CheapVPS.co.uk - Early Impressions
Jun 21, 2007
As a first time VPS user, looking for something to mess around with, to host my basic website and mail, I went looking for something cheapish to get started.
My original hosting was with A Small Orange (Shared Hosting), and although they offer exceptional service, their VPS plans were a bit high in price and we're Linux based (which would leave me completely and utterly dumbfounded).
I signed up with CheapVPS after browsing this forum and clicking through from their sister VPS company a2b2. Straight off the bat, their live sales web chat was open. Joined the chat, got all my questions answered in a very friendly manner. After thinking about it for half the day, found there was a 10% discount code. I was sold.
From ordering the VPS to using it was less than 24 hours (but the site did say 90% in about an hour) so I was at first fairly suspicious, and worried that customer service might be a bit of a pain. But hey, up and running in 24 hours is excellent, I was being a tad impatient and excited to get at it
I'm from Australia, so ping times are generally highish to the US and download speeds can be average if the server is not located in the right place. Server is currently pinging at 210-220ms (which is pretty damn awesome for US-Australia). I've been using the VPS for the last 2 days and so far, no downtime and the server has been very responsive.
As for the customer service, it is fantastic, more than fantastic (so far anyway, and I hope it stays that way!). Rus, who is obviously one of the main owners, has been responding to my tickets within 2-5 minutes at varying times of the day. I often wonder if he sleeps. As I am a complete n00b to the whole VPS thing I've submitted a fair few tickets and all of them have had friendly responses
These are of course early impressions, and I certainly hope they don't change, but I thought I would write up this little review because I personally think they deserve a little plug for being an excellent provider at a great price point (for someone starting up anyway). I hope their uptime stays constant, because I need my VPS for my mail
Currently, I'm on the cheapest Windows 2003 plan, 10GB HDD, 30GB bandwidth. Hosts are digitaldj.net, w00ties.com/.net/.org. Not all domains have been transfered over yet...As I said I'm new to all of it, trying to get all the DNS working
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Aug 25, 2007
I ordered VM200 (Enterprise VPS) with cPanel/WHM + Fantastico from Zone.net 2 days ago and here's my review:
Sales: 9/9
I can't say any bad about their sales team, they're (at least Jefrey) excellent. Keep the good work guys
Setup: 5/9
I've had & still have another vps from another provider, it was set up within max. 3 hours with complete setup like what was ordered.
With Zone.net, I have to say I'm disappointed, setup took 9 hours from the time I paid it.
And then the next issue is Fantastico has not been installed, I've contacted them about this yesterday; they said Fantastico license will be arrived within 24-48 hours. This is issue that I didn't find with other providers before (Jaguarpc, Knownhost, SLhost & Futurehosting).
Fantastico has not been installed yet until now.
Speed (network & hardware): 8/9
I can't complain, I choose LA data center and the speed is good from here (Indonesia) also the server seems a monster server (8 CPUs)
I can't mark it 9 yet, because I've been using my VPS only for 2 days.
Support: 6/9
I have sent 1 ticket to support, and it took about 2 hours to be replied. The other ticket sent to billing was replied in about 20 mins.
This is early review, this is purely for information to the community, I'm not doing this to make bad impression about Zone.net.
I will give another review within 2-3 days and the next 1 or 2 months.
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Jun 22, 2007
I ordered a VPS there after speaking with their AIM representative.
It was provisioned in 3 minutes and was fully working. I was impressed. Then I log in and the VPS is extremely fast and on a good host node. I downloaded my software and it flew as well. So far, 9/10, I'm super impressed and couldn't be happier. (Mods - no domain yet, just added it and its in the midst of propagating.)
The VPS is lightning quick, it compiles everything 1-2-3. Compiled an IRCd in 15 seconds, takes a good minute or two on all the other VPS companies I've ever used. I couldn't be more satisfied.
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Mar 10, 2009
I purchased a small VPS from whirlhost. Now I try to enter to my.whirlhost.com and it is down
What would you guys do? Should I cancel and ask for a refund?
