Do You Need SiteLock Security With BlueHost? Is It Worth The Money?

Awesome Explanation, very useful!!

Many thanks,

Albert.

Hi
Yes I got scammed from them and paid the $14.99 ' Because Google contacted me and said that I had malware on my website and they black listed my website' So I thought I would pay the $14.99 to sitelock and they would help me get rid of the malware or what ever is on my website. I was wrong' The $14.99 is just for you to use there logo sitelock and put it on your website. That's all you get' They contacted me and said that they would go in to my website and remove the malware and fix it for $189.00 . That's more money they want . I said to them to give me my $14.99 back and they can keep there logo.

I dealt with Sitelock where they are very over-priced in comparison with other services in the same space. I paid around $400 for them to clean malware from our site and "harden" against further attacks. 2 weeks later, they sent me an email saying the site had malware on it. They wanted to charge me an additional $250 to clean the site or $780 to continually clean for a year.

My complaint was that their "hardening" process seemed quite useless to me seeing that 2 weeks later malware infected my site again. Furthermore, when they initially "hardened" my site, they somehow made a mistake on coding that prevented me from accessing my control panel. Their response is that they wouldn't fix unless I paid the additional fees for them to clean my site.

I simply moved on to another company to handle the work. www.Sucuri.net

Much more reasonable.

D

Your post is real funny I actually enjoyed it - - and thanks for the tip! I kinda feel sitelock isn't really needed - just had to be sure though. I was comparing 3 providers and 2 insist upon it, the other plainly said "you don't need it"!

SiteLock is more for the kind of people that think that building a website is done by just *thinking* it into existence. It's for the people that think that once a site is built, nothing else is needed. It's for the people that have no idea what an insecure script is, what a malware injection is, and for people who have a password that is fluffy1.

It's a simple scanning service that searches weekly for outdated scripts and notifies the user of such. There are enhanced services, like where it will automatically update said outdated scripts, for additional cost.

Man why didn't I see this earlier. Going through the EXACT same nonsense currently. They're giving me all kinds of run arounds promising things and not delivering then always asking for more money. I don't know how such a scammy service got associated with BlueHost but it's ridiculous. The "malware reports" they give you are the exact same things you'd get for free from Google if you just use their website reports. RIP OFF SERVICE hands down.

Hi Guys
Oops, just signed up with Bluehost who suggested Sitelock and guess what.
Wish I had seen this post earlier.
Anyway, thanks for the info, - better late than never.

Gonna keep my eyes open in case they try to get me by the proverbial b.......

Cheers

Wow, just got off the phone with them. They wanted $320 to set up preventive security and that money would be good for the whole year. Working on my first website, so I'm thinking, Oh, I never thought about all the security stuff. I'm that guy that "Me not You" above is talking about. So in my head im trying to budget out this $320. Thank you everybody on here, because you just save me that money. I'm sure security is needed, but this doesnt seem like the right path to get it.

Thank you Derek, I will check out your recommendation. Any other recommendations are appreciated.

-D

Apparently my site now has malware after almost exactly 1 month after signing up with bluehost and selecting site lock. After reading this I'm thinking I will be asking for a refund from them. I had called and they wanted $200 to clean up once, premium plan for a ton of money, and a firewall for $500 a year. WTF!

Dont buy from SiteLock!

I mysteriously got a "malware" issue on my website an hour before I got a phone call from SiteLock saying I had malware and they wanted to charge me extra to delete it, over their scanning software price.

I almost got sucked in by $800 or so until doing some digging and finding this website. It would SEEM LIKELY that they infected my website deliberately to try and sell this nonsense to me.

Just contact your HOSTING provider, they should remove malware free of charge. Then keep all software/wordpress plugins and versions updated, anti-spam comments plugins up to date and change passwords regularly and you'll be fine.

Julian

You just saved me some cash. Thanks a lot for that.

I wasn't exactly sure what "Sitelock" was or if i needed it.
Thanks again.

Cheers.

Guys, just beware of BlueHost. It is owned by Mormons and they can and do practice censorship of your content if it is not in line with their ethical beliefs. This applies to various language, photos, any adult type references, political opinions, or any other subject they deem inappropriate.

This company is running a scam I think. Read my story and you tell me. Also they have awful customer service. DO NOT SIGN UP WITH THEM!!!

I have not had an issue with any sort of blocking on any of my website for over 6 years and last week on the suggestion of Netfirms I bought the Premium package from Site lock because Netfirms told me that this would be the plan that finds the malware and then cleans it up for me. So of course this sounded like a good plan. Interestingly the day after I sign on with Site Lock Google black lists my website and site lock is telling me that this is a malware they can’t clean up for me and that I would have to pay $200 extra for them to clean this up. Plus I should pay another $60 a month for a firewall to make sure it doesnt happen again. Ps I found out this info on the second call because on the first call they told me that they would had fixed the problem and resubmitted to Google for me and would call me that night to let me know the status which they never did call me back until another agent called me 4 days later.

