WARNING: Do not trust Hostek with your business, domain, website or email
I was a Hostek customer for many years, and I can honestly say this company has caused me more stress, disruption and damage to my business than any provider I have ever dealt with. I previously posted about part of this experience, but this is the complete picture including the final outcome. Last year, my website was hacked and malicious adult content was injected into my domain/site. This was devastating for my business and reputation. Instead of urgently helping me secure my account and resolve the issue, Hostek locked me out of my own account and then effectively disappeared while I was left trying to deal with the fallout alone. For weeks I was ignored during this active crisis. The consequences were devastating. I ultimately had to: * abandon my original website * create an entirely new brand * rebuild my website from scratch * migrate all systems and email * try to repair the reputational damage caused by the hack. Any responsible, ethical company would try their hardest not to allow a situation like this to develop to start with. But if it did, they would aim to resolve the issue immediately, clean up their act so it doesn’t happen again and support their customer through the devastation caused, simply because it is the right thing to do. Hostek chose to wash their hands of the situation instead. What made the entire experience even worse was the tone of the responses I eventually received from Hostek management. Rather than showing concern for the damage caused or attempting to rebuild trust with a long-standing customer, their communication focused on quoting terms and conditions, shutting down further discussion, and repeatedly declaring the matter “resolved” while I was still dealing with the real-world fallout caused to my business. But it doesn’t end there. Unbelievably, when they had another opportunity to redeem themselves, they decided to repeat exactly the same despicable behaviour all over again. Recently, my domain entered redemption status and urgently required action. I contacted Hostek repeatedly over the course of more than a week: * support tickets, * escalation emails, * voicemail messages, * repeated explanations that the issue was business-critical and time-sensitive. I explained multiple times that I could not access my account normally because the suspended domain had taken my email offline. Despite this, I received virtually no response whatsoever. My messages were clearly being seen, yet I was left completely stuck waiting while business services depending on my domain remained disrupted. Every single day that passed increased the stress, risk and operational impact. And still Hostek failed to act. In the end, I had to go directly through external registry intervention to find a workaround and resolve the situation because Hostek were unreachable yet again. Of course, only AFTER I had resolved the domain issue myself, did Hostek mysteriously reappear and respond with a pointless email stating that my domain was now transferred. That final response perfectly summed up my entire experience with this awful company: When things are working, they’re happy to take your money. When something goes seriously wrong, support disappears and you are left to deal with the devastating consequences alone. I would strongly urge anyone considering using Hostek as their provider, to think very carefully before trusting them with anything business-critical. Because if you ever face a serious issue involving your website, domain, email or account access, you may discover, as I did, that any support simply disappears when you need it most.