Deluxe | Hosting

Like so many people here, I was a holdover from LiquidWeb from many years ago and basically stuck with Deluxe Hosting (which had bought LW out) because I didn't want to go through the hassle of starting over with a new host. Everything was fine for awhile, but then things started going downhill around 2019 or so.

The first thing that happened was that I had constant problems logging in, to where I had to contact support or keep resetting my password every few months. The last time I reset my password, their password security algorithm was so insane that no matter what I created using its requirements (one upper case, one lower case, characters, etc.), it wouldn't accept it. So I was left with a completely random, hard to remember password that was practically 50 characters long and only consisted of numbers.

I put up with all of these issues regarding logging in until I noticed early in 2021 that Jetpack Monitor was sending me constant alerts about my WordPress site going down. I contacted support about it, and they told me that everything was fine on their end, that all I needed to do was clear my cache. Come to find out, according to a visitor the site was indeed offline for many times during the day, in some case as long as an hour.

When I logged into my account to open a support ticket, I saw a message from Deluxe Hosting saying that it had experienced a hardware failure and was currently transferring accounts. That was all well and good but it was a classic case of too little, too late. Besides, the host had lost all credibility by this point anyway. I had experienced months of downtime, reported it and was told by these people that nothing was wrong, only to find out that they had experienced a hardware failure the entire time. I could've waited for them to fix the problem, but why bother at this rate with the amount of money I was paying them?

So, I'm done with Deluxe Hosting. I immediately canceled and switched to a different host. Everyone else, stay far away. Don't even think of joining them.

Here's a rundown of our month after Liquidweb sold our account to DeluxeHosting.com

1. They put our site on a server that had an outdated version of PHP installed, which caused errors on our site and made it impossible to update our WordPress plugins.

2. Our site was hacked. Twice. They tried to blame this on our WordPress theme, but part of both hacks involved the hackers getting our FTP, cPanel, and deluxehosting.com logins. That's not possible to get from a compromised WordPress theme. Clearly someone had hacked into their system. Still, that's what they claimed and were of no help, so we cleaned things up on our own.

3. The entire server was offline for 3 days due to hardware malfunction.

4. While working on our site they somehow managed to delete all of our WordPress users. All of them.

It's bad enough that all of these issues happened, but to make matters worse they don't respond to tech support tickets for days at a time.

I'm not left pulling my hair out, having to be rude on the phone with their tech support staff because it's the only way I seem to be able to get any response from them, and hoping that they can restore our site to an earlier date so I can grab a working backup of the site and get the hell off their server.

I've been working as a website developer for over 15 years. I have never encountered a host as horrible as DeluxeHosting. I can not stress enough how miserable our experience with them has been.

I got moved over to this hellhole when my account was sold by LiquidWeb a little less than a year ago. Little did I know that this One-Man-Show would increase my blood pressure and destroy my once promising business.

Deluxe(?)hosting do not understand the meaning of customer service. In my line of business if I provide bad service causing my customers to lose money, when my customer call to find out what's going on if I tell them to calm down I would be out of business.

I have (had) a couple websites with Deluxe(?)hosting and I kept losing files from my public_html directory. Every time I call, nobody (the same guy pick up the phone every time with a different name) I mean nobody knows why.

At first I was told that I deleted my own files. The guy said he was going to open a ticket to find out what happens. And supposedly escalate my issue to tier 2 (lol. What a joke) there is no such thing as tiered support at Deluxehosting. It's just one guy.

An hour later the guy sent me an email telling me that the files were not deleted but rather the permissions were changed. Who changed them? He doesn't know.

What do the logs show, I ask him. Nothing.

If you wanna have fun with html, php well I guess you will find deluxehole appealing. If instead you want to run a business, forget it. You need to find a reputable host not this deluxehole.

Was a LiquidWeb customer for years, and they were awesome... however, when LiquidWeb divested itself of all their basic-plan customers, my business was sold to DeluxeHosting. Everything was fine for a bit, but after I renewed by yearly hosting subscription, things started going awry. First, fetching mail [via GMail client] from the main domain account stopped working... opened a support ticket, was told repeatedly that it was a high priority, 2 weeks go by, and not only do I not receive any updates, but when I [repeatedly] engage support, they just have no idea why this stopped working. OK fine, I create additional mail accounts instead of using the main domain email account's "catch-all" and I'm back in business. Then about a week later, each of the email accounts I created mysteriously disappeared. Opened a support ticket, told them to send updates to my GMail account (cause, my domain-based emails disappeared). Was told repeatedly that this was a high priority, and TWO WEEKS LATER, I get a mail from some company called "JumpLine" telling me that they had no backups for the email accounts on my domain. Two weeks is not high priority, and is a completely unacceptable response time. OK, I re-create the handful of email accounts, and use completely new passwords, each being 30 characters long and consisting of upper-case, lower-case, numbers, and special characters. Less than a week later, and each of my domain-based email accounts disappeared again. I send email to Deluxe's support, asking to speak to a senior manager, and get an immediate response. Tell the senior manager about my troubles, and explicitly tell her that either security at Deluxe is terrible, or someone AT Deluxe is purposely sabotaging my account... and she does not even respond. Send one more email saying that if a customer accuses their company of sabotaging their own customers, I would expect the company to defend itself and assure their customer everything was on the up & up... and again, no response at all. With 10 months remaining on my pre-paid hosting plan with Deluxe, I transferred my domain to another hosting provider. I would avoid doing business with Deluxe at all costs.

As a podcaster it's increasingly hard to find solid hosts who don't throttle you. They've been great and easy to work with.

I don't think there is any better hosting solution out there. Excellent customer service they provide!

In terms of value for money, this is the best I've come across. DeluxeHosting is helpful for me and they are polite. Prices are not high.