VPS Under 10$ Per Month, Multiply Providers Review
Apr 17, 2009
For my application I needed a few low end VPS in mulitply locations. The requirements are quite simple: Linux, 128Mb RAM or more, low cost, various locations, no need for control panels just ssh will do.
During this week I've ordered nearly 20 VPS from a bunch of providers. For benefit of WHT public here is a short information on my experience with these providers so far.
1. thenynoc
ordered 2 VPS, one in NY one in LA, set up is not instant, but reasonably quick. I am not happy with the network in both locations, high packet loss for some operations. I guess this is due to some wierd VPS settings/limitations they use. I have not contacted them about it yet. So far, no other issues. Good price.
2. mosso (Rackable)
Nice low cost VPS in the cloud setting. Location not specified, but looks like Dalls, TX. Instant setup, everything works, great network, hourly billing. IMO in 3 years VPS hosting as we know it now will be forgotten and everyhing will be done 'one the cloud'.
3. euvps
ordered 1 VPS, location Germany. Not instant but reasonably quick setup. Time on the system is almost 5 minutes off. Having correct time on the system is important for my application. I am talking about time not timezone. It is usually impossible to change time from within VPS and it is therefore responsibility of the VPS provider to run properly configured ntpd on the host. I've sent a support request asking to fix the time, no response yet, but less than an hour passed so far, I'll wait.
3. rapidswitch
Ordered 1 VPS, location London, UK. Great experience so far, simple to use website not a cookie cutter WHMC , everything just works, instant setup, good network. I used 1£/month promotion, the price reverts to 7.5£ per month in June which seems a bit pricey.
4. vpsville
got a 64MB VPS from them, location Toronto, CA. Wow, turned out my application works 64MB. Quick setup, no issues. So far, so good.
5. slicebox
VPS location - Chicago. Quick setup. no issues. So far so good.
6. xeneurope
got a VPS in Amsterdam. It took about 8 hours to get VPS activated. The system subjectively feels very slow or maybe it is just XEN so bad for low memory VPS. With 128 MB specs, something takes all the memory and it is not my applications or daemons I can control. I had lots of trouble simply installing cpan modules on this system which was failing all the time due to lack memory/swap. However, I managed to install my stuff and how things work. Other XEN machines I had with 128 MB allocation usually give me at least 100 meg for my stuff. It is worse here. I am looking for another VPS provider in Amsterdam.
7. 1gb.ru
VPS location, Moscow, Russia. This is the only VPS provider I could find in Russia with resonable prices and accepting normal credit cards as payment method. They do only Ubuntu, so I had to use it, not my usual CentOS. They have some wierd self coded control panel, the setup is a bit wierd. For example, to get access to VPS I had to first ssh into their gateway system, which dropped me into my vps shell as root. Than I had to install sshd and set things up so that I can access my VPS using ssh in a normal way. Come on... this is more complicated that it needs to be. But, well, in the end of the day I have a VPS and it working. No issues and I am happy so far. One observation, as far as Linux VPS hosting is concerned Russians are still living in the stone age. FreeBSD based VDS thingy from ispserver is very popular there, though, maybe that's why.
8. gplhost
Aparently it is run by the people developing an open source control panel for XEN. Big plus for them is their geographical diversity, I've ordered VPS located in Kuala-Lumpur, Sydney, Singapore, Barcelona, Haifa.
The price I paid is at least double of what I'd like to pay plus rip off Paypal fees on top of advertised rate. Hey VPS providers, take a hint! Is it that difficult to rent a decent dedicated/colocated server somewhere except a dozen DC in US and sell VPS for a premium? A market niche is here!
Back to gplhost.com. Again, a bit wierd and quirky setup, but does the job done. VPS are activated instantly. Things just work. In the end of the day I am happy (but counting pennies).
9. vixile
ordered VPS located in Tampa, FL. Nice quick setup no problems whatsoever. Good price. Good job. I am happy.
