Hosting Zoom Can't Host WordPress Sites?!?
After a long correspondence with Hosting Zoom support, I have discovered that for $99 per year, it is apparently not possible to host a WordPress site at Hosting Zoom without problems. I've been experiencing 500 errors (internal server error) so frequently recently that my blog is barely reachable let alone 'writable'. Hosting Zoom technical support (who do, I must add, respond swiftly to support requests) claim that a WordPress script is using too much memory / CPU / resources / whatever. We're talking a FRESH WORDPRESS INSTALL here (one I installed for testing purposes alongside this one)!
Suzanna,
The WordPress script uses too much memory in a single PHP process for this specific shared hosting environment.Putting it bluntly, your hosting plan does not provide you with sufficient resources to allow WordPress to perform perfectly. Don't get me wrong, it's capable of running it - but not to an extent that you're able to serve multiple user's with.
HZ Support Manager
Huh? Multiple users?
Roy and I host www.chokingonpopcorn.com at Hosting Zoom too and that 's a much more popular site than my Bilinguiblog. It gets 500 errors occasionally, but not nearly as often. It's located on a different server though which may make all the difference. suzero.com is hosted on OCEAN.
HZ are now suggesting I upgrade my account type to ensure a working WordPress install. Why would I do that if my current account includes no less than 20 SQL databases (I'm only using two) and an automated WordPress install by Fantastico? I don't want a dedicated server for my lil' old personal blog. That would be a little overkill, don't you agree?
All in all, I am appalled at the conclusion of this problem. I was happy with them for a couple of years, but things have been going downhill over the last 6 months or so. Does this happen to all big hosters? They all seem to get too big for their boots and appear to be over-selling their server space.
I'll be looking out for another host - at least for my WordPress sites.
Meanwhile, please feel free to download and use the banner above if it fits your Hosting Zoom experience too. I had fun making it 
March 24th, 2008 - 00:11
I will put the banner on zeroblack.org which seems to have the exact same problem. What a coincidence
March 25th, 2008 - 17:44
Alas, an update with bad news: I spoke too soon about http://www.chokingonpopcorn.com working fine as that server appears to be down today too. Endless 500 errors and that exactly on the day Roy is trying to develop a new theme for a client. Enough to wanna pull your hair out!
April 2nd, 2008 - 16:00
Thank God! I am not going crazy!! I too have a WordPress blog on Hosting Zoom’s Ocean server. http://www.wombok.com/blog/
For the last 2 weeks or so I’ve been pulling my hair out trying to fix it. I’ve had an outstanding ticket with HZ support for more than a week. Every day they email me to say they have locked out some “abusers” and my site works ok for about 12 hrs, then it’s back to overloads again.
I’ve tried tweaking .htaccess and wp-config.php but am pretty much in the dark and it seems to only provide temporary relief.
The server status in cpanel often show 10+ CPU load. Sometimes as high as 28! I did a reverse lookup the Ocean server IP and found it has 512 domains registered to it! Not sure how this compares to other provides, but it does seem a bit high.
I’ve been with hosting zoom for 2 years. The very few times I’ve had problmes HZ support have resolved them within a few hours. Their service and support has been without fault, however after these past 2 weeks I am left feeling disappointed and starting to think I need to move my business elsewhere.
Please let me know if you come to any solution. I’ll do likewise if I hear anything.
April 2nd, 2008 - 16:12
@ Chris: well, my solution is to move to another host. The fact that you were able to leave a comment and can read this means I am safely over to (in this case) Pair.com.
I was also happy with HZ up until now. They have a tendency to reply to e-mails about sites being down with “well it works for us” kind of e-mails, but on the whole good support. They have really overplayed their hand with OCEAN (and possibly other servers too as one of my sites was on the C1 server and ran into problems soon after I posted the above).
Pair.com is much more expensive if you look at GB/$ ratio, but who needs 20GB storage, really? Even Pair warned that WordPress can use a lot of resources and they actually recommend using Movable Type – but that’s not an option for my sites right now.
Let me know if you experience any improvement at HZ and good luck!
April 2nd, 2008 - 16:35
@Suzero, shame to hear you had to change providers. I really hope I can avoid that. I’d set my own webserver up at home if I had the space (I live in studio flat in central london).
I’ve asked HZ to move me to another server. Fingers crossed.
April 21st, 2008 - 19:30
A quick update to this story. It’s been three weeks since Suzero and I moved our sites to Pair Networks, and so far it’s been great. The first thing I noticed is how pages on our movie blog take only have the time to process that they did at HZ. We’ve also had no downtime at all. None. Zip.
Pair is more expensive that HZ is, especially if your need lots of space. But I feel that so far it’s been money well spent.
Pair rulez!
April 22nd, 2008 - 12:24
Just thought I’d let you all know how things have gone for me.
Well, I’m still with Hosting Zoom! And guess what? Everything is working again!
A few weeks ago I was ready to pack my bags and leave Hosting Zoom, such a shame after 2 years of nearly flawless service. I had half a dozen outstanding tickets with their support desk and felt they were constantly giving me the run around.
I had started to look at other providers when I decided to contact the HZ Support Manager. To my surprise I received a somewhat positive reply, suggesting my account be moved from their “Zoom” package to their “Clustered Failover” package. The cost to me was to be $4 (apparently that’s the price difference between the two packages).
Considering the cost and inconvenience of moving to another provider, I decided to give Hosting Zoom one last try. Call me stupid, but I kind of expected everything to be sorted within a couple of days. It wasn’t. In the end it was about a week before my account had been fully migrated. I also had a bit of reconfiguring to do because the web server and mysql servers were now on different boxes.
It’s been 2 weeks now and my google analytics graph of 500 errors (i had embedded the google code on a custom 500 page), shows a steep decline from several hundred per day to just just 1 or 2 every few days. I am very happy with site performance.
So for now at least, I’m sticking to Hosting Zoom.
August 14th, 2008 - 21:14
Its so funny that i’m reading this as i am also with HZ and only installed and started testing wordpress and got the dreaded internal server error 500 also and after countless tickets the answers to my questions were dreadful and they also suggested i move my account to their higher paid dedicated package, the cheek!
So im in search of a new hosting provider for the up and coming blog im going to release but im scared of cpu resources now and cant find anyone as i always manage to find a bad review especially towards wordpress!!!!!1
September 11th, 2008 - 00:04
Marek, we moved to pair.com. They are more expensive, but so far so good with WordPress.
October 22nd, 2008 - 10:25
http://hostingzoom.com/blog/
Hosting Zoom has recently started using WordPress themselves. I wonder whether we’ll be seeing many 500 errors on that blog…