Downtownhost.com � A Detailed Review

Web Hosting Buzz - A Very Detailed Review

May 12, 2009

This review was posted around March 09, however due to the unfortunate circumstances it was lost when WHT was compromised. This may seem very evil having to repost this, however my original thread didnt last very long before it was lost. I thought long and hard whether to repost this again or not and have finally decided to post this again purely for the benefit of the community. I have no personal vendetta against WHB its just a review to help others make a concise and wise decision if they ever come to considering WHB as their webhost.

This is very different from any other review that you may have read on WHT. This review will take you 20-60 mins to read. I suggest you are sitting down comfortably, this is also my first ever review on a web hosting company.

Some of you may find the latter part of my experience with Web Hosting Buzz and my review interesting.

Before i write a very detailed review of WHB - Web Hosting Buzz i would like to make a few things clear first of all.

This review contains my experience dealing with WHB, it contains extracts from actuall tickets and quotes from forums keeping all WHB staff anonymous.

I am a former customer of WHB, my contract as a reseller was from November, 2007 to November, 2008. Only been a few months since my contract expired.

This is my personal and honest experience with Web Hosting Buzz and also a review about WHB.

Why am i writing a review now? I think the length of it explains why im writing it now.

I have been busy lately and i know writing this will be time consuming and needs to be in detail. So it was important i take time and write it as accurately and as honestly as possible. I have had such a bad time with WHB which deserves a detailed analysis from all my tickets and correspondence that i have had with WHB.

To give WHB some benefit of the doubt - things may have changed since i last was with them. But i doubt that after my years of experience.

November - Mid February:

When i first joined WHB in November i was extremely happy with them. They were no doubt value for money and very cheap, they were much cheaper and much more value for money than my previous host.

For two and a half months things have been good then it got so bad it was unbearable for me or my clients who were being hosted on WHB.

Mid February:

By mid february i was getting MySQL errors and connection outages. I reported the problem via ticket and i was told the following by WHB:

"The server you're hosted on had some load problems related to wrong web statistics update settings. In fact this brought the server into suboptimal condition, and naturally MySQL performance was affected too. That's why you could experience some outages or query delays."

Problems still persisted and i kept reporting the errors. I was told it was fixed again, then suddenly i was told the issue was with me?

"Dear Customer,

The problems that you experience with MySQL are caused by the fact that your forum is based on the vBulletin and it overloads MySQL, because your forum is frequently visited. The configuration and the limits that are set for MySQL on shared servers do not allow so many connections and some problems appear during the work of your forum because it does not have enough free connections to MySQL. The best choice for you would be the upgrade to the dedicated plan."

The forum he was referring to has only a few members online at any one time the most would be 10 users online with a very few visitors. I was suprised how they began to make their customers doubt themselves and later use dirty tactics on getting their customers to go and sign up to a Dedicated plan? That particular website has been running since 2004 and has been through 3 hosts which has been on a shared plan ever since, and still is on a shared plan today. For the first few months with WHB my website has been the same in terms of traffic and users which i had no problems with.

But now theres sudden problems with the server, first im told

"load problems related to wrong web statistics update settings"

But just because i kept on pursuing them about the server load they decided to shut me up by putting blame on me about the issues. They suggested i take my small forum with very little users onto a dedicated plan? (This is not the first instance they were quick to suggest a dedicated plan, - read on.)

Late February - Early March:

Problems and more outages kept on arising, a WHB server side 404 page kept coming up across all my reseller sites. Which clearly had WHB companies name and address written on it. This caused further concerns, as if it was seen by a client then theres no point in me being a reseller if they could see who i was hiring the service from. Later WHB heeded my concerns and deleted their server side 404 page which kept on showing up when the server was down.

Early March:

Problems were still thriving with socket errors, all my clients websites were getting this issue which brings back our discussion about the problem being isolated to me only? (Remember when I was suggested to upgrade to a dedicated box?)

Mid March:

Server is still giving problems and was heavily loaded, which literally grinded my website and my clients websites and mail to a hault. Users were being kicked off and the server kept on restarting. They tell me that they had addressed the issue but the problem still persisted. They didnt know what else to say to me as it was clearly a problem on their end. They obviously wanted to keep me busy and gave me instructions to troubleshoot on my connection locally. When it was evident not only me but my clients were facing the same issue.

There was also no "Webalizer" available in cPanel which i found strange as other shared hosts that ive been with had it, even the one im with now has it. I use to check my statistics with it. I was told "Webalizer" was disabled from cPanel on WHB to reduce load issues on the server. - Load issues? So i see "desperate measures"were taken to substitute an important feature that customers use in place of poor server hardware/connection that cannot maintain server load.

Things have been running ok for a few weeks when i thought the storm had passed but no, not quite.

Mid April

More load issues, users being kicked off. Problem being persistent on websites with MySQL and PHP. It had a few good days when things were actually working.

Early May - Mid May

I was showing a client around and had told him he could check some of his statistics in Awstats, but guess what - there was no Awstats either, how embarrasing!? It was disabled assuming it was disabled for the very same reasons as to why "Webalizer" was disabled as i had mentioned earlier. But a support ticket later got staff to re-enable this feature for me after i had emphasised how important it was and stressed the word "client".

I was told to request this feature for each domain i had wanted it on. What a bummer!?

From early May to mid May there was more load upon more load issues. The senior technician then got back to me with

"It wasn't a networking issue today, RS9 was heavily overloaded (exactly when you and ***** were talking in chat). I've tuned some kernel options, but I suspect HDD cooling problems."

So again it boils down to the poor hardware that they are using on their servers.

Mid May:

Things got really bad, i was really frustrated. Pages were taking 35 seconds to load. I opened yet another ticket and this time the staff member agrees that the server was rather slow.

I was told that the scripts on my server was causing the problem, they were

/usr/bin/php
/forum/forumdisplay.php

So they were blaming PHP and the vbulletin software? I am no vbulletin coder and have been using the "off the shelf" premium script for years which i have had no problems with and now its the script?

I asked them why does there seem to be a problem suddenly with the script as i had not changed or altered anything since i joined WHB some months ago - why now?

I was told

"During last several days there were some problems with load there were load leaps on the server and we were working on it contantly and today server is stable.

There are no problems with the server.

Now your site is being processed quickly.
If you are still experiencing problems please provide us with full URLs you have problems with and will check once again."

So whats happened to the accusations that i was causing the problems?

I was even threatened with suspension twice!

"Advise you to check your site and scripts, i.e. during intensive attendence of your site it may cause our server overload and your account will be suspended."

Heres a funny story, the first few months with WHB was great so i recommended a family member to join WHB. He has a forum with a few more people online. I showed WHB staff that website and told them to compare it with mine as they wanted to suspend me on because i was causing the load. I asked them why the other website had more member and was working fine without any problems and i am having to deal with such accusations with very few or no users online at all?

I was really angry and had explained for the last several days and weeks the server had been slow. They kept on blaming me for the issue which again i repeatedly asked them to identify exactly what part of the script was giving problems and demanded that more senior staff take a look at the entire ticket.

I later received an apology from a senior technician:

"Please accept our sincere apologize for our previous post with misunderstanding. Yes, it was our server issue and no way with your script. Certainly it's up to you to decide what to do with your scripts. PLease let us know if we can be of any help to you at any time."

And another from the initial technician that i was talking to:

"There was a misunderstanding and we're really sorry for it. We really had some problems with rs*, but they're resolved now. If you have any problems - feel free to contact us anytime."

