A few more posts to support my Love WordPress, Hate Recommended AN Hosting aka Midphase experience:

• Don’t Use AN Hosting details another horror story about AN Hosting where the site was shut down for a traffic spike. I cannot agree more strongly with their conclusion:
  

  Hopefully, wordpress.org will remove AN Hosting as a recommended provider. They were awesome during setup, but I feel they didn’t give me any options the first time an issue arose. For many who read this blog and someday hope to get a site on digg.com, think what would happen if you were hosted on AN Hosting. You’d get dugg and then shut off.

• Down again – Blogger M is for Myg writes:
  

  Okay, I think it’s official now. AN Hosting sucks ass.

  I have never dealt with so much downtime in a hosting service, ever. Add to that the fact that their customer support department, while very nice and quite responsive, is inept. Now you have every reason to move your shit to a new service.

  For example, when trying to get assistance for configuring an addon domain, I was told I had to upgrade my service to host the addon. Being a dumbass, I did it even though I didn’t think I needed to. I was right–I didn’t need to. The service person was proactive enough to contact me and let me know about the error, which I appreciated. However, he then downgraded my service plan farther than my original plan. Then the company kept the money I paid (upfront) and when I contacted them about a) restoring my service to my original plan and b) getting my money back, the poor bastard on the other end of the phone was so confused I had to walk him through the situation at *least* five times before he understood that I didn’t actually owe them any money. And then he still had to get his supervisor on the phone.

  Folks, that’s just one episode. I have at least four other stories like that, and I’ve only been with these people for about 10 weeks.

• Jason Scott’s ASCII blog has some comments:
  

  I had several accounts under Mid-Phase. I just cancelled them today because they automatically charge your account for renewal if you don’t fill out the “cancellation form on their website”. They give you NO WARNING that your checking account is being billed, which caused several ovedraft fees. I called and complained with their billing department, which was less than friendly with me, even though I was calm. He said that a link to the agreement should have been emailed to me when I signed up for the account. I went back and clicked the link, and the agreement was not at the URL they sent me when I activated the account. Granted the agreement is plainly at the bottom of their homepage nowadays, but how do I know it hasn’t changed? They charged my account $53, and will not refund it. I design several websites a year, and will never use them, nor will I recommend them again.
  Posted by: Jason | November 7, 2006 04:54 PM

  Midphase is the worst…..in three weeks we’ve had two down times including now for hours. business killer.
  i will post how bad whenever i can.
  Posted by: BSLM | December 31, 2006 03:09 PM

  Horrible. Read about it here.
  Posted by: Michael | January 4, 2007 03:48 PM

• And from Bryanboy, an article about his experience whose title we won’t cite, also has a set of links to other horror stories. Coupla points:
  

  Here’s the 411 on them: Midphase is a webhosting company formed by Zak (Zachary) Boca and Dan Ushman in 2003 from their dorm rooms and a $2,000 investment on their credit cards. Fast forward a few years later, they have over 50,000 customers supported from two offices and two datacenters.
  …
  I have a feeling Midphase is being run by 1 and only 1 person only and his name is Alexander. My god, looking at all the emails I got, there’s just too many Alexanders going on: “Alexander Morozov”, “Alexander Ilnitsky”, “Alex Shevchuk”. If you’re gonna pretend you outsource support to Russia/former republics, please use other names like “Snejana Onopka”, “Natasha Poly”, “Natalia Vodianova” and “Eugenia Volodina”.

• Overwhelming majority of comments here condemn Midphase, too.

It’s making me think that perhaps the $6.95/mo is just a ruse to upsell dedicated server accounts. Get a traffic spike and your site is shut down and you’re extorted for a lot more $ instead of a more reasonable monthly fee for excess usage.

Dear WordPress… WHY do you have AN Hosting / Midphase on your recommended hosts list?!?