Hostwinds Reviews 724

I've been testing their cloud portal for a small technical project. The network speed and uptime are quite decent for the price. However, the management interface feels a bit over-engineered and complicated for daily use compared to other cloud providers. Also, the documentation lacks depth on advanced networking configurations. It's an okay hosting provider, but there's a learning curve.

Title: BEWARE: Crypto Payments Held Hostage! Terrible Support & Deceptive Practices
​Review:
If you are planning to pay with Cryptocurrency, DO NOT use Hostwinds. They will take your money, fail to deliver the service, and hold your funds hostage.
​Here is exactly what happened to me:
I attempted to purchase a hosting service using Crypto (USDC ERC20) through their Stripe payment gateway. The blockchain transaction was fully successful and confirmed on my end. However, due to a delay/issue with their own payment processor (Stripe), Hostwinds canceled my order, claiming the payment took too long.
​Instead of automatically refunding my money for a service they COMPLETELY FAILED to deliver, they kept it.
​The support experience was a complete nightmare. First, their frontline agent (Dominic) explicitly opened a ticket for a "Crypto Refund," acknowledging the situation. But then, their Director of Operations, Dustin Waggoner, stepped in and refused to send the money back to my crypto wallet. He hid behind a generic "crypto is non-refundable" Terms of Service clause.
​Keep in mind, I wasn't asking for a refund on a used service—I was asking for my money back because THEY failed to activate my order!
​Instead of a real refund, Dustin forced an $88.88 "account credit" onto my Hostwinds profile, essentially trapping my money on their platform. When I went to Live Chat to escalate this and demand a manual blockchain withdrawal, agents like Evan and Ryan acted like literal bots. They copy-pasted generic scripts and flat-out refused to transfer the chat to a manager, telling me to "wait for an email."
​They blame Stripe for the gateway failure, but they are the ones punishing the customer by refusing a manual withdrawal. They are happy to acknowledge the funds by giving you "store credit," but will fight tooth and nail to prevent you from actually getting your money back.
​Save yourself the headache, the lost time, and the stolen money. Take your business to a reliable hosting company that actually takes responsibility for its own broken billing systems. Avoid Hostwinds at all costs!

Don't waste your time and money. This is by far the worst hosting. Their VPS servers are just too slow

I am writing this to warn anyone considering Hostwinds for "Fully Managed" services. I have been paying double the price for their management service, only to have my server completely wiped by a ransomware attack that they admitted was caused by a known cPanel vulnerability.

In a "Managed" environment, patching system-level vulnerabilities is the provider's job. Hostwinds failed to apply proactive security patches, and when the disaster happened, their support was dismissive, slow, and incompetent. They even had the audacity to tell me that they "don't update the server unless the client asks"—which completely defeats the purpose of paying for managed hosting!

Key Failures:

Security Negligence: Failed to patch known exploits, leading to total data encryption.

Technical Incompetence: Their support claimed all data was "corrupted" and unrecoverable, yet I (the client) managed to recover MySQL databases and emails myself. They didn't even try.

Terrible Support: They detached my recovery volume without my consent while I was still extracting data, showing a complete lack of care for my business.

If you value your data and your business, DO NOT TRUST HOSTWINDS. They will take your money for "management" but will leave you to drown when a real technical issue arises. I am now facing years of lost work because of their failure to fulfill their contract.

I cannot recall how long I've been using Hostwinds, my best guess is about ten years.

I am self taught because, back in the 1990's I realized that writing software would be useful for my business. So I am a businessman who writes software to achieve my business objectives not a professional software engineer.

Hostwinds is a godsend for a guy like me. If I have a problem or need help, their support staff responds immediately and is always very courteous. I have four VPS servers with them and am about to purchase another one for my current project.

Finally just had them delete my account. Auto renewals, service fees that are unclear, terrible customer service. With how competetive the hosting market is, they could do better and so can you.

The worst servers, hosting, and customer support I have ever experienced. Several times a year their hosting breaks down, and then they claim they are not responsible for its performance if you haven’t purchased an additional service. Even if you buy a backup, you can still lose your website, as they say they are not responsible for the loss of backups in case of a hosting failure. The response time from technical support is a few days, often turning into several weeks. Forget about Hostwinds if you rely on your website for work — their services are more suited for casual use. This is a JUNK company — stay away from them, I strongly advise.

PLEASE whatever you do don't use this company! They are fraudulent, unscrupulous and a complete rip off. They terminated my hosting and then deleted all my expensive website info. I have NOTHING now. Will need to start from scratch. This company needs to be fined, and their owners should be ashamed of how they do business They essentially steal money from you. AVOID!

its totally scam i print documents signature with pen photo id lisence id many questions and totaly its scammmmm

I have been using a dedicated server of about 200$ monthly value with them for over 1 year. The technical support has been mostly amazing. They are diligent, competent and solving all my problems promptly.

