Sometime around May I decided to have my website transfered over to zone.net as I outgrew Dreamhost.
Dreamhost, which now offers quite some cool setups (such as pimping up your server by additional ram etc), has kind of "chucked me" off due to excessive CPU use that was triggered by my Wordpress install (running WP-Cache of course).
I was told, I outgrew a shared environment and should opt to either switch to their (at this time) 360$/month plan or get another hosting provider. when asked what to get, I was told "a vps with plenty of ram".
I had a particular setup in mind and was thinking of either joining jaguar pc hosting or zone.net.
What I did like at zone.net at this point was the working live-support. I clicked "live support" - chat now and within seconds I was talking to someone who had a clue and cared about getting me to move over.
I opted zone.net as they promised to set-up my domain(s) in before of moving for free and making the transition happen without any downtime.
It worked this way, I sent my sql databases to them and uploaded a four gig rar-file to third-party server (always handy to have another one at hand). They downloaded everything and setup my VPS with CentOs, plesk and virtuozzo.
From my GoDaddy-domains I know there were plenty of discount codes around- as I couldnt find any for zone.net I blunty asked them if they had a promotion campaign running and if there was a zone.net discount code.
Their honest reply, which I appreciate, was "yes" and I was given the code to discount my setup and monthly fee by 10%. Seeing as I did not find any codes on Google, this was a good catch.
The transfer went smooth and the first weeks passed. Without any trouble, my site(s) ran smoothly, quicker than ever and with no downtime. Thanks to the watchdog module, that one employee installed, services that killed itself were automatically loaded again.
Ever since I moved my site to zone.net it has been growing prosperously with 15,000 visitors daily and increasing. Wordpress and WP-Cache are working smoothly, Permalinks with htaccess are operational, too.
When I had trouble setting up WP-Cache (at one point you have to run a shell command to create a sym-link file), their Live-support helped me out in seconds.
I really liked the free and high-quality support at zone.net and the polite, yet direct employees.
The advantage of "sticking" with a company with a dozen employees is that in due progress you get to know everyone and they get to know you. You dont have to explain your setup and problems all over again, as your setup is known and sending passwords over etc has become obsolete.
Amongst my domains are also two German denic (DE) domains, the setup of them is very annoying, as you have to observe all kinds of regulations (like specific TTL time), different class C ips etc. - zone.net has been so accommodating to setup those different C-class ips for free.
I am quite sure that I would have had to pay additional money at almost every other company.
At my VPS I had Plesk and CentOS running, what I did not know is that you SHOULD not (seriously!) try to update your VPS (plesk) manually.
I pressed "auto-update" under plesk, and the whole vps went into full-out lockup mode. zone.net´s experienced techies had the website up within minutes, but still plesk was unaccessible.
This was the case for a week roughly and I did not receive any email for one week. This really annoyed me, but who to blame? It was all my fault- if I had not played around with things it would not have locked up so bad (internal errors all over the place). I decided to wait one week for them to find a solution, as the website was up, I was earning good money with it (around 40$ a day) and I did not care about emails... since it was only a secondary email address.
yet I wanted to have my plesk back.- so one employee worked on my vps for two days in a row and tried all kinds of hacks. still I did not work. so without asking, and I appreciate that, they cloned my "running" site and setup another vps and routed all traffic over there. wow. I did not know this was technically possible!
anyway, I had my plesk back and every setting I had done, was input kindly by the zone.net tech-man. If I had to do this all myself I would have lost valuable time at university that (at this point) I did not have.
Just a few weeks ago I received an email saying that my vps (and basically) every VPS had to be moved, as zone.net had bought their own network or net of servers or datacenter, I cannot remember what it was, anyway... my vps had to be moved, meaning starting at "zero". A new vps was setup again, but since the ips changed, too I had to undergo the whole IPs annoyance with the german denic domains again.
luckily zone.net helped me out quickly and assured me things would work.
Indeed it did, the transfer went very smooth, as the old vps was not shutdown until the new one had been successfully "talking" with my nameserver.
Bad thing though was, that I lost several posts and comments, as in the meantime I was accessing (randomly) two different sites on different servers.
At one time, the old site loaded, the next hour the new one loaded and vice versa.
If you plan to transfer sites, you should not post anything and close comments. just as a matter of fact, that was my learning...
What I did not like about zone.net is that after the server move and in the meantime, they have seem to taken off the live-support. I loved to quickly address my problems and have them sorted out.
Now I have to reside to their (working!) ticket system, where I usually receive a reply within hours, but sometimes also days (but that´s my fault then again to not "bump" my tickets every now and then).
In general, I am very satisfied with the performance at zone.net, the level of support and the possibility of having almost EVERYTHING customized to my needs. I appreciate being a customer there, seriously! as soon as I experience something else, I will post it here, promised!
i currently have a vps with zone.net and im really satisfied with their service. Thank you .. Jeffrey, Sean, especially Robert, John D, ( with their amazing support whenever i need something)
and especially JenniferL (the best sales representative who never close the chat window before im satisfied with his answer, say goodbye and close it). that's why im surprised and i think he's a strange person, who treat the company clients very well, i have never seen this treat from any sales at other hosting providers i had chance to work with,
if i forget to reply in the chat window for a hour, he will keep the window at his end too and wait till i get back to him...he always help me to answer any question and forward my ticket immediately to the admin whenever i need a priority.
im really new with this business and i submited a lot of tickets, about 30 tickets in first month, but they are willing to answer all of my stupid questions.
very fast and helpful
dont know how to say thank you, just want to go here and say thanks for your awesome service Zone.net
Well, before jumping to Downtownhost.com (aka DTH), I will like to give a bit background story on why I went to DTH at first place. (It's going to be a detailed review, so if you don't have time, just skip first 5 paragraphs)
My first ever host was Startlogic.com (I was a noob back then). Getting my first site online was a big achievement for me. Startlogic worked for me for about a year until my site started getting some traffic. After that, it was nothing but a big trouble and headache to be there. I reviewed them Here (Infect that was my first thread here at WHT )
After this bad experience, I moved to HostingZoom (aka HZ) failover hosting. After few days, my site started getting problem there. I was told that it was causing more than 110% CPU usage. I was never able to backup or restore a mere 7MB database with them. In short, their Failover hosting proved to be "failing over & over hosting" for me in just one month. I was recommended to move to VPS or dedicated server by HZ. My review of HostingZoom is Here.
After being let down by HZ, I looked for my options and decided to go with DTH. Amazingly, the site that took more than 110% CPU at HZ was running without a glitch. I repeatedly asked DTH for server load, so that I wouldn't get any trouble and every time I was told that it was "below normal". I was so happy with DTH that I even got a reseller account and started hosting my friend's sites.
