Easy CGI Review
Easy CGI is by most standards, a fairly large host. Founded in 1994 as an ISP (the hosting section came four years later), they’ve prided themselves on providing word class support and services. At first glance, Easy CGI’s web site isn’t bad - it’s easy to navigate, easy to get information, and all of the things you’d expect from a web site. While EasyCGI.com not visually stunning, it does work.
From what I observed, everything seems pretty conventional with the Easy CGI. Pricing is about average for a budget host, The company’s Terms of Use is pretty standard, and there doesn’t appear to be any hidden or crazy things they get you to agree to or buy. Easy CGI seems straight forward, and seem to do a good job of communicating this. It’s nice to deal with a web host knowing they aren’t trying to rip you off.
The proof is in the pud. The Easy CGI control panel (which has no name, it’s just “Control Panel”) seems pretty generic in terms of features. It’s a little slow and clunky compared to cPanel, DirectAdmin, or the other major control panels, but it manages to get the job done without too many hassles. There’s definitely a learning curve if you’re used to the other major control panels (mainly because of layout, different wording, etc.) and with almost literally no graphics, the control panel is pretty ugly, but again, still functional. Within about 15 minutes, I was using it without any problems.
A nice thing is that Easy CGI supports lots of databases (MySQL, MsSQL, ODBC). They allow you to change the A, MX, and CNAME records from your control panel, and of course, do all of the standard email/FTP things. Webmail and stats somewhat lack, but again, are functional. FTP was pretty quick and worked without any problems. I managed to install some basic scripts (a forum system, a CMS, etc.) without any problems. There were some slight confusions with the host name (most of the time it’s localhost, but Easy CGI seems to use a different server for SQL, which is good). Once installed, everything ran fine.
There are no separate billing systems you have to deal with, which makes things easier and far less confusing. The billing functions are straight forward, easy-to-update, and simple enough. You can add/remove services, upgrade plans/features, view invoices, etc. all from your control panel, which means less hassles. There’s a built in ticket system, which seems simple enough, as well as some basic tutorials and a knowledge base.
From my experience, Easy CGI support was pretty good. I managed to figure out what I needed on my own. I didn’t really need them, but no review is complete without support contact. I called technical support and was speaking to a human about 20 seconds after dialing. Two simple questions–do you support mod_rewrite (Yes) and do you run Windows or Linux (Windows)–were answered quickly and politely. I sent the same questions via email (at noon EST) and got a helpful reply within 3 hours–pretty good for a Sunday.
Pros: Good database support, easy to contact technical support, near total control over domain/web site, fair prices and practices.
Cons: Not visually stunning, no amazingly unique features.
Bottomline: Easy CGI is a straight forward host that provides everything expected with a few nice pluses all for a fair price with pretty good service and reliability.
Rating: 
-Reviewed by Douglas Hanna
January 4th, 2008
Easy-CGI sucks. I have used them for over 3 - 4 years now and they have gone from good to terrible. The sites are down very often, the support spits out canned responses for 9 out 10 support requests. The people on the phone are incompetent and have no customer service skills at all. If you want headaches go with these guys but as for me I am leaving first chance I get.
March 12th, 2008
i’ve been trying to leave for a while now and i get bombarded with error messages, in some cases they totally remove the option for me to leave… i have in effect been kidnapped by easycgi.
steer clear!
April 22nd, 2008
I have been using EasyCgi for a while now without any problems not sure what the others have had problems with
May 3rd, 2008
Easy CGI really is probably the most incompetent of hosts. They actually tried to tell me that my classic asp application was not working because a virtual directory/application was not created on the folder. Anyone that has worked even remotely with asp knows that only .net applications require this functionality and that the asp dll is what handles the serving of classic asp pages not the .net framework. What the h***????? Makes me wonder who they hire. I could see if easy was mainly linux host that only offered windows as an alternative but they are windows only shop. UGH! Don’t do service with them you will regret it! Oh and they only have one connection to the internet to if that goes down so does access to your site. We have verified this in person at their facility.
