I recently was looking for a good place to colocation some servers and new clients! Bought a P4 from "JSCL" and the story starts out like this....
Jason and I had talked (yes he and me are two different people) on AIM for about 1 hour and then I decided Jason had the right DC for me and my clients!
So far each question I've had about network, price, data, etc has been fulfilled within 12 hours or less! The day I had my P4 colocated it took a few days because they had a mass order so that time took a little bit but it was quick, faster then what I had expected though!
Jason has given me the best prices for colocation! Now I can offer my clients the best services on the net, I truly do not think there is a cheaper spot that fits my needs!
WOW When I started to play on the server I thought it was a quad core because the network is so DARN FAST! I truly am happy that I had found Jason when I did! I have already managed to have a few people talking to me about getting colocation with me!
It was quite funny because I was nagging at him for a while and I felt really bad because he should be sick of me but ya know he wasn't! Best darn support I have ever seen!
This is only a week review I'll review more after one full month!
07.10.2009 - 13.37 i need additional 2 IP address please.
07.10.2009 - 14.25 (Server.Lu Response) For what do you need them ?
07.10.2009 - 14.44 2 sites with SSL support.
07.10.2009 - 16.39 you there ?
07.10.2009 - 17.11 (Server.Lu Response) Hello, i will create an invoice for these 2 IP's. These will cost you 10€ setup and 2€ per month each. Please confirm so we can create the invoice. Best regards
07.10.2009 - 17.37 ok, its fine
07.10.2009 - 19.23 can i have the ips today ? ...
08.10.2009 - 00.44 Im not interested in the IPS, this take too long for a simple 2 IP request, thanks, and the server is DOWN ...
08.10.2009 - 00.10 My Server is dead, no reboot no rescue console works
08.10.2009 - 00.13 (Server.Lu Response) We are looking after this. This is not a server issue, but we see alarms on that particular cisco switch serving your box.
08.10.2009 - 00.27 whats going on ?
08.10.2009 - 02.02 this is awesome, server not respond, do you say its some issues related with 'Cisco Switch' and no one can say anything more, i dont interested in your services, please give me a refund, your company is caothic
08.10.2009 - 09.55 (Server.Lu Response) Hello, your server is running again. There will be no refund. Please remind that you opened a ticket at night so respond times are higher than during the day.
when i was able to acces the server after 11 hours i did single "uptime" , uptime 55 minutes, well they lied about the cisco switch or i dont know, but the NEW server without any use was started their first problems.
They refuse to do a refund because they not offer any Refund Policy and they dont offer any Support or any other guarantee, just their Network Uptime.
I looking to find a way to get my money back, because i dont want to be in a company who cant handle fine the products they sell.
They refuse to do a refund and well im working with paypal to do a clamin in the EU with Root S.A.
For the time I had their services, I was very pleased. Every time I had a slight problem with my services, they were ontop of it. I'm proud to be a customer of Server Hostage, and if I still decided to keep my website, I'd continue to use them. My forum is/was MyBB and when I needed my modifications and themes installed, they handled it within minutes. This is definitely getting what you pay for. The other thing I loved about Server Hostage, was its uptime. My site was never down, and I think that's hard to come by. Thank you Server Hostage. My site is under ground wrestling . net with out the spaces.
They make me wait no more than 15 minutes for support responses and I have experienced no downtime whilst being with them. Why does everything have to be so good?
Now, being serious about it:
I ordered my VPS with them two months ago because I wanted to cut down on the amount of servers that I leased. The deployment was completed within about 8 hours, had to wait for good old Otto to be deployed onto the world wide web.
I submitted some issues regarding a bit of drag in the network, slow response times etc and they responded promptly explaining the current packet loss issues with Limestone and all seemed to be resolved within an hour or so.
The ONLY issue I had is that their WHMCS, which might I say is nicely designed right now, forgot to invoice me! Other than that, superb experience all round!
When we first got our server (named Angelina) from Burst we were very happy with the server and managed service. However, for the last few weeks we have been experiencing downtime almost daily and sometimes twice daily. Now it has become daily and for hours at a time.
There reason is another server was flooded and was causing the others on the same block to fail. Seems reasonable enough and everyone makes mistakes and has problems. But almost every day for a few weeks now and still no permanent fix?
Our clients are threatening to leave us and we are losing money because of this. I've lost sleep debating whether to post this or not. Since we know that we will not be reimbursed for our losses we hope to prevent others from falling into the same trap.
We are currently looking for a new server/datacenter to more all of our clients from that server. We actually tried to purchase another server from them awhile back but was told they we could not keep up with orders. I'm glad we didn't get it. We cannot continue to let our clients experience this.
I ordered a vps from servercomplete 2 months ago and it is great..Top Speed, Awesome Network and Great Customer Support ..Just ordered another vps from ServerComplete.The VPS performance has been excellent.Server loads are always low.It’s always responsive and has had excellent uptime.
