KnownHost.com - Honest Review And Experience
Mar 18, 2008
I recently transferred to Knownhost after my previous host ask me to leave their server because my websites eats 35% of their system, not the bandwidth and not the diskspace but the CPU. I have several clients running SMF forums with less than a hundred users at the same time.
After days of searching through the pages of WHT and through the suggestions of other members for me to get a VPS, I signed up with Knownhost.com. That is after asking them a lot of question regarding VPS and their packages, AUP and TOS. Pre-sale is fast, chat support answered all my questions with precise information and the same goes with their sales when I emailed them.
Since I don't know anything about VPS, I asked a lot of question ranging from stupid to more stupid question. Should I delete incremental backup or full backup ? what is Apache backup ? Can I delete Apache archive ? Can my client run mod-rewrite ? What is wrong with their .htaccess ? What DNS entry should I change for wildcard? What should I do to fix system resource problem as it reached 35.92% ? As you will see, all this questions and the other questions that I throwed to them were answered in a very professional and precise manner. I must admit that I am really impressed on how they handled my problems and how they explain everything that I need to know. This may seem small issues to others, but for a newbie on VPS like me it is a great help. They are not just simply efficient, but also very effective in delivering the solution. All the help that I need was given to me to run the VPS from scratch, me having no knowledge about it. Honestly, at first I thought they were trained to be polite, but it seems the support are really polite in nature. Not like other support I encountered from other host that were trained to be polite yet their evil nature goes out when you asked something unusual and off their manual and they can't solve it. It's been more than a week now, but everything is running smoothly. I may have had a few downtime but loss is immaterial for everything is being resolved in reasonable time. Reasonable in a way that minor problem are resolved instantly while major problems are carefully evaluated to give not just work around but rather a solution to the cause of the problem. I experienced this when they fixed the problem of my PHP configuration that conflicts with the memory requirement of SMF and also regarding the wildcard DNS that my client need.
I can't tell how long Knownhost.com support will be like this, but as long as I got the same quality of service from them, then I will stay.
I saw more than 35% usage from virtouzzo panel and it is indeed a spike.
In the event that the quality of support change, I'll look for this thread and post it here.
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Jun 30, 2008
Length of time: I've been with KH in some form or another for several months. (Since March or so of this year)
Account Type: I initially signed up for a reseller account. After I continued to be absolutely amazed with the speed/uptime I took advantage of one of their promotions and sprung for a VPS to do my software developing on. Just recently I upgraded my reseller account to a 2nd VPS, which I use as my production server.
Speed/Uptime: These guys must use top of the line servers because every one I've been on has been astoundingly fast and had little to no downtime.
I receive weekly uptime reports from a couple of different monitors and have yet to see one dip below 99.98%.
My development VPS currently shows uptime at 46 days + The last VPS host I used struggled to reach 21 days
Customer Service/Support: This is what helps set KH apart from "the other guys". Sales and billing are usually answered within an hour or so during business hours. Support is truly 24/7 and is generally answered within 1/2 hour in most cases...even if I mark it as low priority and tell them that my question isn't urgent!
These guys have truly gone out of their way to work with me, which (IMO) is something you really don't see very often. Some providers will do what you ask but provide curt replies that almost make you wonder if you're talking to a machine. I've yet to have a response like that from anyone at KH. Even if it's just "hey I need to elevate this ticket so you can get the most accurate answer", every tech has been courteous and professional.
So, hats off to KnownHost If you're like me and would rather
= Focus more on what your site is doing than the behind the scenes admin stuff
= Know that you will get prompt, courteous, and professional support when you need it (and never feel like a dope for asking!)
= Be on a reseller/VPS account that you can count uptime by months instead of days
Then I would definitely recommend you give KH a whirl!
I hope to revisit this thread in a few months with an update akin to "Still going strong!" VPS info has been submitted to mods for verification of my account with KH
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Jan 23, 2009
I want to know if there are any known honest review sites which contains real feedback from users and unbiased reviews?
Besides WHT and WHREVIEWS.COM.
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Feb 20, 2008
It was 11 months ago to this day that I first signed up with Rackspace. I can honestly say that while the fee's, some of you may claim to be high (and well, I guess they are more than the average) the service and professionalism provided by Rackspace is unparalleled.
In the 11 months of hosting my server inside Rackspace, I have had my primary hard drive blow out. Now when this happened, the raid configuration switched over to the second / mirror hard drive, meaning absolutely no downtime during this event. It was suggested to me, by Rackspace, to use a raid configuration just in case something like this should occur. Well am I glad I listened! They had the primary raid device (hot swappable, again their suggestion) replaced within an hour – all of this without a second of downtime and without any need (although I did since I am pedantic) to call them – they were on it!
The only other time I experienced any service / availability related problems was when they had some sort of electrical fault and the two backup generators failed to start. This was completely out of the blue and obviously someone messed up big time. The server was down for a good 8 hours or so, and the CEO of Rackspace apologized so many times, I actually felt sorry for him and the entire team... They also credited my account for any downtime, as per the agreement we have together.
Team M8 (the support team assigned to me) and my account manager, Ginger Lee, deserve a big thumbs up! They always make me feel welcome when I call, have always been professional and most importantly, interested to hear what I have to say (and act on it accordingly).
About the only disappointment I have faced with throughout this ordeal, is that I was under the impression that because I have “Platinum” monitoring and support, which as I understand it, unless things have changed, is the best support – that if I needed something installed, that was all a-ok. Initially, it was... and the team always worked with me to install any service a growing business needs.
