Here is what I heard about lime domains. I thought I was the only sufferer but This is have heard from one other client. Now you decide whether to go for lime domains or not. If you ask me, lime domains is one of the worst hosting providers in Internet. They have been providing the worst services for my other site.
Lime Domains Hosting – Just Say No!
I have read enough here to understand that you folks need verification from those of us who sign up just to leave a review. You can verify my site at www . wyellow . net
Someone far wiser than myself once said that you should never speak out of anger. However, I doubt that person ever had the opportunity to use Lime Domains and their ‘Premium’ hosting plan. If they had, they just might be in my shoes right now hopping mad over this incompetent company. Let me count the ways for you folks.
1. Domain registration. I can not say anything negative about this. Works fine. No problems at all with the seven domains I have registered with them. Good for them. Side note: I use domain privacy from Lime Domains as well, as far as I can tell, nothing out of the ordinary here.
2. Basic hosting that everyone gets for free with a domain registration. If you are a small guy just starting out, the 250 mb space and 1 gb bandwidth are probably enough to get you going. Provided, that is, you can get the FTP service to consistently work. My experience on the basic hosting is that it will connect, then transfer three or four files from the cue, then either hang or go through the entire reconnect process once again and transfer three or four more files. Wet. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. This was frustrating as hell for me on the basic side of things. Support questions were always met with blah blah … temporary glitch, it works fine now … blah blah blah. Get used to reading the word ‘temporary glitch’ when it comes to anything to do with these guys.
3. Slow connections are routine, dropped connections common with the basic hosting. While I don’t know for sure, I am going to step out on a limb and say that I will guess the majority of Lime Domains customers are using basic hosting, and are crammed onto shared hosting servers like cattle on a truck headed to market. Again, I don’t know that, but I have been around long enough and have had enough experience with hosts to know when a server is pretty full and when it’s at the right level. This slow and dropped connection issue came up in the support forums often.
4. What finally drove me off Basic and into Premium was that my website finally gained enough traffic that not only was it grinding to a halt, but I needed to run crons and make backups on a daily basis. Yeah right.
5. Premium hosting is the only hosting offered that you can run crons under. Under basic and Standard, you can’t. That sucks if you are like me and run a WordPress install that relies on scheduled posting and a sitemap update tool that runs after each new post. Conversations with Lime Domains support indicated this was for security purposes. Ok, if they say so. Even though many, many other hosts offer it. After the move to Premium, fine, the scheduled posts would work and the sitemap maker updated correctly. Yeah for Lime.
6. Backups. What a joke. You can backup on the Premium plan, IF your website files + your database(s) are UNDER 10 megs. And the process is not automated. If you want to backup, you have to manually do it from the control panel. You have got to be kidding me? If your file sizes are not within the limit, then you have to FTP your files. Ugh. Also, I was very disappointed to see that Lime doesn’t store any backups in your website area, they all go to your local machine. Honestly though, just a WordPress installation eats the 10 meg threshold, so really, Lime, what is the point of your half-baked backup system?
7. Now let’s get to what has driven me away from Lime Domains. Logs and stats. It’s that simple. For the Premium pricing I get Webalizer. Woo hoo for me. A program that just about every other host gives for free, we pay for it. I also pay for the privilege of not knowing the country you visit from because it is not configured due to security reasons. And on a good day, I might even get your hostname.
8. Now the real problem – the stats they have been giving me are not all mine. Let me repeat that – the stats they have been giving me are not all mine. I have stats from at least two other websites that I have been able to determine that are being mingled with mine. One of those sites concerns me, because it is an apparent file sharing site hosting movies and videos. How do I know this? Well, I know this because I can see in my log files the url’s and files. Plus, there is a huge amount of bandwidth shown in my stats that go with the files. I have no /files directory in my site; yet, my graphs list bandwidth used and number of times accessed and so on for non-existent files. Then, there is the fact that my internal WordPress stats show referral strings from a second website hosted on Lime servers that is logging MY stats. I can actually click on that link and go to the other website and view my websites stats. I do not enjoy that, appreciate that or begin to think that’s cool. And not one response yet in 36 plus hours from Lime support on this very creepy issue. I find it highly disturbing that my info is going other places and that I am getting others info. How does one even begin to explain that?
9. Support with Lime Domains is a very dicey issue. They are based in India, so you have to do the math and calculate when it’s business hours in India, they do not conform to U.S. hours. Also, if it’s a weekend, you are screwed. They do not work weekends. You put something in on Friday after India closing hours, and you won’t hear back again until your Monday, MAYBE. Which brings me to my final beef with them – they will not change the contact email address that goes with my master account. It’s locked on the email address I used when I signed up for my account. Even though in my contact info there is a place to change email addresses, which I have done, all contact with support and the company is through the email address used when you signed up. Well gee, since that email address no longer exists, I can not communicate with Lime other than through their support forums, which I have done and have done so loudly. To no avial.
10. And finally, as a final kick in the teeth for paying for Premium hosting, FTP and site load times never improved. Not one bit. FTP still hangs and page loads are still slow. The page loads are especially troubling since I installed what is considered to be the premiere cache plugin for WordPress.
I know this is more of a rant that a review, but honestly, I have to say that since being a hosting customer since February of 2010, I have been nothing but disappointed with Lime Domains and their hosting. Please folks, if you are even considering Lime Domains, reconsider. I would like to add that prior to posting this rant/review, I have taken the time to write and send via USPS a letter to Lime Domains and their New York office. It will be interesting to see if any response comes back from them. And yes, my tone and sarcasm were throttled down in the letter.