Communication: 10/10 Support: 10/10 Server performance: 10/10 Uptime: 10/10 - Overall Rating 10/10. I'm very impressed with the service I've received. The owner Daniel is a great guy who always seems to be improving things for us somewhere and is amazingly down-to-earth.My order was flagged by maxmind.He approved my order manually.I hope this post will help for all of you guys who are planning to change your vps providers or buy new vps.I highly recommend them.
I've been with serverpoint.com for over a year now and my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. Last year I negotiated an excellent price for a dedicated box with serverpoint via PM. They delivered my server promptly and even upgraded my CPU since they were out of stock on the one I had ordered. The few times I’ve had to call support (due to issues on my end) they’ve been prompt and professional.
My only real complaint is I can’t setup automatic bill pay online. They want my to send a photocopy of my CC and a photo ID, which I’m leery of.
I suppose this is a boring review, but in and ideal world isn’t that the way it should be? Who wants a lot of drama with a host provider?
I am aware of the horror stories and pretty much 99% negative rating for 1&1 on this forum – where its related to lack of high level support I agree most other relating to billing I believe the majority is user error (aka incompetence).
With that disclaimer out of the way here is my review
Currently 6 dedicated servers with 1&1 for 1 year now
Downtime in 1 yr due to 1&1 network (less then 1 hr – 0 downtime in last 6 months+) – not sure there is an ISP on this entire board that could claim/match that
Support – have used on occasion and yes it is horrible and virtually non-existent. My theory has always been that in a critical/helpless situation support will cost me $99 which is the setup fee for a new server with them and I will use current backup to restore failed server. In this 1 yr and across 6 dedicated servers (all windows server 2003) I have had one such critical – machine down situation that appeared to be hardware/OS related. Well it was about 5AM in the morning and I panicked and thought OK here we go I am going to be paid back for all this time putting my trust in 1&1 (this occurred about 1 month ago). I thought OK let me at least give support a try (I had not spoken to them in months) – I checked and found out they had a new number so I though OK new number maybe there is a glimmer of hope. Called it spoke to Philippines, calmly explained the server down situation – they verified it and said it would be sent to data center and I would here back via email – not real comforting but I decided to at least breathe easy for an hour or so. Within 15 mins I noticed via my serial connection (an awesome 1&1 feature) that someone was on my server and attempting a rescue image restore, I was kind of stunned with the response time so just waited and monitored it.
Cut to the chase within 1 hour my server was back online no lost data OS running fine and I was informed via email all was restored, no explanation but hey this is 1&1 how much do you expect. I have since called on another non-critical issue and noticed I got right through to a semi-high level technician in USA so maybe just maybe things are turning the corner in this regard.
1&1 PROs after 1 yr experience
-Features/power available in 1&1 control panel – yes I know most hate it and its not the most intuitive but once you find your way around boy does it have some power not the least of which is the immediate hardware reboot option not only to a normal reboot but to a rescue image if needed. This has been a life saver for me countless times. -Direct serial access to server at all times – once again extremely powerful and allows to you run fully interactive disc check, metadata defrags and more during boot sequence as you have serial access to machine via telnet right from power on sequence.
-Full ftp backup included that is on their lightning fast network
-Full server reimage capabilities
-Full featured firewall configurable from control panel- we’ve never had any ddos attacks others constantly get hit with.
-Full RAID configured dual drive on all machines
-Bullet proof fast network
1&1 CONs after 1 yr experience
-The aforementioned support experience is always a nerve racking experience but so far I’ve been fortunate.
-Lack of ability to upgrade the server components (not a biggie as you can move to a new server if you want to upgrade but would be nice)
That’s it a real review from a 1&1 dedicated server customer, suffice to say I am a competent server/network professional so know how to configure a server correctly so have not needed 1&1 in this regard. I merely need them to maintain the network and hardware integrity nothing more nothing less and that is what they have done for me to this point.
Frankly, I follow this forum almost daily and covet being a Hivelocity customer as in my assessment of the feedback on here they have outstanding customer support and certainly light years better and more professional then I have now but if I had of been a customer of them for last year I would have –
-Paid a lot more per server and still not got some of the features I have standard now (direct serial access, default raid, free ftp backup, immediate reboot and re-imaging power)
-Had considerably more downtime (Freaks me out that they do not operate fully all their data centers and are at the mercy of Sago Networks and their relentless power outages which will always be the case in Florida)
-Slept uneasy every night during the summer whenever a hurricane came within 1000 miles of Florida
how's this desktop server looking? Do you think it can handle Windows 2003 Small business server and is there any restriction on how many websites you can host with Windows 2003 small business server?
this is my first time building a server for colo so far i have gather info from this board on the motherboard and the rest are picked by myself.
i want to colo with colo4dallas. is there any other place better than colo4dallas?
I had posted the review a week back but for some reason everything went bazook with WHT.
I lost all my posts but am making an attempt to write the review again of my exp with HG.