At some point, not long ago, however, I asked to have a certain PHP module installed to allow compilation / uploading of video files and I was actually charged an hourly fee for this. Normally I would appreciate the time in doing this, and understand a fee... however given they set a precedence and expectation with me from previous encounters and given my understanding there of the “Platinum” support offered, I was somewhat shocked... I did pay the fee for these things to be installed without mentioning this... but am still dumbfounded, I guess, as to why I had to pay (given I pay on an on-going basis for the Platinum support, which ain't exactly cheap).
I have only ever once spoke with someone (a receptionist / level one representative) and received pathetic attitude – this was during the power issues as mentioned above, and as of such have affected the break-down below.
Here is a break-down of the service / support. In fairness to my team, I have graded the teams efforts and Rackspace's as a whole, separately. In my opinion, the team that works with me, including my account manager, deserve recognition. So thank you, guys and girls, for doing a wonderful job.
TEAM:
Willingness: 10/10
Professionalism: 10/10
Duty of Care: 10/10
Expertise: 10/10
Reaction Time: 10/10
RACKSPACE:
Willingness: 10/10
Professionalism: 9/10
Duty of Care: 9/10
Expertise: 10/10
Reaction Time: 10/10
Uptime: 9/10
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Nov 14, 2008
Ive been hosted with Tmzhosting from the past 5 months and it has been the best hosting experience I have ever had with any host! Words that perfectly describe Tmzhosting:
Fast,Reliable and Rock Solid! They won't vanish over night with your website.. They are simply the best hosting I have come across so far Ive used - Hostgator, HostMonster, BlueHost and several other highly repped web hosts but my experience with Tmzhosting has been the best and the smoothest!
I bought Tmzhosting in a promo which they had about 5 months back and I'm still hosted with that promo.. Never thought about changing my host or complaining about slow speeds!
They never gave me a chance to complain. Cpanel 11(Latest), Fantastisco Delux, Site Builder, Free/Instant Setup, AwStats, Unlimited SQL/Domains come along for the most affordable prices ever! No Slow Speeds! Special proxy server for proxy clients! What else? A 30 day money back guarantee(I bet you won’t need this!) and Monthly Payments Facility! What else do you need?
You can try Hostgator, Hostmonster, BlueHost, DreamHost, Servage etc but when your tired finding a host and you give up, switch over to TmzHosting… Or Switch over to TmzHosting tomorrow and save your Money and Time!
My overall rating would be a 10/10!
Some screenshots which I took when my blog got sudden visitors:
[url]
[url]
Even after this, Tmzhosting dint go down and accepted my site since this was a temporary Stumble effect!
Tmzhosting - The Best Web Hosting!
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Jan 21, 2009
I order a plan at Manadospace.com in 12.1.2008, they have 12 Day Money Back Guarantee,but when i ask for Money Back,they rufused!
In 12.18.2008,they mail me that I had been to move on new server with new quota for value hosting plan! But they deleted all my files without any back up.
In 1.4.2009,they close my account without any note or mail.I contact them and they tell me that because my main domain doesn't use they host,and it violate their TOS ,so they close my accout and delete my all files.But I can't find any words like "main domain can't use another host" at [url]termofservice.html in 1.5.2009.
now they modify point 11 of there tos,but I have a copy of there tos in 1.5.2009.
my site :[url
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Nov 27, 2008
What you guys think about liquidweb hosting?
how fast the speed is? i have doubt because when i visit their main page are slow but i read some feedback its good
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Jun 12, 2008
After trying out GoDaddy shared web hosting for 2 months now, I am confident to give you a good review.
Purpose
I got Web Hosting from GoDaddy in order to get ASP.NET. I looked at other hosts but they are just more expensive. So I decided to go with GoDaddy since they provide quite a lot of storage space, bandwidth and of course ASP, ASP.NET 1, and 2, IIS 7 and quite cheap as well. Since HostGator didn't have that option, I didn't have any other choice.
Server Speed & Uptime
I monitor my website using SiteUptime, and there have been 0 downtimes in two months. Not sure how closely SiteUptime monitors a website, but that's what the stats read.
Server speed is very good. For example file upload/download speed is good and doesn't lag.
Scripting Support
Since I chose Windows Hosting, it comes with ASP.NET support, and the ability to create Virtual Directories via the mini web based IIS Manager.
I was actually surprised to see this but they also have PHP 5 . On their windows web hosting package they don't advertise PHP, but after testing a simple file I was just surprised and happy .
Data Base
They give you MS SQL Databases, Access and MySQL. What I really like in their database management area is, it gives you examples of different connectionstrings for your database.
Support
It usually takes 2-3 hours to process each ticket. The support representatives are kind and really helpful.
In a nutshell, GoDaddy really surprised me with their web hosting features, support and just wow .
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Nov 9, 2009
This is an 11 day review of KnowHost.com's Managed VPS (VS2 package). As is customary, my site is MachinaDei.com [url] to verify I am on their servers.
Based off my questions here and at another forum, I choose KnownHost.com.
[url]
I am a VPS newbie and have little experience beyond shared hosting on Linux and Windows. So I wanted a managed VPS and KnownHost.com had very quick and well explained responses to my pre-sales inquiries.
It took 3 1/5 hours to get my VPS account from purchase. Which is within the 3-4 hour estimate they state on their site.