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Jan 20, 2009
I'd like to ask linode.com customers if they're happy with their service.
Are the VPSes fast? Are there I/O problems? Bandwidth? etc.
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Nov 19, 2008
I recently went out on a limb and signed up for dedicated hosting with IndiaNets, a company that I'd never heard of in all of my years as a web developer. I found IndiaNets in my search for a host that offers multiple, non-sequential Class-C IP addresses. (I need this for SEO reasons.)
Normally, I like to either call or chat online with a host before I sign up to see how responsive they are and how they treat people. Prior to signing up, I had a couple of live chats with Vijay, and he was great -- quick to respond and very knowledgeable. I also asked for an account feature that was not specified on their web site, and he went out of his way to accommodate me. After the second chat, I signed up.
Since all of my 20 accounts had to be set up manually, I expected this to take a few days, but Vijay set them all up within 24 hours, and this was on a weekend! He was also online and available to chat over the same weekend, which was good because I had a few tech support questions.
So far, so good. Then came an email after a couple of days saying that there was an issue with one of the servers, and the hard drive would need to be replaced. While it's always an inconvenience when these things happen, they happen nonetheless. It's the nature of the business. What really matters is how the web host deals with the problem. I must say, I'm impressed with how IndiaNets handled this issue. They sent an email to all customers explaining the problem and how it would be solved, as well as the time frame during which it would be solved so that people would know not to make any updates to their sites during this time. They also set up a web page with frequent updates about the status of the issue.
In addition, I submitted a non-related support ticket while all of this was going on, and I still got a fast reply (within minutes, actually). Even though I had to wait until the server issue was resolved for someone to address my other issue, I appreciate that I still received a reply with an explanation of what was going on and that it would be handled as soon as possible. This is much better than submitting a ticket and having to wait for days to get a response. I appreciate some kind of communication, even if it's to say something like, "I got your message, and I'll help you as soon as I can." This type of customer service is extremely rare, especially in the hosting industry, and I just want to say thank you to Vijay and IndiaNets for being so refreshing.
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May 22, 2008
Been using ML for 2-3 days now.
vBulletin's performance is a hell of a lot better compared to my last host (fasthosts.co.uk - which takes 60 seconds to give an error page!)
In addition, litespeed is pretty damn sweet.
Setup took maybe 10-25 minutes from payment.
Only problem I have with it is that SSH is a bit too locked down - wget/etc don't work, and sort of negate the need for me to use SSH in the first place.. (to get and unzip files without having to upload massive things)
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Jun 9, 2008
I recently switched my dedicated server hosting from The Planet ($100/mo) to iWeb ($70/mo). I'd been with The Planet for quite a long time (originally Rackshack, then renamed to ev1, then bought by The Planet), and had been reasonably happy with them, but I'd been thinking about jumping ship for a while, for several reasons: (1) I was unhappy with EV1 for paying protection money to SCO; (2) my hardware was getting out of date; and (3) I thought I'd see if I could save some money on my monthly bill. I found iWeb because they were high up in the netcraft rankings, and netcraft showed them as running Linux. Searching the webhostingtalk forums for comments, I did find one long thread that involved one very unhappy user, but I wasn't convinced that his complaint was completely reasonable, so that didn't scare me off.
The dedicated server page at iWeb has a prominent offer of 1-hour activation on selected servers, but that wasn't an option I could use, because I wanted to use their cheapest configuration, which is a 2.4 GHz celeron, with 1 Gb ram, 160 Gb disk space, and 1500 Gb/mo. Since this was a step down from $100/mo at my old host to $70/mo at iweb, I was worried about quality of service and support, so I only signed a one-month contract. If you prepay for 24 months, you can get the same service at $52/mo. There was a setup charge of $49. Access to a web control panel would have cost extra, and they tried hard to sell me on that, but I didn't need it, since I'm comfortable managing everything via SSH. I got Debian installed on my machine rather than their default for Unix boxes, which is CentOS.
