Many providers of “low-cost” shared web hosting like Hostpapa advertise “unlimited bandwidth” — but it’s a scam, and you could end up with your website shut down and back-up functions blocked unless you pay higher fees. Don’t get burned. Learn from my experience.
In 2018-19, the web hosting provider Hostpapa suddenly without notice shut my website down completely until I paid higher fees. This seemed like a scam. I investigated and discovered that’s exactly what it was – and I was far from Hostpapa’s only victim. In this post, I summarize what I learned about this profitable scam aspect of Hostpapa’s regular business operations. I do it in a way that is understandable for non-technical people, and I then suggest key questions to ask before signing up with any “cheap” web hosting provider like Hostpapa.
Update April 2024: Since I first published this in 2019, hundreds of people have left comments and/or contacted me privately having the same problems with Hostpapa–they had small websites with low traffic but were being threatened and told they had to “upgrade” to much more expensive hosting plans. This has included a number of people and companies with significant expertise in web technologies, who said that they were able to technically audit activities on their own websites and determine that Hostpapa’s claims of excessive resource use were, simply, false. In addition, of those hundreds of people who left Hostpapa for another hosting provider, none have reported back to me that they ever had the same problems arise again. In light of this, I have updated the “technical discussion” section of my post.
Hostpapa gets generally good reviews. Learning #1: You cannot trust most reviews of web hosting providers. Search engines return “Reviews of…”, “Top ten…” and “Best…” lists very high in search results, so there are massive profits in posting such lists and reviews. Most reviews of the “best web hosting providers” are put together by a person or company that’s typically getting paid by the web hosting companies every time a visitor clicks through to the companies’ websites, and is paid more if the visitor signs up. So if a top-ten list gives a very bad review, it’s usually just because that particular company has no such “affiliate programs” with scam reviewers. (Reviews done by established, independent tech magazines are a better bet.)
I signed up for Hostpapa’s medium, “unlimited bandwidth,” shared web hosting plan that said they would “never charge higher usage fees” – so what could go wrong?
One day out of the blue I received an automated message from Hostpapa telling me that my website had been using up so much server resources that Hostpapa had shut my website down. I could not even access my website to manage it. The email said that I could regain access to my site if I started paying monthly fees that were ten times more than what I was currently paying.
Most people without technical knowledge probably just pay the higher fees. What choice do you have? But I had a little technical knowledge and a lot of suspicion. My WordPress blog on Hostpapa was small, and the traffic was very light. I contacted Hostpapa and explained this and reminded them I was on an “unlimited bandwidth” plan that said I’d “never be charged higher usage fees”.
Hostpapa staff said my “unlimited” plan wasn’t actually unlimited. They said the “bandwidth” was unlimited but not the “server usage”. Learning #2: The commonly advertised feature of “unlimited bandwidth” for shared web hosting plans is misleading.
For non-technical users, “bandwidth” can be understood as the width of a pipe, while “server usage”, is the amount of liquid your website sends back and forth through the pipe. Hostpapa sent me a link to their policy that described extremely tight, strict limits on “server usage” – the number of monthly drops my website was allowed to send through the pipe to web users. But this policy was never mentioned in Hostpapa’s ads or Terms of Service.
I persuaded Hostpapa to let me back into my website, and I tried to ensure that I had a backup of the content. However, Hostpapa was still throttling my website so heavily that, no matter what back-up tool I used, it would time out.
Hostpapa then sent me a list of technical tips to “correct the problems” that were causing my “excessive server usage.” I had to spend many hours researching to figure out how to implement them. I finally managed to implement them all — and it made absolutely no difference. Hostpapa shut my website down again.
Hostpapa then admitted to me that it was often the case that implementing their technical tips did not actually solve the problems. The “real” problem, their staff explained, was that WordPress has become so popular that it’s now a frequent target of hackers and malicious web-bots. These hackers and web-bots were overloading my website, they claimed. And even running WordPress firewalls and plugins like “Stop Bad Bots” might not help much, Hostpapa staff said, because they do not actually block the bad traffic from ever arriving.
