This is an honest review of how I spent my summer dealing with trying to have a simple dedicated server setup with Sentris.com, and how they failed.... miserably.
I initially ordered the server from them because of an ad they posted here at WHM. The advertisement explicitly stated:
"Free Full Management with any Centos and cPanel/DirectAdmin or Windows 2003 with HC.
We'll do security updates and fix any issues you may have, only on software we preinstalled. We'll even help installing any 3rd party software when requested. We'll also secure your server for free, installing things like Zend, mod_security, APF, BFD, Rootkits Protection, EAccelerator, ClamAV, etc. (some of them require a cpanel/whm)."
The ad from them is still posted and you can read it yourself. The key words in this paragraph is "Free Full Management".
I could give you a full blow-by-blow, detailed-by-date breakdown of everything that went wrong, but I've decided to just hit a few highlights since this post will be pretty long anyway.
By the way, this is the first time in my life I have ever posted a negative review about any specific company, product, or person. But I feel it is important to the WHM community that they are aware of how Sentris.com operates, since they are still advertising here.
1. The first thing that happened, was that the initial hard drive setup was incorrect.
They put the two separate physical hard-drive into one volume. When I point this out, the answer was pretty much that it was my fault since I didn't specify that I wanted two separate hard drives. I should have run away from them right then. I posted about this here without naming Sentris by name.
2. Fantastico was not installed-- as per the initial order. When asked about that, they sent me a link to netenberg about how to install it myself.
3. The first days, the server was down-- a lot. Finally they replaced a cpu fan.
4. The server was still unavailable, and the reply to the server-down ticket, was that I should unplug the server from the network. (!)
5. Finally, they said they moved the hard drives "to a completely new server, with new motherboard and all". And a new IP, so of course, I had a lot to do.
6. They never DID get Fantastico installed, so I had the great folks at Platinum Server Management to do it.
After the move to a "new" server, things would run ok for a while, then it would go down. Then at the end of June they had a "Scheduled maintenance downtime because of "recent huge attacks we had in the last week".
The server itself was hacked at least twice and got spam reports. I and PSM, did all we could do to keep up with it. We changed the server's root password several times. But somehow....
Sentris' ticketing system is bizarre. They require the root password to be given on every ticket, and it's on a non-secure form/site. Also, the only way to look up past tickets is to send a request, and you're sent an email with a list of ticket numbers that you then have to lookup like a search. And sometimes prior tickets, and/or comment or answers just completely disappear. They sometimes answer a current question, on an old ticket also.
They use ModernBill for, well, billing, but put up a warning NOT to use ModernBill's ticketing system because they don't read them.
The one and only time I ever got ahold of anyone at MSN Live Chat (which they advertise) to report that my server was down, I was curtly told to submit a support ticket, and the person immediately signed off.
I never could get an actual human person using their phone support number.
I first started requesting credit as per their SLA in July. No response for weeks.
August was fairly ok with just periodic downtimes. In the first part of September, a phishing site was hacked into the server, and Sentris took the server offline. (Without any notice... no email, no nothing.) I do understand why it was a point of concern, but a little heads-up would have been appreciated. And whatever happened to "Free Full Managed" part?
After a couple days (when I finally figured out what happened) I canceled the server account 30 days in advance, just like their TOS demanded and paid the last invoice.
After many, many requests for credit for ALL the downtime I had had since the server first went live in June, they finally came back at me and said they don't give credit for scheduled maintenance, and attacks, etc. BUT they would credit my account with 25% of the monthly charge on the next month, since there was currently an open invoice and they couldn't change it.
I canceled the server on 09-06-09... via emails and a support ticket.
So far, I have rec'd two requests for payments for the October period. The latest email came in just this morning.
I emailed them again, telling them again that the server is CANCELED but I don't have any hope they'll notice. I even attached screenshots of the original cancellation ticket.
From these experiences, it is my belief that Sentris.com is more than likely a one-man operation that SLOWLY goes through "normal" support tickets to relay to the datacenter and farms out "server down" tickets to a different company that actually responds.
Not only has this experience been expensive, but is also the single-worst experience of any customer service I have ever experienced.
If you are really wanting a dedicated server with "Fulll Management" look somewhere else than Sentris. Well, really, if you wanting any kind of dedicated server I would suggest using someone other than Sentris.
In September, I got a dedicated server with Burst.net to replace this one. The pricing was equivalent, and I feel like I'm in heaven now, after being in H*ll.
I have been with them for 2 month now and thought they needed a review here.
I was searching on WHT 2 month ago and came across a couple of ads and decided to go with Sentris their 1TB and 2TB Bandwidth amazed me. Had a chat with the Msn guy and paid for the server, although the setup took more than usual, it didn't really bother me as long as i got the server.
Got the server and I got to work, no major issues, although i ran with an issue a week or two later where openssl or something like that was broken on the server. I wasn't too happy with their support and had quite an argument with the support team as they were taking long to reply.. (lol) Then Cpanel asked me to reload the OS which would then solve the problem. So asked sentris to do it and it was done really quick and there i was again at it.
I also appologised for being rushy but the were helpful.
Since then no issues at all... Although i find their support slow at times.
So in short..
Great Servers, Good Hardware Great Uptime, Not a single downtime since am with them. Support is also great (although they are sometimes slow, but they hit the spot) The guys are really helpful. Price is good also.
I have a dedicated server with Sentris for one month, and I am very happy to be with them ! The server is very good, never down or latency... I'm very satisfy.
Sentris/JustEdge - 7/5 Month Reviews - Great time with them so far!
About half a year ago, I got my first server with Sentris.com, after hearing some scetchy reviews I was worried about going with them - but I thought I would give them a try.