The first problem I ran into was that I made a mistake at one stage of the sign-up process, and although the interface did have buttons for backing up to earlier steps in the process, they didn't work for me. Starting over from scratch didn't work, and I finally had to put in a different email address in order to get a fresh start.
I placed my order by phone Wednesday morning, and got access to my server Thursday afternoon. Everything worked well as far as getting apache, mysql, and postfix set up.
IWeb is Canadian. Their pricing for US customers is in US dollars. They answer the phones in French, but everyone I spoke to was bilingual, and we never had any significant problems communicating. My credit card company's risk management thingie got triggered because of the non-US transaction, but that wasn't a big problem.
The big problem I had was that I was unable to log in to the iweb web site, which I needed to do in order to set their nameservers to point my domains to my box's ip. I put in the username and password, but the login page just refreshed. I started attempting to resolve the problem first thing on Friday, and ended up dealing with a total of six people before finding a solution at noon on Monday. In the interim, they offered to set the dns zones for me from their end, and that worked. Support was pretty bad. Sometimes I was able to get through to a technician on the phone in 5-10 minutes, but other times I spent ~1 hour on hold waiting to talk to someone. Email support generally received either no reply or a non-helpful reply. This was one of those typical, frustrating tech support situations where you keep on explaining the same things to different people, they promise to get back to you but don't, they send you canned email replies that don't address your actual question, etc. The long and the short of it seems to be that their login page had at least one known OS/browser incompatibility (with some versions of Windows+IE7), and one other, which was the one I had run into (with both Firefox 3+Linux and Konqueror+Linux). (I had javascript and cookies enabled on my Linux box, and in fact the cookies were being accepted, but the page just wasn't loading.) Tech #3 was unable to log in to my account on his own machine using my login info on Firefox+Win. The final resolution of the problem was that tech #6 suggested I try a different machine, and I found that it worked on my wife's machine with Firefox+MacOS. Go figger.
So in summary, their support is horrible, but basically I'm resigned to the fact that all webhosts' support is horrible. Maybe iWeb's is a little more horrible than The Planet's, but they also cost significantly less. The experience has been bad, but not bad enough to make me give up on the initial investment of the setup fee plus first month's service. I realize that at $70/mo they're working on a very thin profit margin, and I'm not under the illusion that they can afford to provide the level of support that would come with a $300/mo account. I'm going to stick with them for at least a while and just try really hard to avoid ever needing support.
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Oct 16, 2008
I got hostpc after hostsimplex.com closed down.
They have been very helpful in getting my site back up and running. I had a few issues like unable to get the back up of my sql to restore so I uploaded the back up and they restored that for me. Nice guys.
An interesting issue came up which required me to have a symbolic link well could have gone with out it but would have made it so one of my sites was down for a few more days.
Basically the symbolic link allows 2 sites I run to have the same games with out taking up any more space on the server. Actually this was hostsimplex's idea and they created the link. How ever I could not restore that link or figure out how it was made to after opening a ticket with hostpc I got one made.
But not right away cuz I was first told it would not work, which had me kind of puzzled so I told them hostsimplex had that file so I know it works just I am not sure how they did it. Any way they did get a symblolic linke, 2 in fact one I could not delete and another one. I had them delete the one I did not need and got the other one working.
I will say they are very good people and very helpful. They even put up with my frustrating of things not going right which was not thier fault.
verification link is in my siggy.
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Jan 20, 2009
I've been with XenVZ for about a day now, and thought I would share my initial impressions thus far.
I was looking for a cheap, basic little VPS to run a few simple services off of. I had raked high and low through these forums since I was looking for something located in the UK, with Xen virtualization for <£10/month.
I came across XenVZ in the advertising forum, and thought I would check them out.
Started up the Live Chat, and got through to Sean right away. I asked a series of questions and received prompt and professional replies.
I thought I would start out cheap, so I signed up for the £3.99 'taster' VPS (they have a 30 day money back guarantee, so can't really lose). Signed up around 8:10, received invoice 8:12, paid invoice right away and had the server details at 8:21. Whole signup process took around 11 minutes.
