for reviews and i couldnt find one negative review on them here on WHT unless i missed one.
billing did reply apologizing if it seemed like an insult.. although i cant seem to see it any other way as a direct insult? ill still looked passed it and give em a shot.. "
How is their vps uptime/support? as soon as i get this paypal issue straightened out im going to try them out since i havent read anything bad about them.
For people looking for a vps, I thought it's important to get a feel for their technical support team. So for the first time, I've had to use it. . .
My problem is that MySQL CPU utilization is around 25% at all times and it is lagging the box like crazy. All of my sites hosted only get around 200k uniques per month. <<snipped>> The lag seemed to start around the same time I added multiple cronjobs at various times and frequencies to grab RSS feed data and check to see if it should add a new entry into the DB.
I am not a linux guru, so I opened a ticket and asked for help and suggestions on what to do. . .
Response:
Quote:
I could try tweaking the mysql configuration so the service uses less resources, but this usually just helps with the memory use.
I was looking for him to either say yes the cronjobs are doing it or I have poorly coded queries. . something useful and related to CPU usage. But no.
So then I say sure, tweak. I ask if he agrees that the cronjobs are the problem and what options I have to remedy the situation.
Response:
I have tweaked the mysql configuration for you. Yes, most likely those cronjobs are causing the big CPU usage in mysql.
Basically he completely ignored my question on what other options I have or recommendations on what to do next. Needless to say I am furious. I ask for advice and get absolutely nothing useful in return. Not to mention his short answers make it seem like I'm lucky he even reads my entire question.
I've been with Zoom for 2 years now, and I'm leaving as soon as I find another host. Here's why: once a month, for the last 3 months, emails I send to a Yahoo.com address are bounced because Yahoo is blocking all email from my mail server. When this is finally dealt with, it turns out Yahoo blocks everything coming from Zoom (or my shared server -- sorry I'm not technical) because of spam originating there. Now, *I'm* not sending spam, and spam is annoying enough to deal with in my in box, but now other people sending spam are stopping me from sending my little 20-30 emails a day!
Here's how tech support has worked for me when this problem comes up:
1. I go on and open a chat with support.
2. Someone In India eventually says hello to me.
3. I state my problem.
4. Long wait.
5. Someone In India eventually comes back and says "hello" again.
6. Now I'm pissed. I tell Someone In India what the problem is and give her email headers and tell her to pay attention.
7. Another long wait.
8. This Someone In India gives me an email address at zoom to email directly about this problem.
9. I email TheAddressIWasGiven @ zoom explaining my problem...and THAT EMAIL BOUNCES! Despite the irony of having an email begging for help with bounces get bounced itself, I am not amused.
10. I go to call Tech Support... DOH! They no longer have phone support.
11. I fill out an online support and send it in. I wait No reply. Emails to Yahoo still bouncing.
12. I fill out another one. I wait.
13. I get an email telling me my second support request is being closed since they are working on the first one. Really? First I've heard of them working on it.
14. 20 minutes later I get an email saying they're working on the first request.
15. A day or so later, I get an email telling me it will all be fine in a day.
16. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes I get another email telling me to go to Yahoo and fill out a form to get them to unblock it.
17. I fill out a form at Yahoo and it gets unblocked within hours. I am currently suffering from the latest email bouncing and am at step # 14. Which is what drove me here to find a real host. Something about getting lumped in with spammers is just....icky. Yucky.
Also, they spontaneously took my little web site off line several times because they messed with directories. It took days to get right. My business is not web-based, but it was still annoying.
Anyway, there's my cautionary tale about Zoom . A few mistakes are forgivable, but this is too much.
I had purchased an SSL certificate from Go-Daddy. The Tech support people at GigaPros were more than willing to give me the advice I needed and to get the certificate installed for me in very short order.
Polite courteous professional service, excellent response times and top notch support. This company offers excellent value for the money! I highly recommend GigaPros!
I'd like to start an ongoing thread here listing the 'Good Hosters with Good TELEPHONE tech support'. In other words, out of the 1,000s of host companies, this may cut it down to less than a dozen.
( And for all you Hosters out there who really want your company to grow, and want to know how, - it's easy: just read here.)
Good telephone support is the #1 ultimate requirement, because:
-It's a lot faster and easier for both the user and the host company, because you can state and answer all questions and clarifications on the spot, you don't need to continually pass new emails with new questions and clarifications, back and forth for days on end, until the issue is solved. It saves tech time and user's time. And saves a lot of nerves.