7 months later and now having a few servers with them they have provided a fantastic server to me to run ClanDrive.com's shared/other services off.
They have always been quick to fix any problems on their side of things which I could not handle, they provide an excellent bang-for-a-buck.
When I first signed up on my first server with them, just a few problems but they were resolved quickly. The server was in stock so I did not experience their fantastic setup times (usually within the same day), so the next day I had the server setup for me and an appology for the wait. There was also a cPanel licensing problem but they also sorted that for me in the same day.
Other than that, it has been a grand experience, they have provided an excellent service on my servers and support, now getting 30 minute replies from them which I consider good compared to old experiences.
They've forwarded any tos violations or phishing reports to me of any of my clients, allowing me to deal with it myself, understanding that I am running a webhosting company. They've given me a good basis for ClanDrive, proud for them to be my provider.
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Justedge, another fantastic service providing some high quality bandwidth for me, some higher bandwidth usage plans for me.
I use Justedge for higher-spec plans and some VPS accounts.
Just one problem, on setup time, was due to a fault motherboard causing some serious errors but they replaced it within a day, also saving my data + configuration too, so no need to start over.
They've responded to my support queries slower than Sentris but its acceptable, they provide a good service for their money, always helpful and help me resolve my problems.
Have helped with sorting out e-mailing problems and have been helpful on spam issues.
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I'd recommend companies to anyone who is wanting a good service, with good uptime, hardware and staff. They've provided a great experience to me with multiple servers each.
I've signed up with Wiredtree for a Managed VPS 12 days ago.
I know it's not enough time to write a review. But I decided to write my first impression then keep you updated by writing a new review at the end of each month, so expect one at 12 February.
For now, these guys are simply the best I've tried.
They reply you in 15 minutes or less and if it took them more, 20 minutes or something, then be sure that they're investigating your problem. If you can't wait for 15 minutes, then go ahead and give them a call on their toll-free number and they'll be with you second by second. Their support wont just solve your problem, but they'll educate you telling you what caused the problem and how did they fix it.
I'm solicitous about security. But with these guys, I finally sleep peacefully knowing that my VPS is well secured.
I joined Limestonenetworks back in 2008 when it was a small company. At the time they offered the best price on the server I was looking for, so I took the plunge. The first 2 months were great, I enjoyed the stable network, and responses from the support team were fairly quick (1-2 hours response time). From there on it was all downhill, my servers were constantly down, and the support team took longer to answer my tickets. I didn't think this was a big problem, so I stayed with Limestonenetworks even though it was having problems with their network. Near December an incident occurred that really pushed me over the edge. My servers had been down for hours, so I opened a support ticket, and one of the agents replied and told me that the downtime was due to an upgrade in their network.
Again, I came to conclude that it could be far worst, so I stayed, one of the reasons was that I didn't want to switch my game servers over. It's important to keep in mind when you are running game servers, IPs play an important part because that's where you get your traffic. Near January the network upgrade at Limestonenetworks was still taking place which caused my bandwidth meter to stop working. This really scared me because I didn't want to get charged for overages due to the fact that my servers were receiving DDOS attacks, and I wouldn't know when to close the ports.
This incident actually turned out to be positive for me because even though I went over my bandwidth quota they didn't charge me for overages. I was very happy because this was like a late Christmas present, so now I was even more happy to give my money to Limestonenetworks. Now you might ask the question, how is this going downhill? Even though they didn't charge me for the overages, I still lost many clients who were angry at the fact that their game server were down.
In the end this network upgrade actually cost me 3 clients who were paying ~$60 per month. I let this slide because at this point I already had two servers with Limestonenetworks and I really didn't want to switch over due to the fact I would lose my IPs. The next month, February, was no different, I had more issues with Limestonenetworks. Starting of this month I was getting large DDOS attacks, which kept pushing my bandwidth over the quota, and I ended up paying close to $200 dollars just for bandwidth overages.
At this point they started to nickel and dime me for every single penny they could get of me. I don't know if they were having financial problems, or if it was due to another reason. Again in March I went over the quota, but at this time they told me that I had to pay per gigabyte which would result in a $500+ charge in bandwidth, and after talking with multiple agents, I was finally able to reach an agreement. They had changed a policy all of the sudden due to the fact that they knew I was a good customer and would keep paying for the overages.
The problem I had here was that I didn't mind upgrading to plan after I knew how much bandwidth was going to be used, since they don't offer any sort of DDOS protection, and game servers result in large DDOS attacks occasionally. I understand that Limestonenetworks was not at fault, but by making me pay per gigabyte was a bit harsh, since I had never been late on a payment, and had multiple servers. Try to remember that I stayed with this company even though I lost multiple clients because of their network outages, but they didn't care about this, all the care about is nickling and diming customers.
From that point on I have been living on the edge because I don't want to pay for an upgrade before hand due to the fact I don't know how much bandwidth my server will be using. Even if I upgrade to a different package it does not offer an insurance due to the fact that if I receieve a large DDOS than I orignally predicted, I would still end up paying per gigabyte.
This company has turned from having potential to just making their customers run away. Now the other problems I had with Limestonenetwork is the support they offer, which has been declining since I joined. The associates are very rude and don't really care about the customer's experience. I didn't include every problem I had with Limestonenetwork because it would make it a very long read.
Network - 10/10 Downtime - 5/10 Customer Service - 2/10 Overall Experience - 4/10 Would I recommend this company? NO, I urge everyone to stay away, unless they like to deal with problems on a daily basis.
Also from reading other topics on this forum, I personally believe that Limestonenetwork is overselling and their network can not handle the load.
