I've been with Zoom for 2 years now, and I'm leaving as soon as I find another host.
Here's why: once a month, for the last 3 months, emails I send to a Yahoo.com address are bounced because Yahoo is blocking all email from my mail server. When this is finally dealt with, it turns out Yahoo blocks everything coming from Zoom (or my shared server -- sorry I'm not technical) because of spam originating there. Now, *I'm* not sending spam, and spam is annoying enough to deal with in my in box, but now other people sending spam are stopping me from sending my little 20-30 emails a day!
Here's how tech support has worked for me when this problem comes up:
1. I go on and open a chat with support.
2. Someone In India eventually says hello to me.
3. I state my problem.
4. Long wait.
5. Someone In India eventually comes back and says "hello" again.
6. Now I'm pissed. I tell Someone In India what the problem is and give her email
headers and tell her to pay attention.
7. Another long wait.
8. This Someone In India gives me an email address at zoom to email directly about this problem.
9. I email TheAddressIWasGiven @ zoom explaining my problem...and THAT EMAIL BOUNCES! Despite the irony of having an email begging for help with bounces get bounced itself, I am not amused.
10. I go to call Tech Support... DOH! They no longer have phone support.
11. I fill out an online support and send it in. I wait No reply. Emails to Yahoo still bouncing.
12. I fill out another one. I wait.
13. I get an email telling me my second support request is being closed since they are working on the first one. Really? First I've heard of them working on it.
14. 20 minutes later I get an email saying they're working on the first request.
15. A day or so later, I get an email telling me it will all be fine in a day.
16. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes I get another email telling me to go to Yahoo and fill out a form to get them to unblock it.
17. I fill out a form at Yahoo and it gets unblocked within hours.
I am currently suffering from the latest email bouncing and am at step # 14.
Which is what drove me here to find a real host. Something about getting lumped in with spammers is just....icky. Yucky.
Also, they spontaneously took my little web site off line several times because they messed with directories. It took days to get right. My business is not web-based, but it was still annoying.
Anyway, there's my cautionary tale about Zoom . A few mistakes are forgivable, but this is too much.
I had purchased an SSL certificate from Go-Daddy. The Tech support people at GigaPros were more than willing to give me the advice I needed and to get the certificate installed for me in very short order.
Polite courteous professional service, excellent response times and top notch support. This company offers excellent value for the money! I highly recommend GigaPros!
Just recd. an alert from Google Alerts that Landing Holdings, Inc has acquired Hosting Zoom so I thought of sharing this with WHT community Complete story: [url] From the CEO October 22nd, 2008 Howdy Zoomers, First an introduction and background check. My name is Greg Landis, Im the CEO of Landis holdings, Inc. A Houston, TX based company. Most of you already know Kiet Duong, CEO of HostingZoom, but you might not know that me and Kiet have been neighbors for some time.
Our companies grew under similar circumstances, offering similar products, and from the same city here in Houston. We even share the same colocation facilities and product vendors. In many ways, too many to list, our companies were always siblings and we often spoke of ways the two might benefit one another.
Those talks grew and grew over the months until we realized we are already aligned so we made it official. All of our companies are already very profitable, and very reputable.
In this agreement Kiet will remain on in his same executive level and power, with a new title. Thats as far as the changes go, we have zero plans to move, alter, or upset clients in any fashion.
We do have some awesome benefits for all the companies under our corp umbrella though.
Lets go over how some of these are already being deployed and which ones are coming and how far out they are. Me, Kiet, Dylan, Les, Masood, Vlad, and other key members of HostingZoom/ResellerZoom/ModVPS have been laying out plans and discussing client needs and the main wish list. The even better news is we don’t plan to pick one, instead we have the unique opportunity to do them all. Thanks to these companies being profitable we have no need or desire to upset any flow thats working well.
For people looking for a vps, I thought it's important to get a feel for their technical support team. So for the first time, I've had to use it. . .
My problem is that MySQL CPU utilization is around 25% at all times and it is lagging the box like crazy. All of my sites hosted only get around 200k uniques per month. <<snipped>> The lag seemed to start around the same time I added multiple cronjobs at various times and frequencies to grab RSS feed data and check to see if it should add a new entry into the DB.