During that time, I also had an account with Hosgator (aka HG) for about 4 months that I used for hosting one blog. It was end of year 2007 when my blog started getting heavy traffic. Unfortunately, that was more than what HG servers were built to handle. After few back and forth tickets, I was told to move to a dedicated server as my blog was not only exceeding their "shared hosting" limit but also causing issue for other clients. (Note: The blog was using "WP Cache" when hosted with HG)
And guess what, I moved that site to DTH reseller account and it worked there without an issue. Although, initially (without WP Cache) the CPU usage was as high as 20%-25%, my site worked without an error. Jedito was kind enough to let me tweak few things without shutting down the site. And when I was finally able to implement Cache, the CPU usage/load became 3.5%. So the site that required a Dedicated Server as per HostGator support was working absolutely fine with DTH Shared/Reseller account. (Amazing, isn't it )
Now, my complete analysis of (DTH) after being with them for over 1.8 Year:
Hardware: I am with DTH since August 2007 and so far other than two major issues, I haven't seen any other problem with them. One in January 2009, when there was a DDOS attack on the server and I experienced connectivity issue; and one in March209, when there was some server problem. I am happy that they were able to sort it out quickly. DTH score: (9/10)
Support: That's where DTH beats any other host any time of the day. Sometimes, I get the feeling that I am not using support desk but chatting with them. The shortest reply I got was in less than 1 minute. And it's not just one time; most of my tickets were responded in less than 10-15 minuets. I wouldn't say that ALL of my tickets were answered within minute. The longest response I got was in 4 hours. But I am still happy because instead of getting reply like "We will update you shortly"... I got the reply "It's done". Whenever I needed them, they were there to help out. For me, it's the best support I ever got. DTH score: (11/10)
Billing/Sales/Customer Service: With DTH, I always felt that I am a special customer rather than "just another customer" feeling. Whenever I asked for a "little" favor from billing/sales, I got more than I ever wished. I have never seen such a friendly host (and I have been with more than 8 hosts now). DTH score: (12/10)
So I am going to say it again... and again.... and again..... Shared hosting can't get any better than what you get with DowntownHost. DownTownHost is not just one of the best hosts, they are simply THE BEST.
I am sorry if you think unnecessary details were included. Feel free to ask me any question.
I run several low-traffic websites and I'm looking for a VPS that can handle them all.
What I need:
15 GB Storage 256 RAM burstable to at least 512 MB 200 GB Transfer (I use way lower than this ALWAYS) Linux CPanel Unlimited domains Fully managed $1 IP addresses Adult friendly (everything is legal, no sick stuff, no mailing)
I run two small vBulletin boards, 11 installations of WordPress (low traffic though) and looking to expand to at least 20, two image hosting services for the boards (most of the traffic comes from here), 1 Joomla installation (extremely low traffic), and other unimportant stuff. I think the above specs should be sufficient.
Different Class C's are a plus Service outside of the US with established VPS providers are a plus Proven fast support ticket response times are a plus Initial VPS hardening is a plus Migration support a plus ICQ/Skype support a plus
This review was posted around March 09, however due to the unfortunate circumstances it was lost when WHT was compromised. This may seem very evil having to repost this, however my original thread didnt last very long before it was lost. I thought long and hard whether to repost this again or not and have finally decided to post this again purely for the benefit of the community. I have no personal vendetta against WHB its just a review to help others make a concise and wise decision if they ever come to considering WHB as their webhost.
This is very different from any other review that you may have read on WHT. This review will take you 20-60 mins to read. I suggest you are sitting down comfortably, this is also my first ever review on a web hosting company.
Some of you may find the latter part of my experience with Web Hosting Buzz and my review interesting.
Before i write a very detailed review of WHB - Web Hosting Buzz i would like to make a few things clear first of all.
This review contains my experience dealing with WHB, it contains extracts from actuall tickets and quotes from forums keeping all WHB staff anonymous.
I am a former customer of WHB, my contract as a reseller was from November, 2007 to November, 2008. Only been a few months since my contract expired.
This is my personal and honest experience with Web Hosting Buzz and also a review about WHB.
Why am i writing a review now? I think the length of it explains why im writing it now.
I have been busy lately and i know writing this will be time consuming and needs to be in detail. So it was important i take time and write it as accurately and as honestly as possible. I have had such a bad time with WHB which deserves a detailed analysis from all my tickets and correspondence that i have had with WHB.
To give WHB some benefit of the doubt - things may have changed since i last was with them. But i doubt that after my years of experience.
November - Mid February:
When i first joined WHB in November i was extremely happy with them. They were no doubt value for money and very cheap, they were much cheaper and much more value for money than my previous host.
For two and a half months things have been good then it got so bad it was unbearable for me or my clients who were being hosted on WHB.
Mid February:
By mid february i was getting MySQL errors and connection outages. I reported the problem via ticket and i was told the following by WHB:
"The server you're hosted on had some load problems related to wrong web statistics update settings. In fact this brought the server into suboptimal condition, and naturally MySQL performance was affected too. That's why you could experience some outages or query delays."
Problems still persisted and i kept reporting the errors. I was told it was fixed again, then suddenly i was told the issue was with me?
"Dear Customer,
The problems that you experience with MySQL are caused by the fact that your forum is based on the vBulletin and it overloads MySQL, because your forum is frequently visited. The configuration and the limits that are set for MySQL on shared servers do not allow so many connections and some problems appear during the work of your forum because it does not have enough free connections to MySQL. The best choice for you would be the upgrade to the dedicated plan."
The forum he was referring to has only a few members online at any one time the most would be 10 users online with a very few visitors. I was suprised how they began to make their customers doubt themselves and later use dirty tactics on getting their customers to go and sign up to a Dedicated plan? That particular website has been running since 2004 and has been through 3 hosts which has been on a shared plan ever since, and still is on a shared plan today. For the first few months with WHB my website has been the same in terms of traffic and users which i had no problems with.
But now theres sudden problems with the server, first im told
"load problems related to wrong web statistics update settings"
But just because i kept on pursuing them about the server load they decided to shut me up by putting blame on me about the issues. They suggested i take my small forum with very little users onto a dedicated plan? (This is not the first instance they were quick to suggest a dedicated plan, - read on.)
Late February - Early March:
Problems and more outages kept on arising, a WHB server side 404 page kept coming up across all my reseller sites. Which clearly had WHB companies name and address written on it. This caused further concerns, as if it was seen by a client then theres no point in me being a reseller if they could see who i was hiring the service from. Later WHB heeded my concerns and deleted their server side 404 page which kept on showing up when the server was down.
Early March:
Problems were still thriving with socket errors, all my clients websites were getting this issue which brings back our discussion about the problem being isolated to me only? (Remember when I was suggested to upgrade to a dedicated box?)
Mid March:
Server is still giving problems and was heavily loaded, which literally grinded my website and my clients websites and mail to a hault. Users were being kicked off and the server kept on restarting. They tell me that they had addressed the issue but the problem still persisted. They didnt know what else to say to me as it was clearly a problem on their end. They obviously wanted to keep me busy and gave me instructions to troubleshoot on my connection locally. When it was evident not only me but my clients were facing the same issue.
