I've reviewed MediaLayer before but I have to do it again. I just paid my latest invoice and thought to myself "If I didn't have to pay this monthly invoice, I would forget I even did business with MediaLayer" I can't remember the last time I had any sort of hosting issues with my site. It's always online and always fast!
View 14 RepliesI signed up with MediaLayer [url](ML) for my client in November last year.
I've read a lot about ML here which are mostly (all?) good +ve reviews & so I decided to pick them to host my client's site.
Since the website is an ecommerce site based on Magento, I needed something that could handle application load. Its for this reason I chose ML.
Magento itself is pretty slow the first time until cache starts working.
So far its been smooth at ML and this post is just to add to the pool of its +ve reviews on WHT.
There was just one unexpected downtime which lasted for a few minutes. It was the mysql server that was down, not the http server (litespeed).
You dont get a whole lot of space at ML, so hosting a lot of raw data like images can be pricey - most of the space taken on my client's site are product images - and duplicated in cache for every dimension by Magento. As of now it gets 500-1000 pageviews a day but this is to increase over 10 times this year and if it goes beyond shared hosting limits (which I doubt), we'll move it to ML's VPS.
it's been year and half since we are together, so i can tell a lot more about medialayer.
1. speed is excellent. various users from all over the world reporting that the website reaction is good to excellent. that includes aussies.
2. uptime is perfect. i know, that sometimes they DO announce some maintenance works, and i suspect they really do them, but till now my impression is that they operate like little dwarves - nobody sees and nobody feels anything.
3. support - quick, effective, polite - who would want more?
me and my firm are very happy with our choice we maid a year and a half ago. these days we launch another website, hosted with medialayer.
I decided to write a review of BurstNET Technologies, with the hopes that it will help others in deciding whether BurstNET is right for them.
Background
First of all, we signed up with BurstNET back in September of 2005. This places us about 4 months shy of being with them a full 2 years. When we came aboard, we were migrating from dedicated servers with Server4Sale (one of Burst's larger resellers), whom we had been with for approximately 2 months.
Our decision to move was based purely on a decision to begin colocating our own equipment. The decision to choose BurstNET initially, as well as stay with them when colocating, was based upon a reliable 2 months on their network, as well as their location, which happens to be only a few hours from us.
Support
During the course of my two years with BurstNET, the support I have received from their staff has not been perfect, but has been far from terrible. I would rate it as good, and that is saying something because my standards may be considered high. I expect a provider to provide support in an intelligent, friendly, and timely fashion -- and Burst lived up to this almost every time I needed them to.
On the occasions they did not meet all the requirements, it was usually only an issue with the speed of their response. We never once dealt with a technician who was unwillingly to help, rude, or impolite. Also, each of their technicians seem very knowledgeable, which is definitely a plus. I rate their support a 9/10.
Network
The network is relatively fast.. when it works. If you have ever read other reviews about Burst, you will probably have read that they used to have reccurring instances of prolonged downtime, usually due to a router failure. This is still occuring, despite promises of redundency. You may have read that they have supposedly been expanding their network and decreasing the likelihood of these outages from happening. I have not seen an improvement.
Over the past few months especially, the outages became unbearable. I cannot say for sure if they increased in frequency or duration, or whether I simply got fed up with having my server down for 2, 3, or 4 hours at a time every other month. However, I can say that I was dissatisfied with their network, but with an understanding. I came to accept several things with regards to the BurstNET network and their business practices.
First, I realized that their SLA prevents you from ever recovering any funds due to an outage. It shields them from any instance you will ever think of because outages are never, ever, ever, their fault. Second, (again) they promise that measures are in place to provide redundency for the network. However, the network continues to be unreliable.
Third, I realized that despite the fact that these outages continue to occur and customers continue to become increasingly more upset, BurstNET does not care. Please understand that this statement was well thoughtout, and I would not have said it if I didn't truely feel that I was not appreciate as a customer. Finally, I respect BurstNET for providing a network for those who are on a strict budget, and do not mind downtime.
I will be the first to tell you that there is probably a large market of individuals who would rather pay less money and accept a certain percentage of downtime for their servers, however, I am not one of those individuals. Therefore, I rate the BurstNET network a 6/10.
Price
Prices are fantastic. BurstNET is by far the best I have found to date if you are looking for a BUDGET provider and don't mind downtime. I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt Shawn A (BurstCEO) is very eager to bring you on board if you are a serious potential customer and are looking for a custom plan. He is very helpful, extremely friendly, and overall a really great person, just like the rest of his staff. They provide affordable pricing for all their products, ranging from dedicated servers, virtual private servers, colocation, etc.
I feel that BurstNET's pricing can best be reflected by the old cliche "You get what you pay for". You aren't paying pennies on the dollar in terms of what you'd pay somewhere else, and you don't receive crappy service. You are paying sub-par prices, so expect a sub-par network and you'll never be disappointed. In terms of pricing, I rate BurstNET an 8/10.