Setup was easy, especially since I have never setup a VPS before.
Since purchasing the VPS account, I have been tinkering around on the VPS and have installed Wordpress MU to test. KnownHost.com support has responded to all my questions quickly. Only once did I put it at "High" and got a response in 10 minutes (better than I expected). One of my questions was about setting up my own backup and transferring it to another server. I set the priority at low, figuring I would have a response back later that day or the next as it was not that big of a deal. I sent the message at 1:39pm Sunday and had a response 20 minutes later.
Before I started writing this review, I sent a message asking how to change a regular account to reseller on low priority. I sent my support request at 4:32pm (eastern) and got the response at 4:43pm. I would have been happy with a response in a couple hours. That wasn't to test response speed, I just didn't know the answer...
None of my support request have been tough questions, just newbie questions. So I can not attest to what happens if there is a major issue.
A friend who works with a server farm at a data center tested a 10meg download file for me and got 1.32 - 1.35 mb/s for download speed. Not sure if that is maximum, but good enough for my use.
I was worried that 384meg ram would not run well with CPanel, but so far it has been pretty good. I tend to run at 35-40% ram use on a fairly quite site (high traffic sites are not transferred yet). So figure that is about idle for the VS2 package. I put a PHP script (PHPSysInfo) up to see what my use was at both my shared hosting account (1and1 - stop laughing) and the VPS. Pretty amazed at how heavily used the shared account was! I took a few screen shots of both servers and put in a post on my site.
[url]
My only critique is the support section needs more information for a newbie. So far that is the only issue I have run into... They do have a good forum to use, but I like reading documentation when possible before asking questions.
So I will give two thumbs up to KnownHost.com. If you are considering a managed VPS, I do suggest you give them a consideration. Especially if you are going to need support.
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Dec 5, 2008
This is a two month review of KnownHost.
We moved from FutureHosting to KnownHost after we suffered slow server responses over prolonged period of time. Although I had read many good reviews, I contacted KnownHost and asked a few questions of my own and received prompt, friendly and detailed responses that gave me confidence to proceed. The signup was quick and efficient and all the server details, control panel logins and other important stuff was supplied with no fuss or confusion.Setup and Support
For our site to run we require some extra libraries, I raised a low priority ticket outlining what was needed, it was responded to within 10 minutes and all our requests were completed 40 mins later. There was no back and forth required to get this done and once completed they also provided full paths to the installations without needing us to prompt for the information. Sometimes the small things can make a big difference in your hosting experience and they seem to go that extra mile to help out.
I transferred the majority of our sites from the previous hosts but asked Knownhost to handle our main site. Since this is a dynamic site they arranged a convenient time with us and begun the transfer exactly on time. During the transfer we were kept informed of the progress and the whole process was completed professionally and with no stress or fuss. It was by far the easiest and most efficient site move I have experienced.Server Speed
After speaking directly with KnownHost about our sites and their plans, on their advice we chose a package with less resources than we had at our previous host. KnownHost did not attempt to up sell and instead encouraged us to try it out first and only add to the package if it was needed. Our sites have been running faster than with the previous hosts, the server is more responsive, control panels load instantly and server loads are always extremely low. You would expect some occasional load spikes on a VPS but we have not seen any at all. Up Time
As far as I can tell (we don’t have any external site monitoring) there has been no downtime since moving. Our main site runs a busy vBulletin community (usually around 150-200 members and guests active at any one time) and our members are very quick to complain if it’s slow or not available. Since moving to Knownhost our members have not had cause to complain and our life as server admins has become considerably easier.General thoughts
Trying to sum up the KnownHost experience is quite easy and can be done in one word…boring. Once you have everything setup and to your liking, which quite frankly didn’t take long or cause any stress, then its just a case of paying your monthly bill and getting on with your own business, the server just runs without any issues. We have been there for 2 months now and although have submitted less than 5 tickets, each one has been responded to and completed to our total satisfaction by friendly, efficient and knowledgeable staff. With their well setup and maintained servers that are obviously not oversold, fast, courteous and knowledgeable support plus fair prices for an excellent service, it would seem that they will have us as customers for a very long time.Summary
Presales response quality/speed – 10/10
Signup process/speed – 10/10
Support Knowledge – 10/10
Support Speed – 10/10
Server Speed – 10/10
Costs – 10/10
I realise its early days yet but first experiences counts too. I’ll update the thread again in 6 months time.
Sites hosted on the server submitted for admin verification.
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Sep 25, 2008
I've been with KnownHost for a little over six months now, and figured it's time to throw in another thumbs up review for them and their superior support.
I signed up with them on March 12 after getting tired of dealing with suspensions at my previous host, and setup for a new VPS-Lca was done in five hours.
Being new to VPS, I of course had no clue what I was doing, and made some changes to the firewall in Virtuozzo. Ooops, can't login to cPanel now. Sent a support ticket in, and 11 minutes later, the issue was fixed. Without them even laughing at me.
Next support request was for site migration. They had it done within an hour, after answering questions about the process that I had, since I wanted to transfer an addon domain as the main domain (couldn't be done that way they informed me).
So, the site transferred in its entirety, and I immediately had problems. The main one being that the old user name transferred over, and I didn't want to use it (trying to forget the entire experience at my previous host). Anyway, it was now giving me ownership errors. I started to change the ownership one by one, then asked support if there was a way to do a batch change. I'd have done it myself, but those wonderful people did it for me in minutes. Changed the database, etc.
