Complaint: Winhost.co.za

[The Web Space Bar]

Hi Fishzn.
There is quite a difference between load times , obviously as there are more hops to get to the destination.
Depending on the kind of site you are hosting load times will play a big role.
With blog sites for example , one might not notice the load time difference as much as for , say , a flash website or a image gallery.
Your target market should be the deciding factor , if your target market is international , host in the US / UK ,
if they are in SA , host in SA. Always give your target market the best loading speed you possibly can.
Load times also depends on how well the site is coded (Had to get it in there as Im sure some web designers will read this too)

If you need some real world examples I can put up an example site on our US and SA servers for you to test.

[FaTaL]

Unless you are running a very interactive site, I don't think the international load times are all that bad.
Even mg.co.za is hosted in the US.

[SYNERGY]

For static websites - international is more or less fine.

For more complicated- dynamic websites, a local host will be needed sooner or later as the website expands. Costs also play a factor as well.

[3kwartappel]

Hi Pakka

Have you received any other feedback from Circle? My circle sites has been affected with malware as well for the past two months, with me fixing them every other week. (No help from circle)

I have lost all my frequent visitors because of this (Malware replaces the javascript, so this is making my website useless, and therefore not generating revenue through my adverts anymore).

After investigation, and giving them information of how to fix this infection more than a month ago, I have not received any feedback.

This is their servers that are infected, and I can only assume more websites are indeed affected. I am going to have to post on hellopeter now. and ask for a refund, this is not 99% uptime. my sites are broken. Im ******* frustrated

Here is one of the emails I sent a while ago, no response yet :

From: Me
Sent: 02 August 2012 11:52 AM
To: 'CIRCLE Windows'
Subject: RE: [Ticket ID: malware detected

Hi
It just happened again, but google didn’t block me this time. But these sites are now broken :

www.yyy.co.za
www.zzz.co.za
www.aaa.co.za

while investigating, I saw that yyy.co.za was redirecting to …./runforestrun?sid=boten_api… which shouldn’t happen.
Looks like the malware replaces all JS files. Attached are the one that has been infected, and the other is normal.

According to the internet, it is malware attaching itself to the JS. Please read here
http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/20...ame_generation
and here
http://blog.unmaskparasites.com/2012...mate-js-files/

“Most probably, it spreads through the recent vulnerability in Plesk Panel<http://kb.parallels.com/en/113321>, so we would like to appeal to every web administrator and every hosting provider to update the Plesk software on their servers to the newest version, apply all the security patches and change the passwords to all the FTP/SFTP/SSH accounts as soon as possible.”

Please let me know once you have fixed this vulnerability, because this is unacceptable.

Please assist urgently!

[Pakka]

I have also noticed that one of my sites has been marked by Google as being infected with malware. Since the site is of no use to me at the moment, and the lack of response from Circle, I'm just going to not renew my hosting with them when the term is over in 3 months.

You on the other hand should take action since it is affecting your business. Keep us updated

Its really clear now how much Winhost cares about their customers

[koffiejunkie]

It really sounds to me like your host has a compromised host. If they're still not responding, I would strongly recommend you move your stuff as soon as possible and consider any sensitive information you might have on there to be compromised and out in the wild.

[3kwartappel]

Yeah I really want to move, not sure where to. will google a bit tonight.

Because the sad thing is, I am paying Circle to host malware at the moment!
and because this only affects javascript, im sure there are other sites infected, but dont even know it. (their javascript might not me as necessary as mine)

[Pakka]

Any news?

[3kwartappel]

They have not replied on my mails yet, so I gave them a call just now. They do know that there is a vulnerability in plesk, and that it causes the malware to spread onto their sites. According to them they are patching the servers tonight, and fixing the malware.

He couldn't explain why this hasn't been fixed earlier, why they are not replying on their mails, or why they haven't let anyone know two months ago already. *shocking*

I asked about refunds and he said I should mail sales@circle.co.za , which I am doing now
I will let you know if this was worthwhile.

[Rvandyk]

I agree completely - I have never in my life met a more useless bunch at Winhost (Circle).

I have to find out from my clients when the server is down (No scheduled maintenance warnings), they seem to doi a lot of "maintenance" but then nothing works after that. I've even started with a lawsuit against them its that bad - NEVER EVER host with Circle/Winhost if you value your sanity and health.

They even decided that after 3 months of no response to my support queries that they can close them. It takes serious shouting and threats for them to do any form of professional business.

