Can you please offer your ideas which type of plan is to be better chosen for a video sharing site www.cirtexhosting.com/shared.shtml or www.hostv.com/virtual.shtml, they both offer this feature, so what would be a better solution if I'm still quite unsure about the number of the visitors to the site?
I would like to ask for any information you can share about the company called hostV (www.hostv.com) and their VPS deals in particular. I would like to know if the company is worthy of dealing with.
I thought it was time to post a review about Cirtex and their brother Company HostV.
At first I was at Cirtex with a shared plan. The first month all was ok, reliability ok, speed ok. Then it all went downhill. All sorts of problems started appearing, lots of customers were complaining at the time, anyway they offered to change servers. I switched servers and all was ok again. For a few months. Then they decided to change my server without notifying me. And guess what, everything started breaking again... Downtime, downtime and then some more downtime. After a lot of complaining things sorted out a bit, not 100% ok but on the verge of acceptable... Then I received an abuse notification. I run a vBulletin site that of course uses resources on the server, more than a static website. The forum is active but small. About 300 registered users with 7-15 users online at the same time. Nothing too "heavy" in my book...
Anyway, they said I had to transfer my account to a VPS or a Dedicated server. At the time they had a very nice offer for their VPS plans (50% off) so I thought to give it a try. I thought "Hell, I had problems with the shared plan, their VPS should be ok". How wrong was I.......
The VPS keeps crashing, they have a Virtuozo panel and WHM to manage the server, almost daily the site is down so I have to go in Virtuozo and restart the server. WHM doesn't work when this happens. After restart all is ok.
I am having trouble configuring the DNS for this server, this is a managed VPS so they have to help me fix it. But no, people still have problem accessing the site. Some can access the site in the morning and not in the afternoon. Some users told me that when they can't access it as www.mydomain.com, if they go at mydomain.com (minus the www) it is working. This all seemed odd to me and I thought it must had been an error in the user's computer configuration. But then I confirmed these problems cause these happened to me as well (for 3 different ISPs, 2 locations and various computers).
Oh yes, and their support? My god, childish to say the least! You tell them that the server's url does not resolve to an IP address and they tell you to send them a tracert! If somenone knows how to tracert something that does not resolve please tell me, I'd like to know!
Let me add the latest support ticket I had with them so that you can see the problems I'm having...: ....
Unfortunately the original thread has been closed, so I can't post this in there, but I feel an update should be posted, because people do watch this forum for information about various hosts, and the previous thread may well influence their decision. Original thread can be found at [url].
The bottom line is that the original issue has now been resolved, and it's been resolved well. Harry (Cirtex support) spent quite some time on Thursday monitoring the issue, identifying the problem, and fixing it, so that, on Friday, the problem was gone. Permanently by the look of it. We did have a couple of instances of slowness/high load through the day, but nothing of any consequence.
Unfortunately, Cirtex/HostV did make the same mistake that so many hosting/internet providers make, which was to assume that the customer's "Critical" rating meant the problem could be addressed at leisure with an inadequate response (ie. I report "problem occurs at 01:20 and lasts 2 hours every day", I get a response 4 hours later saying "it's ok now, job closed"), and to assume that the customer really has no idea what they're talking about.
It was only when I kicked up a stink that I received anything approaching an adequate level of support, and I felt that I had to maintain that stink until the problem was fixed. Which is REALLY irritating, because that causes everyone stress, and I have better things to do with my time than maintain a high level of indignation.
It's important to say, though, that this is NOT specific to HostV/Cirtex, which is why I'm sticking with them, rather than going elsewhere.
I've experienced it elsewhere, and I've probably even been responsible for causing it when I worked support a few years ago. The fact is that 95% of the time, it IS the customer's fault, and "critical" just means "I don't know what a GIF is and I *want* to know now!", but just as food for thought, it would be so much nicer for everyone if that didn't happen. Seriously, I don't like having to behave like a jerk to get some attention, but it's become a necessary evil.
It takes a lot for me to be impressed, but HostV has done just that.
I migrated my site over a month ago to a new VPS plan. Up until then I was residing on a FFmpeg shared hosting plan(A company here) which was terrible(up, down, impossible slow access, huge memory usage).