Even for a tiny VPS with only 64MB RAM, it performs fairly well. I am running a Ventrilo server inside Screen, IRSSI session inside Screen and Lighttpd server (serving a simple static placeholder page), and I still have around 20MB spare RAM.
The network seems pretty solid too, I thought I would test it out with a wget from a UK mirror service, the connection capped out at about 9.5MB/s.
If your looking for a UK VPS, I highly suggest giving these guys a check, can't fault them so far.
Of course, I'll be back in a month to give a more detailed rundown of the service.
I don't run a domain off the VPS but can provide the IP on request.
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Oct 28, 2009
A few days ago I got our new dedicated server with Sweden Dedicated and at first everything looked fine. The server was provisioned with some delay but still it works as expected and the network is fine.
Their support though is quite a different story and far from the advertised 24/7 and response time under 3 hours. A simple reverse DNS record request is still open after almost 24 hours. And what is worse is that today I found the the IP address we were assigned is from a blacklisted spam network. Their phone number is playing a voicemail message and nobody seems to be looking and the tickets I opened, so I'm seriously considering alternative providers.
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Oct 7, 2008
We moved our hosting from Knownhost to VPSville approximately over the weekend and here are the initial impressions of VPSville. By the way, Knownhost support is great, the best, and we had no problems with them, just wanted to get the server out of the US.
We decided to try out VPSville based on the few reviews on this site and taking on their supposedly 'Stellar 24/7' support and 'Satisfaction guarantee' as promised on their website.
The few support tickets initiated so far were either answered very late (up to several days) to one ticket not having been answered at all.
The answers themselves were not very satisfactory and very incomplete, and kept recommending irrelevant 'upgrades', instead of trying to tackle the problem. I solved one ticket issue on my own, but got the reply that basically a tiny server (HIB 1 - 128MB guaranteed RAM with 4x Xeon processor) is 'too tiny' to even support attaching e-mail attachments larger than 2MB via Roundcube, so that I should 'upgrade' to HIB2 (256MB RAM guaranteed). Now, having used Roundcube on a VPS with 128MB RAM and having researched the issue with Roundcube, I know that it has to do with modifying configuration files to reset the maximum upload limit, etc. All I asked was for was the easiest way to go about doing it, since they are the 'experts' and this is the first time using an HIB LXAdmin for me.
Regarding the servers themselves, the setup was instant and I have no problems with the servers, very satisfied.
It's just the support that makes me quite skeptical. I really think that either the VPSville support are manned by nameless non-technicians or their priority is to have their customers upgrade over every issue, instead of helping to tackle the problem.
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Jul 18, 2008
I am between these two what would you use for a very busy server that you will need support and no downtimes.
Cheap vps is offering the double of their plans as an offer.
Do you have any experiences to help me choose? My website will be really busy must be trustworthy and 24/7 support in case of problems.
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May 25, 2008
I ordered a VPS from CheapVPS earlier this week.
I asked many questions via e-mail the day before and on the morning. The replies were good and fast (within an hour).
Once i placed my order i quickly had an e-mail regarding payment options, after paying and getting confirmation i was expecting to wait 24 hours as advised for setup, but it was done in about 2-3 hours.
I have never managed my own VPS but wanted to learn so had "host in a box" installed. So far all is well with fast ping times and a great service.
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Sep 14, 2007
i found cheapvps.co.uk and they have that special 20% off deal on XEN VPSs. Sounds good to me.
the plans i am debating are the 256mb ram and 384mb ram.
now from my calculations,
the Linux 256mb /10GB/300GB plan is $18 per month. (-15% discount for 1 year = $183.60 - 20% off the discount coupon = $146.88
the Linux 384mb /15GB/600GB plan is $24 per month. (-15% discount for 1 year = $244.80 - 20% off the discount coupon = $195.84
So now the question is: Will the 384mb plan make a difference vs the 256? I will be using XEN.
I have decided to go with the U.K. server since i am currently working in the middle east and found out its hops are much closer and ping better than that of the U.S.