10. zanyhost AKA wickedvps
Ordered a VPS located in Atlanta, not instant but reasonably quick VPS setup. However, somehow after I ordered from nanihost the VPS turned up from wickedvps.com . Come on.. get a name and stick to it, stop confusing me :-)
Time on their system was off by about 90 seconds. Created a ticket asking to fix it. 7 Hours later got a response saying that time on their servers is correct and that they use some specific timezone. It is implying that I was was wrong and they time on their system was indeed correct at the time and I just mixed up timezones. I've checked and indeed the time is correct now, hopefully they not just set up correct time but installed ntpd to keep it correct. Well.. I can live with that. However, it all appears to be a bit childish and amateurish. RTFM on ntpd before you start selling VPS to people not after! Please do not get offended, get things sorted and move on, or you customers will.
11. myprohost
got VPS in Denver. Nice and easy no problem so far.
9. Bad apples:
quillhost - order placed and paid for more than 36 hours ago
nanihost - order placed and paid for more than 36 hours ago
hitme.net.pl - order placed and paid for more than 36 hours ago
I have not heard from them yet. Is it take money and run or are they just that slow? I do not know yet. Hello! Anyone there! If it takes you that long to set up a VPS, the tasks others can do in seconds, how long it will take you to give a less trivial support if required? Work with me people!
This is it, hope it will help someone and wont get anyone infuriated. Obviously this review is quite limited in scope due to short timewrame and simple requirements I had.
I am using these VPS, as a distributed DNS network. Netwisp's and Myraid Networks vps are also used to filter exim dictionary attacks off server.
1.) Myraid Network - 10/10 Myraid network is an awesome company to deal with. The vps was setup extremely fast and, I had no issues from the get go. To this date, I have not received any downtime. The staff is very friendly and willing to help with any issue. I just wish I had an issue to send to them Everything has been flawless. This is a virtuozzo VPS. I fully recommend this host.
2.) Netwisp - 10/10 This is another great host. Hal definately knows what hes doing with virtuozzo, everything has been running flawless. I have received no downtime, other then a scheduled maintenance that I was fully notified about in advance. This is the second time having a vps with this company, and I am glad to say both times have been excellent. I fully recommend this host.
3.) ProVPS - 10/10 This is a xen host this time. Very well ran company. They have their own XEN panel that is absolutely the best one on the market. You definately get more control over your vps specifics then other hosts in my opinion... Did I mention to you... its flawless? No downtime here either. The vps is also very speedy considering its their cheap plan. I fully recommend this host.
There you have it folks... Take it from a seasoned hosting veteran...Stop dealing with poorly ran companies, choose one of these to be your next host. Your headaches will go away.
I was just wondering how fast does it take for a VPS business to reach a certain number of clients.
I'm sure there are lots of variables, like how long the company is in business, what sort of product the company is providing, the market it is targeting, and more, but just elaborate as much as you want, or just ball park it.
I've signed up with Wiredtree for a Managed VPS 12 days ago.
I know it's not enough time to write a review. But I decided to write my first impression then keep you updated by writing a new review at the end of each month, so expect one at 12 February.
For now, these guys are simply the best I've tried.
They reply you in 15 minutes or less and if it took them more, 20 minutes or something, then be sure that they're investigating your problem. If you can't wait for 15 minutes, then go ahead and give them a call on their toll-free number and they'll be with you second by second. Their support wont just solve your problem, but they'll educate you telling you what caused the problem and how did they fix it.
I'm solicitous about security. But with these guys, I finally sleep peacefully knowing that my VPS is well secured.
About a week ago I posted a thread [url]about my experiences with a bunch of VPS providers. Here is an update after one week.
I have quite simple requirements 128 MB RAM Linux VPS, correct time on the system (plus/minus a few seconds), minimum of my time wasted on any issues related to VPS management/communication with VPS provider. I also needed VPS in various geo locations. Here is how it goes so far in addition to what I said in the previous thread. My trivial requirements make my reviews quite limited in scope, though little details like having correct time and provider's reaction on 'please set up correct time' IMO acts like a nice indicator of their attention to details and efficiency of the support.
Generally, when I have not much to say about a VPS provider it is equals to a great thumbs up review
1. thenynoc
got 2 VPS, one in NY one in LA, set up is not instant, but reasonably quick. So far so good. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.
2. mosso (Rackable)
Nice low cost VPS in the cloud setting. Location not specified, but looks like Dallas, TX. Instant setup, everything works, great network, hourly billing. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.
3. rapidswitch
Ordered 1 VPS, location London, UK. Great experience so far, simple to use website not a cookie cutter WHMC , everything just works, instant setup, good network. I used 1£/month promotion, the price reverts to 7.5£ per month in June which seems a bit pricey. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.
