My boss sent me a link to a story about Network Solutions scamming people into paying their inflated rates for domain registration. I don't know if this has been covered here before, but i thought I would spread the word just in case. There is already a discussion on it on Sitepoint.
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I impulsively signed up for 2 years of web-hosting at Network Solutions @ $89 /year, thinking I was covered by their 30 day money back guarantee. Normally I due a little research but I was actually calling them about another matter and made an (uncharacteristic) impulse decision, thinking I was covered by the money back guarantee. Reading the fine print today, their user agreement says it will cost $24.95 per contract year (x2) to cancel. In addition to this bit of marketing shenanigans, a additional bit of research seems to indicate that they are not exactly a "preferred host" among experienced users.
Q's - Is it worth $50 to walk away from NetSol and start fresh with a new host? Although I'm a newb with simple hosting needs, I still get just a frustrated with poor customer as the next guy. Am I likely to encounter any added grief, compared to other hosting options, by staying with NetSol?
FWIW - I will need hosting for four small sites, two that are nothing more than "multi page" splash pages and two will be new vBulletin powered sites. The vBulletin sites will start simple, but hopefully progress as my skills and traffic grow. While I recognize my needs are modest by any standard, I don't want my learning curve with vBulletin (and as a first time Site Administrator) to be hampered by a mediocre host and/or customer service.
New to the board, although I've looked through it for awhile. This is my first post. My company currently hosts internally and plans to move to external hosting. What's your take on Bluehost vs. Network Solutions for shared hosting?
View 14 Replies View RelatedAny comments on Network Solutions as a hosting service?
I have never created a website and would rather not have to deal with coding and all that stuff. I planning a very basic site, but I want it to look good.
It seems Network Solutions has a really nice and easy-to-use web page software package.
But then again I have no idea what's really going on.
I'm kind of annoyed. Not so much the server outage; I know those happen.
What is annoying me is the inability to get anyone on the phone.
I've been calling each of their 4 numbers in succession for the last 45 minutes. Finally connected with someone who has no idea what's going on, only that it is allegedly affecting their entire customer base. Man, if you're not going to answer the phone, at least put on a voice message, or maybe a banner on your Account Manager page.
their site didn't go down, just the ones they are hosting.
I'm a newbie at this so, for the vets, if you are experiencing a server outage, how long do you give your hosting company to give you an answer before getting "assertive" on the phone.
It's not a big deal to me since currently I only use my site for email. However, there must be some folks losing a bit of cash by being out of commission for an extended period of time.
the original domain registrar itself finally joins the VPS fray. Just saw this on their website:
[url]
After roughly a year or so (I think) of offering the hosting we all know, looks like they've finally decided it's time to take the next step.
(to think I'll be moving my domain name away from them next month...)
Just wanted to share my experiences with you once again. There are a select number of companies on this planet that really seem to go out of the way to be obnoxiously bad at their jobs. Comcast, AIG, United Airlines - the familiar litany. Well, my experience with online hosting would put Network Solutions right up there with those in competition for the title 'Worst Company in America.'
Here's the current problem. Yesterday, May 14, 2009, at about 6:00AM, one of my users reported that my site had come up with a malware/virus alert on his computer. This was odd, as I am not a malware host. Further, my work computer had been infected the day before, though I had only visited reputable news sites; and my own site.
Lo and behold, upon investigation I found that my site had been hacked to carry the FakeAlert-CL trojan, which had the effect of causing my computer to pretend it had been badly hacked to get me to buy some spurious anti-virus software. Essentially, buying "protection" in the Mafia sense.
Luckily for me, this is not my first rodeo with Network Solutions' laughable excuse for security. This exact same thing had happened 18 months or so ago. I realized then that a worm had infected NS's shared hosting servers, and had changed every file with "index" anywhere in the title to include an < iframe > tag linking to a malware site (from which the computer would be infected).
So here's my workaround. I downloaded and repaired the three index files which control my site. I then deleted the infected files, and re-uploaded clean ones. Being prudent, and having experience with this, I also uploaded *backup* copies with different file names. This proved wise. NS has now been hacked 3 times in the last 18 hours in the exact same way. Each time I get hacked again, I simply delete the infected 'index' file and rename my backup to replace it, then upload a new backup for later use.