I am not a linux guru, so I opened a ticket and asked for help and suggestions on what to do. . .
Response:
Quote:
I could try tweaking the mysql configuration so the service uses less resources, but this usually just helps with the memory use.
I was looking for him to either say yes the cronjobs are doing it or I have poorly coded queries. . something useful and related to CPU usage. But no.
So then I say sure, tweak. I ask if he agrees that the cronjobs are the problem and what options I have to remedy the situation.
Response:
I have tweaked the mysql configuration for you. Yes, most likely those cronjobs are causing the big CPU usage in mysql.
Basically he completely ignored my question on what other options I have or recommendations on what to do next. Needless to say I am furious. I ask for advice and get absolutely nothing useful in return. Not to mention his short answers make it seem like I'm lucky he even reads my entire question.
I'd like to start an ongoing thread here listing the 'Good Hosters with Good TELEPHONE tech support'. In other words, out of the 1,000s of host companies, this may cut it down to less than a dozen.
( And for all you Hosters out there who really want your company to grow, and want to know how, - it's easy: just read here.)
Good telephone support is the #1 ultimate requirement, because:
-It's a lot faster and easier for both the user and the host company, because you can state and answer all questions and clarifications on the spot, you don't need to continually pass new emails with new questions and clarifications, back and forth for days on end, until the issue is solved. It saves tech time and user's time. And saves a lot of nerves.
- It's the best way to sort the good guys from the bad. A bad company isn't going to bother to answer the phone, - or will make you wait way too long, - because they are likely getting endless complaints. The good guys are always ready to answer the phones, with a friendly voice, - because they really WANT to please the customer.
- If a company can't be bothered to pick up the phone, we can't be bothered to even consider them. They're a joke, and so won't be listed here on this thread. (So, before adding or listing any Hosters here, please verfify that they do have Good, quick, friendly, telephone support,; ideally 24/7, but 9am to 10pm might be acceptable, if it was supplemented by some emergency contact. AND:
- Hoster ALSO needs good EMAIL support (and preferably, Chat online, extended hour availability). (I spend a lot of time overseas). It sems all emails should get a non-automated response within about an hour, - and then support should jump on fixing any problem.
I only need support a few times a year. To answer some questions, or fix a problem, or do an install. That's lesss than 1 hour total, so any company paying maybe $18/hour tech support should be able to handle this. It IS reasonable to charge a custm for extended calls, beyond say, 90minutes a year, IF you don't count the 80%? Of times an issue is the Hoster;s fault of stmg gone wrong, and don't count the 'hold' times.
ALSO IMPORTANT: - Uptime - site Speeds - Monthly plans, no contract (Only a dishonest host will try to force you into a contract, where they can then ignore you.) - Reasonable price. (? Maybe $12 to $18/month for a basic business site. We don't need massive bandwitdths, - we all know that's an overselling scam, and can't ever be delivered.) - a good upgrade plan of bigger options. Maybe even VPS. - Dedicated IP, and availbility of SSL -PHP 5, mysql, phpMyAdmin, etc - cPanel ( Some Hosts are using problematic panels, like Hsphere, which are slow to load, slow in operation, require many more clicks, have too many options, spread apart on many separate pages. Time is money, and this really slows down the ability of a small business to manage his own site in effective time. For example, one WHT user wrote somewhere: "I don't feel that HSphere's interface is nice at all, although I have worked with cPanel and DA all my life... I just found it to include un-necessary features or split features up in to different hard to find pages, such as backups - mysql backups you had to find on a completely different page than file backups, and then there were options to have it in the home directory or server-end backup, in which then you had to wait a good 10 minutes before it was ready. cPanel, just hit backup and hit download and instantly it does everything you need...".
I have used several hosters. Currently on Aplus.net and Godad, which have phone support, and mediocre service.