Datacenter and Security
I visited the datacenter today -- to pickup my server and make a run for it. I had spoken to one of the technicians in a support ticket for the past few days, so he knew that I was coming. When I arrived, I said "Hi, I'm Richard from Tadunka, and I'm here to pickup my server." I was asked to sign my name, company, and the time, on a clipboard that was never checked. Another technician then went to the back, grabbed my server, and handed it to me without checking my ID. This disappointed me. In their defense, I will tell myself that they must have felt it would be extremely unlikely for an imposter Richard Sayer to show up at the exact time the real one (as mentioned in the ticket system) was supposed to show up, therefore no ID was required.
However.. had my username and password to their ticketing system been hacked, the attacker could have easily said "I'm Richard, I'll be there tomorrow to get it" and walked out with my server today without a problem. So.. take that for what it is. I'll also mention that the building their datacenter is in looks pretty runned down from the outside. When I arrived in Scranton and started looking for it, I was in total disbelief when I saw "BurstNET Technologies" on a metal plaque across the door of this ugly building in the middle of downtown.
I suppose by the pictures on their site (of the inside) I was expecting some high-rise building that looked like it was straight out of New York city. I wanted to open the door and feel the rush of refreshing cold-air slap me in the face as I walked up to a receptionist counter and asked what floor my server was on. With this expectation in mind, you can only imagine my disappointment when I opened the door and noticed only a small room plastered with "This facility is under surveillance." in every corner. While I waited to get my server (which again, thank god I was indeed me and not an imposter!), I observed rows and rows of racks filled with servers of all shapes, colors, and sizes.
It was beautiful, and they had them pretty well kept. I'll give them a point for this, it looked a lot better inside than it did outside. One thing that stood out was that there was exceptionally good air circulation, so there's atleast 4 points right there. My rating, 5/10.
Recommendation
To sum this up, I really recommend that you try BurstNET if you are looking for a budget provider and don't mind occasional downtime. Create a pre-made "We're sorry for the outage" mailing, and be prepared to send it to your customers every other month or so, and be sure to cover your bases in your SLA just as well as BurstNET did, so you never have to pay a dime.
I know that my review sounds like a back-handed compliment to them, but I am trying to be fair, and honest about my experience. Obviously we stayed with them through all of this for almost 2 years, so it was tolerable to some extent. Again I will remind you that if you are going to try them out, expect the worst, and if you receive better, you can feel happy about it rather than being disappointed all the time that your server goes up and down all the time.
Also, perhaps the thing to do is ask them to put a big sticker on the front of your server that says "ASK ME FOR ID". This little reminder may help save your server from a kidnapping someday, who knows?
Finally, if you try them out and you aren't happy with the service, don't be fooled by promises that it will get better. It won't. Reviews of BurstNET have not changed much over the past several years and many say the same thing about them promising the network reliability will get better, but that never seems to happen. I feel that BurstNET is a great provider for a certain group of people (extremely budget-minded), horrible for those who want absolute network reliability at BurstNET prices, and OK for those who are in-between.
I also feel that BurstNET is similar to a public-school system that lacks a budget, in that, they are doing the best they can with what they are given. Perhaps if they demended higher prices, they could provider a better quality network. I wish they had, because short of their network (and the security incident today), I have nothing extremely negative to say about them. I had often considered that if they'd provided a "premium network" alongside their current network, I would gladly switch over in order to stay with the great group of friendly people that work there.
I moved from A Small Orange to Medialayer in late June of 2008, and although I was a little unsure on going from cPanel to DirectAdmin, aside from one small thing* I honestly don't miss cPanel at all. Medialayer themselves ported my sites over (I'm always scared I'll mess things up on my own) so really, changing control panels was rather painless for me.
Anyway, as far as actual hosting I could not be happier. The only downtime I've experienced was scheduled and announced well in advance and never for very long.
Support tickets and general inquires are answered ridiculously fast to the point of being scary. I'm still not used to getting replies within minutes instead of hours or days.
I don't currently use a custom plan but the fact that I can request one is a huge plus to me. With my previous host you could add extra bandwidth but not space (you're only option was to simply go up to the next plan) and that always felt very limiting to me.
I'm aware that these days hosts with Medialayer's pricing structure are called "expensive" by some, but I'm still stuck in 2004 and consider them priced just right for what they offer. Also, as far as I'm aware Paypal is still the only payment option, and although that is fine for me, it won't be for others.
* (The only thing I miss is the ability to purge/make unwrittable the stats/awstats folders. I'm not sure if this is a host vs host or cPanel vs DirectAdmin difference, and really it is so minor in the grand scheme of things and only even noticeable to someone stupidly anal such as me.
i wanted to share my hosting review with medialayer.com
i have been with medialayer since 10 months.
my site visitors are mostly from istanbul,Turkey and europe ,even there is a long distance i get efficient response times.
support times are excellent,although there is a time zone difference,i get instant help during my working hours.
i recommend every one who needs a reliable and fast hosting.
in case you need to check my site with medialayer here is the link.
it has been a while since I last visited WHT. So hello all! Work is slow today and I'm procrastinating.