This is my 1 month review on the company vt6 (vt6.co.uk). There is no doubt about it, they have the fastest reply times and most helpfull support. I started out on the basic plan and have just paid for the next one, i was upgraded allmost instantly but as i found it was no benfit to me i asked to downgrade and was again instantly downgraded and my money refunded.
As for the quality of the VPS, it is perfect. they dont cramm VPS's onto one server so each VPS runs smooth without any problems. Iv also had no downtime at all. Iv been with a few VPS's before this and none come close to pure quality and fantastic support that vt6 provide.
That is all for my one month review on this perfect company that i would deffinitly recommend to anyone seeking low cost quality VPS's (Or hosting that i assume will be exatcly the same)
I came to use Liquidweb thorugh a string of random REALLY bad luck. From "Managed" VPS that ended up not getting patched and fried due to a security exploit (PowerVPS) to a RAID failure, during a backup, causing total data loss and backup loss (RockMyWeb's VDNet). I was ready to pull my hair out. So I decided to kick out the bucks for a Liquid Web VPS Plan 2 (with a great price from a special found here). All I can say is it was a night and day difference.
The server is fast. Remote access to this VPS is a fast as my dedicated server in the office. I thought moving to cPanel was going to slow things down but this thing flies! Wow!
The service is fast. I call support and a person picks up the phone. No e-mail. No long hold times. I call, someone answers, no need to transfer to a higher tech, it's just fixed. Wow!
The one downfall. And it's only a downfall if it's not what you want. cPanel only. I'm a big DirectAdmin fan, but I'm learning my way around cPanel again.
Until I'm ready to do dedicated (I'm guessing it's coming in 2k8) this thing is awesome!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
1x Web Hosting Talk for hooking me up with Liquidweb.
1x Web Hosting Talk Community for reviewing Liquidweb.
1x Liquidweb for the awesome service!
1x VDNet. It may sound strange but they did answer e-mails faster than anyone I had ever seen (multiple replies in under two mins). They had a great price, but bad luck drove me to change. I'm glad I did, but I wouldn't have a hard time recommending VDNet now that they fixed the problem that caused the loss of my server. (and they did give me a month free) They really did give good value for the price, and offer DirectAdmin which Liquidweb doesn't.
Anyone else care to share?
P.S.
I'm not a fan of emoticons, but I did it out of love for you guys. Feel free to hammer the server a bit and tell me how fast the pages load. They're pretty quick here in Costa Rica: CR Solutions Group Costa Rica Web Design.
I've been with Steadcom for a few months now, and I greatly their services. Such great deals have been offered to me. Each time I talk with the staff, I seem to want to use their services longer. I'm currently working with my own free hosting company and I entrust my uptime and reliability to Steadcom. I've had no problems with either of those aspects and it seems like their network is as fast as Google. If you find a better deal than this, it would be a miracle. I am working on obtaining up to six months with them for my next payment. I would fully recommend Steadcom and their services. I give it all of my reputation and respect as a business owner to acknowledge such outstanding services.
I have been with SoftLayer a month now, and this is my review of their company. I will start with my pre-sales experience, going into hardware, their network, server, portal, accounting/sales, and support .
[[[[[[[ PRE SALES ]]]]]]]
I started out looking for a new server by looking at some good dedicated hosts. I saw SoftLayer offered the new Nehalem series, so I went for it. Their sales team is excellent beyond all reasons -- the staff are personal and do NOT try to take your money; instead, they find the best-fit solution for you and work with you by calling you, showing you their specials, and talking to managers.
[[[[[[ HARDWARE ]]]]]]]
The Hardware at SL is top-notch. There's no problem with it, it's clearly stated in the portal what type of motherboard, HDs, RAM, etc are in the server and it's top-notch Supermicro hardware. I've never seen a problem with it, and I have seen the certificate of passing benchmarks as that is done on all SL servers by default.
Their provisioning system is excellent, I got my server in 2-3 hours at MAX. WOW! It is all inside the portal too; you can view the status (PE_BOOT, OS_RELOAD); it's clearly there and excellent. We finally got VIRTUOZZO (thanks natecarlson ) working with it too.
[[[[ SERVER ]]]]]
What can I say? This is the new Nehalem series. I think the deal I got was quite good, I brought several SL servers before I switched to this one, and it did take a while to get it down to this price (especially for SL quality, damn!) :
-Intel Dual Quad Core (2x) X5570 Nehalem 2.93GHZ w/ HT -12 x 300GB SAS 15K Seagate Cheetah HD's in RAID 10 -12GB DDR3 RAM (to start) -4000GB Monthly Bandwith -1GigE Port Speed -64 IP Addresses -Monitoring & Automated Reboot $1,100 a month -- which I think is good for this type of server.
It's blazing fast and 0 problems.
[[[[ NETWORK ]]]]
I started in their Dallas, TX datacenter with a Dual 5450, but decided to get a 2U server with SAS HD's. Sadly, they said they were out of stock in Dallas. They said they can get me an EXTRA DISCOUNT if I went to Washington DC. I live an hour or two from DC, so it was good for me. I debated, and talked to them, they said it was a great place and I went with their Washington D.C datacenter .
It's fast. Blazing fast. They have like 100GBPS connectivity -- with many backbone providers. I've never seen so many . I'm liking the nework speeds and it really is nice.
