I might end up colocating at a datacenter which serves as a POP for cogent, however the setup fee is $1,000 for this (they already have their own fiber in their building).
Have you ever gotten the setup fee waived before or any tips on negotiating these kinds of things. I don't know if its upto the sales guy to make the call or not.
How much is your rack fees per month for your servers?
View 14 Replies View RelatedHow much do cross connect fees cost in the Equnix/Dallas Infomart and a Level3 owned datacenter? Is it priced according to what size circuit?
View 1 Replies View Relatedi am about to sign up for equinix's colocation service in LA. I am just curious if anyone else is paying similarly outrageous cross connect fees.. they are charging $300 for ethernet, and $200 for DS3.
View 14 Replies View Relatedhow IP transit works? An EU IP transit company who has 5 pop in different country has different pricing for the bandwidth. when they own ASN and have pop in 5 locations.
Whom do these wholesale bandwidth player pays? To tier1 companies?
An US wholesale bandwidth company has same pricing for USA/NL/DE but the company in EU has different pricing for SE/FI/DE/Russia.
I know there are a bazillion email only services out there (constant contact), however, they all require a monthly contract, which I am not interested in, as I only send my newsletters every three months or so (to about 2500 people).
View 1 Replies View RelatedIs it important to have the option to pay monthly or are you happy with term contracts, as long as the price and service standards are there?
View 14 Replies View Relatedwhat "Partial IP Transit" Means?, I found providers for Partial IP Transit But couldnt find what it means, is it like a bandwidth connection?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have about a year left on my contract with Lunarpages and would like to sell it (at a discount to what I paid for it). Where's the best place to post this kind of thing?
View 4 Replies View RelatedDoes anyone have any recent experience in dealing with XO for transit? Any noticable latency/congestion on their network or at peering points? Overall customer satisfaction?
It seems most have dropped XO from their hosting networks due to issues. Since their recent network upgrade and business division I am wondering if anything has improved. We already are located in an XO facility bringing in other transit and of course the easiest solution for our next provider would be to bring XO transit into the mix.
I am going to rent a rack on a carrier neutral DC (Interxion in Madrid, Spain) and get bandwitdh from a single provider (Easynet). We don't have the knowledge nor the required time to become RIPE member, setup BGP from multiple providers, etc. so we are going to use a single transit provider.
The question is: In the future, will I be able to add another transit provider and setup BGP using the same IP addresses our current provider will give us?
I have a dedicated server currently hosted over by Aplus.NET
I have a 3000 GB Monthly Transfer limit and we have been going over this limit for the past few months. This has resulted in a large sum of overage fees.
I am looking to go to another hosting company that is just as good as Aplus.NET, if not better... with a better traffic rate. A friend told me about Choopa.com and I wanted to know how good of a company they were. What are some other top reliable hosting companies with premium servers and that specialize in unmetered bandwidth?
I have a situation with Full Control that may be of interest to professionals who are considering doing business with this hosting company. As VP of Operations and the head of technologies for a startup firm I chose Full Control Networks after some research to host several virtual machines for the company's clients. I filled out a contract with them and things proceeded well for some time. They are a bit pricey, but the service and performance were overall good, so I didn't mind paying a little extra out of our budget. The problem came after the company I was working for started to run into cash flow problems, and after having some paychecks delayed I decided to move on. A few months later I started to receive calls from my former company's clients saying that they were unable to contact the company and that they were worried about their sites and data hosted on the virtual machines at Full Control. I called Full Control as a courtesy to the former clients, whom I had maintained good relationships with, however I was informed that I was no longer on the 'authorized contact list' by request of my former employer and could no longer be given information about the accounts. I asked if I could at least be told if the account was current, and they finally told me that it was up to date. I told the former clients that they were probably ok for the moment, but that was the extent that I could be of assistance. About a month and a half later I receive a call from Full Control asking to be paid for past due balances, and was informed that all servers had been taken off-line. I told them that I was no longer associated with the company and as they were aware had been removed from the 'authorized contact list'. Their reply was that I had signed the contract and that if I did not pay it, the bill would go into collections, and I would be on the hook. After trying to contact my former employer to no avail, I re-contacted a couple of the former clients that had first contacted me with concerns. They said that they had recently been on their sites but could no longer access them, and what could we do to correct the situation. I asked them if they would be willing to pay for their share of the past due balance, and they both said they would. I called Full Control back and said that if they want to divide the bill into the separate machine accounts, that I could get them paid for those portions of the bill (about a third of outstanding) that the former clients are willing to pay for, that I may be able to bring the other former clients on-board and then they could persue my former employer for the remainder. They demanded payment in full, or it was going to collection. So...
