Powweb.com Review

A Powweb review can be misleading, because not everyone has figured out that Powweb.com was bought out in a merger a few years ago.  Now, the quality of Powweb hosting changes as they grow.  Founded in 1999, Powweb was one of those homegrown companies that developed their own control panel and also their own way of doing business.  Then, Endurance International purchased Powweb.com and operating procedures started to changed.  As one former employee puts it, “Sure, the “old” PowWeb had its fair share of problems, but we were genuine. However since the buy out many of these problems have been addressed and powweb offers a decent hosting package for under ten bucks.

Endurance International is an acquisitions firm that buys web hosting companies and operates them under an umbrella organization.  The one catch, however, is that they keep all of the brand names in tact and make them look like are operating independently.  So naturally, a naïve consumer doesn’t know that they are really getting into a situation where their site is actually being hosted by a huge corporation that simply acquires web hosting companies for profit.  In some cases, this can mean that web hosting brands that are not as profitable can be phased out and eventually dumped in favor of those making more money.  This is a common practice, but it does leave customers with billing problems and down time that they don’t understand.  The result is a trail of angry and childish comments from people who say things like “worst host ever” without understanding the big picture.  

So, it’s important to be an educated consumer and get real information from the company itself.  If you are deciding between several hosting companies, the first thing to do is write down a list of questions.  The next step is to call the 1-800-number and start asking those questions.  If you get the run-around as a potential buyer, imagine how the response will be if you have issues as a webmaster.  In the case of Powweb, the customer service center was outsourced to Boston and Canada.  It is rumored that in order to save money, Endurance came up with a one, two, and three customer service level.  The lowest level, which was one, was set up for the people who were paying $7.00 a month.  This may not be exactly true, but you can see how a company that now has to provide service to thirty different web hosting companies might let a few people fall through the cracks.    

 Also, ask where the data center is and who runs it.  If it’s outsourced in Phoenix, calling a customer service rep company that is outsourced in Omaha probably won’t get you many answers.  A few years ago, there were quite a few problems when Endurance started making changes to the data center at Powweb.  To their credit, Endurance and Powweb did give customers information on how to move their sites, but they didn’t say why, and also didn’t know what effects it would have on the sites that were moved.  Quite a few subscribers left during the transition, simply because they were in the dark about what was happening.

Ask a sales rep technical questions that apply to you.  Powweb has its own control panel that is set up specifically to install scripts easily.  This includes Joomla, Mambo, PHP-Nuke, Drupal, PHP-Fusion, e107, phpWebsite, PHP fusion, WordPress, and many others.  This is a great feature because it gives users the freedom to do their own scripting.  If you aren’t familiar with installing scripts, don’t expect customer service reps at Powweb to have the time to teach you to become a competent webmaster.

So Powweb, large conglomerates, or any other hosting company isn’t all to blame for downtime o other problems on anyone’s site.  As a consumer, it’s really important to think what you want your web site to do, especially if you sign a two-year contract.  It is also up to you to pay attention to how your site and the company that hosts it are changing and growing.