I was pleased that they atleast understood me if not fix the issue. I really sometimes could not understand what they were saying, it brought some glimmer of hope when there was some understanding between us.

Now for the really bad experience with Web Hosting Buzz.

Still Mid May - Websites hacked across my entire resellers package.

Now this is really getting interesting now. My websites and clients websites were hacked across the server. From standard pages to premium forums like vBulletin.

As some had vBulletin installed on them i gave WHB some benefit of the doubt. vBulletin release patches from time to time to patch certain exploits. Exploits dont always mean websites get defaced very easily. Exploits allow only certain things to happen abnormally or create different avenues of attack if they are not properly patched.

However what happened to the hacked websites and forums was more than a petty exploit, luckyly this gave WHB the benefit of the doubt.

The damage that was caused was different, and it was quite evident that an exploit could not have done so much. It was more sinister. Before you know it, another website on my resellers was hacked and defaced and the two websites were no way related to one another. The only relation i could see was that they were sitting on the same server until a third website also got hacked!

I was doubting vbulletin and thought it could have been something new that they had not discovered. However if it was just a vBulletin problem then the problem would have stayed with vBulletin only. But no it had caused problem on a root level, html pages were deleted and replaced with the hackers message.

Anyways i contacted vbulletin and various senior technicians had taken a closer look at the websites affected. I gave vbulletin staff root access to all the websites affected and also gave them shell, ftp, cpanel access to find what was wrong. By chance i already had an up to date forum installed, that was also hacked and defaced along with other root files. This eliminates that it had nothing to do with patching vbulletin or running the latest version, as the latest version along with other things inside that domain was hacked.

Even after restoring the websites with the latest updates they were still being hacked and defaced across my entire resellers account.

WHB thought my passwords were weak or there was something on my end locally, a key logger or a spyware maybe etc. But no that was not the case, as i am behind a very good firewall and security and never ever had a virus on my computer. I also dont access client websites only when i set them up which was also defaced.

Later staff from WHB carried out a scan and found that when the hackers attacked they were able to leave files in my root for an easier entry the next time they attack.

WHB was persistent that it was a flaw with vBulletin when it was not.

vBulletin was adament that it was a flaw with WHB servers. They had carried out extensive research and examination on the many websites that were defaced including their premium software. The only possible route left was the servers.

WHB staff argued why it had not happened to others on the server yet? Well that was their word against mine, who knows maybe it did happen to somebody else giving me the benefit of the doubt?

Still not convinced?

The hackers had left a few files inside my root which they had forgotten to delete. They didnt leave anything behind on the other domains they had attacked, but on this particular one they had left everything. There was this file called get.php i was able to see peoples database passwords inside their configs etc along with some usernames when i executed the script. I am so lucky not to have lost any databases.

Take a read at this old thread i had made around that time about this very same issue with WebHostingBuzz:

Web Hosts being Hacked using PHP? - Web Hosting Talk - The largest, most influential web hosting community on the Internet

As you can see many have already identified the security flaws, it being with the servers on WHB. I also showed the same outcome to the staff members at vBulletin. If i was able to see everyone whos hosted on the same server dont you think there could have been somebody on the same server helping a hacker or the hacker himself running the script obtaining passwords of other accounts?

Does this not already represent a flaw with the services that are being run on WHB servers? I did not even get a thank you for bringing this to the attention of the CEO and their Operations Manager for identifying this problem. All i got was that they would look into the problem. Eventually this was resolved and patched on the server.

I remember WebHostingBuzz itself was also hacked, this was earlier on and i have the screenshots for that too. This was quite late at night and i dont think many were online to see. I had spoken to a senior staff member about this and his response was:

"Hi

If you can wait for a few days you would notice our press release in the news rooms around the internet. (I did not see any) This was actually caused due to a hole in the blackberry service by vodafone. Very high fi group of hackers hacked into the vulnerable blackberry software linked to one of the directories in the main webhostingbuzz list of folders and tried to take down the website. Never the less it was detected well in time (within 15 to 30 minutes) by our top admins. We are planning to sue Vodafone Europe for about $120,000 lost during the downtime caused by them.

Well all of this is confidential and I would appreciate if you could keep it yourself while we release more details officially in the due time.

Cheers"

I understand that this may seem confidential, but i have been searching the internet high and low till this day for a year now and have not found a single article about Vodafones relation with WHB and WHB suing Vodafone.

So this leads me to believe what i was told was not the truth and was merely said to boost my confidence in WHB? Maybe im being very cynical here, but the way that message was written and the words used was as if it was addressed to a kid on false pretence?

I can now see why reseller hosting is cheap. No doubt i really did get my moneys worth. $57 = �30 for the whole year.

Early June - Early July

As the server loads were getting really bad my emails and client emails halted and were not functioning at all. It just continued!

Mid July - More websites defaced

We thought our problems were over? No - websites were still hacked and defaced it was time i had to do something about it.

I was kept being told that the servers were fine, a senior member of staff told me they had the best server security and firewall. Clearly after what i have outlined above they dont!

Again i allowed senior vBulletin staff to be in my shoes, i gave them ftp, shell, cpanel access etc vBulletin staff had carried out extensive research over the weeks and finally reached a unanimous decision among them. The result concluded that the server was the only thing to blame. Read on to see how they reached their conclusion.

Late July

WHB servers were compromised yet again one way or another. Like all the staff at vBulletin Mike Sullivan was the one who had helped me the most and had spent hours communicating with me to get to the bottom of what i was facing. I have sought permission from Mike Sullivan to mention him from vBulletin for this review.

Here is an extract from our ticket:

Mike Sullivan - "Hi,

I have focused on **********.co.uk and that seemed to turn up something interesting. In the logs, I found this line:

212.71.37.96 - - [29/Jul/2008:11:56:42 +0000] "GET /forum/calendar.php?c=1&week=1167523200&do=displayweek&month=1 HTTP/1.1" 200 117

[url]
3A209.51.154.100+powered+by+3.6&go=&form=QBRE" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; ar; rv:1.8.1.16) Gecko/20080702 Firefox/2.0.0.16"

This is about 40 minutes before the deface happened. The interesting part is the referrer:

[url]

This is a search for all sites on a particular IP (209.51.54.100), with "powered by 3.6" on them. Your sites are the top 2 results.

While this means that they were targeting vB specifically,

by limiting it to an IP, that indicates that they already had access to that server and were using a separate search to help them find more things to deface.

Between this entry in the log and when the defacement happened, there were 2 hits to /forum/ and absolutely nothing else.

That just has to point to the server being compromised.

The does look pretty definitive to me this time. I think it's time to change hosts. Perhaps look at a VPS, where you're not paying for an entire server, but you are completely segregated from the other people on it.

Please let me know if you require any further assistance.

Mike Sullivan
Developer Team, vBulletin"

So i had presented this to WHB and told them about the particular search query the hackers were attempting. WHB were telling me nobody else on the server was hacked or defaced other than me. I told them that the search query presented to me by Mike from vBulletin displays my websites at the top only, the hackers already had access to the server hence the reasons I was the only victim so far.

(Remember this was last year, i have moved now so the search query will display different results.)

I found this very ingenious of the hackers.

WHB had wrote lengthy messages to me trying explain and reassure me it was not their servers. A senior technician even told me he use to work for a "goverment" before WHB, notice he spelt government wrong. I knew right away what kind of government he worked for. But to reassure me with personal experience was a good attempt on his behalf.

