written by Gary_H on 18/09/2015
Avoid this company at all cost renewed with them in June 2015 did not renew my domain name with Nominet after I paid them in full on credit card. I have now lost the domain name and much time wasted over 3 months trying to sort this out. I Have moved my business else ware DETAILS PASSED ONTO TRADING STANDARDS
written by EmeryMcDonald146 on 06/05/2014
The escape from Yorhost requires time, forward planning and possibly the help of onlinenic, the company that Yorhost uses to register its (your) domain names ( in the case of non uk domains) Contrary to many reviews, I have had a reasonable service from web-mania and Yorhost. The problem with them is that communication is difficult as the phone line has never ever been answered and the email delay is too long for me. So I decided to move to another hosting company, with reluctance. That was the start of the problems. Basically Yorhost hijacked my domains and I needed onlinenic to intervene, the whole process taking several months. So, in the light of experience, this is how I would recommend it be done. In the order below First be sneaky. Make sure that the admin email addresses of Your domain is one that you can access separately from yorhost. You need to receive an email to progress the transfer so having web mania or yorhost as the admin email is bad, because you will not get that crucial email yourself. You do this through the admin section of the yorhost website , logging in using the bit at the top of yorhost front page. Next, wait a few days and check that the admin address is listed in Whois or equivalent is your one. Now is not the time to have yorhost retaining you privacy. But you could choose a gmail etc address created for this purpose. Once done, go onto your yorhost login and change the name server to that of your new provider. Also make sure that the domain is unlocked. Try locking and unlocking the domain once or twice if the site prevents a change in name server. Now, when you start the transfer process with your new provider, you get the emails and your domain can be controlled through your new provider website interface, cpanel or whatever. Yorhost will possibly stop the move at this point by not giving you the transfer EPP code that you need, and ignoring your emails. If this occurs, creat an account with onlinenic and tell them your problem. Include emails or invoices that you have from yorhost to demonstrate your validity. Enter the same request through yorhost customer support portal so everything is logged. Eventually onlinenic will give yorhost an ultimatum. To which they will probably respond providing you with a transfer code and unlocking your domain. If they do not you will need to prove ownership of the domain to onlinenic, they will tell you what to do in such an instance. The process above is not necessary with uk domains under the control of nominet. They are aware of the problems with Nathan Barnes, sole trader running yorhost. They will make transfer much easier, or at least they did with me. And you can phone them easily. Well that's my distillation of a whole lot of worry, frustration and time spent doing what yorhost promises on its website; free and easy transfer to another provider. Good luck. Getting your own email, not webmania or yorhost as the domain registered email is most crucial, i suspect. This account is my own personal experience, maybe I am uniquely unlucky and other than the communication problem and this transfer I had been happy with web mania and yorhost with several domains over perhaps 8 or10 years. Therefore it is a shame it ended for me in this way.
written by on 06/03/2013
I've been with them for at least 5 years, and I've been treated shoddily. At one point paid for my hosting and domain (rolling over a year) only to find that it expired anyway. It took 2 months to get it back online, and I didn't receive any money/time compensation. I've repeatedly had my main domain parked for no reason. I'm writing this review now because it's happened again. The only reason I'm still with them is because I don't have time to transfer to someone else, but believe me, I will at the first chance I get. I noticed recently that the Yorhost offices are in York. That's only a 45 minute train journey from where I live, and the next time I have problems I will gladly visit them in person to talk to them face to face and sort those issues out. I'm a customer. Their "anonymity" does not make them unaccountable for their actions.
written by on 21/02/2013
I had many good years with Web-mania in the mid 2000's. However their recent liquidation and conversion into YorHost has prompted a whole load of complaints from people. I was one of the unlucky ones who paid YorHost to renew domains and basically had my money stolen by them with no sign of a domain renewal. I eventually managed to transfer my 3 domains away at added cost to myself. DO NOT USE YORHOST - You will lose money and will not receive any service at all.