For me, this just raised more questions. Isn’t bad traffic like this usually blocked at the server level, by the web hosting provider? After all, about 90% of emails circulating on the internet are spam, too. Imagine if an internet service provider refused to run spam-blockers and instead let all spam emails through to its clients and then charged its clients higher fees for all the extra email server space they were using each day. Hostpapa staff replied that they simply couldn’t keep up with blocking all of that bad traffic. They told me that, as a result, Hostpapa had set up an entire division dedicated to moving people with small WordPress sites off low-cost hosting plans onto higher-priced plans. Basically, they admitted that this scam is a major part of Hostpapa’s profit model–of course, they didn’t call it a “scam.” (Update 2024: A number of technical experts who have run into the same problems with Hostpapa have informed me that Hostpapa’s claims about these various “causes” and “solutions” are all technically implausible based on how shared hosting servers work–that’s why no actions ever solve the alleged “problems.” In addition, a number of readers forwarded this article to Hostpapa staff, who didn’t respond to any of it except to dismiss the post as “old.” Hence, another reason I’ve updated!)
I repeatedly asked to be allowed to talk to a supervisor or manager at Hostpapa, but my requests were refused.
I persuaded the Advertising Standards Council to investigate and they eventually concluded that Hostpapa was indeed engaged in false and misleading advertising.
In response to the findings of the Advertising Standards Council and another complaint I made through the Better Business Bureau, Hostpapa finally changed their advertising and Terms of Service to clarify that they will under certain conditions throttle websites, shut them down and charge higher fees (see their new ad below). However, the wording in their ad and Terms of Service “Disruptive Uses” section still make it sound like this will only ever happen if “you” engage in “abusive” activities or if “you” use “unusual” amounts of server space. Hostpapa has refused to clarify that, in fact, your site could be throttled and shut down under very ordinary conditions with no reasonable technical explanations for it.
I will never do business with Hostpapa again — I’ve found other web hosting providers that are nearly as low-cost and I’ve had no such problems. So here are some key questions to ask a provider if you are considering signing up for a shared web hosting plan:
- What are their actual server usage limits?
- Do they ever throttle client websites?
- Do they shut down client websites without notice?
- How do they deal with situations where a customer’s website may be crossing the server usage limits? And if a customer disputes that they’re crossing those limits, what resolution processes does the company have in place?
I’ve posted this just to be helpful to other people, not to make money. If you’ve found this post helpful, please post a link to it somewhere so that others are more likely to find it when they do searches. (And/or please leave a comment — if you don’t see my “Comments” section below, click on the title of this post and it should appear.)
Addendum 2024: I have not continued to research other web hosting providers, and my “list” of recommended, alternative, better providers has slowly whittled down to about two providers. I’m happy to email a recommendation to you if you ask in a comment. However, it appears that Hostpapa may be relatively rare in the scope of this scam it is running, even compared to other questionable providers; therefore, my main recommendation is to contact providers with the questions I’ve listed. That way, you let them know that people are wising up and looking for alternatives, and you get providers’ policies in writing. When you find a good one, feel free to let me know via email (I don’t want to turn the comments thread into a long list of “ads” for providers) and perhaps we can crowd-source a longer list again. Also, I encourage everyone having problems with Hostpapa to post a complaint to TrustPilot and the Better Business Bureau or other review places, summarizing this scam. If there are a lot of public complaints about this, others will hear about it — and who knows, Hostpapa might even change… You can go through a formal complaint process with the BBB, or simply post a comment here: https://www.bbb.org/ca/on/oakville/profile/web-hosting/hostpapa-inc-0107-1241393/customer-reviews. and at TrustPilot here: https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/www.hostpapa.com
Glad I found this. I would appreciate your recommendations as I was ready to sign up with them too. :-(
Hello,
We are currently experiencing these escalating threats of shut down if we don’t respond to their upselling efforts. Hoping we can safely navigate out of this with your list of recommendation.
We’ll definitely be contacting the BBB.
Thanks in advance!