So for a brief moment WHB decided to talk to vB, me being the messenger ofcourse they wanted hints from vb .

WHB Senior Technician - "Can you please ask VB techs for some assumptions about how exactly these sites might be hacked using server-side security flaws? I don't see any reasonable way to do it. Possibly some specific PHP settings might create VB security issue, or something like that? Either VB guys meant something certain they know about, or they just said "this is not our product's vulnerability because this can not be our product's vulnerability". We'd really appreciate some hints from them."

vBulletin - "Hacked passwords are by far the most common method of compromising a server. However there are literally hundreds of other possibilities due to the wide range of applications on a server and the need to constantly monitor them all and keep them up-to-date.

In short this appears to be a brush-off. You host knows very well the multitude of ways a server or account on a server can be compromised. Or at least they should.

Please see this thread on how to make your vBulletin more secure:

How To Make My Forums More Secure - vBulletin Community Forum

If you are still being hacked after doing all of this, then they are most likely doing this by accessing your server or account on the server. There are currently no known exploits in the latest unmodified version of vB.

Best regards,
Steve Machol
Customer Support Manager, vBulletin"

After that last response, WHB did not reply to the ticket.

There were still major load on the servers and i was already looking for a new host. I was then suprised to see a comment from a support staff.

"Small server overload has been in process all day long due to server security maintenance."

Suprise Suprise!

Later i had posted on the vbulletin forums and this was the response i had got from vb staff:

"Steve Machol:
If you are still being hacked after doing all of this, then they are most likely doing this by accessing your server. You need to contact your host about this.

Me:
Hi Steve, Mike and I also came to the same conclusion. If you look at ticket number (Ticketid: 824317). You will see what Mike has to say and that there is sufficient evidence to say that it was the server that was compromised afterall.

A vbulletin. 3.7.2 (latest version was defaced), 3.7.1 and also a 3.6.8

I am in the process of changing hosts, however my current host fails to understand what i am trying to say to them and they are persistent that it is vbulletin's fault.

This is what they had to say.

WHB:
Dear .......,

I totally comprehend you but it is a matter only of your vbulletin's security which is not being guaranteed and provided by you i.e. it is not updated at all. Please be so kind to contact vbulletin's developers/support and install the LATEST version and ALL patches and updates! Keeping all these rules will make your forums safe for sure!

If you have any further questions just let us know. We'll be happy to help.

Me:
How can i make them understand that 3 different domains on the server were defaced which were not linked with one another and that 2 out of the 3 were fully updated versions of vbulletin?

Mike had also showed me the process of where the hackers traced the forum boards with msn search targeting the particular server which the hackers know well there was a way in.

I really would appreciate a reply which i can pose to my current host including any technical terms which they may understand.

Thanks

Steve Machol:
Unfortunately you cannot make a host like that understand. If they are not even willing to investigate a possible security breach on their servers, then the only viable option is to get away from them as fast as you can."

Another response for the above from Steve:

Mike Sullivan
Aug 01st '08 11:29am

"Hi,

I suppose you can use my name and try to explain what I showed. I'm just a bit wary that it looks like a vB staff member just saying it's not our fault. I'm really not trying to do that.

As for your host, I doubt you'll be able to convince them of much. Especially if it's from things I say. It's "he said, she said" really. In a weird sense, I wish I could find a whole in vB (or some other software) when I do these searches. It would actually provide some closue to the issue!

I don't really know what I can say technically, unfortunately. Looking at the logs, I could see when the pages started returning a particular page size; that indicated when it got hacked. I saw no accesses in your logs between the last good access and the first bad access that had anything weird about them (they were just /forums/).

The search enginer referrer is probably the clearest thing. Did my explanation of that make sense?

While I know that there is no such thing as guaranteed safety, your host's response just says "upgrade to the latest version and you'll be fine"... But as you said, you're already on the latest version. I don't know how they'd respond to you telling them that.

Hopefully you can get away from them. Glad to hear that you were looking into some VPS options, though you're right they might require more management. It depends if you're interested in getting into that. Frankly, just getting to another host might make the problems go away.

However, some of these problems are (somewhat) intrinsic to shared hosting. Only so much can be done to prevent 2 people with full access to the server (via Apache) from interacting with each other.

All I can say is: Good luck!

Mike Sullivan
Developer Team, vBulletin

(Mike mentioned going with another host could solve the problem, guess what? Im with a new host and no problems what so ever! - Read on.)

Early August

Problems still remained with regards to server overload, other users were also facing the same issues as this was evident on WHB forums. I was fed up and was in the process of moving but it was a very hard one.

I found communicating with WHB support staff very difficult. My first language is not english either nor am i perfect. However there always has been some misunderstanding and i have continually had to repeat myself so many times so that the support staff is able to understand me. There has been times where ive tried explaining simple things to them which they wouldnt simply understand. I have also had to break down my english just so that they could understand me, that experience was very frustrating.

I remember a time i had highlighted a ticket as urgent when my website was hacked across my reseller, support staff had demoted it "Low Priority" which made me even more upset with them.

There was a point i had an urgent ticket, it was responded to after 29 hours. Usually staff reply within a few hours, however in my case it took staff to respond to one of my urgent tickets 29 hours when the subject of the ticket header read: "3 websites hacked".

However they changed my ticket status cheekly from "Urgent" to a "Normal" one. I give them credit for doing that as they came very close to replying to my ticket, but atleast they tried and gave me a sign that they had read it.

I suppose they were able to buy enough time to give me a flawed response 29 hours later.

I thought resellers would have been taken somewhat seriously as they also have clients to manage and look after. Clearly they were not interested and i was merely another drop in the sea.

Their servers have been overloaded for a long time, on and off they were blaming it on the mail and then they tell me some clients were using up a lot of resources on their servers.

Every time i had approached them i was told they were taking down the sites that were abusing the server. - For that long!? I dont think they will have many clients left.

They were clearly under some sort of attack. The hackers were also searching sites on the particular server i was on by a the "specific IP address" search which Mike from vBulletin had demonstrated above.

I felt really ashamed after a few months as i had been promoting WHB as being a reliable and a good host. I had also introduced a family member to WHB, he was doing well on a different server on WHB until it suddenly had server issues.

I paid for a years hosting and so did he. He was told by WHB to Upgrade to a dedicated plan.. only after hes being with them for a few months which is when he started experiencing problems.

Does it not seem strange WHB had also told me the same thing? Why do they take every server load as an opportunity to sell their clients dedicated hosting? WHB was asking us to upgrade to a dedicated server initially just because we were experiencing load issues.

WHB is clearly just interested in how to get your money fast as cheap as it may seem. Im not suprised they must enjoy putting load on their servers and get customers coming up to them omplaining about load issues, they will then be very quick to suggest a dedicated plan. Talk about dirty tactics, they must be doing very well by now.

I found a new host around mid August which left me over 3 months to sacrifice. However my family relative has had to move after being with WHB for around 5 months so hes had to sacrifice a lot more months.

I am having no problems with my current new host even though i am paying a little bit more than what i use to with WHB. I have had:

no server issues,
no hacking attempts,
no script issues,
no MySQL errors and
no down time,
staff also know what their talking about.

Its been over 6 months and no problems at all, so what does this say about WebHostingBuzz hosting? I'll leave that for you to decide.