- It's the best way to sort the good guys from the bad. A bad company isn't going to bother to answer the phone, - or will make you wait way too long, - because they are likely getting endless complaints. The good guys are always ready to answer the phones, with a friendly voice, - because they really WANT to please the customer.
- If a company can't be bothered to pick up the phone, we can't be bothered to even consider them. They're a joke, and so won't be listed here on this thread. (So, before adding or listing any Hosters here, please verfify that they do have Good, quick, friendly, telephone support,; ideally 24/7, but 9am to 10pm might be acceptable, if it was supplemented by some emergency contact. AND:
- Hoster ALSO needs good EMAIL support (and preferably, Chat online, extended hour availability). (I spend a lot of time overseas). It sems all emails should get a non-automated response within about an hour, - and then support should jump on fixing any problem.
I only need support a few times a year. To answer some questions, or fix a problem, or do an install. That's lesss than 1 hour total, so any company paying maybe $18/hour tech support should be able to handle this. It IS reasonable to charge a custm for extended calls, beyond say, 90minutes a year, IF you don't count the 80%? Of times an issue is the Hoster;s fault of stmg gone wrong, and don't count the 'hold' times.
ALSO IMPORTANT: - Uptime - site Speeds - Monthly plans, no contract (Only a dishonest host will try to force you into a contract, where they can then ignore you.) - Reasonable price. (? Maybe $12 to $18/month for a basic business site. We don't need massive bandwitdths, - we all know that's an overselling scam, and can't ever be delivered.) - a good upgrade plan of bigger options. Maybe even VPS. - Dedicated IP, and availbility of SSL -PHP 5, mysql, phpMyAdmin, etc - cPanel ( Some Hosts are using problematic panels, like Hsphere, which are slow to load, slow in operation, require many more clicks, have too many options, spread apart on many separate pages. Time is money, and this really slows down the ability of a small business to manage his own site in effective time. For example, one WHT user wrote somewhere: "I don't feel that HSphere's interface is nice at all, although I have worked with cPanel and DA all my life... I just found it to include un-necessary features or split features up in to different hard to find pages, such as backups - mysql backups you had to find on a completely different page than file backups, and then there were options to have it in the home directory or server-end backup, in which then you had to wait a good 10 minutes before it was ready. cPanel, just hit backup and hit download and instantly it does everything you need...".
I have used several hosters. Currently on Aplus.net and Godad, which have phone support, and mediocre service.
My LIST So Far: - Liquidweb: a very impressive company with good, 24 hour support. But to get dedicated IP, you need to go with their $25/month plan. Yikes! - NewIdeaHosting.com. A very small company. My call was returned, and the owner chatted with me for an hour on the phone! Plans have small bandwidth, but promises No overselling, and personalized attention. Extra $5 for dedi IP. He specializes in Small business sites, and small eCommerce sites. He has only 250 accounts, on 3 servers. He rents servers from the Equinox data center of Chicago. Seems exceptionaly honest. - MegaHosters. Excellent phone support and WHT reviews. But company was taken over by another company, and so may well go downhill in future. Another problem: uses Hsphere. - Steadfast. Has a good rep on WHT, and seems impressive. Tech answered the phone immediately, but they say they prefer emails. Sales phone has limited hours. Good price on $20 SSL. But, uses Hshhere. - JodoHost 24 hour phone. But, uses Hsphere. An Indian company with office in Florida, and good rep. I like the idea of outsourcing phone support, if it makes it more available and affordable. But, the accent on the phone was very hard for me to understand, so maybe this might not work..... - Hostgator. Yes, it's a big overseller, but seems to get good reviews/results anyway, and good phone support. - ? ThePrimeHost ?? Mostly good WHT reviews; some dissenters. Site says 24hour phone, but when I called on several nights, no one ever answered... - Can anyone add to this list? Please list only hosts that meet the above minimum requirements of phone support, etc. Especially useful is hosters you've tried. TO AVOID: - Avoid Arvixe. I had a horrid experience with them, here: [WHT forum]:/showthread.php?p=5097822#post5097822 - Avoid WebHostingBuzz. This company never returned my phone msessage inquiries.
I have been a customer with www.DMEHosting.com for over two months now. They were an ok server provider/host at first but I am now forced to leave.
The server setup is advertised as under 72 hours. My first server took just a few hours under that and my second one actually took longer. I also heard a report that a rapid deploy server (they say 1 hour or less) took over 24 hours to set up.