There was also no "Webalizer" available in cPanel which i found strange as other shared hosts that ive been with had it, even the one im with now has it. I use to check my statistics with it. I was told "Webalizer" was disabled from cPanel on WHB to reduce load issues on the server. - Load issues? So i see "desperate measures"were taken to substitute an important feature that customers use in place of poor server hardware/connection that cannot maintain server load.
Things have been running ok for a few weeks when i thought the storm had passed but no, not quite.
Mid April
More load issues, users being kicked off. Problem being persistent on websites with MySQL and PHP. It had a few good days when things were actually working.
Early May - Mid May
I was showing a client around and had told him he could check some of his statistics in Awstats, but guess what - there was no Awstats either, how embarrasing!? It was disabled assuming it was disabled for the very same reasons as to why "Webalizer" was disabled as i had mentioned earlier. But a support ticket later got staff to re-enable this feature for me after i had emphasised how important it was and stressed the word "client".
I was told to request this feature for each domain i had wanted it on. What a bummer!?
From early May to mid May there was more load upon more load issues. The senior technician then got back to me with
"It wasn't a networking issue today, RS9 was heavily overloaded (exactly when you and ***** were talking in chat). I've tuned some kernel options, but I suspect HDD cooling problems."
So again it boils down to the poor hardware that they are using on their servers.
Mid May:
Things got really bad, i was really frustrated. Pages were taking 35 seconds to load. I opened yet another ticket and this time the staff member agrees that the server was rather slow.
I was told that the scripts on my server was causing the problem, they were
/usr/bin/php /forum/forumdisplay.php
So they were blaming PHP and the vbulletin software? I am no vbulletin coder and have been using the "off the shelf" premium script for years which i have had no problems with and now its the script?
I asked them why does there seem to be a problem suddenly with the script as i had not changed or altered anything since i joined WHB some months ago - why now?
I was told
"During last several days there were some problems with load there were load leaps on the server and we were working on it contantly and today server is stable.
There are no problems with the server.
Now your site is being processed quickly. If you are still experiencing problems please provide us with full URLs you have problems with and will check once again."
So whats happened to the accusations that i was causing the problems?
I was even threatened with suspension twice!
"Advise you to check your site and scripts, i.e. during intensive attendence of your site it may cause our server overload and your account will be suspended."
Heres a funny story, the first few months with WHB was great so i recommended a family member to join WHB. He has a forum with a few more people online. I showed WHB staff that website and told them to compare it with mine as they wanted to suspend me on because i was causing the load. I asked them why the other website had more member and was working fine without any problems and i am having to deal with such accusations with very few or no users online at all?
I was really angry and had explained for the last several days and weeks the server had been slow. They kept on blaming me for the issue which again i repeatedly asked them to identify exactly what part of the script was giving problems and demanded that more senior staff take a look at the entire ticket.
I later received an apology from a senior technician:
"Please accept our sincere apologize for our previous post with misunderstanding. Yes, it was our server issue and no way with your script. Certainly it's up to you to decide what to do with your scripts. PLease let us know if we can be of any help to you at any time."
And another from the initial technician that i was talking to:
"There was a misunderstanding and we're really sorry for it. We really had some problems with rs*, but they're resolved now. If you have any problems - feel free to contact us anytime."
I was pleased that they atleast understood me if not fix the issue. I really sometimes could not understand what they were saying, it brought some glimmer of hope when there was some understanding between us.
Now for the really bad experience with Web Hosting Buzz.
Still Mid May - Websites hacked across my entire resellers package.
Now this is really getting interesting now. My websites and clients websites were hacked across the server. From standard pages to premium forums like vBulletin.
As some had vBulletin installed on them i gave WHB some benefit of the doubt. vBulletin release patches from time to time to patch certain exploits. Exploits dont always mean websites get defaced very easily. Exploits allow only certain things to happen abnormally or create different avenues of attack if they are not properly patched.
However what happened to the hacked websites and forums was more than a petty exploit, luckyly this gave WHB the benefit of the doubt.
The damage that was caused was different, and it was quite evident that an exploit could not have done so much. It was more sinister. Before you know it, another website on my resellers was hacked and defaced and the two websites were no way related to one another. The only relation i could see was that they were sitting on the same server until a third website also got hacked!
I was doubting vbulletin and thought it could have been something new that they had not discovered. However if it was just a vBulletin problem then the problem would have stayed with vBulletin only. But no it had caused problem on a root level, html pages were deleted and replaced with the hackers message.
Anyways i contacted vbulletin and various senior technicians had taken a closer look at the websites affected. I gave vbulletin staff root access to all the websites affected and also gave them shell, ftp, cpanel access to find what was wrong. By chance i already had an up to date forum installed, that was also hacked and defaced along with other root files. This eliminates that it had nothing to do with patching vbulletin or running the latest version, as the latest version along with other things inside that domain was hacked.
Even after restoring the websites with the latest updates they were still being hacked and defaced across my entire resellers account.
WHB thought my passwords were weak or there was something on my end locally, a key logger or a spyware maybe etc. But no that was not the case, as i am behind a very good firewall and security and never ever had a virus on my computer. I also dont access client websites only when i set them up which was also defaced.
Later staff from WHB carried out a scan and found that when the hackers attacked they were able to leave files in my root for an easier entry the next time they attack.
WHB was persistent that it was a flaw with vBulletin when it was not.
vBulletin was adament that it was a flaw with WHB servers. They had carried out extensive research and examination on the many websites that were defaced including their premium software. The only possible route left was the servers.
WHB staff argued why it had not happened to others on the server yet? Well that was their word against mine, who knows maybe it did happen to somebody else giving me the benefit of the doubt?
Still not convinced?
The hackers had left a few files inside my root which they had forgotten to delete. They didnt leave anything behind on the other domains they had attacked, but on this particular one they had left everything. There was this file called get.php i was able to see peoples database passwords inside their configs etc along with some usernames when i executed the script. I am so lucky not to have lost any databases.
Take a read at this old thread i had made around that time about this very same issue with WebHostingBuzz:
Web Hosts being Hacked using PHP? - Web Hosting Talk - The largest, most influential web hosting community on the Internet
As you can see many have already identified the security flaws, it being with the servers on WHB. I also showed the same outcome to the staff members at vBulletin. If i was able to see everyone whos hosted on the same server dont you think there could have been somebody on the same server helping a hacker or the hacker himself running the script obtaining passwords of other accounts?
Does this not already represent a flaw with the services that are being run on WHB servers? I did not even get a thank you for bringing this to the attention of the CEO and their Operations Manager for identifying this problem. All i got was that they would look into the problem. Eventually this was resolved and patched on the server.
