I post this review of my negative experience with Solid Hosting Philippines (SolidHosting.PH) as a warning to others who might be lured by their low prices. If price is all that matters, then Solid Hosting’s basic plan of only PHP 600 (around $15) per year certainly can’t be beat. BUT, if you’re thinking of signing up with them only for this very reason, think again.
Last week, Solid Hosting’s server was unplugged from their US data center for hosting phishing links. This led to deletion of ALL websites on Solid Hosting and several days of downtime. Obviously, people weren’t happy about this:
i don’t get it. all my files are gone? solidhosting what is up. good thing i didn’t renew hosting from them.
— kislapmata (@kislapmata) February 11, 2013
Solid fail solidhosting.. -_-
— Melissa H☮lmes (@holmesmelissa) February 11, 2013
Solidhosting sucks.
— Richmond Arceo (@richiieboy) February 11, 2013
How can you not be irate when your webhost deleted all your posts right before your very eyes? Hello @phsolidhosting
— RN Bautista (@roninbautista) February 9, 2013
My Joannes Consulting site and a couple others crashed. It has to be rebuilt. This really sucks. @phsolidhosting YOU OWE ME BIG TIME!
— David Joannes (@davidjoannes) February 5, 2013
I wasn’t too upset because a) I had offsite backups, and b) I don’t blog much. However, I imagine they have many clients who are full-time bloggers or run online businesses who were remiss in backing up their sites, and lost readers or customers due to the prolonged downtime.
EPIC FAILS on the part of Solid Hosting:
- They did not give clients a heads-up before mass deletion, and informed them only AFTER the fact. As webmasters, we should be conscientious enough to back up our sites, especially with a wide range of good backup tools available for free (I used the WordPress plugin BackWPUp to back up to DropBox). Still, the least Solid Hosting could have done was give clients sufficient time to salvage the latest versions of their websites. While Solid Hosting was able to fully restore some sites, for others, they could only offer database backups (or worse, none at all). Goodbye forever, media files.
- Sites that were not infected with phishing links, like this blog, were also deleted as collateral damage. It is apparent now that they have poor security, since the phishing attack was not limited to one site, but involved many sites on their server. It’s quite possible that even the fully-restored “clean” sites contain some as-yet undetected malware code.
They have had many downtimes in the past, but I just chalked it up to “you get what you pay for”. However, this complete system-wide wipeout is simply too much, and does not inspire a lot of confidence in their brand. Right now, they’re the farthest thing from “Solid”.
What is most upsetting in this debacle is their cavalier and unapologetic attitude:
@newtonposts Well @phsolidhosting sent a very unapologetic message telling me that it’s gone. Poor service I must say.
— RN Bautista (@roninbautista) February 7, 2013
They have not owned up to their lack of security, and have even SHAMED and BLAMED their clients for the phishing attack.
I had another site hosted with them, but I lost interest in it months ago. They informed me that it was among those infected with phishing links and is thus suspended. I requested for reactivation of the package since it still had some unused months left. I didn’t ask for the site to be restored; I just wanted the web space that I bought and paid for. Their flippant replies:
How would I rate your reply? Poor I must say!
It gets worse…Why isn’t there a negative star rating?
Solid Hosting acknowledges that the culprit is an outside attacker and obviously not me. The site is a victim of their poor security, and their refusal to give me something which, it bears repeating, I bought and paid for, is tantamount to stealing. I’m not bummed about the money, which relatively isn’t much, but it’s the principle of the thing. I am tempted to write a formal letter of complaint to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), because this is not the right way to do business.
Living in the Philippines, one is inured to terrible customer service, and I usually just shrug these things off. However, their total disregard and “it’s not our fault” approach just crossed my threshold for crap.
/end rant. I’ve since moved this blog to Hawk Host. It’s not as cheap as Solid Hosting, but at least they have good feedback on Web Hosting Talk. One can also get a 50% discount off with the following code: WHTS50V2. No host is 100% secure, but Solid Hosting left a bad taste in my mouth. A fresh start is definitely in order.