written by on 03/11/2012
DO NOT USE! Webmania.co.uk or yorhost.co.uk
written by on 01/08/2012
I think it is time to sort out this guy. This guy could have done a lot more to help the people he has inconvenienced, however what he is doing with YorHost is beyond the pale. Many of us have lost money and been given an immense amount of trouble by the collapse of Web Mania Ltd. Some of us still have issues to sort out. I am receiving invoices off his new company YorHost for domains that are no longer registered with Web Mania Ltd and I have never been a customer of YorHost nor have I had any domains registered with him. This is therefore fraud and it is a criminal offence. I know at least two other people this is happening to. At £10-£45 a time this is not a lot of money, however if he is sending out 100s or 1000s of false invoices and some people are paying them then this amounts to a lot of money. I am willing to collate the information and report the matter to North Yorkshire Police for criminal investigation. Please send the following you have received from YorHost - email “Account Renewal Reminder” - copy of invoice form your Web Mania account. as a zipped file to: [email protected] Please note: Your invoice must be for a service that is not registered with YorHost
written by on 25/01/2012
DON'T USE WEB MANIA! Can't think of anything good to say about Web Mania. We have lost business because of them freezing our email account without notice a number of times. Their customer 'service' phone line is always closed. They don't answer email enquiries. We have been trying to move to another web hosting company, but as we can't get hold of them, we are stuck. Do yourself a favour, DON'T USE WEB MANIA!
written by on 03/11/2011
renewed my hosting but they took the money and ran, impossible to contact , website down for 2 weeks while I tried to recover info to migrate, amazingly still get emails from them notifying me of changes at their end although haven't been with them since April.Amazed they can so blatantly steal peoples money and don't get closed down or prosecuted.
written by on 06/10/2011
If you are thinking of buying a domain name or website hosting seriously do not use web-mania.com or yorhost.net they will take your money and when you renew your domain name they will simply put their advertising all over it and you will be without a website or worst still a domain name. I would highly reccommend heartinternet.com they are superb, great support, price and service.
written by on 28/05/2011
Also lost money with web-mania (now yorhost.net). Are they anything to do with yorhost.com? I hope not, for their sake! Good hosting with web-mania for several years, now not responding to any contact. No explanation, no apology - even an email stating "Sorry, we've gone bust and you've wasted this year's money but this is how you get your websites back" would have been appreciated. I hope as many people as possible read about web-mania becoming yorhost.net and avoid this company. Oh well, it's not the first time I've lost sites / money with bad hosting "providers". What I fail to understand is why the people who ran web-mania (who may indeed be in financial trouble themselves) cannot continue to help those who have paid them for a service - a simple note, and simple instructions as to how to proceed, and most importantly, the freeing-up of domain registrations so we can take our sites elsewhere. I don't want to get mad, I don't even want to get even - I want my sites back.
written by on 24/05/2011
WebMania now renamed YorHost or Yor Host have not responded to my contact with them, they have taken my money, I have been their customer for many years now, but recently they parked my domain with a temporary search engine provider, thus making money and generating a bad name for my domain, despite me renewing it in good time. I have asked them to contact me many times and only get automated reply saying 'thanks someone will contact you soon'. Web Mania aor YorHost when you read this, I WANT MY DOMAIN UNLOCKED SO I CAN MOVE IT. If Yor Host, Yor-host or web-mania do that and refund my annual renewal cost, then I be happy to rewrite the review again in light of these new facts. Until then I shall avoid using them at all costs, just to be clear very clearuntil then I shall avoid using them at all cost. I recommend you should avoid using them at all cost too until their customer service exists.
written by on 23/05/2011
As mentioned web mania is now yorhost but still run by the same person
The liquidation is being managed by Begbies Traynor 01904 479801 and York Trading Standards at 01904 551578 and all I would suggest is that you call and let them know how much out of pocket you are and how disgusting it is that someone can just liquidate one company and the next day open another company providing the exact same service (or not providing) and who has no duty to refund monies taken for services not provided, what a mockery of british law this is!
written by on 17/05/2011
just glad to have got out of web mania, they never answer the phone,the service is evident by their complaints, took my monie by post, never acknowledge payment, sent second payment by card, web site up for two days.
rubbish
written by vielgrader on 15/05/2011
WEB MANIA LOST ALL MY DATA !!!!!
Web Mania, has lost ALL my data of the last two years, after they moved the servers from London to York.
They have no backup and didn't give anybody enough advance warning to take their own data backups.
If they are not able to recover all data, including SQL databases, I will start a Lobby Group to sue them for every last Penny in their pockets!!!
Written on: 19/05/2011
Perhaps not lost? Worth checking your website(s) again.
<br/>Unexpectedly one of my websites (the other is already on a new host) came back online last night, including the forum - and thus sql data. I thought it had migrated to the new host slightly ahead of schedule, but not so. Until the transfer takes place it's still on Web-Mania - none of my data has been lost.