My LIST So Far: - Liquidweb: a very impressive company with good, 24 hour support. But to get dedicated IP, you need to go with their $25/month plan. Yikes! - NewIdeaHosting.com. A very small company. My call was returned, and the owner chatted with me for an hour on the phone! Plans have small bandwidth, but promises No overselling, and personalized attention. Extra $5 for dedi IP. He specializes in Small business sites, and small eCommerce sites. He has only 250 accounts, on 3 servers. He rents servers from the Equinox data center of Chicago. Seems exceptionaly honest. - MegaHosters. Excellent phone support and WHT reviews. But company was taken over by another company, and so may well go downhill in future. Another problem: uses Hsphere. - Steadfast. Has a good rep on WHT, and seems impressive. Tech answered the phone immediately, but they say they prefer emails. Sales phone has limited hours. Good price on $20 SSL. But, uses Hshhere. - JodoHost 24 hour phone. But, uses Hsphere. An Indian company with office in Florida, and good rep. I like the idea of outsourcing phone support, if it makes it more available and affordable. But, the accent on the phone was very hard for me to understand, so maybe this might not work..... - Hostgator. Yes, it's a big overseller, but seems to get good reviews/results anyway, and good phone support. - ? ThePrimeHost ?? Mostly good WHT reviews; some dissenters. Site says 24hour phone, but when I called on several nights, no one ever answered... - Can anyone add to this list? Please list only hosts that meet the above minimum requirements of phone support, etc. Especially useful is hosters you've tried. TO AVOID: - Avoid Arvixe. I had a horrid experience with them, here: [WHT forum]:/showthread.php?p=5097822#post5097822 - Avoid WebHostingBuzz. This company never returned my phone msessage inquiries.
I want to buy a hosting service with following feature
1 SSH
2 SSL
3 Rsync
4 SVN
5 Wordpress, Drupal support ( plan to run multiple wordpress and drupal site in this hosting plan)
6 multiple domain name support in one hosting plan
7 a lot of bandwith
8 great customer support, and low down time
I do some research and have a chat with justhost.com and they seem to support everything i need however, after reading some review seem like they try to force you to update to dedicate server when your bandwidth is up.
We would just like to take a minute to say how impressed and satisfied we are with one of our primary colo providers, G3 Technologies [url]. Brendan at G3 is a absolute pleasure to deal with. The facility is secure, well maintained and the BGP network Brendan has created is powerful and reliable.
I wouldn't trust anyone but Brendan and G3 when you need premium colocation.
Mods, you can PM us for proof that we use G3 or you can just trace hostvault.net ;-).
Hey all. I have some legacy web applications that requires MySQL 4.X to function. Too much pain to upgrade. Can any of you recommend a VPS linux hosting provider that you can vouch for, who also support MySQL 4?
I am currently using MediaTemple GS which has MySQL 4 support; however, recent problems have made me want to consider other options. Unfortuantely, MediaTemple DV (thier VPS option) does not have MySQL 4 as an option.
I have some legacy web applications that requires MySQL 4.X to function. Too much pain to upgrade. Can any of you recommend a VPS linux hosting provider that you can vouch for, who also support MySQL 4?
I am currently using MediaTemple GS which has MySQL 4 support; however, recent problems have made me want to consider other options. Unfortuantely, MediaTemple DV (thier VPS option) does not have MySQL 4 as an option.
I am currently hosted with HostFresh on their HongKong sever (Shared Hosting) and my site has been down for 7 days now!
I tried emailing them for several days, before calling their US phone line 3 days ago, which I was told they could not help and had to wait for an emailmwhich i replied I had been waiting 3 days for a reply..... later that day I finally get a response for my email which asked what the hell is wrong and when it will be fixed, the simply say- site was nullrouted and have to wait for it to come online this was 3 days ago now... I have sent 1 (sometimes 2) emails per day since, I currently have 8 open tickets, all ranging from the last 6-7wks - YES... I had open tickets when this all began t do with me paying my bill twice, which i heard nothing for weeks so I did a charge back through PayPal.. another mater. Does anyone else have this problem with support there? and with the site?
is there a way I can get my files of the server and DB?
can someone please advise what I should do?
I am hopeless with out them as they have my site files, otherwise i would have dumped them days ago!
by the way, I have emailed them number of times, they just ignore me, I am going to be calling again t the U.S in the morning, though they have no idea, and frankly nor do I - I need my DB it has my whole site for the last 18mths on it - over 10,000 members info.