Some notes: this has affected my entire Movable Type system by corrupting the templates. However, it attacks only the base index.php file; if you simply fix that one file, then rebuild your Movable Type database, the offending code snippet will be removed. Secondarily, some sections of my site (my bulletin board, for instance) do not have 'index' in the title of their operative files. If I could remove every index file from my site and rename them, I would, but unfortunately too many of the components are hard-wired for that name. Finally, I tried CHMODing the index files to 444, which should have prevented even an Administrator from overwriting or changing them, but it had no effect.
So, back to NS. I contacted a person from NS' marketing department (who contacted me after I posted a previous complaint on this board) and let him know that I had been hacked. He told me he was referring me to "third level support" (meaning what? they speak better English?). I have since been hacked twice more, and have emailed this same PR guy both times. The last time I asked for a phone call; no shock, I have not yet heard back. Maybe this post will prompt a response.
At any rate, to those of you experiencing this with Network Solutions, hopefully my solution will help you. To those of you considering a hosting provider, DO NOT CHOOSE NETWORK SOLUTIONS.
if anyone knew if with Network Solutions advanced hosting package on unix there was a way to store the documents outside of document root? If not is there a good way to secure a folder/files that is in the document root from users?
View 1 Replies View RelatedIn this thread i would like to recommend about this company.
I was looking for a good anualy package in respectable price, and then Host-monkey offered a cheap deal and i said why not.
I just want to say that after i joined i got alot of help, anything i wanted and anything i needed.
The site contain realy good costumer system that provide many services.
After few days i decided to upgrade my plan and it was fast and courteous.
The server is realy strong and fast for me, even that im from far away land from usa.
I hope you will choose it too, you wont dissapoint.
[url]
Presently I run a site on a shared server. I run a database backup every night to the host root and two backup servers and I run a full root backup every week to the backup servers.
I have two questions. One, let's say I lose my entire forum root for some reason and need to run a backup. I use vBulletin and am wondering how that works with the database. Would the database be stored in the root somewhere, or would I have to take one of my database backups, create a new database in cpanel, and import the backup into the new database (and link to it via config.php)?
Second, I'm looking to increase my backup security. I understand that offsite backup servers are great if the site gets hacked, but let's say the server gets hacked. Not that I find it likely, but if it does happen from what I understand the hacker could destroy the rsync'd backups because the key is right there.
I'm looking for a backup solution that would keep this from happening. I'm thinking of going with an external RAID harddrive configuration with DVD backups at regular intervals (probably weekly).
I'm considering using an automatic FTP from one of my backup roots (more bandwidth) to my computer. If I do this, and my main root is compromised, is there any way the hacker could compromise my home computer or backups. Further, is there a way to get the information on my home computer without simply copying everything over every time, because that will really eat bandwidth and take a lot of time. I know rsync is great because it only updates, and thus if I lose all my folders it won't delete the backup, whereas an FTP that happened at the correct time could potentially do so.
if you remember recently Crissic Solutions went offline. I was told by Skylar when he came back online i would receive a refund within 5-7 days.
He has yet again, unavailable everywhere i look, and guess what.... i still have no refund that was promised.
Is the free linux hot-copy enough? Or should I go with something along the lines of the Linux CDP?
I've never really looked into CDP before so any help would be good. Our current backup solutions are manual, so were looking for something that can be more automated.
I have been with Galaxy-Solutions.net (GS) for a long time. At first, they were really good, especially Richard Anderson. So, coming to the real story -
I got a new server with them in April -
AMD Dual Core 5600+
2 GB RAM
250x2 HDD
2000 GB on 100mbit shared
5 IPs
cPanel/WHM + Fantastico
Free Remote Reboot port
Free MRTG
for $124.99/month
At that time I had a server with Burst & BurstNET do 50/50 on Bandwidth , 50% in & 50% out, so I asked how bandwidth is measured at GS.
They told me - 2000 GB in & 2000 GB out,
Server was setup with 3 days & all was pretty good.
SCAM/FRAUD #1 & #2 =
I NEVER got the Remote Reboot port & the MRTG stats , & in August (5 months later) I was told that it had been canceled, & they will not provide it as it was insecure.
In the meantime I was told ....
I thought I would take my time to post and talk about a company hosting VPS's and Dedis...
I was attracted to Crissic when a friend that knows about servers mentioned he had a discount code and they were very cheap.
I decided to try it out and bought 1 month of 128mb "small" VPS for $8.
This was going great once we had sorted out the Nameservers
I was in the process of setting up my domain ukhype.info, When i noticed a email claiming my VPS had been using too much power and had been shutdown. When I inquired, I was told I had installed a bruteforcer and was over using ram. The wierd thing being, I needed my domain to access FTP.
