Netfirms Review 2024

In the eternal words of the great philosopher Patrick Stump (the lead singer of Fall Out Boy), “Oh how the mighty fall”.

A few short years ago, Netfirms web hosting was largely considered to be one of the biggest and best games in town. They offered affordable and high quality web hosting solutions that kept many of the biggest websites in the world up and running.

However, for whatever reason, it seems that the once mighty web hosting behemoth has scaled back their efforts, (maybe their CEO got bored and moved to Tahiti… who knows) and, as a result the quality of their services.

If this review were being written back in 2010, you’d have read about how reliable, versatile, affordable, and high quality Netfirms is.

But this is 2018, and I’m sad to report that Netfirms is almost unrecognizable from the company it once was.

Indeed, the mighty have fallen… And they’ve fallen hard.

But just how far has this once great web hosting provider fallen?

You’ll just have to read on and find out 😉

TLDR;

When it comes to Netfirms’ shared hosting, we suggest you find an alternative. Yes, Netfirms used to be good and yes, they do have a few positives like solid uptimes and unlimited email packages.

Sadly, they also have a whole bunch of negatives such as horrible load times, limited hosting plans, and some of the worst customer reviews we’ve seen in the space.

If you’re looking for a solid hosting plan that does not have these negatives, we suggest checking out HostPapa for your hosting needs. HostPapa is a Canadian hosting service with low introductory prices, great speed, and plans that allow flexibility for growth.

What is Netfirm Hosting?

Positioning themselves as the go-to “Small Business Web Host” Netfirms has been around for a long long time.

Founded in 1998 with Thomas Savundra (who has since gone on to co-found Sync.com) for more than a decade and a half, Netfirms actually was the go to web host for small businesses.

However, after their acquisition by Endurance International Group in 2011, things have taken a turn for the worse.

That being said, the company is still responsible for hosting more than 1.2 million websites and is a member of one of the largest hosting corporations in the world.

… Which makes it all the more disappointing that the quality of their service dropped off so inexplicably.

But enough with the history lessons. With their brief origin story out of the way, let’s dive into how Netfirms performs today and what you can expect from this iconic hosting company.

Pros of Netfirm Hosting

Although there are a lot of problems with Netfirms’ hosting services and the general customer experience, to their credit, they perform pretty well on a handful of important metrics.

Here are just a few of the positive aspects that I encountered while reviewing Netfirms’ services.

1. Good Uptimes and Decent Reliability

Netfirms’ biggest selling point is their reliable uptime. It’s nothing exceptional (like SiteGround or A2 Hosting), but for the price you pay, it’s still pretty solid.

Unfortunately, they don’t offer any sort of uptime guarantees (other than that you’ll actually have uptime) they performed reasonably well over the course of our 12 months as paying customers.

2. Unlimited Email Accounts with All Packages

Many, shall I say, “less than ethical” hosting companies (cough Godaddy cough) will offer a single free email account for the first year of your hosting plan and then charge and exorbitant renewal fee in the ballpark of $60/year per account.

Luckily, that’s not how Netfirms rolls.

Regardless of the package that you choose, Netfirms gives all of their customers access to an unlimited number of email accounts ensuring that you can add an extra layer of professionalism to your website and correspondence.

3. Decent Live Chat Support

While they don’t offer any sort of mind blowing customer support like HostGator or SiteGround, Netfirms’ gives their customers access to knowledgeable and responsive customer support through 24/7 email tickets and a toll free live chat.

After putting their support team through their paces, I’d give them a solid B+. Their live support staff is fairly responsive (although not instantly so) and they were able to handle all of the questions I threw at them… Even if it took them a couple of tries to get it right.

Much like the rest of their service, Netfirms’ customer support is good for the price that you pay, but not quite up to par with some of the other industry giants.

Cons of Netfirm Hosting

Unfortunately, for every one thing that Netfirms gets right, they get another two wrong. From the structure of their hosting plans to the types of servers they use to their atrocious load times, here are just a few of the problems I encountered while using Netfirms.

1. Limited Hosting Plans Available

At first glance, Netfirms seems to offer, more or less, the same variety of hosting plans that other major providers do. But when you actually peel back the layers of the proverbial onion, you’ll quickly realize that all is not as it first appears.

Despite the fact that they have three different hosting packages, Plus ($4.45/month), Advantage ($8.99/month), and Business ($12.99/month) the differences between these plans are nominal.