View 14 Replies View Related

DownTownHost Review

Nov 29, 2008

I am with DTH for almost 4 months and has been very satisfied. So, I thought I'd post a review here.

I am on their blog package, 1GB of space and 50GB of bandwidth at $5.99. I have to say their support teams are wonderful as they managed to solved every single problem I had every time, literally. Also, I love their 'Live Chat' on their website, once you click it, a conversation with them will start, the only bad thing is sometimes it takes longer than 2minutes which is acceptable

So far, the uptime and speed has been good.

Highly Recommended from me

View 10 Replies View Related

Downtownhost 3+ Month Review

Aug 22, 2008

I wrote an initial setup experience review of downtown host including support w/ transferring my sites a few months ago. Now I am going to extend the review with reliability, speed and performance.

So far, the support and helpfulness has been the same. Rarely does support wait longer than 10 min to respond to questions. They are always responded with a great attitude.

Reliability of all my sites has been 100%. I have seen no downtime at all since I got my account. Truly fabulous. The only time a site has gone down was not their fault...it was my fault...for messing up the database they restored it within minutes after I sent a high priority technical support ticket too.

Speed and performance go hand in hand. Sites are quick and responsive. Just as responsive as a content management system on any dedicated in my opinion. Download speeds are always the same. Never does the download or upload speed fluctuate by more than 10 kbps up or down from the average (totally unlike dreamhost where it would fluctuate as much as 400-500 kbps depending on the day).

All scripts I have used have responded very quickly without any problems that I would encounter with dreamhost (like cut off scripts due to time it took the servers to run through them).

View 5 Replies View Related

DowntownHost 2 Year Review

Oct 5, 2009

I've recently had some issues with a script I wrote and I contacted support about it. Three techs assisted me with it, but could not resolve it. I later found the problem was with my outputting text when there should be no output at all. I closed the ticket and thanked the techs for their work.

This is just one of the many examples I have of how they are willing to work with the customer, even if it is not their fault. They will do what it takes to keep the customer happy, except fixing the customers' code. Jedito and his team really strive at providing superb support for their customers.

I have a few domains hosted with them and also have pointed others to their services. I currently use two of their servers, one is production and the other is staging. They are quick to get services setup and ready to go, as well as providing quick support through their ticket system. Their live chat doesn't always reach people (when it says it is online), but they respond to tickets within a few hours, sometimes within a few minutes.

I have the Silver plan with them, and I think they recently changed the amount of disk space available from 7GB to 14GB because that's what I now have available. I did not know they were planning that, but it was a pleasant surprise when I logged in to cPanel.

I can't think of any problems I have had with Downtownhost in these two years of experience with them, though I have had problems with my scripts and code. If they make a mistake, they admit it and are quick to fix it. I might have had a little bit of downtime over a year ago, but I think the server went down briefly. The uptime has been superb and the services have been wonderful.

To anyone who is in search of a good web host, Downtownhost is the way to go for shared hosting. I have not tried their other services (well, I am using blogging on the staging server), so I do not know what they are like. I have been with my share of web hosts and I have not found one that is better than Downtownhost.

View 12 Replies View Related

Downtownhost - 1 Year Review

Oct 10, 2009

I've been with Downtownhost for a little more than a year now, and figured I would share my experiences with others.

When I first signed up with Downtownhost, everything was great. Transferring my sites went super smooth: my server was very fast and support was amazing (got replies in under a minute!). Unfortunately, as time has gone on, I've seen a dramatic drop in server stability and support.

My first major issue with Downtownhost happened in March of this year, when my server was constantly being brought offline with DDoS attacks. I requested that they switch me to a different server, hopefully with less DDoS attacks. Downtownhost gave me a date and time when they would switch my account to a new server. That day and time went, with no word from anyone at Downtownhost. I sent an email to Downtownhost asking if my account had been moved, but apparently they had forgotten to switch me. Jorge was very quick to switch me once I asked to be moved again.

Everything was smooth on the new server until April, when it went down for periods of at least 6 hours or more on several different occasions (at least 3). These extremely long periods of downtime were very angering.

Everything has been fairly stable up until these last few weeks. I recently registered a new domain and went to add it to my cPanel account as an addon domain. Something screwed up within cPanel, so I was unable to add my new domain to cPanel. This issue took over 5 hours to even get a response from Downtownhost (which used to be very unusual). Eventually, the issue was resolved.

Now, my server is timing out several times per day, and my email has now stopped working.

On top of the increasingly longer support response times, nobody *ever* answers me on their live support feature, which is a big downside for me. I'm not sure what has caused this dramatic drop in quality from Downtownhost, but it's not looking like I will be renewing my contract with them

View 14 Replies View Related

Downtownhost 8 Month Review

Feb 18, 2008

Downtownhost is amazing. I have never been so fond of a host before. Yes, I've only been doing websites since 1999, but still, they are excellent.

I have been working on a site for a client since December and it was on server28 until tonight. I went on the online chat, and after about 35 seconds, Diego came online and told me about a server in Washington, server32. Since the future web viewers of this site will be in California, I think Washington would be a much better server location than Texas. I put in a ticket, and four minutes later, Diego had it moved, database and all.

My site on server20 has been up since June 2007, going down only for a little bit when there was a server problem. Overall, the service has been great and the support is phenomenal. I currently recommend only Downtownhost to my web clients because of their excellent support.

When I setup that site in December on server28, my client didn't enter a phone number where he was currently, and that was when they decided to call to activate the account.

When Sebastian saw my email address as the referral, he immediately approved it.

Sebastian has helped me more than Jorge and Diego, but all three of them provide excellent, quick support through chat and tickets. I don't think I've put in a ticket that has stayed open for more than a day. They are fast and efficient.

Some sites I have with them...
server20: scec.com
server26: bethanyjanewilson.com
* I don't want to include all of them, just a little bit.

As of this review, I have setup 7 accounts on 6 servers since June of 2007. I plan on getting more people to this host.

View 14 Replies View Related

5 Months Review Of DownTownHost.com

Dec 11, 2008

I am hosting my sites with DownTownHost since July 08 and i must say i am really impressed with their quality of service, uptime and site speed. I haven't experienced any major issue yet accept some server modules were not upgraded and were vulnerable so i reported them. Everything is fine now. I am thinking to get a reseller account with them but their plans are too expensive for me. Saving money these days so that i could start my own web hosting business in partnership with them.

View 11 Replies View Related

Downtownhost 1 Year Review

Jul 23, 2008

(I don't want to disclose my domains, but if required i may pm them to moderators.)

I've just realized that it's been over a year since i've started doing business with downtownhost. I thought it's time to write a review.

Hosting (Plans/Servers/etc.): Their plans are affordable, servers are uncrowded (at least it seems so), everything is working as it should be. Over 1 year, none of my sites gone down. (at least i haven't seen it or received any complaints).

Support: Downtownhost has great support. They are quick and reliable. They even helped me with issues which are not even their responsibility. Example: I'm a little bit obsessed with little things. Last month, i just wanted to change my account name, main domain, some other little things which doesn't matter, but are important for me (and takes time). They didn't even ask a single question, they just did it, because i wanted it. That is a big, very big plus for me. This is not the only example, they helped me with several other problems throughout a year.

If you are thinking about signing up with downtownhost, don't think twice about it.

They're great.

View 10 Replies View Related

Managed VPS, Detailed Specs

Jul 14, 2008

I run several low-traffic websites and I'm looking for a VPS that can handle them all.