[[[[ PORTAL ]]]]
The best part. They have their 'manage.softlayer.com' and their mobile 'manage.softlayer.mobi' portals. They are excellent. I don't even need support, and when I do, it's there. I mean, I'm STILL exploring their portal system. It has so much stuff; "Instant cPanel Licenseing, Instant Firewall, Upgrades, IP's, OS reloads, Installs, Backups" -- I love it. It makes my life a lot easier and quiker. I've had a server with ThePlanet, HiVelocity, and more and SL portal blows them all away
[[[ SUPPORT ]]]
The support is great. In the times I need it, it's there. Within 15 minutes I get a response and usually in under an hour, a resolution. It's excellent in what they provide at an unmanaged rate, and the $3 tickets are great in my opinion for those quick issues that you just can't figure out. They even helped me with a bit of PHP help!
[[[ ACCOUNTING AND SALES ]]]
It's there any time I needed it. I got servers upgraded, downgraded, reclaimed, removed, created, OS reloaded, invoices adjusted, and it's there. They respond within 1 hour usually and it's great for a sales team. Personally it's awesome how they have excellent teams for support and sales! The reps are VERY nice and friendly too, and they offer some nice discounts .
[[[ OVERALL ]]]
I give SoftLayer a 10/10+. They are everything I expect from a provider (heck, they are better than most managed providers I've been with) and more. I urge you to try them out, they will try to fit your budget as good as you can do it.
I'd first like to follow up with my end at GNAX. I ended up going down to them on the 31st to pick up my colo server and get my refund. All went generally well, except for the "I'll be back in 5 mins" that took more than 30 mins for some sales/billing guy to get me my stuff. Signed some papers, and my money was refunded in full. In the end, a happy ending with GNAX.
Now, while all that was ongoing, I moved over to a dedicated server at Softlayer quick as I could because I knew with 100% certainty that Jeff would have my service terminated when I posted the chat log of him threatening me - a controversial decision I still stand by for what it's worth.
First, lets talk about sales with Softlayer. My God - I have never seen anything like this. With GNAX, sales would consist of me sending a ticket and waiting days, or it getting closed randomly, then having to wait more and more. A 48-hour max setup time with GNAX ended up being 5+ days and still no setup. Softlayer. I was doing Live Chat with an agent who was extremely helpful. Too move the process along quicker, I asked if I could call and speak with him, and sure enough, he game me a toll free number and I spoke with him through the entire ordering process. Not only was he extremely knowlegeable and helpful, but he also pointed me to a special I was unaware of where I got double the RAM and a second hard drive for free. I ended up ordering a dual core Xeon setup, but I actually got setup with a quad Core Xeon X3220. No mistake they said, they were just out of what I ordered so they gave me a quad core for the price of a dual core. And all of this happened in less than 4 hours. Yep, that's right. I went from on the phone with sales to having my brand new quad core for the price of a dual core with twice the RAM and HDD for free in under four hours. I was actually shocked. After being with GNAX so long, I had no idea that anything even under a 24 hour wait was possible (which it wasn't with GNAX btw), and they didn't hold my order because of being short on inventory like GNAX did - they just gave me a free upgrade with no delay!
With GNAX, I have never been able to be in such control of my server as I am now with Softlayer. With GNAX, lets say, I wanted to change or add reverse DNS for an IP, I would have to send a ticket and wait hours and hours and hours for them to do it. With Softlayer, I login to the portal, and click click type, click and it's done and live. All by myself! Their portal is the most powerful thing I have ever seen and it allows me to do and see everything.
Their support, I'm convinced, is second to none. I once had three days of downtime with GNAX because of a hardware problem (their hardware) they just couldn't fix. The motherboard has gone bad and I had to wait three days for them to find another identical motherboard to replace mine with. Apparently, they don't like to keep hardware on hand in case of emergency. In the mean time, I was faced with a lot of pissed off people who couldn't access the server for three days while all GNAX did was "we're looking, we're trying". Three days downtime is unacceptable, GNAX's support is just horrible. Phone support is essentially non-existent. When, on occasion, people pick up the phone, I'm simply told to submit a ticket and they'll get to it - when it's convenient for them. Support with Softlayer is drastically different, I can call support and pick their brains on technical problems for as long as I need. Recently, something went wrong when I was moving IP addresses around with my servers, and I was able to submit a ticket, call them, and they resolved it while on the phone with me. Some other small issues cropped up, and I replied to the ticket as it was non-urgent, and they had it fixed it about 20 mins. THAT people, is how support. Again, after being with GNAX for so long and having to wait hours, and sometimes days for support, having things fixed on the phone with me or via ticket in under 15 mins really caught me off guard.
Sales - part two.
Incredibly impressed with the sales and support I have seen so far, I recently ordered a second server. Again, I did this over the phone and was given an amazing deal - one not even on their site! In the end, it'll save me about $60/month on my second server. Pretty decent I say.
Other stuff.
They have a forum! That's not what's cool in itself, but it's cool that its integrated into my portal account. Now, GNAX has a forum too, but you first have to email GNAX and ask for their blessing to sign up there.
Another nifty thing about Softlayer is their developer API. Their API enables tons of cool things, like I can see my uptime and bandwidth usage from within WHMCS. With GNAX, I would have to go find which one of my logins for their seemingly hundreds of disintegrated services. Having everything being in one place and under one login with Softlayer.
Basically, if you need a dedicated server provider, choose Softlayer. Leaving GNAX (well, being forced out) and moving to Softlayer is the best thing that has ever happened to me an my company.
Alright, Ive been with them for a little over two months and I have been with them before. Their support is excellent, their servers' are excellent, their network is excellent, their portal is excellent, and not having to deal with Cogent directly is a joy.
I first singed on with them 11/9/08 till 12/29/08 everything went well I closed my account simply because I didn't need the server again.