A. It was a contract with a corporation and I was 'unauthorized' and taken off of the email list for billing by request of the corporate president, until suddenly there was an unpaid balance whereupon I was 're-instated' as a responsible party because my name was on the contract under the company name.
B. I have been trying to help all involved by getting them partially paid for the balance due and in the process provide them with on-going revenue from those customers for probably years to come. In addition I had already started a new account with Full Control via my own company, which would likely grow to a good number of virtual machines and always be paid on time. Currently an unlikely scenario.
C. Not only will they never collect a penny by going to collections, but there is a real possibility that all parties will have to pay legal expenses to hash it out. (I keep counsel on retainer, and the former clients are attorneys themselves.)
I am still hoping for reason to prevail, and will post the outcome when it is settled. Until then, If you are a technology officer for a company, and are not prepared to pay your company's bills after you have left the company; Do Not sign a contract with Full Control.
On the 95th percentile model, I recall reading bursting not calculated for 36 hrs in this model.
In our application, for now, we will only be uploading to the colocation 6 days a week, on a 10 meg upstream - averaging anywhere from 2 hrs nightly to Saturday ....real small upload.
When I look at 95th percentile, I am looking at it that we would be billed at 9Mbps if we were to utilize this billing method as opposed to purchased transit.
some light on the math & or the *36 hr* burstable bandwidth ?
My website: downarchive.com - it's wearez site and hosted leaseweb.
Yesterday. My server was downtime to today! We contact leaseweb and they said: "we delete my server" ... when my contract not yet finish.. (8/27/08 it's finish
My database - My source - script - website was delete!
I sundenly!
... Next. I trying contact leaseweb once more time but they didn't take phone !
What's are they doing? I didn't know!
where I can get some GBLX in Denver, Co. I have been trying to get GBLX fiber to Colorado Springs, but the loop is just too expensive and the price comes to $95 per MB.
Then I try to look in Denver, but it seems that none of the facilities carry GBLX, and the ones that could carry are asking much $65 per mb with 100 Mb at least commitment.
So far, I called Internap and they quote me $65 per mb which I find decent for their quality, but they don’t have their own DC in Denver. It seems that Internap use XO facility which is not good for me at all, (I have heard some bad histories about the XO facilities). I am looking to colo 1 cab with 20 MB/s with possibility to expand to 4 cabs and 50 MB/s in the next 6 months. Price should be decent.
Are there any web designers/developers who offer hosting to their clients as part of their website creation package. I am toying with the idea of only creating websites for people who host with me. I currently have a colo server, but only use it for personal things. So I have no experience with the needs and demands of clients in regards to hosting. What are some of your experiences with hosting for clients? Is it worth it?
View 15 Replies View RelatedAs my clients' needs expand, they're asking for chroot ssh/sftp setup. I'm currently on a dedicated Linux setup but don't really have the time to set up a whole new box with full virtualization or investigate a full chroot solution (baby on the way), and to be honest it would be less hassle to move to a new provider than worry about down time with sites.
What I'm looking for:
- linux hosting
- hosting for 30+ accounts, some with several domains
- at least 6 IP addresses for SSL certs
- each account in a full chroot environment (ssh/sftp/ftp) so they can't poke around each others' files, or each account set up in a virtual machine setup (ie: openvz)
- maildir
- spamassassin
- php 5, mysql, perl 5.8.8
- suexec apache would be nice
I have learnt it is harder to setup than I initially expected (since I have just moved from a shared hosting service). I am in need of some help setting up my DNS servers, as I am very confused. Here is most of the info I know:
1) I am running HyperVM
2) I've installed LXAdmin
3) I own the domain (purchased from xeodomains.com) runemart.com
4) My VPS hostname is: vps.runemart.com
5) I know my IP
6) My host has said:
'For VPS customers that have a HyperVM login you can now host forward DNS on the DNS servers rdns1.vaserv.com (US)rdns2.vaserv.com (UK'
And I am unsure what this means/how to do it.
