I need to get a couple of dedicated windows servers and am trying to decide between SoftLayer and a couple other providers.
So, how is SoftLayer for customer support, network performance/uptime, pricing, and just overall?
Any recommendations?
It's imperative for you to know that web host features does not just stop with Unilimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. There are other very salient features to which some people looking for a host provider have ignore, it is CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
You will not value the importance of a good customer support until you start having problems which you want resolved in the shortest possible time. For some host providers this is like telling them to do the impossible.
It is sad that some of the so-called reputable host don't even have a ticket system not to talk of an on-line chat system where you can ask questions and receive answers in real time.
So, for those of you that are new to hosting or want to change your host, then you had better look for a host that offers good customer support either by Chat, ticket system or forum.
I'm undecided between an upcoming dedicated hosting server and am moving between Softlayer and ThePlanet. My decision partly comes down to support.
I've read many reviews on WHT about both companies, but not necessarily comparing them from people who have experienced both.
So my questions (keep in mind this is my first dedicated. I have used VPS in the past with good support) Which offers MORE support (not better) - I'm curious which company might consider my support questions as "part of the default service package" or "need additional service plan for that" More detailed support - my usual experience with support is support staff assume you already know a high level so it may take going forward and back 5 times via email to get a full answer
Overall support satisfaction - any other comments
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 want to know if softlayer will fit my needs?
1) i want to use svn
2) i will only host about 3 small-ish sites with images and maybe one cast-control.
has any used them and what is there up-time like.
It seems that from the morning the servers in seattle dc of softlayer are not responding from all locations. According to softlayer noone else has reporting this issue yet, however yet from our monitoring system this has been occuring for the past two hours.
Few clients around the world also reported this, however apparently for other few this is working. Is anyone else having the same issue?
I was host with lunarpages.com one day I got a mail from them that my account has been deleted. Sent them mail for the reason why my account was deleted because I need my account I register for two year and they have host me about one year, up to date I haven’t got any explanation from them and they have stop responding to my mail I have 5 domain with which need it badly could any one help me to get my domain from them. Right now I have register with deferent hosting company
View 8 Replies View RelatedI have no choice but to post this. I purchased a vps plan from them and couldn't login.
It was over the weekends. I tried to email them. No reply for more than 1 day. I emailed again, still no reply after many hours. I was quite shock because I read review that says support is supposedly good, even during the weekends. Have they closed down or are they posting good review for themselves?
I usually don't do this kind of stuff but when somebody does a good job it's right to let other people know, most of all in this industry.
it was Saturday, 12:52AM Euro time, i had an issue with the DNS of our new server, sent an email to Leaseweb support, within 5 minutes i had the answer.
For those of you who run your own dedicated server, How difficult is it to manage your customers? How many phone calls per day do you get from customers asking questions? Lets say you had 50 web sites set up on your server...How difficult, or how much time per day do you spend dealing with your customers or the server itself?
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have a VPS system on the west coast of the US, and access it from the east coast. Sometimes I can get 1Mbyte/sec downloads, and other times it is as bad a 250KB/sec.
I have done some pings, and have not seen any packet loss. I've experimented with sysctl and changed some parameters to hopefully help, but really haven't seen much of a difference.
Does anyone have a recommendation as to what I could do different to squeeze a little more speed out of the connection? The problem is that from both sides of the US, I see ping times (depending on different ISPs on the east coast) from 80ms-120ms.
Here is what I've tuned so far:
kern.ipc.nmbclusters=65535
net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_max=16777216
net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_max=16777216
net.inet.tcp.sendspace=78840
net.inet.tcp.recvspace=78840
net.inet.tcp.mssdflt=1460
net.inet.tcp.slowstart_flightsize=52
net.inet.tcp.inflight.min=29200
net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_inc=8760
net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_inc=8760
net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_auto=1
net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_auto=1
net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=1
net.inet.tcp.delacktime=150
net.inet.tcp.inflight.enable=1
I am creating a basic static site for my friend's gardening business. It will use html and CSS only, be around 5MB at most and does not require any databases, php support etc.
My problem is that he wants to basically have the site up and running and then be able to forget about it really. I will be going on now and again to update it for him, but that is about it. My experience with free hosts is limited, I have used byethost before, and though very good, they do require a log on every week else they assume the site is no longer wanted and delete the account and all files!
So, my requirements are:
Free host that easily allows to have your own domain name
Email address with the company domain, so quotes@domain.com, not quotes@domain.host.com
Cheap
Good customer service
Need no more than 20MB (allow for some extra photos to be added)
UK Based would be preferable
I'm going to be rolling out a php/mysql driven site soon and I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that the mysql performance dreamhost has given me isn't going to cut it, its probably too oversold. Simple one table one column selects can take 30 seconds or time out depending on how badly the server is being hammered. HTTP requests are usually snappy, but the mysql performance is bogus.
