Lunarpages Review
Stardate -316458.1
The Lunarpages Web Hosting company got its name from a Star Trek episode. I am not sure which episode or series, only that it involved images of a moon, planets and lunar material, if that helps narrow it down. After discovering this trivial fact, I set out on mission to go where no reviewer has gone before: determine whether Lunarpages’ hosting performance is stellar.
I did some probing of Lunarpages and found that the company got its start in the late 1990’s giving out free web hosting on the planet earth. Even when Lunarpages began charging for hosting, the competition was no where near what we see in the web hosting industry today where we see hosts piling up like tribbles. Over the years, Lunarpages began adding dedicated, VPS and Windows hosting to their shared offerings. Lunarpages determined to grow at a slow pace rather than risk crossing the neutral zone at warp speed. Timing and business acumen seem to have been critical factors in the company’s growth. Here is where they stand today:
- Over 100,000 accounts hosted
- Datacenters located in Los Angeles, Riverside and Las Vegas
- More than 2500 servers under ownership
Lunarpages Features/Pricing – The Ferengi Factor
Initial tricorder readings taken on the Lunarpages Basic Plan ($6.95/month) indicated enough bandwidth to drive a starship through (15,000 GB) and more disk space (1500 GB) than you can shake a phaser at. One thing I learned from doing research for this Lunarpages review was that big, established corporate web hosts purchase large volumes of bandwidth at discount prices, sort of the Wal-Mart effect. A few standard features that came up on the main view screen were:
- Ruby on Rails 6
- MySQL 5
- PHP 5
- Python
- JSP
- ASP
And some unique features:
- 1 free domain for life
- CoffeeCup software valued at $700
- CrazyEgg tracking/stats
Taking a look under the hood at the dilithium crystals, I saw that Lunarpages is powered by the well-known Dell PowerEdge line of servers, which Lunarpages says is “the most innovative and secure servers in the industry.” PowerEdge appears to be more of a generic name and it’s not clear specifically which models are currently in use. I will update this review if I find out.
Control Panel – Bridge to Engineering
After logging in, I saw a nice and neat tabbed layout of “website information,” “Upgrades/Addons,” “Billing History,” and “Specials” below some big fat icons for “Helpdesk,” “FAQ,” “Tutorials” and “Network Status.” I was relieved to see the familiar cPanel icons from the cPanel X theme. I have grown very comfortable with cPanel over the years and have developed a respect for the package after testing other control panels.
Feeling a bit lazy, I went for the Fantastico icon. In case you don’t know, Fantastico is a third party script library feature that web hosts embed into their cPanel control panels. Each of the popularly known scripts, many open source or free, can be auto installed in seconds with a scant few clicks–no MySQL database setup, no uploading files or chmoding files (all tasks that Vulcans enjoy). A feature like this very much appeals to the programmatically challenged folk like myself–I’m a doctor, not a web developer, Jim. At the time of this review, only 37 scripts were available. I successfully one-click installed and uninstalled 5 of them with no problems. Some important scripts that other hosts offer like Drupal, Mambo and Typo3 were sadly missing from the Lunarpages Fantastico offering. Transporter malfunction?
What about the versions of the scripts listed? Were they current? It is extremely important to have available the most current versions of the scripts. I can tell you from experience that some hosts do not keep these current so users end up installing outdated and less secure versions of scripts. Not good. I poked around in the Fantastico section and found that WordPress and OSCommerce—both scripts that I use—were exactly the same versions as appear on the official web sites.
Lunarpages Support – Hailing Frequencies Open?
Another point that came through in researching Lunarpages was the uncanny emphasis they place on customer support. It seems they go out of their way to make the customer feel that 24/7 support is available if needed. The words “Phone Support,” “Ask a Question” and the support phone number were plastered all over the Lunarpages.com website. The welcome email clearly listed multiple avenues of contacting support.
I took note of this because with some hosts, I get the impression that they are deliberately burying the contact info. Some hosts would prefer not hear my whining. This tactic can backfire with stubborn webmasters like myself who just try all the harder until they find a way to be heard. I never felt that Lunarpages was cloaking customer support; if anything, they were promoting it. Cloaking didn’t work for the Romulans and it won’t work for web hosts.
Email Support Test
I decided to find out for myself if Lunarpages customer support was willing to lower their shields for me. I sent an email support request at exactly 2:53 am before I went to bed saying that at I didn’t see Drupal in the Fantastico package and asking if there were some way to install it.