Well, I had been with these guys for close to 14 months. I never knew there was bright world beyond HG for dedicated server untill I came to WHT. I had taken a xeon 2.4 with 2 gb ram for $219 everything was fine untill the server started giving me problems off late. It was supposed to be a managed server but these guys had just no clue whatso ever on any kinda problem. The took like close to 12 hours just to figure out the problem which was an issue with fan.
Imagine they were putting the blame game on me till they figured out it was a problem with the hardware(fan). When I went to claim refund for meeting the SLA, they told me that it was my fault and the onus was on me to ensure the server is up and running. WTF? How do you expect me find and why do you think I took managed service if the onus was on me to make sure the server is up and running.
That wasn't the end of my horror story. I don't remember the number of times I had to suffer with restarting the Apache / Mysql and downtime and when I did goto them, they said my RAM usage is too much. Hmmm when I further digged out and I felt cheated when I found out that they gave me a cheap DDR-200 MHZ RAM which is way outdated technology. I was like WTF? All those problems were because of that Cheap DDR-200 MHZ RAM for which they were charging me a bomb.
Imagine they gave me a trash Hardware and charging me a bomb for that crap and they kept blaming me for it.
I scrapped my Xeon 2.8 to Q9550 for a bit more but it was worth it.
I've been building a new services over the last two month and needed a server to host it. I've initially ordered a server at an other provider (which will be getting a very bad review shortly) but after three weeks I still didn't get the server.
While desperately browsing these forums looking for a replacement I noticed a few posts by a server.lu staff member, I've heard some good things about them in the past so I decided to send them a pm with the question if they could deliver a server with the specs I needed. Within 5 minutes I got a response (it was past 00:00 at that point, talk about service). And I think it was about 30 minutes later my server was up and running.
And as an added bonus it was a quad-core instead of the dual-core advertised. What the other provider failed to do in 3 weeks server.lu had done in a matter of minutes.
To see if that was just a lucky coincidence I ordered a 2nd server yesterday and again it was setup with a few minutes.
Server.lu is off to a very good start, my 2 month review will tell you if they can keep it up.
SO the last few months I been trying like crazy to tweak Apache or find a better http setup such as running lighttpd with Apache, etc. I have been frustrated by the way Apache easily fork bombs under any decent load or dos attack. You get about 100 bots all making 30+ connections a piece on Apache and it kills it.
Bot kids have adapted to ddos protection and connection flooding banning by sending low bandwidth attacks that do not make enough connections to get banned if you do have protection, its real low bandwidth incoming but is like a massive vampire attack outgoing. And it destroys Apache no matter what you do, what modules you have, etc. You basically have to go in and manually ban or set your connection tracking limit down to where it starts banning regular users too.
So I seen on here somewhere someone recommending litespeed to someone so I went and checked it out and was amazed by the performance. I installed the trial enterprise in a p4 server I been having problems out of lately crashing all because a busy site and I installed it in my main server.
The only thing I needed to do was compile my own php5 for it, which is real easy via their wiki instruction. After a few snags here in there I finally got it working tip top on both servers, both of which are cpanel.
So with the p4 that was always crashing and keeping hi load, We would end up having to remote reboot that box almost once a week not due to any misconfiguration or wrong setup, just couldnt take all that Apache usage and would die. We instantly noticed a difference with litespeed. The average load used to be about 1-2 always, with litespeed the average stayed about ..2 even under heavy traffic. So this was a big improvement and we have not had to reboot that box since.
My main server which I take my high risk clients on, core2duo 2.4. I thought there for a Lil bit the sites were starting to outgrow the server as its average load always was around 1 which was fairly acceptable seeing the traffic it gets so normal for Apache.
During the low bandwidth ddos attacks I would have to go in and manually ban as well as setting connection limit way down just to keep it from lagging, most of the time it still did. So I was really wanting to do something for this server to optimize http without upgrading, because it seems most of your hardware upgrades are to suit Apache anyway.
So I installed litespeed on my main server, ran into a few snags here and there but eventually got it under control. Just the last few days I got to see it put to the test.
I took on a client who was being extorted by a ddoser who recently got him kicked off his previous host. SO as soon as dns resolves here comes the crapstorm. A low bandwidth http attack, a lot got by ddos firewall on the network level which these are hard to stop because they are so similar to a legit user.
So I started getting hundreds of csf connection tracking blocked emails, was checking the site periodically and it loaded fine. So I logged in the box, looked at the load.
Was at .24. When I done netstat command there was hundreds of syns coming in and about 250 ips all connected about 50 times, this would normally kill Apache no matter what CPU/ram and all that you have. So I set connection tracking down to a reasonable level, 60 connections and I figured I would just let them get themselves banned. Looking in the live stats in the litespeed admin panel which is real cool BTW. I was seeing about 400 requests a second. This was eating a Lil bandwidth, all outgoing as that is how the attack works like a massive vamp attack. So about 2000 connection tracking emails later finally gets em all banned. The entire time the load on that box never even got to 1!