I was with MediaLayer for a good amount of time. I used the service mostly to host a personal site and develop some APIs using Truveo video search engine and Zend platform on Facebook. The source codes of these projects were synchronized and managed by a group of developers through SVN+SSH tunneling.
I have absolutely nothing negative to discuss about MediaLayer. They have been great every step of the way. Granted, they're not exactly the cheapest option among what were presented to me at the time, but I'm glad I picked them. After all, $10 didn't break the bank, and I simply didn't need 500GB of bandwidth (are they in the scales of TB these days?). The servers were well managed, and multiple DNS servers are always a plus (well at least save me a trip to DynDNS). They used LiteSpeed, which is an excellent choice, also considering their web server environment is very much similar to my developmental machine at home. Oh yeah, they don't use Cpanel. =) Haha.. I've never liked Cpanel. Too clutter.
I didn't observe any downtime while I was with them. None of the developers involved in the projects had issues with the SVN server. I don't have any statistics to prove it, so you just have to take my words for it. =) MySQL access is reasonably fast.
Customer service was great. All emails were answered professionally within 24 hours, including weekends. Phone representatives ware extremely helpful when I called. I remember once when my identity was stolen, the CSR I spoke to on the phone were very reasonable and handled the billing issues to my satisfaction.
So I'd highly recommend to MediaLayer!
I have a fairly important php bug tracking system on medialayer.
The service has never been down in 6 months and the speed is excellent.
I imagine customer support is just as good, but thankfully i've never needed to try
It's much faster, more flexible (no hard written resource limits) and more reliable than most hosts i've used (site5, hostingzoom, resellerzoom to name a few).
I couldn't ask for a better service.
I am so overwhelmed by the quality of hosting provided by Medialayer, that I decided to review them after being almost 2 years on their servers. My "bread and butter" website is hosted on their server and all I experienced in these 2 years was sheer quality, stability and prompt customer support (very rarely required).
It is a saying that you get what you pay for, and it shows. Medialayer is not one of those hosts with "unlimited everything" plans for $3 a month. I am on their starter shared plan which is $9.95 a month with 500 mb of space and 10Gb bandwidth. Some may find that costly, but believe me, it is worth every cent.
Uptime: Excellent. I have never seen my website down or someone complaining about it. No downtime experienced whatsoever till now.
Speed: Rocket fast. Scripts execute rocket fast too.
Ease of use: Excellent. They provide direct admin (instead of cpanel) and never faced any problem with that either.
Customer support: Blink of an eye, round the clock. I am from the opposite part of the world (GMT +5.5) and at 11 AM my time, I get instant response to a support ticket if opened. Secondly, they go above and beyond, - I had a problem with one of my php scripts and these guys studied the script and pointed out the flaw (which might have been harmful) if not rectified.
I will be more than happy to let anyone know my website, mods please let me know how do I prove the authenticity of the review, with my website. These guys deserve a lot more than just a review.
Conclusion: The best host so far I have got. In these aspect I must tell you, I have 3 more hosting service providers, Medialayer smokes them apart. And my personal thanks to Gurpreet Virdi via this forum for running such a tight ship consistently. I believe, the success of a website business depends on the hosting heavily, so Medialayer folks - it has been my pleasure to stay with you all these time and thank you for everything.
After I moved from (spit) mediatemple to MediaLayer last April, I wrote a glowing one-month review [url]. So 10 months on, what is it like?
Well, rather boringly, I don't have much to add to my original review, since it's still as awesome as it was then. I tend to forget most of the time that I'm even paying for a hosting service, because it's just there, rock-solid, serving my sites stupidly fast.
At least it's more exciting at other hosts when you're constantly having to manage one crisis after another. It's true that MediaLayer are more expensive than many other hosts, but they're a bargain at the price.
MediaLayer's public Hyperspin report [url] is currently showing better than four-nines uptime on all servers. 'Nuff said. Great company. Happy customer. That's all.
Last year I moved from Site5 to MediaTemple's GridServer. MT seemed cool at first, but over the last 6 months it has been absolutely horrible, with almost daily periods of downtime, atrocious php/MySQL performance, http lag, appalling support ticket response time (measured in days and then only a copy-paste of a FAQ without answering the actual question, necessitating more days' wait), etc etc. At least they have plenty of customers on their forums addicted to the Kool-Aid, saying "Well whaddya expect for $20 a month? It's better than Dreamhost!"
I trialled a few hosts recommended around here through one-month accounts etc, and they were all good. Eventually I went with MediaLayer and moved my two main sites there five weeks ago. Both are WordPress installs (one Super-Cached; one not) averaging between 200-500 unique visitors a day, with the occasional traffic surge to several thousand from Digg or other big linkers. A few hundred megabytes of files between them. Historically, bandwidth for each has been anywhere from 10Gb to 30Gb a month. My impressions so far:
Performance: amazing. Page execution times between 0.1 and 0.2s on a WordPress page making 20 queries. I am hosted on their Chicago server, and from my home in Europe it literally feels no slower than a local LAMP install. I had an influx of 7,000 uniques in one day on one site with no problem at all. FTP responsiveness is also better than MediaTemple's. Two weeks ago I installed a punBB forum on one site: also stupidly quick.
