Crystal Tech www.crystaltech.com

A simply awful experience. We have been loyal customers of CrystalTech/Newtek for 10+ years... recommending their services to any client or colleague looking for hosting, but no more.

We received an email from them telling us that our account had been deleted. The issue was that our billing had changed, but they had not received an update... so after X days, the account was deleted. According to CrystalTech/Newtek, advance notice emails were sent to alert us of this, but none of these were received. We checked our logs of all emails sent to and from CrystalTech/Newtek support, and no advance notices were found. They did, however, have no problem with their cancellation email. We explained this fact to them, and their response was to offer to restore our account for the low price of $120. This was unacceptable. We spoke with several representatives over the course of a few weeks to resolve the issue, escalating it up the chain, but they continued to demand the $120 "restore" fee.

Understand, we are not trying to get "even" with CrystalTech/Newtek. If any emails had been in our logs that were overlooked, we would have gladly admitted we were at fault and paid the restore fee. However, this was not the case.

We have worked with a variety of high quality hosting providers, but this experience has definitely removed CrystalTech/Newtek from that list. They normally had great customer service, and competitive prices, but that pales in comparison to the concern that your account can be deleted randomly at any moment. Reliability is much too important to my clients. We will be advising everyone currently using their services to find alternate providers. Do not use CrystalTech/Newtek.

I have used Crystaltech for nearly 3 years, I am based in the UK and am small time web developer. I found they offer a brilliant service, they are on a different time zone thus when you want support you get these persons in the support that usually reply within a minute of a phone call and not only are they super polite but they give full clued up and competent support, I have used them for near 90 sites so far and would not consider moving. The control panel they offer is simple and non intimidating, little change of you clicking something and find out later you have been charged for it. I have had very bad experience with a few of the main uk hosing companies due to charges and support. The only thing that lets Crystaltech down is that I cannot transfer .co.uk names to them, I would like to have all my sites and domain names in one place. but I have my .co.uk and .coms in separate companies. any way Crystaltech deserves a good look as I am really please with there service and that can give me confidence in the work place.

Kenny Darcy

I would never recommend this company to ANYONE. The customer service is horrible...the worst I've ever experienced. I hired them to design an ecommerce website for me, which they did and I have to say that it's very nice...in all fairness they did a good job. The problem is the communication. I call and email and might hear back in 2 weeks. They also hooked me up with a shopping cart that I can't use and it's been impossible to get them to teach me how to use it. They just refer me to the cart's webpage or say they'll 'fix' it for 75 bucks an hour. What a ripoff!

I have to go thru a sales rep to ask a question of the "the guys" ie; the developers because the tech side knows nothing about my cart. I am stuck, and will be moving my site to more user friendly company.

This company is horrible. Never try talking to anyone in customer service, it's like the blind leading the blind. The manager can't even fix problems, and will bs you with what YOU need to do. Excuse me, I pay YOUR company for a service. It seems like this company is getting worse. I have told everyone I know to leave this company. They overcharge, their service is terrible, and they try to up sale you on EVERY call.

I do not recommend crystaltech.com, they still have not yet really resolved my issues with their web hosting in my opinion. We've had so many problems that we're bringing everything in house. I wouldn't recommend crystal tech to host a static html page. Everything about my experience has been bad I feel.

I have hosted several of my domains on Crystal Tech for several years and very happy with it. Crystal tech has very friendly and professional support team that is able to resolve any problems you have in timely manner.

I have used CrystalTech for five years to host shared and dedicated coldfusion platforms and am very satisfied with these plans, as are my clients . I am also very satisfied with the customer service 24/7 toll free number and the email/ticket system. The forums are very good and most people on the numerous forums go out of their way to help. Bad Points

Their home page misrepresents the support available. Example: I bought the service on recommendation of my cousin who is a web designer and host. He has referred them before a few times. I am not knowledgeable about the technical aspects of web design and hosting, but I did read Crystal Tech's available information to the extent it was comprehensible to the ordinary non-techy who is also an attorney. Without having reason to doubt their words, it looked good and I signed up. I went on to establish an administrator email and a general user email account. The accounts did not function properly. They were slow, i.e. 12 hours for a message to be received, or messages were not received at all. The ones I tested, I then sent back to the new email addresses by using the reply button of my older email account. I now have about eight emails indicating that the emails were undeliverable. Half of this happened during the first 24 hours after I purchased the service. I sent an email to the support email address the same day. 24 hours later, I had not received a reply. I sent another one. Three days later, I had not received a reply to either one. So I called. The person who responded did not sound very knowledgeable. He said that Crystal Tech's support people must not have received my emails because my domain server was not pointed to Crystal Tech's. However, I did not send the emails to their support using the new email addresses. I sent it from my email account that works consistently. There is no relationship between the domain server associated with my new domain, and my sending an email through another server (Hotmail's) to Crystal Tech's support.

I had also used the company's online web page builder to create a preliminary web page using my domain name (this was registered through another company, and so domain pointing may be relevant here), but the pages did not publish. When I asked about this, he said that I needed to contact the company I registered with and have them point my domain to the two server numbers provided to me by Crystal Tech originally. NOT. He said I had received an email that reiterated my passwords and gave these numbers. I told him I had not. He said he was resending it. I later received one email at each email address I gave him, but it did not provide me with any passwords or numbers. It identified links that are commonly referred to. I clicked on the first one and was taken to a sign up window, into which I provided my username and password. Guess what I got back? A message that read I should contact the support people! Fat Chance. I will be insisting I get my money back ASAP.

Crystal Tech are absolutely fantastic value for money when you consider what we're paying for ASP.NET 2 / MS SQL Server 2000.

I have used CrystalTech for about 3 years now. I would (and often do) recommend them to anyone wanting a reliable host. My guess is that the people on here that think the service goes down too frequently need to learn how to write code.