free webspace  






Portland

Our free web hosting review is no longer available for this previously listed free website host.

This web host was removed from our database, possibly (usually) because it is no longer a free or operating service, or is not accepting new users at this time, but could have been removed for other reason(s). If any of the user ratings and reviews of users were saved, they will be listed below.


User Rating:
   
# Votes: 13 5 6 2 1 0 4 2 10 5
Rating: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Average Rating:  4.96 / 10

Total Votes: 48




41 User Testimonials/Reviews of Portland


7 blank user reviews (ratings only) not listed.
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Reviewed on: 2005-06-17   -   (IP: 200.179.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
No support, poor ftp service, slow access.

Reviewed on: 2005-04-14   -   (IP: 207.112.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
FTP did not work; so could not even start to host my website there :-(

Reviewed on: 2005-01-18   -   (IP: 195.252.x.x)   -   Rated: 8
This is a solid webhost. I use it over a year and i haven't any problems. 100MB/month is not much, but for a small presentation is enough. Site statistic is good. Email forvarding works well. Fast FTP uploading. That's all!

Reviewed on: 2004-12-16   -   (IP: 81.153.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
Absolutely appalling service - I wouldn't recommend Portland to my worst enemy. Customer support is non-existant and the servers seem to be down more than they are up. I'm trying to access my own site to transfer it and I can't get hold of it. If there are any reliable free hosts out there, Portland certainly isn't one. Don't go there!

Reviewed on: 2004-10-09   -   (IP: 213.107.x.x)   -   Rated: 10
There are these subdomains to choose from:
port5.com
8bit.co.uk
5p.org.uk
6p.org.uk
7p.org.uk
8p.org.uk
9p.org.uk
p5.org.uk
p6.org.uk
p7.org.uk
p8.org.uk
p9.org.uk

They offer free POP3 Mail

Quite Fast!

Ooh, to get your password you must have a pop3 account! It is the only way I find to get my password!


Reviewed on: 2004-09-29   -   (IP: 69.157.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
ABSOLUTELY THE WORST on the net. I ended up having to join the forum within their site just to get assistance from people who have absolutely nothing to do with PORTLAND. There is no customer service whatsoever. I sent them numerous emails and not a single one was answered. You are wasting your time with this one. As you can see from the reviews, there seems to be a trend in what people think of PORTLAND's Customer Service.

Reviewed on: 2004-09-14   -   (IP: 213.42.x.x)   -   Rated: 8
Negatives include
- web space and bandwidth constraints,
- server down problems

Positives include
- no ads,
- faster processing of application,
- uni.cc domain allowed,
- easy interface, though not most secure.
- appropriate for personal webpages and test sites, as they also claim.

I am giving relatively higher rating because they have got overall poor response which probably doesn't reflect their present status.


Reviewed on: 2004-09-14   -   (IP: 213.42.x.x)   -   Rated: 9
I have used this host as my stepping stone on internet and beleive me it is good. The interface is as easy it can get. Web space and bandwidth is a constraint but then they very clearly state their free hosting plan as being idle for personal webpages and test sites, which is a correct info. They allow uni.cc domain, which I found only in a few webhosts, so it's an advantage. No hassles in registration at all, things did happen instantly. NO forced ads, banners etc To be very frank, this site deserves a much better score than it is presently getting.

Reviewed on: 2004-07-25   -   (IP: 65.9.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
I've been with portland for about 6 months now.  Uploading my site was easy, and I haven't noticed any downtime.  HOWEVER...  it's slow to load, and when it does .. EVERY SINGLE TIME my images don't load correctly.  The buttons for my site are rollovers and they never load properly at all.  EVER.  There is absolutely ZERRRROOOOOO support.  And I mean NONE.  I had to sell my old computer and ended up losing my ftp login and password.  I've been emailing them for months trying to get my login and password and they have yet to respond.  I've had to abandon my site and it's still there and they're still NOT sending me my info even though I email them like..every other day. I finally got desperate and went into their forums and posted asking WHY I haven't gotten my login and password.  I followed their instructions and I still haven't gotten any resolution.  I actually hate portland. Alot.  That site has been totally abandoned for like..EVER and they won't delete it or gimme the password so I can update it and now I can't find another host and that horribly ugly thing that I made when I first learned how to code is still there and yeah...don't ever use portland.  Ever.