Also, what OS should I choose for easy package installation and such? (dont want apt-get or portage to sit there updating its package system wasting my bandwidth)
Please help decipher the following terminology!All plans include1 Fixed IP with 1 extra IP free with justification (What?)
Burst RAM double that of the guarenteed RAM on Linux (What does this mean? So if i pick 384 guaranteed ram how much burst do i get?)
Free HyperVM or Virtuozzo Power Panel (VZPP) management panel for reboots, reloads and status checking. (Does HyperVM work with XEN or is it for OpenVZ only?)
Unlimited reboots
Unlimited reloads
24×7 Support
DirectAdmin is $10/mo and $15 setup email sales@cheapvps.co.uk to order
cPanel is $15/mo and $15 setup - email sales@cheapvps.co.uk
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Dec 7, 2007
I have purchased the 256Mb-10Gb-00Gb-£9.00 / $18.00 per month unmanaged plan + 2 dedicated IP address from CheapVPS, paid for the half of year, last month - 12 Nov. 2007, as for now they ask for some more money as they generated new invoice, every time they want £84.15 + £7.50 again cPanel setup charges
For Rus to check the PayPal transaction number: 140444259N989564W
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Jun 27, 2008
Purchased a vps from CheapVPS/A2B2 a month ago (There was a special running on WHT..and i wanted the vps urgently so they deployed it within 30 minutes ).Support rocks.My tickets are answered within 10 minutes and they even have msn support!Today, i ordered another vps and they deployed it within 30 minutes again .
I highly recommend Cheapvps/A2b2.
Support 10/10
Setup Time 10/10
Overall Experience: 10/10
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Jun 29, 2008
I just saw two quite nice deal in the VPS offer forum with CheapVPS and Crissic.
They both around $15/month after discount with 512RAM and 20gb(Crissic's is 70gb) harddisk and 300gb+(CheapVPS is 600gb) bandwidth.
The harddisk space is more important to me at the moment but after a search in the forum I can't find any possitive feedback on Crissic, and both nice/bad feedback on CheapVPS. Seems more people are using CheapVPS.
I am wondering if anyone can help me to choose between them in terms of the reliability and stability of their server/service?
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Aug 27, 2008
I got a VPS from cheapvps.co.uk in March since they had a very good offer at WHT. I got a VPS with 512 MB of RAM, 25 GB HD, 300 GB bandwidth and LxAdmin for £9.31 (around $18/mo)
I did never like LxAdmin and changed to Cpanel after some time. They did reinstall my VPS free of charge, and installed Cpanel/WHM.
When I first got the VPS the setup was fast, only two hours from I paid to the VPS was ready.
Cheapvps.co.uk offer unmanaged plans, but still they have helped me with every problem I have had with them. I have no clue how to use a Linux server, and if I get any problem, I create a support ticket. And they have never told me that they don’t want to help me.
So with their low price, and good support, I think they have a very good product.
I have had some downtime since I got the VPS. I’m using Hyperspin to monitor my VPS and I have 99.830% uptime since the start.
My VPS has always been very fast, and they have good hardware to that price. And I don’t think they oversell their VPS nodes. I have never had any problems with slow VPS nodes.
Since I’m only using the VPS from cheapvps.co.uk as a backup server for my main VPS server (I have a live backup and I’m using DNS made Easy failover service) and as a test VPS for new sites, and Cpanel setups, I had to cut the montly fees.
I paid around $40/mo for the VPS and Cpanel. I sent them a mail, and told them that I had to cut the monthly fees, or cancel the server, since I got another offer from WHT for the same setup, at a lower price.
They did offer to cut the cost to around $30/mo, and I stayed. And I think I will stay for a long time, so long they offer good service and good support.
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May 12, 2008
I try to rent a vps from cheapvps.co.uk today and get this message:
In order to keep security and high quality of our service, all new orders needs to pass our fraud checking screen. In order to pass it, we ask you to email us scanned version of your Photo ID, Passport, Driver's license or your credit card.
