I am creating a basic static site for my friend's gardening business. It will use html and CSS only, be around 5MB at most and does not require any databases, php support etc.
My problem is that he wants to basically have the site up and running and then be able to forget about it really. I will be going on now and again to update it for him, but that is about it. My experience with free hosts is limited, I have used byethost before, and though very good, they do require a log on every week else they assume the site is no longer wanted and delete the account and all files!
So, my requirements are:
Free host that easily allows to have your own domain name
Email address with the company domain, so quotes@domain.com, not quotes@domain.host.com
Cheap
Good customer service
Need no more than 20MB (allow for some extra photos to be added)
UK Based would be preferable
Couple days ago all of a sudden my host that I've been with for years all of a sudden went down the drain. Why? Supposedly, my site was used for spam? Stupid. They are "trying" to compile my database and files, but I DOUBT that will happen.
With an already 24 hour downtime. I am receiving a lot of emails and phone calls on site. I need my community to get back up asap! So I guess it's time to find a new host.
I need a RECOMMENDATION on a westcoast host that will provide me with great customer service and the requirements I need to run my community.
Must handle vBulletin real well, have the requirements I need, and have great customer service.
This is a local forum, which is why I would like to be on a Westcoast Host.
It's imperative for you to know that web host features does not just stop with Unilimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. There are other very salient features to which some people looking for a host provider have ignore, it is CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
You will not value the importance of a good customer support until you start having problems which you want resolved in the shortest possible time. For some host providers this is like telling them to do the impossible.
It is sad that some of the so-called reputable host don't even have a ticket system not to talk of an on-line chat system where you can ask questions and receive answers in real time.
So, for those of you that are new to hosting or want to change your host, then you had better look for a host that offers good customer support either by Chat, ticket system or forum.
Just wanted to ask for any reliable cheap web hosting... they pointed me towards godaddy.com but i am not too sure... i mean i am leaning towards it but... any other sites or recommendations?
I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations on good, cheap, ASP.NET web hosting companies preferably in the 5-7$/month range. I have a tiny site, but a lot of email, so having a few gigs of storage space would be nice. Bandwidth has never been an issue in the past, but the more the merrier. Support for the newest .NET stuff would be highly desirable (.NET 3.5, preferably win2008 servers, maybe a MSSQL db?)
Other then webmin and virtualmin are there any other decent free panels out there?
I was looking at some of the pricing on some of the panels out there and their pricing models. Direct Admin seems to be the cheapest with 9 dollars a month (if you qualify that is.) Is that pretty much as low as it will get? I would think there might be some that are cheaper then that depending on the bulk size and others.
I've searched and have read the reviews of iicinternet and how poorly they treat customers but I had their service about 4 years ago and dont remember any of the reviews complaints being true. So I've decided to order service to see for myself and give them a fair chance to prove their critics wrong. I ordered service on saturday december 13th, it was the weekend and they dont say anywhere on their site that they setup new accounts over the weekend but I did not get a confirmation of my order, just a paypal email confirming I've paid for the service. So I waited, come monday no contact from iicinternet, then tuesday came and no contact so I used the yahoo pingbox on their site, bill would answer, ask for my last name then after about 20 minutes go idle and never return. So I waited, wednesday I did the same thing. I contacted bill via their yahoo pingbox, and he did the same thing asked for my last name then went idle. This time every 5 minutes when he wouldnt say anything I would ask if he was still there, he would reply with just the word "standby" and then go idle after about an hour. I continued to do this until friday dec 19th, when I emailed steve and support about the issue. I continued to contact bill on their yahoo pingbox to no avail. Today I called them and had the guy who answered pick up the phone, ask for my last name, then put me on hold for an hour never getting back to me.
Now when you buy a dedicated server for under $20 you dont expect much, but I do expect a server within a reasonable amount of time or at least some information as to why its not setup. Now going into this I knew that I might run into some bad customer service and I know you get what you pay for but I was hoping that I'd get at least some information on why it'd take over a week to setup a server, not to mention that the paypal subscription is automated and even if I've only had my server for 2 weeks they're going to auto-renew on the anniversary of the subscription which is completely unfair. For anyone thinking about service with these folks please reconsider, you will just end up losing your money.
I thought you should know about the lazy and rubbish customer service at Knownhost.
I have a trojan in my 404 file of one of my blogs, which a spammer is using to insert 1600+ links into my header and footer. This of course will ruin my SEO, and google my even ban me for spamming and linking to dodgy sites.