My experience as well. I was updating a friend’s website and he had 2,300 spam comments with hundreds of bad links. It had been that way since 2016 with HostPapa never saying a word to him. The minute we cleaned that up and installed a WordPress plugin to stop spam, HostPapa started contacting us saying we have 48 hour to respond or they were taking our website down. They listed a bunch of highly technical reasons that were all linked to writing code and nothing to do with a WordPress site that has 6 pages and 10 photos on it. When we called back it sounded like a call centre and the person who sent us the message was “busy” and would call back. They never called back and we just transferred the website to another service. Very much a scam! Thanks for this website. I made my friend feel better about moving his website.
Wow, they are more brazen all the time!
Hi could I get your recommendation. I’m in Australia
Hi – can you send your wordpress recommendations to me for Australia please? I am in the midst of getting these SRM twisting emails from them.
Hi. Yep getting the same experience here. I am in Australia so if I could get your hosting recommendation it would be appreciated.
This was very interesting to read after going through through this issue for months now with hostpapa. I used to do Web design but it’s been a while, so I figured maybe I’m out of the loop. Asked a professional to look who confirmed my suspicion my site is simple with few pages and shouldn’t be causing any issues.
Hey, another person checking in about the host papa scam. I only became involved because my mother was getting tricked into buying a VPS for a tiny WordPress site. The dude at host papa said she had malware on her site, and she was very concerned – but then hostpapa listed a home directory of another user lol. Once I pointed out they didn’t even have the right site he switched to talking about resources. Sadly I took their bait and looked at logs myself and once again, they are trying to be tricky. They limit sites to 1gb memory max, but it’s not sandboxed or anything so if WordPress does an update check/site scan they let it consume whenever memory is available (even if it’s for .5 of a second) and then they count that as a fault, and you know what that means — up selling scam! Anyway, now I’m moving the site and having my mother get her credit card to reverse the charges (it’s easier and it screws with hostpapa a little bit, so I like that) . Anyway thanks for the site, at first I couldn’t believe a legit company would be so scammy, this is nearly on the level of “hi we’re calling because your computer has a problem” scammers. The only difference here is folks signed up with hostpapa to start the harassment!
I’ve just received my third and fourth emails from a Hostpapa account manager threatening suspending my account due to “high resource usage…Disruptive Use Policy (Section 6.2)”.
Each time I implement suggested code or plugin, they keep coming back with more alleged usage violations. In the 7 years with Hostgator, not a single email from them. This is getting ridiculous.
Usage issues is a moving target for Hostpapa. I’ll be moving my sites as soon as I can.
What really burns is the money I spent on a 3 year agreement. Can I ask for the pro-rated amount back?
Hi Dan, yes you absolutely can get your money back! I got mine back. Just write them a clear, polite but firm letter highlighting your complaint and that you want your money back. I think the reason it’s easy is because there are several independent arbiters where you can easily formally complain about being financially ripped off if they don’t give it back. They will investigate on your behalf. The broader issue — the apparent widespread deception and fraud that Hostpapa seems to be engaging in through this pattern of behaviour — is much more difficult to find anyone to investigate. Best of luck!
Hi Rob! Thank you for sharing the experience.
I have used HostPaPa for more than 5 years and didn’t have any big problem. However, they sent me a kind of warning email said my website has malware after I recently moved all of my websites.
“You’ll understand that because every website hosted on our servers has to be secure, if this situation persists, we’ll have no other choice than to disable your website. Before this happens, let’s discuss so we can resolve this issue. ” – from HosPaPa
I instantly felt that I need to move to other webhosting service. I don’t even have many traffic (less than 10 per a day). That is why they are trying to scam using “maleware” thing. Please send me a link for an alternate Canadian webhost.
Thanks for your post!
This is happening to me as well! I already have business pro and they are trying to sell me on these high rates:
The price is:
1 year – $1,087.83 + tax
2 years – $2,035.71 + tax
3 years – $2,863.59 + tax
Please send me a link for an alternate Canadian webhost so I can be done with these scammers once and for all!
Thanks so much for your post!
I have just bought a few domains, and not set up any websites there yet – OTHER than uploading a wordpress template. Nothing else, not any text or images. last week I moved over a domain that has quite a few emails, but have never set up a website for. guess what!? I got a notice that I need to upgrage my plan as I was exceeding my website storage! One website with a template only, one domain with two email accounts and existing emails. it has taken me 4 days working on this email migration and they are STILL messing me around, they have repeatedly blocked my IP address (some bot maybe?) and really just handing me around to multiple people. I am done. Would really appreciate it if you could please share with me your favourite domain hosts, thanks. I am in Canada.