I am not sure if I need some more information to set up my DNS, however I am sure that I can get it if I do.
Now, my questions begin. Firstly, I need to point my domain - runemart.com - somewhere. I believe I need to set up my DNS via HyperVM or LXAdmin so that they are something like: ns1.runemart.com and ns2.runemart.com. Though, is this correct? Am I able to set up my own actual domain name servers, or will my domain have to point at something like rdns2.vaserv.com?
If anyone can assist me in this I would be very greatful, as I am waiting to get my website running. This is all I will ask for now, I will take it one step at a time =).
We've been using Sentris mainly for our server needs over the past year, today marks our 365th day with the provider!
Past reviews:
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Overall they've been fantastic to us. Good support when we need it, fantastic network uptime (only recall one time when there were some network problems).
When we've requested for custom things, in terms of hardware or other they are happy to help. They've always seemed to be offering new things with their services over the year, improving their bandwidth carriers, adding more. On the front of it, their site doesn't seem too much, doesn't express the good level of service which I've gotten, probably would expect more from an old site like that.
I don't know what else to say, since they've been pretty great with no problems - suppose its harder to write a review when nothing bad has happened.
I moved from A Small Orange to Medialayer in late June of 2008, and although I was a little unsure on going from cPanel to DirectAdmin, aside from one small thing* I honestly don't miss cPanel at all. Medialayer themselves ported my sites over (I'm always scared I'll mess things up on my own) so really, changing control panels was rather painless for me.
Anyway, as far as actual hosting I could not be happier. The only downtime I've experienced was scheduled and announced well in advance and never for very long.
Support tickets and general inquires are answered ridiculously fast to the point of being scary. I'm still not used to getting replies within minutes instead of hours or days.
I don't currently use a custom plan but the fact that I can request one is a huge plus to me. With my previous host you could add extra bandwidth but not space (you're only option was to simply go up to the next plan) and that always felt very limiting to me.
I'm aware that these days hosts with Medialayer's pricing structure are called "expensive" by some, but I'm still stuck in 2004 and consider them priced just right for what they offer. Also, as far as I'm aware Paypal is still the only payment option, and although that is fine for me, it won't be for others.
* (The only thing I miss is the ability to purge/make unwrittable the stats/awstats folders. I'm not sure if this is a host vs host or cPanel vs DirectAdmin difference, and really it is so minor in the grand scheme of things and only even noticeable to someone stupidly anal such as me.
This is a brief review of my experience with VT6 over the last year.
I have little to say, because it's "just worked". I've had to call upon their helpdesk twice in the last year. In both cases the response was timely and the matter resolved in a reasonable timeframe, both were matters beyond their control.
I'd happily recommend them for shared hosting.
I wrote a while back about my 9 month experience with ZONE.net, and now certain circumstances have come up that have brought the need for me to to move to a different datacenter in southern California. However, my experience "in the ZONE" was exceptional, and I didn't want to walk out on them without a final word here on WHT to let everyone know what a wonderful time it was hosting with them.
In June of 2007 I was beginning to grow my own web development & client solutions business and decided it was time to move from a shared box to a "more private" VDS. I don't jump into things quickly however, so I had planned a week or so of research for the best price/quality/service combination. I spent days on here reading reviews, checked out 20 or 30 different companies and websites, and pitted plan against plan.
Eventually I narrowed it down to "the top three" and finally went with ZONE.net. They lured me in with some amazing deals in the "VPS Offers" advertising forum here, and I liked seeing the activity of their sales guys on WHT.
As you'll see echoed over and over again by happy customers on this forum, I wasn't disappointed by my choice. Throughout the year I filed some 16 support tickets which were all dealt with swiftly and as expected. As my company began to grow, I even went through migrating to a larger VPS plan with them, which was handled perfectly and went through effortlessly. I've "scaled-up" with other hosting companies in the past (when I worked for another company) and have had horrible experiences (plans change and prices fluctuate and you can't always get the same kind of deal you had before), but these guys were wonderful and everything went through without a snag.
Their network is quick, their support is amazing, and their prices are incredible. For clients of mine who need a VPS, I always recommend the ZONE. You won't be disappointed.