Reviewed on: 2004-04-02   -   (IP: 217.137.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
They deleted my site.

Reviewed on: 2004-03-06   -   (IP: 24.84.x.x)   -   Rated: 3
Horrible! If you want to suffer a LOT--> go with Portland. EXTREMELY UNRELIABLE, I don't understand how they expect people trust them and upgrade... It seems that the idea they have is to really give you a hard time with a free account so you will upgrade eventually. Your free web work almost never and when it does WORK is soooo slow, plus of couse ZERO support. Horrible!

Reviewed on: 2004-02-08   -   (IP: 195.218.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
I initially tried Portland about 2 years ago, but had to stop after about 2 months as I had consistant problems uploading to the site, then all passwords were reset due to a problem on their servers, it took me almost a month to obtain a new password from them.

Recently I decided to try them again, this time with a different domain which would not need regular updating. Within 2 days of setting up the account, and before actually uploading anything I started to recieve spam thru the domain name. The domain name had been in use and re-directed to a sub-domain on another site for over a year without any problems. Do they permit email harvesting ???
I've contacded them several times with regard to this, but have recieved no reply. I'm now getting rapidly increasing levels of spam thru this domain after only 2 weeks, time to close the account....


Reviewed on: 2004-01-28   -   (IP: 172.128.x.x)   -   Rated: 5
Portland.co.uk has some ups & downs, pros & cons,etc.

Positive and Negative aspects:

Positive: it allows unix type stuff, such as uploading a file and changing its name to .htaccess
and is ok for a small but quick site and 15 megs is ok, compared to tripod.

Negative: Can't find login on site. I tried and it's hard to find where to login...well for me at least, also when I emailed them for a new site...I never got a reply (it might take them awhile to answer back maybe). I then used my free email account(which btw has a free but limited internet access to it) and they replied the next day...hmm maybe portland.co.uk is considered spam for some isps?

middle point: this is kinda a in between thing. portland web hosting is free and good...if your someone like me who say...needs web space for small video game memory card files (Dreamcast/VMU in this case) however I live in the USA and well portland I thought was in Portland, oregon...but it's Portland someplace, england.

they're ok and for a 2meg limit on uploads it's 45/55 (ration...meaning where as 100/0 would be perfect and 50/50 would be half)

I'd give this a 4.5 maybe even a 4.9 at best...but rated it a 5 anyway, since it's iffy.

PS: if you want free webspace to test vmu files, go with portland! but as for just free websites and webspace itself...I'd say maybe try tripod or something.


Reviewed on: 2004-01-11   -   (IP: 172.203.x.x)   -   Rated: 9
let me explain my rating, all the hosts stink usually.  they offer everything and then they go under.  portland has been around for a long time.  they may be a little slow but at least i can rely on them to still have my website on their servers in 1 month after signing up.  i like them.

Reviewed on: 2004-01-05   -   (IP: 212.248.x.x)   -   Rated: 7
I'm a web designer too and Portland seems to be a mixed blessing. I've hosted two sites on it now, and the customer support is actually quite good and the service itself is free, which is a rarity. On the negative side, uptime is usually pretty poor, I would guess under 85% and file types/sizes are limited.

It's bearable though, for a free host...


Reviewed on: 2003-11-03   -   (IP: 81.77.x.x)   -   Rated: 10
All I have to say to the people who have been with portland before is give it another go. I don't know what has happened, but they are one of the best hosts I have ever been with. I used to be with hostdepartment, and they seemed to 'lock' the server. I have had no trouble whatsoever with portland, and as for the FTP server being permenantly down, I don't understand. My site, as far as I know has had no downtime whatsoever! Try portland again - give 'em a go - i like em!

Reviewed on: 2003-10-15   -   (IP: 210.7.x.x)   -   Rated: 2
FTP does not work all the time. Very UNCOMFORTABLE.