In my own view, Kashif in particular is probably going to be the cause of the comany's complete downfall. I've been battling with them for about 2 years to simply load ASPUpload and ASPJpeg from Persits for my older ASP sites I host.

Since moving to a new server through goDaddy, I have full access to the the Remote Desktop and it took me all of 20 minutes to set up - even with 64-bit and I'm not even an engineer...

Its an absolute dream moving away from them...

I'll rather cut off my ear than have to listen to their lip-service again!

xRiaan

I am very unhappy with Winhost (aka Circle) at the moment and would urge everyone looking for Windows hosting to STAY CLEAR.

Let me explain.

First case
I needed to get into the PLESK back-end of one of my clients' site after a very long time of inactivity. I couldn't log into PLESK with the details I requested it to be reset.
On July the 19th I sent an email requesting the reset of the username and password. It is now 9 days later and I still haven't received a reply. This is unacceptable.

Second case
Another client of mine had visitors to his website tell him someone visiting their website got a virus warning from Kaspersky. I thought this was odd. Later, another visitor got a similar warning from AVG.
When I got home I looked into it and MSE also picked up a Trojan horse on the site, called JS/BlacoleRef.BV.
This is a site that hadn't been worked on for months and had been used without problems since then.
I contacted Winhost on the 25th (3 days ago) with the following message:

In the meanwhile I found that some JS files used for Lightbox had been edited a few days ago. Like I said, I hadn't worked on the site in ages, so I knew these files were the cuplrits. I removed them and everything seemed to be okay. A Google search revealed that the virus might be the result of a security loophole in outdated PLESK versions. I checked another site of mine also hosted at Winhost and it was infected too!

The next day I mailed Winhost again with the following message:


One would think that an event like this may cause a stir at Winhost because all of their servers might be affected. But they just don't seem to care.

Needless to say, I still haven't heard of them on any of the two cases. I'm not a happy client at the moment.


Previously I had clients constantly complain about emails being down and sometimes even the entire site being down. These clients all requested to be moved to a new hosting provider.

So yeah, I just wanted to warn everyone about Winhost. They won't be receiving any more business from me.

[Pakka]

I agree completely - I have never in my life met a more useless bunch at Winhost (Circle).

I have to find out from my clients when the server is down (No scheduled maintenance warnings), they seem to doi a lot of "maintenance" but then nothing works after that. I've even started with a lawsuit against them its that bad - NEVER EVER host with Circle/Winhost if you value your sanity and health.

They even decided that after 3 months of no response to my support queries that they can close them. It takes serious shouting and threats for them to do any form of professional business.

In my own view, Kashif in particular is probably going to be the cause of the comany's complete downfall. I've been battling with them for about 2 years to simply load ASPUpload and ASPJpeg from Persits for my older ASP sites I host.

Since moving to a new server through goDaddy, I have full access to the the Remote Desktop and it took me all of 20 minutes to set up - even with 64-bit and I'm not even an engineer...

Its an absolute dream moving away from them...

I'll rather cut off my ear than have to listen to their lip-service again!

xRiaan

Thanks for sharing your experience!

One of my clients just let me know that they discovered that their site is offline for no reason and without warning. Gosh, Winhost is terrible. I'll have to move all my clients

[3kwartappel]

Just letting you know what has happened since I mailed sales@circle.co.za about my refund...
wait for it....
wait for it...
NOTHING.

I guess I shouldn't be so optimistic.

Also, my website is still infected with trojans (even though circle promised it would be removed). I have created another support ticket, with no reply as well. I can honestly say this is the worst experience I have ever received from any company.

This looks like the best deal I have found so far for a locally windows hosted site in south africa :
http://www.webafrica.co.za/hosting/windows/

My sites will all be hosted there next month, I just have to fight for a refund first from winhost.

They have not replied on my mails yet, so I gave them a call just now. They do know that there is a vulnerability in plesk, and that it causes the malware to spread onto their sites. According to them they are patching the servers tonight, and fixing the malware.

He couldn't explain why this hasn't been fixed earlier, why they are not replying on their mails, or why they haven't let anyone know two months ago already. *shocking*

I asked about refunds and he said I should mail sales@circle.co.za , which I am doing now
I will let you know if this was worthwhile.

[Pakka]

I just checked the website I complained about last night and it is back online now, but I get a :80 login popup after the site has loaded, and AVG detected an infected Javascript file which wasn't there previously.

Gosh, Circle is terrible.

I've heard good things from webafrica. Thanks for the link