But then I encountered a weird problem. Couldn't see any new posts or comments. Turns out some of the tables didn't transfer the first time around. Known Host went back in and transferred the missing tables from the old host for me.
This entire process took two days, with them staying on it the whole time. At the end they even went in and corrected the permissions on the WordPress files, that had changed in the process. I daresay few hosts would be so good as to do that.
Next request (low priority) was asking about eAccelerator, Within 30 minutes they wrote back to tell me they'd installed it. Another low priority request was asking what version of Mod Security was installed. Within 10 minutes I had the answer, plus some helpful hints on it!
A more urgent request had to do with my memory usage going high. I requested to upgrade my plan (which I'd been thinking of doing anyway). On a weekend, they upgraded me ASAP, with no downtime. That helped, but not to the extent I thought, so support went right in and looked around and fixed a problem with max connections, which was at the default unlimited.
Since then, I discovered the offending plugin I was using and removed it completely. And the VPS has been humming along without a hiccup ever since.
So, if you're looking for fast (and knowledgeable) support that goes beyond what anyone can expect, Known Host is the only choice. I can't say enough good things about them, and in fact have recommended them to others in other forums.
The only extremely minor problem I had was with billing last month, when I failed to receive my invoice. I did get a reminder, unlike other hosts that may suspend you for missing the payment. So it wasn't even a problem. I just have to remember to check my account in case the invoice again disappears into the etherworld.
In conclusion:
Speed: 10/10
Support: 12/10
Billing: 9 1/2/10
They are top notch in every way.
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Jun 17, 2008
I've been with Knownhost for 1 year (and a month or so). In that time, I've purchased a second (and soon a third) VPS with them, and moved most of my sites there.
They are fantastic.
The support is great, even for complex tickets where there is confusion, they are patient and generous. The uptime has been excellent, and the servers are fast. I have total confidence in Knownhost ... and I've not felt that before for any other provider.
I reccommend them totally.
I still wish they'd update their website though - I don't think it reflects how awesome they are.
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Nov 23, 2008
I have been with KnownHost for just over 2 weeks now and am EXTREMELY happy with the services provided. I recommend them to anyone who cares about customer service/uptime.
The basic VPS that I'm on has been powerful, no issues at all, and support is extremely quick. The reason I am writing this quick review is because I just submitted a support ticket at 1:40AM on a Sunday (Pacific time) and received a response at 1:55AM. When these guys say 24/7 support, they mean it.
I will try to do another review in a few months, but am extremely happy so far. Try them out if you've been searching for a VPS provider - you get what you pay for with KH.
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Aug 25, 2008
The Past Month (23 of July) i purchased two Mini VPS to check KnownHost Performance.
Great.
Yesterday I Begin to think in move some VPS with them, and i enter to check my VPS, and Are DOWN. No Notice emails, no nothing.
I Write to Support, and some minutes later they pass me to billing. Then i realize Immediatly the problem. One Partner of me, is a verified Paypal SPANIARD with vacation in Mexico, she Pay the Two Invoices, and Maybe Paypal reverse the payment.
I understand. Is ok ...
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Sep 20, 2008
I want to share my experience with KnownHost. It's has been great.
I jumped to KH in January 2008, first invoice #22530.
Actually, this is not my VPS, but its my friend's. But, since my friend wants me to manage the VPS, I have to deal with the VPS thing. And, this is my first VPS.
Before with KH, my friend was with a shared hosting, and it was DreamHost. My friend fell in love with the huge space and bandwith (at that time).
She only has two types of websites: blog (powered by WordPress, and small forum). For the next few months, her community was growing very fast, and she started to get problems.
She got her account suspended once (because she used too many resources). Also, sometime it was soooo slow to open the site. So, after having a discussion, she told me that she wanted to MOVE. At first, when I looked at the site stats, I told her that if she moved to another shared hosting, she will be suspended. She needed more than a shared hosting (since she only had small budget). After that, we finally decided that: yes, we needed a VPS.
So, I jumped to WHT, and found some alternatives. We need to have a managed VPS. After searching and narrowing some alternatives, we got some options: KnownHost, SerVint, Dotable. They got many positive reviews. Sometime, I was thinking that choosing a webhosting might be tricky. Because we did not want to get suspended by DreamHost, we need to get a VPS ASAP. And, we went to KnownHost.
The price might not be the cheapest, but the packages are looks great. We finally ordered the VPS Ltx (256 RAM, 10 GB space, and 200 GB bandwidth).
I got the VPS login detail on 25 Jan 2008. And start moving all files and database. Everything looks good, and I was lucky all the process was finished before our account was suspended. In the next few days, our site completely transfered to KH. All good.
On February 2, 2008, I sent a ticket about ImageMagick, and some other questions (ticket #31817). The ticket was answered and solved in 25 minutes. Great!
On February 5, 2008, I needed to have ionCube PHP Loader and eAccelerator for my VPS (ticket #32043). I got everything solved in 51 minutes.
After that, when I need some issues (even small issues), I contact the support team (not via live chat), I always got the answer quickly. I am happy, my friend is happy, our community is happy!
After around six months, we ugpraded our RAM to 512. The process was also simple. So, here I am, almost 8 months with KH. Satisfied!
I will report this post to moderator to confirm my domain hosted at KH.
