4U Hosting www.4uhosting.co.uk - Pre May 2005

Signed up with 4UHosting (www.4uhosting.co.uk) last month and I have not had a single problem, My domain was set up and online within 10 minutes YES 10 MINUTES! of registering it. I raised a support ticket to ask a general question and it was answered within a couple of hours.

I think if you want straight forward no hassle hosting and you don't fanny around, 4u are great.

Some hosts are charging £100 for the same comparable package you can get for £29.99 if you want the best hosts pay the £100+. For my dollar 4uhosting are superb!

I have hosted my two personal and one non-profit organisation websites with 4uhosting for the last year, all on their 'linux plus' packages (£49.99/yr). It's cheap, very cheap, compared to competitors but to an extent you do get what you pay for. They are honest in their FAQs on their website in stating that they have around 98% server uptime, which seems to be accurate in my experience - my websites have only once been inaccessible and even then only for a few minutes.

The support can sometimes be a bit lacking - they generally take around a day/2 days to reply to support emails and their phone lines are only open 11am - 3pm 5 days a week! That said, I have only had to resort to support for transffering in new domains and this was done proficiently. Contrary to some of the other reviews on this site I have never had any problems with the subdomains or control panel, although the mySQL database did go down for a few hours last month, although this would seem to be down to a system error. Again contrary to comments on this website this is not a 'one man band' - I have spoken to at least 3 different people on support calls - and I believe they are expanding.

For my sites these gripes did not matter - my personal sites do not need to be up 100% of the time - so when the downtime is an occasional 15 mins this is not a problem. For my non-profit site (a University society website) the same applied - we can handle ticket sales for events and a complex content management system through the mySQL database at a fraction of the cost of other providers, and have had no complaints about reliability.

My overall recomendation is this - if you need to host a personal website, one for a charity, University society etc for whom 100% uptime isn't a priority then use this service. It's an amazing price for the number of features and it's generally pretty reliable. But if you're a business do think twice - especially if you're going to be relying on the site to generate sales - spending the extra on a service provided by a company who will make an uptime guarantee may well prove worthwhile.

I posted a review on here about 4 months ago pretty much saying the same as everyone else. I actually got a reply from probably the only guy working there saying that they will not refund my money and that it was my fault my website wouldn't work!!! Which is total rubbish. They also asked for evidence of me contacting them for help so I emailed them a load of tickets which they would not accept due to their help system being dodgy from November til January!!! So no refund.

Ive written to Watchdog and loads of online complaint authorities and even told them I'd see them in court which their reply was "I wish you the best of luck" followed immediately by an email saying "Ticket closed, Bye!"

This company is a bad joke....don't use them ever and if you've had problems please write to Watchdog....

I am also a customer of 4U Hosting and I am having exactly the same problem as many of you. I can't access any features anymore, my web mail doesn't work, the sub domains don't work, Databases are being shut off and now I can't access my Control Panel.

I would like to know how we would go about cancelling our account before it gets auto billed. There must be a way, otherwise this is beyond committing fraud and something seriously needs to be done about this website!

Please contact me in the Review Centre Website Forums so we can formulize ideas on how we should take action.

Regards

Rod

Signed up with 4U Hosting (or seemingly with this person as it appears as if it's a one-man band judging by the lack of support) on the 29th of Jan 2005. Once the nameservers had been changed (made the error of switching to them due to the attractive price of their 500mb package) the site was up for about 24 hours and the c/panel worked. Outgoing email didn't work and the first of 3 support tickets was issued. It's now 3rd Feb, the site has been down since approx 2pm on the 2nd Feb, more support tickets have been submitted and still nothing coming through from 4uhosting.co.uk by way of explanation. As others will testify, their phone support is non-existant (probably due to the high level of complaints that would undoubtedly be flooding in) and their postal contact address is a PO box. Has anyone looked into the precise whereabouts of this PO Box address? One piece of research suggests it's in a field, between a main road and a railtrack somewhere near Newthorpe in West Yorkshire. Conveniently, because their payments by credit card are handled by World Pay, getting a refund on the credit card falls not with them but with 4uhosting.co.uk - essentially you have to make contact with them personally to try to get the money back direct - if they're not answering support issues I doubt they'll want to reason over their lack of service and the subsequent reimbursement of such.

Personally I'm submitting a review of my own experience with them to Watchdog and will help in any way possible to see that this company is accountable for it's (in)actions.

4uhosting.co.uk are arrogant, ignorant, cheeky, unhelpful and totally disinterested in resolving any problems, even when caused by their own inaptitude, the only two answers they seem able to provide to any question is 'we have no issues' and 'ticket closed', (which they are extremely good at).

Beware of this host!!!!

4U Hosting (www.4uhosting.co.uk) is rubbish and the owner is a cowboy.

4U Hosting (www.4uhosting.co.uk) is a classic case of a company offering the moon for a cheap price and then finding out they don't have the experience or technical knowledge to cope!

I was so impressed by this company's customer service back in April 2004 that I wrote a glowing letter to them which they have as one of the customer testimonies on their home page. With the inability to receive emails any more and 4UHosting not responding to any email, support ticket or telephone I now REALLY wish I hadn't written that.

The least the company could do is post something on their front page warning business customers of a potential problem. Business customers are now losing money thanks to these cowboys.

My advice to business is go to a reputable company - you pay more but at least you are not left up the creek without a paddle!!!!

4U Hosting (www.4uhosting.co.uk) are possibly the worst hosting company you could ever chose.

I moved to them because they offered a good deal on hosting and a good price. I wish I had stayed at my previous hosting company and spent the extra cash.

This company should be investigated by a watchdog as soon as possible so no more people will be conned and lose money.

4U Hosting (www.4uhosting.co.uk) provide NO support here whatso ever!!!!