They screwed me over. They have limited everything and shut my business down several times pushing me to upgrade. I ended up moving my 13 websites and domains.. and they still told me I was using too much data. They cost me lots of time and money. They are a complete scam.
Hi Rob
Here we are December 2020 and I have had a string of Hostpapa Failures on my sites, so sorry I am now stuck in a contract looking for a way out but this article and reading other opinions has pushed me to take the strong arm and do something. Thankyou for your research and Blog Niall
Sorry to hear that, Niall. Good luck! My experience was that when I finally just clearly expressed in writing that I wanted my money back because I believed Hostpapa had breached the terms of our agreement, they promptly sent me the remaining money. I believe Hostpapa wants to avoid those kinds of financial complaints because it’s something the BBB or regulators would, and do, more regularly and thoroughly investigate — i.e. if a customer says they got ‘ripped off’ financially. But if a customer instead says they just ‘felt manipulated into potentially paying more,’ that’s a different, more complicated kind of issue for complaints monitors and, as my blog post shows, seems to go nowhere.
And thanks for posting your comment — I believe the frequent legit comments on this page may be increasing the profile of this page in search results for others to find. I’m also going to update this post soon with the latest information I’ve been gathering.
I am very glad to have found this information.
I received a warning email this morning and I immediately checked the cPanel resources for my three very low traffic websites. Over the past month there has been negligible use of resources.
I had a similar warning from them a little more than a year ago. In that case I was able to get to talk with someone on their Tech side who was able to say within minutes that I had nothing to worry about and there were no issues, so I ignored the warning.
I very much would like some recommendations for an honest, preferably Canadian based, hosting company.
Could you send me your recommendations please?
HI,
Thanks for this, I am in the same boat. Can you please send through your recommended host.
Kind Regards,
Jamie
A new Scam… their account manager claim I have malware and want me to get a security that cost over 80 extra a year. I performed several tests with different programs and online scanners with no malware and still HOSTPAPA cannot even provided any evidence I have malware; just their words. Yet they blocked my website and nothing I can do. It seems I have to trust them.$$$$
Hi Ronnie, yes, it seems this is the latest trend at Hostpapa, I’ve been hearing about it a lot. I would suggest that you simply put in writing a firm request that they a) provide screenshots or other evidence of the presence of malware files and b) re-open your site so that you can back it up with a plug-in like Duplicator. Then say, if they do not do both immediately, then you will complain to the Better Business Bureau. It’s not a big threat, but I believe that if more complaints like these actually got brought to the BBB’s attention, that it would start to catch the attention of senior management at Hostpapa — because they are required to respond to complaints through BBB. Especially if when you complain you include a link to this thread as further evidence of something amiss at Hostpapa that you’re being victimized by!
Ditto. Glad I found this. Now backing things up and looking to transfer. Please recommend another host.
Same shit here , ”High resource usage coming from your hosting account” They want me to move to ” to a hosting plan with more server power,…” this blackmail I have get today even though I’ve only been with them for two weeks! They give me 20 days to resolve these issues, with ”High resource usage ” or moving to a more expensive hosting plan, otherwise ”your services will be suspended.” I’m lucky, at least I think so, that I’m still in the time frame of a 30 days Refund! which I will definitely use, although I don’t know if I will really get my money back. I immediately went to do a backup of my website..these people are completely crazy. I will let you know how my case unfolds….I had think to move my website to dreamhost, I hope they aren’t such scammers as HostPapa.
Same issue here. Just got one of those emails for a simple WordPress website with business hosting. Barely any traffic.
Please send me the list of hosts. I’m planning on moving it over somewhere else.
Hi Rob,
I challenged my “account manager” about the type of Malware they detected and explained to them that I used a 3rd party malware detection software and my site came up clean and free of any malware. I asked them to rescan my site and to let me know the type of malware detected. When they got back to me the malware had mysteriously disappeared. He said that it is probably hidden and can return at any time. They have decided to no longer shutdown my site tomorrow as they had threatened and will now just monitor. Smells a little fishy to me.