What I need:

15 GB Storage
256 RAM burstable to at least 512 MB
200 GB Transfer (I use way lower than this ALWAYS)
Linux
CPanel
Unlimited domains
Fully managed
$1 IP addresses
Adult friendly (everything is legal, no sick stuff, no mailing)

I run two small vBulletin boards, 11 installations of WordPress (low traffic though) and looking to expand to at least 20, two image hosting services for the boards (most of the traffic comes from here), 1 Joomla installation (extremely low traffic), and other unimportant stuff. I think the above specs should be sufficient.

Different Class C's are a plus
Service outside of the US with established VPS providers are a plus
Proven fast support ticket response times are a plus
Initial VPS hardening is a plus
Migration support a plus
ICQ/Skype support a plus

View 9 Replies View Related

6 Months At Zone.net , My Resum� (detailed)

Nov 20, 2007

Sometime around May I decided to have my website transfered over to zone.net as I outgrew Dreamhost.

Dreamhost, which now offers quite some cool setups (such as pimping up your server by additional ram etc), has kind of "chucked me" off due to excessive CPU use that was triggered by my Wordpress install (running WP-Cache of course).

I was told, I outgrew a shared environment and should opt to either switch to their (at this time) 360$/month plan or get another hosting provider. when asked what to get, I was told "a vps with plenty of ram".

I had a particular setup in mind and was thinking of either joining jaguar pc hosting or zone.net.

What I did like at zone.net at this point was the working live-support. I clicked "live support" - chat now and within seconds I was talking to someone who had a clue and cared about getting me to move over.

I opted zone.net as they promised to set-up my domain(s) in before of moving for free and making the transition happen without any downtime.

It worked this way, I sent my sql databases to them and uploaded a four gig rar-file to third-party server (always handy to have another one at hand). They downloaded everything and setup my VPS with CentOs, plesk and virtuozzo.

From my GoDaddy-domains I know there were plenty of discount codes around- as I couldnt find any for zone.net I blunty asked them if they had a promotion campaign running and if there was a zone.net discount code.

Their honest reply, which I appreciate, was "yes" and I was given the code to discount my setup and monthly fee by 10%. Seeing as I did not find any codes on Google, this was a good catch.

The transfer went smooth and the first weeks passed. Without any trouble, my site(s) ran smoothly, quicker than ever and with no downtime. Thanks to the watchdog module, that one employee installed, services that killed itself were automatically loaded again.

Ever since I moved my site to zone.net it has been growing prosperously with 15,000 visitors daily and increasing. Wordpress and WP-Cache are working smoothly, Permalinks with htaccess are operational, too.

When I had trouble setting up WP-Cache (at one point you have to run a shell command to create a sym-link file), their Live-support helped me out in seconds.

I really liked the free and high-quality support at zone.net and the polite, yet direct employees.

The advantage of "sticking" with a company with a dozen employees is that in due progress you get to know everyone and they get to know you. You dont have to explain your setup and problems all over again, as your setup is known and sending passwords over etc has become obsolete.

Amongst my domains are also two German denic (DE) domains, the setup of them is very annoying, as you have to observe all kinds of regulations (like specific TTL time), different class C ips etc. - zone.net has been so accommodating to setup those different C-class ips for free.

I am quite sure that I would have had to pay additional money at almost every other company.

At my VPS I had Plesk and CentOS running, what I did not know is that you SHOULD not (seriously!) try to update your VPS (plesk) manually.
I pressed "auto-update" under plesk, and the whole vps went into full-out lockup mode. zone.net�s experienced techies had the website up within minutes, but still plesk was unaccessible.

This was the case for a week roughly and I did not receive any email for one week. This really annoyed me, but who to blame? It was all my fault- if I had not played around with things it would not have locked up so bad (internal errors all over the place). I decided to wait one week for them to find a solution, as the website was up, I was earning good money with it (around 40$ a day) and I did not care about emails... since it was only a secondary email address.

yet I wanted to have my plesk back.- so one employee worked on my vps for two days in a row and tried all kinds of hacks. still I did not work. so without asking, and I appreciate that, they cloned my "running" site and setup another vps and routed all traffic over there. wow. I did not know this was technically possible!

anyway, I had my plesk back and every setting I had done, was input kindly by the zone.net tech-man. If I had to do this all myself I would have lost valuable time at university that (at this point) I did not have.

Just a few weeks ago I received an email saying that my vps (and basically) every VPS had to be moved, as zone.net had bought their own network or net of servers or datacenter, I cannot remember what it was, anyway... my vps had to be moved, meaning starting at "zero". A new vps was setup again, but since the ips changed, too I had to undergo the whole IPs annoyance with the german denic domains again.

luckily zone.net helped me out quickly and assured me things would work.

Indeed it did, the transfer went very smooth, as the old vps was not shutdown until the new one had been successfully "talking" with my nameserver.

Bad thing though was, that I lost several posts and comments, as in the meantime I was accessing (randomly) two different sites on different servers.

At one time, the old site loaded, the next hour the new one loaded and vice versa.

If you plan to transfer sites, you should not post anything and close comments. just as a matter of fact, that was my learning...

What I did not like about zone.net is that after the server move and in the meantime, they have seem to taken off the live-support. I loved to quickly address my problems and have them sorted out.

Now I have to reside to their (working!) ticket system, where I usually receive a reply within hours, but sometimes also days (but that�s my fault then again to not "bump" my tickets every now and then).

In general, I am very satisfied with the performance at zone.net, the level of support and the possibility of having almost EVERYTHING customized to my needs. I appreciate being a customer there, seriously! as soon as I experience something else, I will post it here, promised!

View 14 Replies View Related

Plesk 11.x / Windows :: Detailed Error Messages Not Being Displayed

Dec 2, 2014

I have a Plesk 11.5 server that someone made changes to in IIS to allow web site users to turn the sending of detailed error messages on and off from a web.config file. Unfortunately now none of the sites will send detailed error messages to the browser no matter what is done. The person that made the changes to IIS did not document them properly and cannot tell me what exactly they changed. None of the obvious settings have made an effect on the problem.

View 1 Replies View Related

Plesk 12.x / Linux :: View Detailed Maillog To Find Spam Scripts

Apr 15, 2015

We have just had reports of SPAM being sent from our CentOS 6.x server running Plesk 12.

Services like Plesk Premium antivirus, SpamAssasin, watchdog(rkhunter) and mod_security are enabled on the server to enhance security and none of these seemed to stop the scripts.

The issue is that multiple domains are sending out mail from this server, so it is difficult to find the script sending out SPAM.
When we were running Plesk 11.0 we had a seperate log-file where we could see the file sending any mail going out from the postfix mailserver. I have check both /var/log/maillog and /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog, but there is nothing in those files to tell me the file that sent the mail.

How would I go about finding this file from either the Plesk Control Panel or through SSH (using log-files)?

View 1 Replies View Related

DownTownHost And AWStats

May 2, 2008

I have been more than 1 year with DownTownHost, and although overall they are quite OK, yet I need to point out some serious flaws which no one ever mentions. This is just an honest complaint.

Namely - downtime.

There is downtime on DownTownHost which in my case lasts a few days each month. I have not been analyzing my stats closely, but when I do, I notice there is a monthly downtime...

The reason - I don't know.

The last time, I can see from AW stats that for about 48 hours there was downtime resulting in site became inaccessible, and there were ZERO visitors for 24 hours at least.

