Freeblackhat/X3 - most of a year later.

[Lumos]

Starting a new thread about this as the other one here is old and has been obviously trashed with one-liners by folks wanting to up their post counts...

What follows are my actual observations after almost a year as a user of reseller hosting from X3host.

Most importantly=>
I want to be very clear that what follows IS my honest observations and review - but that it is NOT aimed at flaming, bashing or tearing down this provider.

My biggest concern -was- that I needed to gain full control of the domain I had with X3 - and as it has been transferred away now, their services really no longer concern me.

I had asked X3 about doing this transfer specifically sometime back and was assured that I could transfer out anytime via the client area - but that statement was not 100% accurate as it did not work that way at all.

Here are my 100% honest observations and review:
- This hosting is OK - not terrible - not terrific - just OK.
- It has downtimes pretty often which are variable in length.
- It has things like 500 server errors a bit too often.
- Their main site's client area is very, very slow to respond.
- This service is definitely good enough for casual uses.
- This service is not well suited to uses which require almost 100% uptime.

My recommendations to the provider himself:
1.
STOP USING THIS FORUM TO BURY ANY COMPLAINTS ABOUT YOUR SERVICE and STOP BEING SO ARGUMENTATIVE WITH THE USERS HERE !!!
2.
Either improve your reseller and other most critical services even more, or stop offering reseller hosting as it has already brought too much controversy as is clearly shown here at the forum.

My needs for hosting are such that the X3hosting service is a bit below my standards for reliability and availability, therefore I have not placed any client accounts onto it.
(I only ever use reseller hosting, for many good reasons.)

I've given X3 a fair test, locally monitoring it 24/7 for most of a year already.
As things stand now I do not plan to renew with this provider, I am sad to say that it is just not a good enough value compared with other, more reliable providers.

If, and only if I am able to replace the previous domain on my account with a free one and keep the account open, I will continue to monitor it and see if it gets substantially better for the remainder of the year of my service there; if not - no great loss.

The time came for me to get some serious uses out of the domain that was assigned to my account at X3 and for that it needed to point to a more reliable service.

@FreeBlackHat:
I wish you well in your business and hope you will manage to do even better than you have until now AND with FAR less controversy between yourself and the users.

A general note to others about cheap vs. costly hosting:
They fail with about equal frequencies and usually with ZERO warnings.

My needs are served by multiple providers and I've been using reseller hosting for around a decade already.

I've used highly rated, very spendy providers that went -POOF- and vanished without ANY warning or refunds...I also (right now) have some really great, cheap hosting that has been incredibly reliable for years for me as well - so=>
The too often assumed relationships between price and quality are a pile of hooey based upon my actual experiences.

This is why I gave X3 a chance - but it seems the cultural and language barriers in this instance are just too large to get across - too much struggle for too little in the way of results - not a good value for me, IMO.

[indigenius]

Your sites are your most important treasure. Even if there is a downtime or any kind of error, it affects users in a lot of ways.
I have always used Hostgator and bluehost because in my opinion, paying a few extra bucks every month is much better as compared to a cheap hosting.
I have not used x3 host or whatever it is so the owner should not come and shout at me. This is my general observation and I stand by it.

[Lumos]

Thanks for replying here Indigenius.
I've learned the hard way about hosting providers and have seen lots of them just quit or fail over the years.

During that journey I did get forced into trying out hostgator after the other one I was on failed and made a backroom deal with them to take on all the accounts they had...
After the 'free month' (having lost 11 months from the 1st place...) hostgator billed me some gigantic amount for basic hosting AND used my payment info from the other place to just go ahead and take it without authorization.
I had to dispute it because they would not cancel or refund - then they hit my card again for a $75 chargeback fee - which I again disputed.
Ultimately I had to report fraud and get a new card to stop their nastiness.
That was the end of that - I'll not go near that one again.

Bluehost does not appeal to me because I've found great value in some providers already and have no need of them.

My favourite source when looking for a provider is the WHT forum - and contacting any that look good with a fixed set of queries that I've worked out over time.

Once in a while I'll test a small hosting company as I did with X3...
In this case I did so just because I wanted to see for myself if all the hoopla here was really due to poor services, or not.

As it turns out after so many months I can honestly attest to the fact that most of the user complaints (sadly) must be genuine and that this provider does come with too many problems to be good for serious uses.

But as I've said repeatedly:
I have found over time that there is no dependable connection between cost, quality and longevity of hosting providers - they just come and go as they do - its a coin toss, really.