I remember WebHostingBuzz itself was also hacked, this was earlier on and i have the screenshots for that too. This was quite late at night and i dont think many were online to see. I had spoken to a senior staff member about this and his response was:
"Hi
If you can wait for a few days you would notice our press release in the news rooms around the internet. (I did not see any) This was actually caused due to a hole in the blackberry service by vodafone. Very high fi group of hackers hacked into the vulnerable blackberry software linked to one of the directories in the main webhostingbuzz list of folders and tried to take down the website. Never the less it was detected well in time (within 15 to 30 minutes) by our top admins. We are planning to sue Vodafone Europe for about $120,000 lost during the downtime caused by them.
Well all of this is confidential and I would appreciate if you could keep it yourself while we release more details officially in the due time.
Cheers"
I understand that this may seem confidential, but i have been searching the internet high and low till this day for a year now and have not found a single article about Vodafones relation with WHB and WHB suing Vodafone.
So this leads me to believe what i was told was not the truth and was merely said to boost my confidence in WHB? Maybe im being very cynical here, but the way that message was written and the words used was as if it was addressed to a kid on false pretence?
I can now see why reseller hosting is cheap. No doubt i really did get my moneys worth. $57 = £30 for the whole year.
Early June - Early July
As the server loads were getting really bad my emails and client emails halted and were not functioning at all. It just continued!
Mid July - More websites defaced
We thought our problems were over? No - websites were still hacked and defaced it was time i had to do something about it.
I was kept being told that the servers were fine, a senior member of staff told me they had the best server security and firewall. Clearly after what i have outlined above they dont!
Again i allowed senior vBulletin staff to be in my shoes, i gave them ftp, shell, cpanel access etc vBulletin staff had carried out extensive research over the weeks and finally reached a unanimous decision among them. The result concluded that the server was the only thing to blame. Read on to see how they reached their conclusion.
Late July
WHB servers were compromised yet again one way or another. Like all the staff at vBulletin Mike Sullivan was the one who had helped me the most and had spent hours communicating with me to get to the bottom of what i was facing. I have sought permission from Mike Sullivan to mention him from vBulletin for this review.
Here is an extract from our ticket:
Mike Sullivan - "Hi,
I have focused on **********.co.uk and that seemed to turn up something interesting. In the logs, I found this line:
[url] 3A209.51.154.100+powered+by+3.6&go=&form=QBRE" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; ar; rv:1.8.1.16) Gecko/20080702 Firefox/2.0.0.16"
This is about 40 minutes before the deface happened. The interesting part is the referrer:
[url]
This is a search for all sites on a particular IP (209.51.54.100), with "powered by 3.6" on them. Your sites are the top 2 results.
While this means that they were targeting vB specifically,
by limiting it to an IP, that indicates that they already had access to that server and were using a separate search to help them find more things to deface.
Between this entry in the log and when the defacement happened, there were 2 hits to /forum/ and absolutely nothing else.
That just has to point to the server being compromised.
The does look pretty definitive to me this time. I think it's time to change hosts. Perhaps look at a VPS, where you're not paying for an entire server, but you are completely segregated from the other people on it.
Please let me know if you require any further assistance.
Mike Sullivan Developer Team, vBulletin"
So i had presented this to WHB and told them about the particular search query the hackers were attempting. WHB were telling me nobody else on the server was hacked or defaced other than me. I told them that the search query presented to me by Mike from vBulletin displays my websites at the top only, the hackers already had access to the server hence the reasons I was the only victim so far.
(Remember this was last year, i have moved now so the search query will display different results.)
I found this very ingenious of the hackers.
WHB had wrote lengthy messages to me trying explain and reassure me it was not their servers. A senior technician even told me he use to work for a "goverment" before WHB, notice he spelt government wrong. I knew right away what kind of government he worked for. But to reassure me with personal experience was a good attempt on his behalf.
So for a brief moment WHB decided to talk to vB, me being the messenger ofcourse they wanted hints from vb .
WHB Senior Technician - "Can you please ask VB techs for some assumptions about how exactly these sites might be hacked using server-side security flaws? I don't see any reasonable way to do it. Possibly some specific PHP settings might create VB security issue, or something like that? Either VB guys meant something certain they know about, or they just said "this is not our product's vulnerability because this can not be our product's vulnerability". We'd really appreciate some hints from them."
vBulletin - "Hacked passwords are by far the most common method of compromising a server. However there are literally hundreds of other possibilities due to the wide range of applications on a server and the need to constantly monitor them all and keep them up-to-date.
In short this appears to be a brush-off. You host knows very well the multitude of ways a server or account on a server can be compromised. Or at least they should.
Please see this thread on how to make your vBulletin more secure:
How To Make My Forums More Secure - vBulletin Community Forum
If you are still being hacked after doing all of this, then they are most likely doing this by accessing your server or account on the server. There are currently no known exploits in the latest unmodified version of vB.
Best regards, Steve Machol Customer Support Manager, vBulletin"
After that last response, WHB did not reply to the ticket.
There were still major load on the servers and i was already looking for a new host. I was then suprised to see a comment from a support staff.
"Small server overload has been in process all day long due to server security maintenance."
Suprise Suprise!
Later i had posted on the vbulletin forums and this was the response i had got from vb staff:
"Steve Machol: If you are still being hacked after doing all of this, then they are most likely doing this by accessing your server. You need to contact your host about this.
Me: Hi Steve, Mike and I also came to the same conclusion. If you look at ticket number (Ticketid: 824317). You will see what Mike has to say and that there is sufficient evidence to say that it was the server that was compromised afterall.
A vbulletin. 3.7.2 (latest version was defaced), 3.7.1 and also a 3.6.8
I am in the process of changing hosts, however my current host fails to understand what i am trying to say to them and they are persistent that it is vbulletin's fault.
This is what they had to say.
WHB: Dear .......,
I totally comprehend you but it is a matter only of your vbulletin's security which is not being guaranteed and provided by you i.e. it is not updated at all. Please be so kind to contact vbulletin's developers/support and install the LATEST version and ALL patches and updates! Keeping all these rules will make your forums safe for sure!
If you have any further questions just let us know. We'll be happy to help.
Me: How can i make them understand that 3 different domains on the server were defaced which were not linked with one another and that 2 out of the 3 were fully updated versions of vbulletin?
Mike had also showed me the process of where the hackers traced the forum boards with msn search targeting the particular server which the hackers know well there was a way in.
I really would appreciate a reply which i can pose to my current host including any technical terms which they may understand.
Thanks
Steve Machol: Unfortunately you cannot make a host like that understand. If they are not even willing to investigate a possible security breach on their servers, then the only viable option is to get away from them as fast as you can."
Another response for the above from Steve:
Mike Sullivan Aug 01st '08 11:29am
"Hi,
I suppose you can use my name and try to explain what I showed. I'm just a bit wary that it looks like a vB staff member just saying it's not our fault. I'm really not trying to do that.