Once we receive necessary document(s) we will happily proceed with processing your order.
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May 24, 2008
I purchased a second VPS with cheapvps.co.uk for £31.73 (including managed service). I bought the 2nd vps, because my first one crashed for some reason.
After 7 days of misconfigured 2 vps systems I asked for a complete and full working VPS or a refund and they suspend me on all 2 systems without getting a refund.
That is not nice.
Edit: I got a refund, today but only 11.73 of 31.73, because DirectAdmin will be cost now $20 instead of $10, if it is an refund issue.
One really bad part of the TOS, if you want to get a refund (Note, that they it will cost you only 5 pounds, while purchase a VPS, but they double the pricing, if you ask for a refund!):
The 7 day money back is offered on all managed and semi-managed VPS accounts. The money back does not cover unmanaged VPS. Control panel fees will not be refunded. cPanel and DirectAdmin are valued at $20/mo with a $20 setup. RVSkins and Fantastico are counted as control panels and have an associated cost of $2 each should they be active on your account.
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May 23, 2007
Although I only ordered my VPS a couple of days ago I felt compelled to make known my initial thoughts on cheapvps.co.uk.
My main reasons for going for cheapvps was not only the cheap prices, but also the fact that a2b2 (a sister company of cheapvps I believe) and Rus appear to have very good reps here on WHT. I spoke to Rus initially via live help to ask a couple of questions and he was extremely helpful which convinced me to make my mind up there and then.
The VPS was set up and going within about 3 hours which is very fast in my book (I didn't get access to it for a couple of hours more but that was just because of an e-mail hiccup causing me not to receive the welcome e-mail). The speed is amazing - especially for a budget VPS. The network is also extremely fast, and the fact I got the choice of it being in the UK was also a big bonus for me.
One of the things that really impressed me though was when I started hitting a couple of snags when running a couple of programs, including Postfix (whose developers decided it would be useful for it to use literally about 90 unix sockets). This caused a problem for the resource limits in the VPS for sockets. Also the kernel memory limit was causing memory allocations to fail as well.
No sooner had I contacted Rus again than the resource limits had been raised to something a little bit more suitable. This also needed to be done for the process limit and file limit.
Tickets are answered very promptly and you can also contact them through MSN which I have made use of a couple of times.
Through this initial phase of getting the VPS running nicely Rus and the guys have been incredibly helpful and accommodating in getting things sorted. I would highly recommend them to anybody looking for a low price VPS, and although I know this is only after the first couple of days I'm sure things will continue this way.
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Dec 22, 2008
After considering and comparing VPS offers from Future Hosting, Knownhost, Wiredtree, and Liquidweb, I went ahead and ordered from Future Hosting.
I'll post my initial impressions, and try to update the thread over time.
I currently have a VPS at Godaddy, plus shared hosting at Godaddy, 1and1, and Namecheap.
My objectives were to get away from Godaddy VPS, set up with a 'better' provider, and consolidate sites.
I am fairly technically adept, though not an expert. My requirements are for hosting appx. 25 sites currently, with perhaps another 15-25 to be added over the next 12 months.
Most are low volume, a few are low-to-mid volume. Nothing fancy, primarily informational sites and affiliate sales sites (WP and Xsitepro), and some direct ecommerce.
I focused on the 4 providers mentioned above based on recommendations and reviews here and elsewhere. My main concerns are reliability and price.
After comparing plans and the specials listed on the 'Webhosting Offers' board, I settled on Future Hostings "Titanium" managed VPS offer. The special offer they listed was for 50% off lifetime cost.
Through live chat, I spoke with Nick to ask some specific questions. He was patient and helpful each of the 3-4 times I came back with questions.
One question I asked was how long it would take to get provisioned. He quoted me at under 12 hours - this was also mentioned on the "Offers" thread, specifically for the current special.
The "unspecial" price was $84.95 for 1Gb RAM, 650Gb bandwidth, and 50Gb disk space, with cPanel. I added Fantastico for $3.95. After the coupon code, I'll be paying $46.42 / month.
