Siteground Creates and Promotes Fake Awards

While you note that our approach is "spamming", we use our assets to our advantages - happy and loyal customers. We do not have top 10 sites, GoDaddy's massive budget or CloudAccesses stature in the Joomla! community (although we've hosted Joomla sites for almost a decade) so we decided to use an asset we have. Imagine the results if we'd asked all of our clients...

Anyway, I think the comments will be good for our business so appreciate the link to it.

Feel free to contact me privately if you wish to discuss.

Matt Russell
CEO

Steve,

Absolutely.

Please see http://www.webhostingbuzz.com/...-away.html

No Joomla review will count towards this although I still want to run it for brand awareness. I guess some bad timing and poor wording/confusion on my behalf caused this, so apologies for this.

ROTFL, I've just stumbled upon that Joomla RFPS page, and that is really funny, nearly ridiculous..

I think that this gives us (or at least, me) the opposite effect that company wanted to achieve.

Advertising that you won fake awards is FRAUD, plain and simple. If their marketing stoops this low to get customers, what else are they doing that's equally or even less ethical?

I'm glad I don't host with WebHostingBuzz and now I won't be tempted to in the future. Thanks for some great reporting!

Mat,

I have no idea how it came to your mind to create such nice spamming and how did you decided it may help.

In fact, it would not, it would obviously create mostly negative feelings against the company you run. To spam in such way the community site of an open source project, definitely could go in the top failures of the year for your industry.

Personally, I am never going to use the services of your company (and the other one spamming), and will "promote" these.

Damn! I obviously meant Siteground in my comment. Sheesh!

Think I have read all I need to here.
Which also confirms what I have been wondering for some time...

Love to see the ethics of some companies clearly exposed.

For the record, I don't think WebHostingBuzz has done anything different than many other Joomla! marketeers. I'm sure they are only following trends of the community they see.

I do however, believe Siteground is Googlewashing in very sneaky and unethical ways. You can't search for anything "Joomla" without them showing up - and the results are often useless and spammy. If you download and install one of their templates, you have to clean 3-4 links from the code. God forbid, you get a hosting account with them and they inject your demo content with useless links.

WebHostingBuzz : "although we've hosted Joomla sites for almost a decade"
has joomla! been going that long?

how do i claim my laptop for giving you a god review, despite the fact i dont host with you. are you sending out a "stop this nonsense" email also?

Ref Siteground... any joomla template search i do has the -siteground in it

Ivo,

I had no idea we'd have such a big response from customers (who are still posting from one email sent a week ago). Previous requests to our customers have resulted in 10 or so actually posting.

I'm sorry that you see it as spam (and I had no idea we'd get a response that big) so while I'm sure it has annoyed some people, it has actually given us a sales boost.

I apologise for treading on anyones toes and our intention was certainly not to generate hostility.

casey,

Thanks for the kind words. We certainly didn't intend to spam although I can understand if people are subscribed to the comments and had a bombardment of emails saying a similar thing all over the Christmas break, this caused some anger.

caeos,

Slip of tongue. It should have read Mambo before the two projects split.

To be fair, this is such common practise for businesses anywhere. How many offline companies "sponsor" awards and then manage to win an award or 4? It's a very common thing.

To me what siteground have done is no worse than link bait blog articles with fantastical headlines that then go on to be fairly mundane and not as fantastic as the title suggested. That is also fraud in a way isn't it?!

Okay, perhaps it wasn't the best example but seriously, i work for the direct marketing sector so get to see the nuts and bolts of companies marketing strategies in the UK all the time. This sort of stuff goes on every day!

There aren't many companies out there who haven't told massive porky pies about themselves to self promote.

well, Siteground certainly doesn't have a good reputation w/ BBB: http://www.bbb.org/new-york-ci...-ny-89942/

Regarding the Demo Hosting RFP and the spamming (and bickering between a couple of the respondents) - it confirms something I have believed for a long time - I'd like to see Joomla! go with Open Source Labs like many other free software projects, including GNOME, Apache Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Drupal, phpBB, etc.

Judging from the responses to this post, there does not appear to be any acknowledgement of what might be good for the Joomla! project and community. And, I don't expect a commercial company that is not part of our community to "worry about us." I certainly understand the need to do what's "good for business" and "brand awareness" - but I struggle with the logic of handing over our demo site and exposure to new users to a company focused on their bottomline (which of course they should be, don't get me wrong.)

It just seems to me that the goals are not congruent and we might regret this at some point. BTW - during the 1.5 beta, I hosted the demo sites at the University for awhile. That's another option - see if someone will do it for no charge.

Hi Amy,

With our proposal at least, it involved a revenue share with the Joomla! community per the RFP itself. We've used open source software since our inception - Linux, FreeBSD, Apache and all of the associated software required when running LAMP based servers.

While obviously we evaluated the business side of things (i.e. we couldn't throw money into a bottomless pit), we were eager to give something back to the community that has helped given us significant help in getting us to where we are.

I do not think a commercial company and an open source community have to be mutually exclusive.

Thanks,
Matt

To be fair, the RFP required a revenue share element to be considered, so, I wouldn't really call that "giving something back." Personally, I'd rather see us build up our contributing community than outsourcing. The commercial companies within our community should be able to support our operations. My 2 cents.