4. vpsville
I got a 64MB VPS from them, location Toronto, CA. Wow, turned out that my application works on 64MB VPS. Quick setup, no issues. So far, so good. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.
5. slicebox
VPS location - Chicago. Quick setup. no issues. So far so good. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.
6. xeneurope
VPS in Amsterdam. It took about 8 hours to get VPS activated. I initially was disappointed with this VPS since it was quite sluggish, but once I have rebuild VPS via hyperVM to a standard CentOS5.2 image all the issues have disappeared Hence, the only issue with them so far is unsuitable for low memory VPS default system. My time wasted on BS - a little I am going to renew.
7. vixile
ordered VPS located in Tampa, FL. Nice quick setup no problems whatsoever. Good price. Good job. I am happy. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.
8. zanyhost AKA wickedvps
Ordered a VPS located in Atlanta, not instant but reasonably quick VPS setup. There was a little issue in the beginning with time on the system being off by 90 seconds. After one ticket and 7 hours later it got sorted. Comparing to some other providers their response to 'please set up correct time' ticket was actually very nice and efficient, they did managed to set up correct time after all. My time wasted on BS - a little. I am going to renew.
9. myprohost
got a VPS located in Denver. Nice and easy, no problems so far. The time on their system is off by 10 seconds, this is kind of acceptable for me. Though, it would be great if they start running some kind of time sync service on host system. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.
10. quillhost
Got a VPS located in Washington, DC. My apologies, I was unfair to them in my original review. The delay with getting access to their VPS was solely due to my error. I somehow managed to give them wrong email during sign up. Anyway it got sorted rather quickly. And now I am a happy customer. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.
11. buzzservers
got a VPS in San-Hose, CA. Reasonably quick setup time, everything works. Their claim 24/7 on site support and so far it does look like they indeed have it. I again had that error replicated where I gave wrong email during sign up, but once I asked them to help me out resolving that it was done quickly and efficiently. Well done ,guys. This outfit looks and feels quite professional. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.
12. iwebfusion
Got a VPS located in some supposedly very secure and resilient DC somewhere in Iowa, which is nice. Set up time was reasonably quick. Support response is quick, though so far is a bit clueless. This is again all about my pet issue with time. Their system time if off by about 4 hours and 10 minutes. To illustrate my here is our little conversation so far, paraphrased:
Me: time on your system is wrong by 4 hours 10 minutes, please fix it.
Support, 10 minutes later: you can change your timezone using hypervm
Me: nah.. it is not helping, how on earth changing timezone could sort time which is off by 4 hours 10 minutes?
Support, 1h 40m later: we cannot change time on the host system because it would affect other customers, use date command on your VPS to change time.
Me: nah.. date does not work '[root@ia1 ~]# date 04251425.59 date: cannot set date: Operation not permitted ' 'Obviously it does not work, otherwise I would not bother you with this. Having correct time on the system is important for my application and so far your system is useless for me. Could you please reconsider changing time on your system to correct one. Most other VPS provides somehow manage to have correct time on their system. Just to illustrate my point below is a printout of time on some of VPS systems I work with. ia1- is hosted by you.
lo1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:09 UTC 2009 am1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:09 UTC 2009 fr1: Sat Apr 25 16:23:23 UTC 2009 ba1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:09 UTC 2009 ny1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009 ha1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009 at1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009 ca1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009 ia1: Sat Apr 25 10:09:48 UTC 2009 ch1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009 da1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009 dc1: Sat Apr 25 14:20:02 UTC 2009 ta1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009 de1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:02 UTC 2009 la1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:11 UTC 2009 sh1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:11 UTC 2009 sy1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:12 UTC 2009 kl1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:13 UTC 2009 si1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:13 UTC 2009 ' Support, 1 hour later: we are checking why 'date' is not working meanwhile please use ntp command.
Me: nah... ntpd will not work because I simply do not have permission to change date, and it is a good thing. The only one who can change date is root on the host system.
end of conversation so far.
Come on people!!! Get someone who has a clue on the line. Hopefully they will sort it out eventually.
My time wasted on BS - quite some. I am going to renew if they manage to set up time correctly (unfortunately clueless support is quite a common thing nowadays, hence, given my simple requirement and usually no need for support, I might be able to stay with them).