What is a good host for me to launch this site with? Storage wouldn't need to be too terribly high, at least initially. I'm tempted by MediaTemple's slick marketing, but I've seen on here that some people have had poor sql performance (contrary to what some personal friends have experienced, so I'm torn). I was reading about downtownhost on here, but their load times seemed slow when I hit a couple domains listed on here that are hosted by them.
This host needs to be located in the US. Honestly, I like dreamhost and their panel, save for the sql sluggishness I'm getting.
Is there a good hosting reseller out there that handles customer support?
View 8 Replies View RelatedAlright, I do not know why but all my technicians who I had hand picked right here from WHT started to leave one by one. I definitely do not think its due to price or work-load cause ALL of them first worked as staff on our help desk for a week and then fixed price themselves. I did no barging at all ~ so I suppose it was a personal problem.
I'll never forgive myself for this, but I took someone's advise and thought to give a shot at outsourcing technical support. I went up to this company called "OnLiveGlobal" - they are all Indians and thats what I needed exactly cause 50% of my customer base are Indians; I assumed I had a perfect match. And was just dreaming of all the money I could save in the process...
First Day
- excellent work; all support tickets are being answered within 20 mins and resolved withing an hour - WOW!
Second Day
Now comes t
- excellent work; all support tickets are being answered within 20 mins and resolved withing an hour - WOW!
Third Day
Ticket is open 2 hours... 3 hours... I reply and resolve it eventually. A few more tickets are opened in the process and I resolve all of them.
Then I ask for a refund on the 4th day of the service (doesn't their website say 7 days money back?) just due to the lack of service (forget satisfaction for now ). The guy named 'Sooraj' says I'll be refunded in 24-48 hours; alright I'm cool.
48 hours passes by, nothing done. I check MSN, no one is online! All the reps have probably blocked my address and/or deleted me completely of their contact list. So I find this user "onliveglobal" on WHT and PM him and ask him for some help regarding the refund. No continuous response - I fill a dispute in PayPal and now you guys have to read this... its hilarious:
I have censored and clipped a lot of personal information in the quotes below.
PayPal Transaction Details
Quote:
Transc ID: XXXABCXXXABCXXXA
Seller Name & Email: OnLiveGlobal, paypal@onliveglobal.com
Transaction Amount: XXX USD
Transaction Date: 10-Jan.-2008
Message From Seller
Quote:
...
We did get start working on their services as per our SLA. We did work on their Helpdesk and resolved tickets ABC-123456, XYZ-123456, PQR-123456, ABC-123456, XYZ-123456 and many others which are unlogged for over 2 to 3 weeks from Jan 03 and after nearly one month of using our services, the buyer claims saying he is not satisfied.
...
After reading this; instead of getting upset or whatever, I was just laughing for a full minute.
I am sure many of you will state that out-sourcing is wrong from the bottom, right and I couldn't agree any less - I wont do that mistake again (and wont dream of saving loads of $$$). I have already picked a few techs again and all good and going now
If the OnLiveGlobal representative even replies to this thread and tries to prove a point, I least care. Who ever reads this is gonna have a laugh and thats what I care now...
Just after that incident I did come across a few other companies; ThinkSupport, TouchSupport, BobCares, etc and heard that their near to perfect. I haven't lost complete faith over the outsourcing phenomena but lets see if I choose to outsource later on for something else...
i only know ntt/vrion is good.
what about Level 3/InterNap/Time Warner?
was planning to get from epicvps...
Maybe all of you can post your speed kb/s and your location?
epicvps.com/speedtest/100megabytefile.tar.gz
I raise a ticket of server down and no response... not assignment to a staff member... nothing...
time goes by and nothing!
No one online on the chats --- this was the 1 very thing that kept me away from my previous hosts. What's the deal?
we are thinking of moving to rackedge, as we need an nl server and they offers are pretty good, but we don't know how good support is, has anyone used them? what's your experience? if it was bad, have you found something better?
View 8 Replies View RelatedWe are a small group, we hope startin a small business (Hosting service).
and we have a small project, we want to run a service like YOUTUBE.
so, we are looking for yours ideas and your help.
we are seeing in this forum a lot of providers, but we don't know about theirs networks, we are outside US.
we need a fully managed vps, uptime 100% garantie, SLA.
700 MB minimum of RAM
40 - 70 GB (disk space)
500 - 1000 (Bandwidth)
Linux / cPnal
we need a big company, we may upgrade later to a dedicated server.
monthy price: from $80 to $125
Things have become a little hectic.
I decided to go for a budget dedicated server because the shared hosting I was using was grinding to a halt several times a week.
I haven't used a dedicated server before, and wasn't 100% sure what I needed, so after lot's of going round in circles, I found the 123-reg £49.99 server and unlimited bandwidth, so I ordered it....and waited, and waited. Not so much as an order confirmation, or reply to my emails asking what was going on. Not a great start, so I cancelled the order.