Support: amazing. Queries are answered extremely quickly (in minutes; I think the very longest was just over an hour), and in a highly cordial, professional and helpful manner, whether it be by layer0 himself or any of the other support staff.
Uptime: very good. A couple of hiccups so far measured in minutes. Enquiries about these were, again, very rapidly and informatively dealt with by support. They also have a public hyperspin report for all servers, which is very impressive.
Value: excellent. I don't make any money directly from my websites, but they are showcases for my professional work. I just want them to be available and pleasant to use (ie snappy), and they are. I signed up on the $20 a month plan and then thought maybe I could trade off some unneeded storage allocation vs increased bandwidth (since I also serve a few media files). They wrote me a custom plan at the same price in minutes, with which I am very happy.
Backend: I find DirectAdmin pleasant and efficient for my needs. I actually prefer it (or just about anything) to CPanel, which I find horribly clunky. The inbuilt stat package is poor, though I understand they are planning to replace it, but it doesn't matter to me since I use Mint and Google Analytics anyway.
Conclusion: at last, a host that is focused on performance and customer satisfaction.
If they carry on with this level of service, I will have no hesitation in moving to a higher plan at MediaLayer if my needs grow rather than looking for another host.
[PM'd moderator with domain info]
I thought some might find this short review useful. I recently found my website - vladstudio.com - pushing shared hosting limits fast (powweb.com at that time). After long days of (unsuccessful) searching for ideal hosting (fast, with lots of traffic, managed, and of course cheap :-) ), I got good idea from my wife and splitted my website into 2 pieces hosted separately.
For domain, PHP and MySQL, I've been using MediaLayer Application (shared) hosting. I might already mention it here before - I'm extremely happy with them, once my site hit digg.com frontpage and I got 500000 visitors in a day, and hosting did not go down! Right now, it serves about 25000 visits (500000 hits) a day, every hit being dynamic PHP page with several MySQL queries.
For hosting images and downloadable files, I use PacificRack dedicated server (most basic one, but with 2000 Gb/m traffic included). I am very bad at managing servers, but default configuration and my modest knowledge of Linux was enough - it is only used to store files that visitors download from vladstudio.com.
So, if your site is growing out of shared hosting too, consider 2 separate hosting accounts for application and files - it works very well for me. And once again, big thanks to MediaLayer and PacificRack.
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. =)
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!
This is a brief review of my experience with VT6 over the last year.
I have little to say, because it's "just worked". I've had to call upon their helpdesk twice in the last year. In both cases the response was timely and the matter resolved in a reasonable timeframe, both were matters beyond their control.
I'd happily recommend them for shared hosting.
This is my first and last review of these guys. When I first colocated my server with them, they were still known as iHosting. The price was good, the support was excellent, and it was a friendly little place. I never experienced any down time to speak of, and when I needed something changed (like a reverse DNS entry), they took care of it almost straight away.
Of course, then a big mean company bought them. In(forbusiness).(nl|be). From day one I knew things could only go downhill from there on, and I was right. Every time they touched my server in the datacentre, it went offline. Even when they didn't have any business with my particular server. On three occasions they unplugged the power cable *WITHOUT PRIOR NOTIFICATION* so I couldn't do a clean shut down which resulted in a raid array rebuild. That in itself would almost be acceptable, but each time they didn't plug it back in properly.
Then on another three occasions they've messed up my connectivity by not handling the NIC with care. It's a sensitive little thing, and even though I've pointed it out to them time and time again, they keep messing up. Usually they've been kind enough to fix these problems, which they caused relatively quickly. However, it's happened again, and this time they're refusing to fix it for free. Needless to say, I'm not paying for something they broke, and I'm cancelling my account with them ASAP. They'd better not make a fuss about giving me back my server, or I won't be a happy camper.
As if unannounced shutdowns and unplugged cables aren't bad enough, I've also been paying for an APC connection/account for almost two years now. I still haven't received any actual login data that would in fact allow me to do a remote reboot. It's not like I haven't asked them .. I asked them at least every time the server went down, and about every other month as well. Each time my mail was either ignored, or I got some vague reply.
Oh, and about this latest downtime .. they told me they'd be rearranging things in the rack today. I asked them, yet again, to be careful with my server so it wouldn't go down for like a week again. That mail was nicely ignored. After almost a day of downtime, I told them I would be cancelling my account and that they'd better get my server back up ASAP. Their only reply was that that would cost me. After they guaranteed me there would be no more than 5 minutes of downtime while rearranging the rack. Right.
The hosting world has changed a good bit in those years I've been with them. I can now get a reseller account that gives me just as much freedom for less money with more support. And face it, support is what it's all about -- and theirs blows.
I wouldn't recommend this host to anyone, not even if they paid me. Not even if they were the last host on the planet. Never again.
have use iwebfusion for 3 months, write this review share with you.
iwf was a nice host provider,i buy a vps with their los angeles DC,
1 uptime 10/10
no downtime in 3 months.