As for your host, I doubt you'll be able to convince them of much. Especially if it's from things I say. It's "he said, she said" really. In a weird sense, I wish I could find a whole in vB (or some other software) when I do these searches. It would actually provide some closue to the issue!
I don't really know what I can say technically, unfortunately. Looking at the logs, I could see when the pages started returning a particular page size; that indicated when it got hacked. I saw no accesses in your logs between the last good access and the first bad access that had anything weird about them (they were just /forums/).
The search enginer referrer is probably the clearest thing. Did my explanation of that make sense?
While I know that there is no such thing as guaranteed safety, your host's response just says "upgrade to the latest version and you'll be fine"... But as you said, you're already on the latest version. I don't know how they'd respond to you telling them that.
Hopefully you can get away from them. Glad to hear that you were looking into some VPS options, though you're right they might require more management. It depends if you're interested in getting into that. Frankly, just getting to another host might make the problems go away.
However, some of these problems are (somewhat) intrinsic to shared hosting. Only so much can be done to prevent 2 people with full access to the server (via Apache) from interacting with each other.
All I can say is: Good luck!
Mike Sullivan Developer Team, vBulletin
(Mike mentioned going with another host could solve the problem, guess what? Im with a new host and no problems what so ever! - Read on.)
Early August
Problems still remained with regards to server overload, other users were also facing the same issues as this was evident on WHB forums. I was fed up and was in the process of moving but it was a very hard one.
I found communicating with WHB support staff very difficult. My first language is not english either nor am i perfect. However there always has been some misunderstanding and i have continually had to repeat myself so many times so that the support staff is able to understand me. There has been times where ive tried explaining simple things to them which they wouldnt simply understand. I have also had to break down my english just so that they could understand me, that experience was very frustrating.
I remember a time i had highlighted a ticket as urgent when my website was hacked across my reseller, support staff had demoted it "Low Priority" which made me even more upset with them.
There was a point i had an urgent ticket, it was responded to after 29 hours. Usually staff reply within a few hours, however in my case it took staff to respond to one of my urgent tickets 29 hours when the subject of the ticket header read: "3 websites hacked".
However they changed my ticket status cheekly from "Urgent" to a "Normal" one. I give them credit for doing that as they came very close to replying to my ticket, but atleast they tried and gave me a sign that they had read it.
I suppose they were able to buy enough time to give me a flawed response 29 hours later.
I thought resellers would have been taken somewhat seriously as they also have clients to manage and look after. Clearly they were not interested and i was merely another drop in the sea.
Their servers have been overloaded for a long time, on and off they were blaming it on the mail and then they tell me some clients were using up a lot of resources on their servers.
Every time i had approached them i was told they were taking down the sites that were abusing the server. - For that long!? I dont think they will have many clients left.
They were clearly under some sort of attack. The hackers were also searching sites on the particular server i was on by a the "specific IP address" search which Mike from vBulletin had demonstrated above.
I felt really ashamed after a few months as i had been promoting WHB as being a reliable and a good host. I had also introduced a family member to WHB, he was doing well on a different server on WHB until it suddenly had server issues.
I paid for a years hosting and so did he. He was told by WHB to Upgrade to a dedicated plan.. only after hes being with them for a few months which is when he started experiencing problems.
Does it not seem strange WHB had also told me the same thing? Why do they take every server load as an opportunity to sell their clients dedicated hosting? WHB was asking us to upgrade to a dedicated server initially just because we were experiencing load issues.
WHB is clearly just interested in how to get your money fast as cheap as it may seem. Im not suprised they must enjoy putting load on their servers and get customers coming up to them omplaining about load issues, they will then be very quick to suggest a dedicated plan. Talk about dirty tactics, they must be doing very well by now.
I found a new host around mid August which left me over 3 months to sacrifice. However my family relative has had to move after being with WHB for around 5 months so hes had to sacrifice a lot more months.
I am having no problems with my current new host even though i am paying a little bit more than what i use to with WHB. I have had:
no server issues, no hacking attempts, no script issues, no MySQL errors and no down time, staff also know what their talking about.
Its been over 6 months and no problems at all, so what does this say about WebHostingBuzz hosting? I'll leave that for you to decide.
I'm using PUTTY SSH right now to a server, and it's taking forever to extracting a 500GB tar.gz file... I need to restart this workstation, is there anyway I can resume my PUTTY SSH session on another workstation without having to restart my extracting process?
I have a Plesk 11.5 server that someone made changes to in IIS to allow web site users to turn the sending of detailed error messages on and off from a web.config file. Unfortunately now none of the sites will send detailed error messages to the browser no matter what is done. The person that made the changes to IIS did not document them properly and cannot tell me what exactly they changed. None of the obvious settings have made an effect on the problem.
I got a new server and at present it is not allowing resume of disconnected uploads. I remember on my last server I have to add a line on a config file to enable this but for the life of me I cannot remember.
When using a download manager to download stuff from server, download manager detects server unable to support resume and parallel downloads, is there a way to set the server to allow it?
I am unable to find how to resume file transfor via sftp and command line:
I use PUT command to upload file, but when connections fails and I start again, the transfer starts from its beginning - how could I made it to check the uploaded part and then resume?
We have just had reports of SPAM being sent from our CentOS 6.x server running Plesk 12.
Services like Plesk Premium antivirus, SpamAssasin, watchdog(rkhunter) and mod_security are enabled on the server to enhance security and none of these seemed to stop the scripts.
The issue is that multiple domains are sending out mail from this server, so it is difficult to find the script sending out SPAM. When we were running Plesk 11.0 we had a seperate log-file where we could see the file sending any mail going out from the postfix mailserver. I have check both /var/log/maillog and /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog, but there is nothing in those files to tell me the file that sent the mail.
How would I go about finding this file from either the Plesk Control Panel or through SSH (using log-files)?
Well I have to say to begin with, I never expected to be with one provider for so long. My sites are low volume enough that it would be a waste for a full dedicated server, but I wanted the control that a VPS provided.
Four or five years ago, when I first started trying to find a VPS, I floundered. Fpund more problems, and slow unreliable servers. I averaged about 3 host a year during that time. It was at this time I started reading about XEN, and the concept of it's method of virtualzation intrigued me, so I started searching for a host that offered this type of VPS.
My first experience was a big let down. Not really sure what the problem was, and cannot remember the name of the host, but that server was extremely slow.
It was then that I came to WHT and found the VPS offers here. There I saw an offer by ServerDave, signed up only to find there was a waiting list for new VPS. It originally took about a week (to my initial disappointment) to get provisioned. The VPS had 1 gig of ram allocated that was almost unheard of at the time. As soon as I started setting up I could tell the difference in speed and responsiveness.
I did have one problem, contacted support about it, and it was fixed within a couple of hours. Turned out to be a php misconfiguration. That was the last problem I ever had with my VPS. All my other contacts with support has just been a few general questions, and of course once to upgrade to a new VPS (newer OS) wich they provided me more than enough time to complete my move.
