Aplus

Where to begin? I have been a Sys Admin for nearly 30 years, design/develop software too. Okay so about 5 years ago I began hosting some of my clients with Aplus hosting (peaked at 37+ sites). I was relatively pleased as I seldom had issues from a co location perspective. Then about a year ago things began to deteriorate.
I now am down to three sites remaining with Amateur Plus.net. Which I shall relocate by end of this week.
They caused some serious loss of business for some folks and more than enough frustration for myself and my staff. It took me over a month just to regain access to our MS SQL DB - they changed instances without any notification! Imagine that and they call themselves technical experts. All of sudden none I repeat none of our usernames/passwords would authenticate - try and contact their technical support when you really need them and get a resolution - not going to happen folks.
To summarize I would not recommend Aplus.net hosting to anyone!

I have had multiple domains with Aplus for over 10 years. The hosting service was pretty good except for their charging habits such as, if I cancel hosting for a domain, they still charged me for domain privacy. I went around and around with them until they finally changed their system to not charge for services they are not providing.
The service went from pretty good to horrible once Deluxe for Business bought them and took over. Now, one of my websites won't function at all; the page won't even load. On a local computer and on GoDaddy, it works flawlessly. For several years it would load on occasion, but now it won't load at all; even though the structure has not been edited at all.
I have also seen on many occasions that late at night, none of the websites would load, which is not acceptable. They have no technical ability to tell my why any of this happens. Some years ago their server was hit by a virus and my sites on that server have never worked properly, since. They do not seem like experts on any level. I am slowly removing all domains and websites from Aplus and can't do it quickly enough. After many years of very poor performance, I just can't wait to rid myself of them altogether.
I offer 1-star because my one personal website won't load at all, and it is a very simple page.

Ridiculous gaps in customer service.
I've been with this company for 8+ years and never really been satisfied with the service.

• They were taken over by Deluxe For Business about 5 years ago and never even bothered to communicate the change to their customers. Now I'm never even sure how to enter my account- which site to use?

• The links within their customer service emails- the breadcrumbs you follow to actually perform whatever task you're asking about- never work as stated, and they never correct the problem once you've alerted them.

• Their website has gotten prettier over the years but no less a labyrinth of jargon buttons with names and functions that never quite match what CS is describing.

• Customer service is only available online from 9-9EST.
Call center even less. Apparently international clients need not apply.

• They do not respond promptly to emails, and a good 50% of the time they don't even address your problem. They tend not to read inquiries very carefully.

• Icing on the cake: stupid technical issues on their website.
It's as if they never bothered to test any of the features from a customer's point of view.
Perfect Example: Attempting to input new bank card information through their website- the card expiration year can only be input via pulldown menu, and the pulldown menu only goes up to 2019. What about cards that expire after 2019?
Took days to work that out.

Very typical.
Weak communication skills and a buggy website.
And really, what else do you need from a web host?

Aplus hosting more like Cplus hosting if you're a small website - I read a number of positive reviews on CNET and other reputable sites of Aplus hosting before signing up for a dedicated server. However, after I signed up I began to realize that unless you are a large customer, Aplus customer service is terrible.

We had a number of problems setting up the server and they were not very helpful. But the WORST was their server farm in Phoenix went down and our site was down for 7 DAYS! Larger customers were kept up as they shifting resources from another facility but our pleas were ignored. Moreover, as compensation for the downtime, they only gave us one month free! We lost thousands in business but Aplus didn't care. In retrospect, I wish I had gone with Rackspace. My other friend who runs a small website has been using them had their customer service is much better and they seem to care more about working with start ups (Rackspace had downtime too, but they were more responsive to getting things back online and compensating their customers). I would avoid Aplus if you're a small company.

Don't waste your time. There is no one out there to help you with simple domain issues, they are lost and confused.

Aplus.Net hosting has the WORST customer service ever in the history of all companies - Last night we experienced another nightmare scenario for a small, growing company. We went down again for the THIRD time, starting at 12:45am PT. After reporting the problem, I was told that the failed server would get rebooted within 15min. Things got progressively worse from there. After half an hour, I called back and they had no idea what was going on and refused to give me an ETA at this point. After another hour, all of their customer support goes OFFLINE -- i. E. the hosting company goes completely dark and is completely unreachable. Regular server support is offline, dedicated server support is offline, and worst of all, the dedicated server support hotline (phone) starts playing a 30 second generic message and then HANGS UP ON YOU. I called five times with the same result. After yet another hour, I finally see a support person come online and ping her. She says she can't help me because she isn't a dedicated server support representative. I ask her what happened to dedicated server support at her company and she says LUNCH BREAK. Sweet. Two hours into the ordeal, I realize that there is only one person in the entire company that can help me and he is out eating a sandwich.

Fast forward seven hours later and we are finally back up. There's no knowing how many users we lost or pissed off over that time period. But great news, according to their uptime guarantee policy on http://servers.aplus.net/servers_guarantee.html, we will get 35% off next month's bill. Can't wait to save that $80! Well worth the downtime!

The worst part is not just being down, but not having anybody available to talk with. There's no worse feeling than trying desperately to contact your server provider and not be able to reach ANYONE. When will these companies get a clue about what customer service means? When someone is having a real problem, "I don't know", "I can't help you", and automatic messages that hang up on you, just don't cut it.

Stay away from Aplus.Net! At least until someone from their company cares enough to do something about their customer service.