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Oct 4, 2009
I had decided to transfer 1 server into Hivelocity. It was a low $200s server with Hivelocities Platinum magagement plan. I was attracted to the pricing and the options available to configure my server how I wanted. I also liked the fact that they are somewhat local to where I live.
I had placed the server order with Drew. The server was delivered to me in 4 days, I was not in any rush so I did not mind. We started the migration process and went with out a problem until we went live. According to the tech the hard drive cable was bad and was replaced within 2 hours. These things happen and I still was not upset.
I was thinking to take advantage of the annual pricing offered and bring over the other servers until one morning I get flooded with phone calls chats and emails. I immediately try to log in the server to no avail so I contact Hivelocity. I was then told to contact the abuse department, well the abuse department does not take phone calls so then I was to told to log in a ticket.
What had happened was 1 of the hundreds of accounts hosted on the server recieved a copywright complaint and the server would not go back online until deleted and a ticket respond. I always comply with any complaint however I would appreciate at least a few hours to resolve, rather them an immediate disconnection. When you sell shared hosting you will always have a few accounts that are bad. No hosting company is immune to this. The server went back online 2 hours later.
Similar scenarios happened 2 more times with excessive down time in the first month that I was with them. Needless to say after talking several times with the GM Steve, I learned that he promises you one thing and either does another thing or does nothing as promised. For ex: will call you or will give a few hours to resolve any future complaints.
To compile further worries I learned that Hivelocity was terminating servers with out allowing transfer, including one host that was in business over 10 years. I do not know the non-bias details of those scenarios but I do know those things do not happent at the Planet, Softlayer or any other major datacenter, otherwise it would have been posted all over the net as was with Hivelocity.
In closing, my impression of the place was that their servers are ok, the bandwith is a bit spotty, the techs are ok, albeit one being a smart ass, the GM is a great speaker and the abuse guy is trigger happy. I do love the Hivelocity banners though.
It's too bad as I thought I had found a company that can save me alot of money however it ended costing me much more with loosing good clients.
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Oct 7, 2009
is there any review or experience available for www.verio.com
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May 12, 2008
Is there any reviews or anyone with experience that can tell wether GPLHost are reliable or not?
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Aug 30, 2007
We bought a VU200 VPS two days ago since we want to have a server in a stable environment mainly for our web site and email. We run a small Information Security consulting firm in the Silicon Valley.
Our experience with Zone.net has been a total disaster!
Zone.net installed a very bare CentOS 4; when we tried to use yum to install Dovecot IMAP we got a series of errors due to some missing libraries! Not a good sign. We contacted customer support and after they complained that this is an unmanaged server (like it is our fault they don't know how to install a stable system) they eventually agreed to install imap for us. If they installed a solid system in the first place we wouldn't have this problem . After we received an email from them saying that imap was installed, we login into the system and sure enough imap was not intalled! What a joke.
We then decided to reinstall the VPS from the Virtuozzo panel, since we figured out that these people at Zone.net are incompetents. The new installed system was even more bare: no yum , no imap, nothing. We called support again and ask to have access to the CentOS distribution via NFS for example. We don't want necessarily to install yum or other packages using rpmfinder, which would not be very clean; nor we want to have to upload a ton of rpm packages to the server, which would be a huge waste of our time. We talked to Jeffrey about it and he came up with a bunch of excuses why this is not possible, and why it is the way it is since this is a an unmanaged system. It was clear from the conversation that this yahoo is incompetent and he is just a button pusher. Furthermore he was unwilling to help whatsoever.
We have taken this matter to our credit card company and have them reverse the charges that Zone.net posted on our account and barred them to post any future charge on our account.
We strongly recommend not to use Zone.net!
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Nov 2, 2009
this is my experience with Maximum-Hosting.org.
I went there for the low prices to startup my Shoutcast station. At $3 a month, it sounded too good to be true. I got my service, and the owner, seemed like a nice guy. He was very helpful, and was eager to help me get started. This was back in March. The first half of my stent there was great, however, in the last half, downtimes and even a data loss was getting on my nerves. I saw some really personal issues and arguments in the IRC server about the owner and staff, and even some back talk and really personal stuff that I wish I never had heard.
Because of the downtime, the owner did provide me with some free service and features. In these times, I was itching to leave, but the owner lured me back in with something better.
In this time, the service was 'okay', no real big complaints, I was even promoted to an IRCop, on the server.
Four things happened.
1) There was an incident in the chatroom with a regular joke we have done may times was taken really the wrong way. (I did not use my IRCop powers when this happened)
2) After a long outage (last night from 'this' post date), I was the only human on the irc server. In order for me to ask the owner what happened, I silenced a eggdrop bot by banning it from the main room. This was so I can get a new message notification when a real person enters the room. The bot posted every 2min, and it was at 2am in the morning.
3) I actually found a pretty big security hole in the control panel, the owner thanked me yesterday, and was furious the next.
4) because of the top three things, the owner basically got extremely mad and took away my IRCops.
Those 4 things basically were the last pieces of trash I could take. Yes, I forgot to unban the bot I mentioned in #2, but is that a good reason to get me out? Tonight, after a somewhat heated discussion with the owner, my account was instantly closed, all http/ftp pipes closed. I am very lucky I saw the owner start to fall into this cycle he seems to do, I had a full backup of the space I had.
In a nut shell, I would highly advise people NOT to use Maximum-Hosting. If you want low prices, frequent downtime, and the possibility your data could be gone in an instant, this is the host for you!
