Today a friend asked my opinion about IX Web hosting. He told me that he saw a hosting package for $4.95/month which will give him UNLIMITED disk space and UNLIMITED bandwith along with 500$ worth of marketing tools and credits.

I told him that i have to check it out before i say my opinion.

The first things that got to my eyes were the following lines: Unlimited Domains Unlimited Data Transfer Unlimited Web Space.

I’m fine with Unlimited Domains, but Unlimited data transfer and Unlimited Web space sounds pretty fishy to me. I saw IX web Hosting’s offer last year, but back then they had normal values at the Web space and the Bandwith.

At this point i said to myself: “uuu…let’s chat a little with someone at live support”, what i did, and believe me i laughed a lot during my “small” chat with a Support representative. The most annoying thing was that Karina(the support representative) replied to my questions within minutes like she was working on something rather than chatting with me.

Here’s the chat:

Chat InformationPlease wait for a site operator to respond.

Chat InformationYou are now chatting with ‘Karina Zalavskaya’

Karina Zalavskaya: Welcome, this is Karina, how can I help you?
you: Hey Karina,
you: i have just one pre-sale question
you: How can you offer UNLIMITED disk space and UNLIMITED transfer?
Karina Zalavskaya: What do you mean?
you: Business plus plan
you: Unlimited Data Transfer Unlimited Web Space
you: unlimited doesn’t actually exist
you: Karina? Are you still there?
Karina Zalavskaya: Yes.
Karina Zalavskaya: But we realy provide unlimited webspace.
you: i get that
you: for example
you: if i make an image hosting website and fill up 400gigs of space and use 50TB of band width each month won’t that be a problem?
Karina Zalavskaya: You have to understand that we provide shared hostimg and then servers have limits.
you: i understand
you: but with the above sentence you just said the opposite of what you said before
you: Karina Zalavskaya: But we realy provide unlimited webspace.

I waited about 5 minutes and because she didn’t respond i just closed the chat. I have a feeling that all the unlimited disk space and band width thingy is just a marketing tool to gain new newbie webmasters to sign up who are tempted by all the Unlimited words that they see on the packages page.

If an experienced web master sees the packages page he will surely close the tab and go search for an other web host. As you can see in the chat UNLIMITED bandwidth and web space doesn’t exist. It’s true that in the chat i said a rough example which is almost at the edge but still they wouldn’t have the right to suspend my account if i would reach those levels.

I didn’t even look at the marketing tools(they most probably offer vouchers and stuff), i just closed the tab and told my friend: DON’T be an idiot. Go search a little more, and after you find a web host search for reviews before asking my opinion.

Here’s a quote from Findhosts.com

Reviewer: Anonymous 02-06-2007
I have websites hosted by expensive apollohosting, poor control panel bluehost and Cheap Easy Setup Ixwebhosting. While I have minor problems with the first two, IX is PATHETIC. In less than 1month, IX has been down for nearly 12hours in total. Right now as I type, my ecommerce site is down, my newly launched news site is down and IX is unreachable. A complete WASTE of my money!