My current server with them as of this post is $199.00/mth and I get the following
CPU : Xenon X3230 Quad Core @ 2.66 Ghz Ram : 4GB OS : Server Standard 2008 64 bit 1000 mbps 2 TB of bandwidth Washington, DC Data Center 2x 250GB SATA II 174.37.243.170
Having a server with them has been nothing short of amazing zero downtime caused by them and most anything a managed host will do they will do for you free. I was having issues with routes and simply asked them and within ten minutes they had changed it according to what I would prefer. I have had a DoS attack before that was pushing 800 mbps of traffic and they sent me an email and I opened a ticket and they blocked the attackers' addresses at my switch. Very quickly and not much damage was done. Overall I'm very pleased and I would recommend them to anyone.
Here is my review of Virpus after being with them for 1 month.
Uptime: 10/10
So far I have not experienced any outages and I am going to have to give them a 10 on that as I have seen many threads in the outages about them but it appears they solved that issue and I was never effected by any of those.
Support: 8/10
I will give the support a 8 as sometimes on off times it could take up to about 30 minutes for the first response which is great but then after that the responses tend to be around 2 hours or so. Overall though the support is great!
Price: 10/10
I signed up with there plan that was cPanel included and had double bandwidth and ram. I was thinking it was too good to be true and that the VPS was not going to be quality, but I am glad I was wrong!
Performance: 9/10
The performance of the server is overall great so far. I have had no issues as far as the server being anything but fast. I will have to commend them on having great hardware and not overselling there services like a lot of the VPS providers these days.
Overall: 9/10
I would highly recommend them as they have been a great provider overall and I hope that they keep up the good work in the future.
I wrote an initial setup experience review of downtown host including support w/ transferring my sites a few months ago. Now I am going to extend the review with reliability, speed and performance.
So far, the support and helpfulness has been the same. Rarely does support wait longer than 10 min to respond to questions. They are always responded with a great attitude.
Reliability of all my sites has been 100%. I have seen no downtime at all since I got my account. Truly fabulous. The only time a site has gone down was not their fault...it was my fault...for messing up the database they restored it within minutes after I sent a high priority technical support ticket too.
Speed and performance go hand in hand. Sites are quick and responsive. Just as responsive as a content management system on any dedicated in my opinion. Download speeds are always the same. Never does the download or upload speed fluctuate by more than 10 kbps up or down from the average (totally unlike dreamhost where it would fluctuate as much as 400-500 kbps depending on the day).
All scripts I have used have responded very quickly without any problems that I would encounter with dreamhost (like cut off scripts due to time it took the servers to run through them).
Man, it seems just like yesterday that I initially signed up for a VPS from SolarVPS, but the truth is, I have been with them for just over 6 months now.
What can I say about SolarVPS besides that they completely rock! Not to mention Douglas, but we won't go there
The Network
The network at SolarVPS is nothing short of amazing. I get lightning fast speeds and rock solid performance no matter the time of day. I have not experienced even one network hiccup in the 6 months that I have been with SolarVPS. I constantly get compliments from people about how fast the network really is.
The Hardware
SolarVPS uses nothing less than the best hardware. The VPS node that my VPS is located on has Dual Quad Xeons and performance is amazing. They do not overload their servers and use SLM parameteres with Virtuozzo instead of the old school UBC. I know that I can use all of my resources without battling with other VPS instances on the node.
The Support
Solar's support is by far outstanding. I have never had to wait for extended periods of time to get an answer to even the most complex questions. I can rest assured that no matter the time of day, or night, there will always be a Solar rep there to answer even the stupidest of questions, in a very timely manner. Unlike some hosts that I have used, Solar's support understands my questions and gets them taken care of instead of giving nonsense responses to try and buy time to get the job done.
The Overall Experience
The overall experience at SolarVPS is awesome. I know that I can trust my online business in their hands. SolarVPS is highly recommended to anyone who needs rock solid performance with extreme reliability.
Support - 10/10 Network - 10/10 Hardware - 10/10 The Staff - 10/10
Just a warning... Watch out for that Douglas character that mans their live chat.
I've now been with Serveraxis for nearly 36 months and will make this fairly short and sweet - my experience with Serveraxis has been great. Uptime has been excellent with the vast majority of downtime coming from things such as a simple reboot for kernel upgrades. I think in those three years there have only been two cases of unscheduled downtime. Both times Serveraxis kept it's clients well informed and the downtime wasn't major - I believe due to hardware failure. There has been no unscheduled downtime for the past two years on my server, both of those cases were quite a while ago.
Their prices are very reasonable (and have even gone down once or twice) and the few times I've needed support they have been very responsive. They have also increased the amount of bandwidth and disk space multiple times at no additional cost to it's clients during the three years I have been with them.
On the whole, I think Serveraxis is phenomenal for users that just want an unmanaged VPS with rock-solid uptime and a great company behind them.
I wrote a review of Tzulo last month before that attack occurred and the thread was lost along with all the other data. So I am writing a review again as I feel they deserve this.
I rented a VPS Large package in March in 2008 through their reseller and a few months later I was shifted to Tzulo as the reseller changed.
Tzullo servers are really great. They are quad core, their customer service is really great. I do own dedicated servers from other companies and Tzulo customer service is the best among all the web hosting companies I have experienced. I have contacted them via their ticket system and crazy hours like midnight and have gotten a helpful reply from them within 5 - 30 minutes.
I run two dedicated gameservers from the VPS I bought from them and I have never had any problems with their hardware. The net connection is really good also because there is never any lag on behalf of the server, I know a person who connects to my gameserver from australia and he gets a latency of only 250. The VPS's are based in Chicago.
They are really cheap considering they are based in USA. I have never seen cheaper reliable hosts in USA. They even offer a $10 'novice' VPS for people so they can check and experience the servers.
