Complaint: Winhost.co.za

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.
 
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)
 
circle is useless

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 [email protected] , which I am doing now
I will let you know if this was worthwhile.
 
Useless

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

Pakka said:
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. :mad: 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.
Click to expand...
 
Rvandyk said:
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
Click to expand...

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
 
Just letting you know what has happened since I mailed [email protected] 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.

3kwartappel said:
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 [email protected] , which I am doing now
I will let you know if this was worthwhile.
Click to expand...
 
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
 
It's just getting worse at Circle.... I wish I had seen this tread before signing up with them - in 36 days a simple request for a domain transfer has not been completed..... no response to support-tickets in over 4 days and nobody answers the phone.
 
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