So im pretty much amazed how fast and light this http server is. And especially how well it handles dos. I about know for a fact even if you was on a non protected network it could handle as much http as your pipe will give it, and do all this at a low resource load.
This will end up saving me money on hardware upgrades in the future as well. Long review, long story, but I been so amazed by this http server I had to make a review on it. Im sure some geniouses will try to say "If you do this and that with apache you can make it just as good" But check it out for yourselves and see.
Since ditching the sinking boat known as the USS Hostchum, I found AquariusStorage. Initially I wasn't all that interested in their service as the VPS offerings were something new that Aquarius was doing and I had no clue as to how overloaded their servers were (OpenVZ based). After having the a4 package (1GB dedicated RAM, 1.2GB burst) for a few weeks now, I forget that I'm even on a VPS!
Ryan has been there for everything, even the small issues that he had no reason to help me fix (unmanaged). From my initial live chat with him, he never lied about any of the specs and went as far as telling me that they had *just* opened up their VPS offerings. Have read plenty of positive things about AS's shared/resellering services and thought meh, lets give them a try. No matter what I throw at the VPS, it handles it as if its a bug hitting the windshield of my rocket.
Support: 10/10, replies were within 30 minutes, if there wasn't a reply then the issue was already fixed. Had a DDoS on the node I was on around midnight, Ryan was up and on the issue before I even got a ticket in to him (I was up late working on the VPS and noticied probably within a minute of the DDoS happening).
Uptime: To date, 100% uptime of the node (with the exception of the DDoS, which was dealt with within 20 minutes).
Performance: WOW! Ryan and the guys at Aquarius sure know how to build a VPS node! Nothing but praise for the service I'm getting. Fairly certain they aren't overloading their nodes either as they have had plenty of time to pack my node to the fullest since I've had service with them, and it still performs just as it did when I bought it, heck its better! Orignal unixbench results were in the 220's, one I ran this morning reported 370
Overall: Ryan knows his stuff and the support is above excellent. If you're looking for a professional host, look no further! Personally, I'll be upgrading to the a6 package as soon as I have a need.
can i get some review on www.leaseweb.com and can i host such website on there server please go to www.rapidshare-search-engine.com to see what kind of search engine i have
6 ) beeing d*cks *Why This Review* Originally the intention was to forget as soon as possible about what happened in the past three months and to move on with our new isp. To our regret, Leaseweb has besides the overall lack of service in the past months found it neccessary to kill our network connection without notice a day prior to the ending of our contract. Eventhough the impact is minimal, this gesture speaks for itself. *Ordering a Server*
Having been a leaseweb customer directly and indirectly for several years in theyre budget segment we to be fairly honnest have rarely had any trouble ordering, nor have we had any trouble with the delivery of the purchased servers.
We experienced differently when ordering the following :
Dell Poweredge 1950 2x Quad Core Xeon L5320 16 GB DDR2 4 x 300GB SAS raid 1+0 IP KVM card 1 x 100Mbps Full-Duplex 10 Mbps (95%) bandwith SLA : Best Effort OS : Debian Ordered 09/30/2008 - payment sent immediatly
Wanted to let you all know that I am very pleased with service I am receiving from Byethost! Many people think of Byet as just a free hosting and paid shared hosting company, but for awhile now I've been leasing a server and management service from them for io3.us and io4.us. I must say I have been very impressed!
I've received lots of personal attention and consulting to help me determine my needs, and also to make sure I end up with the best solution. Byethost has been very flexible in their solutions for me, and I have really appreciated all they've done!
I recently had to upgrade from a VPS to a full dedicated server, and once again Byethost was there to help every step of the way. The upgrade was literally totally seamless.
They ordered the server, configured it, moved everything over, verified everything with me. Nothing was down, not even for a few seconds. Byethost handled it all, and I didn't have to do a thing! That's what I call service. (Plus, from the time I ordered until the time everything was moved from the VPS to the dedicated server and running fine was less than 2 days!)
Previously, I've said HostGator was my number 1 pick for dedicated servers, but I have to change that now. If you're looking for a dedicated server (with or without management servers), I strongly recommend Byethost.com. You will be doing yourself a huge favor, saving a tremendous amount of hassle by choosing Byethost.
I now have a dedicated server and 10 Mbps dedicated line from them, and I couldn't be happier!
just want to say this forum kicks some serious arse. It helped me out tremendously with a potential scam that I almost got myself caught in this morning. Secondly, since I am on here posting this morning I might as well post up a one year review of Singlehop.com and the dedicated server I am using.