I wasnt sure how to link my domain to a IP, So I gave up for the day. Then I noticed another email claiming my VPS had been shutdown and My Package Canceled according to there TOS they can cancel when they want.
I then noticed Under the privacy act they are not allowed to look through my personal files (even though none exist)
They are in there TOS, not allowed to moniter what I do unless they notice harmful files exiting for entering my VPS...
I am very annoyed since im down my money and my VPS... *since it got shutdown within the first day*
I would go with VPSlink rather than these since they are 24.7 down with no support...
Who has the best Windows VPS Solutions? [ Managed ].
I am looking for a 40GB Space/400-500GB Bandwidth/1GB Dedicated RAM/Windows 2003/PLESK 100 domains with Power Pack
My clients are mainly from India so kindly recommend a good provider who has solid network, best prices, rock solid customer support.
Norted solutions offers very cheap VPS solutions. However, anybody on this forum using them and has a review about them. I need a VPS for my test networking site, Norted seems a good choice for me.
View 3 Replies View Relatedany experiences to report about purchasing used / refurb gear from either Network Liquidators (nweq.com) or Network Hardware (networkhardware.com)?
View 12 Replies View RelatedI am in need to get a UPS for my 20 amp circuit in one of my datacenters. For whatever reason at least once a month the power will go down for a few seconds and then causing FSCK on my servers.
I need an affordable solution that will give me a few minutes of power so that at least the servers don't crash. E-mail notification would be nice too but not required.
There is an advanced windows software firewall solution as CSF for linux server?
View 3 Replies View RelatedAfter being a VPS client of theirs for a few days I realised that their domain is listed in a Realtime Blacklist according to DNSReport [ dot ] com.
I emailed the person to enquire about the possible reasons but it probably pissed him so much so that he terminated my account with no reasons whatsoever. According to their TOS, they have the right to do that and I acknowledge the fact that I can do nothing about it.
I did read the TOS before I ordered and was completely aware of that clause. However, at that time, I didn't think any decent provider would put that into effect unless I was abusing their system. Now I know a company can do anything they want, stated in their TOS, if they don't like you for the slightest of reasons. Thus, I have to treat this as a $15 lesson.
For those who are newbies like me in finding reliable hosting providers, I would like to advice you to consider many factors besides price. Among them that I have learnt from this episode are:
1) Size of the company
2) Duration in business
3) Number of reviews (good or bad)
4) Is their server blacklisted anywhere
5) Is their TOS reasonable
Just 1 day,I feel so sad with them.I think the company is just 1 man running.I bought a small plan on 7.2,the price is good $6.99 for 256 RAM 30G Disk 160G bandwidth/m.Everything is good after they spent 7 hours to setup my vps,not bad.
I spent the whole days of 7.3 to rebuild my vps from centos to gentoo & update it,& the bad thing from this moment is begin.
everything is ok during the update time,but I forgot the my openvz server's kernel is 2.6.18,I updated my linux-headers to 2.6.25, it causes I can't fininshed emerge -e my sytem,so I reboot it,but it die & never running again,I do anything I can do,reboot in the HyperVM,& ssh to the console access,but nothing help.
so I submit a ticket to them,at last they just rebuild my vps back to centos,do nothing for me.I know it's the unmanaged service,& if the vps I can rescue it,I won't sumbit a ticket.
After that,I make a mistake,they don't have a refund for vps,but I request it,all right,no refund is ok.I say I'll make a review for my vps,but they sad I can't paste the ticket to the public space because of the TOS,if i do it,my vps will be terminated immediately.i don't care.I feel sad with them,so spent $6.99 to let everyone know the company & the unreaonable TOS,it worth
here is the ticket,I'll let you know: ....
I recently took over a site and needed to have a dedicated server for it to handle it. I decided to use AYK Solutions (AYK from now on), the same host the site was currently using but purchased a more powerful server. The previous owner said that AYK had very good support and he generally didn't have any problems except for the fact his server could not handle the traffic.
The Deal
AYK was having a deal at their Florida location for a Quad Core upgrade and free gig of ram. Deciding it was worth it, I ordered a new server.
AYK implements a verification process where you have to scan your Credit Card (and suggests blocking out all the sensitive information) and fax/email it to them. I did this and sent it to them and waited for the server to go up. After waiting a day, I asked for an update to see if there were any problems. They responded in 4 minutes! The documents were good and they will inform me when the server is set up.