2 support 8/10
2~6 hours, if not lucky, no more than 24 hours.......
I'd been with hivelocity for 14 months by now and i'm thinking to continue my bussines on there.
I created a thread on the past, this is the thread:
[url]
And this is what i said:
Quote:
What can i say?
They just Rock, Dave and steve are just great.
Dave is my account manager he is helpfull, quickly and very efficient.
i would like to recommend people to join in hivelocity.
They are just more than fine, my server is working great and i had 2 issues resolved.
1 issue in less than 20 mins (another server in the rack was consuming a lot of bandwith)
the other issue was a little more complicated but it has been resolved too, thanks Dave
They have the same problem with support than sharktech (not managed), but if you talk to your account manager or Steve they will take care of it and get the problem resolved in a few minuts, that's just cool.
Service and support for me was really good in one week with they .. i will stay for a long time here if everything goes right.
and if we can, stablish a long term business based on trust (i'm a coder i can help)
Well from that moment to now i can say the following things:
No downtimes, only schedules (maintenence)
No support problems.
I upgraded my server to a quad2core and for 6 months payment, they gove me a second HDD!
I'm sending new customers to hivelocity right now, and trying to start reselling their servers.
¿why do i want to?
Because Steve and Dave, are responsable guys.
Because Network works fine.
Last server i bought for a customer: 1 day setup, no problems. I did a hardware check and it was OK, no HDD failures and TEMPERATURE was the right.
Because they understand if you have a problem.
Because support is there to help, even if you don't pay for "Managed services"
And i think that, they manage customers as well, that you can feel as a part of the company and not just another Argentinian customer.
So, watching the huge financial crisis, i want to give a good review about this company, and try to get more and new customers to they.
I would highly recommend to buy their services, this is not another company this is one of the best companies i ever knew.
This is my first review regarding a dedicated server prodiver, so forgive me if i miss anything.
We are a small web hosting company located in Greece and after many years in a Greek Datacenter, we were seeking for a reliable provider with Managed Dedicated servers. After a lot of search here in WHT, we came through ServerBoost which is located in Holland.
Sales: Jelle was very patient during our talks, although we were just researching at the time being. A really nice guy and a true professional, answered all my questions as I was skeptic regarding the migration, or details of our contract and service. ( personal fears :p )
Support: They say the first impression is the most significant and I must admit that mine was pretty good. Starting from the Server migration ( From 2 old/slow servers to a brand-new Dell one. ) which went really smoothly from ServerBoost part, taking the downtime to minimal time!
Our SLA contract has a specific time window for support requests but it hardly takes over some minutes or 1-2 hours to get a response ( regarding the time of the day of course! ) and Jelle is always there when i need to ask something.
Hardware/Network: Our Dell server is running really good, and the network is really reliable as "promised". Good speeds and ping ( from Greece ) which is important for our customers.
Conclusion: For me, having dealt with only one foreign company in the past for hosting ( US ), ServerBoost is the ideal one to do business with, because they look really "caring" about our business and their flexibility is priceless.
I'm looking forward using ServerBoost for a long time, really satisfied! :-)
I would just like to say that they surprise me for a shared host.
Support: 10/10
Uptime: 9/10
Speed: 9.5/10
Value: 8/10
Although I pay quite a bit I still think it's worth it. About $15/mth for 15GB HDD and 75GB transfer. My website handles ~300K hit's daily with only a few hiccups. It's uptime is something like 99.97% which is decent. The only big incident is when I first signed up I was transferring my domain which took a few days, but was resolved professionally. So far it's a big thumbs up.
[url]
Decided to give a VPS a try back in November. Ordered through one the sales advertised in the offer forums, got set-up in less than 12 hours.
In terms of performance, the VPS works fine.
In terms of service, this is where the ball is dropped.
The issue is that they set me up in LA, and I'm on the East coast. So I've contacted support, asking if a move was possible. When they said yes, and I've confirmed that their offer to move it during the night was fine, I've even shut everything down to make things smoother.
The next morning, I receive an email telling me I will get another one once it's done... the following day, I receive an email that it can't be done, as I have a x64 OS and there is no space on the node.
So I let this slide, and decide that sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and decided to offer them to BUY another one, this time on the East coast, if they could offer me the same setup as I have on the West coast. They've agreed, and I did the order as they requested... That was around noon 2 days ago, and still nothing today...
For another example, I've requested a ticket because the /dev/tun wasn't configured properly in the container... I don't know what they did, but it corrupted my VPS so bad that I have to re-initialise it completly. Another example: I've posted a ticket that their gentoo image is faulty (no network support at all!), and to my knowledge this was still not fixed.
So yes, NYNOC has some cool ideas like an online chat, even offered an EYEOS desktop, forums, tips, and great prices... but for me now this ain't worth it much and will be canceling my accounts. I guess coming from VPSFarm has spoiled me (instant setup, quick support), and will be looking for a new provider.