My websites hosted on rig: www.svtsnake.com, www.nsgcenter.com, www.nextlevelhardware.com My host: SingleHop My sales rep: Miguel Villegas My hosting package: Dedicated Server E8400, 2GB ram, 250GB HDD (non raid), Plesk CP with 5 domain license. My monthly pricing: 189.00 even per month
At the beginning of my term about a year ago I was achieving 2.1 to 3.0 MB/s throughput down and close to 500 KB/s up which is excellent and really incredible for working on SSH Secure Shell for me with uploading and downloading DB files, etc. At this current point in time I have noticed a minor decrease in speed to around 1.5 MB/s download speeds and at nighttime hours around 700K, which is more than ample and still excellent IMO as you will see in this picture: http://nsgcenter.com/dlspeed.jpg
I am very happy with overall throughput of the server at almost all hours. You can check out overall network response time and server DB response by playing around with the vbulletin database I run at svtsnake.com. There is always a huge amount of concurrent users and never any slowdown.
Something else incredible for me with Singlehop so far is network downtime. I can honestly say, since my latest term with them. I was also a customer a few years ago and had a few issues with server downtime that I ceased being a customer with them because of it. However, I was refunded an compensated in a timely matter and everything was taken care of immediately.
However, it seems that as of recently they have improved there infrastructure tremendously because I have NOT been down for 1 second in over 7 months. Even when they schedule downtine, my server has never noticed it. My uptime has been 100% for every single day that I have owned this server on Singlehop.com.
There is one issue that I can say I am very unhappy with, and it is an issue where all partys can be blamed even including myself. I am well aware that there policy states after 3 days of non payment they can shut down server connection. So, I was a customer for seven months when a new single hop account executive named Miguel Villegas joined the team and was my representative. I had changed my cell phone and never updated the file, and at the same time I own multiple businesses and frequently close and open different credit/debit/rewards cards to be used for processing payment. Note that I have never missed a payment with them up until this point. The payment was do on like the 18th of the month or something, and I received the invoice thinking that my credit card on file was automatically going to pay my bill like it always does. But it just so happens that the credit card I had on file with singlehop was stolen at a nightclub in NYC called MansionNYC, and I was pick pocketed. I lost all of my credit cards that night and called up to report all of them stolen. So, obviously I was issued new credit card and I was waiting for them to issue me new cards in the mail and new numbers, which took about 3 to 5 days with most companys. So, here I am 3 days late for payment and I wake up one morning and ALL of my websites are completely shut down. No notification, no warning, just closed and I got an email from Miguel Villegas my account representative explaing that my server was turned off until I remit payment.
I called up Singlehop and I was furiated, yelled almost at the top of my lungs that they simply just shut off a server, after 3 days of payment. Especially in a situation like this and they never even called me up to let me know they were doing this because my cell phone was different on file - which was mis-communication on my part. At this point in time I called up my bank HSBC and got an emergency debit card number to make the payment to Miguel through email and my server was re-activated.
But, 3 days after invoice is due to just cancel someones server or suspend it is definitely not good business policy. I have been a customers for almost a year and the whole incident was a fluke, they didnt have to suspend the server. In my business, we give a customer at least 30 days to pay a bill. But thats not the point, I know there policy states you have 3 days to remit payment or policy account suspension. But I think that is a horrendous policy, especially for emergency situations like I was in. What happens if the owner of a business is dying of an anyeurism in the hospital and is 3 days late with his web payment for his website, does singlehop simply suspend his 16 million hit per month vbulletin forum just because of lack of communication and payment?
I am still a longstanding customer with Singlehop but felt I needed to share that story with everyone. So, yes I am very happy with quality of service, speed of service, tech support, packages offered. But, I am very upset about there payment policy regarding 3 days of lack of payment that just aint right. I really like the attitude and business practices of the execs at the company and they are going to hate me for the negative feedback of my one bad incident with them, but overall Singlehop has my business and will have my business UNTIL either the server is offline every other week, or my DB crashes due to SInglehop issues. LOL Neither I think will be happening anytime soon.
Thanks for reading everyone. If anything, I hope Singlehop reads this and considers modifying there policy regarding server suspension and lack of payment maybe to something more like 10 to 15 days. Not 3 days.
As a longtime member around these parts, I've had the opportunity to use the services of a lot of different companies. Whether it be dedicated providers, software developers and in this specific case -- server administration / management. I have had the opportunity to work with Scott of Admingeekz over the course of the past few months. He's provided me with server optimization, security and most importantly prompt, effective communication.
Link to Admingeekz: Admingeekz
I'll detail the pros, cons & downsides below.
Pre: I started working with Scott for system administrative needs a few months back for a few one-off jobs, sorting issues that I simply either didn't have time to manage or couldn't handle by my lonesome. The first few times I've used Admingeekz went off without a hitch and so I began delving deeper into their services & recently had an emergency that I had Scott deal with..
Admingeekz Pros: The pros of admingeekz are instantly obvious the moment you start using them. The team there is attentive, thorough and most of all they're not just robots. Not only will they handle the job but in almost every case they'll make recommendations, outpour some criticism and overall ensure that they're not just taking care of the issue at hand but rather going out of their way for all of your needs.