The Wait
As with any good deal that gets posted around, people tend to leap on it sometimes causing an unanticipated response. After 3 days, the standard time they said it would take to have the servers up, they contacted me and stated that they had too many orders and needed more time to set mine up (I'm paraphrasing of course). They stated it would be up in 48 hours. The next day I got an email stating the server was up and ready for use.
The Transfer
Now, the old owner of the site was using CPanel and I purchased CPanel so that it could do an easy transfer from server to server. He gave AYK the information to access his server and they initiated the transfer. We ran into a few hitches here. Along with the purchase of a server, they offer the option to harden it. The hardening process changed some of the standard ports so when they tried to do the transfer, it failed.
They contacted me and I provided the information they needed. This was resolved quickly and the transfer was done.
The Launch
I ran into a few issues at launch. These issues were generally mine of course but AYK has shown themselves to be very helpful and to do things with record speed so I figured they would have a better chance of figuring them out than I would. Some of the components required to run the site weren't installed on my server (mostly to do with PHP). I sent a quick ticket to AYK to ask them what was wrong. The ticket was responded to in 15 minutes for more information (server login, error message, etc) and resolved in less than 3 hours.
The Now
The server is approximately 3 months old now. The site is running smoothly (although I haven't worked on it as much as I had hoped). I am working on several other projects on the same server and haven't had issues with any slow down, speed or reliability issues. The support is bearing on the word "perfect" if such a thing is possible. I can honestly say that I have no complaints whatsoever concerning AYK.
I'm very happy with them and would highly recommend them to anyone.
Overall Rating: 10/10
Support: 10/10
Reliability: 10/10
Speed and Bandwidth: 10/10
We are having our web application distributed across a number of subdomains on our hosting account. We want a single SSL certificate solution for our web application?
View 2 Replies View RelatedA dedicated server comes around 200 USD [ good specs with softwares ].
What about colocating our own server?. How much would it charge and what are the necessary things to look on before going towards it.
i am a new member and planning on hosting several web sites in the near future.
For the moment, i have found that webhostforasp.net is closer to my requirements, but didn't find a lot of feedback under webhostingtalk. Does anybody that has worked with webhostforasp.net would like to share his impressions?
I also checked ************.com, but though they answered my questions really fast, i ran into many negative comments from webhostingtalk members. So, i have second thoughts about it.
I want also to check on softsyshosting.com and m6.net in order to reach to a final decision (not excluding the chance of using different hosting solutions per site, based on each site specific requirements).
Alright here is my 3 month review for my VPS with FS-IT Solutions. I would like to note that this is a German company, all services are based completely in Germany, and I speak no German at all. I decided to try a VPS in a different country and found this one for a decent price on a forum. Sorry if this is kind of weird posting a review for a German company and VPS on an English forum but I am American and speak only English so I figured I can share my hosting experiences as well. I also have noticed other people give reviews and info on German companies like hetzner.de, netdirekt.de, and others.
The company's website is located at [url]. I don't believe the VPS plans are shown on the site, it may be done on a custom order only basis. I had a fairly long correspondence of emails with the sales person from the company before ordering and they spoke very good English and helped me through anything I had inquiries about. I ordered the following:
20GB Disk
500GB Data Transfer on 100mbps
128MB RAM
4IPs free of charge
Confixx license included
10EUR/month - a little less than $15 for me usually
My VPS was setup very quickly (under 12 hours) after I ordered and I was able to immediately login to SSH and my VPS control panel. The panel is completely in German but it's fine because most of the words used for features are cognates of English words and I never have to use a translator. It is easy to navigate and easy to use features like reinstalling/changing operating systems and checking data graphs, etc. I had to first contact support regarding inquiries behind operating Confixx as well as some IP address inquiries and all emails were responded to very quickly and professionally. I ended up using my own Plesk license that I have and it is all running very smoothly. The network speed is superb, and being in the US, I can max out my connection an pull a full 10mbps from it at about any time when I download a speed test file. This is pretty good because most european downloads for me cap out at around 4-6mbps. The hardware is very nice and installing things or running anything through shell and compiling goes very smoothly and quickly. I have never experienced any issues or downtimes yet and it's been a very stable operation thus far.
Overall I would recommend them if anyone was looking for something like this...
Speed 8/10
Support 9/10
Network Speed 10/10
Uptime 10/10
Overall 9/10
I'm setting up a new VPS, and I'm curious what services people use for offsite backups.