13. euvps
VPS location Frankfurt, Germany. Not instant but reasonably quick setup. Time on the system was almost 5 minutes off. Having correct time on the system is important for my application. I am talking about time not timezone. It is usually impossible to change time from within VPS and it is therefore responsibility of a VPS provider to run properly configured ntpd on the host. I've sent a support request asking to fix the time, responses I got so far were clueless and in English which made not much sense to me. The issue is still not sorted one week after it was raised. My time wasted on BS - quite some. I am not going to renew unless they clean up their act about having correct time on the system.
14. 1gb.ru VPS location, Moscow, Russia. This is the only VPS provider I could find in Russia with reasonable prices and accepting normal credit cards as payment method. They do only Ubuntu, so I had to use it, not my usual CentOS. They have some weird self coded control panel, the setup is a bit weird For example, to get access to VPS I had to first ssh into their gateway system, which dropped me into my vps shell as root. Than I had to install sshd and set things up so that I can access my VPS using ssh in a normal way. Come on... this is more complicated that it needs to be. But, well, in the end of the day I have a VPS and it working.
Initially I was happy with their VPS. But there were issues popping up all the time. For example, they often override /etc/resolv.conf so that it points to their DNS servers. Apparently they think that customer should not be able to use other DNS servers. A minor thing, I can rewrite that file myself every minute or so. But still additional hassle. By some reason some time after VPS restart it stops letting me in using ssh. This is quite a show stopper. I realize that such thing might happen when in low memory setups, but hey stuff which I run work for me in two dozens of other VPS. Basically just too much hassle to keep this charade up. I will not renew the VPS.
I have used their system to register a .ru domain. No complaints so far on this one. I needed to switch DNS to external DNS servers. They supposedly have this functionality in online control panel, but I have failed to It is just so confusing and not intuitive. Contacted their support with this DNS thing and their have it sorted for me very quickly and professionally. Well done. Definitely will stay with them as registrars for a while.
15. gplhost
This is not exactly sub 10$ VPS, more like sub 20$ VPS. But I still use them because they have VPS in all sorts of exotic locations.
The price I paid is at least double of what I'd like to pay plus rip off Paypal fees on top of advertised rate.
Apparently it is run by the people developing an open source control panel for XEN. Big plus for them is their geographical diversity, I've ordered VPS located in Kuala-Lumpur, Sydney, Singapore, Barcelona, Haifa.
Back to gplhost.com. Again, a bit weird and quirky setup, but does the job done. VPS are activated instantly. Things just work.
Support people are knowledgeable and helpful. One of my processes 'run away' due to a bug in my software and started consuming lots of CPU/IO. They apparently investigated this, and once realized that I indeed run a legitimate application stopped this investigation and contacted me asking what's going on. So I was able to resolve this problem. I am quite happy with the way gplhost has handled this. Well done. In the end of the day I am happy (but counting pennies). My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.
16. hitme.net.pl
A polish outfit. They apparently work on polish market and everything is in polish. I can read Polish a bit so I though I'd be able to get some service from them. Unfortunately, I made the same mistake with wrong email during sign up. It turned out to be a fatal mistake. So far any attempts to get it sorted with them have failed. Maybe it is my fault, maybe communication problems are killing it. I will move on. My time wasted on BS - quite some. I am NOT going to renew.
17. nanihost.
The last one in this review. I even feel a bit guilty for slamming nanihost like that. But hey, I've massacred other VPS providers for far less than this. So it is only fair to not give this outfit any slack. Sorry.
Got a VPS located in Seattle. Set up time was reasonably quick. But I was a bit busy last week so first time accessed VPS just yesterday. How I was surprised by complete lack of any awareness about information security issues by this people (a person actually). More so, because I had a VPS set up by them running untouched for almost a week. Turned out the default username:password they have set up for lxdirect panel which they have installed for me was admin:admin. I have not asked to have any cp installed BTW. Passwords for hypervm, root and other stuff were similarly insecure. I've noticed that the system is being quite actively scanned i.e. someone is already running dictionary attacks on their systems. I bet quite a few of their customers are already owned, maybe their host system(s) as well. Though, it is just my speculation.
By default they installed for me CentOS Hostinabox with all sort of crap running on it. Moreover, it appears that there are no other OS image is available.