I put in the order at 10:04am.
Registration was activated at 10:50am.
Cpanel, Virtuozzo, firewall, etc. installed
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Oct 24, 2008
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy hosting with CheapVPS.co.uk, but I find their level 1 support staff to be lacking the basic skills required to respond in a helpful manner.
Their typical replies often instruct me to confirm that the problem has been resolved, when in fact nothing has changed; this is just a waste of my time (and theirs).
I would expect that my issue is forwarded to level 2-3 admins when level 1 staff can't provide a sound solution/fix. This is the case sometimes, but not always. Most importantly (and this occurred to me today) level 1 staff should never, in any form, have access to a customer's VPS without prior consent/approval. Maybe I'm coming off as a little paranoid here, but I'm not fond of the idea of inexperienced individuals going through my stuff. Limiting access to just level 2/3 admins can only mean good as far as security is concerned.
I honestly can't recall a time when a good solution was provided by level 1 staff. While I strongly trust Rus Foster and the way he conducts business, I would ask him to take the above into account and reconsider the policies in place.
(I was originally going to paste a screenshot of my last support ticket, but I now think it won't be neccassary as my post adequately conveys my concerns)
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Oct 13, 2009
I had three VMs with Fsck VPS, dating back to before they got hacked in June. I've been paying the bill since then, I imagined as a kind of insurance, so that I had the VMs handy if I needed to use them in a big hurry. Last week, I tried to log in, and found that my three VMs didn't exist, anymore. As far as I can tell, the VMs haven't existed since the June break-in.
SETUP / PROVISIONING
My first reaction was "They've been billing me for three months, and providing nothing?!??!" I'll be honest, I was pretty tweaked, but after I'd calmed down I decided to see how they handled the situation. So I submitted a ticket asking for an explanation: How long had the machines been down for, and what would it take to get them back up and running?
It took about a day, but we eventually established that VAServ could build three new OpenVZ VMs, and that they would give me three months' credit for those three machines. Since I actually do need the VMs, and I didn't really want to fight about the billing, I decided to go for it. It took another day, but I did get three new machines up and running.
Unfortunately, I do have some complaints about the process, specifically:
- VAServ's technical support is very inconsistent, and different techs seem to have vastly different levels of communications skill and professionality.
- Many of the techs don't seem to bother reading your ticket, beyond the subject. They tend to only be capable of answering the first question in each ticket/email, and they ignore anything else you've asked.
- After the FSCKVPS/VAServ buyout, following the break-in, the HyperVM control panel was disabled. If you need a reboot, or a root password reset, or anything that you can't accomplish yourself by SSHing into the VM, you have to open a ticket. (Seems like a chancy proposition, now, to me.)
REBOOT-AND-PRAY
Today, I started seeing memory allocation errors in running programs. The machine mostly worked, but certain operations (shell scripts, in particular) would error out. I opened a ticket asking for some guidance, and within less than 10 minutes, the VM started rebooting. I got an update about the ticket a few minutes later, and was told that the VM had been reconfigured (increased memory allocation limit) and rebooted.
I was pretty mad about the no-notice reboot. I'd been in the middle of editing a bunch of configuration files, and I lost an hour of work. It just seems so unprofessional and inconsiderate for VAServ's technician to bounce the VM without confirming it with me, first.
I did get an explanation/apology from the tech who rebooted the machine. I asked him to have his supervisor contact me, which took a few hours, but I did hear back. The supervisor wrote:
"...we reboot the vps if we found any VPS out of memory. Normally most of the service stop working or access got killed when VPS is out of memory..."
To me, it sounds like the reboot is a standard procedure for a common problem. Given that kind of environment, it's only natural that the tech's first impulse would be to reboot, given a ticket about memory errors.
At the same time, it's also indicative of a bottom-of-the-barrel service, isn't it?
- Memory problems seem to be common--is that because they're over-subscribed? Does your 512MB allocation mean anything, or is it just talk?
