HostFeature.com and mesopia.com reviews?

[topcat]

I'm looking for a new web host and found HostFeature.com (http://www.hostfeature.com). Are there any present or past customers that can give me any feedback on your experience with them? Some of you are probably already aware that both this company and mesopia.com (http://www.mesopia.com) are owned by Happy! Hosting Network, so reviews of either site are valid.

The hosting plans I've seen are attractive, but both of these companies appear to have been formed within the past 10 months and there isn't a heck of a lot more company info on their sites. Because a new company can also be a good company I certainly don't hold that against them. However it is important (obviously) that the service and support are reliable and will be around for more years to come.

Looking forward to your comments.

[topcat]

Although no one has posted their hosting experience with HostFeature.com or mesopia.com yet, I have something to add.

I sent a pre-sales inquiry with a few questions, one of which was two part question. It first asked if the mail servers allow executable attachments (my current host doesn't). Secondly, if attachments are not allowed, does the sender receive a delivery failure notification if SpamAssassin is on (my current host doesn't send one if this is on) or does the message just disappear without either the sender or receiver knowing what happened.

I received a fairly prompt reply (about 4 hours later) with short sentence or one word answers to each of my questions. I'm familiar with this and wasn't offended that the questions were not part of the response or that the answers were brief. However, my question about the mail server could had three potential questions in one. This was my fault for not phrasing better. I decided to respond to that address with my second e-mail and ask if I understood the answer properly.

About 10 hours later, I still had no response so I called their sales inquiry phone number (approximately 1 hour after their opening hour). I got through to the message system, pressed the right extension number and was put on hold. After about 2 minutes another message came on and told me to call during business hours and disconnected me. I'm willing to cut slack for a small business occasionally and figured "small staff, maybe someone is out sick or the weather is bad, no biggie."

After waiting another couple hours I decided to resend my previous e-mail, but also include the original sales address as well. About 4 hours later, a response hit my mailbox. It read:

"I answered your questions already. Here was my response." This was followed by a copy and paste of the first set of answers given to me, no more no less.

Maybe I'm being too hard, but my experience with previous hosts is that sales inquiries are usually answered promptly, clearly and politely regardless of how support questions are answered. This experience just left me with a bad taste and my question still unanswered. I wouldn't want to receive this kind of answer after I had already handed my money over and ran into a technical issue with my site.

I'll be honest, I was ready to transfer my business to this host, but have decided to keep looking. I'd still be interested in hearing current or past customer experiences, though. Maybe I'm the 1 in 1000 that caught someone before their first coffee and I shouldn't rule out the company in the future.

[Chicken]

I can see how you'd think that, although I suppose there is the chance that your questions were answered (at least to the best of their ability), and that you read the words with a certain attitude which wasn't intentional. I know peole have read my posts/emails sometimes and replied in a way that I can tell they read it one way, when I didn't mean it that way.

From what you posted, I'm not sure that was the case here, just something to keep in mind.

[topcat]

Hey, Chicken!

Thanks for the response. I admit that you may be totally right about this and maybe I read more into the last message than I should have. I'm not in a major rush for a new host, so I can wait to see if anyone else has opinions/experiences with this host.

Peace.