My support tickets at HostV have been answered within hours regardless of when I have created them. They have fixed some of my own screw ups without hesitation and in great time and even installed some apache modules for me. My sites load faster then google now a days.
I run two streaming video sites, a few medium size forums and a couple wordpress blogs.
My bandwidth over the past month has been higher then ever thanks to the reliable service of the FFmpeg enabled VPS. 750 gb later I could not be more impressed.
So, if anyone is considering making a switch to a VPS anytime soon look at HostV's plans. They have far succeeded any expectation I had going in considering what I am paying.
they provide a backup service through virtuozo that does not use your own disk space for free
I would like to share with guys the experience I had with Hostv over past 7 days.
After signing up I got some email configuration problem on server side, but I haven't changed a thing on that section. I couldn't send or receive emails for like two days, contacted the support, didn't a reply till 12 hours later (ok maybe that's because it was Saturday ). After about 10 emails going forward and back they then found out the problem was caused by some misconfiguration on mail server, which I haven't NOT touched after I signup. Come on, I thought I purchased a VPS server not a $2.99 shared!. So basically I wasted two days on this email problem! After that I thought ok I can a have break now... but no there's more. The server goes down AT LEAST once a day, and when it's down, everything is DOWN, including the WHM and Virtuozzo. To sum it all up, I have not had a peaceful day since I joined them! Oh and by the way, my server is still down as I'm writing this! and has been so in about 1 hour now!
customer of HostV's VPS hosting, and for the past 3 days, at almost exactly 01:20 GMT, CPU load jumps from an average of about 0.10 to 2.5+, stays there for over an hour, then drops back down.
During this time, there are NO processes on my virtual server using any significant amount of CPU time, memory, or IO. No cron jobs are running on my server, etc.
Note the output from 'uptime' below (I was monitoring it waiting for the problem to occur, which it did at exactly the time I expected):
00:32:05 up 22:01, 2 users, load average: 0.09, 0.11, 0.08 00:32:07 up 22:01, 2 users, load average: 0.08, 0.11, 0.08 01:09:49 up 22:39, 2 users, load average: 0.06, 0.03, 0.00 01:10:03 up 22:39, 2 users, load average: 0.05, 0.03, 0.00 01:19:26 up 22:48, 2 users, load average: 0.46, 0.16, 0.04 01:20:42 up 22:50, 2 users, load average: 1.53, 0.55, 0.18 01:21:39 up 22:51, 2 users, load average: 1.40, 0.67, 0.24 01:46:04 up 23:15, 2 users, load average: 3.06, 2.02, 1.52
Also note output from 'top', taken when load average was at 3.06 shown on the last line above:
My cpu usage is very low (0.1%) but wait time is at 9.0%, and I've seen this go as high as 70% during these times.
So, basically, there is a problem that exists on the host node somewhere that is causing my site to become effectively unresponsive (page load 20 seconds+ - measured), and it happens every single day at the same time.
So, why am I posting it here instead of logging a trouble ticket? I have logged a trouble ticket, but when I encountered the problem yesterday, despite logging it as "CRITICAL", I had to wait nearly 5 hours for a response, which effectively said not much beyond "we noticed the problem and fixed it and we're monitoring it". So I don't have a lot of faith that today's response will be any better.
I moved to HostV because of similar problems I was encountering with shared hosting, and was assured before signing up that the kind of problem I'm seeing doesn't happen. So now I'm outlaying more than 10 times the cost for almost exactly the same problems and a similarly unhelpful response to it.
By publicly posting the problem, I would hope that someone at HostV will ensure the problem is addressed PROPERLY, rather than bandaided again, and that hopefully we will all be able to see just how good HostV's support CAN be (as evidenced in another similar post).
I await HostV/Cirtex's response.
As shown in the uptime information about, server uptime is 23:15, because I rebooted the virtual server yesterday to see if that helped. It didn't. In fact, it took over 20 minutes for the server to come back up, which is why I'm not going to do it again.
I've had Cirtex hosting for about six months now, I setup a simple Wordpress blog and the site was fine, other than being a bit slow to load on occasion.