In all reality, the only real difference between their Plus and Business plans are a free SSL certificate, unlimited SQL databases, and unlimited FTP accounts. Personally, I’m not quite sure why anyone would choose to upgrade to a business account with such a paltry offer.

2. Terrible Load Times

One of the biggest problems with Netfirm is their subpar loading times.

In 2018, the speed of your website is everything.

More than 47% of customers will bounce from a website if it takes longer than 2-seconds to load. If your web host isn’t able to deliver load times at or below 2000 ms, then I’d advise that you transfer to a new provider immediately.

Unfortunately for Netfirm, their load times were nowhere near as fast as they should be.

Since they don’t implement SSD hosting, their performance is far below what would be considered acceptable for a high quality web host and, this fact in and of itself, is enough for us to redact our endorsement.

But it gets worse…

3. Shared Hosting Only

If you are looking to host a small business website or expect to see a significant number of visitors soliciting content on your website, then shared hosting isn’t really an option.

Sure, it works if you’re in the startup phase of a new company or blogging for kicks and giggles. But once you scale past 10,000 visitors a month, it’s in your best interest to upgrade to a VPS or dedicated hosting package.

If you don’t, it’s the equivalent of moving into an apartment with 4 other roommates only a few months before you plan to start a family… You’re just setting yourself up for a world of hurt.

Unfortunately, Netfirms doesn’t have a lot of variety in their hosting packages.

If you purchase hosting through Netfirms, you’re buying shared hosting… Period.

They don’t offer dedicated servers, VPS servers, or any sort of cloud based hosting solution. So if you plan on scaling your website and don’t want to be plagued by incessant server crashes and bandwidth issues, I’d advise that you take your business elsewhere.

4. Fuzzy Guarantees and Refund Policies

One of the most annoying and downright unethical problems that I’ve noticed in the web hosting market is unfulfilled money back guarantees.

The proliferation of ambiguous terms of service and refund policies has led many an unwitting customer to make a substantial purchase, find themselves unsatisfied with the final product, and request a refund…

Only to find that one teeny little action (like utilizing a one-click WordPress installation) has rendered the money back guarantee nullified.

Unfortunately, Netfirm seems to be following in the footsteps of equally scuzzy companies like GoDaddy with their ambiguous and unethical billing practices.

From failing to cancel a hosting account (and failing to refund the customer’s funds) and then renewing the service without notice the next year, to blatantly denying refunds to eligible customers.

I’ve seen a myriad of horror stories on the web regarding Netfirms’ billing practices.

This is a huge red flag and should not be ignored by any potential customer.

If (for some inexplicable reason) you choose to trust Netfirm over their far superior competitors and you decide that you want your money back… Well, just don’t expect to see the funds credited to your account anytime soon.

5. Terrible Customer Reviews (Since 2016)

Although my own experience with Netfirm could be described as “lackadaisical” at worst, the public at large does not seem to agree with my consensus.

The most common words and phrases that popped up as I perused through Netfirm customer reviews were, “Terrible”, “Atrocious service”, and “A complete failure as a web host”.

I’m not entirely certain why other customers were so thoroughly agitated by Netfirm’s services, however, since 2016, the public opinion of Netfirm has dropped substantially.

After several hours of checking out other web hosting forums and reddit threads, I noticed enough of these reviews (literally hundreds of them) that I felt it was worth mentioning.

6. Outdated Support Center

The final issue that I encountered while reviewing Netfirms was their support center.

Even though you have access to email, live chat, and over the phone support, there are plenty of times where you don’t feel like going through the hassle of talking to a real person and simply want a quick answer to a hosting question.

Unfortunately, it seems that Netfirms hasn’t updated their support center since they were acquired by Endurance International Group. The information that you are given is cryptic and outdated and best and completely nonexistent at worst.

This is a far cry from what you would expect to see from a company with more than 1.2 million customers.

Do We Recommend Netfirms?

Once upon a time, the answer would have been a resounding, “Hell yes”.

But today, it’s a hard “No”.

From the shoddy load times to the limited hosting options to the unethical and ambiguous billing practices there’s simply no reason to pay good money for such a subpar web host when you can just as easily sign up for a superb hosting service through SiteGround, A2 Hosting, or HostGator.

Sorry Netfirms, but it looks like the web hosting world’s shining star has completely burned out.

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