After I woke up the next morning and logged on, I was glad to have received a response in my inbox at 10:31 am with a ticket number kindly stating that Drupal is not currently offered for installation in cPanel’s Fantastico and that I could manually download and install it. A download URL was provided along with encouragement to contact Lunarpages again if needed.
Phone Support Test
My tests had been going well. Now it was time to turn on my communicator and make the dreaded customer support phone call. This is where web hosts always seem to implode. Come to think of it, most hosts probably don’t even offer phone support. If they do, they tend to force the customer to hold a long time and listen to elevator music interspersed with promotional plugs.
On my first attempt, I held for a musicless 17 minutes and was disconnected. I have no idea if the problem was due to my cell phone or the Lunarpages call center. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. On the second attempt, I help for 10 minutes and was relieved to get a very professional sounding and courteous support rep (I think his name was Josh). I basically asked him why I couldn’t install AWStats through cPanel. He explained that this script wasn’t available through cPanel. I would have to visit the AWStats site and upload/install the current version to my site myself. That wasn’t really the answer I was hoping for, but I certainly appreciated Josh’s courteous and confident manner. He further confirmed my suspicions that the reason many scripts were not available for automatic install in the Lunarpages cPanel was due to security concerns.
Was the positive impression I had about Lunarpages customer support accurate? I’d have to say waiting on hold for 10 minutes was not much fun. But then again, by web hosting company standards, I don’t think that 10 minutes is too terribly unreasonable.
Set a course for the Lunarpages Star System?
I would have given Lunarpages a 5/5 rating if they had offered the full panoply of cPanel scripts and perhaps lessened my customer support hold time a bit. In fact, I may yet upgrade the rating. They appear quite conservative in what scripts are allowed for installation in the control panel. Other hosts do offer more scripts. Unlike some other hosts, though, Lunarpages does not claim to offer features they don’t support.
Pros: Large, established, experienced host offering huge amounts of bandwidth and disk space at low prices. Knowledgeable, courteous customer support. Unique features like a free domain for life, CoffeeCup software and CrazyEgg stats.
Cons: Lack of a few Fantastico script installations like Drupal, Mambo and Typo3. No AWStats.
Bottomline: Engage? They’ve got the bandwidth, diskspace, low pricing and support–one of the best hosts I have ever reviewed. Unless you’re like me and rely too much on the control panel’s one-click installation scripts, Lunarpages is a logical choice.
Rating: 
–Reviewed by Emory Rowland
Visit Lunarpages.com
Sources: Webmasterradio.fm’s Net Income, hosted by ShoeMoney, Amy Armitage from Lunarpages.
I never would have thought to have gotten such poor service and support from a host service as I did from Lunar Pages.
They promote themselves as user-friendly and great for the first time website owner. They also advertise that they give away $250 worth of publishing software, perfect for those who can not write HTML code. Not so. Sure, they give you software (the basic plan for Coffee Cup), but if you can not write HTML code, you get a very short free trial, but then you MUST purchase the component that allows this to happen.
I had problems with the service from the very start. My website published properly initially, updated properly one time, then from that point on, it was a real mess. On the 2nd update, Lunar Pages erased my entire website except for 1/2 of a paragraph. When I inquired, I was told that my site looked “just fine”, and to prove it, they sent me two urls. Funny thing was, they were not to my site at all, they were to an S & M site selling leather items, replete with studs. When I asked about it, they failed to answer me for a week or more, leaving me in a panic because I thought my site might have been hijacked. They ignored my requests for help on the urls and danced around the other problems I was having, blaming it on anyone but themselves, but never actually telling me what was wrong. I was repeatedly told that my site looked “just fine”.
I frequently had to wait 2 – 3 days before getting a response from them, not the two hours they claim as a response time.
After several days of begging for help and not getting it, I asked for my money back and was ignored. These problems went on for 9 months with me alternately begging for help and asking for a refund if they weren’t planning to provide help. They always gave me responses centering around FrontPage, even though I repeatedly told them I was using Publisher. I would remind them that I was using Publisher, so the next email would demand identification and would not answer my questions. Then, after receiving my identification, they again started talking about FrontPage. This cycle repeated time and time again. Talk about frustration!
