Canvas Host

David, Canvas Host Owner, (or one of his minions) had my review pulled which I suppose is one way to keep your business rating high. The fact that he went to these lengths to squash the truth about his business really underscores the main complaint I have with Canvas Host… the guy is an autocratic control freak.
Unilocal said that my initial review did not provide enough detail about my customer experience. That’s totally fine with me. I didn’t want to go on a rant when posting my one star review but if more examples is what’s needed, here you go.
Unilocal said: The best reviews provide context, detail and perhaps even a helpful tip or two. Feel free to post a new review with more information about your experience with this business. OK Unilocal.Here it is.
I signed up with Canvas Dreams some years ago and it was a HORRIBLE experience. Not disappointing. Not bad. HORRIBLE! David, the Owner, is a *REAL* jerk! Combative best describes him. Barely a day went by when there wasn’t some e-​mail complaint from him about some trivial thing. It was like living with someone who’s always telling you to pick up your socks, wash behind your ears and generally treating you like you are five years old. I did not sign up with Canvas Dreams because I needed a mommy. I signed up because I needed a reliable, reasonably priced web hosting service that was customer oriented and offered features and capabilities that were important to me. As it turned out, Canvas Dreams offered NONE of these attributes!
I left them for a *MUCH* better local hosting company. They were absolutely great. But, as luck would have it, Canvas Dreams wound up buying them just a few months later. Darn!
So I left Canvas Dreams a second time and have been with Dreamhost for almost 5 years. I love them. MUCH better customer service, MUCH more reliable and no grief from any of their employees! Basically, they are everything that Canvas Host isn’t.
If the above horrible experience explanation isn’t enough, David, the Owner, is totally anal about anyone being logged in via SSH for more than five minutes. He would routinely kill my connection, often when I was in the middle of editing a file or something. MAJOR pain and totally inappropriate.
And as mentioned earlier, David had no shortage of complaints about trivial things that he didn’t like. I’ve been a systems engineer for many decades and always employ «best practices» so David’s complaints typically fell into the control freak category rather than anything having to do with most companies’ violation of terms. To put this into perspective, I have been with Dreamhost since 2011 and they have never complained to me about anything ever.
In case you need more, David also interfered with the transfer of my domain name to my new hosting provider. I had to file a complaint with ICANN to get that resolved.
And God forbid I should open a trouble ticket about anything! David does not like trouble tickets and will complain and belittle you until you get the message and quit creating them.
Many of the trouble tickets I created had to do with my site being totally down or loading pages VERY slowly. The standard reply from Canvas Dreams was, «it’s working fine from my PC». Well, with all due respect, who cares? It’s not working from my PC and I’m getting e-​mails from people telling my that my site is either down or loading very slowly. That’s what Canvas Host should have been responding to. These issues were never addressed.
So poor reliability, unresponsive support and an Owner who clearly did not value my business. Is that specific enough to let this updated review stand?
The shame of it is, I totally value and support local businesses. And it’s highly likely that had David not CHASED ME AWAY AS A CUSTOMER I would have referred others to Canvas Host. Instead, Dreamhost has earned my business loyalty and over the years I’ve referred quite a few people to them. Way to keep loyal customers and generate new business David!
Finally, there was some saber rattling from David about how he’d get even with me after I filed a complaint with the BBB. We shall see if that resumes once David realizes that getting my legitimate and accurate negative reviews removed is fruitless. Should there be additional threats or retaliation from David I will update this review accordingly.
So… I hope this updated review provides sufficient detail about my customer experience to prevent David (or his functionary) from having it pulled again. I’m sure David will like this review much better than my previous one which was obviously not complimentary but at least it didn’t showcase in painful detail what a lousy outfit Canvas Hosts is to deal with.
I am generally not one to rant but since Unilocal requested a rant, here it is.
If there was a zero star choice, Canvas Host would have gotten it.

I’ve used Canvas Host (formerly Canvas Dreams) for years to host my own business websites, including
and
, as well as those for a number of clients. They have excellent service and tech support, plus they are a benefit company that takes care of its employees and is powered by 100% clean energy, so I am surprised to see lukewarm reviews here.
CH thinks that Unilocal is filtering positive reviews – and I have heard others say they do that unfairly – so that is likely why we aren’t seeing other 5-​star reviews.
Thanks for the great service through the years, CH team!

They did respond to me the next morning and fixed the problem. They seemed like they waned to be helpful. They said that due to an emergency a staff member wasn’t available in the evening to handle problems. I’m upgrading my review, hoping they’ll have policies in the future to ensure ²⁴⁄₇ coverage.

I am a professional web developer and I’ve been using CanvasDreams (now CanvasHost) on most of my projects for years. They are extremely reliable and provide exceptional customer service and technical support.
I’m shocked to see the negative reviews on here, most of which say nothing of significance. I’ve never left a review on Unilocal before but felt compelled to create an account and post this five star review as I am a big fan of Canvas Host.

I have had a lot of problems with this company. They are now «holding» my domain name so I cannot go through another company to pay for the renewal! BTW, I wanted to use them because I thought they were local. They are NOT local. My last actual phone call with them was with someone in England. It may have just been someone on vacation, but after the hassle I went through I don’t trust anything they say. Their service started great, but then they «migrated» their servers and I’ve been screwed ever since.
I’m going somewhere else and if they don’t release my domain name I will file suit (my part time job is with an attorney).

My website was hacked because of a bad Wordpress plugin. I thought I would have to rebuild the whole site, but when I talked with Canvas Dream’s tech support, they said they were able to restore it back to exactly how it appeared a few days prior. Once restored, I was able to delete the plugin in question and save my site.
I like that they are a local company and that they are focused on the environment. The «wind power» is them just buying offset credits, but at least it’s a start. They should implement a better phone system for support — it seems like it’s just one line, but they call you back pretty quickly. Overall, I highly recommend them.
UPDATE — 11÷15÷13
I’m having trouble with my site again, but haven’t been able to get it fixed for a couple of days. Every time I call the phone number it is busy — no opportunity to even leave a voice mail. I’ve emailed a couple of times and updated help tickets, but am still waiting in limbo. I’ve got to lower my rating from 5 stars down to 3. They seem like good guys, but the website problem is affecting my nonprofit’s ability to accept registrations.

The people are nice and the equipment is good…
BUT…
I’ve referred a few people to Canvas Dreams, and they’ve each come back to me after having had bad experiences, reporting poor and/​or labyrinthine customer service, website mishaps and erasures, viruses in the servers, unwanted web design or domain sign-​up solicitations, and outages. A few even went through the hassle of changing to new providers following their dissatisfaction.

As a more expensive web hosting provider, I expect their services — including customer service — to be better than excellent.
While I love the idea of buying local, small business, and green, I’m not willing to forgo solid service or endorse Canvas Dreams to my customers when, as it currently stands, they can get a much better value for their money elsewhere.