Planethippo Reviews 110

Amended this to 1 star, still no response and their phone line is permanently busy as if they do not wish to take calls.
Moved to Planethippo a few years ago, plus points they are cost effective and generally reliable and support up to now has been good. However now I want to move my domain elsewhere and apparently providing a code is something that the general support have had to escalate upwards, 3 days in and absolutely no progress or positive feedback, this is not rocket science and no feedback is somewhat worrying.

Today I received a notice that their prices for web hosting were going up on 1st December. In my case, from £14.40 to £24.99 per year. I tolerated the not-so-great support and slow web page loading times while the price was relatively low. I put up with not being able to renew via the client area, and had to raise a support ticket earlier this year. But if the price is going to suddenly shoot up like that, with less than a month's warning, it's time to leave.

Edit: In response to Planet Hippo's comments on this review: The entire problem was that I couldn't renew normally via the client area, like I had in the previous three years. I had to raise a support ticket, as I saw an error message when trying to pay: "The country of your IP address did not match the billing address country you entered so we cannot accept your order". I was in fact in the the same country as my billing address.

I was then told by support that "While checking the root cause found you are ordering renewal of your domain out of your home town". Which wasn't actually the case, I was in my home town when renewing the domain. And, even if I had been outside my home town, why should that matter? At that point I gave up, and asked them to raise the manual invoice. My original support ticket was raised at 08:11. Apart from a "We're taking a look at this now for you. We'll get back to you ASAP." email, the next email from Planet Hippos was at 11:59, three hours and 48 minutes after the original email. The email telling me that the invoice was created was at 14:42. So, six and a half hours to resolve, not a "couple of hours" as stated by Planet Hippo. But regardless of finally being able to renew my domain, the fact that I had to go through that process was not a good customer experience.

There was another occasion with a support query about a cgi-bin script, raised on 19/04/2024. After a few emails were exchanged, it ended with a Planet Hippo response on 25/04/2024: "We have forwarded this issue to the senior administrator for review and will provide an update shortly.". That was the last I heard of it, and I see that the ticket was closed.

With regard to the "your website is none existent" comment, that is not the case. I do have a website, which is admittedly small, but it is there. When I last measured it, it seemed to have a slow response time, but today it's fine. Maybe I just tested it on a bad day.

Lastly, re: "PlanetHippo haven't increased prices in over 10 years", I can understand prices rising, it's the large jump (a 73.5% increase) and short notice period (24 days) that jars.

I found the response time for tickets to be very good during business hours. Also the people where very knowledgeable and fixed my issue very quickly.

Responded to my query very quickly. They sent some clear instructions for me to follow which I did and it was all fixed less than 24 hours from my initial request.

Needed a domain and website hosting plan for my business , support was critical for me. Got to say that the support team have been fantastic in responding to my needs, can't fault them to be honest.

Avoid like the plague.

Be warned these people do not know how to run a business. cant contact them, not replying to tickets

server keeps going down without warning.

all my files are on this server and i use the emails with 365 for my business.

there are ten times better hosting companies. do your rhesearch

I have been their customer since 2016 and the service I received from this company has deteriorated significantly over time, to the point where I was forced to switch to another hosting provider. It started when their servers went down few years ago, then all of the communication from them was getting lost - no emails were coming through to my gmail. They suggested that gmail may be blocking them and I should give them a different email address that is not associated with Google. My websites would randomly go down, and email accounts associated with my domains would be down. Recently when I tried investigating what was wrong I couldn't even access their website in order to log in to my portal. They never answered any of my calls. I also noticed all of my previous invoices between 2017-2020 were gone. I could access 2016 and from 2021 onwards, but when I asked Customer Support to help me get access to the rest they told me to check my old emails for those. Technical support became so bad that when I did get response to my queries they looked like they were run through Google Translate. Responses didn't make sense, they referred to features that aren't even present in their customer portal, and were very dismissive. Eventually they just started closing my support tickets without answering them. I urge anyone who is considering Planet Hippo for their hosting or domains to look elsewhere. They are very unreliable and shockingly unprofessional.

I can't stress enough how much I appreciate planet hippos customer service.I Forgot to renew my domain by 1 day and and they renewed it without any extra fees. I had the same thing with go daddy and they parked the domain and tried to charge me £80 to get it back. This is why I will always chose planet hippo

I have been using Planethippo since 2016, they offer a very good value for money service. There is always a reply on the helpful ticket support system, and Issues are always resolved.

Very helpful and resolved my issue quickly keeping me informed.

Great customer service, very helpful.

Very helpful, quick and efficient services, great support.

Terrible company. Despite moving my domain elsewhere and cancelling all services in 2017 due to their performance issues & poor customer service, they have continued to send out invoices, and for two years tried to take payment from my credit card (it was impossible to remove my details from their site) to the extent that I notified my provider that the payments were fraudulent and they were reversed. Unfortunately, Planet Hippo continue to issue annual invoices, including one issued earlier this week that they are now claiming is overdue! Would highly recommend that anyone thinking of using their 'services' goes elsewhere - literally any other provider would be better than Planet Hippo!

Thank you for your excellent support.
After being a planet hippo customer for over three years we remain very happy and wanted to write this review after a recent support request.
As usual the support was excellent and nothing is too much trouble.

I run a number of websites, which is ridiculous because I'm barely html literate. I therefore test the patience of the support teams at all my hosting companies.
Planethippo is the cheapest hosting and domain company I have so far found but they are still happy to get stuck in, resolve problems I've usually created for myself and be patient when I don't immediately get it.

After my post 4 days ago, I now find that two of the websites I have hosted on Planet Hippo have gone down. It very much looks as though this company is on a rapid slide into collapse.

These guys are appalling. I would highly recommend purchasing a domain from another company.

Ah ha, I'm not the only one having problems with Planet Hippo.My account has been suspended to even though I've paid recently. I cannot log on as the security question wont accept my answer even though it has NEVER been changed. Today all Planet Hippos webpages are down "We can’t connect to the server at w@@.planethippo.co.uk." They must be in big trouble. I did notice there telephone number went missing on there site ,allways not a good sign.

My hosting account was suspended last week because of an "unpaid invoice" of which I have no knowledge - as far as I know my account is up to date.
I can do nothing about it until I can log in so I'm stymied.
They don't respond to any of my attempts to contact them by email (which is the only avenue open to me) so it looks like another member's deduction that they may be circling the drain could be true.
Needless to say, I won't be staying after this..