My web developer told me to contact Knownhost which I did, but check out this reply:
Hello Julian,
The abuse queue is only for abuse reports regarding our customers. Please open a ticket with our support team directly through our helpdesk if you require technical assistance with your VPS.
Thanks, Helen KnownHost abuse
The word "abuse" seemed suitable, becuase my site is being abused, there is no description to explain what "Abuse" is for. Plus it took her about 3 hours to contact me, even though i marked it as critical, and then she refused to deal with it. The last straw is the fact that she didn't even pass it onto the right department. Its a good job that i was checking my emails.
So now i have to go and open a new ticket, not happy!
I am writing this message to share with fellow readers my sincere dissatisfaction and utter disappointment with the low standards and non-performance of customer service at 1&1.com. The following message is a copy of a feedback e-mail that I sent to 1&1 management after cancelling my Dedicated Server. I was a customer since 2005.
---- Dear Sir or Madam:
I am writing to provide you with feedback on my experience with 1&1, and the events and circumstances that led me to cancel my Dedicated Server Package (a "1&1 Managed Server III"). I have been a customer since 2005, and over the course of these past few years, have witnessed the gradual degradation of service, transparency, and accountability by 1&1 customer service and technical support staff.
I purchased a Managed Server because I wanted support personnel to administer my system, so that my business team and I could focus on building and developing content. We design and launch web sites and interactive communities focused around creative topics, and our sites are ultimately very successful and highly active. Upgrades of our server's operating system were often done reactively and late, rather than proactively and positively, at times exposing our server to security holes and performance inefficiencies. However, my real disappointment rests with how your customer service has been managed.
Over the past year, there were complete server outages that lasted several hours at a stretch. When I was aware of these, I would call the 1&1 Customer Service line, via the "dedicated server" 1-800 number that your company had established. What I received was an outsourced call center in India, with absolutely no ability to perform technical or quality maintenance on my server. The customer service representatives were marginally understandable through their thick accents, and were very clearly reading from a script. Their inability to think creatively and adapt solutions to the problems at hand is understandable, even if frustrating; but entirely unacceptable is the fact that, by their own admission on several calls over the past few months, the data center in the United States was unstaffed. Ordinarily, Tier-1 customer service escalates to live Tier-2 and Tier-3 technicians and admins; your customer service department, however, was left lodging help desk tickets into a system that, according to them, would not be checked in days.
In the latest episode, my dedicated server went offline on Friday night. Saturday morning, I was on the phone with your customer service personnel, who told me that the U.S. data center where my server was located was unstaffed on weekends and admins might not be able to get to my issue until Monday morning. They repeatedly offered insulting "scripted" suggestions as to why my server was offline ("perhaps it was my Internet Service Provider?", for example). Finally, they concluded that there was nothing that they could do - not even a remote-reboot, which is now standard in the industry (such as an APC-reboot). All in all, my server was offline for over 20 hours without explanation, with no clear accountability, and with zero communication. When I kept calling, demanding escalation, I finally got through to an admin in the United States, who managed to remote-force-reboot my machine. After I conversed with him briefly, he simply said he did not know why my server went offline.
Our Dedicated Server's system specifications were modest, but still competitive (a Pentium 4, 2 Gigs of RAM machine, with around 500 concurrent MySQL connections on a single site). Our site's system specifications, using out-of-the-box software that we licensed to run our site, should easily have supported thousands of concurrent connections before we needed to upgrade our system. Nevertheless, I specifically paid extra and purchased 1&1's "managed dedicated server" option because I wanted the extra care and attention to our business-critical web sites.
FEEDBACK ITEMS:
To improve upon your business, I recommend three immediate changes.
1. Train Your Customer Service Personnel.
Your Indian/Outsourced customer service appeared generally unfamiliar with both my package (they had to escalate several times, placing me on hold for over 20 minutes at a stretch, before they could conclude that I had a dedicated and managed server), and had been reading from an outdated script that left them uninformed and incompetent to handle even basic queries on system status, server and service readiness, and the functionality of my server. Furthermore, they were completely unsupported by not having any live technical team working during reasonable hours.