They offer linux and windows including control panels like hypervm and virtuozzo. You can do free re-installs, restarts, repairs from the online control panel.
Recently I recommended them to my friend also and he bought the medium package from them and it got activated within minutes of his payment confirmation.
Overall, my experience with them has been the best and that is why I am going through and writing this review again, I highly recommend Tzulo to all of you if you are looking for a good quality cheap VPS.
my website is on digitallinx vps from abt 4 months. and in these 4 months i experienced 100% uptime. speed is pretty gud too. and most imp thing i liked abt them is their support that is great. they reply in timely manner no matter wat time of the day and they r really professionals whatever issue i had they always helped me. never heard no from them. i think space and bandwidth can every host provide but professional support is the most that we need. i ll stick to them as long as i could.
what can i say, you get what you pay for but i think this is expensive!
i fell to the trap of unmetered bandwith. its true, it was really freaking fast speed.
BUT, ram is limited. especially if you run cPanel. i advise people not to use it.
Tickets were answered very fast. usually within 2~5 minutes. even faster at times. downside: a bit expensive. even though unmetered bandwith, this is shared. also its tough to push much traffic because of the lack of ram. i think if you bought something with 1gig ram, you can find cheaper VPS.
also you are completely on your own with this VPS. nothing surprised i knew this going in. But then i discovered other services that provided managed VPS at even cheaper price! these were reputable companies too. Next time im just gonna go with managed service. wasted too much time compiling and learning how to do stuff.
I give : out of
I found lot of the reviews on here inaccurate. They are actually not bad.....but imo a bit expensive.
From the moment that I signed up with them to now they have been on top of everything. Right after I created the account it took about 15 minutes for my site to be transferred over from GeekStorage and up and running on their servers. They respond their tickets very quickly, most of the time in less than 10 minutes.
I have not had many issues with them; the only issue I can recall was when a bot posted some weird scripts on my site. Even though my site was the only one attacked Tyler was very quick to respond and even offered me one on one support via Messenger. The problem was resolved with a quick password change.
Not only do they provide excellent support but they keep in contact with their customers. They email me from time to time to see how things are going and if I need any additional help. Most importantly, their servers are blazing fast and by no means do they overcrowd them. I can run Wordpress and Invision Power Board with no hiccups.
If anyone is in need of some quality inexpensive shared hosting then I would defiantly give StableHost a try.
I have had a VPS with Level3Hosting for 1 month now and am happy to report that I am very happy with the VPS and the service and support. There was a couple of minor issues at first but these were quickly dealt with. The VPS is semi-managed and since I am quite new to the whole VPS thing I did have questions and concerns and Brian has always been fast to respond (where possible) and always been helpful and informative. Not all support questions were answered as fast as others but always easily within 24 hours and the higher priority ones answered sometimes within minutes. I had seen some negative comments about Level3Hosting here on WHT, as well as positive but I decided to go with what was advertised and so far am very glad that I did. Server uptime has been great (100% for me so far) and the VPS copes with what I have on it which is my own 4 websites and 4 radio ports all running 24/7 with no problems. I have searched for a cheaper deal that has everything I have now and no-one can come close, having said that, I purchased this VPS during the 50% off for life promotion so that explains a lot, however, even at full price it is still a good deal. So to summarise, my own personal experience of dealing with Level3Hosting has been a positive one and I hope that the service I get now is maintained and can continue for a long time as I will be a long term customer if it does.
This is a quick review of the VPS Provider [url] I will highlight four things: Support, Speed/Network, Sales/Setup, and Overall.
I have been hosted at [url]for 1 month now about, with my domain [url], we have 3 Dedicated for VPS hosting and a Hybrid VPS for sales, but I preferred a offsite provider for our main domain [url] So we went with GeekStorage! Support
Support has been excellent. Usually I have to request rDNS PTR but guess what, I didn't! It came all configured and everything. I've had two support tickets, one of which I've quickly resolved myself and the other one was fixed within a few hours. Overall the support is excellent and nothing is wrong, a few extra techs could do (this is a personal pet peeve of mine but it isn't a problem with most, actually it's not much of a problem with me as I only had 2 support requests.) Network and Speed
What can I say? They have their nodes at WebNX, a great provider! I get excellent pings, speeds, and my mail server etc. is nice and fast. I have 512MB guaranteed RAM but there are only 2 main sites on the VPS, using about 200-300MB of RAM (with cPanel/WHM). Uptime has been superior, I've gotten 100% Network and VPS Uptime! Not even a second I've seen the network go down, for any reason. Only time when it was down was when I accidently blocked myself via IPtables, had to use a proxy to get in SSH/WHM and unblock myself , but that's another story there..
Sales
Setup time was average. Took about 36-40 hours for my VPS to setup, a bit long, but they made sure it was running great, gave me status updates, and Jay did everything he could to make my VPS run faster and smoothly through the queue. I used the 'WHT50MORE' special and got a generous 50% off my 2 month prepayment .
Sales is also great. They have an excellent portal and everything. I'd say there are no problems with their billing. I haven't had a chance to open a sales ticket but I'm sure that there would be no problem.
The free control panel that comes with each GeekStorage VPS is perfect, I find that a great need aswell.
Overall
GeekStorage is a excellent, top-notch company. I'd give it 5+ stars, and reccomend it to ANYONE else who is looking for a stable & fast VPS provider. Don't hesitate: Go Geek! Verification for the MODs: Domain is [url] hosted via GeekStorage (they use dedicated servers/colo at WebNX)
We're coming up on around 7 or 8 months with a low-spec machine at CoreNetworks, and overall I'm pretty happy with the service. I picked it up as something cheap for my personal sites, but I've snuck some work stuff on there too. At the time of ordering, the specs of the machine I was given exceeded the specs they were offering (3.0ghz instead of 2.4ghz, if I'm not mistaken), it was provisioned quickly and the option to use KVMoIP and do your own install was great.