I can only hope no one else falls into the nightmare I have had to put up with for cheap hosting.
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Jun 23, 2009
Fivebean.com VPS -
[url]
Although the domain was registered in 4/15/08, I could find next to nothing on WHT or the ‘net in general in the way of reviews on FiveBean. Saw a lot of specials and things they have been running off and on at different venues and boards, but couldn’t find a review to save my life. I did search pretty thoroughly. No web cache on web.archive.org either.
So, I’ll be the first to post one (that I know of), with a special they are offering, it’s very affordable, if the service turns out to be good enough, then I have another node at a great price J. The more, the merrier. Win / Win 4 all.
(FiveBean also offers shared hosting, so not exclusively a VPS provider.)
Hardware nodes –
From their site:
“VPS Nodes are built with Intel Core2 Quad Processors, Premium SATA Disks and RAID Protection powered by CentOS 5.x and MoxieVM. Each VPS server is backed up daily and we provide 2 full backups to our customers.”
Although I never rely on provider’s backups, it’s good to see them offered as standard. Could come in handy.
They offer 5 plans; I ordered the middle-of-the road “Starter”. All VPSs appear to be OpenVZ based.
Ordered Plan -
512M / 1G burst
40G HDD
450G BW
1 IP
CentOS 5 for initial load
Initial order, small issue -
Placed order at about midnight, got my welcome email at 7:40 AM.
One issue was, I did not receive any emails from their ordering system, other than the PayPal-originating receipt. The emails were listed under the Client Area, so I still had access to read. Since I own and admin my own mail servers, I checked logs -
Emails from ordering system were sent from a non-FQDN domain.
From SMTP logfile:
RECEIVED: MAIL FROM:<fivebean@kona> SIZE=3560
Mail server rejected because of the incomplete domain.
This appeared to be an issue with the sign-up process only. All support ticket replies came from a FQDN. I described this problem in a support ticket, curios to see if they really do look @ and fix. Maybe on my second order?
Everything initially ordered during the process was delivered, with no follow-ups required to correct anything. That's a little rare, from my experiences.
They offer online chat support, but have not caught it online as of yet, although I haven’t checked before 9PM on any given day, so not a fair eval on that aspect. FWIW.
- On to the goodies -
Control panel -
Apparently, FiveBean previously used HyperVM, but has since disabled and rolled out their own self-spun VM manager, "moxieVM". It's a simple, yet effective, web interface that allows me to do everything I need to, and everything works. That's always a good plus!
moxieVM control panel contains the following:
VPS list facility / user profile control / pass reset
VPS Controls -- Reboot / Start / Stop / Rebuild OS / Set Reverse DNS
Report (simple) shows -- OS currently installed / Monthly BW Usage total / Current Memory Usage / Action Log of previous control commands
Noteworthy - when you select "reboot / start / stop" there is no confirmation, action is queued and executed immediately. Good info to know.
Rebuilds -
FiveBean offers 13 OS rebuild option w/ 6 Flavors - Ubuntu / Suse / Slackware / Fedora / Debian / CentOS, 32/64bit in most.
Reload of OS (From CentOS 5 to Fedora 10) took about 4 minutes. Note - keep your original root login password! On OS reload, the pass is reset to the original you receive in your VPS welcome email, NOT whatever you have currently changed it to. I can see this being an issue if it’s been a while since you have reloaded and end up digging out the old email. A little different than HyperVM.
Network -
Ping times are consistently 15-16ms from/to Austin, 21ms from/to Atlanta, 12-18ms from/to Kansas City, MO. Traceroute to node (69.162.118.226) puts them behind Limestone Networks in Dallas, Tx.
One thing I can report, their network seems to be very peppy. I've had a hard time hitting anything from / to the VPS with more than 20ms. I haven't seen a 30ms yet. From anywhere. An I have VPSs from coast to coast.
VPS / Initial Order-
Hostname was set properly right off the bat, both initially and on OS reloads.
Reverse DNS PTR self-set worked without having to put in a ticket, a first for sure! I just entered the rDNS PTR I required, waited about an hour, and it was set and propagated, ready to go. No muss, no fuss.
Although I haven't put any load on the system, the CLI is responding very fast, and pings / traces / nslookups are very quick (as stated above).
The only issue at all so far was the aforementioned order response email non-FQDN flurb. But, stuff happens. Small beans (pun intended).
AUP
No porn, excessive violence, hate, deception, illegal
IRC that causes no disturbances is allowed. I really prefer non-IRC networks, but they have a long lecture about it in the AUP, so it appears they watch activity pretty close.
Nuts n Bolts -
Benchmark
(benchmark is on newly loaded system, minimal install FC 10, no load)
------------------
INDEX VALUES
TEST BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 376783.7 11243614.3 298.4
Double-Precision Whetstone 83.1 1239.4 149.1
Execl Throughput 188.3 5574.6 296.0
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 2672.0 127493.0 477.1
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1077.0 48517.0 450.5
File Read 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 15382.0 803836.0 522.6
Pipe-based Context Switching 15448.6 509724.8 329.9
Pipe Throughput 111814.6 1790127.7 160.1
Process Creation 569.3 16151.2 283.7
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 44.8 1055.8 235.7
System Call Overhead 114433.5 1246883.8 109.0
=========
FINAL SCORE 270.6
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusions – so far, so good. I’m actually pretty impressed with everything I’ve seen up to this point. I’m planning on putting the server under load as a backend node of a busy website’s load balancer. I’ll post follow ups as we go along.
