I had a server taken offline by dedicatednow. A reboot request was logged by our server management company immediately after the server was offline. When I got back in later this evening, I find the server down and submit a ticket. I am told that they did a billing audit and took the server down because it was not attached to a billing account, so they did not know who owned it. Now that I am submitting the ticket, there is no one there to bring the server back online. Techs can't do it and no one from billing is there or online to deal with the issue. So, as a customer, I am the one that has to suffer all as my customers sites are down all night even though I have faithfully paid all my bills, etc.
My overall experiences with DedicatedNow have always been good, but there are certain things that always plague them.
1. The inability to deal with unique issues when they arise.
2. The lack of delivery on promised rrp's for over 5 years now.
I am considering getting a dedicated server from Dedicated now dot com. I searched for reviews I found are a bit aged.
The aged reviews tend to show some network issues in the past. I was looking for some up to date reviews on the network issues if they still exist or how happy people are with their dedicated server hosting experiences with them.
They are sure running some great specials right now but sometimes things aren't as good as they seem. Any experiences from people especially on their management services & such from users who have had them (or used to have them) for some period of time (not brand new or short-time users--- unless the short time was due to very bad experiences from the start).
And please-no "secret reps" telling me how great you are, would like some actual user experiences. Have been very happy with the same provider for over 6 years but their pricing is not reflecting the current trends in server technology & I'm growing tired of "negotiating" (old tech at new tech prices) so I've been looking for some options for the first time in years.
High-end users preferred (quads-dual quads etc.) but mainly want to know if they live up to their management & security promises (response times SLA, tech knowledge, etc. for "fully managed".
I thinking to buy new servers and now I checking offers on softlayer and dedicatedNow and look like prices on softlayer are higher and also dedicatedNow offer is for managed servers...
In this moment I have few servers with softlayer and all working fine but price...I don`t know nothing about DedicatedNow...what you think SL vs DN?
Im currently hosted with Staminus, I left dedicatednow in the past because of the way they handled the ddos attacks, if they were too big they would just give up very easily.
Thats not something I was ok with. Im wondering now if maybe things have changed or where I should go? I am currently with Staminus but they are too over priced for me. I want to move to a nice 8 core somewhere else that I don't have to tack on hundreds more just to stay online.
I'm switching provider soon and was considering these two. DedicatedNOW have given me an amazingly good quote, the question is are they any good? As good as ThePlanet for network/reliability and such would you say?
this is a four days review but i am going to continue this review weekly
so let's get started ,first of all i will rate them for this four days :
Network : 10/10 Sales : 10/10 Support : 20/10 (Very Very Impressive) Customer Care : 10/10 Overall : 10/10
i got a fully managed server from DedicatedNOW.com just 4 days ago first, Josh Really Really hepled me in ordring the server.an i really want to SAY THANK YOU JOSH ,
after ordering the server, it wsa online in 4 hours and everything seemed to be good.i opened a ticket about disabling core dump generation, after JUST ONE MINUTE the support told me that core dump generation is enabled in my server anf asked me if i want them to disable that, i said YES, after 3 MINUTES they replied back that it has been disabled. after a couple of hours while i wanted to transfer my sites , i faced a problem in cPanel and i could nottransfer my accounts .
so i opened another ticket and told them the problem and they said that they can transfer the accounts (the problem was that i had to manulay generate a backup from my accounts and then transfer them to the new server and then restore them manually from SSH)
they did transfered my accounts (about 300 users) manually in 36 hours (because of connection speed of my old server)
I felt it necessary to offer a moment of praise to the team at DedicatedNOW.
I finally outgrew my quotas from the reseller provider I used previously, so for a couple days, I did some comparison shopping, looked at my options, and decided to give DedicatedNOW a try.
I decided to start with a machine from their "closeout" line, figuring I'd have my opinion of these guys within the first few weeks, and about 10 photographer/artist friends that have offered to switch over to me so we can test out this bad boy. I had it modified a bit; doubled the standard RAM and a pair of 250gb drives. Of course, I added the standards too; cPanel, Fantastico, RVskin, etc. I figured with these additions, server setup would take an extra half to full day.