This is my first and last review of these guys. When I first colocated my server with them, they were still known as iHosting. The price was good, the support was excellent, and it was a friendly little place. I never experienced any down time to speak of, and when I needed something changed (like a reverse DNS entry), they took care of it almost straight away.
Of course, then a big mean company bought them. In(forbusiness).(nl|be). From day one I knew things could only go downhill from there on, and I was right. Every time they touched my server in the datacentre, it went offline. Even when they didn't have any business with my particular server. On three occasions they unplugged the power cable *WITHOUT PRIOR NOTIFICATION* so I couldn't do a clean shut down which resulted in a raid array rebuild. That in itself would almost be acceptable, but each time they didn't plug it back in properly.
Then on another three occasions they've messed up my connectivity by not handling the NIC with care. It's a sensitive little thing, and even though I've pointed it out to them time and time again, they keep messing up. Usually they've been kind enough to fix these problems, which they caused relatively quickly. However, it's happened again, and this time they're refusing to fix it for free. Needless to say, I'm not paying for something they broke, and I'm cancelling my account with them ASAP. They'd better not make a fuss about giving me back my server, or I won't be a happy camper.
As if unannounced shutdowns and unplugged cables aren't bad enough, I've also been paying for an APC connection/account for almost two years now. I still haven't received any actual login data that would in fact allow me to do a remote reboot. It's not like I haven't asked them .. I asked them at least every time the server went down, and about every other month as well. Each time my mail was either ignored, or I got some vague reply.
Oh, and about this latest downtime .. they told me they'd be rearranging things in the rack today. I asked them, yet again, to be careful with my server so it wouldn't go down for like a week again. That mail was nicely ignored. After almost a day of downtime, I told them I would be cancelling my account and that they'd better get my server back up ASAP. Their only reply was that that would cost me. After they guaranteed me there would be no more than 5 minutes of downtime while rearranging the rack. Right.
The hosting world has changed a good bit in those years I've been with them. I can now get a reseller account that gives me just as much freedom for less money with more support. And face it, support is what it's all about -- and theirs blows.
I wouldn't recommend this host to anyone, not even if they paid me. Not even if they were the last host on the planet. Never again.
I have had several accounts with Powweb for 5 years now and I thought I would write a brief review of them:
BEFORE
I originally went with Powweb 5 years ago based off of a referral from a friend. At the time, the “shared hosting environment” isn’t quite what it is today. For the first several years, I experienced trouble free hosting (for the most part) and truly felt as though I was “getting what I paid for.”
Powweb, back then, was a privately owned company based out of California ( I believe) and I usually got the impression that most of their employees truly cared about their customers and the quality of service they provided. What made them semi-unique at the time, was that they offered only a “one plan solution” (they didn’t offer multiple plan types) and the simplicity of their business model worked well for most.
Powweb was also unique in that they offered community forums which were pretty “open” and it truly allowed customers to discuss problems and issues with one another. A few years ago, they transitioned from private dedicated servers to a clustered environment and that did bring along some hard time, but they got it under control eventually. Overall, I was satisfied with the service.
NOW
A year or so ago Powweb was bought-out by Endurance. If you do not know anything about Endurance, they are a very large web-hosting company which has acquired several other large shared-hosts over the past few years.
Once Powweb was purchased by Endurance, the quality in service immediately decreased. Part of what Endurance does with most of their acquisitions is to assimilate them into their fold. This was a very shaky process and nearly everyone experience a large amount of downtime.
Additionally, Powweb is now plagued by horrible MySQL issues where the service is nearly completely useless. For the past year, Powweb has been either unable or unwilling to fix these issues. It can often take several minutes for even the most basic of queries to run. Any dynamic type of an application: forums, blogs, CMS, are usually rendered completely useless.
To make matters worse, Powweb continues to aggressively advertise these resource heavy applications and then ask for patience as they attempt to get their issues fixed. It has been about a year now, and still it is not resolved. Much of these issues come from the extreme overselling that Powweb does. Nearly every day, all websites (even static ones) come to a complete crawl.
Calling customer support is also a waste of your time. 95% of the time, you are met by a rude person who simply tells you “well, it seems to work for me” or that “we are aware of the problem” (at best). Opening support tickets is also usually not helpful. Tickets are often closed without any contact with the customer and it is very common for them to “give you the run-around.”