BUT!

The billing department is a disaster.
They are the kings of inconvenience!

WHY?

1) They have a very old school and super inconvenient payment gateway. The billing pages are a nightmare!

2) They send only 2 emails regarding failed payments, one on the billed day, and on on the due date, and you can easily miss this, if you are a busy entrepreneur juggling money between your cards and accounts.

3) They auto suspend the server based on failed payments. And they do not mind doing it on WEEKENDS.

4) BUT, Billing support team do not work on the WEEKENDS. So if you are in this scenario that I am in, you are doomed.

So here I am left with a credit card payment system that is extremely outdated, probably from 1990s. Missed the 2 payment notification emails, and the failed auto payment.

Trying to pay, knowing that regardless of it is a weekend, they will suspend your server no matter what, and your business will go down the drain.

I tried to pay 60+ times with 4 different cards and they all failed. It is ridiculous error messages like "please make sure your card information is correct and matching, and" etc. etc. I spent 2 hours of hair spitting, nerve breaking time, and no. IT DOES NOT WORK! Poor support members on the chat also cannot help me and they keep telling me I have to wait for the billing team to come to office on Monday, which is 48 hours away!

So I am left with the desperation and the world's worst payment gateway, knowing that even if it is weekends, and even if the billing team is not available, they will suspend my service and I had to wait 48 hours, just like that.

Worst part?
This scenario happened exactly like this TWICE in the last 3 months. Even after successful payment, you have to wait 1 hour for the website to come back online.

And I already gave me them feedback, after the first suspension, that there should be 5 to 10 notificaion emails of failed payments, which is very easy to set up. But they did nothing about it.

So long story short, although the technical side of things are excellent, sadly, I will leave and never look back.

If I can get them a minus 10000000 definitely I would!

DO NOT sign up for services with this company.

I transferred three of my domain names to a different registrar and they still have them listed on my account.

And just like that, they stole me $24.09. When I disputed it, they refused to give me my money back under the excuse of the auto renewal being active, even they were NOT supposed to have those domains listed under Hostwinds.

If possible stay away from those thieves and do NOT, and I repeat do NOT sign up with them. They will scam you and take your money with no permission.

Be careful.
I had shared WordPress hosting for several years with them and then put in a support ticket to cancel the annual plan a day before the renewal date, and was still charged to my credit card and then refused to honor the cancellation and refund my credit card. To deny the refund, they used some very suspect loophole on why I wasn't eligible for a refund that was clearly in violation of consumer protection laws in my state.

Catastrophique, ferme mon site sans raison. N’achetez rien chez eux ils ferment sans raison et ne rembourse rien bien entendu!
Kon de t mort

Ne surtout pas recommander cette plateforme!! ferme sans raison vos services pour repayer. Mon site a été fermé pour ( phishing ) a cause d'un logo; qui a été modifié mais n'ont rien cherché a comprendre. Ce sont des soumis au fournisseur ENOM!!!!!

They are sad and horrible. I give them two stars because they did host my website and email for many years and it worked most of the time. But some four years ago they lost my website and took weeks to restore an older version and then months to admit they had had a problem. Recently my web builder stopped working and they said it would only again if I paid an expensive upgrade. I moved to namehero which is great and paid a quarter of the price. Hostwinds do have tech support people (and/or ai) trying hard to find solutions (to you I am thankful) but the hostwinds system is rotten to the core. They told me the only way to cancel my renewal was to cancel the account which I did and then they immediately deleted everything without sending me a message saying what they had done or even saying goodbye. The only thing they did not delete on my account was my credit card details and now they say they cannot do that without opening a ticket. I prefer to cancel the credit card because I don't trust their system. I can see other reviewers complain about unauthorized charges and I believe Hostwinds would do that deliberately as part of their sad business model. Goodby hostwinds. I can sleep better without you.

we cancelled our VPS late 2024, but they have been charging us until now. June 2025.

to add more detail, they bill us because we have an attached volume, but our servers are cancelled. so the volume is not attached to anything. and we can not remove or cancel it.

[{"result":"error","action":"Detach Volume","message":"A valid serviceid is required."}]

for somereason their windows servers are chinese. and 2019, you can not run a newer version of winserver even with your own license. (very difficult setup, took me aroudn 2 days and still couldnt get it to work with their instructions.

I have ordered VPS server with cpanel. And they asked me to provide legal documents like credit card picture, govt ID picture. I have provided them everything and then they sent me a document and said I have to print out the document and fill it and then hand sign, what kind of verification is it? It's like I'm buying property lolx. Too much legal documents they asked which is not authentic. I understand they have to secure their network from spammers. But they asked too much, it's feel like real state thing.