About three days ago I tried to add an addon domain. I went through the usual process, and when I clicked submit I got an error telling me I could add 0 of 0 addon domains. The package I am on offered unlimited addon domains, but on the cpanel home page it said I had 0/0 available.
I opened a support ticket and told them it looked like my account wasn't configured to allow addon domains. Twelve hours later I got a response telling me how to setup the Nameservers for the domain.
I explained the nameservers are setup properly, the problem is my hosting account is not configured to allow me to add addon domains. Seven hours later I got a reply telling exactly what an addon domain was and how they work. Great, except that had nothing whatsoever to do with my problem.
I replied back again, this time with screenshots showing that my account was not configured correctly. The next day I get another response saying they had configured addon domains, it should work now.
I checked, and sure enough addon domains were now enabled, I added the domain and went to install Wordpress with Fantastico, and discovered that there was no longer Fantastico support on my account.
I reply back yet again, and tell them the addon domains work but now Fantastico is gone. Eleven hours later I get a response that Fantastico is once again enabled on my account. I logged in and clicked on Fantastico, and tried to install Wordpress again.
Now I get an error that that application is not available, please contact support. I tried pretty much all the applications in Fantastico and none of them are available.
This question brought me to this forum in fact. I would like to know about the provider called cirtexhosting(.com). Their plans seem to be quite reasonable and they suit the existing needs very well, so I would like you to tell me if the company itself is worthy of dealing with.
I signed up three weeks ago. In that time I've had constant SQL server issues, very slow load times, four complete outages and the server was hacked at least once.
Reponse from tech support is slow as well and not very informative. From what I read of other clients there they have similar issues but apparently the server I had been put on was the worst. At this writing the server is down yet again.
I packed my bags and moved hosts and I am now demanding a refund. Avoid this company at all costs.
I paid for 6 months because it was a very good deal. During that time, it was down more than 10 times for extended periods... I was on the scratchy server, which sucked.
I never used it for any of my important sites, but still.
So, it was set to renew on December 16th. I didn't want to continue the service, because, uh, it sucked. I sent in a ticket asking to cancel, but that I didn't want my service shut off until the my pre paid time was up. They told me to use the cancellation form.
I did this, and I got an email asking why I was quitting. I said my site was down all the time, they couldn't really argue with that.
Fast forward to the next day, and there we have it. The sites are down. The account is deleted. What a bunch of sleazeballs... I specifically said not to close my account.
I can't in good conscience recommend Cirtex. Steer clear.
1)I bought a vps from them, got it promptly, except it was set to the wrong port.
2)I requested it reinstalled without there 'extras' so my network admin could do it himself. They do not offer a reboot in there power panel.
3)They reinstalled it, but changed my root password, also it is still set to the wrong port.
4)I then spoke to there live support, they started talking then disappeared for about 10 minutes to chat on the phone without even telling me, leaving a paying customer sitting there thinking 'what the hell'.
5)I requested the VPS be set to my original password by email, and they haven't I just wanted a clean VPS to do my have my own install done on... how was that so much to ask of them?
I have now sent in another password request, but my advice to you all, steer the hell away!
I too had a very bad experience with this hosting too!
The host is not stable at all! I scheduled an hourly cron job there and it executed a couple of times and then totally stopped! I set up the cron job to make my life easier, not to give me more burden.
Around a year ago I hosted my forum with Cirtex hosting. I had a virtual dedicated server plan for around 4 months (at about $40 per month) and I was not impressed at all to say the least. For the first month or so it was fine and the server could cope with the large amount of CPU and RAM power required to run the forum...
However around 2 months after initially transferring the forum over the the VDS I noticed that the people on my forum were complaining of the forum being offline for hours and hours during the day. I thought that it might have been a one-off, or that there might just be some problems at Cirtex...So I waited for it to cool off. But after around 1 week there were still complaints from everyone and I came home from school quite often to an offline forum.