1. Month
I used 15 days of godaddy's shared hosting before FsckVPS. Due to unexpected traffic, I had to move to a VPS. So I chose FsckVPS's 512mb packet.
I was very sattisfied with them. Their servers were fast and the VPS got setup in just a few seconds.
The hacking incident happened this month. I was still pleased by the way they handled it. So I decided to stay with them. They decided to give 2 months free after the hacking incident.
2. Month and 3. Month
Everything was very smooth, running perfectly. Servers were still fast after I got switched to a new one after the hacking.
4. Month
This is the second time I paid to FsckVPS and I was pretty happy about it.
Then I have been informed that they will be switching servers. They told that it would take around 4 hours per vps.
So when I noticed that my vps was down for the first time, I didn't react and waited. After being down for about 8 hours, I sent them a ticket. The response came after 4 hours saying that it was now online.
I logged in to my vps and the first thing I noticed was how SLOW it was. After a while, it crashed and I couldn't reach to my vps anymore. I sent a ticket, they reset the server, it got a little better.
This happened about 4 times. Everytime I sent a ticket asking why this is happening, I only received a response saying it is OK now.
After 3 weeks of being like this, I decided to switch to a new VPS provider.
Now I am on my new VPS provider, hoping for better results.
My fsckvps will expire in 4 days and it is still very slow.
After having a dedicated server for more than 70 days from WiredTree.com, I thought that it would be a good time for a review.
I came across them through good reviews in this forum and took the opportunity to get one of their special offers (Core i7). As a short summary in advance: I can fully recommend them to anyone seeking a managed dedicated box.
Sales:
I just had contact to Sales twice - Once as I tried to bargain for an even cheaper offer than the special one they already had (without success, by the way) and a second time when it came to an eventual server upgrade. Response time was quick, the answers were professional and friendly and there is nothing I could complain about.
Server Setup:
I was in a totally different time-zone than WiredTree while ordering the server. As they have the practice to call their new customers for identity verification, the call reached me at night time and I could not pick it up. So I called them in the morning and they called me back again. It must have been deepest night time in Chicago at this moment. From this telephone call on, it took less than 2-3 hours (as far as I remember) until the server was ready and online.
Another thing is their "ServerShield Server Hardening" that they perform before you get the box. I never received a dedicated server before with so many tweaking measures taken in advance. MySQL performance was improved, the firewall was well configured, security checks were already made, everything felt fine-tuned in advance. So, again, very good job done by WiredTree.
Hardware Quality:
You might say: "You've only been with them 70+ days. Of course, there was no hardware problem during that short time". Well, I read here at WHT about customers of other hosts who had the first failures already at the moment they received the new box. So - No hardware problems at all until now.
Support:
I am not very experienced in server management and tend to get nervous if something doesn't work and support takes more than 30min. to answer questions. I know that this makes me annoying sometimes, but at least I always try to be friendly. Fortunately, WiredTree seems very good prepared for nerve-wrackers like me... Support never took more than 15min. to answer my requests and in at least 2 cases, they even bent backwards to help me with problems that had nothing to do with them. Every single request got solved in a very short time. I contacted support at the most unusable hours of the day because I often travel between different time zones - They were always there, like an own IT-Crowd in your pocket. Two thumbs up for their support staff.
Network:
100% Uptime during the whole time. No hickups at all, no problem that I would be aware of. Fine speed all the time. There is really nothing negative that I could say.
Billing:
No billing issues at all. Everything worked correctly.
Their customer portal "Grove":
Well. Hmmm. Okay, one thing first: I saw several customer portals during the last 10 years. And none of them blew me away. I haven't seen SoftLayer's yet and was told that theirs should be even nicer than grandmas cheese cake, but the grass is always greener on the other side as long as you have never been there. Let's say that "Grove" is surely one of the better and nicer looking customer portals around. It bundles a lot of information and offers a good way of communication. The rest is a question of taste...
The bad news:
I cancelled the server today. The company I work for has rent several servers at another host and paid them 1 year in advance. One is totally unused (great planning, MnMgt!) and I was offered by my boss to use it cost-free for that period of time. Well, this is an opportunity I have to take... Saving $300 a month is quite a lot of money. But I am determined to go back to WiredTree as soon as my "free time" is over.
I've been using SmoothVPS for about 4 months (and colleagues of mine have been using them for more than that) based on posts from WHT as well as recommendations from others in the industry. Bob @ SmoothVPS has been extremely helpful, very responsive, and is seemingly always online to help me with even the most basic of questions. He has bent over backwards to accomodate my random needs and helps me with specific server configurations that I can't figure out - even with third-party packages that he is not required to support!
I have three Linux-based VPSes with Bob and he has no problem configuring them to my specific needs with whatever version OS that I require. I plan on adding many more as I migrate all my servers to him - I've decided to give him my exclusive business due to how well everything runs and how competitive the price is. Billing is simple - Paypal subscriptions or regular invoices make it a snap to manage (even if I lose track, which I do - sorry Bob).