Hi Rob,
Great article. I’m having issues with Hostpapa.ca saying that my website is infected with Malware and will be shutdown within 2 days if I don’t take their Protect Service at $12.99 CND per month. I’ve scanned my site for Malware with 3rd party inspection tools and cannot find anything wrong. I’ve asked them for the details about what Malware has been detected. I have a 2 page site with mostly text and a few pictures that just show my coordinates and services. Seems like a scam to me. Shouldn’t they be protecting their server from this malware in the first place? Can you suggest another web hosting provider?
Shawn
Thanks for the note, Shawn — wow, I haven’t heard that one before! Sounds like someone at Hostpapa has come up with a clever new version of the scam. So they never even gave you any evidence of the allegad Malware? There are many ways malware can get in, e.g. you could have had a WP plug-in that wasn’t completely secure or something, but certainly Hostpapa should be able to point to the corrupted files on your site. And then that would allow you to research to see how that particular malware gets onto sites and how to get rid of it. And yes, there’s no doubt that, if they actually found it, then they have contained it within your site so there’s no reason for them to “hurry” you to decide what to do. If it was a danger to them, they would have punched it out already immediately!
Can you send me the info, these clowns are shutting me down with 4 sites that get 10 hits a month with their unlimited everything package
Thanks for the article Rob. Could you send me your recommended website please? Also, have you received any indication that HostPapa has improved since you posted this article? Judging by some of the recent comments, I am guessing not.
Terrible Hosting ….cheating innocent customers. After going through your post and what is actually happening with me it seems every word of yours is true. Stay away from such hosting providers. I
Another extortion victim here…after years of trouble-free interaction they want me to upgrade to Business plan (I guess to better serve my 7 customers?) or they will suspend the account. No evidence provided to say it is me. Luckily I vote with my feet. Bye-bye HostPutrid.
What a relief to read this thread! I thought I was going crazy, looking at everything that might cause my small and plain website to use up so many resources. I’ll do my research, but also would appreciate your recommended host – I have 24 hours before my account gets suspended. Thank you!
Can you please send the hosting provider(s) that you trust?……….same old story as the rest, totally scandalous………thanks……Richie
Hi Rob,
I’m experiencing something similar. Can you please send the hosting provider(s) that you trust?
My story…
About a month ago, Hostpapa warned me that my account would be suspended. I had only been with them a few months, and was very surprised at their email. Previously, I had enjoyed trouble-free service at ***** for years.
Fortunately, I have a friend — who is also a web developer — and he suggested that I explain to Hostpapa that my site has very low traffic. He also suggested that I give them permission to block the site’s heartbeat function and cron function if necessary. (BTW – He’s the one that shared a link to this page. Thank you ****.)
Anyway, after a few weeks of back and forth, Hostpapa wrote to me saying, “We disabled the Heartbeat functionality. We also replaced the WP-cron with a real one from the cPanel. I have been monitoring your account and I am happy to inform you that there are currently no hits.”
Good news right?
Unfortunately, this morning I discovered that my account is suspended.
So, time to move on. That’s why I’m asking for your list of trusted hosting providers.
Thank you in advance,
=L=
Having the same issue at the moment. Apparently have had 212 million visitors in 7 days when my analytics only shows less than 100.
Would love the name of your recommended hosting prvider.
Thanks!
Hi,
I, too, have had the same email telling me my very small web press site is using too much of the shared server usage. I had just signed up with Google Ad sense and thought that was the problem. thank you for this article and I would appreciate the list of recommended web hosts too.
Thank you so very much!
Hi Rob,
I am in the same situation. I need to move out from HostPapa. Could you please send me the names of your recommended hosting providers? Thanks.
I read through all of the above posts. I am unfortunately in the same boat. When I started receiving unusual emails from HostPapa, I thought that I was missing something or that they had perhaps made a mistake on their end. Based on all of the above comments, and how similar my experience has been, it seems clear that there is no mistake and it is exactly the scam that it feels like. I am currently in the middle of the problem and backing up my work. I am developing a website for a client and it is not even live to the public. There is no traffic aside from me and my development work so far would be using few server resources. Still, HostPapa sent me the same kind of emails that are being described above. Thank goodness for reputable hosts, reputable backup tools, and this post.