2. Staff your U.S. Data Center.
It is astonishing, and horrifying, to me that 1&1 is apparently selling any hosting services, much less dedicated/managed hosting services, on a data center that is apparently not staffed with technicians 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In my situation, my business-critical server went offline for nearly 24 hours, and there was no one that either I, or your Outsourced/Indian Tier-1 customer support could escalate to in order to get accountability. Furthermore, there was no transparency: there is no number to reach a live human being on-site at the data center, and your Customer Service personnel seemed either unable or unwilling to ask questions to figure out if anyone was in charge on the ground. They concluded to me, on the phone, that the "technicians were home for the weekend". That is entirely unacceptable, and it operates on a level of non-performance that is shocking to me as both a business executive and an organizational manager.
3. Provide full-time, English-speaking, U.S.-based Customer Service.
Your call center in India was staffed with people who, quite frankly, were neither qualified nor competent to handle the concerns of your United States and European customers. When asked questions that deviated from the script that they were reading (you could hear them both typing and flipping pages to try and find the answer), they ended up placing me on hold for long stretches of time. There is zero innovation, and absolutely no adaptability by your customer service at this call center. When this scenario unfolds, there absolutely must be an immediate, Tier-2 customer service personnel that can promptly, professionally, and courteously handle the concerns of your customers, and they should do so in an intelligent, dynamic, innovative fashion. I am extremely patient and forgiving of outsourced and offshore technical solutions, especially since my business leverages a global model similar to most information technology consultancies. I can only imagine the number of clients that your user-unfriendly, backward, and mentally-atrophied customer representatives have cost you. The fact that they are the only customer support you offer before escalation to a (non-existent or absent) technical team is unacceptable, and speaks of a systematic failure in your organizational management and escalation hierarchy structure. Please, for the sake of your future customers, provide a full-time, intelligent, responsive, and communicative U.S.-based customer service team.
CONCLUSION
In closing, I want to reiterate my sadness at having come to the decision to cancel my 1&1 account and close all of my business with your organization. I have been a customer for nearly three years with your company, and have been very patient and understanding of the delays and mismanagement with customer service, especially since it seemed that in previous years, you had an attentive and present technical support team that would resolve matters promptly. However, after the past few months, I have witnessed the apparent absence of any service level agreement to respond to issues, queries, or escalations, the complete incompetence and mismanagement at your outsourced and offshore Indian call-center, and gross non-performance of your technical personnel and utter negligence of your support staff on the data center. Within a matter of moments, I was able to identify a major and large-scale competitor of yours that offered me an enterprise server solution at a U.S.-based data center that was staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; a full-time U.S.-based customer service team that had guaranteed SLA's of responsiveness; and, professional management services for a comprehensive management solution -- all of this at a cost less than what you currently charge new customers.
The decision was one of the easiest ones I have ever made.
That "free first month" looked like a great deal until we got shutdown, over-billed, the server is NOT what we agreed on in the contract, and we cannot speak with anyone in a supervisory position.
When the account agreement was entered into, all information was sent to The Planet via The Planet salesman who sold us the account. It appears from subsequent email that he forwarded the contract and information to the planet via his Blackberry. This included all necessary contracts, billing, and credit card information. Hmm.
Exactly one month later the service was suspended. After contacting 'The Planet' we were told our credit card had been declined. We argued this point supported by our own banking information. We were told to simply add the credit card information into the 'orbit' billing portal so we did. Then we were told we would need to re-verify all the card holder information since we were adding a new card into the system. This point I also argued since we were adding THE SAME card information that they had from day one.
I was told by the person that handled my call regarding the suspension that the matter would be fixed. He would also have a supervisor phone me. I told him as long as they fix the billing error there is no need to have the supervisor phone me unless they took issue with my complaints. So nobody contacted me. They opened and closed numerous tickets and proceeded to bill me a $50.00 "reconnection fee".
I have now phoned The Planet numerous times since the 5th of May. I cannot speak with anyone in a supervisory position. They just keep telling me the supervisor will phone me.
For a company that is so large, customer service at this company sounds like three teenagers in 2 bedroom apartment. Not to mention the fact that since that server has been online it has been a magnet for IP scans. I found a possible reason for that problem in a September 30th 08 report by Netcraft,
I bought a shell from them but they are also a VPS company so I figured I would warn everyone about them...
I put in a cancel request a few days ago, I just asked to cancel. I didn't specify to cancel immediately or at the end of my month.
I assumed they would leave my service running for the time I paid for, reguardless of my cancel request (like a good natured business would do)
I sure was wrong.
My service was shutoff immediately, and my account for billing/support was closed so I couldn't login to update my support ticket.
When I joined their IRC channel and asked about it, I was laughed at by the ops and staff of sh3lls because I was upset they shutoff my account early.