The paypal email they have is <some Chinese looking name>@hotmail.com . They have a support phone number located in UK on their website. I called, it was answered by a child. I just apologized and hang up. Is this outfit is being tun by a 10 year old? Or am I being an ageist here?
I have tried to sort a few issues with them, support response was quite quick.
Now their terms and conditions. [url]. This stuff is probably the most valuable part of their website. It has loads of entertainment value. Nice laughs I strongly recommend reading it out loud after a few beers with mates... Just a few fragments to give you a teaser:
'13. Illegal Files/Phishers/Criminal Activity. Please note that NaniHost does not allow illegal files on our servers such as phishers and more. If these files are found by us on our servers they will be deleted and account suspended. If you are from the government please note that we take no responsibility for our clients and their actions.'
or this one:
'OUR 1 HOUR RESPONSE TIME GUARANTEE ONLY APPLIES IF THE OPERATOR SHOWED UP FOR THEIR SHIFT. IF NO OPERATOR SHOWED UP FOR THEIR SHIFT, THEN THE 1 HOUR RESPONSE TIME GUARANTEE DOES NOT APPLY.'
there are also at least 3 different cancellation/termination procedures outlined all with different requirements/time frames Again, nice to read after a few beers
Nanihost promises all kinds of benefits on their website but this outfit appears to be run by a 17 years old (no offence to '17 years old's) and is a one man show. Good effort, but I better stay away from this. I've decided to not waste my breath on this and move on. I've requested moneyback and they agreed. Nice, thank you, it was great to be your customer, see you in the next life.
I think, that this nanihost will not be around for long, but if with time they prove me wrong it would be great.
Just to finish it some data on my little 'correct time' test. This is printout of current time on VPS hosted by providers mentioned in this review with some comments. The script requests time from all of them simultaneously, due to various geo locations some of them take a bit more time to respond than others, hence a few seconds variation is expected.
[root@app1] 5:17pm# ./foreach.vps 'date' lo1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:04 UTC 2009 am1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:04 UTC 2009 ba1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009 ny1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009 ha1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009 at1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009 ca1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009 da1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009 ch1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009 ia1: Sat Apr 25 13:09:42 UTC 2009 # iwebfusion, still thinking whether to fix time or it would affect other customers. :-( dc1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:58 UTC 2009 # quillhost, a tiny bit off, please run ntpd on host system ta1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:06 UTC 2009 de1: Sat Apr 25 17:18:57 UTC 2009 # myprohost, a tiny bit off, please run ntpd on host system la1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:06 UTC 2009 sh1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:06 UTC 2009 sy1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:08 UTC 2009 si1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:08 UTC 2009 kl1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:12 UTC 2009 fr1: # euvps, opps this one is down now, usually they 2 hours 4 minutes wrong, but now decided simply to be unreachable.
Here is my mini review of the various hosting providers I have tried in the past 3 months.
1. vpsfarm.com
A. Setup: Instant. The server was setup in about 3 mins after I paid.
B. Stability: Excellent. I tried various operating systems from their control panel. Not a single issue. The server was very stable. The control panel was also very stable.
C. Support: I am a self made server admin and as such, I do not need much support. The few support tickets I sent were answered to the point and promptly by Selvaraj and his crew. They really know their technical stuff to keep the whole setup running smoothly. Excellent.
D. Speed: The server speed was fast and the site loaded fast. No problems.
Rating: Excellent.
2. jpstream.net
A. Setup: The account [a shared hosting acct] was setup in 18 hrs after I paid.
B. Stability: Excellent. The control panel [plesk] is very stable and the server ran smoothly.
myipneighbors.com showed 110 other sites on the same server but my site loaded fast. Mysql performance was also good. That probably indicates that the server was not overloaded.
C. Support: Fair. Support tickets took a while to be answered. The time varied from anything between an hour to a max of 8 hrs. The responses were mostly to the point but in a few cases indicated that they replied without reading my ticket fully.
d. D. Speed: The server speed was fast and the site loaded fast. No problems.
However, the greatest annoyance: Their email setup does NOT allow mails from free email services to be received. All mails from gmail, hotmail, yahoo and rediff are blocked.
Support did NOT want to fix that.
Rating: Bad. Many people have free email addresses and blocking emails from such people is nonsense. Also, I cancelled with them but till now I have not recd a refund. Bad.