It seems towards the end of the month, there will be downtime...of some kind. Around 27/28/29 of the month. Visitor levels will show a drop for a few days during this period.

Or if not the end of the month, then in the middle of the month....

But last month was bad....1 whole day my blog was not available. Zero visitors recorded.

I just want to know if anyone experienced this also or not.

My server is server 20.

DTH is OK in most things....but downtime is something I really don't tolerate....

Maybe there is an explanation for this, but if these continue, I will look for another host.

View 14 Replies View Related

DowntownHost, SharkSpace, StableHost

Oct 18, 2009

I have narrowed it down to DowntownHost SharkSpace and StableHost.

Here's how they compare (Well they almost have all the same features so I'll jus compare space and bw

DowntownHost SILVER:
14 GB / 300 GB
With 25% off coupon: 5.27777777777$/month

StableHost PLUS:
15 GB / 300 GB
With 50% off coupon AND Free domain :3.64$/month

SharkSpace HAMMERHEAD:
20 GB / 500 GB
With 50% off coupon: 3.975$/month

DowntownHost has a 99% off coupon.. but I dont understand and sounds a little bit sketchy. Would be like 12 cents per month.

So in terms of reliability, and SPEED, speed is important to me, which do you suggest.
Downtownhost: Chicago
Stablehost: Dallas
Sharkspace North Carolina and Kansas.

View 14 Replies View Related

Downtownhost, Hostgator Or Hawkhost?

May 8, 2009

I have a website hosted at bluehost.. I've just got a new website that I would like to host ielsewhere.

I hadn't had major problems at bluehost only that I have a coppermine gallery there and occasionally my site goes down due to CPU usage, although I removed all the fancy stuff that uses resources like random images, votes, comments, etc..

anyway, I don't think it would be a good idea to have another website with another coppermine gallery under the same account so I was looking at Downtown Host, Hostgator and Hawkhost... or any other recommended host to move my second website, I will leave the first one at bluehost

What I'm looking for is great customer support, no more than $10 a month, can handle coppermine better than bluehost, I dont need more than 200 gig of bandwith and I don't need more than 2 gb of space

View 14 Replies View Related

I Have Been Hosted With DownTownHost For 18 Months Now

Apr 30, 2008

Back in winter 2006 I visited this very forum asking for advice on where to find a reliable and friendly host. I was shown downtownhost by several people on this forum and I was initally impressed when I saw them.

I've posted up two reviews so far of them in this forum, both of which were very positive.

Over the past year I have been on the smallest semi-dedicated hosting plan which I believe is around $60 a month which I'm happy with.

Until that time I was on their shared hosting which was too excellent.

At first if I had a few problems the three guys (there was only 2 at first I think) were on the support desk to help me out.

Speed and reliability are as good as I can hope for. I never have any problems any more so haven't had a chat with the guys on the support desk in ages but I'm sure they'd respond better than ever.

I shall await your comments.....and the monthly hosting invoice that arrives in my inbox tomorrow

View 1 Replies View Related

Medialayer And Downtownhost Comparison

Apr 30, 2008

For APPROXIMATELY the same price range downtown host offers 5 GB Disk Space and 100 GB Bandwidth and unlimited domains, while medialayer offers only 500 MB space, 10GB Bandwidth and only 3 domains.

Question: Is downtownhost OVERSELLING(maybe it is doable) or is Medialayer providing much less VALUE for MONEY.

View 4 Replies View Related

Pre-Installed Script Library From Downtownhost

Aug 19, 2008

Community, what does it mean - Pre-Installed Script Library from Downtownhost.com? When I have seen it, I was a little bit baffled with that.

Can anybody clear it up?

View 0 Replies View Related

SharkSpace, DownTownHost, Hawkhost Or 3inetwork For Asia

Oct 22, 2009

Narrowed down my choices to these companies. My customers will mainly be in Asia and for that reason I am thinking of going with Sharkspace and choosing their West Coast server option.

Anyone have experience with 3inetwork? They seemed geared towards Vietnamese customers (where I am at the moment) but can't find many reviews.

View 12 Replies View Related

Casino Review/sports Betting Review Hosting With Godaddy?

May 12, 2009

Is Godaddy cool for the casino review/sports betting review site?i searched a lot and submit Godaddy a ticket,still dont dig out.

View 5 Replies View Related

MonkeyWrench Hosting Review - Three Year Review

Dec 15, 2008

MonkeyWrench Hosting review - Three year review

I've been hosting my personal sites with MonkeyWrench Hosting for around three years now (coming up in January I believe), and I figured I'd share my experiences with them!

I've gone through a few hosts in my time, and some of them have been pretty rough. After using paid hosts, a niche free host started up that I stayed with for around a year before they eventually closed down.

I switched to MonkeyWrench Hosting at that point as a place to host my sites and store my files, and I have to say that I've been impressed throughout the time I've been with them.

Uptime/speed:
Fantastic! The sites have been perfectly reliable and speedy whenever I've gone to access them, and I haven't had any complaints from users. I did come across MySQL going down on one of the servers (I have two accounts for different purposes that are on seperate servers) in the past, but it was resolved quickly before I even needed to get help.

Support:
I've used the support a few times, but not for anything critical since there's not been the need. However, everything that I have asked was answered promptly in a professional manner.

Pricing:
Again, no complaints here. The pricing is pretty cheap, especially for the quality of service receieved. They aren't the cheapest on the Internet by any means, but you generally get what you pay for. I'm aware of what my realistic space/bandwidth needs are anyway, and I'd rather pick a host that clearly advertises what you'll receive over an 'unlimited' host.

All in all, MWH have been a fantastic choice and I couldn't have hoped for anything better.

So, thumbs up to Jonathan, and keep up the good work!

I'll report my domains for the moderators to check them out. =)

View 10 Replies View Related

Virpus Review (my Final Review)

Apr 26, 2009

I've been very happy with Virpus since I joined. There was 1 issue that has plagued me since the beginning and that was that I was not receiving e-mails on my ISP e-mail, my main e-mail. Not to big of an issue except that I didn't get any news updates or know when my tickets were replied to, or even when I was past due on my bill. 3 tickets later and their solution was for me to use another e-mail address, which was kind of a pain for me since each of my e-mail addresses has a specific reason which only specific e-mail get sent there for organizational reasons.

First off I have to say the VPS I was using was top notch. It easily outperformed my LiquidWeb VPSs and quickly became my primary VPS instead of my backup like was intended. I took advantage of one of their specials a while back which was a 512MB RAM cPanel VPS for $19.50/month which is a steal since the cPanel license alone is $15/month!

So now to why this is probably my final review of this company. Communication is lacking greatly. It was good at first, but now it's non-existant.

Over the weekend all my sites went down and I had no idea why... because I never got the e-mail saying they were moving data centers (if it weren't for a small thread on WHT I would never have known). I also did not receive any updates on extending their ETA so yet again I had nothing to tell my clients. The only good thing was that I run a free hosting company (Host2x.com for reference) and I offer no uptime guarantee since it's a non-paid service.

Ok, so the sites are back online and everything is working nicely... well I recently hit the 70% mark on my disk space usage so time to start looking for an upgrade. I created a ticket on April 23rd asking if they would allow me to upgrade my plan to their biggest VPS plan and to my surprise I never got a reply. I would think that a billing ticket asking to upgrade to a plan that costs more without the transfer of the discount I'm receiving would be a welcome ticket for them to reply to, but I was incorrect in thinking this. So I ended up purchasing a dedicated server last night because I cannot wait to see if they will assist me with upgrading my account or not.