Sales were exceptionally helpful prior to ordering the machine, and support were fast and friendly every time I needed their help. The on-demand KVMoIP was setup fast on the one occasion I've needed it - ticket created 9:23AM, Chemito responded at 9:26 and had it hooked up and emailed me the details at 9:34. When I first configured the machine, my third IP address was unusable because something got goofed. I filed the ticket at 12:27PM, it was fixed and I had a response by 12:34PM. In fact if I average out all the tickets I've filed (which admittedly are mostly silly issues), the average resolution time is under ten minutes.
The network isn't bad, the pings are slightly elevated and there are periodic bouts of DoS which are dealt with quickly. The network status page is updated frequently with regards to these incidents, which makes me happy as I'm all about honesty when something stops working. I decided to go with the 3mbps unmetered, because I don't really use the server for much and at the time I ordered it overages were crazy expensive - they appear to have come down in price quite a bit.
The one-time upgrades for RAM and suchlike are great, it helps to keep the bottom-barrel monthly pricing with only a modest up-front cost. They also have an automated remote-reboot system in addition to the on-demand KVMoIP. The setup fees can be a little hard to swallow for the budget market, but on the whole it's completely worth it if you plan on staying any length of time.
A few reasons I got hosting with this company. I was having some issues with the support staff at hostpc.com I mean to me they just made me feel they did not care. So any way knowing how busy my site has gotten on hostpc I thought I needed vps. So came in and looked through the offers section and asked many questions to a lot of them that looked interesting and in my price range.
Mddhosting was the one that stuck out the most and every time I talked to support before I got service they really showed they cared about me and were honest and helpful. Much like the feeling I get with downtownhost and everity.
I went ahead and signed up for a vps with them and support iis still the same I mean good. They even helped me with my shoutcast needs which is actually above an beyond and wow have I had to contact them a lot of shoutcast issues which at this time are all fixed and none really had to do with my vps server. All the issues were either the bouncy radio software I was using or a dj messing things up.
the service has been great no down time that I know of and its fast.
This is why I added them to my great host list. Sites with them are: [url]and [url]
INITIAL CAVEAT: My site is not yet live yet so none of this review takes into account production loads. I am currently using the vps mostly for learning and development.
Website is [url] Yes I know it's under construction this is more of a side project/learning experience for me in the realm of server management/setting up and running a site through Drupal.
tl;dr 9/10 Much better then I expected for the small price I'm paying. I would highly recommend them.
Sales 10/10
I emailed Rick before signing up and I explained what I would be doing with the site and which level of serviced he recommended. We came to an agreement on there Mach 2 service. His response to this email was quick. Once I signed up setup was instant
Value 10/10 I have there Mach 2 service which for $12 a month (after a coupon I used) offers: 512 mb Ram guaranteed with 1 gig burst, equal cpu and plenty of disk space/bandwidth (honestly I'm not too concerned about those so I dont' know the exact figures of the top of my head)
Uptime 8/10
Had a few hiccups over the first 3-4 days with a total of about 3-4 hours downtime over 2 incidents but was kept informed the whole time and they regularly update the network status page in wmhs if something goes awry. Since then I've had 0 downtime.
Speed 8/10 Again during the first week I experienced some slow down doing various YUM updates but after they performed some work on it everything seems to be going quite fast. I'm EXTREMELY pleased with the download speeds I'm getting from home. I've used this as an intermediary for some video files that my friends and I are editing together and we're consistently getting 400k downloads everywhere from Ohio to Maine. Uploading is a little slower but at 100k it's probably limited by our home pipes. None of have access to a t1 to check.
Tech Support 7/10
I've put in 4-5 tickets and the response times have varied from a few minutes to a few hours. Nothing egregious and certainly better then I would expect from 12 bucks a month (I've got no illusions about you get what you pay for!) They have been very knowledgeable and never have I put in a ticket only to find out I had to explain as if to a child what I needed done (Yea I'm kinda bitter about this from other experiences, does it show )
Overall 9/10
Let me just say that I'm not sure if this is somethign standard among openvz/hypervm vps's but I am in love with the included backup and restore options along with being able to set up notifications if my services go down without having to figure out how to do it using monitoring daemons myself (nor would I know where to begin...)
They have a ton of os options and they load quite quickly if you need to reload (about 5-6 minutes) and I really love the ability to be able to do a quick (like 2 minutes) backup of your entire system once you have it the way you like. I've used this numerous times as inevitable I screw up something while playing around and with 3 clicks and 5 minutes I can have the system the way it was last time it worked. Then once I get everything working I can make the next incremental backup (again quickly) and move on. Again I cant say that this is unique to vpsspeed but it sure is awesome.
In short I would highly recommend Rick and his team if you are thinking about getting into the vps domain (for lack of a better word)
We've been with WebNX for about 2 months now, and we're loving it. We already rent 11 servers there and are looking to purchase another 10-20 in the near future!
Support/Sales
WebNX support is excellent, I must say. From the start their sales team has responded promptly (within a few hours) and almost always had a solution for my requests. We had (1) ticket opened in the support department and that was promptly handled in a few minutes.
I'd like to thank Dario and Chris who have helped me with my sales inquiries. I had a dedicated server purchased a few days ago and I needed rush setup, they gave me some options and I really loved the flexibility.