3. Zone.net
A. Setup: The server was setup in about 2 hours after I paid.
B. Stability: Excellent. Not a single issue. The server is very stable. The control panel is also very stable.
C. Support: I am a self made server admin and as such, I do not need much support. The few support tickets I sent were answered to the point and promptly. These people are also very good technically to keep their servers running very smoothly. Excellent.
D. Speed: The server speed was fast and the site loaded fast. No problems.
Rating: Excellent.
4. xeneurope.co.uk
A. Setup: The server was setup in about 15 mins after I paid. Infact Adam did a cutom plan for me.
B. Stability: The HyperVM is unstable. Diskspace and memory display on the control panel are totally incorrect and misleading.
The Ubuntu template crashed the server after a day, while the opensuse and debian templates have a big problem - after you install, you cannot ssh into the system.
C. Support: I am a self made server admin and as such, I do not need much support. The few support tickets I sent were answered to the point and promptly. Adam and Chris did fix the debian template temporarily for me. However the problem with HyperVM being misleading and unstable is a big turn off for me.
Here is my latest email from HyperVM:
----------------------------------------------
Warning: The Account michael is using 100% of quota for realmem_usage. Limit: 640 Used: 640
Warning: The Account michael is using 100% of quota for swap_usage. Limit: 512 Used: 512 -----------------------------------
Here is my latest email to Adam:
-----------------------------------------
Hi Support,
The HyperVM info is thoroughly misleading:
S Resource Used Max Graph Disk 1.01 GB 29.3 GB Mem NA 640 MB Backup 0 Unlimited Traffic 312.53 MB 341.8 GB Ip 1 1 Traffic 0 MB -
Please move me to a different HyperVM system which functions stable and without any problem with the statistics as well as without conking out on various OS templates.
I have used Xen before and never had a problem until now.
Please let me know when you can give me a stable Xen system without problems.
D. Speed: The server speed is fast. No problems, when the server works but the ubuntu crash along with all these problems is not good.
Rating: I am not rating this yet.
I do hope Adam will put me on a different server where everything functions fast, stable and without any problems. ----------------------------------------------------------
Here is my question to all the experts at WHT:
Is it true that if I have my server in the US, the govt and the FBI can put a backdoor into the server and see through info when they feel like it?
This is what I heard from a friend of mine. I am NOT trolling but when I heard this, I was quite upset. This is what made me seek a server outside the US.
Please let me know if this is true or this is bull, so that I can keep myself informed that this is just crap.
Vpsfarm and zone.net, please keep up your excellent service. I may come back and get other servers from you. JP stream please fix the email problem and you will be no 1 in Japan. Adam, your xen setup needs to be more stable. Please fix this.
The domain in question is technichristian [dot] net. The web server is not yet installed. I am waiting for Adam to fix the problems first. ----------------------------------------------------------
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.
This is my 1 month review on the company vt6 (vt6.co.uk). There is no doubt about it, they have the fastest reply times and most helpfull support. I started out on the basic plan and have just paid for the next one, i was upgraded allmost instantly but as i found it was no benfit to me i asked to downgrade and was again instantly downgraded and my money refunded.
As for the quality of the VPS, it is perfect. they dont cramm VPS's onto one server so each VPS runs smooth without any problems. Iv also had no downtime at all. Iv been with a few VPS's before this and none come close to pure quality and fantastic support that vt6 provide.
That is all for my one month review on this perfect company that i would deffinitly recommend to anyone seeking low cost quality VPS's (Or hosting that i assume will be exatcly the same)
I came to use Liquidweb thorugh a string of random REALLY bad luck. From "Managed" VPS that ended up not getting patched and fried due to a security exploit (PowerVPS) to a RAID failure, during a backup, causing total data loss and backup loss (RockMyWeb's VDNet). I was ready to pull my hair out. So I decided to kick out the bucks for a Liquid Web VPS Plan 2 (with a great price from a special found here). All I can say is it was a night and day difference.
The server is fast. Remote access to this VPS is a fast as my dedicated server in the office. I thought moving to cPanel was going to slow things down but this thing flies! Wow!
The service is fast. I call support and a person picks up the phone. No e-mail. No long hold times. I call, someone answers, no need to transfer to a higher tech, it's just fixed. Wow!
