I've been an Ipowerweb customer since 2002. I have been happy with the hosting, and never had to contact customer service. When I started having speed issues while accessing their control panel I called customer service in early 2006. They suggested migrating my website to one of their new servers. They touted it as faster, better, etc. Unfortunately I've had nothing but problems since migrating. My problems are not related to the hosting itself. I don't monitor my pages, so I don't know if my site is down. I use my site as a billboard for my services and also as an email filter.

    My problems with the new server revolve around the email service. IT SUCKS. I create and delete email addresses on my site as a way to cut down on spam. For instance, if I'm entering a contest I create a new email, then delete it after the contest is over. I thought I was being smart, but Ipowerweb has absolutely screwed this whole process up. Let me explain how. I forward all of my website email to one email at another company (Yahoo). This allows me to sign in through webmail on yahoo to one account and not have to sign into 40 different accounts (yes I have 40 separate emails). After migration I started getting normal emails with a tag saying "SPAM" in the subject line. Unfortunately, these emails were not spam, but I was getting plenty of spam that wasn't marked. This was just an annoyance, but I wanted it fixed. I tried contacting customer service and found that their tier 1 reps are idiots (a person with intelligence less than a 3 year old). Their main objective is to tell you that they don't see any problems, and if you just read their extensive help tutorials (these are so rudimentary you couldn't possibly be taught anything) that you will be able to set spam levels properly. Well, I hadn't even set spam filtering up, it was set to "no", so that wasn't the problem, but it took an hour for tier 1 to believe me. So I get sent to a Tier 2 rep, also known as an imbecile (intelligence from 3 to 7 years old). Tier 2 says he's fixed the problem. I start getting emails that don't have any "SPAM" in the heading and I'm a happy camper. But then suddenly I'm not getting any email. HMMMMM, I usually get at least 1 email a day, and mostly get around 5. So I send myself a test email. I don't get it. So someone at Ipowerweb had screwed up my email completely. Starting over at tier 1 again I went through the tiers and finally starting getting email again.

    My next problem was with an email that I get every day from Ebay. Ebay allows you to set up searches and when new products are listed that meet these search criteria ebay sends a notification email to you. Guess what, I haven't gotten one for several months now through my website emails. I changed my email on ebay to my yahoo account, and lo and behold, I was able to receive them. After reading some comments on the web regarding Ipowerweb, I can only assume that these emails have been flagged by Ipowerweb as spam and are not being relayed through. Too bad they can't figure out how to whitelist servers like some companies are able to. I spent alot of time on the phone and through email on this one, and Ipowerweb claims that they don't see a problem, and that I must be doing something on my end. That's their pat response, the customer is the problem. There's never anything wrong on their end. I even had a run in with a guy that was so rude that I came close to sending a letter to the president of the company. I was telling him how to replicate my problem but he didn't want to listen to me, told me there wasn't a problem and that he wasn't going to do anything more. I was pretty furious over this one. I'd never actually had anyone at Ipowerweb be this aggressive. I was just trying to help him out with a testing strategy so that he could fix the problem. This guy wasn't interested. He'd sent an email to my account, he could see it worked, and so as far as he was concerned, there was no problem. So I just gave up and have never tried to do anything else about the fact that I know there are emails that I should probably be getting, but aren't.

    My next problem came up recently, I was getting a ton of spam to one of my addresses, so I deleted it. So far, so good, except within 2 weeks I was getting emails addressed to the deleted address, forwarded to my yahoo address. Tried sending emails to customer support, but as usual they are extremely dim, and don't have a clue as to what could be happening, they asked me to send them the email address and my password for that address so they could look into it. I sent an email back saying there was no account, or password to send, because it doesn't exist. They just can't comprehend how this is happening. I frankly don't know how either, because when I send emails to the deleted address it pops back to me as undeliverable, but every day I receive 3 to 5 emails that look like they are going to the deleted address, and Ipowerweb is forwarding it to my Yahoo account. My only guess on this one is that Ipowerweb had hackers get into their system and have stolen my forwarding address, or maybe Ipowerweb is selling my information, or maybe Ipowerweb is actually sending these spam, because the headers clearly show they are coming through Ipowerweb. Either way I'm getting emails that I don't want.

    My bottom line is this. Please don't use this company if you care about your email accounts. The creation and deletion of these accounts are easy and straight forward. Unfortunately they have way too many things going on in the background that you'll have absolutely no way of controlling. I'm pissed that I've paid for a year of service from a company that is marginal at best. I've been looking into other hosting companies, but it seems that all of them have their issues. I just want my email to work, but in this day of spamming, is there any company that doesn't do this behind the scenes filtering? I want to decide what email I get, not some pimply kid that doesn't know the first thing about programming, or how to test their programming once its done.

Summary of Ipowerweb / Ipower problems:

They filter emails behind the scenes and you won't get all the emails that you should.
Even after deleting website email accounts you will receive emails (this only relates to
      forwarding).
You could get emails marked as "SPAM" even though they aren't.
You will get emails not marked as "SPAM" that are spam.
They have horrible customer service.    
      I have tried all forms of customer service including online chat, phone, and email.