Reviewed on: 2003-10-09   -   (IP: 202.22.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
These guys are the worst host I've ever seen because even though they offer some ok features, honestly I would prefer webspawner and that's saying something because even though webspawner STINKS, at least they're RELIABLE. More reliable than Portland anyway. Yes, they give great promises of wonderful things like no ads... msqyl... 15mb space and all that... but all they really give you is CONSTANT SPAM, PATHETIC BANDWIDTH, FTP THAT DOESN'T WORK and HEAPS OF DOWNTIME!!! And have you ever tried emailing them? They either ignore you or make some sardonic comeback. Say I'm ranting if you want, but I'm warning you: STAY AWAY FROM THIS FREE HOST!!!

Reviewed on: 2003-10-08   -   (IP: 63.137.x.x)   -   Rated: 2
I have been using Portland now for over 1 year to host my small business site.
Quick to set-up and get going but unfortunately very unreliable.
Downtimes are frequent and can last for days.
The support through their website is VERY poor.
FTP access seems to be a random thing.
Low bandwidth and slow page loading.

Overall this host has demonstrated a very poor customer focus and has left my website extremly vulnerable to their servers uptimes and bandwidth. In all this is not what I expect from any host (even if it is free) as it does give the wrong image of my own business.

What I don't understand is how they expect people to sign-up to their premium service with such a bad track record.


Reviewed on: 2003-10-06   -   (IP: 66.215.x.x)   -   Rated: 2
There are at least a few good things about this host:

1. Very easy to sign up (not alot of information required)
2. No forced advertising
3. Some advanced features that normally aren't found on free hosts (PHP, MySQL, etc.) [now removed]

Now the bad:

1. Horrendous downtime. The server regularly goes down for days at a time with no warning or notice from the staff. Even if your site is up, things are still glitchy. For example, sometimes you get errors when trying to access the FTP site to upload or to view your web site's stats.
2. Terrible support. As I mentioned before, there is rarely any notice of downtime and when you report downtime they never reply. The way they react you'd think they weren't even aware of the downtime. No notices, no apologizes, no mention at all.

I rated this host a 2 out of 10. The only reason it got a 2 instead of a 1 is because of some of the advanced features. If you have a few recipes or something you want to put online and you don't care if the site goes down regularly, then this is the host for you. Otherwise, skip it. This is without a doubt the most unreliable host I have ever been with.


Reviewed on: 2003-10-06   -   (IP: 212.9.x.x)   -   Rated: 3
They don't provide PHP scripts (as well as CGI) on free sites anymore.
Look here: http://office.portland.co.uk/cgi-bin/index.cgi/known_errors
Probably they are still attractive for HTML "business cards"
I put them 3 and looking for another hosting (see my previous post).


Reviewed on: 2003-09-26   -   (IP: 212.9.x.x)   -   Rated: 9
Hi,
I host two sites on Portland and I am really satisfied.
There are several limitations on PHP. For example they do not have GD2, mcrypt and other libraries installed. So I accomodate somehow. My payed host (for company I work in) does not have any extension libraries as well.
Speed is problem. Sometimes it drops to 1..2kb/s. 95% i-net users in my country use 3..4kb/s dial-up. Any way, making pages exceed 30kb size is bad manner :-)
They are down first hours of a month. I think due to MySQL reconnect. They become much more reliable last time - 98-99% up-time.
Have a nice hosting!


Reviewed on: 2003-09-10   -   (IP: 195.156.x.x)   -   Rated: 4
I used to use it, but they don't support Perl anymore.

Reviewed on: 2003-09-07   -   (IP: 65.94.x.x)   -   Rated: 3
I'd move my site if I could get into it. I've been waiting 3 DAYS!!! now, and no news as to when they'll be up again. I've only been there a short time and my site has yet to be up for a week without downtime.

Reviewed on: 2003-08-27   -   (IP: 145.254.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
Well, what to say about this?

- I -wouldn't- recommend this free host.
- I have used it as long as my nerves actually could stand it.
- No, it hasn't been reliable (~70% downtime)
- It is bloody slow.
- The support is rude and somehome doesn't answer at all.

positive:
- PHP Support, Email forwarding, nice stats
negative:
- 70% downtime
- when you once exceed your bandwidth (100MB!) your page stays locked until, I guess, you pay for 1GB(!) extra bandwidth or upgrade to a paid package (but I also read somewhere that doesn't change anything at all)
- the contents of the account regularly got lost
- no way to delete the account (for re-registrating and using it again afterwards)


Reviewed on: 2003-08-24   -   (IP: 217.81.x.x)   -   Rated: 2
friendly, if ignorant support. I never could succesfully manage to run any Portland site. Their forum is full of complaints from other users.