I am writing a PHP/MySQL application which extracts information from a .DBF file on a remote server and then builds a web page.
However, I just found out that my hosting company doesn't (and won't) support the FTP functions within PHP and they won't enable DBF file support (extension=php_dbase.dll in php.ini)
Does anyone know if other hosting companies will do this?
Also, at the risk of asking a very broad question, is there a place to go to get consolidated reviews of web hosting companies?
hosting that has PHP, MySQL, and Java. I have found [url]. I would like to know if lunarpages is any good, and if there is anything better. I don't want to spend too much but would like good service and the above specs.
I can remember not so long ago, Layered Tech and Soft Layer were pitched as being pretty much equal in pricing. When it comes to high-end VPS nodes, I've seen it so far to be more feesable to lease them, maybe on RTO, rather than buy hardware and rack it up so when I came to request a quote from the two providers, it seems to be that Layered Tech charge some what $800 more for the same configuration as Soft Layer. Who is actually worth the money in your opinion?
The quote:
Quote:
Dual Processor Quad Core Xeon 5335 2.00GHz (Clovertown) - 2 x 8MB cache 2 x 1.00TB SATA II 24 GB FB-DIMM Registered 533/667 100 Mbps Public & Private Ports Public Bandwidth 2000 GB Bandwidth Monitoring Host Ping Notification Email and Ticket Response Automated Notification Operating System CentOS 5 (64 bit) Primary IP Addresses: 1 IP Address Secondary IP Addresses: 4 IP Addresses Lockbox 1 GB Network IDS/IPS Protection Unlimited SSL VPN Users & 1 PPTP VPN User per account Nessus Vulnerability Assessment & Reporting Quantity: 1 Discounted Total: $599/month, $0 setup
For exactly the same quote, Layered Tech wanted $1,400 per month. Although I have no plans to go with either right now, who is actually worth the money?
I didn't even know about this company until I saw one of their PDU in somebody's cabinet in the datacenter.
They don't list any prices or vendors, I emailed them waiting for reply.
One thing that caught my eye was the number of additional outlets per strip. We never daisy chain out PDUs so even though we have the power to put more servers per circuit we never could. It has at least 3-4 more outlets than Raritan PX and APC, which means we can put 3-4 more servers per circuit.
How are their products? The look pretty robust from what I saw in the cabinet.
I've found an interesting offer from this provider. After doing some research I found one topic which didn't really describe the quality of their service.
I'm trying to find a bulletproof support hosting provider that will alowe me to install phplist and send high number of newsletters to customers. I have my dedicated SMTP servers... i just need some place to host my web sites and park my other domains....
and the hosting provider must not suspends my account for any complain form the 3rd party....
How much traffic can a typical $5/mo shared hosting account support?
A lot of them claimed "unlimited" bandwidth and storage. Of course there's no such thing as unlimited.
I have a site based on Python, Django, MySQL or Postgresql. It doesn't have any video or other bandwidth heavy elements, but the whole site is dynamic, each page takes about 5 to 10 DB query, 90% reads, 10% writes.
What kinds of traffic can a shared hosting account support for a site like that?
At stackoverflow.com, someone stated that a $5/mo shared hosting account can typically support 10-20,000 unique users per day or 100-200,000 pageviews/day. Does that sound about right?
Any recommendation for a good hosting company that'd suit my needs? My site will start small but hopefully will ramp up quickly. I'd like a hosting firm that can support that growth.
It's imperative for you to know that web host features does not just stop with Unilimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. There are other very salient features to which some people looking for a host provider have ignore, it is CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
You will not value the importance of a good customer support until you start having problems which you want resolved in the shortest possible time. For some host providers this is like telling them to do the impossible.
It is sad that some of the so-called reputable host don't even have a ticket system not to talk of an on-line chat system where you can ask questions and receive answers in real time.
So, for those of you that are new to hosting or want to change your host, then you had better look for a host that offers good customer support either by Chat, ticket system or forum.
I'm needing to move one of my own websites, as the current shared host doesn't provide curl or full PDO support.
I'm tempted by the basic fasthosts linux home package, as I've used them before for a client, but I'm not sure if they're shared hosting includes curl/PDO support (I know their dedicated servers do, as I've just checked).