I have been told by support several times to keep an eye on the forums for updates on issues and whatnot. Then, if you go to the forums and attempt to get any information from there, you are told that ‘these are only user-helping user forums’ and that you can’t get any official help there, though customer support told you to go to that very place. Additionally, Powweb’s staff practices extreme censorship of the forum and it is common for negative remarks to be removed or posts completely deleted, many times without any acknowledgement of the act.
In addition to the MySQL issues, Powweb also experiences frequent “lock-ups,” CGI issues, email issues, dns issues, and so on and so forth. The list of problems that has occurred over the past year is literally too long to remember.
In conclusion, the Powweb of new is nothing like the Powweb of old. This new Powweb is controlled by an over-selling giant (Endurance) that is only concerned with the number of accounts as apposed to the quality of service. While certainly any business related site should not be in such an environment at all, I would even suggest that people looking for a host for hobby related purposes stay clear of powweb – it’s that bad.
One year has gone by since we bought our hosting plan at HostMySite (HMS) and I thought I'd post another review. You can read my previous review here (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=659594)
The Short Of It
We have 2 IIS Coldfusion VPS (CF VPS+ plan). The first one we had was originally just a CF VPS (for developing) but we later changed it over to a CF VPS+ (more ram, more space, etc). This VPS is 1 year and 1 month old. Our production VPS which currently hosts our website is a healthy 1 year old. The reliability has been great and we never had any speed or performance issues.
We are very happy at HMS. We have had very little issues with the our VPSes and those issues are usually resolved very quickly. Anytime we needed support, it was overall always quick and helpful. We recommend HMS to anyone who needs a Windows VPS.
Security and Friends
The SSL certificate we purchased from our previous host expired so we bought a new one via HMS. At first the order we placed was apparently processed by them but wasn't sent to the issuer for processing. We didn't find out until we sent a ticket in wondering about the status. They immediately processed it for us. Except for the fact that they processed it for 1 year when we bought it for 3. So another ticket flew across the internet and flew back to us just as quickly resolving the problem.
They asked if they wanted them to install it and we emphatically said yes. They installed the certificate and we were set. Or so we thought. We began having issues with our merchant account not being able to verify our SSL certificate. They forgot to add in the intermediate certificate so that third party processors can see verify it's legitimacy. This was resolved very quickly (faster than we expected) and we have not had issues with it since.
The One Thing
The only thing we'd like to mention was an incident that occurred several months ago. One day, out of the apparently gray clouds, for some reason our site could not be connected to. After shaking our fists futilely at the weather gods, we sat down and tried to figure out what was wrong. By doing the basic diagnostics to make sure it wasn't us or our ISP we cursed the Lunar Goddess and contacted HMS to see what was up. They fixed it but didn't tell us what the issue was. Apologies in the form of cup cakes to the Moon was issued.
The next day, the same problem occurred or at least we thought and was told it was the same problem. We could not access our site. This time we did both live chat and started a ticket (for documentation, last time we just called). In the live chat they stated it was an issue with the node and not specific to our VPS and they were working on it. They said it was the same issue as yesterday.
This is where it starts getting dicey.
They also responded via the ticket that the firewall was blocking the ports and not the same issue as yesterday. Now considering only one person has access to the VPS (via RDC) to make changes and he did not log in to make any changes to the firewall (why would we?) that explanation didn't even seem plausible. And the ports blocked (pretty much everything except FTP) didn't make any sense. We went back and forth, with me explaining that after several months of not touching the firewall after setup, why would we inexplicable block ourselves out? Why would we even touch the firewall? Also that it can't be a coincidence with the node issues yesterday and they had already stated it was the same issue.
After a bit of going back and forth, they finally came to the conclusion that the patch they applied to fix the node issue made changes to the firewall which caused the subsequent issue. While this explanation didn't exactly seem completely kosher, we weren't going waste more time asking for a better explanation.
Now given that the total "downtime" of both issues was about 5 hours we thought we'd see how much of a resistance they will put up for the uptime guarantee. The first issue we pretty much knew wasn't going to get any attention because according to their TOS, they will only refund for time it was down when you posted a support ticket. Since we did this over the phone, there was no documentation to speak of when it went down and when it got fixed.