The bottom line is that SmoothVPS is the place to go for your VPS needs. I haven't needed Windows boxes there, but I will probably mess around with one in the near future to test some software. They're moving to a new DC in the near-future - and they're giving me 30 free days of IP migration to make sure the process runs smoothly. Just amazing.
I've had a Krypt VPS for a few months now, started with the VPS400 package and moved up to VPS800 over time. Initially (I'm guessing they had just gotten into providing VPS's) the service was EXCELLENT! My VPS was located in their LA datacenter on the Level3 backbone. First two months the VPS was rock solid, I was running a full LAMP (no optimizations) install along with Webmin. By the 3rd month I started having issues with sluggishness, both on the site and SSH. Put in a support ticket which got responded to within 10 minutes as usual (fantastic support!) and their techs moved my VPS to a less loaded VMware node. Things were again pretty solid for about two weeks, then the same thing happened again. I let it be for a few days thinking it may just be a spike, but even after a week it was still pretty horrid. I had even turned off the LAMP install and Webmin in favor of a lone Lighttpd install to serve static html pages. Mind you by this time I had been upgraded to above their VPS800 package, yet I was still having performance issues. Put in another ticket and asked to be moved to another node, they said sure and asked a timeframe, I told them asap and let the issue be. After 4 hours of not hearing anything back, I update my ticket to find out that they were having some issues with the VPS, ok bad things happen, give them time. A few hours later I ask again and am told that they formatted the VPS without any authorization from me...Its a VMware host, they could at the least have attached the virtual hard drivei mage to the new install of my VPS, but they prefered to just delete it. I run several ESX servers at work and even with a nonbootable (according to them) image, the hard drive can still be mounted and recovery can be attempted. I was angry but I have a few dedicated servers with Krypt so I gave them another chance. I took the freshly installed VPS and started hunting down backups to restore from. Installed LAMP and Webmin, gave it a week and once again: slow. I'm fairly certain that CentOS repo apps and Webmin arn't enough to cause a VPS to dog down this bad, even with *everything* turned off (top shows 24MB ram usage) SSH and pages being served by lighttpd are taking 3-10 seconds to come up, as before they came up before I even let go of the button.
Ratings
Support: 10/10
Service: 6/10
VPS Quality: 5/10
Network: 5/10 (great in the beginning, after a week less than 400KB/s)
Overall they're a great provider, but they need to monitor their nodes more carefully and find abusers. It seems to me like they're either overloading their nodes or have something misconfugured thats causing issues. I was told a few times to restart my VPS which didn't help at all. Orderded a VPS with them about 2 weeks ago on a different account, havn't even touch it since I got it, as of right now, SSH is sluggish, apps like top take an average 5 seconds to come up, max throughput is ~300KB/s from Seattle (hit ~7MB/s when I first got it). Same issue as my other VPS. I'll provide my domain to the mods for authentication.
I thought I could share my opinion on VolumeDrive after being with them for a few months. I always appreciated when I could find in-depth reviews from hosting companies when I was looking for one so I hope some peope will find this review useful.
First of all, here my plan with them:
Quote:
AMD Athlon64 3200+
1 GB DDR2 Ram
120 GB SATA Hard Drive
3000 GB of bandwidth on 100MB port
2 IP addresses
Ubuntu Server 8.04 Linux
This package costs me $49.95 per month.
It all started when I contacted them to have more information on their services and what they have to offer. They replied very quickly and sent me a document detailing every offer they have and how their plans work. It's a shame that all that information wasn't available on their website, they proposed roughly 3 different dedicated solutions on their order form when you can actually choose a bunch of other options. Anyway, I asked a few other questions (like if they could install Ubuntu even if it wasn't listed in the available OS, and they had no problem in doing this). Again, they replied quickly. I made my choice and as I made my first payment, my server was online 24 hours later, as stated in their e-mail.
Communication with Volumedrive's staff is always great, I've had an issue one time where my internet connection was realllllly slow. I e-mailed them and it took a few minutes before I received an answer to my e-mail with someone trying to find what was wrong. We exchanged a few e-mails trying to find what was the issue and the issue got resolved in no time. Aside from this problem, I've never had any network or hardware issue (still have a fresh new server though)
I also personnaly think that their prices are far superior to what other companies offer. Their plans are flexible and if I want a hardware upgrade for example I know I can just contact them and we'll work out the details.
The only downsides I can give them is that their website is missing a lot of information. When you are looking for a server you may not want to spend time contacting each company by e-mail to ask question and have more information, you rely on the website to give you a lot of details. Also, their invoice system is not so great. You receive an e-mail saying you need to pay them and they only accept paypal. When your payment is done, you don't receive any confirmation e-mail. It's not bothering me much for a 50$ server, but I'd want a more conventional billing system with automatic renewal if I had a big business going on with them.
All in all, I really like volumedrive! I'd recommend it for everybody looking for a low cost dedicated server, they're fast, professional and helpful. You just need to send them an e-mail to get the plan that works for you so tow thumbs up for Volumedrive!
We have been with ServerBoost since March '09.