Reviewed on: 2003-08-20   -   (IP: 80.177.x.x)   -   Rated: 7
I think to be honest that it isn't that bad, but reading others comments made me think of getting a new host, and the bandwidth is the most worstest i've ever seen, from what i worked out, if you had a web site with 100 pages, and every page was 10kb, and every person who went to your site saw every page,
1024kb 100000mb

10240 per page
100 pages per user
1024000 bytes per user

10000000 bytes bandwidth

100mb bandwidth
then from my calculations you could have around 10 visitors per month! Which is terrible!


Reviewed on: 2003-05-25   -   (IP: 67.74.x.x)   -   Rated: 4
On the plus side, you can sign up for an account very easily without giving much personal info away... and the FTP functions work fine.

on the negative side...

I tranfered my site to Portland because they offer 'full CGI' support for their free accounts and my previous host (Netfirms) choked CGI usage down to basically nothing for free accounts. 

Well... after moving my message board to Portland, I discovered that 'Sendmail' support is not included for free accounts.  In other words, the email notification function of my message board no longer works!  That makes the message board a whole lot less useful.  If you check out the free account features and limitations, this is NOT documented anywhere.  The only place you'll discover the truth is in the support forums.

So, I'm back to looking for another free host with FULL CGI support... where 'FULL' actually means 'Full'.

[below was added 2003-05-27]

An update to my review from a couple days ago..  My site was knocked offline several hours ago and remains offline.  FTP access was also knocked off but has finally been restored.  I sent a 'highest priority' email to their support folks to get my site back online but I'm not sure what 'highest priority' means for free accounts!  LOL

Oh well, the site was 'almost' up for a full week.  Guess I'll have to move it to a new host again...


Reviewed on: 2003-04-22   -   (IP: 203.45.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
Firstly let me tell you what I do and what I needed from Portland. Then let me tell you my experiences with Portland with an un-biased opinion from the point of view of a WEBSITE DESIGNER with clients websites hosted with them on free accounts as well as the enhanced accounts. (ie. a paying customer as well). And why my client sites are now hosted with someone else.
I dont have to put Portland down or anything because they are doing that to themselves... let me explain my history with them:
About a year ago i was looking to host my website design website which was in the process of being developed. I didnt have much money so naturally I jumped at the opportunity at FREE hosting. Now dont get me wrong, if u have a personal site like a geocities type website and you dont mind if theres an outage once a week or two for 3 days to sometimes 2 weeks, unable to use FTP alot of the time, missing passwords and outages, hard drive failures, etc etc without any support from portland and your developing your website over time then good luck, these guys are for you.

Now, if you are a website designer or someone who designs websites that are starting to get to the..more then just a hobbie stage and you need access to your FTP account, your webserver account details, setting up emails etc... 24/7 then this is not the host for you. You will be totally frustrated with there free account...BUT WAIT THERES MORE!

After a while it worked out that my site had actually been down MORE than it had been UP! Yes my website stats recorded a 49% uptime and 51% downtime and that is totally unacceptable considering they SPECIFICALLY state on thier website that they have a guarantee of 99.5% uptime... trust me its a load of gargage.

I got SO fed up with the free account i thought, ok fair enough, i will pay for a decent 'ENHANCED' account. Now i must admit there was a slight difference, but only an extra 10% uptime over 6 months to 59% uptime for a PAID account.
Basically the problems i experienced on the FREE account were felt on the PAID account. The problem was, i had moved over all my CLIENTS websites to Portland to thier enhanced account and thats when the problems really started. I started getting phone calls from very angry clients advising me that thier website had been down for days and no email was getting through, or being fowarded for WEEKS!
It seems someone had lost the password list and support didnt bother to tell anyone about it. It took me a further 2 weeks to get any response from Portland and when I finally did, i had to explain the problem because they had lost my account details. I gave them one more chance and then APPARENTLY one of their harddrives failed and my entire website, my clients were lost for good. I back up my work myself so luckily i had a copy on CD but if I didnt i would be catching a plane to england and following up a law suit. Portland have been the worst webhosts i have ever encountered... but wait theres more!