As for the second issue (which did have a ticket) they stated that since the VPS was technically up, the uptime guarantee did not apply even if the problem was caused by them (they didn't specifically say that but it was implied). While we didn't expect anything from it and didn't bother to pursue it, that response raised some eyebrows. While within their rights, it did seem a bit "whoa". They did apologize and were very polite and respectful. It was pretty much what we expected in terms of responses.
The Train Ride
While the above issue may seem bad, it was a one-time event. These things can happen. We haven't had any uptime, access or server issues since that problem. Support is quick and helpful.
The site has been running fine for months with no downtime.
We are overall very happy with HMS and would recommend them to anyone who needs a Windows VPS.
Overall Rating: 9.5/10
Support: 9/10
Reliability: 9/10
Speed and Bandwidth: 10/10
I will try to share my experience with all of you regarding the company I rent my dedicated servers - Netdirekt.
I found out about them over an year ago when I needed to move to dedicated server. I decided to give them a try, since I was new in this area and since I am perfectionist in this job (making backup of backups of backups)I thought I don't have what to loose if they disappoint me. At least not much.
So over an year ago, I ordered my first server with them. It was Core2Duo server with 4GB of RAM, with a nice price. By the way, when I saw their 1996 website and their pricing, I was getting ready to get disappointed)
I didn't need much help in the beginning, the hardware and network were (are) top notch. Some months later, 4 if I remember correctly, I expanded my business and ordered a second server with them. So, I am really satisfied with their service.
Couple of experiences I got with them that I would like to share with you.
Once, the hard drive of one of my servers started fiving SMART errors so it needed to be changed. It was Sunday, 1AM, so I didn't expect much and it was the secondary (backup) drive so it wasn't THAT urgent to me. Anyway, I dropped them an e-mail requesting drive change. 15 minutes (yup, 15 minutes, Sunday, 1AM) later I got an e-mail back, their representative asking me am I ready for the hard drive replacement. I replied yes. I told him i shut off the server. 10 minutes later my server was back online, with new drive in it.
Later on, once they had 2 hours network outage and another time 1 hour power outage I think, that is in an year. My servers are checked by Pingdom so I believe their uptime.
Then I left them alone for some months, didn't bother them since I had no issues at all, until 2 weeks ago when I got my third server with them. I believe I have been the most boring client ever to them. 10 times maybe I asked IP transfer from one server to another, and they did that very fast and without making me feel uncomfortable by asking that from them over and over again.
So overall, I am very satisfied with their service. They don't do much (hardware and network only, no management), but I think they are perfect in what they do.
Keep up the great work netdirekt, and you will keep me with you forever.
We've been a customer of Steadfast for a little over a year with a VPS plan. We had been using a dedicated server from another provider and we were looking to cut costs a bit since the server was very underutilized.
After researching here, we originally signed up on a low-end VPS plan and set up monitoring. Our goal was to monitor the server and service for a couple/few months prior to moving any services over to it; just to make sure the company and VPS would meet our needs.
After a several months of monitoring the server closely we decided to migrate from our ded server to the VPS at Steadfast. We haven't looked back since.
Our criteria for VPS at the time were:
1) Had to run Debian.
2) Reliability of service/provider.
--Uptime of the server itself
--Network reliability
--Redundancy
3) Customer support responsiveness.
4) Price.
Steadfast has exceeded our expectations in all areas. First off finding a host that supports Debian is not as easy as it should be.
(Note to VPS providers: This is a deal-breaker for us. If we can't use Debian then there's much less chance of us signing up for your services.)
Off the soapbox and back to Steadfast: The VPS is quick - with no I/O lag at all. It feels like a dedicated server. The service itself has been reliable and the network has also been responsive. (We monitor our servers from two separate geographical locations).
Further, we've opened more tickets than a 'normal' customer probably would, mostly just to find out what our options are for growth, backups, etc. The team (Karl and others) at Steadfast are very helpful. I don't have any specific recollection of opening a true tech support ticket but I'm sure I have. The fact that it doesn't stand out as remarkable indicates that it was answered quickly and with a personalized (non-generic) response.
We've grown since we started using the VPS and the upgrade process has been painless and quick. Maybe this is true of all VPS providers since all they need to do is allocate more resources, but either way, it's been painless and quick for us at Steadfast.