I told my dad about this (who manages a whole heap of dedicated servers at his work) and he started to investigate. After around 2 weeks of back and forward emailing with the Cirtex employees (who were total retards who couldn't speak English, nor understand what the hell a server was) we finally figured out that the VDS managing system was automatically shutting down my forum because it was using too much RAM and/or CPU. It's very weird, because they advertised their VDS server as having "1gb of swap memory and 256mb of dedicated", but apparently a lot of the dedicated RAM was used to run CPanel and the swap memory was totally unreliable and caused my server to ****ing crash when it swapped out.
I never once, throughout the 2 months that this **** went on, received any sort of warning or notification that my forum was using too many resources. All they did was shut me down automatically and cost me time, money and visitors....And I paid $40 per month for the experience.
I now receive extremely high quality hosting for free from my dads company, because they had a free server available. It has never been offline once in almost 1 year and is really fast and reliable.
I will never host with Cirtex again as long as I live, and I'm sooo happy that I'm no longer with them
To preface, I used to own a web hosting company but sold my customers after I came to college. I started hosting various websites with Cirtex Hosting and my experience has just been top notch so far.
With such incredibly low prices and after experiences with numerous hosts over the past 5 years, I didn't think that Cirtex would render the outstanding service that it has provided over the past year.
I have uptime monitored for my account and I'm amazed to see such a high uptime percentage ... much better than all the previous companies I have hosted with. I'm not hosting mission critical sites, but it's still wonderful to receive mission critical service for my small sites (at a cheap price to boot!).
Support is very competent and responsive. My support requests are usually answered within the day and issues are mitigated quickly. All in all, my experience with Cirtex has been top notch, and I would recommend them to anyone.
Hope someone might find this review helpful ... really do appreciate a good host when I come across one ... after being in the industry I know its hard to deliver a quality service, but Cirtex definitely delivers.
I'm trying to leave my old host, and consolidate all my websites into one host. I have about 5 websites, each running php/mysql with community features such as message boards and flash video.
In total on all the websites I have, i would say that the average is about 30 users online at the same during peak hours.
I need a host with the following at minimum:
# Web Server API - Apache # Supported Operating System - Linux # PHP Version - Minimum - 4.3.3 # MySQL Version - Minimum - 4.1 # GD complied with your PHP Build - Yes # SendMail - Yes # PHP safe mode - OFF # PHP memory_limit - 32M # Unlimited addon domains # FFmpeg # FFmpeg-PHP # Mplayer + Mencoder # flv2tool # Libogg + Libvorbis # LAME MP3 Encoder # PHP file_uploads - 1 # PHP post_max_size - 100M # PHP max_input_time - -1 # PHP upload_max_filesize - 100M
I plan to eventually move into a dedicated server, but can't afford the costs at the moment. However, I need a host where i don't have to worry about:
# my databases corrupting # slow connections # account suspensions for mundane things # downtime
I'm trying to leave my old host, and consolidate all my websites into one host. I have about 5 websites, each running php/mysql with community features such as message boards and flash video.
In total on all the websites I have, i would say that the average is about 30 users online at the same during peak hours.
I need a host with the following at minimum:
# Web Server API - Apache # Supported Operating System - Linux # PHP Version - Minimum - 4.3.3 # MySQL Version - Minimum - 4.1 # GD complied with your PHP Build - Yes # SendMail - Yes # PHP safe mode - OFF # PHP memory_limit - 32M # Unlimited addon domains # FFmpeg # FFmpeg-PHP # Mplayer + Mencoder # flv2tool # Libogg + Libvorbis # LAME MP3 Encoder # PHP file_uploads - 1 # PHP post_max_size - 100M # PHP max_input_time - -1 # PHP upload_max_filesize - 100M
I plan to eventually move into a dedicated server, but can't afford the costs at the moment. However, I need a host where i don't have to worry about:
# my databases corrupting # slow connections # account suspensions for mundane things # downtime
so ive had powervps and they i thought they were good well i just got cirtex for my moms small business and we had some issues. the guys at cirtex were very helpful and fixed my mail issues and even offered to give me a free dedicated IP.
Do they do a good job of supporting OSCommerce? I want to customize stuff using OSCommerce for my site. Let me know from those who have used OSCommerce with Cirtex hosting.