Written on: 08/08/2012
I have had two new customers this month request help with moving a .com domain away from Webmania. I have written a blog article here on how to do it.
written by on 14/05/2011
Watch out - looks like Web-mania is changing its name to YORHOST... but looks like the same old service underneath...
written by on 12/05/2011
Just to say I've had success with contacting OnlineNIC who have been extremely helpful. I would recommend them to anyone who needs to escape webmania and retrieve their domain name. They have unlocked my webmania domain, changed my e-mail address to be the admin contact and supplied me with an auth code so that I can retrieve my domain name and take it to another provider. I had just paid my renewal fee for both my domain name and hosting for a year only to find they have not renewed the account and from reading numerous forums I know suspect they are out of business. I'm not impressed at all and am concerned at how it has affected my own business in the last two weeks. Thank goodness for OnlineNIC for thir help!
Written on: 13/05/2011
Not quite out of business apparently.
<br/>According to Begbies Traynor (liquidation company) [name removed] has taken on Web-Mania as sole trader, and he had the very good grace to reply to an email I sent today about retrieving the mysql database for the forum which is/was part of a domain I've now transferred to a new host. He gave some additional detail about the servers which went offline and the damage that was done to them after the PSU failure. Repair work is still being done, although I heard this morning that some websites have now come back online.
<br/>I still think the last few weeks have shown that Web-Mania has been very poorly run - but I'm encouraged by the fact that [name removed] has responded quickly to an email; maybe there is some hope?
written by on 12/05/2011
I concur with most other people, the service and non-existant support is rubbish then I found this forum that confirmed my suspicions. I am going to try and get my domain tranferred to Raam, they look to be on the ball...
written by on 09/05/2011
webmania took my renewal fee in April but my website disappeared and I found there was no way to contact them despite phone calls, emails and the live chat was unavailable.
However, these people helped out and at last, as of today, my site is back up. I did have to pay an extra £16.
you can contact them on [email protected], explain the problem then follow the instructions.
Ps: I would have put nil rating above but it doesn't allow for that.
written by on 06/05/2011
Clearly they had very little resilience built into their hosting. But the reason things have gone so bad is they have gone into liquidation! For further info do a Google search on "webmania liquidation".
written by on 05/05/2011
I have been using web-mania.com for about 4-5 years primarily because they are super cheap and provide all the basic requirement for a website.
They've recently remodeled their website and ever since the service has become shocking. They advertise 24-7 support using a live chat feature however no one is ever one this anymore.
I received 2 emails on the 29th (see below)
We would like to inform you of a network outage that affected our network on Friday 29th April. The outage affected all customers and was caused by a routing issue inside the Level3 network who we peer with. As soon as the outage occured, Level3 were notified of the error and there engineers were working to resolv it. The connection on their edge router which interfaces with our needed to be rebuilt and in the process altering the route path slightly. The Network is currently up.
and
We would like to give you an update regarding an issue found on server 14.
The Power Supply Unit in this server has failed, we sent a replacement PSU to the data centre which was installed, unfortunately although power was live on the server, the server itself would not respond. We believe the midplane on the server has suffered damage as a result of the PSU failure.
We are now sending a replacement chasis for the server to the data centre. Which we hope will solve the issue. Apologies for the inconvenience.
and nothing since. Both of my websites have been down with no further contact or comments about what is going on. I have tried contacting them but you won't get a reply. On a plus point my custom domain email addresses with work but the websites are just down. I even tried ringing them but no answer.. just keeps ringing.
Written on: 06/05/2011
Some more information too:
<br/>
<br/>Their website does now confirm that seven of its servers went offline because of the fault. It goes on to say that new equipment was being installed on 4th May, but if this has happened it hasn't brought websites back online.
<br/>
<br/>More troubling, though, is this: if you do a search for Notice: 1349844 (Issue: 59768) you'll see that a meeting of creditors was arranged for 26th April this year with a view to putting Web-Mania into liquidation. Even if they are actually effecting repairs and if we get our websites back, it's evident Web-Mania are in pretty serious trouble.
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Agile's Comment
Written on: 05/03/2014
You assume that it is an "office". The reality is that must be running it from his home ( which is traceable by the way ) as he would never pay any rent and would have been evicted by now.
There is a useful post on Pistonheads about how he is a reseller and whom can help to get domains transferred away from him.
Its a pity he could; have done very well if only he had put the effort into doing the admin properly.
I expect several may have taken him to court and he probably has a few CCJs against him!