For most of the time, the only graphs they offered were network graphs, but just recently they have performed an upgrade and the graphs now chart - cpu - disk utilization - along with the network charts. For a control panel I chose DirectAdmin, which I now love. And 5 dollars a month is a great price for it.
Uptime has been terrific. In my three years, my server has only gone down about four or five times for a short time. These all were for upgrades that was well announced before the downtime which was usually just a system reboot for a kernel update.
I use CentOS, and they do auto yum updates which makes it nice. I update my server software manually through directadmins custombuild scripts.
They do have another control panel for auto OS reloads, but this of course does not install your control panel. This is why when I moved from CentOS 4 to CentOS 5 they provisioned another VPS for me (free of charge).
All in all this company has been a pleasure to work with. I look forward to the next 3 years with them.
Just wanted to give a short review of WebTHosting, an offshore hosting company.I am with them more than 6 months.
SO far the greatest hosting service I ever had. WebT Hosting is fairly affordable, with fast and reliable networks, and great support. Their uptime and server load is quite satisfactory.
One most important and the best thing is their live support and sales service. also the response of their support ticket is really fast.
cant believe its almost been a year already, but like sand through the hour glass so goes the days of our lives. anyway, my almost year with imountain has been one of pure bliss. everyone on the imountain team needs to be commended cause they have consistently been there when i needed them and have truly bent over backwards to answer any remedial question i may pose or fulfill any request without hesitation. their support team is phenomenal and have truly gone above and beyond the call of duty and it has been truly appreciated.
uptime has been excellent. there has been only a few hours of downtime and most of that has been scheduled. even though they had to shut me down last week, but i truly couldnt be mad at them cause they did everything they could to rectify the issue. i run a music blog and some spider/bot was trying to download everything in my directories at one time which of course brought/slowed down the server i am on. i could tell that they hated taking me down, but business is business and i know i was affecting other people's businesses. in the end they tracked down the main offender and everything returned to normal.
in regards to speed, i think my site loads pretty quickly. i have not been told otherwise. people are quick to complain about other stuff and loading times has not been one of their gripes.
all in all i would give them a 9.5 out of 10 and will continue to recommend them to anyone who will listen.
I'd been with hivelocity for 14 months by now and i'm thinking to continue my bussines on there.
I created a thread on the past, this is the thread:
[url]
And this is what i said:
Quote:
What can i say?
They just Rock, Dave and steve are just great.
Dave is my account manager he is helpfull, quickly and very efficient.
i would like to recommend people to join in hivelocity.
They are just more than fine, my server is working great and i had 2 issues resolved.
1 issue in less than 20 mins (another server in the rack was consuming a lot of bandwith) the other issue was a little more complicated but it has been resolved too, thanks Dave
They have the same problem with support than sharktech (not managed), but if you talk to your account manager or Steve they will take care of it and get the problem resolved in a few minuts, that's just cool.
Service and support for me was really good in one week with they .. i will stay for a long time here if everything goes right.
and if we can, stablish a long term business based on trust (i'm a coder i can help)
Well from that moment to now i can say the following things:
No downtimes, only schedules (maintenence)
No support problems.
I upgraded my server to a quad2core and for 6 months payment, they gove me a second HDD!
I'm sending new customers to hivelocity right now, and trying to start reselling their servers.
¿why do i want to?
Because Steve and Dave, are responsable guys.
Because Network works fine.
Last server i bought for a customer: 1 day setup, no problems. I did a hardware check and it was OK, no HDD failures and TEMPERATURE was the right.
Because they understand if you have a problem.
Because support is there to help, even if you don't pay for "Managed services"
And i think that, they manage customers as well, that you can feel as a part of the company and not just another Argentinian customer.
So, watching the huge financial crisis, i want to give a good review about this company, and try to get more and new customers to they.
I would highly recommend to buy their services, this is not another company this is one of the best companies i ever knew.
This is my first review regarding a dedicated server prodiver, so forgive me if i miss anything.
We are a small web hosting company located in Greece and after many years in a Greek Datacenter, we were seeking for a reliable provider with Managed Dedicated servers. After a lot of search here in WHT, we came through ServerBoost which is located in Holland.
Sales: Jelle was very patient during our talks, although we were just researching at the time being. A really nice guy and a true professional, answered all my questions as I was skeptic regarding the migration, or details of our contract and service. ( personal fears :p )
Support: They say the first impression is the most significant and I must admit that mine was pretty good. Starting from the Server migration ( From 2 old/slow servers to a brand-new Dell one. ) which went really smoothly from ServerBoost part, taking the downtime to minimal time!
Our SLA contract has a specific time window for support requests but it hardly takes over some minutes or 1-2 hours to get a response ( regarding the time of the day of course! ) and Jelle is always there when i need to ask something.
Hardware/Network: Our Dell server is running really good, and the network is really reliable as "promised". Good speeds and ping ( from Greece ) which is important for our customers.
Conclusion: For me, having dealt with only one foreign company in the past for hosting ( US ), ServerBoost is the ideal one to do business with, because they look really "caring" about our business and their flexibility is priceless.
I'm looking forward using ServerBoost for a long time, really satisfied! :-)
I would just like to say that they surprise me for a shared host.
Support: 10/10
Uptime: 9/10
Speed: 9.5/10
Value: 8/10
Although I pay quite a bit I still think it's worth it. About $15/mth for 15GB HDD and 75GB transfer. My website handles ~300K hit's daily with only a few hiccups. It's uptime is something like 99.97% which is decent. The only big incident is when I first signed up I was transferring my domain which took a few days, but was resolved professionally. So far it's a big thumbs up.
Decided to give a VPS a try back in November. Ordered through one the sales advertised in the offer forums, got set-up in less than 12 hours.
In terms of performance, the VPS works fine.
In terms of service, this is where the ball is dropped.
The issue is that they set me up in LA, and I'm on the East coast. So I've contacted support, asking if a move was possible. When they said yes, and I've confirmed that their offer to move it during the night was fine, I've even shut everything down to make things smoother.
The next morning, I receive an email telling me I will get another one once it's done... the following day, I receive an email that it can't be done, as I have a x64 OS and there is no space on the node.
So I let this slide, and decide that sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and decided to offer them to BUY another one, this time on the East coast, if they could offer me the same setup as I have on the West coast. They've agreed, and I did the order as they requested... That was around noon 2 days ago, and still nothing today...
For another example, I've requested a ticket because the /dev/tun wasn't configured properly in the container... I don't know what they did, but it corrupted my VPS so bad that I have to re-initialise it completly. Another example: I've posted a ticket that their gentoo image is faulty (no network support at all!), and to my knowledge this was still not fixed.
So yes, NYNOC has some cool ideas like an online chat, even offered an EYEOS desktop, forums, tips, and great prices... but for me now this ain't worth it much and will be canceling my accounts. I guess coming from VPSFarm has spoiled me (instant setup, quick support), and will be looking for a new provider.