Pricingwise, I expected to be paying a lot more for the service that Scott & co. are offering. Not only are they inexpensive but they offer a 10% discount for return clients -- something that has continued to bring me back, not only because of the service but because I'm a cheapskate.
Communication, Scott is really on top of things. Frequent updates during the job being performed, effective communication and most of all friendly to work with.
Thoroughness: Admingeekz gets the job done and goes well beyond what's necessary in a lot of cases. Scott handled an emergency for me just yesterday and with most companies you just expect an 'okay, complete'. Scott went above and beyond and sent me a thorough detailed list of issues that he noted on the system, along with an exceptionally precise list of things he had done. Gorgeous, what we need as company owners.
Admingeekz downsides: Now the downside... and admittedly, they're nasty. The only downside to admingeekz is that you won't be satisfied anywhere else after you've worked with Scott & co. Not only are they attentive, thorough and fast -- but they know their security, administration and optimization. It will be nearly impossible for me to be satisfied by another security company at this point.
Keep up the great work Scott & thanks for spending hours working with me!
I've had a couple dedicated servers with 1and1 for a while now(about 6mos). I have to say that my overall experience was pretty good. At the time the prices where pretty good, and are very comparable to most hosts. I received the speeds promised, the server was setup very quickly.
The only negative I had with the server was the kernel. I attempted to install vmware on they system however they did not have the headers needed by GCC to compile vmware. It was an annoyance, but I just opted to update the kernel since there where a few releases since their custom built kernel was made. Once I was running the new kernel the vmware process went smoothly, and everything worked perfectly.
As for 1and1's support team, I have to say their standard support I would not rate a 10/10, however their dedicated server support team, and one particular rep I've come to know in their sales / abuse department (more on the abuse dpt. later) are very knowledgeable. And always addressed any issues or questions promptly. Which honestly no issues besides vmware stand out in my mind, which was just a minor inconvenience, which you would find on most hosts. Since its an un-managed root server your responsible for keeping the system up to date, and run the latest kernels anyway right?
Ok, so I mentioned I came to know a rep out of the abuse department of sales. Now this isn't particularly related to my dedicated servers but I did have one of their hosting packages. Well I never kept tabs on the site and the scripts had a couple vulnerabilities, php5 wasn't enforced.
Anyway to make a long story short, the site was hacked and fake bank sites and other scripts where loaded onto the server. Which is where The abuse department came into play. Now I know (getting off topic, but it may be the same with a dedicated server) hosting companies don't want to run sites like these, and I thought that the way these companies usualy handle these types of situations are to send a take-down notice to their client, as its possible they may not even know its there. But 1and1 opted to completely disable all access to the server, http, ftp, ssh, everything. So at first I didn't know what happend. I call up tech support that night(prob around midnight -- 24/7 tech support is always great), they let me know the account was dissabled do to an abused related complaint. They told me I would have to wait until morning when their sales department opens(as abuse is located in sales).
So I call up the number they gave me the next morning. And meet Bob (I'm calling him bob because his name escapes me at the moment). He was very pleasant and understanding that I needed my site up as soon as possible. He looked at my account he saw I had been with them for about a year and a half, and said he didn't think I had posted any of the content anyway(he disabled it himself imagine that haha). He emailed me links to all the files in question, informed me that php5 was not forced and recomed I fix it. Since that was the only reason we had this isue in the first place. He was also able to tell me what files the hacker used to exploit and gain access to the server, as well as searched the the user directory for any backdoor scripts. Which he did find some and sent me the locations in the email.
So, finally we got of the phone he re-enabled the server. I went through the email went through everything, I just opted to delete everything as i felt the whole system was compromised anyway, and re-upload the site. I forced php5 for all php scripts and never heard anything about it again... and the site still runs today!
Their normal tech support isn't all the great, at least not when it comes to apache. I inquired about mod_rewrite not working and the first rep i spoke to didn't know what i was talking about, I explained in more detail, she put me on hold for about 10-20mins and researched it. Said she found details about my issue and shot me an email. I checked the email, it contained how to moddify headers using MS ASP which has nothing to even do with my "LINUX" shared hosting plan.
I called in a second time frustrated, remember I usually talk to guys from their dedicated server support. When I spoke with the second rep. The first thing I asked Him was if he was familiar with "Apache Mod_Rewrite" (exact words) are you familiar with this, and if not can you please give me to someone that is. He assured me he knew what I was talking about, I explained the situation, and what the other rep sent me was completely off topic. He apologized and assured me he knows exactly what I'm talking about.
He sent me an email with another link to their FAQ yet again. However this time is was on creating 403 redirects in apache. Well I do admit at least they got closer this time right? I laughed and walked out of the room. Took a shower and relaxed. Finally, I decided I'd take one last look at .htaccess configs before trying another call. I played around with different setting and... eureka! I found the solution; for some reason mod rewrite on 1and1's shared hosting servers doesn't support sub-directories; that is you need to access the files in your root directory to successfully process a rewrite.
