JustHost Review
Last updated on Sep 19, 2014
Let’s cut to the chase. JustHost sucks. That’s kinda expected because they are an EIG company, but I didn’t expect they’d be a whole lot worse than their sister companies (e.g., Bluehost, HostGator). I’ve had a client with them and for half a year, we’ve had nothing but trouble.
It was mid 2013. My client insisted on signing up with JustHost because they had a colleague who highly recommended them. I had no choice but to work with what my client wanted, so I went ahead and uploaded his site as soon as his hosting account was provisioned. It was our first day with JustHost and I was already turned off — it took me almost 30 minutes to upload a 3mb WordPress theme. Well at least I got it done.
Once the site was setup and ready to go, we encountered even more problems. My client’s site would go down frequently. There wasn’t a week that the site wasn’t down for at least an hour total. I don’t know the exact cause as support was not willing to share any info. They only got back to me once their service was back up, and that’s poor support right there.
We stayed with JustHost for a few more months because my client didn’t want to bother trying to get a refund and sorting everything out, and then moving to another host. The downtime issues didn’t seem to get to them that much anyway. However there was one issue we overlooked, and that’s what made my client rage.
The Last Straw
My client’s business is in the human resources industry, so they spend most of their time answering and sending emails. Last January, they noticed they weren’t hearing back from most of their recipients. They sent frequent follow-up emails, but no one seemed to get back to them. We asked the host about this and they said there wasn’t anything wrong as the mails were being sent.
This was really weird, so my client decided to communicate to their prospects via phone. It was when we found out that emails were either being marked as spam, or worse, not being received at all!
Client was pissed, they finally had enough of all the issues. That was the last straw. We had to find a temporary solution for the email problems while we were waiting for the refund from JustHost.
Fast forward February 2014. JustHost account officially cancelled. I talked to my client a bit about this and advised them to have their site on a reputable provider. They didn’t want to get involved with all the hosting stuff anymore so they asked me to handle all the dirty work. I figured it would be much less of a hassle if I hosted their site on my private reseller account with StableHost. And so I did, and everything’s running smoothly now.
Final Verdict
JustHost has slow servers. Obviously overloaded, although they vehemently deny that fact. Support is useless. Ask them about downtime and they’ll get back to you once their servers are back up (which is some 24 hours later). Their mail servers are being used for spam. My client’s business suffered a loss because all their outgoing emails were either sent straight to the recipients’ spam boxes, or weren’t received at all.
Shame on all those hosting review sites who give JustHost a 5/5 score or equivalent. Same goes for all those people who recommend this host to their friends just so they can make a quick buck.
Didn’t read my full review/rant? Here’s a simple and to-the-point advice: Avoid this host if you don’t want to have a “web hosting nightmare.”
P.S. They currently have a Valentine’s Day promo where you can get unlimited everything for $2.25/month if you prepay for 2 years in advance. Beware though — even if it seems like a sweet deal, it’s more of a trap. I say you should save yourself the headache. I don’t think this host’s service is worth a penny, to be honest.
I find this hard to believe. I have two sites on JustHost. They run quickly and have never been down in the time we’ve been there. I’ve been able to do whatever I need to with domains, file transfers and script installations — our blog flies when it loads and when I’ve had questions, support has been reliable and provided answers. We had XO Communications before and they DO suck (curtailed .htaccess commands and outdated software with no intention of upgrading. When I see these complaints about JustHost, I wonder if there’s two hosting sites with the same name becuase I’ve never seen the problems complained of. (Not a sock puppet and no connection other than being a customer with JustHost).
It’s good that your sites are running fine on JustHost. But your good experience + my (and possibly other people’s) bad experience just proves their service is inconsistent. ;)
I don’t think there’s any host out there who could please 100% of their clientbase, but JustHost couldn’t even provide us with the most “basic” hosting needs and the way they handled every issue was just deplorable. I don’t want other people to experience what my client and I went through with JustHost.
I agree Janet.
I think by sheer numbers of reviews and feedback from forums to review sites, JustHost can’t match other webhosts (i.e., MDDHosting) who have raving fans sharing their positive and consistent experience. Brent even reviewed JustHost TWICE and STILL has bad marks?? YIKES!
I found nothing wrong with JustHost as well. Have always been able to contact support (via chat) and get things answered. Our pingdom.com speed matches that of many high traffic sites.
The question is: how were things answered, and how long did getting the answer take? Knowing EIG’s support, at the very least 1h of livechat where you had to ask the same questions over and over before finding a rep with the basic knowledge required to answer them.
I think Pingdom is giving you false positives; it does that more often than many users think.
These comments are rather old.
JustHost is certainly not the host it used to be. They have lost a ton of business in the last year, including my own, because they are not up to par. Their customer service is much worse than it used to be, and, frankly, very inadequate. Not only is it hard to get a hold of them on a consistent basis through live chat or on the phone (wait times can be long), their support is simply untrained. Their are many better hosts out there, like SiteGround, InMotion, etc., even other sister brands like BlueHost and HostGator are better.
Avoid Justhost if you can. Their customer support is literally non existent and any hosting packages I create (I am a reseller) needs atleast 3 follow up engagement with their tech support before it is provisioned properly. Definitely looking forward to move the business elsewhere.
Be Wary (even long time customers).
I was a customer of Justhost for over a decade. I made no changes to my shared server in the last year or so. They kept the sites up and I kept paying. Late in October a change they made broke my sites. I contacted them and they were no help. I researched the issue, found the problem and informed them. I was told the only option I had was to upgrade to dedicated. To fix an issue they caused!
I don’t like to feel extorted so I asked to cancel my long time account and they acted as though they couldn’t have cared less.