Specs:
2x Quad Core Xeon E5430
12 GB DDR2 FB-DIMM memory
2x 146 GB SAS 15k RPM
Hardware RAID 1
Pricing:
A little more expensive than some other NL hosts but you get what you pay for.
Setup:
Total setup time was 3 days after payment (the server was a custom setup), because we had to wait an extra day for the setup Jelle gave us a free upgrade (better CPU and HDDs) which was amazing seeing that the setup period wasn't that long anyway.
Uptime:
In the past 7 months we have had 2 small bits of downtime, 1 was scheduled - when they upgraded their datacenter and the other was due to a RAID card failure, which was promptly replaced in less than an hour. Their network is faultless.
Support:
We only have the free SLA yet Jelle responds within minutes, and his responses are always friendly and professional. However I haven't needed to contact support outside of business hours so I cannot vouch for that, but during business hours it's top notch.
Overall:
I can't recommend ServerBoost enough, I'm 110% pleased. We/I have 5 servers in EU each with different providers and ServerBoost is by far my favourite and the one I recommend most.
I'm sharing my experience with Dynaceron till now .
Month one;
I wanted to try a Linux server and I ordered one of their hardware, that came with CentOS. I have had many questions about Linux, as I am new to it, and the friendly tech support people helped me find answers. The questions I had were often answered in under 3 minutes. I've had 5 minutes of downtime, but that was because I ordered a 4 gigabyte ram upgrade.
Month two;
I decided to go back to Windows and I asked them if they could install Windows on my server, They asked if I had my data backed up, when I said yes they said they were going to start the install ASAP, after 1.5 hours I received an email with the login details..
After 15 days I asked if they could upgrade my uplink to 1Gbps; The upgrade was done without a server reboot.
Month three;
No problems so far, everything has been going well. Seriously, in my opinion they are the best service around, couldn't ask for better. Their uptime is fantastic. In 3 months I've only experienced 5 minutes of downtime, but again that was because I ordered a hardware upgrade.
I would highly recommend them to anyone that is looking for Quality hardware and support.
I will write a review back in 3 months or if I ever experience a problem I will update this thread.
Finally I managed to get some time to write another review about my host, VPSRight. Simple summary, one of the best webhosts that i have ever had. With great support and resources. And the best thing is they think about their customers.
Talking about their support, they're an excellent bunch who knows what they are doing and what they're being asked. Extremely prompt on responses and are usually responded within an hours time. In the initial month or so I've submitted a lot of tickets and they were dealt with ease.
Their servers are great and fast. Not overloaded and recent uptimes have been great. For the last 3 or so weeks I've had no downtime. And after switching from FluidVM to SolusVM the host nodes have become much more stable.
Network is also great and have a good connection speeds. I rarely go below the 1Mbit/s when downloading files to the server (incoming). A few weeks ago we had a small issue of packet loss for a few hours, as result of a DOS attack on another server at the DC. It was soon mitigated and services was fully restored.
In the months of June/July, VPSRight inured a lot of downtime due to DC migrations and s/w migrations. Therefore they made the next billing cycle free to all it's customers as a compensation. This something good as host and they've taken responsibility for the actions they took.
Now everything is a smooth ride and I am a very happy customer of theirs. I'd happily recommend them if someone is looking for reasonably priced, managed, decent spec VPSs.
I think Zinkhosting.net does not get the credit it deserves. In the last ~7 years I have been with many different hosts, and I have to conclude that Zinkhosting.net has been the best. From day one I knew this company wanted to serve the customers, and the small size allowed them to do so. Many large companies ignore the customers when it comes to reliability, price, and support. With Zinkhosting.net I did not have any downtime, and the prices were great compared to other companies. The main reason I stayed with Zinkhosting.net was the support I received. The owner himself was able to help me out on many situations where I did not understand why a certain script was not working. Even though he did not have to offer this sort of support, he still did so out of courtsey. I hope Zinkhosting.net can keep on serving my needs in this manner.
Reliablity - 10/10
Price - 10/10
Support - 10/10
I've been seeing alot of negative threads about Hivelocity so I decide to post my review.
A little more than 4 months ago I ordered a server on Hivelocity using an offer they posted on twitter, it was a Core2Duo for $75/month and first month for $50. I ordered on the chat and the sales told me there wasn't any package with the Core2duo so he used the next cheapest server to order(Core2Quad q8200, everything else was the same) and wrote a comment saying that the actual server would be a Core2Duo.
I paid the bill, submitted some documents(on June 7) and waited, I had to send a few emails because there wasn't any progress with my order and by June 10 the server was live. When I logged in I realized I was given the Core2Quad q8200, same specs, better CPU
Ever since then I've not needed to talk to support for anything except adding some services(extra IP and 100mb port, both were quickly added and with no problems).
My server has been up ever since:
PHP Code:
uptime
22:49:49 up 127 days, 17:45, 2 users, load average: 0.02, 0.05, 0.07
And I've had very little downtime, according to Pingdom 99.98% uptime since June 15:
[URL]
Their service has been Very Good so far and I've had no problems.