I have been with futurehosting since October 2007 and have had my ups and downs. see my history below:
October 2007: Signed up for both a vps in chicago and one in dallas datacenter. I used my chicago server for my primary hosting and my dallas server is used only for DNS failover for 2 websites. I am a small town host that hosts locally only so we have around 15 clients. Everything was working ok, but the chicago server just always seemed slow, ocasional load spikes throughout the day hitting the 5 or 6’s. So finally in May 2009 I posted on WHT to seek some help for why loads were so high and we came to the conclusion in that thread that it must be an overloaded server. So I shot off a ticket to futurehosting to move me to a different node and they did without any problems. Loads seemed to go way down after the move and my server was zippy fast again.
August 2009: My chicago server has been getting progressivly slower throughout the last 3 months and we are back to load spikes again. I finally give up with the load issue and just assume it is my problem.
September 11, 2009: Now I run into a problem with php handeling sessions and ask for help from futurehosting and have a problem with them lying to me. You can see the thread here. Jim at futurehosting is aware of this and apologized deeply. And they reprimanded the admin working on my case.
September 21, 2009: I migrated my chicago server to Wiredtree and still have my dallas server as my backup with futurehosting. Since moving to Wiredtree, all of my load issues have gone away and load sits around 0.25 average.
Please note that in all these cases I have opened tickets with futurehosting and worked with them through the problems.
Now, after I got my history out of the way, here is my review:
Value: 10/10
futurehosting is one of the best values around especially now with their 40% off for life and more ram. I, as an existing customer even submitted a ticket complaining how new customers get this and we as exhisting don’t and they gave me the discount.
Support: 7/10
I think the support of futurehosting is a little below of top tier. When you submit a ticket with futurehosting after 15 min you get a reply stating “we’re working on it”. Then sometimes after 30 min you get a reply “we’re escelating this to sysadmins”. And finally after 45 min the problem is fixed. Now keep in mind this is just one instance, but almos all receive a first ticket stating “we’re working on it” and then 15 min later it’s fixed. Now, I really don’t have much to compare to here other than wiredtree, and when you submit a ticket to them, 15 min later you get a response “fixed”. Now about the server admin lying directly to me when he couldn’t fix the problem. I realise this is a rare isolated instance, but still put a sour taste in my mouth.
Server Performance: 5/10
Performance was good at times bad at times and overall seemed slow at futurehosting. I think, but not sure that maybe they are overloading their servers…
Server Uptime: 10/10
Server was always up, and I mean always. Only around once or twice in two years was there a problem with DDOS on another server that caused routing problems in the datacenter to cause my server to be unreachable.
I hav enever had any problems with my server in dallas and it is always fast and zippy and never down. I have also never really submitted a ticket on my server in dallas because it is used so infrequently. We, however are leaving futurehosting and will be in process of moving our dallas server away from them soon.
Well, there you have it, my review of futurehosting after two years.
I've recently had some issues with a script I wrote and I contacted support about it. Three techs assisted me with it, but could not resolve it. I later found the problem was with my outputting text when there should be no output at all. I closed the ticket and thanked the techs for their work.
This is just one of the many examples I have of how they are willing to work with the customer, even if it is not their fault. They will do what it takes to keep the customer happy, except fixing the customers' code. Jedito and his team really strive at providing superb support for their customers.
I have a few domains hosted with them and also have pointed others to their services. I currently use two of their servers, one is production and the other is staging. They are quick to get services setup and ready to go, as well as providing quick support through their ticket system. Their live chat doesn't always reach people (when it says it is online), but they respond to tickets within a few hours, sometimes within a few minutes.
I have the Silver plan with them, and I think they recently changed the amount of disk space available from 7GB to 14GB because that's what I now have available. I did not know they were planning that, but it was a pleasant surprise when I logged in to cPanel.
I can't think of any problems I have had with Downtownhost in these two years of experience with them, though I have had problems with my scripts and code. If they make a mistake, they admit it and are quick to fix it. I might have had a little bit of downtime over a year ago, but I think the server went down briefly. The uptime has been superb and the services have been wonderful.
To anyone who is in search of a good web host, Downtownhost is the way to go for shared hosting. I have not tried their other services (well, I am using blogging on the staging server), so I do not know what they are like. I have been with my share of web hosts and I have not found one that is better than Downtownhost.
What could I expect in the web hosting world for £1/m or £10/y?
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