For those of you who don't know, AWC is the host for EVula.com. Since I have a lot of experience with them (another website, in addition to this one), I feel that I can write a fair, calm, and accurate review of their services.
Or lack thereof.
First, an abstract paragraph describing them, courtesy of Thesaurus.com: hurtful, harmful, scathful, baneful, baleful; injurious, deleterious, detrimental, noxious, pernicious, mischievous, full of mischief, mischief-making, malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome; prejudicial; disserviceable, disadvantageous; wide-wasting, unlucky, sinister; obnoxious; untoward, disastrous, oppressive, burdensome, onerous; malign (malevolent), corrupting (corrupt); virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive; poisonous (morbific); deadly (killing); destructive (destroying); inauspicious, bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful; horrid, horrible; dire; rank, peccant, foul, fulsome; rotten, rotten at the core, rotten to the core, vile, base, villanous; mean (paltry); injured, deteriorated; unsatisfactory, exceptionable indifferent; below par (imperfect); illcontrived, ill-conditioned; wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful (painful) evil, wrong; depraved; shocking; reprehensible (disapprove) hateful, hateful as a toad; abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded; damned, damnable; infernal; diabolic (malevolent) unadvisable (inexpedient); unprofitable (useless); incompetent (unskillful); irremediable (hopeless).
Those are all of the adjectives that I got when I put "horrible" into Thesaurus.com's search field. Some of them are appropriate, some aren't. Obviously, a web host can't literally be "injurious," but it sure can be "detestable," and trying to get tech support from them definetly does seem "irremediable" sometimes.
Why do I hate them so much? Because, they are a rip off. First off, I pay $20 a month for my web hosting. This includes 100 megs of disk space, 5 GB of data transfer, and 10 POP3 email accounts. There is no PHP support. I can do SSI (which I have on the front page [the counter isn't really there]), but I can't edit the .htaccess file as far as I know, meaning I have to rename every file if I want to use a SSI on it. "Illcontrived."
A note on support: If you go to their site, and click on the "support" link at the top, you go to a page that is, more or less, just a list of FAQ pages. Even Microsoft has some support. "Diabolical."
I tried emailing their webmaster at one point to bitch at him about the shitty service; I got a bounce-back email. I can't even tell them how much they suck. "Unsatisfactory."
They also provide no update whatsoever for their customers. On their website, it says "We're upgrading your web hosting!" Uh-huh. Thats been up there for a year (possibly longer). My web hosting has not been upgraded. "Noxious." (yes, that doesn't work, but I like that word)
The main problem that I've had with them, however, is the spotty email availability. Right now, its 12:40 on a Tuesday, and I've been fighting AWC's email server since 9:00 this morning. This has been one of their short-term downings. Their website says nothing about down email. I called tech support, and I only got an automated message saying "We are aware of email being down, we have no estimate as to when this will be fixed." Its like their email server is being run of a Pentium 1 computer running Windows 3.1.
The last time that their email service was down, it was down all day. I called tech support, got another automated message, and gave up. Then, I called the Billing department about getting a refund (I paid for a service that I wasn't getting), and they forwarded me directly to a tech support operator, who was able to get me around the problem (I had to change my POP server). Did the automated message say anything about the fix? No. Did AWC's website say anything about the fix? No. I had to call the Billing department. "Deplorable."
Also, I've had times where this site (as well as 2 other sites that I know are hosted on AWC) will just go down. Boom, gone. Did I get any kind of response from AWC about it? No. Another host I've got a site on, when they had a server go down, they offered everyone involved a two-month credit. THAT is service.
One good thing: they have a sweet web-based traffic statistics program. It gives a breakdown of all the traffic for the site, individual directories, and the number of 404s, 403s, 500s, and other error codes that occur. That is the ONLY good thing.
Why am I still there? Well, because moving the site is a pain in the ass. Trust me, by next year, I won't be there anymore. I'm not sure if I can get a refund of any kind (I don't trust them), and I don't like the idea of having to shell out even more money, so I'm just sitting tight for right now. I will be moving soon, however.