Green Geeks Web Hosting Review – Why They Suck Ass

I ‘m a web developer always looking for a good host to place client websites on using either shared hosting and/or virtual private server packages.

I have profiled a LOT of hosts over the years and have experienced all kinds of service levels and issues related to hosting. My experience goes far beyond just a user with a site and includes everything from shell access, MySQL management, INI file edits, and log troubleshooting above and beyond front end site development and management.

My point is I am not a spring chicken when it comes to using hosting and assessing their services.

Green Geeks started out as a decent host, but after several years things began to change for several different client hosted sites. Remember these are all different shared hosting accounts and they are NOT on my Virtual Private Server so the problems cannot be compared to one server instance.

Green Geeks Issues We Have Dealt With:

1. Their servers began to continuously slow down in early 2013 and would often timeout completely. This went on for months and resulted in us having to move one site to another host by the summer of 2013.
2. Support told me on 2 different hosting accounts all using a standard WordPress installation that we were to blame for a DDOS attack? We aren’t Anonymous over here how �exactly did we cause a DDOS attack? (They never told us how.)
3. Without consultation they installed captcha like authentication plugins on our account that did not work well and wouldn’t function on tablet and smartphone that severely compromised our ability to access our administration area for both wordpress and joomla Content Management Systems for the site.
4. We were told that 2 different sites were not optimized even though we spent lots of time and money installing and optimizing cache systems that reduced HTTP requests, resources, and queries to negligible levels. When we asked them to clarify what wasn’t working we were offered NO details and told to optimize our site using the same canned response that we received the first time.
5. We were charged for add ons on 2 different accounts that we did not want (SSL and Static IP Address), This was partly my fault for not cancelling the account right away (Which is buried on their site). Once I submitted a cancellation request they continued to charge us for additional Addons to our account!!! I asked for a refund and they told us Addons are not refundable. Basically taking our money after we cancelled and then refusing to give it back.
6. Finally after we managed to cancel our account we were told that our site would remain active, and that we would have to submit another ticket to get rid of it otherwise it would remain active till 2016!
7. Out of numerous support tickets over 10 different shared hosting accounts, and 2 different VPS accounts I can say with a high degree of certainty that Green Geeks support system is generally a rapid series of canned responses.

Now here is the rub. All the cheap shared hosting are generally the same. Green Geeks refusing to refund stuff is unique however. I have generally been given a refund by other hosts, even some hosts who have 30 day hosting policies have returned money when asked after the 30 day period.

Green Geeks to date has taken rough $110 dollars worth of payments hostage from 2 different accounts with Add ons. Not to mention about 2 hours of back and forth time with their support system that I won’t charge my client for even though my time is worth $75 hourly.

Alternative Hosts

I will write more on these guys later, and why they are superior in both quality of hosting and service, but for the moment you’ll have to take my word for it which is why�I recommend A Small Orange�(Yes that’s my affiliate link. ). After so many shitty hosts and some Ok hosts they are the Gold Standard for customer service.