View 13 Replies View Related

WebtHosting Review * Major Review

Sep 27, 2009

What seemed to be a good company quickly turned to nightmares. I purchased a couple domains. All went well. Then paypal emailed me saying they are high risk and wanted me to confirm I made the payment and service was given. So until I did the payment was held. They blame the held on me and threatened me to release it or they will cancel my account.

So they finally gave them the money and all was well. Well I did a stupid thing and decided to get a VPS from them, they have good deals so I thought, whats the worse that can happen. Well shortly after, I get a email saying because your payments are unreliable, we are waiting a week to setup your vps which is complete udder crap.

So I just said screw it and said give me a refund then and about 2 hours ago I try logging into my client center and my account is gone.

I am hoping one of them see this so we can get this worked out. In the mean time I opened disputes on all of the payments.

I will keep you all updated.

View 14 Replies View Related

HiVelocity Review (Possible Client Review)

Apr 17, 2009

I just want to take the time and review Hivelocity. Boy oh boy, where to start. I am just so pleased with the customer support they offer and I don't even own a single product with them.

I currently own a server with another comapny and I am always looking at other options for cheaper prices, better services and etc.

I found Hivelocity through WHT and I took the time to start up a live chat which was answered quickly from Kevin. Kevin was very nice and welcoming. I was asking about discounts they could provide and etc. Kevin showed me their reseller program which seemed to be something I may be interested in. After a 15-20 minute chat with Kevin, he offered to add me on MSN if I ever wanted to chat which I thought was pretty nice.

After I got off live chat with Kevin, I decided to keep researching Hivelocity. I immediately signed up on Twitter (I never had a Twitter Account). I saw they had some awesome deals. They were offering an awesome deal today it looks like this:

"The next person to go to our site, open a live chat and say "I just got your TWEET" gets a Core2Duo 3.0Ghz e8400 for $5 the first month."

By time I even got onto Twitter, I noticed that this was already taken. I kept browsing their Twitter and hey what do you know, another great deal it followed like this:
"The 1st $5 Core2Duo sold in about 20 seconds so lets do it again. The next person to open a live chat saying "Give me a $5 Server" gets it."

I decided I was going to be late as the last one sold in 20 seconds. Well, it turned out it did get sold but, I got into a Live Chat with David from Hivelocity.

David informed me that the server was sold and I was a bit too late. What do you know, more great discounts! He offered me the same server for $5 on the first month. I decided not to take advantage of the offer as I wouldn't be able to put much use to the offer. I will be moving to Hivelocity within the next 1-3 months.

Overall I am very pleased with the great offers they provide and the support is just amazing!

Based on the sales support and the deals they provide, I did a bit of a rating on Hivelocity.

Sales Support:5/5
Deals:5/5
Overall:5/5

Also, if you decide your interested in Hivelocity's awesome offers, I would follow them on Twitter! They are constantly updating their Twitter and offering great deals. Their Twitter deals are 100% and it's pretty awesome a company like Hivelocity offers products and support so great!

View 14 Replies View Related

Limestonenetworks Review [8 Month Review]

May 5, 2009

I joined Limestonenetworks back in 2008 when it was a small company. At the time they offered the best price on the server I was looking for, so I took the plunge. The first 2 months were great, I enjoyed the stable network, and responses from the support team were fairly quick (1-2 hours response time). From there on it was all downhill, my servers were constantly down, and the support team took longer to answer my tickets. I didn't think this was a big problem, so I stayed with Limestonenetworks even though it was having problems with their network. Near December an incident occurred that really pushed me over the edge. My servers had been down for hours, so I opened a support ticket, and one of the agents replied and told me that the downtime was due to an upgrade in their network.

Again, I came to conclude that it could be far worst, so I stayed, one of the reasons was that I didn't want to switch my game servers over. It's important to keep in mind when you are running game servers, IPs play an important part because that's where you get your traffic. Near January the network upgrade at Limestonenetworks was still taking place which caused my bandwidth meter to stop working. This really scared me because I didn't want to get charged for overages due to the fact that my servers were receiving DDOS attacks, and I wouldn't know when to close the ports.

This incident actually turned out to be positive for me because even though I went over my bandwidth quota they didn't charge me for overages. I was very happy because this was like a late Christmas present, so now I was even more happy to give my money to Limestonenetworks. Now you might ask the question, how is this going downhill? Even though they didn't charge me for the overages, I still lost many clients who were angry at the fact that their game server were down.

In the end this network upgrade actually cost me 3 clients who were paying ~$60 per month. I let this slide because at this point I already had two servers with Limestonenetworks and I really didn't want to switch over due to the fact I would lose my IPs. The next month, February, was no different, I had more issues with Limestonenetworks. Starting of this month I was getting large DDOS attacks, which kept pushing my bandwidth over the quota, and I ended up paying close to $200 dollars just for bandwidth overages.

At this point they started to nickel and dime me for every single penny they could get of me. I don't know if they were having financial problems, or if it was due to another reason. Again in March I went over the quota, but at this time they told me that I had to pay per gigabyte which would result in a $500+ charge in bandwidth, and after talking with multiple agents, I was finally able to reach an agreement. They had changed a policy all of the sudden due to the fact that they knew I was a good customer and would keep paying for the overages.

The problem I had here was that I didn't mind upgrading to plan after I knew how much bandwidth was going to be used, since they don't offer any sort of DDOS protection, and game servers result in large DDOS attacks occasionally. I understand that Limestonenetworks was not at fault, but by making me pay per gigabyte was a bit harsh, since I had never been late on a payment, and had multiple servers. Try to remember that I stayed with this company even though I lost multiple clients because of their network outages, but they didn't care about this, all the care about is nickling and diming customers.

From that point on I have been living on the edge because I don't want to pay for an upgrade before hand due to the fact I don't know how much bandwidth my server will be using. Even if I upgrade to a different package it does not offer an insurance due to the fact that if I receieve a large DDOS than I orignally predicted, I would still end up paying per gigabyte.

This company has turned from having potential to just making their customers run away. Now the other problems I had with Limestonenetwork is the support they offer, which has been declining since I joined. The associates are very rude and don't really care about the customer's experience. I didn't include every problem I had with Limestonenetwork because it would make it a very long read.

Network - 10/10
Downtime - 5/10
Customer Service - 2/10
Overall Experience - 4/10
Would I recommend this company? NO, I urge everyone to stay away, unless they like to deal with problems on a daily basis.

Also from reading other topics on this forum, I personally believe that Limestonenetwork is overselling and their network can not handle the load.

View 11 Replies View Related

Wholesaleinternet Review (4 Months Review)

Sep 12, 2008

I've got high end server from WholeSaleinternet.I've been with Wholesaleinternet for 4 months now and I am extremely happy with them.Got an awesome server for a cheap price, a Quad-Core Xeon 8 Processor (3.0GHZ), 32GB RAM, 100mbit port link.
Support:

Sales support is slow but tech support is fast!

That you very much Aaron/Wholesaleinternet!, keep up the good work!

View 10 Replies View Related

Virpus Review 7 Month Review - My "ups And Downs"

May 1, 2009

I have been with virpus for the past 7 months

I have posted an review earlier as well for 2 month : 2 month review

Let me summarize my experience so far,

Technical Support - 10/10 Really fab. even though I was on semi-managed plan, they never made me feel I was on a semi it always felt as if I was under complete management, they did every task I had asked them to do, which I didn't get on any other semi-managed host earlier.