So whats the moral of the story? Call Dedicated Server Support! lol
So anyway since this is a dedicated server review. So for my Dedicated server experience I would rate it a "9 out of 10".
For my overall experience with 1and1, I would rate it an "8 out of 10". Not the best I ever had, but I would do business with them. There are other minor issues I've had with their shared hosting, but I don't feel like getting into them.
Anyway hope that helps sombody, I kno it was a long post... so for the people that read it all congrats, because I lost concentration over about 80% of that post lol
Little humor there.. anyway thanks for read'n the post... just my little contribution to WHT.
I've been a member of WHT for more than five years now, and while I skim WHT daily, I rarely start new threads. My recent experience with Mike Bailey (aka ub3r) deserving of a review, and I hope that others find it informative and useful.
I only know Mike(y) through WHT, and over the years have had an opportunity to read his posts. I've previously contacted him asking for assistance with web design, but he remained humble and pointed me in another direction, with the explanation that my needs could be better met by a more experienced web designer (I'm not sure I agree).
For the past six months I've had a problem interpreting and responding to a support message by one of my VPS providers. I would imagine that the problem and solution were a relatively easy fix, but I needed someone to take the time to help me step-by-step. After contacting Mikey, he followed up with me immediately, and before quoting a price made sure he understood the scope of the problem.
Mike not only emailed me step-by-step instructions on fixing the problem, but he actually took time to explain how it worked. As a teacher I must say that he did a great job explaining the topic in a clear manner, and his willingness to answer follow up questions was very helpful.
The truth is I'm sure he's dealt with far more difficult server issues, but his level of professionalism and willingness to help were evident throughout this entire process. The value of services he provides, and his willingness to not only fix the problem, but also explain the steps, demonstrates his commitment to providing great customer service.
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 been very happy with Virpus since I joined. There was 1 issue that has plagued me since the beginning and that was that I was not receiving e-mails on my ISP e-mail, my main e-mail. Not to big of an issue except that I didn't get any news updates or know when my tickets were replied to, or even when I was past due on my bill. 3 tickets later and their solution was for me to use another e-mail address, which was kind of a pain for me since each of my e-mail addresses has a specific reason which only specific e-mail get sent there for organizational reasons.
First off I have to say the VPS I was using was top notch. It easily outperformed my LiquidWeb VPSs and quickly became my primary VPS instead of my backup like was intended. I took advantage of one of their specials a while back which was a 512MB RAM cPanel VPS for $19.50/month which is a steal since the cPanel license alone is $15/month!
So now to why this is probably my final review of this company. Communication is lacking greatly. It was good at first, but now it's non-existant.
Over the weekend all my sites went down and I had no idea why... because I never got the e-mail saying they were moving data centers (if it weren't for a small thread on WHT I would never have known). I also did not receive any updates on extending their ETA so yet again I had nothing to tell my clients. The only good thing was that I run a free hosting company (Host2x.com for reference) and I offer no uptime guarantee since it's a non-paid service.
Ok, so the sites are back online and everything is working nicely... well I recently hit the 70% mark on my disk space usage so time to start looking for an upgrade. I created a ticket on April 23rd asking if they would allow me to upgrade my plan to their biggest VPS plan and to my surprise I never got a reply. I would think that a billing ticket asking to upgrade to a plan that costs more without the transfer of the discount I'm receiving would be a welcome ticket for them to reply to, but I was incorrect in thinking this. So I ended up purchasing a dedicated server last night because I cannot wait to see if they will assist me with upgrading my account or not.
What seemed to be a good company quickly turned to nightmares. I purchased a couple domains. All went well. Then paypal emailed me saying they are high risk and wanted me to confirm I made the payment and service was given. So until I did the payment was held. They blame the held on me and threatened me to release it or they will cancel my account.
So they finally gave them the money and all was well. Well I did a stupid thing and decided to get a VPS from them, they have good deals so I thought, whats the worse that can happen. Well shortly after, I get a email saying because your payments are unreliable, we are waiting a week to setup your vps which is complete udder crap.
So I just said screw it and said give me a refund then and about 2 hours ago I try logging into my client center and my account is gone.
I am hoping one of them see this so we can get this worked out. In the mean time I opened disputes on all of the payments.
I just want to take the time and review Hivelocity. Boy oh boy, where to start. I am just so pleased with the customer support they offer and I don't even own a single product with them.
I currently own a server with another comapny and I am always looking at other options for cheaper prices, better services and etc.
I found Hivelocity through WHT and I took the time to start up a live chat which was answered quickly from Kevin. Kevin was very nice and welcoming. I was asking about discounts they could provide and etc. Kevin showed me their reseller program which seemed to be something I may be interested in. After a 15-20 minute chat with Kevin, he offered to add me on MSN if I ever wanted to chat which I thought was pretty nice.