August 23rd, 2008
Their 99.9% up-time guarrantee is a fraud. I have experienced about 8 hour downtime and my Wembot (web monitoring service) also showed less than 99.9% down time. But when I mentioned about it, they say that their record doesn’t show any down time. The fact is; when I made a phone call to them at the time of down-time, one of their representatives gave me an apology about it. So they must know it. What a dishonest company! Never trust them!
September 15th, 2008
Easycgi customer service is terribly incompetent. Trying to resolve an issue with one of their servers through their ticket system is taking me 14 hours already!! To give you an indication of how terrible it is they use canned responses which have the greeting addressed to someone else’s name.
Stay away from these guys until they learn to actually listen to their customers.
September 30th, 2008
STAY AWAY FROM EASYCGI!!! I activated a site a few days ago and visitors are continually unable to connect. We are down more than we are up!!! Mt email is FULL of complaints. IF I had known of the downtime issue I would have NEVER chose them.
October 14th, 2008
We’ve been with them for years.
1st year - excellent
2nd year - bad
3rd year - the worst hosting company on planet Earth.
Whatever you do, remember this review and do not, ever, sign up with EasyCGI.
Unless you enjoy the thought of your website being down for 4 days every single month.
Dreadful.
October 17th, 2008
Absolute worst hosting company. Almost as bad as Micfo International Inc. A bunch of crooks. Read the reviews here and know to AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COSTS.
October 17th, 2008
The worst hosting company EVER. Their servers has been down for more than 6 days!!!!.
Their technical support is a joke. They have no ideas what they are doing.
One of our VPS came only a few hours ago, and it is completely destroyed.
October 17th, 2008
I’ve used easyCGI for over 5 years. For the most part they were a good inexpensive webhost.
Lately - They have sucked. They announced a migration to new platform a few weeks back.
“Exciting changes are on the way for Easy CGI customers! I am pleased to announce that we will soon be transitioning to a new hosting platform, which will allow us to provide you with a more dynamic, feature-rich hosting experience.
This September, we will begin the process of migrating customer Web sites and e-mail to the new platform. In this new architecture, customer sites will not be tied to a single server. Rather, Web pages will be served by a pool of servers, increasing redundancy and reliability while improving performance.”
Wow - what a bunch of crap. The previous performance was much better! Why would I care which server my website is tied to as long as it’s accessible to the Internet and SE spiders. Too many 404 errors will kill your SE page ranks.
Since then, no traffic from Google. Traffic stats are horrendous. ASP mail forms quit working. 404 errors have gone through the roof. I have several clients that also host through them. More problems.
I think it’s time to move to a different company. EasyCGI, used to be pretty good but something really stupid happened most recently. Can I get a Refund?
Cheers,
G
October 20th, 2008
The VPS are still down after 8 days.
They are incompetent fixing his issue with ALL customers. It is unbelievable. Technical Support is the worst I hava deal with in my entire life.
I hope they burn in hell. (That is the minumum I can say about them)
October 28th, 2008
worst experience ever
How does one change web hosting
companies?
October 31st, 2008
This migration has been horrific. It’s taken so much time and energy trying to get their support staff to understand what, apparently, were common problems. And the answer is ’sorry we can’t fix this problem we created’.
The site was in QA for a week. The result - they’ve potentially cost us thousands of dollars in lost sales with the terrible job migrating email accounts.
November 4th, 2008
Problems at EasyCGI?
I have begun canceling all services with EasyCGI. I will no longer recommend them to clients. Am migrating websites as we speak. Seems a new company may have purchased them?
Sorry fellows, but has EasyCGI become IncompententCGI, ThreestoogesCGI, RipoffCGI, ….?
They are not just having technical difficulties.
My credit card was charged for unordered services. Run around run around. Guess someone needed a couple hundred extra from me. After speaking with the rep it now appears I will really have to get tough: opened a credit card dispute yesterday. What a bunch of crap.