I used 15 days of godaddy's shared hosting before FsckVPS. Due to unexpected traffic, I had to move to a VPS. So I chose FsckVPS's 512mb packet.
I was very sattisfied with them. Their servers were fast and the VPS got setup in just a few seconds.
The hacking incident happened this month. I was still pleased by the way they handled it. So I decided to stay with them. They decided to give 2 months free after the hacking incident.
2. Month and 3. Month
Everything was very smooth, running perfectly. Servers were still fast after I got switched to a new one after the hacking.
4. Month
This is the second time I paid to FsckVPS and I was pretty happy about it.
Then I have been informed that they will be switching servers. They told that it would take around 4 hours per vps.
So when I noticed that my vps was down for the first time, I didn't react and waited. After being down for about 8 hours, I sent them a ticket. The response came after 4 hours saying that it was now online.
I logged in to my vps and the first thing I noticed was how SLOW it was. After a while, it crashed and I couldn't reach to my vps anymore. I sent a ticket, they reset the server, it got a little better.
This happened about 4 times. Everytime I sent a ticket asking why this is happening, I only received a response saying it is OK now.
After 3 weeks of being like this, I decided to switch to a new VPS provider.
Now I am on my new VPS provider, hoping for better results.
My fsckvps will expire in 4 days and it is still very slow.
After having a dedicated server for more than 70 days from WiredTree.com, I thought that it would be a good time for a review.
I came across them through good reviews in this forum and took the opportunity to get one of their special offers (Core i7). As a short summary in advance: I can fully recommend them to anyone seeking a managed dedicated box.
Sales: I just had contact to Sales twice - Once as I tried to bargain for an even cheaper offer than the special one they already had (without success, by the way) and a second time when it came to an eventual server upgrade. Response time was quick, the answers were professional and friendly and there is nothing I could complain about.
Server Setup: I was in a totally different time-zone than WiredTree while ordering the server. As they have the practice to call their new customers for identity verification, the call reached me at night time and I could not pick it up. So I called them in the morning and they called me back again. It must have been deepest night time in Chicago at this moment. From this telephone call on, it took less than 2-3 hours (as far as I remember) until the server was ready and online. Another thing is their "ServerShield Server Hardening" that they perform before you get the box. I never received a dedicated server before with so many tweaking measures taken in advance. MySQL performance was improved, the firewall was well configured, security checks were already made, everything felt fine-tuned in advance. So, again, very good job done by WiredTree.
Hardware Quality: You might say: "You've only been with them 70+ days. Of course, there was no hardware problem during that short time". Well, I read here at WHT about customers of other hosts who had the first failures already at the moment they received the new box. So - No hardware problems at all until now.
Support: I am not very experienced in server management and tend to get nervous if something doesn't work and support takes more than 30min. to answer questions. I know that this makes me annoying sometimes, but at least I always try to be friendly. Fortunately, WiredTree seems very good prepared for nerve-wrackers like me... Support never took more than 15min. to answer my requests and in at least 2 cases, they even bent backwards to help me with problems that had nothing to do with them. Every single request got solved in a very short time. I contacted support at the most unusable hours of the day because I often travel between different time zones - They were always there, like an own IT-Crowd in your pocket. Two thumbs up for their support staff.
Network: 100% Uptime during the whole time. No hickups at all, no problem that I would be aware of. Fine speed all the time. There is really nothing negative that I could say.
Billing: No billing issues at all. Everything worked correctly.
Their customer portal "Grove": Well. Hmmm. Okay, one thing first: I saw several customer portals during the last 10 years. And none of them blew me away. I haven't seen SoftLayer's yet and was told that theirs should be even nicer than grandmas cheese cake, but the grass is always greener on the other side as long as you have never been there. Let's say that "Grove" is surely one of the better and nicer looking customer portals around. It bundles a lot of information and offers a good way of communication. The rest is a question of taste...
The bad news: I cancelled the server today. The company I work for has rent several servers at another host and paid them 1 year in advance. One is totally unused (great planning, MnMgt!) and I was offered by my boss to use it cost-free for that period of time. Well, this is an opportunity I have to take... Saving $300 a month is quite a lot of money. But I am determined to go back to WiredTree as soon as my "free time" is over.
I've been using SmoothVPS for about 4 months (and colleagues of mine have been using them for more than that) based on posts from WHT as well as recommendations from others in the industry. Bob @ SmoothVPS has been extremely helpful, very responsive, and is seemingly always online to help me with even the most basic of questions. He has bent over backwards to accomodate my random needs and helps me with specific server configurations that I can't figure out - even with third-party packages that he is not required to support!
I have three Linux-based VPSes with Bob and he has no problem configuring them to my specific needs with whatever version OS that I require. I plan on adding many more as I migrate all my servers to him - I've decided to give him my exclusive business due to how well everything runs and how competitive the price is. Billing is simple - Paypal subscriptions or regular invoices make it a snap to manage (even if I lose track, which I do - sorry Bob).
The bottom line is that SmoothVPS is the place to go for your VPS needs. I haven't needed Windows boxes there, but I will probably mess around with one in the near future to test some software. They're moving to a new DC in the near-future - and they're giving me 30 free days of IP migration to make sure the process runs smoothly. Just amazing.
I've had a Krypt VPS for a few months now, started with the VPS400 package and moved up to VPS800 over time. Initially (I'm guessing they had just gotten into providing VPS's) the service was EXCELLENT! My VPS was located in their LA datacenter on the Level3 backbone. First two months the VPS was rock solid, I was running a full LAMP (no optimizations) install along with Webmin. By the 3rd month I started having issues with sluggishness, both on the site and SSH. Put in a support ticket which got responded to within 10 minutes as usual (fantastic support!) and their techs moved my VPS to a less loaded VMware node. Things were again pretty solid for about two weeks, then the same thing happened again. I let it be for a few days thinking it may just be a spike, but even after a week it was still pretty horrid. I had even turned off the LAMP install and Webmin in favor of a lone Lighttpd install to serve static html pages. Mind you by this time I had been upgraded to above their VPS800 package, yet I was still having performance issues. Put in another ticket and asked to be moved to another node, they said sure and asked a timeframe, I told them asap and let the issue be. After 4 hours of not hearing anything back, I update my ticket to find out that they were having some issues with the VPS, ok bad things happen, give them time. A few hours later I ask again and am told that they formatted the VPS without any authorization from me...Its a VMware host, they could at the least have attached the virtual hard drivei mage to the new install of my VPS, but they prefered to just delete it. I run several ESX servers at work and even with a nonbootable (according to them) image, the hard drive can still be mounted and recovery can be attempted. I was angry but I have a few dedicated servers with Krypt so I gave them another chance. I took the freshly installed VPS and started hunting down backups to restore from. Installed LAMP and Webmin, gave it a week and once again: slow. I'm fairly certain that CentOS repo apps and Webmin arn't enough to cause a VPS to dog down this bad, even with *everything* turned off (top shows 24MB ram usage) SSH and pages being served by lighttpd are taking 3-10 seconds to come up, as before they came up before I even let go of the button.