After I got off live chat with Kevin, I decided to keep researching Hivelocity. I immediately signed up on Twitter (I never had a Twitter Account). I saw they had some awesome deals. They were offering an awesome deal today it looks like this:
"The next person to go to our site, open a live chat and say "I just got your TWEET" gets a Core2Duo 3.0Ghz e8400 for $5 the first month."
By time I even got onto Twitter, I noticed that this was already taken. I kept browsing their Twitter and hey what do you know, another great deal it followed like this: "The 1st $5 Core2Duo sold in about 20 seconds so lets do it again. The next person to open a live chat saying "Give me a $5 Server" gets it."
I decided I was going to be late as the last one sold in 20 seconds. Well, it turned out it did get sold but, I got into a Live Chat with David from Hivelocity.
David informed me that the server was sold and I was a bit too late. What do you know, more great discounts! He offered me the same server for $5 on the first month. I decided not to take advantage of the offer as I wouldn't be able to put much use to the offer. I will be moving to Hivelocity within the next 1-3 months.
Overall I am very pleased with the great offers they provide and the support is just amazing!
Based on the sales support and the deals they provide, I did a bit of a rating on Hivelocity.
Sales Support:5/5 Deals:5/5 Overall:5/5
Also, if you decide your interested in Hivelocity's awesome offers, I would follow them on Twitter! They are constantly updating their Twitter and offering great deals. Their Twitter deals are 100% and it's pretty awesome a company like Hivelocity offers products and support so great!
I joined Limestonenetworks back in 2008 when it was a small company. At the time they offered the best price on the server I was looking for, so I took the plunge. The first 2 months were great, I enjoyed the stable network, and responses from the support team were fairly quick (1-2 hours response time). From there on it was all downhill, my servers were constantly down, and the support team took longer to answer my tickets. I didn't think this was a big problem, so I stayed with Limestonenetworks even though it was having problems with their network. Near December an incident occurred that really pushed me over the edge. My servers had been down for hours, so I opened a support ticket, and one of the agents replied and told me that the downtime was due to an upgrade in their network.
Again, I came to conclude that it could be far worst, so I stayed, one of the reasons was that I didn't want to switch my game servers over. It's important to keep in mind when you are running game servers, IPs play an important part because that's where you get your traffic. Near January the network upgrade at Limestonenetworks was still taking place which caused my bandwidth meter to stop working. This really scared me because I didn't want to get charged for overages due to the fact that my servers were receiving DDOS attacks, and I wouldn't know when to close the ports.
This incident actually turned out to be positive for me because even though I went over my bandwidth quota they didn't charge me for overages. I was very happy because this was like a late Christmas present, so now I was even more happy to give my money to Limestonenetworks. Now you might ask the question, how is this going downhill? Even though they didn't charge me for the overages, I still lost many clients who were angry at the fact that their game server were down.
In the end this network upgrade actually cost me 3 clients who were paying ~$60 per month. I let this slide because at this point I already had two servers with Limestonenetworks and I really didn't want to switch over due to the fact I would lose my IPs. The next month, February, was no different, I had more issues with Limestonenetworks. Starting of this month I was getting large DDOS attacks, which kept pushing my bandwidth over the quota, and I ended up paying close to $200 dollars just for bandwidth overages.
At this point they started to nickel and dime me for every single penny they could get of me. I don't know if they were having financial problems, or if it was due to another reason. Again in March I went over the quota, but at this time they told me that I had to pay per gigabyte which would result in a $500+ charge in bandwidth, and after talking with multiple agents, I was finally able to reach an agreement. They had changed a policy all of the sudden due to the fact that they knew I was a good customer and would keep paying for the overages.
The problem I had here was that I didn't mind upgrading to plan after I knew how much bandwidth was going to be used, since they don't offer any sort of DDOS protection, and game servers result in large DDOS attacks occasionally. I understand that Limestonenetworks was not at fault, but by making me pay per gigabyte was a bit harsh, since I had never been late on a payment, and had multiple servers. Try to remember that I stayed with this company even though I lost multiple clients because of their network outages, but they didn't care about this, all the care about is nickling and diming customers.
From that point on I have been living on the edge because I don't want to pay for an upgrade before hand due to the fact I don't know how much bandwidth my server will be using. Even if I upgrade to a different package it does not offer an insurance due to the fact that if I receieve a large DDOS than I orignally predicted, I would still end up paying per gigabyte.
This company has turned from having potential to just making their customers run away. Now the other problems I had with Limestonenetwork is the support they offer, which has been declining since I joined. The associates are very rude and don't really care about the customer's experience. I didn't include every problem I had with Limestonenetwork because it would make it a very long read.
Network - 10/10 Downtime - 5/10 Customer Service - 2/10 Overall Experience - 4/10 Would I recommend this company? NO, I urge everyone to stay away, unless they like to deal with problems on a daily basis.
Also from reading other topics on this forum, I personally believe that Limestonenetwork is overselling and their network can not handle the load.