They said it was cancelled because I opened a ticket asking for it to be cancelled. Which is true, as I have already said, however I did not ask for it to be cancelled immediately. Sh3lls should have either asked me if I want the account cancelled immediately, or just left it running for the remaining time I paid for.
I also cancelled 2 other services with different companies this week, one a VPS company, and one a Web Hosting company, both automatically left my service running until the end of the month - they didn't even try to shut off my services early.
That's what a honest, ethical company would do. They wouldn't automatically shut your service down early, so they can make a few extra dollars off you!
Beware of sh3lls, not only will they shut off your service early, but their admins/staff will laugh at you when you ask for help!
I have to tell about the excellent service I received with Polur.Net. I recently put in a request regarding running a 3rd party script to support. I expected a response with complicated instructions but instead the Polur Team went beyond my expectations by running the script for me and even correcting my own errors which ensured that everything worked great.
I can't believe the hours of BS I had to go through with Godaddy hosting to get a subdomain to work. Their online "help" is horrible, incorrect, and incomplete.
For people who may have this problem, here's what I had to go through:
You can go into "Domain Management" and "Add a Subdomain" and have it point to a specific directory. Fine. That's all well and good, but that in itself does nothing and their help implies that's all you have to do and you're set, boom you have a subdomain. Not so fast.
You have to go into your "DNS Manager" and add a CNAME record with the same name as your subdomain and have it point to @. So apparently you have to change the DNS first so web browsers recognize the subdomain and get redirected to your host, then the domain management "subdomain rule" kicks in and it knows to go to a certain directory.
The funny part is the customer cervice person knew none of this. He kept insisting I had to add an A record, obviously just reading from a script. And even if I did have to mess with my DNS settings to enable my subdomain why wasn't this in the "help" on your website? Unbelieveable.
just want to say this forum kicks some serious arse. It helped me out tremendously with a potential scam that I almost got myself caught in this morning. Secondly, since I am on here posting this morning I might as well post up a one year review of Singlehop.com and the dedicated server I am using.
My websites hosted on rig: www.svtsnake.com, www.nsgcenter.com, www.nextlevelhardware.com My host: SingleHop My sales rep: Miguel Villegas My hosting package: Dedicated Server E8400, 2GB ram, 250GB HDD (non raid), Plesk CP with 5 domain license. My monthly pricing: 189.00 even per month
At the beginning of my term about a year ago I was achieving 2.1 to 3.0 MB/s throughput down and close to 500 KB/s up which is excellent and really incredible for working on SSH Secure Shell for me with uploading and downloading DB files, etc. At this current point in time I have noticed a minor decrease in speed to around 1.5 MB/s download speeds and at nighttime hours around 700K, which is more than ample and still excellent IMO as you will see in this picture: http://nsgcenter.com/dlspeed.jpg
I am very happy with overall throughput of the server at almost all hours. You can check out overall network response time and server DB response by playing around with the vbulletin database I run at svtsnake.com. There is always a huge amount of concurrent users and never any slowdown.
Something else incredible for me with Singlehop so far is network downtime. I can honestly say, since my latest term with them. I was also a customer a few years ago and had a few issues with server downtime that I ceased being a customer with them because of it. However, I was refunded an compensated in a timely matter and everything was taken care of immediately.
However, it seems that as of recently they have improved there infrastructure tremendously because I have NOT been down for 1 second in over 7 months. Even when they schedule downtine, my server has never noticed it. My uptime has been 100% for every single day that I have owned this server on Singlehop.com.
There is one issue that I can say I am very unhappy with, and it is an issue where all partys can be blamed even including myself. I am well aware that there policy states after 3 days of non payment they can shut down server connection. So, I was a customer for seven months when a new single hop account executive named Miguel Villegas joined the team and was my representative. I had changed my cell phone and never updated the file, and at the same time I own multiple businesses and frequently close and open different credit/debit/rewards cards to be used for processing payment. Note that I have never missed a payment with them up until this point. The payment was do on like the 18th of the month or something, and I received the invoice thinking that my credit card on file was automatically going to pay my bill like it always does. But it just so happens that the credit card I had on file with singlehop was stolen at a nightclub in NYC called MansionNYC, and I was pick pocketed. I lost all of my credit cards that night and called up to report all of them stolen. So, obviously I was issued new credit card and I was waiting for them to issue me new cards in the mail and new numbers, which took about 3 to 5 days with most companys. So, here I am 3 days late for payment and I wake up one morning and ALL of my websites are completely shut down. No notification, no warning, just closed and I got an email from Miguel Villegas my account representative explaing that my server was turned off until I remit payment.