I finally gave up on emailing them and left a message on their voicemail (after waiting on hold for 30 minutes, not once but twice) demanding my money back. This guy says he can’t find the problem, but my files saved on their server in strange ways. He assures me that if I let him wipe my account clean, I can then reload my site and it should be “just fine” (there is that phrase again). I let him do it and when I try to reload my site – nothing!! Absolute nothing would load, not one word, not one photo.
After 9 months of this, I gave up and went to a new hosting service. Lo and behold, Lunar Pages comes running forward as soon as they get the transfer request and they have finally managed to fix the ftp problem because I had again asked for a refund and they obviously did not want to pay it. In their words “we will not give you any refund whatsoever because we fixed the ftp issue”. I asked where they had been for 9 months and was met with silence. I told them it would be more cost effective to give me a refund than have me relate their failures to others, so then they said they would give me $22 for my unused months.
I no longer have that bank account I signed up with, but they insisted that is the one and only place they can send my money. After repeatedly explaining that the account does not exist, they agreed to send a check in the mail. They went so far as to tell me it was mailed already, but I must wait 14 business days for it to arrive (I live 30 miles away). I wait 18 business days and then start my writing campaign again. They tell me they sent the check on the day they told me it was in the mail. I get upset and tell them it is not here and they must issue another.
Now I get an email from them claiming they sent it to my old bank. I checked and then told them the bank did not receive it. I get a nasty email back telling me to go and talk to my old bank to get a refund from them. I again call my old bank and they assured me that there has been absolutely no activity on my old account since it was closed and even if there had been, they would have refused the payment. I again call Lunar Pages and the girl gets hateful with me and insists my old bank is withholding the money from me. I tell her that they would refuse the money if it came, but it did not come. I tell her that they did not send it to my bank as they are claiming. She pretends to check on the payment and then lies to me and tells me my old bank has the money and to get it from them. She refuses to send me a check as they had said they would and insists that the one and only way they can give me my money back is to send it to my “no longer in existence” bank account. I ask to speak to a manager, who will not return my calls. I would advise that you avoid this company like the plague. They are friendly and helpful, only until they have received your year’s payment in advance. After that, they don’t care if your website works or not.
Charlie, I am both shocked and sorry to hear about the experience you had with Lunarpages. It hurts to read it. My experience is quite different but you certainly seem sincere. What was the reason Lunarpages would only send payment to the orginal bank account?
Well, I have an update for you. I did get hold of a manager at Lunar Pages today named Clay and he was very helpful and went the extra mile to try and get this resolved. It turns out that I misjudged the service person in billing, based on my past experiences with Lunar Pages. When the bank assured me that the payment had not come in, I believed them over Lunar Pages, but who could blame me? It turns out that my old bank made an error and did receive the payment a month ago. They didn’t put it into the records, it took quite a bit of digging to find it.
The bank insisted on returning the money to Lunar Pages rather than to me, even though both of us were on the phone (conference call) urging them to pay me directly. After several refusals to give it to me directly, I told the woman from the bank that our concern was that they had already held the payment for a month for no reason and I was not convinced that they would be in a hurry to return it to Lunar Pages, thereby making me wait even longer.
When the bank rep. dropped off the call, Clay told me not to worry, he would make sure that the check was cut today and he would deal with the bank independently to regain the payment Lunar Pages had made to them. PFF called me back and they had relented, but it is nice to know that Clay was willing to step up to the plate on my behalf.
Both Lunar Pages and PFF Bank and Trust said that it is their policy to do things the way that they were doing them, irregardless of the existence of the account or it’s closure. Clay stated that in the 3 years he had worked for Lunar Pages, no bank had ever taken the stance that PFF had. He said he’d dealt with 100’s of banks that all took care of getting the refund back to the customer.
I think their policies are along the line of a purchase at a store made with a credit card, they do not like to return cash, they issue a credit to the account instead. But, if it were a store and the account was closed, they would give cash, so I believe that Lunar Pages should cut a check.
I think Lunar Pages should change their policy to send the refund back to the customer when the account is closed or send it to another account of the customer’s choosing. Sending it to another entity for them to pay the customer back instead only slows down the payment to the customer. If that customer had horrible experiences with the company like I did, it only makes a bad situation worse.
It is too bad that Lunar Pages allows their support personnel to treat their customers so badly and to ignore requests for help. If the rest of the company performed as well as Clay did today, I would not have left. Even with all the problems I had over 9 months of being with them, I told one of the support reps. that I would stay if he would just fix the problem. He was the one that wiped my account clean and then I could no longer post my site or it’s changes to the net.
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