Hosting24 – Out Of Disk Space?
After having numerous problems with my old website host, Freehostia and their servers going up and down on an hourly basis week after week, I decided to pay for hosting with Hosting24 for this website and for http://www.birminghamiu.com which is my paranormal group.
The service has been fairly reliable so far, with a few exceptions when apparently a rogue user was using all the CPU time on their server which caused an Internal Server error intermittently and a very slow service for a few days. Well it’s been fairly reliable until now at the time of writing, but now they are making false promises.
Yesterday the main \home directory on the web server where everyone’s webspace is was 100% full and I couldn’t upload any files what-so-ever as it repeatedly said “disk full”. Posts are stored in an SQL database which is luckily on a different server so allowing me to at least continue writing for this blog, but I am unable to upload any new facilities, photos or other files for either of my websites. The thing is the hosting package I’m paying for is meant to have unlimited disk space that is quote, “guaranteed by the company owner itself”. Oh and when the disk space is running low they quote, “So, if some day, we will start running out of disk space, will simply attach new disk drive and you can continue uploading without interruptions.”. Well that’s all very well, BUT THEY HAVEN’T DONE THIS NOW AS TODAY AT THE TIME OF WRITING THE DISK IS STILL 100% FULL causing me extreme inconvenience when I’m paying for the most expensive “Gold” package too.
Here is the full promise as quoted on Hosting24’s website about disk space:
“While it may sound unrealistic – it’s true – with Hosting24.com you receive unlimited disk space and bandwidth – and it’s guaranteed by the company owner itself.
Where is the trick? No tricks at all. You get what you see. Even if your account will use 10 GB of disk space, we will never kick you off and you can continue uploading. Let us explain, how it works.
These days server disk drives are dirty cheap – for example, we get 1000GB disk drive for just $40 per month. So, if some day, we will start running out of disk space, will simply attach new disk drive and you can continue uploading without interruptions. At the moment we have over 5000 customers and the biggest account takes “only” 15 GB of disk space, so even on the worst scenario, we could still put 60 such customers on a single disk drive and then attach new disk drive with the minimal costs”
Well, they clearly lie and aren’t doing as promised and I’m very annoyed with them.
Oh well, I suppose I could just use the 24/7 support chat as clearly promised at the time of purchase to report the problem. WRONG! The 24/7 support chat has never ever EVER been on-line for all the many times I’ve tried to use it since joining. On complaining, Hosting24 say it will be on-line soon and it’s only on-line at the weekend in the short term, well it’s not even on-line then, IT’S NEVER EVER EVER ON-LINE and I’m paying for this service. When I have a problem like this, I have to book a support ticket and wait up to 24 hours for a reply at their convenience, even when the server is down. There never appears to be any sort of urgency at there end either, I can be waiting for ages without reply.
I’m very annoyed and disappointed with Hosting24 as they just aren’t keeping to their promises and guarantees.
I have put in a complaint and will update as soon as I know more, but unless they improve I may be forced to move hosting companies again.
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Comments:
Comment from admin
Time February 5, 2009 at 3:26 am 
WOW – Disk space used down to 52% – I take it back about Hosting24, well some of it. They have at least resolved this problem for now anyway.
Comment from admin
Time February 22, 2009 at 8:06 pm
The disk space is creeping up again to over 70%, but still okay, will update if it becomes a problem again.
Comment from admin
Time April 10, 2009 at 1:08 pm
The problem appears to be resolved. Hosting24 say they just get more disk space when full and this appears to be true, but they do need prompting when the disk space is quite low as they have allowed it to become completely full.
Comment from admin
Time July 12, 2009 at 3:39 am
I’ve been extremely pleased with Hosting 24 since these short term problems and it’s been the most reliable host I’ve ever used to date with masses of features for a very cheap price!
Comment from admin
Time October 9, 2009 at 10:47 pm
The disk space is now 99% on the home directory again. I’m not happy as I’ve been hounding Hosting24 to do something since it’s hit 96% to no avail, they keep telling me there’s no problem. Well I know when it hits 100%, this website will have problems writing to TMP files. I’ve written again quoting their promise which is, “So, if some day, we start running out of disk space, we will simply attach new disk drives and you can continue uploading without interruptions.”, note the quote, “no interruptions”! Well I will say that it’s already hit 100% a few days ago as I had TMP file problems, yet they still haven’t added a drive obviously to resolve the problem as promised.
Hosting24 has been reliable in comparison to other Hosts I’ve used, but I’m very disappointed at their total lack of urgency for sorting out disk space problems against all their written promises to the contrary.
Comment from admin
Time October 10, 2009 at 1:16 am
Hosting24 are saying that 99% disk space full isn’t a concern, well we will see as I suspect otherwise if it hits 100% as last time this website showed errors writing to TMP files.
Incidentally, I’ve just been locked out of all my websites and Hosting24 kept saying everything was fine at their end. All websites and Cpanel (website control panel) was timing out completely. After live chatting to technical support, insisting that there’s a fault at their end when I tested on 2 PCs here, we have found that apparently their security system has locked me out of my own website management and websites which is crazy! I was in the middle of doing a database backup using a Wordpress plug-in when it happened suddenly as for some reason the Cpanel backup hasn’t worked properly for sometime. They are going to white list me to get me back in, in the meantime I’m connected using a proxy server which is fooling their security (a hack) as Hosting24 say it could be up to 12 hours for them to rectify the problem. It’s mad having to hack into my own website management and websites. I hope Hosting24 sort this very soon as it’s very inconvenient using proxy servers to connect. I am still monitoring the impact on disk space if it does hit 100%.
Comment from admin
Time October 10, 2009 at 1:29 am
I’m back in without having to use a Proxy server, so they fixed it very quickly and overall there hasn’t been many problems.
Comment from admin
Time October 10, 2009 at 12:24 pm
The disk space problem is resolved again and the drive is now an acceptable 69% full on the Home directory. Nice one Hosting24.
Comment from admin
Time January 17, 2010 at 4:52 pm
The disk space problem appears to be resolved permanently as now every time it gets close to full, more space is added before there’s a problem.
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Comment from admin
Time February 5, 2009 at 3:05 am
After complaining Hosting24 have managed to cut the disk space on home down to 73%, so hopefully it’s resolved for the time being at least. I will continue using Hosting24 and will report any future problems here.