Prior to writing this post, this blog and some of my PHP wap project were hosted on smartweb.com.ng formally Smartwebng.com. I initially never wanted go for their services, but I was deceived by their 20GB monthly data transfer(bandwidth) and 5GB disk space offer at N2500 annually, which to me was cheap, I never knew I was sacrificing my comfort and happiness. Right from the very first day I started hosting my websites with them, I knew no peace.
My Ugly Experience with Smartweb
After purchasing a hosting from smartweb, I decided to create a technology and internet forum using SIMPLE MACHINE FORUM (SMF), soon members started registering and the forum was receiving decent amount of traffic. when the forum started consuming little over 7GB bandwidth, I started experiencing breakage in SQL connection to the MySQL database, at first, I thought the problem was maybe they were doing server maintenance, but to my greatest surprise, the problem kept re-occurring and showing it ugly head every blessed day. What pains me was, the database connection error will last more than six(6) hours before my forum start functioning properly. Each time I give them a call, they will always tell me to submit a support ticket. Even after submitting a support ticket, I will have to wait for hours before getting a reply, eventually if I get a reply, what I hear is:
Thank you for the mail and sorry about the error.
We are going to look into it and get back to you soon.
I will be glad to assist if you have any issue.
Later on, deleted my forum website and decided to start blogging using WordPress CMS which is this blog you reading. After about a month of blogging, this same breakage in SQL connection to database, what I see frequently when accessing my blog is Error Establishing a Database Connection. This Error kept coming and going. And each time I contact them, they will reply me hours later when the problem is gone saying
Hello sir,
Thank you for working with us.
All have been well you can access it now.
Please let me know if you have any question.
To further stress how their support service sucks: I had this same Error Establishing a Database Connection problem, but this time, it wasn’t their server fault, rather a table in my WordPress database was broken or corrupted. I opened a support ticket as regard the error, I got a reply that they are working on it, I waited the whole day, yet no solution, I have heard of Host like Hostgator support staff solving client’s problem, but the reverse is the case at smartweb. I later did the Database repair and everything was fine once again.
Now to my Question, had it been I wasn’t so geeky, will a newbie know how to repair a Database? He or she would have been stuck in that problem for a long time.
Later on, I was unjustly suspended, according to them because, they said the Cron Job I setup was disturbing their server.
I got fed up with their service and decided it was high time I left this sucking web host.
Summary of Their Sucking Services
- Unreliable server if you host your website with them, you are going to experience downtime at regular interval.
- Bad support when you’re in trouble, you hardly get a good support service from them. What sucks most is, when you call them on phone, you won’t receive any good support, and instead you get angrier. They will always say “Please do submit a support ticket and an admin will get back to you.
- Don’t be fooled by their 20GB bandwidth offer, I bet you, when your site start consuming more than 12GB bandwidth, your site will become very slow and they will either tell terminate your account or tell you to upgrade (don’t even think of upgrading because they not reliable).
WARNING TO WEBMASTER, Don’t host your website domain in same company hosting your site, rather host your domain somewhere else.
I sought the opinions of some Nigerian Bloggers and Webmaster at BloogersLab Facebook group, here are some of their opinion about SMARTWEB.
- wapbaze cheatmaster WEBSITE=> wapbaze.com
Those Smartweb guys sucks big time. Please let me know when you done with this post so I will let people know how sucking they are. - Claire Morgan
Smartweb workers are just armed robbers online, I threaten to sue them, before they gave me back my money, imagine after 2 months. - Stephen Aghatise Idada WEBSITE=> sayit247.com
Those dudes frustrated me. They are nothing but a**holes.
For those of you thinking to do business with smartweb.com.ng, you better have a rethink, because you definitely going to regret it in the long run.