Is EasyCGI experiencing - financial/billing dificulties? Better watch your billing statement - especially after you try to cancel services.
A few more days and I’ll be totally through with CrapCGI. Yea!
Cheers,
G
November 11th, 2008
Easy CGI totally sucks. We have a number of clients hosted with them and have recommended them over the past 5 years, but now they are just terrible. This whole switch to a new platform has been horrendous. I’ve spent so much time trying to figure out why my sites don’t work anymore. It usually takes anywhere from 4-5 or more support follow ups to get anything resolved. Some sites were not functional work weeks. They lost files of mine during the transfer, despite touting the fact that you can restore 2 weeks worth of backups. Their new transfer speed is slow as bawls. They have a general “not our fault” attitude when it comes to support. They have chat support and usually after 15 minutes of explaining your problem over and over, they say they have to escalate the issue and tell you to wait 2 days for a response.
Easy CGI Sucks. Never EVER host with them.
November 11th, 2008
I agree - their “upgrade” to a new data center last month resulted in my VPS server (and all its websites) being down for 8 days. Numerous calls to tech support, and always the same answer, “We apologize…we’re working on it…please be patient”.
I’ve had numerous web hosts over the last 10 years, and none have been as bad as easyCGI.com.
If you value your sanity and your websites, do *not* host with them.
EasyCGI.com sucks. EasyCGI.com sucks. EasyCGI.com sucks.
November 11th, 2008
Update.
After faxing Email Proof of prior account cancellation, … EasyCGI sent me an email saying my cc charges were being reversed. If they would have believed me and been more supportive, I would not have opened a credit card dispute. The front line billing folks seemed helpful - once escalated - they wanted proof. Seemed almost accusatory.
Now a major business client’s website is being affected. The new EasyCGI system may work quite well for new clients, but this migration of old sites to new platform has been horrendous. The old system was easy. The new system is more complex.
Anyway, I may be moving my client’s website away as well over the next few days. Sort of feel sorry for the owners of this firm as the EasyCGI brand may have been severely damaged.
Get it Right EasyCGI.
Wish the best to the rest of you.
G
November 16th, 2008
EasyCGI is the most unreliable host after CIHost. We host multiple domains, use them for our email handling and we have a VPS server. A couple of days before their un-orthodox and definitely unconventional move we applied for three more VPS Servers worth another US$ 4,000 per year. They totally mismanaged their move which resulted in a 13 days horror-movie for any webmaster/systemadmin. A week ago (beginning of November) our server was back online but without notice, apology or refund. Their support deleted all the history logged, and prior to their move (a couple of hours) EASYCGI posted new terms of use basically telling you that you have lost all rights to your data and that they have no obligation to keep our services running. Since today (14th November) our emai laccounts (50+) have stopped working. They have posted information of no use. All data is lost, inboxes are clear (more than 1 year of email history is lost). And again their support keeps ignoring any complaints. Very unprofessional. We have about 100,000 subscribers that we will inform about their incompetence. I am sure that they didn’t budget for the impact word-of-mouth has! EASGYCGI SUCKS BIG TIME!!!! We’re outta there next week!
November 16th, 2008
My company has recommended EasyCGI for the last 4 years to 30 plus of our clients, with little or no issue. However, over the last few months the “New” EasyCGI (since the migration) is horrible. I cannot stress enough that you must avoid using this hosting provider at all cost. I don’t have enough time to describe the nightmare we have been going through the past 4 weeks..because I am too busy trying to fix all the issues and sooth the angry clients. We are moving all the sites to new hosts. When the dust settles, I’m planning a lawsuit against EasyCGI on behalf of my company and my clients.
November 19th, 2008
it seems redundant after reading the rest of these posts but easycgi has definitely lost their ability to execute. We are moving sites rapidly now. I will also remove my credit card from their control panel based on some of the comments above. If anyone has posted complaints with BBB or other consumer protection agencies please post the website names here.