Then we got Netfirms involved because Sitelock said its their fault for leading me to believe that the premium plan would clean up my malware and that is not the case I am paying only to get some malware removed. The Sitelock agent had the nerve to accuse me of lying and that the first agent never said that they had cleaned up my site and would resubmit to google which outraged me. He said that they listened to the call and it was never said which I know is untrue so I requested a copy of the call they listened to and they said they would send it and of course never did because they know I was right and they are the ones lying.

So I would like to spread the word about my awful experience with Sitelock the supposed leader in website security. You be the judge is it just coincidence that the day after I sign on with Sitelock I get hacked and get blacklisted from google? Or could it be that Sitelock is leaking their client list to some hackers and paying them under the table to hack into their new clients sites so that the client will have to pay Sitelock more money to get their site cleaned by them. Sitelock stands to make a lot of money on us poor suckers. Just imagine how easy it would be for them to do this and there would be no way to find out unless one of the Hackers came clean about it and why would they do it when Sitelock is paying them good money to do this. I know I am sounding like a conspiracy theorist but honestly this is just too much of a coincidence.

Thank you for this article!

I'm going to renew one of my domain (the first one with BlueHost) and by default they renewed my subscribe to sitelock too. Problem is I never subscribet it in the first place, they put it for free on my domain for the fist year, then tried to charge for the second year without asking first!

Sitelock is entirely puzzling to me:) Right now, I am in the middle of some discussions with them about possible malware infection of my site which i believe is fake. Why i am saying that? Well, my iPage hosting account was temporarily suspended recently because one of my sites was infected (forgot to update its software, plugins, etc, for long and that made way to vulnerabilities). After making corrections and exchanging emails for 1 week, my hosting provider said that my account is clean and put it back online. But just less than 24 hours later, Sitelock sends me notification that they found malware. Of course, I do not believe them, and i am waiting for an explanation. Most likely they want to convince me to buy one of their protection plans. Besides that, any other malware scanner shows that my site is clean.
So, if sitelock makes up kind of logical story i will let you know.
Cheers!

I have sitelock on a bluehost site and it seems a waste of time. I got hacked and then blocked by Google and so Google webmaster tools sent me a warning. Basically you can use Google webmaster and word fence together and get a warning that way. Site lock probably just monitors google blacklists, not sure it ever scanned anything as they never sent any verification of that. I complained to bluehost to refund the money and they refused. Everyone just wants to sell you another feature but in reality a good backup plan and Wordfence and webmaster tools has been working.

I have had sitelock for years and got nothing more than the badge. my site got hacked anyways and I emailed sitelock about4 times, they never got back to me. the only time I have been contacted by sitelock was today, they told me I needed to update my credit card! they just want the money for their badge, their service and customer service are worthless.

As people have realized on here, not only do you not need Sitelock but it is ACTUALLY A SCAM AND WILL INFECT YOUR WEBSITE WILL MALWARE TO MAKE YOU PAY THEM MONEY.

I have 3 identical websites (exactly the same - just set-up for the USA, UK and Australia). For some reason I signed up for Sitelock for one of them. Surprise, surprise this one has been 'infected' by malware and Sitelock wants me to pay them to remove it.

I actually believe that SITELOCK ITSELF IS MALWARE. I have had problems with this site on Google now. I had to get Sitelock completely removed from my site because of this.

The fact that Bluehost and other hosting companies are making you pay to effectively install their malware on your site is criminal. Spread the word.

Sitelock is an ass hole. My site is down and the hosting site asked me to resort to SITELOCK. I paid them USD150 for one month, and 20 days past, they did nothing, nobody contacts me and solve my problem. I went to their site to complain with their live talk section and nobody even type one word after I saying out my problem. SITELOCK is totally a cheat. They are very sweet and kind before charing your money, but after that they did nothing and only your money will be locked, I think they should be called "MONEYlock". kEEP AWAY FROM THIS CHEAT.!

Thank God. I was just about to buy Sitelock. Read this and other articles and now skipped buying it.

Thanks a lot guys for saving me from financial and mental stress..!!!!

May you live 100 years..!!

this happens with other hosting companies, too. ipage sent me an ad saying site lock was on sale and then, within six hours cut off all my websites (i create them for clients) because they suddenly noticed two were infected by malware through Wordpress. as far as i can tell, they were fine and clean two days ago. two of the three ipage representatives i spoke with over the course of this ordeal made it clear that nothing i could do would get any websites back up unless i bought sitelock and 911 - $159 at the sale price. Homestly, i cannot believe the timing. i am certain this was done to pillage money from their clients. i will be looking for a new hosting company, if there are any that don't so this kind of pillaging of their clients.

Site Lock is worthless! You pay them a premium every month for added protection and then you get hacked. It would not surprise me that they themselves are responsible for the hacking and then you get the call that your site is infected and needs to be cleaned up for big fees. When it happened to me I called them and asked why I would pay them more to clean up something I paid to have them prevent and they proceeded to tell me my 19.00 ( I think that was the amount or close anyway I had upgraded protection) per month was just for scanning and periodic reviews. There is way to much temptation for this company to infect your site and then call to make money. They are also very rude when you question them its as if they think you have no choice. I completely redid my site and cancelled site lock and now just do lots of automatic back ups so I can easily restore. I even told them I would switch web hosting companies to get away from them and they said good luck we are everywhere. Awful company.