Rob, Thank you very much for this post. I very much appreciate it. Could you please send me the names of your recommended hosting providers?
I, too, received one of these E-mails the night before last. It’s not a new story. A friend of mine also had a website with Hostpapa, and some months back she received the same message. Now, I’m a techie with many, many years’ experience, and I questioned Hostpapa on this. Needless, to say, they couldn’t answer me, and just said that my friend need to upgrade. I remained very silent and just moved the website to a separate provider, and my friend closed her account.
So, when I received the E-mail from Hostpapa the other night, I wasn’t entirely surprised. I had been expecting to receive one. Again, without saying a word, I backed up all my sites and they are ready to be redeployed somewhere else.
Hostpapa, I’m afraid, are a crowed of scamsters. People without any technical knowledge fall for it all and have no other option but to pay more money. This is just plain wrong.
Rob, I would be very grateful indeed if you could send me the list of providers as you mention above, and many, many thanks for this website.
Kind regards
J
We began searching a E.Hernandez of Host papa after getting emails a week ago, exactly the same as poster above ( Koora). There is not so much as a blip on our cpu usage and processes etc . No resource issues at all.
We are currently looking into all traffic ips to our site.
Concurrently looking to move away from Hostpapa. The emails from Hostpapa are ridiculous and a blatant hunt to make you upgrade to a much more expensive solution with them.
Goodbye Hostpapa – it’s been a very below average experience.
I cannot recommend Hostpapa at all. I can recommend fantastic host providers but I won’t as it isn’t fair to select just a couple – there are plenty out there. Google 10 top hosting providers – I’m sure you will find a good one and I am also pretty sure you will not find Hostpapa on that list.
Howdy, was going to go through HostPapa, might not now – could you please email me your hosts Rob?
I’ve had ongoing issues with Hostpapa, same story as everyone else here. So glad I found this post, now I know Im not going crazy! They try to bamboozle with tech talk and little graphs. Time and time again I find my website has been shut down by Hostpapa with no communication that its happened. Ive just spent money improving the security on my website. But still I get the same old line “The issue is that your website has been experiencing a lack of resources recently, which has let to faults being generated on our server. Faults are generated when the website demands more resources than the hosting plan has a capacity for, thus getting restricted and not being able to complete the required action properly, which results in slow loading times, content not showing up as intended or even error pages.”
Thank you so much for your post.
I just received the first email from Hostpapa from one of their account managers about this very same “issue” of “utilizing more server resources than allocated to your current hosting plan.” I looked at my usage and it’s low to almost non-existent. I will look at other options so that I have an exit strategy, if required.
Would you please share (via email, of course) your recommendations on other web host providers? Thanks!
host papa is terrible. used to be great when they were lunarpages (11 years very little trouble) …hardly knew that they were there. Then they split into two companies, dismantled our email set up, messed it up when putting it back, after they got our emails for both of our companies hobbled together, less than 6 months later they screw it all up again. They told me four times that the work is complete and fully functional. Yet no calendar migration on two domains, no email folders, two weeks later and we lost countless leads and revenue fr our engineering company and flood specialist company. no where near cheap after all the add-ons just for a simple set-up. They are the worst.
Thanks for the post, Bruce. I’m intrigued and disturbed by this notion emerging from your and others’ experiences that the bots themselves might ultimately be driven deliberately in collaboration with Hostpapa or as an integral part of Hostpapa’s business operations. In light of how intractable, incommunicado, and irresponsible Hostpapa senior management/ownership have been about our complaints, it starts to seem very plausible.
There’s been a big uptick over the last few weeks in the number of people finding this discussion thread, so that’s great. And by the way, if you or anyone want to take the time to post a complaint to the Better Business Bureau, then see if they allow you to include a link to this article and discussion thread as part of your evidence! That could have an impact, – impact in numbers.