I placed the order about 11pm this past Sunday night, knowing full well that they were closed. I received the Credit Card authorization forms by 10:00 the next morning and had them FAXed back by around noon. Within 10 minutes of sending the FAX, I received an email that my order was approved and pending processing! Wow!
I got an email saying that the server would be ready later on that evening. The server was indeed up and a login email was sent about 5:30 that evening. Since I hadn't used WHM in quite awhile, I emailed support a few times that night, and was met with a friendly response each time.
For a P4 and 2gb of RAM, this sucker flies around without issue.
The only thing that's irking me right now, is the fact that I can't get the cpanel->cpanel account conversion tool to work correctly in the MySQL department. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that these were created under WHM/reseller, and I think the naming/permissions of the dbs are somehow changed. Regardless, I sent in a support ticket, and I can see them logged in and checking now!
So, if they keep this pace up, I will be using DedicatedNOW as my provider for the higher-end servers with much more power. So far, so good. Very impressed!
Also, for verification, feel free to ARIN 69.72.171.130. FortressITX is a parent company of DedicatedNOW...or it could be the other way around. Just dig a tad bit further if you wish to check.
If anything changes, I'll be sure to post it here, but so far, they've done a SUPERB job.
This review is posted voluntarily to praise the excellent experience I have had with Fortress ITX.
My primary business has been in business for over a year now. Having developed websites in the past and being involved in web development for over 9 years I have had my experience with webhosting and dedicated servers, having dealt with many different companies. I think it always came down to customer service, which I think is true for a lot of clients; we all want instantaneous response, and hopefully it’s not outsourced. During our start up, we quickly signed up with a promotion on WHT with what seemed to be a server reseller. Due to a number of hardware failures and no sense of urgency for fixing problems, I started my hunt for a new ISP. Due to a WHT post I was contacted by a Fortress sales rep, who was able to convince me that Fortress was the place for me.
Getting setup was quick. I paid for a management option so that they would help with any oversight as well as offer tech support via AIM if I needed it (which I highly recommend). It’s great to deal with real people one on one, especially if you have access to someone 24x7 who can help you right there on the spot. I did have some downtime along with many others as Fortress had network issues. I remember scouring WHT and finding others who had their servers down as well. Honestly I may have had one or two issues with that, it was over a year ago, and it never happened again; it seems that their network infrastructure is flawless; I have had no more downtime issues.
As my business grew I started looking at true database clustering solutions.. I will be honest that at first glance I did not get the response I needed from Fortress regarding a solution. Looking back on it I think it was partly due to some miscommunication and the fact that with most ISP’s, load balancing and clustering are not your average run of the mill requests vs. the volume of just regular server orders; I had special needs that needed to be specifically tailored to me. Finally the CEO interceded and helped come up with a plan.
For 4 months Fortress worked with me to test several clustering solutions including working with outside cluster software companies, assessing my code, taking the time to give me feedback, work through problems, etc. Jay, the CEO had his head techs working with me weekly on finding the right solution. Everyone there knows me on a first name basis and Jay, the CEO, is available any time I need him. It was up until a few months ago that we finished our testing and figured out how we would scale. I worked with Josh Ewin in sales to order all the hardware I needed, all of it got delivered and setup without skipping a beat. Josh is sharp and I recommend getting in touch with him.
My cluster is awesome. It caters to exactly what I need. My sites run flawlessly. It is our new home. We have 15 servers, web, database and load balancers, of course everything all load balanced. We are using some of the most up to date hardware out there. I have had 0 network issues for as long as I can remember. I can talk to any of the head techs at any time, all on a first name basis. I am not Fortress’ biggest client, but they treat me as if I am. The CEO and I keep in touch almost on a daily basis. Jay really knows his stuff and has a very good operation going on. I honestly don’t know if you can find this type of opportunity anywhere else. They have their own datacenter, their own onsite staff and techs, everything is internal. And best of all, they will work for your business.
In closing, I have referred many friends and affiliates to Fortress, and recommend them to anyone looking for very customized support. They have my business locked in and I look forward to growing with them over the next few years. I am planning a trip back east to see the data center and meet everyone in person.
If anyone has any questions about Fortress ITX from a current client, please let me know.
Recently we received reports of spam being sent out in massive amounts from an old IP address we had with DedicatedNow/FortressITX, apparently the IP still has reverse DNS setup for our domain name for some reason and we are still receiving spam reports.
