Top Reasons to not use Yahoo! Hosting

Share Your Thoughts ↓
11.29.2007 - 8:57 am

I try not to write such posts, but the frustrations expressed by my clients who hosts on Yahoo! Small Business compels me to point out the obvious shortcomings of a popular host. This non-exhaustive list is in no particular order, it’s just the top 4 reasons why I would not recommend or host any on my sites on Yahoo!

One-Click-Install of Outdated Software

A client recently used the one click install feature to add WordPress to her site, within days it was hacked and she lost everything she had moved from another CMS (luckily she still had her backups). The problem was the defunct version of WordPress that Yahoo! installed; WP version 2.0.2, which beats Al Gore’s hacked sites WordPress version. Yahoo! claims to be partners with WordPress.org and provide search capabilities for the official WordPress sites, yet the version they install on thousands of user sites is full of holes prone to malicious attacks and hijacks.

Forces to use Yahoo! Mail, no PHPMail

This is somewhat funny and restrictive setup that Yahoo! Hosting has in place to screw users from using phpMail functions. The most common addon on any new WordPress site is the contact form, yet Yahoo! wont allow you to use one. The only situation when it would work is if the from email ID entered in the Contact Form is from the same domain as the site you are on. For example, if you are hosting the domain example.com on Yahoo! Hosting, the only people who can use the contact form are those with emails like someone@example.com, essentially email ID’s set with the same domain! Does that even make sense? Their reason is, if you had access to send emails to and from your site, you might use the privilege to spam someone else. Privilege to Spam? Yahoo! assume that its subscribers are spammers and treat them like one irrespective of if you really are one or not. While there are ways around this issue, it is not worth the time and effort.

Restrictive Controls and no .htaccess Access

Although this feature is mostly used by advanced users, they don’t let users have access to their own .htaccess files. What this could mean is, you are not allowed to set up redirects, and if you do manage to set one up from within the WP install, Yahoo! will delete the file and if you are the ‘unlucky types’, it might even kick you out of the system completely without the opportunity to restore or reverse the .htaccess edits. Lame.

Customer Support

I ended up calling Yahoo! on behalf of my client and was on hold for a good 50+ minutes just to hear the guy on the other end tell me he will “get the engineers to look at the issue the next morning” and that “the issue will be resolved in 3 to 5 days“. I replied (in astonishment) “3 to 5 days?” and he replied very calmly, “that’s less than a week” (almost as if service in “less than a week” should make me feel special!). Obviously Yahoo! Hosting thinks your site is not important and can be down 5 days, after all, why bother rushing their engineer to look into petty matters when they could be spending it on keeping up the number 1 site in the world.

Need more?

I’ll let the readers add the rest using the comment form below.

Spam, Technology, Web, Web Hosting, WP

Resources, Tips

onebizymama

December 4, 2007 • 4:19 am

That is soo rite! I ended my hosting with Yahoo last year because it wasn’t flexible. Even the domain registration is quite complicated, and charging another $$ for the security hidden whois.

Linda the Website Design Tutor

December 10, 2007 • 5:35 pm

I have had similar problems with GoDaddy or similar type hosting options.

It is hard to explain to newbies why they need cpanel type access. Most of them just go for the price and find out later what their decision cost them.

Remember: you want Fantastico, SQL database, .htaccess, PERL, awstats, etc. You may not know what this means, but you will be glad you have them later.

Sunny

December 10, 2007 • 7:59 pm

@ Linda the Website Design Tutor

I don’t even think it is the price, Yahoo! hosting is no way less expensive, it familiarity- people buy hosting from Yahoo or GoDaddy because they are familiar with their names and think just because they can search the internet well or register your domain they should be able to do a good job of hosting too!

Elias the Linux Hosting Guy

December 11, 2007 • 9:25 am

“the issue will be resolved in 3 to 5 days” – now this is ridiculous. You know, it’s funny how all the big names offer hosting services that are simply not that good. I wander what would be if at least one of them was offering a rock solid hosting. Probably they would kill all the competition. However, something else applies, I guess. When you are such a big name, it’s so easy to grow too fast. This means that you have to rapidly hire personnel that is not prepared well to handle such a load.

It’s far better to use a smaller company which has web hosting as their primary business and get response to all your tickets in 10-15 minutes, not days.

December 11, 2007 • 4:44 pm

@ Elias the Linux Hosting Guy

Not sure if small is the way to go either, what if the company folds and leaves with your unsaved data(base)?

December 12, 2007 • 11:10 am

Well, not that small. Compared to the big guys, I would consider a web hosting company with 10 000 clients to be a small one. It already has some maturity, but is still hungry for success and ready to go an extra mile… This is the best combination for me.

December 12, 2007 • 12:42 pm

10K clients is a good number, I agree.

How many machines do you think is needed to host 10K users? I bet Yahoo is cramming 1000+ per machine with daily backups!

Sheryl Hamlin

December 21, 2007 • 10:46 am

Yahoo! also doesn’t allow access to the web server error logs, which is a nuisance, but not fatal. Indeed they treat clients as idiots. But their uptime is near perfection and their ability to catch email spammers is very strong. Our application runs well at Yahoo!(plugandplaywebmaster.com) which makes website management and maintenace a breeze, so one doesn’t have to use the Yahoo! tools. I am impressed with HostGator’s environment and their serious support team and would recommend HostGator for webhosting.

Dave

January 25, 2008 • 3:10 pm

I will never use Yahoo web hosting again. They were a complete nightmare to work with and leaving them was also a pain. Working with the Australian registrar they’re “partners” with was even more of a problem. Never again. I advise anyone thinking about using yahoo webhosting to stay the hell away!

Will

February 5, 2008 • 7:24 pm

Yep. I agree. I am looking for a solution to have a php contact form on my yahoo page, but it doesn’t allow e-mail to be sent. this is a big pain. also you can only have .htm error files, what the heck? what about support for php? the error logs thing is also a thorn in your side.

February 5, 2008 • 7:33 pm

Information about a contact form on for yahoo hosting can be found here: http://www.coffeecup.com

Matt-n-Raleigh

March 21, 2008 • 3:57 am

What is the process to switch from Yahoo to a regular hosting company?

March 21, 2008 • 11:40 am

@ Matt-n-Raleigh

There is no one method to do it, essentially you need to back your database, your theme/template, the plugins list, then switch the DNS address with your current host to point to your new host.

On your new host, install WordPress and add your theme and plugins, create a new database and populate with the downloaded copy from your old site, wait for the DNS to switch.

This way, there is no break between the DNS switching and your site will stay on all the time.

Bart

April 6, 2008 • 7:13 am

Yahoo’s webhosting is a complete nightmare. Paricularly if you have a store on their webhosting platform. They cram ~1000 sites on each server, assign 4 or more IP addresses to your site that change frequently (dynamic IP addresses)and won’t allow you to set up real 301s while they generate multiple urs for your site. The result is that only your homepage will be ranked for just a few unimportant keywords. If you want our business to die a slow & painful death, then go with Yahoo merchant solutions / web hosting.

Zahra

August 23, 2009 • 9:26 am

Thank you for your post. It made me realize that the multiple work-arounds I was having to put in place to get my WordPress blog to work on Yahoo were just not worth it. I switched to BlueHost and everything is working just fine