OK, I have a budget of around £60 a month.
I need the server to be able to do mod_rewrites.
Unlimited, or a generous amount of bandwidth per month is important.
Good service if it all goes wrong is essential.
Preferably UK based, but will consider other countries if contacting them isn't a problem.
I need some kind of control panel as well.
i will be running a Vbulletin + VBSEO (hence the mod_rewrites) installation and a joomnla installation with lots of large images if that makes any difference.
There are a lot of people whether their web hosting providers are good or not. After months of purchasing their web hosting account they might discover that their web hosting providers are so bad. Therefore, you’d better checking your web hosting provider.
One of the most important parts related to web hosting is the supporting services. So when you purchase a new web hosting account, try to check their supporting services. Try to ask them a few technical questions even you don’t have a problem. It just tests their supporting quality. How do they answer your questions quickly? Ask yourself this question. If they spend a lot of time “two or three days”, it might be poor service. For this situation, my advice is to cancel your account. The most of web hosting companies offer 30 days money back and try another web hosting company.
There are many supports kinds:
* HelpDesk
* Live chat
* Supporting via Phone
* Supporting forum
* And so on
This is all about the supporting part for your web hosting provider. So this is very important to check this service.
I have servers with softlayer current paying $2000 a month for 3 dedicated servers. THey are set up and work perfectly.
Issue is i was not aware that softlayer doesnt do "managed" support, would like to know if anyone has a good third party company that works with softlayer.
the tools they have on the portal our great so really would like to find a company thatworks with them. the co that softlayer suggested doesnt do windows support go figure!
our VPS hosting company did an upgrade the other day and now something is wrong with our home page, it takes about 30sec to load. They keep saying its a php problem, but the scripting is fine, the engine is fine and the only thing that changed is that they did an upgrade.
They don't seem to be able to grasp the problem, and it is making my boss go nuts. A web guy a know said it definately had to be something at their end, and everyone else is at a loss.
We've got a discounted Quad dedi box from Ecatel.net about a week ago. Their network and prices are really good, sure. But we still have problems with start up because the second hdd isn't mounted or installed properly. The support team has answers about 1-2 times per day only so this question is in progress already for days.. The helpdesk is locked somehow from todays morning (I see our account is present but there's no way to log in) and we are still waiting for replys from day-before-yesterday requests...
I wouldn't like to be some kind of sharp under any circumstances and I respect every business but this is probably too long so we have to pay now just for waiting to get a server ready with no start yet.
Does somebody work with them? Is it normal situation? We still have some boxes in Layeredtech and would like to move to European DC (these boxes are middle-ended so we need more power now). There were no such problems in LT. Never. The maximum response time to such kind of questions was 2-5 hours (15 minutes in general), maybe a bit more (for hardware setup requests), but not days and nights with no progress indicator.
Maybe that is a European DC highlight strategy to have such delays with tickets response, isn't it? Coz the European market is new for us, anyway, we've never had boxes there before but would like to.
Do they do a good job of supporting OSCommerce? I want to customize stuff using OSCommerce for my site. Let me know from those who have used OSCommerce with Cirtex hosting.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI am referring a friend to JaguarPC but he wants more options so he wants me to recommend 3 different shared webhosts to him. What are two other great shared hosting providers that have as good support as JaguarPC?
View 7 Replies View RelatedI have a 1u server that I'm looking to colo. I looked around the forums but I can't seem to find exactly what I need.
I'd prefer if the hosting company was large, owned its own datacenter (as opposed to leasing), offered proactive (automated) monitoring services, remote reboot, and a superb network with little or no downtime.
I like liquidweb but it looks like they only have 500gb / month up and down or a dedicated line capped at 10mbps line. I need something in between, around 1000GB / month up and down with 100mbps port. Support doesn't really matter, nor does price.
I came to this site few days back only and was going through various discussions. After being on this website since last 1 week I am really impressed that members are really helpful to other members with their fair and valuable suggestions.
I do have a quick question for you and need your suggestions:
Q: Which web host I should go with where I will get around 20GB of space with PHP, MySQL, FFMPEG support.
Please recommend me a host with high uptime, good http response time, and reliable to host considering a long term relationship.
i have been hosting as a reseller with gazzin.com on their windows servers for past some years and in this period i suppose they have shifted their datacenter more than twice causing a great problem to me and all my clients.
the latest period of the shift being going on currently i request you all to go through the transcript below which i had with their support center. when we talk about a refund for this downtime i suppose the owner 'PAUL' just stops responding ......
Softlayer Network Issue or My server Issue?
I unable to ping softlayer.com or any external server since 14/1/2009 06:00 UTC.
I SSH into the server and
----------------
[root@server ~]# ping softlayer.com
ping: unknown host softlayer.com
[root@server ~]# nslookup softlayer.com
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
-----------------
My server is located at Seattle, Server Room 2