I have sent them two emails/tickets, which were logged into their ticket system and have had no response from them in regards to this. They have not taken any action because I am still receiving spam reports from the same IP address, surprising they have not taken any action towards spam on their servers.
I have also requested that they remove the reverse DNS entry, no response to that as well.
Emails were sent with the spam reports from junkemailfilter.com.
Perhaps this will get their attention and they will look into the problem and put a stop into the spam issue.
Don't consider this an extensive review. This is just to share my personal experience with them after transferring a very low end server from LT.
I'll start with the bad since overall I am pleased and would rather finish on a good note.
- The fraud prevention steps are very annoying and somewhat unsafe if you do not have long distance fax. They require a scan of CC as well as scan of Signed photo ID. Without a fax machine you run the risk of e-mail interception. This probably helps them keep a cleaner network and reduce fraud. Its still annoying
- Requirement for a 30 day written and faxed cancellation notice. This one is odd to me.
If they allow you to e-mail a scan of your personal info they should allow the same for written cancellation notices. (maybe they will, but it says faxed in thier terms)
- Let me preface this negative point by saying this was a FREE drive from their recent double days promotion. The drive appears to be very old and on its last legs. When it does die it will likely create downtime for me at some point in the future. I did not ask for a replacement (since I will be using it for backup) but did mention the state of the dive in one of my support tickets.
"Device: /dev/hdb, 149 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors ATA Error Count: 13 (device log contains only the most recent five errors) Error 13 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 24902 hours (1037 days + 14 hours)
Now onto the good.
+ This is a mixed good and bad point. The server was delivered with some installation issues. Cpanel spitting out license errors, yum wasn't installing certain packages and SSLeay had some issues. This is in the positive because of how it was handled. I would say the longest time I waited for a response was still less than a half hour and the quickest was within 15 mins.
+ Every employee I dealt with was friendly and responded in a timely manner.
+ Price of the server was great especially with the WHT promotion. The network appears to be good from every location I have tested.
Now it may look like the review is top heavy with negative points, but the reality is this was a budget server and at a very good price for the quality of their network and support.
To summarize I think my personal experience is a positive one. I hope they keep it up and I hope to be back with a more extensive review after I have had the server for some time.
Any Dedicatednow.com customers here? Where do you pay your bills?
I got an invoice but there are about 3 different areas for logging in it seems and I can only log into one of them. But that area does not have an invoice...
Here are the 3 different possible areas.
[url] [url] [url]
Which the heck is the correct area for all your billing, so I can contact them for my login? I have been paying last 2-3 months but I cannot remember how on earth I paid. I also don't know how to contact them except their technical support which is support@.
I looked at their initial welcome emails which also don't provide much information, a billing info directs me to the pwebtech website which is just ubersmith - and it looks out of date, I have 2 servers with them but only 1 appear and the latest invoice that was email does not appear nor its server.
This is in regard to ongoing stress I've had over this server from DN...
Keep in mind this is a NEW server order; my first with this company.
I was assigned IPs that appear to be on multiple spam block lists. The "biggest" problems are mail being dumped to bulk by yahoo and dumped to bulk or completely black holed by hotmail. It was also blocked by comcast, mail.ru, and anyone who uses SORBS (those are the only ones I KNOW about so far). This helps reinforce the suspicion that bulk mail was being delivered from the IPs at some point.
I Contacted support at 9PM on the 13th and was referred to abuse. Only after complaining again on the 17th, was I told they requested removal from ONE of the blacklists and they would "look into" the others. I replied saying I wanted new IPs or I would request a refund and that I did not feel the service I recently purchased was actually delivered.
Now here is the part that is giving me the feeling this will not end well for me; I no longer see the abuse department ticket when I log into their ticket system.
What If I ordered the server to use as a mail server? Am I out of line for finding a new server unable to deliver mail to the hotmail/yahoo inbox unacceptable?
Telling my customers to wait and maybe someday their mail will be delivered to the major free mail services is not the kind of reputation I want to have. Its feels like I was sold a problem someone else created and am expected to wait an unspecified amount of time to see if it can be resolved. I do not feel its fair to be left hanging while waiting for white listing attempts on IPs I did not soil in the first place.