The one downfall. And it's only a downfall if it's not what you want. cPanel only. I'm a big DirectAdmin fan, but I'm learning my way around cPanel again.
Until I'm ready to do dedicated (I'm guessing it's coming in 2k8) this thing is awesome!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
1x Web Hosting Talk for hooking me up with Liquidweb.
1x Web Hosting Talk Community for reviewing Liquidweb.
1x Liquidweb for the awesome service!
1x VDNet. It may sound strange but they did answer e-mails faster than anyone I had ever seen (multiple replies in under two mins). They had a great price, but bad luck drove me to change. I'm glad I did, but I wouldn't have a hard time recommending VDNet now that they fixed the problem that caused the loss of my server. (and they did give me a month free) They really did give good value for the price, and offer DirectAdmin which Liquidweb doesn't.
Anyone else care to share?
P.S.
I'm not a fan of emoticons, but I did it out of love for you guys. Feel free to hammer the server a bit and tell me how fast the pages load. They're pretty quick here in Costa Rica: CR Solutions Group Costa Rica Web Design.
I've been with Steadcom for a few months now, and I greatly their services. Such great deals have been offered to me. Each time I talk with the staff, I seem to want to use their services longer. I'm currently working with my own free hosting company and I entrust my uptime and reliability to Steadcom. I've had no problems with either of those aspects and it seems like their network is as fast as Google. If you find a better deal than this, it would be a miracle. I am working on obtaining up to six months with them for my next payment. I would fully recommend Steadcom and their services. I give it all of my reputation and respect as a business owner to acknowledge such outstanding services.
I have been with SoftLayer a month now, and this is my review of their company. I will start with my pre-sales experience, going into hardware, their network, server, portal, accounting/sales, and support .
[[[[[[[ PRE SALES ]]]]]]]
I started out looking for a new server by looking at some good dedicated hosts. I saw SoftLayer offered the new Nehalem series, so I went for it. Their sales team is excellent beyond all reasons -- the staff are personal and do NOT try to take your money; instead, they find the best-fit solution for you and work with you by calling you, showing you their specials, and talking to managers.
[[[[[[ HARDWARE ]]]]]]]
The Hardware at SL is top-notch. There's no problem with it, it's clearly stated in the portal what type of motherboard, HDs, RAM, etc are in the server and it's top-notch Supermicro hardware. I've never seen a problem with it, and I have seen the certificate of passing benchmarks as that is done on all SL servers by default.
Their provisioning system is excellent, I got my server in 2-3 hours at MAX. WOW! It is all inside the portal too; you can view the status (PE_BOOT, OS_RELOAD); it's clearly there and excellent. We finally got VIRTUOZZO (thanks natecarlson ) working with it too.
[[[[ SERVER ]]]]]
What can I say? This is the new Nehalem series. I think the deal I got was quite good, I brought several SL servers before I switched to this one, and it did take a while to get it down to this price (especially for SL quality, damn!) :
-Intel Dual Quad Core (2x) X5570 Nehalem 2.93GHZ w/ HT -12 x 300GB SAS 15K Seagate Cheetah HD's in RAID 10 -12GB DDR3 RAM (to start) -4000GB Monthly Bandwith -1GigE Port Speed -64 IP Addresses -Monitoring & Automated Reboot $1,100 a month -- which I think is good for this type of server.
It's blazing fast and 0 problems.
[[[[ NETWORK ]]]]
I started in their Dallas, TX datacenter with a Dual 5450, but decided to get a 2U server with SAS HD's. Sadly, they said they were out of stock in Dallas. They said they can get me an EXTRA DISCOUNT if I went to Washington DC. I live an hour or two from DC, so it was good for me. I debated, and talked to them, they said it was a great place and I went with their Washington D.C datacenter .
It's fast. Blazing fast. They have like 100GBPS connectivity -- with many backbone providers. I've never seen so many . I'm liking the nework speeds and it really is nice.
[[[[ PORTAL ]]]]
The best part. They have their 'manage.softlayer.com' and their mobile 'manage.softlayer.mobi' portals. They are excellent. I don't even need support, and when I do, it's there. I mean, I'm STILL exploring their portal system. It has so much stuff; "Instant cPanel Licenseing, Instant Firewall, Upgrades, IP's, OS reloads, Installs, Backups" -- I love it. It makes my life a lot easier and quiker. I've had a server with ThePlanet, HiVelocity, and more and SL portal blows them all away
[[[ SUPPORT ]]]
The support is great. In the times I need it, it's there. Within 15 minutes I get a response and usually in under an hour, a resolution. It's excellent in what they provide at an unmanaged rate, and the $3 tickets are great in my opinion for those quick issues that you just can't figure out. They even helped me with a bit of PHP help!