I'm not even really sure what types of options are out there. For my purposes, just setting up some cron jobs to do an rsync to another server would be sufficient. I only need 10GB of backup space.
What services have you all used, and what's been your experience with them?
this is something that struck me, that is what are the benefits (pros and con) of being hosting on a clustered webhosting / clustered vpses
View 8 Replies View Relatedthis company is terrible! what a way to treat customers or potential customers, so much for good customer service or even so so customer service, these guys are just plain aweful!
I really wonder how a company like this stays around!
Checkout the convo. between myself and Chad over there at Virtuoso. I am pimpbucks.
Quote:
From: PimpBucks [mailto:pimpbucks@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 2:33 PM
To: Sales
Subject: Re: Virtuoso Net Solutions Inc : Order Details
You are WAY to funny.. I expect my money back within 24 hrs! Or I will report YOU for spam, harassment and credit card theft.
On 1-Aug-07, at 2:32 PM, Sales wrote:
I have reported you for spam, harassment and fraud. Your IP has been reported
for harassment
Do not contact us ever again
From: PimpBucks [mailto:pimpbucks@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 2:31 PM
To: Sales
Subject: Re: Virtuoso Net Solutions Inc : Order Details
fine you go ahead and report a perfectly good credit card you moron, report me to the authorities too!
I unfortunatly read about you AFTER i signed up.
If the money isn't back on my card by tomorrow I will be processing a chargeback.
On 1-Aug-07, at 2:27 PM, Sales wrote:
If we’re so bad why did you both sign up?
We’ll be reporting this to the actual bank as fraud.
I suggest you work on your social skills and refrain from your childish vulgar language.
Any further emails will result in reporting you to proper authority.
From: PimpBucks [mailto:pimpbucks@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 2:26 PM
To: Sales
Subject: Re: Virtuoso Net Solutions Inc : Order Details
holly **** you really do need to work on your social skills. I thought it said bank NAME! Those posts about you and your company over at webhosttalking are 100% correct, your a dick head thru and thru.
On 1-Aug-07, at 2:21 PM, Sales wrote:
It was already marked “fraud” therefore it was not charged.
You could have explained why you inputted epassporte as bank phone number,. but you did not so therefore this is fraud
From: PimpBucks [mailto:pimpbucks@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 2:20 PM
To: Sales
Subject: Re: Virtuoso Net Solutions Inc : Order Details
refund my card then.. its not fraud at all.. but i expect a full refund!!!!
On 1-Aug-07, at 1:15 PM, Sales wrote:
This was marked as fraud due to the following reasons:
Credit card bank phone number provided: epassporte
Billing address is California. IP address used to purchase is from Canada
Domain thetictoc.com shows up as another owner, not matching billing card first/last name.
To correct these factors, you must provide a valid bank phone number which you should have done originally.
From: Pimp Bucks [mailto:pimpbucks@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 11:23 AM
To: sales@virtuosonetsolutions.com
Subject: Re: Virtuoso Net Solutions Inc : Order Details
Wondering how much longer until the account is setup.
I'd just want to say that Galaxy-Solutions is the best hosting provider that I've ever been with!
I have a VPS with them which is Unmanaged,but still, Richard is helping me REALLY a lot with problems that I occur (It's my first VPS)! He helped me when I got errors, When my vps was going down for overload (lol), but he made it so now I don't get any downtimes at all! The speed is really awesome! The ping I get is like 140ms! (Ussualy I have ping arond 180-200ms for US Servers).
The VPS is really reliable, support is fast and really professional, prices really great and fair compared to the service that I'm getting!
I recommend this host for all of you! It's really the best! A+++
Other than Rackspace, can the good folks here recommend some data-centers that have experience in handling the following solutions:
SAN (F/C, 10Gbps), 9TB usable capacity, complete redundancy, and real-time mirroring to an additional SAN in a separate geographic location.
redundant Brocade SAN switches
Servers: Quad processors, quad core, 48GB RAM, 8x146GB SAS Drives, multiple 1Gbps NICs
VMWare installations and handling.
Load balancers (preferably Brocade)
Dedicated L3 switches
I'm not just looking at providing this, but someone who can truly manage it 24/7 - management from VMWare and SAN perspective.
I saw some niche datacenters, but ran into the following problems:
(a) singular location.
(b) support for VMWare and SAN provided during business hours only
(c) no prior experience in real-time SAN replication / VMWare, Oracle/MS-SQL Replication.