I've just sent an email to fasthosts asking, but are there any other hosts I should be looking at?
The site's nothing critical, with pretty low bandwidth needs, but the current hosts uptime isn't anything to shout about.
There are a lot of people whether their web hosting providers are good or not. After months of purchasing their web hosting account they might discover that their web hosting providers are so bad. Therefore, you’d better checking your web hosting provider.
One of the most important parts related to web hosting is the supporting services. So when you purchase a new web hosting account, try to check their supporting services. Try to ask them a few technical questions even you don’t have a problem. It just tests their supporting quality. How do they answer your questions quickly? Ask yourself this question. If they spend a lot of time “two or three days”, it might be poor service. For this situation, my advice is to cancel your account. The most of web hosting companies offer 30 days money back and try another web hosting company.
There are many supports kinds:
* HelpDesk * Live chat * Supporting via Phone * Supporting forum * And so on
This is all about the supporting part for your web hosting provider. So this is very important to check this service.
The Web hosting industry embraced the benefits of outsourcing to maximize the profits.
Web hosting being a competitive business, it is imperative that any and every benefit that comes on the way is picked and used to its maximum. There are many companies which provide support for hosting companies.
Outsourcing support saves the Web hosting company a lot of money and time. Web hosting companies can focus on selling hosting plans while the outsourced support for the Web host can provide quality support to the customers and manage servers 24/7. The Web hosting company does not need to hire many experts who will check the overall quality of delivery to their existing customers and technical experts for managing/monitoring the server. Top outsourcing companies that provide support for Web hosts have an internal QA team that takes care of the quality.
In Web hosting industry it is critical that the servers are up and running all the time. It is expensive to have technical support staff on a 24/7 basis, add to it the cost of buying the software to help you manage and monitor the servers. Most of the companies that provide outsourced support for hosting companies have a complete setup needed for 24 X 7 support to customers like having 24/7 phone support, managing and monitoring servers and helpdesk support system. These things in mere infrastructure will increase costs of a web host, add to this the time needed to manage this setup and people. Hence outsourcing your hosting support is a smarter way.
I'm currently with hostgator and bought website which uses LayerPanel control panel under another hosting provider which down always, and hostgator not support that panel only CPANEL, please advice any reliable hosting like hostgator which can support LayeredPanel with live chat support 24/7 as it's at HG.
My current host has just shafted me by discontinuing PDO_MYSQL support on my setup without warning (my sites now don't work and they won't do anything to rectify it).
I found another host and asked sales about the PHP version and whether PDO_MYSQL was available and was given mis-information, so I'm now cancelling the service I signed up for this morning.
I need:
PDO_MYSQL (most people only support PDO with sqllite!). PHP 5.2*+ Ability to install pear modules.
Well almost a year ago I came here and read lots of posts, asked lots of questions and settled on getting my two servers from LayeredTech.
When I bought both my servers, they were from their clearance rack because although my sites were pushing terabyte level traffic at the time, their CPU/etc needs were fairly low. Of course how these things tend to go, I am looking at needing a third server this summer. Time to look at raising prices I guess
One thing that people seemed to complain about with Layeredtech at that time was the "lack of support". I personally have not seen that over this time I have been with them. For example...
Last Monday SMARTD reports an hard drive error. I submit a ticket and with in 30 mins we were scheduling a down time with them so they could test the drive. They ran the test and it came back with "one or more errors" so they offered to replace the drive and reload. I decided to take advantage of a forced down time to remove that horrid piece of junk called PLESK and asked for a fresh install of the OS, with nothing (I have see the grass on the control panel side, and its not greener!) and while we are at it toss more ram in the machine.
So they offered to bring up a complete new server and run them parallel for a few days!
Which is exactly the choice I opt'd for. I am happy to say we completed that move last Saturday and my users are much happier with the server speed increase (from doubling the RAM and removing PLESK as the rest of the hardware was basically the same)
I would and do happily recommend them to anyone that needs a unmanaged server. Their ticket response time has always been top notch, and other then this drive failure, we have had no hardware issues. Both our servers are in teh Savvis data center, if that means anything.