I have had a bit of downtime, and support is slow since the host is run by one person (David). This means that emails can take 24 hours to get a reply, live chat is only available for a few hours a day and there is no phone support which is a big minus for me in terms of hosting.
I purchase a server for my client who uses it to host proxies. Several times I have gotten reports of malware/spam/some other type of abuse. Each time this happens they send absolutely no details (except server name) and when I ask for more I get no reply and no help in sorting out the possible security problems.
The incredibly horrible bit started around the 7th of September. My main server was down and I had no details or anything from DMEhosting. I sent an email to their support team and a long 3 hours later I got an email back saying I was suspended for non-payment. I found this strange because I had received no emails, notices or invoices that month for the server. They claim to have tried to contact me, but I see no efforts at all.
So they eventually unsuspended my server and then I got an invoice overdue notice (even though I never got any "invoice due" notices. I then tried to pay the invoice, but their paypal system either half the time gives me an error that I need to add a credit card (I have one in my paypal already) or just doesn't let me pay.
I tried explaining their payment problems to them in live chat but they say since no one else is having problems they won't do anything (either they assume I am a complete idiot or I am making it up). This is disgraceful, if I contact a host saying that I can't pay because something is wrong with their system then they should at least take a look. They then terminated the live chat right in the middle of us talking (yes, they/David (one man show) are very rude).
Then, to my horror I got an email saying that no payment had been received and my server was suspended. Even though I told them several times by email and chat that their payment system doesn't work.
They then claim that I am being "very rude and and inconsiderate" and that essentially it is all my fault. They say my invoice is overdue and I still won't (I will, but I can't and they won't listen) pay so they are going to keep my server down.
Essentially the owner of this terrible host, David (he is also the support, billing, everything) is an incredibly rude person and he has no respect or desire to help his clients. I have faced serious amounts of downtime, slow support and now rude, horrible and downright stupid responses from support.
I advise you to steer well clear of this terrible host, they may be cheap but you are just asking for trouble.
I don't think I've given my thanks to KH yet so here goes..
I've been with KH for over 2 years now and worked my way up from a regular VPS to a Hybrid VPS. Their costs are low for their high quality of service, product, and care.
They have always answered my tickets in a timely manner and been lenient in my times of financial crisis when I fell behind payments a few times. They even allowed me to keep my 10% lifetime discount when I upgraded to a Hybrid VPS just because I've been a member for so long. They also have scalability opportunities for members that need dedicated servers (which I will be moving to in a few months).
There really is no need to fatten this post up. Just take away from this that KH is the absolutely best hosting provider out there.
i want to post my experience with giga-international.
A month ago i was looking for a dedicated server to start a gaming community, at first i was looking for something cheap and simple, just for start and check how it was going until i get a better server.
Well, my first server with they was a Pentium 4, i've sent the payment on a saturday so i didn't expect an answer until the monday, and since they say at the website that usually takes 1-3 days to setup the server, i dont care too much about the time.
My surprise was, the monday at 7:52 GMT +1 i receive an email confirming the receipt of the payment, all ok, so i was like, ok, i must wait 3 days.
But no, 2 hours later another mail was at my gmail account with my login data, they had the server up and running in 2 hours when they say in the website that may take 1-3 days to complete the setup, that was a VERY nice start.
Since my gameservers was a huge succes, i have bough the server package with the Core 2 Quad Q6600 and 8GB of ram, same as above, they receive the payment and 2 hours later i was configuring my server.
Actually i host 4 Team Fortress 2 gameservers with 32 slots each, this morning with all the servers full the netgrap was reporting a 1-1.5mb/s continue data transfer rate and the servers running so fine.
The support team was very helpful, when i was thinking to get the quad server they have helped me about the SO choice mainly due the ram.
Also their Windows License offer is awesome, you dont pay the first 3 months of the Windows license, only a little setup fee (14€ for W2008 Web)
I just wanted to let you know that based on your recommendations I ended up with HostGator.com. The good thing I like about them is simplicity. I purchased an account and it was active VERY FAST. Compared to my previous experiences, this amazing. I was able to upload and start working with my space. They have a great interface with a cPanel link. They have a guide teaching newbies how to start they even offered tutorials on how to add my DNS using namecheap.com! which is my domain-name registrar.
The speed is excellent and I was using a webbased file uploader. I will check using FTP it should get faster. I have so many things to do to test their other features. I would definitely upgrade to their dedicated plan if I get a better bandwidth for their plan.
Conclusion: Great experience. Fast, professional and convenient. I recommend it.
