention), but I still have a year's worth of paid hosting that I don't dare use.

If I could give a rating lower than 0, I would. My advice to anyone considering HostPapa is, "RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY VERY FAST AND DON'T LOOK BACK!!"