Rob
Dear Mr. Christopher Morry,
I have also experienced the mysterious bandwidth problem…as you did and I also wondered about the Russian bots that were sending me referral messages through my website hosted by Hostpapa….They also made the bandwidth claims as well….I also noted that some upper echelon members of Hostpapa appear to have Russian heritage names….I wonder if there is a connection….My main beef is in trying to cancel services with them…I verbally did so on the phone after my personal security questions were somehow incorrect…such as the middle name of my oldest child, favourite sports team and name of first pet….As if I wouldn’t know the name of my oldest child by 2 minutes since I am the father of twin girls….Anyway, I have never in my 58 years of life experienced something so frustrating and impossible to leave such as Hostpapa, and they still insist on putting it on me….when I know there are no other correct answers…Has anyone else had problems with trying to leave Hostpapa…In fact, I thought I was gone and 3 months later they contact my marketing guy who forwarded me the notion that somehow even after canceling on the phone my account was still active….Contrived and absurd!!!
Dear Rob
thank you for this review
i have the same problem with Hostpapa and they start to send me e-mail that they are going to shut down my website
could you please inform me with your suggestion of other companies
Hi,
Having the exact same problem with Hostpapa, right from the first year (bought a 3 yr package to get the advertised low price, but they don’t refund or prorate after the first month.)
Have been plagued by problem after problem, with me jumping through hoops and yet getting cpu overuse notices, io use notices, suspensions for excessive inodes, and one because I didn’t reply immediately to an email!!
Flooded by badbots, which I monitor myself and despite security got malware infections. Can you suggest another reliable webhost in roughly the same budget category? Much appreciate it.
Very interesting — Eduardo was one of the people I connected with, too.
I encourage everyone to send the questions from the end of my post to hosting providers to let them know people are becoming aware, and also to help identify which providers have different practices. I did my research some time ago and was not very thorough, so now I’m down to only one provider that I know has a different practice. But there may be more if people ask around now.
I’d also encourage everyone to file complaints against Hostpapa with the Better Business Bureau at this link:
https://www.bbb.org/ca/on/oakville/profile/web-hosting/hostpapa-inc-0107-1241393/customer-reviews
Don’t go through the formal complaint process with BBB — it’s a total joke, and they even in the end declare you satisfied against your will, it’s really ridiculous. And then they don’t allow you to leave a public comment if you’ve used the complaint process — a perfect way to prevent the most serious complaints from ever becoming public. So just post your comments on their profile with BBB so others can see them. Hostpapa may care if their BBB rating ultimately goes down.
Rob
Hi I also have been dealing with this problem.
It first happened last year starring my back up was too full, which was odd seeing as I was still in the middle building the website. I contacted them enquiring about this backup problem with screenshots of my Awstats which was essentially a flatline except for this massive spike on the 20th. I got it reinstated with a very rude email from an Eduardo Hernandez essentially saying that it’s my fault for not stopping any bot attacks.
I later forgot about it and continued to work on my site but LO and BEHOLD the exact same issue on the exact same day one year later. That immediately made me suspicious, so I cautiously messaged them again politely asking “what the heck” and a get another response from Eduardo saying that a massive spike in traffic was the reason for the accounts suspension and “bla bla bla it’s all my fault spend more money”
So I checked the traffic myself and they did indeed matched the 32,786 page views stated in the mail but I also looked at who was visiting the site, I expected most to be from Australia (my country) but almost a 3rd is from the US and 90% of which were from one IP address in particular I looked it up and surprisingly found it belongs to hostpapa themselves – the IP in question is 69.90.162.40 if you want to look it up yourself. And now I am currently looking another provider any recommendations would be appreciated.
TL:DR hostpapa is purposely spiking traffic to put stress on thier hosted server to make it look like you need a bigger plan
Hi, Can you please email your recommended providers?
Thank you!
Wow great (sort of) to find out that this is a scam to up sell.
I too need to migrate fro HP so when you have the time the host you are referencing would be great
Further to my earlier posting on this topic, I have now seamlessly switched web hosting providers to one of the companies Robe recommended. It took all of about an hour to move my website and change domain registry services. I only wish I had taken this step sooner. Many thanks for your advice and assistance Rob.
