I realize people who are happy are usaully less vocal than those that are upset, but I am a bit worried about the long-term success of this company.

Hostony is owned by "Internet and Software Services Limited" out of New Jersey. The servers are in Georgia, and the contact person for the Hostony Domain name is a guy named Serge Ryabchuck or Riabchuck (Serge couldn't even spell his name right twice in a row...) Serge is located in the United Kingdom. He also shows up as the contact for a bighost.biz domain name another one that seems to be owned by "Internet and Software Services Limited." (there is nothing there at the bighost.biz site.)

I have also noticed on this site that although Jersey, Georgia, and the United Kingdom all are English speaking places... Most of the techs responding here struggle with said language, obviously a second langauage to them. Why is this? (please don't flame. I'm not suggesting they aren't qualified for their jobs, or anything like that...)

Some concerns:

1. Will Hostony just dissapear some day and Bighost start up?

2. Why would a company, which is based in an english speaking country, rely on people who speak english as a second language to respond to their customers?

3. why are there so many complaints concerning money and the refund of it?

Just some concers written out loud. I think Hostony looks really great and I may be signing up, but as the saying goes: "If it looks too good to be true... It probably isn't."

I welcome any input from happy customers to put my mind at ease about this company.

Woof Woof
BigDog

After reading my previous post I realized that my words may be taken to heart and I don't wish to hurt anyone's feelings.

To all you Tech support and Hostony staff out there. I'm sure you are trained, educated, and good people, and I'm sorry if my words offend, I just have been reading around the Forum here and was having difficulty following and understanding some of your posts. That is why I said what I did.

Your lucky... I'm not usually this Politically Correct.

To address your concerns I can admit the following:

1. The right domain you saw was fastbighost.com not bighost.biz.
That domain name is active for more than 1.5 years already. Subdomains like serverxx.fastbighost.com are pointed to our servers. We do this in order to allow our resellers not to show their customers that they are reselling hosting from hostony.com. At the same time we need some domain name to be a main domain name on the server in order we could get abuse messages from the systems like spamcop, spews, etc. notifying about the users on that servers who are committed to spam or other illegal activity.
We are in business for over 3 years and don’t plan to change names or disappear. Istead we have good plans for further business growth.

2. The company is not registered in New Jersey. It is registered in St. Heiler, Jersey, UK. We outsource support to Ukraine. It is common practice for US and Europe companies to outsource part of their business to other countries. Even giants like IBM, DELL, HP do this to be able to cut their costs and be competitive. In order to back our offers and stay in business we hire staff with university degree and though they are not always perfect we train them in order to improve their English.

3. I used a search feature on our forums for the words ‘money’, ‘refund’, ‘billing’ and did not found many complaints about money and refunds. We do have some complaints from time to time because refunds take up to 10 banking days depending on customer’s bank, some customers use other emails than they signed up from or direct requests to support rather than to billing, etc. We do our best resolve such complaints because we care about credit history and don’t want chargebacks to hit our merchant account. The result is obvious we had only one chargeback over last 2 months, despite we had problems with one of our servers in August.

I think that's "... it is."

Anyway, check it out: Serge himself answered your questions. Name another hosting company where the owner would take the time to reply to your message board posting (or to your emails like he's done for me every time).

I've hosted with Hostony since they first started. I was something like user #20 on Server #1. That's well over two years of service and never once have I had cause to complain. Rather the reverse: I've found that they were more than willing to help me with any problem I've ever had. They've done more for me than any other host I've had (out of four) or could ever have.

And you're right about the quiet ones. I said this a while ago, but it's worth repeating: happy customers tend to stay quiet. Rather than looking at how many bad posts there are on this board, look at how many different people are starting those posts. You'll find about five names out of hundreds of Hostony users.

I've only been here since January 2004, but I am really pleased with Hostony! I've used numerous other hosts before finding them. (My site has been up in various forms since 1998.) Hostony has the best price and the best service I've ever dealt with. You can't ask for more for the money! It's a great place!

Every question I've had has been promptly answered. Every problem that's come up they have fixed right away. Their uptime is great too. I'm not going anywhere else!
This is the best!


-Bonnie (a loud happy customer... )
bpgisme.com

Thank you for your response Serge, and I am sorry if I ruffled your feathers. I didn't mean to. Just chalk it up to inexpeirence talking. After doing some more research I have discovered that the fact that your data center is away from your headquarters is a good thing. I also have now seen that you have been around for awhile and that too bodes well.

I thank you Danimal and bpgisme for your responses that is what I was looking for. I'm glad to see that there are happy people willing to speak up and be counted.

I have narrowed my search down to two low cost, feature rich, quality hosting sites and Hostony is one of them.

Thanks again and sorry for the novice remarks.

Woof Woof
BigDog

I went to Jersey this year, nice little island.

Anyone been to Sark? (just off Jersey, no cars aloud)