Well, the tactics are used because they get results and most don't even bother to do what Steve did here. They see the awards and take it as fact. I'm with Steve here, they have some sound SEO tactics, then some flat out dishonest ones. I would rather spread the word in other ways that still get good SEO/SEM/SMM results.

Thanks for the post Steve!

Steve,

Thanks for letting people know about these "shady" marketing tactics. I signed up once for Sitegrounds services but never again. I was looking for a service such as Simpleweb (back in the day before Simpleweb existed, and before I had any idea of what I was doing with Joomla and was severely disappointed. I'm glad that I was able to cancel my services and get a refund before the "refund" period ran out. Frankly, I would never use Siteground for hosting nor would I recommend them to anyone regardless of what marketing they use.

Steve,

I'm more than happy to engage, discuss and take criticism where due and I think we did hit the blog comments a bit too hard (I check regularly and it still surprises me to see more comments).

I know we're not a big player in the Joomla! or the open source marketspace and it is something I want to address in 2010. I'd like us to become more involved so I'll be actively looking for discussion, attending some conferences/seminars and contributing some skins/themes to various projects (without linkbacks).

It was actually my friends at Rochen that linked me to this post and I apologise if I've taken this off topic but wanted the chance to respond to some of comments from other users.

I like the site though and am going to mention it when we update our wiki with useful sites/resources.

Happy New Year all,

Matt

Personally I don't give a rat's ass about awards since the Internet is full of "vote us to be the best of the best" -crap. I choose my hosting companies based on personal reference which is much more reliable than all the award images and flash banners that hosting companies have on their sites. As we all know not everything is the ultimate truth on the Internet

Siteground.com is a SCAM. They should not be voted as best web hosting company for 2009.

I have had accounts with them for the past 5 years.

I had two accounts as of June 23rd, 2009. One account which also had two subdomains (and domain names purchased through Siteground) I'll refer to as Account A. On June 23rd I went to Siteground and received notification that it was due for renewal. I renewed the account for one year.

I had a second account, which also had two subdomains (domain names purchased through sitegroud), we will refer to this as Account B. Account B, on June 23rd 2009, was NOT due for renewal because it had a TWO YEAR contract that had only used a portion of that at that time and I would have renewed it at the appropriate time.

However on June 23rd, 2009 I went to fix some problems associated with Account A. What I was able to do for five years prior was no longer allowed. I could not figure out why.

I contacted SiteGround and they told me that they no longer offered those features on a basic account and I needed to UPGRADE to a DEDICATED server for approximately $100 a month.

I told them that was unacceptable. I contacted SiteGround both by phone and with online tickets. I stated within 24 hours of renewal of Site A that their terms of services had changed and this was no longer suitable for my needs and that I was canceling my renewal.

They stated several times that they REFUSED to cancel my renewal and refund my money.

I then got onto this facebook site and politely informed its readers of certain of these problems. I was then contacted on facebook and via email by a SiteGround representative associated with this Facebook Page stating that she will take the necessary actions to rectify the situation and refund my money.

INSTEAD what has happened is that SiteGround CHARGED ME for the RENEWAL of Account A (that I instructed was the be cancelled) and additionally it SHUT DOWN Account B which I was still under a previous 2-year contract with and was "willing" to live with it until it expired.

I found a new hosting service which is honest and does not operate as a scam.

I have been continuously in contact with Siteground throughout this demanding the proper refund of my renewal of Account A and now to deal with the fact that in their terminating the Account B (before its contract ran out), without my knowledge, permission, or advanced notification - I lost all the emails and websites hosted on that account, have lost business, the businesses that were on that account lost their business, and I am out not only the lack of the REFUND for Account A but for DAMANGES from the loss of Account B (and the domain names that were associated with it as subdomains).

SiteGround is a registered business in PANAMA. Its support (phone and internet) are located in BULGARIA. They refuse to put me in touch with ANYONE of "supervisor" or higher status on the phone. They are rude and continue to "parrot" the lies that the phone representative is instructed to tell me, contradicting the facts, and still refuse to place me through to a supervisor or someone with authority to rectify the situation.

In fact that ADMIT that on June 23rd Site A was RENEWED. Site A is STILL ACTIVE (despite my demand to CANCEL that renewal - and is how I have been communicating with them). I received a BILL on my credit card for the renewal of June 23rd.

I have NEVER been refunded that money. And now they claim two contradictory things: (1) That Site B had EXPIRED and that is why it is no longer active; (2) That they "refunded" me for Site B.

If it had EXPIRED there would have been nothing to REFUND. And had the REFUND I had asked for been given that account would no longer exist. And had they not TERMINATED an active and paid account (two year contract) Site B would not have had all of the files, folders, and emails delated and would have continued through to its expiration date.

SiteGround refuses to allow me access to anyone with authority to speak about these issues and continues to LIE (as I show with LOGIC above). SiteGround is a SCAM.

I DEMAND that SiteGround have an OFFICIAL of the Company, not a parroted phone operator, contact me directly by phone to discuss this (and resolve this matter) - but they continuously refuse.

I will be looking for who owns the Servers located in Dallas Texas that this Panamanian registered company is using for this business and I will be seeking CIVIL action in the United States for loss of earnings and income, damages, as well as the refund of the money for the canceled renewal of Account A and the second year that was previously paid for when Account B was terminated.

Until such time I will continue to advise people to STAY FAR AWAY from Siteground and DO NOT DO BUSINESS with them.