I called up Singlehop and I was furiated, yelled almost at the top of my lungs that they simply just shut off a server, after 3 days of payment. Especially in a situation like this and they never even called me up to let me know they were doing this because my cell phone was different on file - which was mis-communication on my part. At this point in time I called up my bank HSBC and got an emergency debit card number to make the payment to Miguel through email and my server was re-activated.
But, 3 days after invoice is due to just cancel someones server or suspend it is definitely not good business policy. I have been a customers for almost a year and the whole incident was a fluke, they didnt have to suspend the server. In my business, we give a customer at least 30 days to pay a bill. But thats not the point, I know there policy states you have 3 days to remit payment or policy account suspension. But I think that is a horrendous policy, especially for emergency situations like I was in. What happens if the owner of a business is dying of an anyeurism in the hospital and is 3 days late with his web payment for his website, does singlehop simply suspend his 16 million hit per month vbulletin forum just because of lack of communication and payment?
I am still a longstanding customer with Singlehop but felt I needed to share that story with everyone. So, yes I am very happy with quality of service, speed of service, tech support, packages offered. But, I am very upset about there payment policy regarding 3 days of lack of payment that just aint right. I really like the attitude and business practices of the execs at the company and they are going to hate me for the negative feedback of my one bad incident with them, but overall Singlehop has my business and will have my business UNTIL either the server is offline every other week, or my DB crashes due to SInglehop issues. LOL Neither I think will be happening anytime soon.
Thanks for reading everyone. If anything, I hope Singlehop reads this and considers modifying there policy regarding server suspension and lack of payment maybe to something more like 10 to 15 days. Not 3 days.
Ive had many problems with hosting companies in the past, and each time i gain advice from other designers, i talk about it on forums (inc sitepoint), and i like to say i learn from my mistakes.
However, i obviously cant be learning from my mistake as i continue to have problems.
Now, this time i chose a experienced host. You could say they sold me a package and everything was good. No complaints.. well that was until today.
I come back from working away to find my website is down (www.avillafan.com)
I also find my host's site is down, and i also got no reply from a email. So i took it one step further and decided to phone them to find out whats going on.
And i get this reply ' Yes, we are sorry man - ill get it back up very soon'
Now what does this mean? very soon is a few mins. Its now been a few hours.
Now ive lost money in the past, as i like to go for yearly deals and each time i get caught out. And once again, im wondering am i entitled to get my money back? Now every other business the customer should come first and is aways right.
So how come this doesnt seem the case in the web hosting/designing business?
I usually host my sites on Bluehost but they are a bit expensive. A friend of mine who wants to host a very small site of his not expecting too many viewers, needs a web host which is cheap, reliable and fast..bandwidth is not an issue since he wont need much.
Please suggest some tested options. Which one of the cheaper options are time tested and reliable?
I want to run Hlstatsx on my webhosting but my current host won't allow me to or open the port that I need to do it with.
I am currently paying about £2.50 a month and don't want to pay much more, I have a plan with 10gb storage and 100gb bandwidth and SSH and Cron jobs. Does anyone know a company that will do a similar deal and allow me to run the script by opening the required port etc?
We just receive few orders in past month for servers advertised here and most of them was a fraud order. Just was surprised with a number of fraud sourced from WHT advertising. Anyone have a same bad experience?
And what do you think about "quality" of customers who order server's advertised on WHT? Are they honest, clean and loyal to host?
I own a small tech firm, mostly in business to support the customer with basic repair and upgrade. In recent year, more and more of my SMB customer ask me about the hosting service of the CRM or CMS.
The question I have is, although the open source tool, such as SugarCRM and Drupal is free of charge, but will it be free for some one like me to offer the service to my customer, either the same or customerize it a little bit.
And if it can be done, what kind of precaution I need to take, so I will not be involved in the copy right battle later on.
Friend of mine is starting up a business and is looking for a reliable and fast web host in the UK but also not too expensive around £100/year and maybe 100gb bandwidth not sure on that.
Looked over reviewcentre.com and picked out some high rated ones with more than 5 reviews, however every single one I have read horror stories about elsewhere (including ukfast which seemed so good looking at reviews).
Can someone recommend any decent ones to me who won't screw up payments or have much downtime, with maybe a year or more of being with them? All I need to start is a bit of bandwidth for pretty much one image to start with, uptime and email, already got the domain from domainmonster.