I asked them to cancel my order and refund me, I didn't receive the VPS and they deducted $38 from my card. They didn't provide me refund and closed the account.

If anyone feels easy to provide legal documents then go ahead for this hosting, but to print the document and then hand sign is not acceptable in my thinking. Only govt issued valid document is enough but they asked too much lolx.

In my honest review, it's not a hosting, it's a real estate company.

I’ve been using hostwinds for a little over a month now, and I must say it’s such an amazing hosting platform. I’d also like to point out their support team: it’s amazing. Not only do they respond very fast, they also guide you through ANYTHING and do anything in their power to help you. This is how a support team should be. I once had a question about linking my domain to the hosting, and they logged in onto my godaddy account to do it for me. That’s how dedicated they are to helping their customers. I would 100% recommend you guys to use this, especially if you’re not all too sure how to set things up.

Disappointing Experience with Hostwinds

We hired a web design company to create a new website for our business, and after paying them in full, we had all necessary documentation—emails, payment receipts, proof of ownership for the domain, design files, etc. Unfortunately, the company dissolved, leaving us with no one to contact to retrieve our website files and nobody to dispute the refusal of the release of our data. We proved our ownership of the website data, hosting and domain, nobody has denied it. It appears Hostwinds did not even attempt to contact Creative Web Studios to satisfy their conundrum. That would be reasonable and prudent. If there is nothing disqualifying us from having our data back, then Hostwinds a holding our data hostage for no good reason.

We reached out to Hostwinds, where our website was hosted, and provided them with days of documentation to prove that the website and all related data belong to us. Despite submitting unquestionable proof of ownership, Hostwinds refused to release our website files, citing that our name was not on the account, even though we had already paid for the services through the now-defunct web design company.

While I understand the need for security, I find it hard to believe they can't work with an abundance of valid proof in such a clear-cut case. They were unhelpful when we were missing just one small piece of documentation, which caused much frustration and ultimately prevented us from regaining access to our new website.

Given our experience, I would be very reluctant to use Hostwinds or recommend them to others, especially in situations where you might face issues with transferring or recovering your website data.

Thank you for your reply, though I have to express my disappointment. While I understand the importance of account security, it feels unreasonable to expect a small business, especially one located outside the US, to incur the costs of hiring an attorney and going through a legal process to retrieve something that clearly belongs to us.

We provided ample documentation, including payment receipts, emails, and proof of ownership, all of which should have been sufficient to resolve the issue. Instead, we were met with a policy that fails to account for real-world circumstances like ours.

As a customer-focused company, I would have hoped Hostwinds would have been more willing to work with us to find a fair solution, rather than simply pointing us toward legal action, which feels like an insurmountable obstacle for a small business like ours.

This entire experience has been incredibly frustrating, and I truly hope you’ll reconsider your stance in situations where valid proof of ownership is provided, and a more reasonable path can be found.

We slipped into the Hostwinds trap as a VPS customer that would have landed them less than $200 a month but wasn't enough for them to be concerned about as an "Enterprise" customer.

I have no idea what Hostwinds used to be or may become - my experience is just based on now.

They have super cute graphics on their website - dragons, dinosaurs, monkeys, aliens in space ships - all happily sitting in front of their computers working on their websites.

They have a VERY convincing about us page - how they are different as a webhosting company - will give you personalized attention at a fraction of the cost.

From there - you call in as a new customer - LOVELY sales people - accommodating - everything is GREAT - they care about you and your sites and your business.

You then give them your credit card information and sign up - it is Russian roulette from there. If you get lucky - everything goes to plan - if there is some weird unforeseeable issue - you are screwed.

Because what they don't tell you upfront - is that the sales people - can't contact the support people - and that the chat people are separate from the sales people and the support people. And that if you have an unforeseeable problem as a customer that you will get the run around - because sales can't talk to support and support can't talk to chat and nobody has any idea what the billing department is doing.

From there - largely all of their responses - are AI generated or assisted. No-one at Hostwinds is responsible - and no-one cares - AI tells them what to say in response - they hit send and call it a day. Customer be damned. Not their problem.

Our experience - we knew it was not a good fit after 4 days - but then were told we were out of luck as the Terms of Use we signed up for CLEARLY stated - no refunds after 3 days.

Seriously.

From there - they removed the "Request Cancellation" buttons from our online account making it impossible to follow their Terms of Use cancellation policy. I'm not kidding - I have it screen captured - and then the problems went on and on from there.

I am co-owner of a business that Hostwinds just completely screwed over and this is just the beginning of my take on things and what I have to say - all documented about our experiences with them.

Just be warned - this is how they operate. I'm sure they will respond with an impressive - grammatically correct - politically correct response - that has NOTHING to do with the complaint.