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Aug 5, 2008
I've been with Blurstorm for 2+ years and I can say alot of good thing about the company and support. I even gave them a 5 out of 5 of webhostingjury and went as far as to say I would give them 10 out of 5, so you can imagine how happy I WAS with their service until this past week.
I has been an absolute hell. First the server kept blocking my ip and locking my session, when I would try and upload files with filezilla. They suggested to try a different ftp software which I did and it worked. At first I thought it was my computer/isp/router, so I tried it from my friend computer, same thing. And by the way, I never had this problem before. So I didn't make a big deal out of it, even though I prefer filezilla.
Now a couple of days ago, seems every time I would browse the pages or try and use the admin section the site would go down, or at least that's what I thought. After sending 8 hours going back and forth with support(Robert) through their support ticket system, because there is not live chat, Robert tells me there is nothing else they can do because they dont see any errors happening and I would have to pay a 3rd party monitoring service to find out what the problem is.
I mean I completely understand that if they cant find the problem but the site was working couple of days ago and I havent done anything different, so something must of happened on their end. Also I uploaded the site onto a friends server with a different hosting company and the site works perfectly with no problems.
Now being left high and dry with no help from Blurstorm, I did a couple of more test and found out that the site was not down but was blocking my ip and locking my sessions and the only way around it was for to renew my ip and to try again, but that would only help me for a couple of mins before it locked it again. Again, I also tried it from my friends computer and same thing. So I know for a Fact that it has to be from Blurstorm's end. I told that the server was blocking my ip and locking my session and haven't heard from them for over 16 hours, which is horrible customer service compared to the way they were before.
The main reason I stayed with blurstorm was for their support and quick response and I've referred them a boat load of business, and this was not the first time i've had problems with the server and support but I didnt make a big deal out of it and from now on no more referrals.
Well there is my review, sorry it's a little lengthy but just wanted to give an indepth review.
Second part - need suggestions for new hosting
From what I've gathers from searching that are reliable
precision effect
jaguarpc
innohosting
which would you recommend from those or any others?
And my site is based on joomla 1.5 + virtuemart so it should work with it.
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Oct 4, 2008
I signed up for a reseller account about 2 weeks ago and i have to say it has been my worst online experience ever.
I purchased a reseller account for around $16. I paid instantly using paypal.
First problem:i didnt receive my account details.
So i opened a support ticket and i got a reply not too long after.
Second Problem: I was billed again for the first month!
I contacted them. Waited for a reply, but nothing. So i opened a paypal dispute... sure enough i got then finally got a reply.
They said it was a billing mistake since everything is automated.
Fair enough i thought, can you know refund the money?
I was told i would have to close the paypal dispute first. so i foolishly did. I replied again notifying them i had closed the dispute and asked them to begin my site transfer.
They replied and said that "Aimee" would issue a refund in a few hours and to provide ftp details so they could transfer site.
So i gave them my ftp details from my old host.
2 Days Pass: I contact them again asking for a update on the refund and transfer. They reply saying they cannot transfer file since it is 8GB. they tell me i have to upload it myself...and i notice no mention of the refund.
Next Day: i check to see if my domain name has been redirected, and i realize my iwhic account has been suspended.
I contact them again asking simply to refund my money. I then try to open the paypal dispute again but failed since i had closed it once.
After contacting paypal and emailing iwhic, i finally receive a response. i get $15.99 refunded. but i ask them when i will receive the rest of my money...no reply.
since then i have tried opening support tickets and i have tried emailing a few of the address i found on some forums. They are never on their live chat.
so much for "24x7 Support"
I wouldnt usually post these things on forums but i am hoping i will finally receive a reply. All i want is my money back.
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Sep 8, 2008
I'm a very small home-based start-up business that currently is having huge amounts of trouble with a webhost here in Vancouver. This webhost has been named recently on WHT as one to avoid. I never had a problem with them the whole 2 years that I only had a poster uploaded to this host. But as soon as I uploaded my first version of my site to this host, the problems came fast and furious. First it was not being able to log into the webmail to view any emails (which it should be known, I had only some test emails from my website forms). Then as of August 27, my site disappeared. I opened tickets. They closed them, saying problem solved. Problem was obviously not solved as I couldn't log onto Plesk, nor was my website visible to the world!
I didn't realize that website hosting was an unscrupulous business. Sigh. I've learned the hard way. I had paid a year in advance (in fact, think I was double billed to boot!). My .ca domain remains there currently as I search for a new webhost. I am loathe to mention the company although I'm sure a few can guess as I would like to recoup my domain as I have currently paid for advertising pointing to my website. All phone calls went unheeded (call centres in the US and elsewhere, even though these trained monkeys are told to say Vancouver).
Anyway, I have been lurking and reading and have been doing my due diligence; however, most reputable companies seem to be located back East. I have noted from all your posts that it would be better to have the data centre nearby.
I would like to support Canada; and in particular, Vancouver. Uptime and having a visible site is paramount to me...as is REAL technical support. I am not web-hosting savvy and I do not want to be taken advantage of again. I am interested in a shared web-hosting plan (I don't have any e-commerce or streaming video or any special needs...at the moment. My site isn't huge, but I can't check how much bandwidth or anything that I used because I can't log on...pretty minimal though).