I have no sort of complaints about their technical team, they tried to solve some problems which were due to the billing dept.

The minimum response for a ticket generally around 10-15mins and the completion with in an hr.

Billing Dept - This is some dept. that has kept me in wonder-land. Some times the replies were so pleasing and most other times the tickets are ignored. From, almost 2nd r 3rd month, the billing dept. tickets don't get regularly replied and used to bump the tickets in order to get a response to the query. Which I got some how, in a apologizing manner (no complaints for that :p)

Now, for the past 1 month we have been having some serious problems.

First, I had recd. some black-listed ip's when we joined virpus, we failed to check them (mistake on our end agreed 100%), which probably even they might not have been aware of.. As, we had a minor mis-understanding with godaddy during domain registration, my friend registered the domain using one of our partner address who resides in Singapore, where as the registration was done from India. Godaddy, assumed this was a spam registration and refunded the amount. So, we had to register the domain through another partner who resided in India. Godaddy was cool after we gave them the complete details, where they wanted some ID proof, and we provided them.

Our ip was on the black-list, we thought since our domain was spam-listed for a day, (until godaddy took it off) it made the hosts to assume the domain was black-listed, so we had manually submitted forms and proofs to most of the anti-spam agencies and mail providers, where they took the ban off the ip with in 15-20 days after we joined virpus.

Our domain was no longer under black-list, but ip was still under black-listed in some sites, such as rediff, it took more than 2 months to set the things straight at rediff, where we did some config added from the tech.dept. such as setting up spf record, and did a few tweaks here and there.

Even after making all these efforts, our ip was still under black-list of some ISP's. Our main domain (the domain which was under bl list earlier) loads well for every user, but our child domains where we have blogs and other activities do not load for lots of users. The ping results in the internet gives 100% but on their particular systems it gives no ping. Some times, the site loads wierdly such as,[url] might load but [url]might not load, and vice-versa, some times local ping fails but site loads, its all wierd and we found the reason to the problem to be ip after some minor confirmation from our end. We were losing our revenue of more than 60% just because of the failure of loading on the site, the tech. dept used to ask the ips which are facing prob to check if they are blocked, but its not possible to give ips of users who visit as guests and others, we have noted reports on other sites that our site wasn't loading for them. We still were able to give few ips for check and found them not-blocked on the ip. The sites are able to be viewed for all from proxy sites such as stage6.info but we can't ask each viewer to go to proxy site to view if they are unable to load, it will become ridiculous and we might lose our entire traffic some day.

We had shifted our domains temporarily to other vps where we noted none of the users had a single complaint, we were there for more than a week, which ensured the problem was not the domains but the ips, again after returning to the virpus hosts, we had created 3 tickets to sales/billing dept. to issue fresh ip's, got 0 reply and mailed to mr.Ken using : kenneth.odem@virpusnetworks.net got no reply after 48hrs.

We have to agreee, Earlier,mr.Ken was so helpful he helped us when we didn't have any funds to issue, since we had an dispute with an item where our payment was delayed by paypal. So, we had paid them almost 10 days later than the due date where mr.Ken was so helpful and saw to it our VPS could stay online despite the payments not been released.

In thanks, we had directly mailed our check we got from an ad-agency, which again made around 5-10 days in the payment, which made our balance stand in the positive note, we have our balance in the account for the past 3 months so that there are no dues left.

But, in the past 1 -2 months the replies have been disappointing.

We planned to leave virpus and join other host, where we burnt our hands, we looked for other reputed VPS and had a few in mind after our staff suggested few good organizations(don't prefer to name them here as it would be mis-leading).

Since, virpus wasn't ready to refund the amount in the credits we decided to continue with virpus atleast as a sideby host. Later, some how our members suggested we used virpus as a main host, so we wanted fresh ip's to get rid of the damn problem we are having but we have recd. no response for the past 1 week.

Now, lately after the maintenance our VPS was down for approx. 26-27hrs on april 25th Saturday, where our traffic is usually on the weekends. We lost the compelete traffic and revenue. When we asked if it come under credits, we got response as : This was the result of scheduled maintenance we cannot, it would not qualify under our SLA. (just giving the main result statment off the entire reply recd. from sales). Its some thing we would like to regret but for sure this isn't some issue, which could make us think to get to a new host.

The reply from the sales dept. has made our staff making funny betting, as one would win if we get a reply and other would if its not replied with in 48hrs, lately the first one is winning () due to lack of communication.

This might be our last month. Our next due date major amount would be taken from the credits, so a very little amount would exist in the account. We will stay with them until our amount with them is spent.

We had enjoyed really good with the tech. dept but the sales dept has been really poor in the recent past. I am forced to say this as even after mailing we haven't got response where, mr.Ken stated if our tickets were lost or some thing, mail to him but either didn't work so far.

Once, earlier when we requested for change of ips we were said some $7 or some thing would be charged for the swap, when we made other enquiries about it we didn't get a response till date

My tickets which lay un-responded:
203497
509467
385781

509467 and 385781 are double-post of the ticket, but got reply for none of the above tickets. Was expecting a reply for 1 atleast.

I was ready to pay excess charge for the new ips as there some mistake from my end in failure to check the ips before getting them but I wanted some concession as the major mistake was from their end while dispatching ips. I am not refusing to pay but I wanted the concession, got no reply and the above tickets are a proof of them.

Our staff online time and their live chat time don't tally, so we can't make any contact to them on live as well.

I am not sure if this is mis-understanding or what, but it has been a mixed experience for me. For sure, their sales crew have to be increased that's some suggestion I would strongly do.

I can recommend this host to any one for the tech. support they provide but can't guarantee them for the sales dept. replies based on my past/recent experiences.

Totally my site down for around ~30hrs including all the maintanence and other reasons, it could be a bit less but I am rounding it off, for sure its more than 28hrs

My over all rating: 7.5/10
Tech. Dept - 10/10
Sales/Billing Dept - 5/10

my site submitted for review via report feature
I tried to give all my experience on virpus and I am not against any one for joining virpus nor have any fights with virpus team.

May be if we get response from sales we might still consider continuing with virpus but that stands low at the moment.

View 14 Replies View Related

1 And 1 Review

Dec 15, 2008

First off they did not setup my server for nearly 2 days. I bitched and was apologized about that. They said I would get 10% off my next month.

I proceed to get everything running and start setting up my domains and then blamo its gone! It was reset they said even though I did not have a remote switch. I asked them why they did that and they insisted it was me. Whatever. So I setup everything again and was getting horrible speeds for my photography site. The hell???? They promised me the world when I signed up with them. I also got to deal with "outsourced tech support" from india that was not helpful.

I finally get things running but its still a slow *** server and they try to tell me I needed to upgrade to a much faster plan and get a better processor and memory. I tell them screw that they are throttling my bandwidth. Like memory and processor are gonna make a difference for 3 websites 1 with forums and 1 for photography then my personal site.

View 11 Replies View Related

WBS Review, Please

Sep 18, 2009

Can you share with me about your experience with WBS as a provider? Including account management, support and of course quality of the network, Also I am interested whether they really have a good South America connectivity.

View 9 Replies View Related

Uk2.net Review

May 15, 2009

havent seen any uk2.net review on WHT? maybe someone can share since im really keen on getting a shared hosting plan there?

View 14 Replies View Related