I will keep this page updated if I get anything extra to add. Cons or Pros.
Is there any happy The Planet dedicated server customers? I read sooo many bad reviews on here, yet they continue to be the largest dedicated hosting provider and are growing leaps and bounds.
So I thought I'd see if there were any lurkers here that are actually pleased as a customer of The Planet.
I have to tell you about my not so happy experience with Geekstorage.
Let me make it short:
Slow loads, there are hours where it's barely loading, from anywhere in the world, I've sent in 1-2 support tickets, but the only answer I got was that it should be okay again (oversold?), no concrete answers at all.
Right now, I'm having a DB Error on my forum, been so for the past hour or so, still waiting for a reply to my ticket, marked as High Priority.
Support: Slow, just plain out slow, I was assured to get my tickets answered within a hour when I spoke to their sales dude, sadly, they havent been able to hold their end of the bargain within that one.
Overall: They are good if you want to have slow loading websites, fly by the day support answers, and in my shoes, a DB Error on my forum.
I am looking for a new host, anyone with any good recommendations ? Pref EU location, but will also be able to live with a Texas based location.
Toward the end of August 2008, I published this review as that week I became a customer under the DedicatedNow service line. In it, you'll read that I was more than pleased with the service quality I was receiving across-the-board. I prefer the personal control of a dedicated server over shared hosting, any day.
It's been approximately ten months since that review. My opinion of this company has not changed a single iota since I started service. I have since obtained additional services, including Applicure DotDefender, and am researching off-site backup solutions with Josh in the sales team this week.
Performance has been unsurpassed. My single core P4 went about its business for almost 300 days, and the only reason I had to reboot, was due to my own fault, mis-typing 'ip route del /' and hitting enter before specifying the proper address & range to unrestrict. So yeah, the only reason I had a service interruption is because I hosed it my darn self....accidentally.
The times I do work with their techs, I'm met with the same personable, professional individuals I've been working with since the beginning. I figured out the issue I was having with cpmove.
Boil it all down: I'm still thrilled with these guys. I cannot recall a single disruption that wasn't caused by my own ISP, and I love the early email notifications during planned maintenance. Looks like the prices are a bit lower nowadays, too.
I haven't seen any reviews on these guys so I thought I'd contribute. I started an account with them last 5 or 6 weeks ago and had a great experience.
setup: was very very fast. It literally took 2 minutes. I paid with paypal and the server was made by the time I got the setup email to my gmail account. I got a town plan mostly for my new blog.
control: this is very important for me. I like to be able to reinstall the OS without opening a support ticket. vpsville does this very well, you can choose any Linux os you want and its setup fast!
I was also able to set the rDNS without opening a ticket. That was a nice change.
speed: the server is fast, so fast it seems like a dedicated box sitting beside me. my ping time is only 10ms from my house (Toronto, Rogers network) so that might be part of it.
Low ping time was very important for me as I will use it as a game server. compiling code on the server is really fast and so is yum or aptitude. apache loads pages quick. No complaints at all.
support: really good. No complaints. I asked about lots of stuff and I always get a quick reply. I was having some problems with iptables and they gave me a firewall script that does exactly what i wanted.
I am not an employee nor affiliate of Sagonet but I wanted to recommend a really good service I've had to date from them. I've been with them for about two years now, and as a large number of my customers are US based, we require a US hosting presence. Being in the UK, it's incredibly helpful to be able to speak to a real technician 24/7 if required. The service uptime has been constant and their prices are very good. I would definitely have no problem recommending them and I don't usually say that.
We would just like to take a minute to say how impressed and satisfied we are with one of our primary colo providers, G3 Technologies [url]. Brendan at G3 is a absolute pleasure to deal with. The facility is secure, well maintained and the BGP network Brendan has created is powerful and reliable.
I wouldn't trust anyone but Brendan and G3 when you need premium colocation.
Mods, you can PM us for proof that we use G3 or you can just trace hostvault.net ;-).
when i odered the server i got the server in 4hrs-from this point iam very happy support-is very good there reply are less than 5min,i must say special thanks to Alex Roman,Nicole Smith,Chris Manfre and Omar Ali they helped me in short out all my issues uptime and network-there network is very good,i dont have faced any downtime in my 30days time
billing-still now no issue in billing part Overall iam a happy client of gigenet
I have had a dedicated server with Axishost for just shy of 2 years.
Before moving to Axishost, I had done the shared hosting account thing with a few companies and was never impressed with the performance or uptime. After realizing that most companies grossly oversell their shared servers, I decided that investing in a dedicated server was the best route for my company.
