webmate (MacAce) Reviews

After getting fed up with the lack of Mac support with previous ISPs i decided to give Macace a try. So far they have been fantastic and their support team couldn't have been more helpful, patiently helping me set up my Macs and iPads. Speeds are decent, unfortunately there is no fibre in my area but I am getting 17mb download speeds on ADSL2+ and it works nice and speedily.

I used to be a customer of theirs for years until I realised they charged over the odds for what was basically a standard service.

Having been with a new supplier for 6 months Mac Ace initiated a transfer of my broadband account away from my current supplier back to themselves without my authorisation and cost my company 3 weeks downtime. I had to to wait for my current provider to regain the service before I finally found out that these fools were behind the error. All I got was a weak apology and they were happy to blame my current service provider even though they had nothing to do with it.

This company have no moral values. You have been warned! ISPreview Sanctioned 'Right to Reply' (RtR) by MacAce Follows (DO NOT REMOVE) Related Rule(s) - http://www.ispreview.co.uk/rules.shtml#3 We did apologise for the error, although it too was not our direct fault - it was an unfortunate mistake with the wholesale database. The client did not inform us until 3 weeks after he had migrated back, otherwise we would have gotten him back online immediately and of course at no charge. The customer did not supply details of any losses incurred which we offered to reimburse.

Addition 27/7/16: In reply to Macace's post above they did not offer to reimburse me a penny for the downtime they caused. I have numerous emails as proof of their reluctance to offer any compensation. As to the claim that I could have contacted them earlier to rectify that is pure nonsense it was only through a lengthy investigation that I found that they were responsible for the mess caused by the unauthorised transfer, and by that time my connection had been established once again with my current provider. Macace play with the facts here to save face, but I have plenty of emails for those interested in the truth.

I recently moved to Macace for fibre broadband, I'm on the "upto 40down 10up" package, my actual speed is 35down 8.6up on wifi. Luckily I'm fairly close to the street cabinet so I'm really happy with that.

I've not needed to call for support yet but they are certainly quick at responding to emails,
I found that they are more competitive if you move the phone line to them as well.

Been with macace for 5 years now. The support is fantastic and always has been - a real eye opener. Speeds suffered massively last year and earlier this year but have drastically improved back to when I first started. I now get near full speeds even at peak times. I got an email from them a while ago explaining they have been so popular since winning their awards that they have been busy upgrading everything and it really seems to have paid off. Now I've got everything I always wanted - 16 megabyte download, support their when i need it and the cost are now more in line with other web hosts. If you have a Mac, these are definately the company to go with.

My review somewhat mirrors the previous reviewer. I started with Macace about January 2010. In the beginning I found the speed great, miles better than Tiscali. But gradually over the space of a year, I found that contention was becoming more of an issue. Secondly, their billing system works only if you make no changes like moving house - then its nothing but trouble. As the previous reviewer implied, their billing "mistakes" are always in their favour, never yours. I was prepared to pay extra to get faster broadband and to have a small company where they are not always making mistakes with the billing like the big companies do. Sadly, the contention at night was becoming quite a drag and their billing system is so bad, that Tiscali actually wins hands down with regards to the billing. It's dreadful. I am still waiting for a refund of over £100, nearly 7 months later. They also send out different invoices for the landline and the broadband and the phone calls. People just want one simple monthly bill. ! Also, their 10gb limit is too little for an average user and 30gb is just too much for me. Something in between would be better. For a small company they really have to jack up their services to justify the higher price tag. I would not recommend this company because their billing system is very poor.

been with them for 14 months after migrating from the lamentable o2 which were giving less 0.2mbps evening speed on their access landline service.

macace are ok, reliable (only a few 20 minute drops outs in the year) and good personal support, quick to answer calls, no call centres, uk based and they seem to continue looking at your problem until you say its resolved. staff seemed to have technical knowledge too.
1 month contract, and the price of £25 for 50gb usage and unlimited at night is cheaper than rivals (ie fast.co.uk) but obviously not as cheap as the £5-10 deals out there (which ive found are so slow/oversubscribed or low download cap that theyre useless).


they claim not to oversubscribe their bandwidth, however im still not very happy with peak time speeds. i normally get 3-4mbps in the day (i only get 5-6mbps max from the exchange in my area - herne bay), but it falls to ~0.8 -1 mbps in the evenings and recently is dipping down to ~0.4-0.8 mbps (in an email they admitted the network is congested at the moment).
i did ask them what my peak time speed would be before i joined and to give them credit they did check and say it would be about 1mbps.
however i think the loss of more than 75% of your speed at peak time isnt really good enough, its always been like this and it means if you live in an area like mine that only gets 5mbps max. from the exchange, then at peak time (~7-11pm) its unlikely more than one person on the network will be able to watch iplayer or other internet tv and on a bad day video is constantly interrupted.

another not so great experience is they tried to charge me for extra usage (claiming it was double one month to what i normally use) until i queried it and they looked in to it and found their meter was recording it wrongly. im sure this was the case in a couple of other previous months but it didnt tip me over my limit. although since theyve noticed it its been ok.

overall its ok for the price but the big fall off in speed at peak time is pretty annoying and often stops me using video and radio streams so i cant really recommend them because of this....although i have been with alot worse isp's and not really satisfied with any of them.

edit: macace are about to impose peak time restriction on their business packages (just 10gb/month between 6pm-12) so it makes them uncompetitive. i will now be switching to another isp.