Ratings Support: 10/10 Service: 6/10 VPS Quality: 5/10 Network: 5/10 (great in the beginning, after a week less than 400KB/s)
Overall they're a great provider, but they need to monitor their nodes more carefully and find abusers. It seems to me like they're either overloading their nodes or have something misconfugured thats causing issues. I was told a few times to restart my VPS which didn't help at all. Orderded a VPS with them about 2 weeks ago on a different account, havn't even touch it since I got it, as of right now, SSH is sluggish, apps like top take an average 5 seconds to come up, max throughput is ~300KB/s from Seattle (hit ~7MB/s when I first got it). Same issue as my other VPS. I'll provide my domain to the mods for authentication.
I thought I could share my opinion on VolumeDrive after being with them for a few months. I always appreciated when I could find in-depth reviews from hosting companies when I was looking for one so I hope some peope will find this review useful.
First of all, here my plan with them:
Quote:
AMD Athlon64 3200+ 1 GB DDR2 Ram 120 GB SATA Hard Drive 3000 GB of bandwidth on 100MB port 2 IP addresses Ubuntu Server 8.04 Linux
This package costs me $49.95 per month.
It all started when I contacted them to have more information on their services and what they have to offer. They replied very quickly and sent me a document detailing every offer they have and how their plans work. It's a shame that all that information wasn't available on their website, they proposed roughly 3 different dedicated solutions on their order form when you can actually choose a bunch of other options. Anyway, I asked a few other questions (like if they could install Ubuntu even if it wasn't listed in the available OS, and they had no problem in doing this). Again, they replied quickly. I made my choice and as I made my first payment, my server was online 24 hours later, as stated in their e-mail.
Communication with Volumedrive's staff is always great, I've had an issue one time where my internet connection was realllllly slow. I e-mailed them and it took a few minutes before I received an answer to my e-mail with someone trying to find what was wrong. We exchanged a few e-mails trying to find what was the issue and the issue got resolved in no time. Aside from this problem, I've never had any network or hardware issue (still have a fresh new server though)
I also personnaly think that their prices are far superior to what other companies offer. Their plans are flexible and if I want a hardware upgrade for example I know I can just contact them and we'll work out the details.
The only downsides I can give them is that their website is missing a lot of information. When you are looking for a server you may not want to spend time contacting each company by e-mail to ask question and have more information, you rely on the website to give you a lot of details. Also, their invoice system is not so great. You receive an e-mail saying you need to pay them and they only accept paypal. When your payment is done, you don't receive any confirmation e-mail. It's not bothering me much for a 50$ server, but I'd want a more conventional billing system with automatic renewal if I had a big business going on with them.
All in all, I really like volumedrive! I'd recommend it for everybody looking for a low cost dedicated server, they're fast, professional and helpful. You just need to send them an e-mail to get the plan that works for you so tow thumbs up for Volumedrive!
Pricing: A little more expensive than some other NL hosts but you get what you pay for.
Setup: Total setup time was 3 days after payment (the server was a custom setup), because we had to wait an extra day for the setup Jelle gave us a free upgrade (better CPU and HDDs) which was amazing seeing that the setup period wasn't that long anyway.
Uptime: In the past 7 months we have had 2 small bits of downtime, 1 was scheduled - when they upgraded their datacenter and the other was due to a RAID card failure, which was promptly replaced in less than an hour. Their network is faultless.
Support: We only have the free SLA yet Jelle responds within minutes, and his responses are always friendly and professional. However I haven't needed to contact support outside of business hours so I cannot vouch for that, but during business hours it's top notch.
Overall: I can't recommend ServerBoost enough, I'm 110% pleased. We/I have 5 servers in EU each with different providers and ServerBoost is by far my favourite and the one I recommend most.
I'm sharing my experience with Dynaceron till now .
Month one;
I wanted to try a Linux server and I ordered one of their hardware, that came with CentOS. I have had many questions about Linux, as I am new to it, and the friendly tech support people helped me find answers. The questions I had were often answered in under 3 minutes. I've had 5 minutes of downtime, but that was because I ordered a 4 gigabyte ram upgrade.
Month two;
I decided to go back to Windows and I asked them if they could install Windows on my server, They asked if I had my data backed up, when I said yes they said they were going to start the install ASAP, after 1.5 hours I received an email with the login details..
After 15 days I asked if they could upgrade my uplink to 1Gbps; The upgrade was done without a server reboot.
Month three;
No problems so far, everything has been going well. Seriously, in my opinion they are the best service around, couldn't ask for better. Their uptime is fantastic. In 3 months I've only experienced 5 minutes of downtime, but again that was because I ordered a hardware upgrade.
I would highly recommend them to anyone that is looking for Quality hardware and support.
I will write a review back in 3 months or if I ever experience a problem I will update this thread.
Finally I managed to get some time to write another review about my host, VPSRight. Simple summary, one of the best webhosts that i have ever had. With great support and resources. And the best thing is they think about their customers.
Talking about their support, they're an excellent bunch who knows what they are doing and what they're being asked. Extremely prompt on responses and are usually responded within an hours time. In the initial month or so I've submitted a lot of tickets and they were dealt with ease.
Their servers are great and fast. Not overloaded and recent uptimes have been great. For the last 3 or so weeks I've had no downtime. And after switching from FluidVM to SolusVM the host nodes have become much more stable.
Network is also great and have a good connection speeds. I rarely go below the 1Mbit/s when downloading files to the server (incoming). A few weeks ago we had a small issue of packet loss for a few hours, as result of a DOS attack on another server at the DC. It was soon mitigated and services was fully restored.
In the months of June/July, VPSRight inured a lot of downtime due to DC migrations and s/w migrations. Therefore they made the next billing cycle free to all it's customers as a compensation. This something good as host and they've taken responsibility for the actions they took.
Now everything is a smooth ride and I am a very happy customer of theirs. I'd happily recommend them if someone is looking for reasonably priced, managed, decent spec VPSs.
I think Zinkhosting.net does not get the credit it deserves. In the last ~7 years I have been with many different hosts, and I have to conclude that Zinkhosting.net has been the best. From day one I knew this company wanted to serve the customers, and the small size allowed them to do so. Many large companies ignore the customers when it comes to reliability, price, and support. With Zinkhosting.net I did not have any downtime, and the prices were great compared to other companies. The main reason I stayed with Zinkhosting.net was the support I received. The owner himself was able to help me out on many situations where I did not understand why a certain script was not working. Even though he did not have to offer this sort of support, he still did so out of courtsey. I hope Zinkhosting.net can keep on serving my needs in this manner.