Someone called 'Selder' who has posted another review on this page is absolutely correct with his review, and i would like to say i back every word he has said because it is true because I also had a problem with email.... how i found out it was Portland was by shear chance!
Over a period of time i started getting spam from dodgy companys trying to sell products out of england and other countrys until the point where i had to delete the email alias. The good news is, i actually setup a specific new alias email address to forward all my Portland email to and NEVER GAVE THE ADDRESS OUT TO ANYONE EXCEPT PORTLAND. By doing this i accidently realized that all my spam was being fowarded through the portland domain to its clients and soon my clients were receiving spam as well.

Well i have many many horror stories about Portland and i never ever want to have anything to do with them again...
Another problem they have is it seems that noone has any idea who is running the show... everyone seems to blame someone else and they have this FORUM there where there are people who manage the forum on Portlands website but they say that are not associated with or have anything to do with portland. On numerous occasions i have witnessed them lying about all sorts of things. I still dont understand how they can run the forum under the name of portland on the same server in the same town, house and not know anyone who runs the show??!

My honest advise: You get what you pay for....and unfortunetly i got sucked into upgrading from the free account to the enhanced account only to have the same problems day in day out.

If you want somewhere to test out some CGI script for a couple of days, use them. If you are looking at peace of mind webhosting, a regular FTP user, email account user, please dont use them....

Im not writting all this out for fun you know... I really really despise them for tricking myself and other people.

One last thing... the moderators on the forum & chatroom are all in collusion and you can tell them until your black and blue (and other guests) how bad the service is, and they will always say... its getting fixed, dont worry... its probably you thats wrong... and if you have a gripe about something, the moderators respond right after your comments making out like you are some kind of liar, just so they dont lose business. Honestly, i dont know who is running the show there but they have some serious problems and ALSO i forgot to mention, the admins there will pinch parts of your website, so if u have any cool graphics u have created or perl scripting, dont be surprised if it pops up on part of the portland website.
Please take my advise and dont get sucked in like i did.
Also, dont be surprised if someone comments next after me about how wonderful portland is, because more than likely, its a Portland employee tying to keep his job.

PORTLAND should be investigated for bad business ethics... and one day they probably will be.


Reviewed on: 2003-04-11   -   (IP: 217.218.x.x)   -   Rated: 9
It is fine! I have 3 sites hosted by this company and all have worked nice. The negative points are:
--They do not support a full PHP, e.g. you cannot host your forums for free.(but you may pay an annual fee which is quite low! adding some other values to your package)
--The up-time in my opinion is 97% or something like that.
The positive features and points:
They feel responsible for what they offer their even free package customers and thus have a good support. If the answer is not given in FAQ area, definitely they will reply within 1 or 2 days (considering the huge amount of questions they face, it is appreciable) and sometimes they give you a special TICKET number that you can use to check your solutions online and follow your quesiton up.
--You may become a VISP by giving away 15 mb subdomains of your own domain to others and even use them as your own subdomain. It is marvellous!!!
--It has no banner ads! which by itself is great!
....
Regards,
David Moseley


Reviewed on: 2003-03-31   -   (IP: 12.238.x.x)   -   Rated: 3
I was excited at what I thought was a really good webspace provider when I signed up for this, but now I'm looking for a new one.  Everything was great the first few days but now it's a hassle to upload even one page of my site for updating.  Server is frequently down and they have known issues that they don't seem to be doing anything about.

Reviewed on: 2003-03-17   -   (IP: 212.50.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
well, if you click on the signup button, it just says "you do not have permission to access the cgi-bin on this server" so as you cant sign up it may as well be deleted.............

Reviewed on: 2003-03-11   -   (IP: 193.61.x.x)   -   Rated: 3
Very patchy service. The server is down a lot which is a shame because the site looks good and the services look impressive. Had the free site been more stable I would have been tempted to upgrade.

Reviewed on: 2003-03-06   -   (IP: 80.195.x.x)   -   Rated: 9
Very good webhost for free-hosting seekers. Not 10 because of the hard to navigate website, but otherwise very good!