- The staff can't / won't bother to read through a ticket and give it some consideration.
- The staff has an itchy reboot finger. Their first impulse is to power-cycle, rather than to try to understand and fix the issue directly.
FOR THE FUTURE
I do intend to continue using VAServ / FSCKVPS, at least for now. They're really cheap, about $10/month for a 512MB VM, and I can mostly get done with what I need to do. But this is a qualified opinion. I am solely using these VMs for simple R&D projects: Quasi-professional work, stuff that nobody is currently paying me to do.
Given my experiences so far, I would never trust these guys with a real, money-making business project. VAServ / FSCKVPS is suitable for toying around with, or if you're flat broke, but I wouldn't bet my job on them if I could possibly help it.
I'm setting a calendar reminder for myself, right now, to check back in another month or so with an update to this post. Assuming I'm still chugging along with these VMs, I'm going to make a point of posting my impressions on a regular basis.
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Nov 25, 2008
So... let's start my review, shall we?
I came into VPS business with EpicVPS, both Amaresh and Raghev (if im right), are excellent persons. Always helped me a lot and their service was overall great.
After some disasters xD, EpicVPS was sold to VAServ. I thought: Okay... maybe it's time to move BUT I should definitely wait a few months and watch how this is going to be.
So, stayed as a client.
I dont know how much months have passed, maybe 6? Dunno, but I do have to say a few things about Russell's company, VAserv.com:
I had some billing problems, specially when they changed to the other software, but all this was solved with screenshots (not that they doubt, just wanted to keep it clear), and in no time, I had it fixed. (Also had one billing issue, for some other reasons, which was solved and today Vladimir just made my day.. heh, not that he offered anything, but telling me kind words... made me feel good. )
Loads... Everyone knows that when you're using a VPS, sometimes you have some stupid users abusing the server , this way you'll get affected as well.
Happened a few times, and I was telling them it wasn't my VPS, etc etc (I've a pretty big vps, and always monitored so I can be sure that everything is running smoothly, this is also pretty secured). I didn't like when they once restarted my vps without asking, and load issue was still there. Again a few days later, they restarted again, like it was my problem. (And figured later that wasn't, but it happens!).
Anyway, this was solved, and their staff was really helpful on this, being really decent with me, just like it SHOULD BE in EVERY company.
Uptime... What can I say, it's true the VPS was rebooted a few times, but, besides that, it's great.
Staff... Always helpful, an extremelly fast support and lovely staff! Just like... hum, Kody, Vladimir... both awesome. (I consider them like business-friends. Honestly, they have helped me A LOT).
It's true that there are a few of them that still need some work heh, but overall, it's really really good.
Support... Extremelly fast and efficient! Top notch. Never saw a company like this.
Hardware... Top notch, NEVER had a disk issue, or something like that. Just like a dream!
Network... PERFECT. But really, just PERFECT. I'm living in Portugal, and I've about 40/50 ms to UK (I choosed UK, but they have other locations), the network is really fast (downloading at 1.7 mb/s from my home, no download accellerators). Also, never had a single downtime.
Billing... Good billing software now. Pretty organised, and simple. I like to keep it simple, easy to use. (And yes, I know that ubbersmith is a COMPLETE software xD)
Price... Excellent. I don't find any place with better prices. Even if I someday find one, I still WON'T move.
Other Issues... Had 2 IP's listed on SBL, reported it, and they already knew, then 2 weeks after the issue was solved. (Yeah yeah 2 weeks, but I emailed SBL and they didn't even answered me , so, vaserv did a great job.)
They just got me as a loyal client, and won't leave them for sure! Rus, great job!
I guarantee you that if you join them, you'll have an excellent service.
Overall:
Uptime: 10/10
Staff: 10/10
Support: 10/10
Price: 10/10
Total: 10/10
What do I want them to get better? Please... just keep providing this quality service.
Join them.
(Domain will be verified as I will submit through the Report button.)
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Nov 27, 2008
High bandwidth, fast speed, any cp, basic hardware-manag. only, trustable
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