I recall researching and sending some 'test' helpdesk tickets to a few popular companies. None of the companies I emailed were very helpful. They just wanted to close the sale and sell me more server than I needed.
Tina @ axishost took the time to find out what my needs were and offered me a good deal on a dedicated box.
Overall, I just wanted a dependable server that I could put a couple dozen fairly low volume accounts on...have a company fully manage the box, and run a server that is Very reliable and fast.
Axishost delivered.
For about $170/month they supply me with a fast single core linux server running Cpanel.
They fully manage the box and provide all the support I need in a timely manner. Rsync backups are included.
My server is in Gnax/Atlanta and has done a fine job for 2 years.
Support ticket responses are always fast. If I put in an emergency ticket it is taken care of within minutes.
I am a happy customer, and I recommend Axishost to anyone looking for a fully managed cPanel server.
I can remember not so long ago, Layered Tech and Soft Layer were pitched as being pretty much equal in pricing. When it comes to high-end VPS nodes, I've seen it so far to be more feesable to lease them, maybe on RTO, rather than buy hardware and rack it up so when I came to request a quote from the two providers, it seems to be that Layered Tech charge some what $800 more for the same configuration as Soft Layer. Who is actually worth the money in your opinion?
The quote:
Quote:
Dual Processor Quad Core Xeon 5335 2.00GHz (Clovertown) - 2 x 8MB cache 2 x 1.00TB SATA II 24 GB FB-DIMM Registered 533/667 100 Mbps Public & Private Ports Public Bandwidth 2000 GB Bandwidth Monitoring Host Ping Notification Email and Ticket Response Automated Notification Operating System CentOS 5 (64 bit) Primary IP Addresses: 1 IP Address Secondary IP Addresses: 4 IP Addresses Lockbox 1 GB Network IDS/IPS Protection Unlimited SSL VPN Users & 1 PPTP VPN User per account Nessus Vulnerability Assessment & Reporting Quantity: 1 Discounted Total: $599/month, $0 setup
For exactly the same quote, Layered Tech wanted $1,400 per month. Although I have no plans to go with either right now, who is actually worth the money?
I didn't even know about this company until I saw one of their PDU in somebody's cabinet in the datacenter.
They don't list any prices or vendors, I emailed them waiting for reply.
One thing that caught my eye was the number of additional outlets per strip. We never daisy chain out PDUs so even though we have the power to put more servers per circuit we never could. It has at least 3-4 more outlets than Raritan PX and APC, which means we can put 3-4 more servers per circuit.
How are their products? The look pretty robust from what I saw in the cabinet.
I've found an interesting offer from this provider. After doing some research I found one topic which didn't really describe the quality of their service.
Well almost a year ago I came here and read lots of posts, asked lots of questions and settled on getting my two servers from LayeredTech.
When I bought both my servers, they were from their clearance rack because although my sites were pushing terabyte level traffic at the time, their CPU/etc needs were fairly low. Of course how these things tend to go, I am looking at needing a third server this summer. Time to look at raising prices I guess
One thing that people seemed to complain about with Layeredtech at that time was the "lack of support". I personally have not seen that over this time I have been with them. For example...
Last Monday SMARTD reports an hard drive error. I submit a ticket and with in 30 mins we were scheduling a down time with them so they could test the drive. They ran the test and it came back with "one or more errors" so they offered to replace the drive and reload. I decided to take advantage of a forced down time to remove that horrid piece of junk called PLESK and asked for a fresh install of the OS, with nothing (I have see the grass on the control panel side, and its not greener!) and while we are at it toss more ram in the machine.
So they offered to bring up a complete new server and run them parallel for a few days!
Which is exactly the choice I opt'd for. I am happy to say we completed that move last Saturday and my users are much happier with the server speed increase (from doubling the RAM and removing PLESK as the rest of the hardware was basically the same)
I would and do happily recommend them to anyone that needs a unmanaged server. Their ticket response time has always been top notch, and other then this drive failure, we have had no hardware issues. Both our servers are in teh Savvis data center, if that means anything.
I was a happy client of Ruby Ring tech, but few days ago my Shared server Cpenl got missing in action... It showed some issue on listens... i submit a ticket to Ruby Ring tech and they said they will fix it soon... but for about 3 days nothing happen... suddenly today my shared server is also gone missing... cant connect to any of my websites and page cannot be displayed on cpanel also.. I submitted tickets.. but still no answer, now about 12 + hours downtime....
