Tailor Made Servers (TMS) - 2 Year Review - Still Highly Recommended!

I posted a review about Tailor Made Servers (TMS) back in December of 2008 however it was wiped out during the infamous "WHT Incident" but I see that it has returned, although in a very incomplete state. Here is a repost of the original review along with a few minor changes to celebrate our 2 year anniversary! (Changes made to original review will have a red font color.)

Technical Support [10/10]:

First things first, TMS are an un-managed provider so don't expect any hand holding if you run into some obscure software or operating system problems. That's not to say TMS wouldn't help you, I'm sure they would to some extent, but it should never be expected from an un-managed provider.

We have a total of 74 tickets recorded with TMS since April of 2007. Twelve of those tickets were high priority requests to either manually reboot a server or check the console. Three of those high priority tickets were false alarms, but the other seven tickets were all answered within a few minutes at the very most.

When I say the tickets were answered, I don't mean a canned reply of "We're looking into it!" then an hour later someone decides to start working on it and then another hour later it's finally resolved. If you submit a high priority ticket, it's given immediate attention and resolved as fast as humanly possible.

Manual reboots take on average 10 minutes, some have been performed in a couple of minutes while the longest we ever had to wait was about 15 minutes which is what they advertise. There have only been a couple of hardware issues, a failing NIC was recently replaced in under 15 minutes, a server died last month and a chassis swap was done in under 3 hours. Hard to find any faults here - the technical support & response times are very reassuring and above average when compared to a lot of other un-managed providers.

Network & Uptime [10/10]:

TMS are located in the prestigious Colo4Dallas facility and using an impressive blend of InterNAP, Level3, Time Warner and XO Communications for bandwidth providers. There are also InterNAP FCP devices in use to attempt to provide the most efficient routing possible and also work around any problems thanks to its intelligent routing capabilities. This differs from BGP in the sense that BGP will always provide the shortest path possible - not necessarily the best path.

The latency and throughput are what you would expect from a reasonably multi-homed provider in Texas. Typical response times to my location in Ontario, Canada are about 60ms while response times to the United Kingdom are around 110ms. Average response times to other parts of the US are nothing short of impressive, 25ms to Chicago, 35ms to Los Angeles, 20ms to Atlanta and 50ms to Seattle.

There was a network blip on March 31, 2009 that caused some instability due to an apparent network upgrade that went wrong. These things do happen, however I feel that communication could have been a bit better in terms of notifying clients in advance. Outside of that one issue the last significant outage was in May of 2007 when a faulty router module had to be replaced and the downtime was a little under 1 hour. TMS clearly has a solid network and should satisfy everyone from web hosting providers looking for maximum uptime to die hard gamers looking for the lowest latency possible.

Hardware Quality & Deployment [10/10]:

All of the newer servers are Dell so you know you're getting quality hardware. The hard drives are a mix of new and old, but they all work perfectly fine with no S.M.A.R.T errors detected using multiple short & long tests. Some people would prefer to always have brand new hard drives, but that's not very economical for a lot of providers and I'm totally OK with that.

Servers are deployed extremely fast during business hours. In most cases if you order a server in the morning, it'll be setup later that afternoon. I've never had to wait more than 6 hours for a server, but I tend to order in the morning so I can't comment on how fast deployments are later in the day or on weekends.

The best deals for TMS are listed under the Dedicated Hosting Offers forum and not on their website, so be sure to check them out. Ordering a server from TMS is completely hassle free and straight forward. You pick the server configuration, pay via PayPal or Credit Card and wait for deployment. There's no faxing or scanning of documents and what not for verification of orders - but I'm sure JoseQ does his own fraud screening.

Overall [9/10]

I can't say enough good things about Tailor Made Servers! The staff is very knowledgeable and genuinely shows that they care, the response times are nothing short of incredible and I can honestly say I sleep better at night knowing our servers are in good hands if something goes wrong.

It truly is a great feeling not always having to worry about network problems, or how long it's going to take to get a manual reboot done, or replace failing hardware if need be. TMS are on top of their game, definitely one of the most underrated and under mentioned providers on WHT!

Why did I rate TMS 9 out of 10 after this glowing review? Well, there's always room for improvement and I don't think it's realistic to rate any provider a 10 out of 10. So what can be improved? When I first posted this review last year, I mentioned that KVM access would be nice and I believe they have since been added - perhaps JoseQ can clarify on that. You know, I honestly can't think of anything major I would like to see improved at this point.

That's pretty much it; if you're looking for an unrivaled dedicated server provider definitely take a look at Tailor Made Servers! Their best deals are always under the Dedicated Hosting Offers forum so be sure to check that out or send TMS - JoseQ a message to see what they can do for you. You have my word, you will not be disappointed and the only regret you'll ever have with TMS is not signing up earlier.