Hardware
Hardware is amazing. Fast, good quality, built to order. I like it. The thing about WebNX (as many others say), is that if you're only looking for one or two small Q6600's, they're not the provider for you. If you want a 32 core server with 20 hard drives, they can do that. Or if you want to buy in bulk, they can do that. When you follow those two "rules", they're one of the best providers in terms of bang for your buck.
Network
Network is top notch. They use lots of bandwidth providers and for the price you're getting, it's amazing how fast these servers are. We'll always be buying from WebNX for our Los Angeles needs. I'm sure if they expanded to Dallas, Chicago, even NYC they'd get a lot more business though! .
One thing I do wonder - do they use a BGP transit? Because whenever I traceroute my servers I only get connections though Cogent.
Overall, WebNX is amazing. We'll be with them for the months to come, for sure! They have my business and my future business.
I feel like I should give a review on the service I've received from Unixy. Don't normally give reviews but feel I should get this out there.
Background: I have a few dedis with Softlayer, Burst and one with Unixy.
All are fairly high end.
I am fairly happy with Softlayer. Their backend system is second to none in my opinion and support is pretty good as well. I am fairly technical (Oracle developer) with server management and can normally work out most issues but occasionally I need something that is beyond what I can do quickly. The software I run is extremely resource intensive which requires a lot of tuning (DB), something which I am not totally competent with.
I signed up with Unixy as they offered a managed service. When my setup goes down I lose money fast so I need somebody there to fix it.
When I first got setup with Unixy the bespoke app that I run was having issues due to an application defect. This required constant monitoring and tuning until a fix was put in place.
Unixy went above and beyond what I expected of a managed service. They proactively monitor my setup and sometimes alert me to issues before I know about them.
They are a little bit more pricey than most but for the service you get it is more than worth it.
The response time is faster than anywhere else I have used and they are very technically knowledgeable.
I've been with ColoCrossing.com in all of my service locations for over 6 months now, and I would like to say the service is incredible. There has been very little downtime, the only downtime I have ever experienced has been caused by scheduled maintenance which I was notified of at least 24 hours before it took place.
And as many of you know their network in all of their locations are some of the best available.
Support tickets are always answered quickly, even at 4 or 5 AM in the morning.
I recommend ColoCrossing to anyone looking for a quality dedicated server or colocation provider. We colocate with them but I have rented their dedicated servers with equal results.
it's been a month, there has been a lot done and said so far with them. Jason Scales I guess no longer works there.
Had issues with KVM on demand, took 3 days some times to get this so I went and then bought a KVM unit. Sent a server for colo this took a week because the power unit they did not have and couldn't find one to fix this so i was billed half the price on the night ship. I was told when I signed up IPs were free now i'm being charged even after I have Jason in AIM telling me to order 5 and I won't be charged. It's funny because the actual provider sells them for free.
Reboots most nights take a long time. Server setup well I paid on the 3rd for 2 new servers and i'm still waiting. I had requested to the actual DC for a reboot and I got an email back saying I'm not authorized to request such things. So that really ticked me off but i understand why.
There are only a few things I can say good right now and that's the network is very amazing! Last night I had to make a threat to take my servers else where if they didnt update me on my server setup and KVM setup status which they said would be today for "1" which I paid a few days ago so I'm paying for time its not online.
The IP I went and ordered took about 2 weeks to get 5 IPs. If this stuff is not settled and I get more issues I think I'm moving my services.
Once stuff is up and going it's all awesome and things go smooth it only seems to have issues when I need new services setup or a reboot.
LOL I had a ticket and had a reply they got my name wrong.... "its Jason not Josh."
The last KVM I wanted took 6 days to hookup, this is mostly because they have like 16 KVM units at least that's what Jason had told me before he left them which would of been nice to know been emailing him.
Lets see if things get better this and next month if not I'm going elsewhere.
Had to call into Wiredtree tech support for a very minor question (forgot my Grove Logon name and needed to check some billing info), which reminded me I've neglected to do a six month review of them. See here:
[url] here: [url] and here: [url]
for background info so you'll know this isn't a puff piece. I had a very frustrating start to the world of VPS's, having migrated from 1and1 shared hosting. Had _major_ problems configuring email to work with port 587 (which is mandatory because of my ISP's blocking port 25) with both Servint and WiredTree. SerVint's fault with them, my fault with Wiretree for not letting DNS changes time to propagate.
So, bottom line is the past 6-7 months with Wiredtree have been totally trouble-free.
All the sites I host are lightning fast and stable. With the exception of a DDoS attack back in September which caused a couple hours of downtime (luckily in the wee morning hours of a Saturday), there've been absolutely no problems whatsoever.
I use mon.itor.us to check availability of my web sites and there's an occasional NOK (not OK) for smtp or pop but never anything to speak of and it's always back up within a minute or two, so I'm pretty sure the problem is on their end or network related and not Wiredtree's.
If I had wanted to stay with Plesk, I probably would have been satisfied with SerVint but they could never get cPanel to work with port 587. I just checked their web site and noticed they re-designed it and must say it looks much better.
One thing I did notice is SerVint now offers 512 MB RAM (burstable to 1 gig) with their entry-level VPS's while Wiredtree still offers 384. I don't go by the "burstable" RAM, which if I remember correctly is pretty much a marketing gimmick but I'm surprised Wiredtree is no longer equal to SerVint in that respect, as they were in August. But it doesn't matter to me as most of my sites are usually Flash, which needs consistent throughput, not processing power.
Bottom line: add me to the massive list here on WHT who are completely satisfied with Wiredtree.com.
Are they a bit more expensive than most other providers? Probably.