Reviewed on: 2003-02-22   -   (IP: 12.251.x.x)   -   Rated: 3
I'm giving this server a 3. I was absolutely pleased until I read the features list. It stuck out like a sore thumb. 100 MEGABYTES BANDWIDTH PER MONTH. I ask you, what's the point of a MySQL database and 15 megabytes of space if you have so little bandwidth? I realize there are many with 100 or even less bandwidth...but I was really irritated when I read their paid plans where you can pay 12 pounds for 250 megabytes. This server is a sick joke. If you have a budget website that may get even a moderate amount of users, I do not recommend this. If you're just looking around to play with features, then this is perfect. But don't rely on this server.

Reviewed on: 2003-02-13   -   (IP: 64.246.x.x)   -   Rated: 9
I deleted them from the Free-Webhosts.com database a couple months ago because they were down and it got a lot of complaints, but I added them back.  Strangely my old site there I can ftp to, but all my pages get a 404 error.  I made a new site and it works though.  They have low bandwidth and slow server (unless maybe you are in the UK).  The host claims to support the scripting language Escapade (ESP), which would be nice to try, but I haven't been able to get a script to work using it.

Reviewed on: 2002-10-13   -   (IP: 158.64.x.x)   -   Rated: 1
The Portland Communications ISP shows two "Internet Magazine labels" of "ISP of the month september & november 2000", but in my opinion things have changed since then. What follows is a copy of the mail I send them:
Dear,

Because the last time I am increasingly under attack of SPAM mail, I did some some research with SAM SPADE to know where this junk mail came from and to try to stop these attacks. It seems that the most of them were passed through your Portland servers. More upstream research seems to me to be "forced" adresses. As a conciencious utiliser of the internet/mail I tried to stop this junkmail by sending last night some mailheaders to abuse@office2.csi.net.uk

This is the response I got from one of your collaborators (Justin Clements):

What are you doing moron?
Your email is being forwarded by tomsk and office2 because you host your domain with Portland. tomsk and office2 forward all your email to you. If your going to be proactive in your anti spam measures at least have the
courtesy to read up on the subject and not irritate your ISP.
If you feel I'm being curt - please don't hesitate to tell me, as I will delete your account in the morning. If you want to reply to me, feel free - I will delete your account. If I get another DUMB UBE message - I will delete your account.
Good night.
Regards,
Justin Clements

and a second reaction probably after a he saw the second abuse mail:

Consider your account dead meat in the morning.
Regards,
Justin Clements

Let me tell you the first minutes after reading these mails I was speechless! If I did something wrong, I will excuse me for that...not everybody is a computer specialist and it is a difficult matter. If we will get kicked off our account because I react on this brute language, so it will be... Your are the ISP/webhost, I own a Free account. What can I say more!
But let me tell you that this kind of language is in my eyes more appropriated to a SPAM mail sender/hacker than to an ISP/Webhost manager. Is this a normal procedure that customers (especially of a free account) are treated this way? I thought that englishmen where more civilized and if I don't get a word of excuse, I will for sure not make a lot of publicity for your company anymore.

Best Regards,
...


Reviewed on: 2002-10-12   -   (IP: 202.163.x.x)   -   Rated: 9
Portland is one of the reliable hosts around.  They do have a 100mb bandwidth limit for all the member sites though but other than that .... 15mb space seems more than sufficient for me .... not to mention with free mysql database and statistics.

Reviewed on: 2002-10-04   -   (IP: 68.8.x.x)   -   Rated: 10
That server is very slow because it's in UK, but overall it's pretty good.

Reviewed on: 2002-09-28   -   (IP: 81.86.x.x)   -   Rated: 7
It took about a day to set mine up, but I'm trying it now.  FTP is incredibly slow, probably the worst feature.

Reviewed on: 2002-09-27   -   (IP: 195.93.x.x)   -   Rated: 7
Server seemed a little shaky in the initial upload, first couldn't connect then got disconnected halfway through. Eventually went up ok (depends on the time of day I think) and is so far fine. No banners or pop ups.... That doesn't happen very often does it??
Looking good so far


 

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