I created my site from a Windows platform. Does this mean I need a Windows shared hosting plan?
Can anyone out there recommend a reputable HONEST Vancouver-based, Vancouver data centred webhost with very good technical support and excellent uptime?
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Jun 24, 2008
I am pretty tired of the constant interference and harassment from competitors that is almost encouraged by rediculous US laws.
I would love to find reliable hosting and a honest registrar outside of the United States/Canada/EU.
My needs are somewhat simple - I have my own server at the Planet right now but a reliable (not oversold) VPS would suit me just fine.
Price is not a huge issue providing the fees are justified by the services received.
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Oct 12, 2008
I've been a couple of months with KnownHost.com and I am very impressed. Their support was back in touch with me in minutes after e-mailing some initial questions about a new account. That was on a weekend at night. They moved my current site quickly. No down time that I can tell or have noticed. (I check my web site often which is how I caught that A Small Orange was having problems. They continue to be my backup host.)
So far, I think Known Host is worth considering if you're looking for good inexpensive web hosting. More to come.
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Oct 14, 2008
LiquidWeb or KnownHost?? Which one is better?
Which one is the better VPS provider? LiquidWeb or KnownHost?
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Feb 5, 2009
although i had some doubts on wiredtree in a sales chat, i went with knownhosts for the simple fact of quality of my sales chat.
i know this might be might dumb but when you say yep, i kind of think only kids say stuff like that. or i might think that is only a lazily response for some serious queries. this is one thing i got with my wiredtree chat. dumb i know but working with kids like that is a total turn off for me. i take my online business seriously so i hope my hosting provider does the same as i depend on them. the other thing i noticed with wiredtree is their slow response to questions which tell me the guy was focused on other stuff. this may be harsh but when you compare the likes of knownhosts, i was surprised by the pro answers and fast response on each chat question.
as for price, i think wiredtree is double what knownhost charges. as the economy sours, my $ mean everything to me. their current promo is pretty good to.
from this site, both providers look awesome but i thought i would go with knownhost. if things fail, there is always wiredtree which sounds really fine to.
i thought i would type this out as zac was looking for reviews on why i might go with someone else but does not mean i won't be a future customer. i just think knownhost was a little more impressive to me at first glance.
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Feb 7, 2009
Can anyone suggest which VPS provider to choose for between the two?
HawkHost's 40% off is really cool and offers lot more than knownhost. However, I really do not want it to be a decision factor and need a quality VPS with least problems and downtime.
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Dec 23, 2008
I am considering both WiredTree and KwnownHost at the moment and frankly I was leaning towards WT for I have yet to find a -ve comment about them. KH also has a lot of +ve reviews but I have not researched them as thoroughly as I did with WT to be honest. The only thing bugging me with KH is the pricing as they are more expensive.
Another reason I am drawn to WT is that they offer dedicated servers and that's important since it's a logical step in the expansion path (VPS -> Hybrid -> Dedi) especially since I am going to run a resource intensive app on the server.
I found a couple of comments in this thread interesting and I'd really appreciate if anyone who has had experience with them could provide some more insight.
[url]
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Apr 7, 2008
I am new to VPS. I have little more than 4 years experience with shared hosting. I always wanted to switch to VPS but always tentative since VERY EXPENSIVE for me since I wanted fully managed VPS and I couldn't pay more than 30 dollars (including cpanel)...
The reason I wanted to switch to VPS was because I wanted to start my own mailing service (not much but around 500 users).. But no shared hosting would allow me for it.
Otherwise, I was happy with shared hosting with p4host initially and then hostgator.
I was keeping an eyes on KnownHost specials for almost a year but a month ago, I saw 75% discount on signup and 15% lifetime discount. And while I was talking to sales rep, I found this life time would be applicable to my upgrades as well... Wohooo, what I needed more, I gave a try to KnowHost..
They had been very supportive and answer me everything very quickly (I can't say the exact time since I myself login to my mail after 1-2 hours of filing ticket but there reply is there whenever I login). Since I was new to VPS, I had 10s of issues with setup and scripts. But they helped me with everything and never gave me tutorials to look for myself. Few of my issues were as under.
1- Hotmail Smartscreen issue (every new ip face this problem). I had to contact KH support time buy time to setup SPF, send MSN mail telling them IP belongs to me etc etc. KH Support had been magnificent and for a time being I was thinking that they will kick me off since I bug them too much. But they provided support like a pro...
2- Cron Jobs Issues. I am very bad with setting up cron job since computers is not my field (I am medical doctor by profession). They setup the cronjobs for me like setting up a cronjob for automatic mysql database backup. They not only helped with the problems but also give me detail of what they did so that I learn myslef from it. I am very pleased with the way they answer.
3- I wanted to monitor my VPS with loadavg script. They helped me with the installation of that.
4- I wanted to make my own backups using bqbackup.com (though KH provide backups for free) but because I am more tentative about my work. But I was making mistake setting up cron for it. KH support helped me with that.
5- There were other issues I was facing with A entry and other things, KnownHost always welcomed me and sorted my problem quickly.
In short, I am very pleased with KnownHost. Best part of their support is that they helped me with instalation of some major scripts where I make blunders and in a way I get know how to get that thing to work myself..
I hope they continue with the support like they do currently...
About Their server, I find it excellent. During the one month preiod, it just happend thrice that loadavg on my server went > 1 for only a period of one minute which I think best it can get. 5 minutes loadavg reached > 1 only once...
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