Just to add to this, here is the text of a second email I had today from “Reneta Dimitrova” who I suspect is a freelance who gets paid according to how many suckers fall for this fraudulent ploy and subscribe to a more expensive service. Apparently she has not even noticed that I now have zero files on their server, let alone a website!
HostPapa Inc. | 115 George St., Suite 511, Oakville, ON, L6J 0A2, Canada | Contact Us
Client ID: 168149 | Primary domain: avalonia-hibernia.ca
Hello Christopher,
We recently informed you that your website performance is being negatively impacted because you are consuming server resources beyond what is allocated to your current shared web hosting plan.
As indicated in our previous email, there could be several possible root causes that may be impacting your account’s performance. You can view detailed information about your account’s resource usage at the bottom of the main page in your cPanel dashboard.
We will need to go over your usage requirements and discuss your plan allotments. We do value your business and we would gladly propose alternative solutions to ensure your current and future requirements are satisfied.
Please reply to this email and let me know when it will be most convenient for us to reach you so we can discuss the best way to help you solve this issue.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Kind Regards,
Reneta Dimitrova
Account Manager
HostPapa Inc.
? reneta.dimitrova@hostpapa.com
? CA&US 1-888-959-PAPA [7272] ext 7509
I too have experienced these problems with HostPapa. Last November (2019) when I received the first email alerting me to this “problem” with my bandwidth usage (on a private website that contains nothing more than a shared WordPress family tree) I took it seriously at first and responded. I was put in touch with a support agent with a Russian name, which set off alarm bells right away. The things she was telling me needed to corrected made no sense. My bandwidth, storage and throughput were all negligible. It was clear they just wanted to bamboozle me and get me to upgrade my account. I told them I was on to them and warned them not to bother contacting me again about this non-problem. I even complained to the Better Business Bureau in their area and of course that led nowhere, despite a couple of dozen similar complaints previously lodged with them.
Now again today (May 4, 2020) with two months left on my contract term, another agent with a Russian name has picked up the thread with the exact same content in the message about my slowing down their shared servers with my website (“your account has been utilizing more server resources than allocated to your current hosting plan”). I need to change services but cannot find any company that comes highly recommended, except for much more expensive business services. Can you please give me the names of companies you believe may be more ethical?
Thanks for posting, Christopher. As frustrating as it is to know Hostpapa is still up to these shenanigans, I derive some satisfaction that more people seem to be finding this article. Russian, hm? I was getting someone from El Salvador, I believe it was. So they’re also heavily outsourcing their support to countries with cheaper labour, which is of course often frustrating because it just is not that easy for someone to know English well enough to effectively converse about technical matters. Argh!
I am still happy with my providers — I will email their names to you privately.
Hi
I was considering them after reading an article. I contacted them to know more migrating from wix but they asked for my passwords!! It did ring a bell. Can you please email me where i can find better service?
Thanks
Just had the very same experience. As of the 3rd of February I started getting spikes in my usage log. Curiously the .ftpquota file had been modified minutes before the usage spikes occured. I know my site is not a busy site and I suspect most of the issues are directly connected to bots rather than genuine visitors. All this happened 3 days after my client had bought into a new Protection Plan Hostpapa were selling. I will be moving the site away from Hostpapa as soon as possible.
Thanks for posting about your experience, Simon. I’ve heard from a number of others via email this month, so there seems to be growing awareness of the scam, hopefully.
Hi Rob,
We are experiencing same problem right now. We are running a member-funded, non-profit with no money to waste. We chose Hostpapa as the #1 ranked host in Canada and with the intention to support local business. What we got in return is exactly what you described so eloquently.
When you say “I’ve found other web hosting providers that are nearly as low-cost and I’ve had no problems.” Can you share some recommendations for hosting? If you prefer to share privately, you can email me at the address in this post.
Thank you so much for the validation.
I’m sorry to hear that, Bobbi — but thank you for putting up a comment about your experience! You’re not the first person to contact me.
I will email you privately. I don’t want to post the names of web hosts here only because I don’t want it to seem like this article is about promoting other companies. Also, over time things might change at a company, and I also did not research them all. However, Hostpapa’s refusals to allow users to ever communicate with higher-level staff no matter how legitimate and serious a concern or complaint is seem particularly unusual and egregious in this industry.