[[[ ACCOUNTING AND SALES ]]]
It's there any time I needed it. I got servers upgraded, downgraded, reclaimed, removed, created, OS reloaded, invoices adjusted, and it's there. They respond within 1 hour usually and it's great for a sales team. Personally it's awesome how they have excellent teams for support and sales! The reps are VERY nice and friendly too, and they offer some nice discounts .
[[[ OVERALL ]]]
I give SoftLayer a 10/10+. They are everything I expect from a provider (heck, they are better than most managed providers I've been with) and more. I urge you to try them out, they will try to fit your budget as good as you can do it.
I'd first like to follow up with my end at GNAX. I ended up going down to them on the 31st to pick up my colo server and get my refund. All went generally well, except for the "I'll be back in 5 mins" that took more than 30 mins for some sales/billing guy to get me my stuff. Signed some papers, and my money was refunded in full. In the end, a happy ending with GNAX.
Now, while all that was ongoing, I moved over to a dedicated server at Softlayer quick as I could because I knew with 100% certainty that Jeff would have my service terminated when I posted the chat log of him threatening me - a controversial decision I still stand by for what it's worth.
First, lets talk about sales with Softlayer. My God - I have never seen anything like this. With GNAX, sales would consist of me sending a ticket and waiting days, or it getting closed randomly, then having to wait more and more. A 48-hour max setup time with GNAX ended up being 5+ days and still no setup. Softlayer. I was doing Live Chat with an agent who was extremely helpful. Too move the process along quicker, I asked if I could call and speak with him, and sure enough, he game me a toll free number and I spoke with him through the entire ordering process. Not only was he extremely knowlegeable and helpful, but he also pointed me to a special I was unaware of where I got double the RAM and a second hard drive for free. I ended up ordering a dual core Xeon setup, but I actually got setup with a quad Core Xeon X3220. No mistake they said, they were just out of what I ordered so they gave me a quad core for the price of a dual core. And all of this happened in less than 4 hours. Yep, that's right. I went from on the phone with sales to having my brand new quad core for the price of a dual core with twice the RAM and HDD for free in under four hours. I was actually shocked. After being with GNAX so long, I had no idea that anything even under a 24 hour wait was possible (which it wasn't with GNAX btw), and they didn't hold my order because of being short on inventory like GNAX did - they just gave me a free upgrade with no delay!
With GNAX, I have never been able to be in such control of my server as I am now with Softlayer. With GNAX, lets say, I wanted to change or add reverse DNS for an IP, I would have to send a ticket and wait hours and hours and hours for them to do it. With Softlayer, I login to the portal, and click click type, click and it's done and live. All by myself! Their portal is the most powerful thing I have ever seen and it allows me to do and see everything.
Their support, I'm convinced, is second to none. I once had three days of downtime with GNAX because of a hardware problem (their hardware) they just couldn't fix. The motherboard has gone bad and I had to wait three days for them to find another identical motherboard to replace mine with. Apparently, they don't like to keep hardware on hand in case of emergency. In the mean time, I was faced with a lot of pissed off people who couldn't access the server for three days while all GNAX did was "we're looking, we're trying". Three days downtime is unacceptable, GNAX's support is just horrible. Phone support is essentially non-existent. When, on occasion, people pick up the phone, I'm simply told to submit a ticket and they'll get to it - when it's convenient for them. Support with Softlayer is drastically different, I can call support and pick their brains on technical problems for as long as I need. Recently, something went wrong when I was moving IP addresses around with my servers, and I was able to submit a ticket, call them, and they resolved it while on the phone with me. Some other small issues cropped up, and I replied to the ticket as it was non-urgent, and they had it fixed it about 20 mins. THAT people, is how support. Again, after being with GNAX for so long and having to wait hours, and sometimes days for support, having things fixed on the phone with me or via ticket in under 15 mins really caught me off guard.
Sales - part two.
Incredibly impressed with the sales and support I have seen so far, I recently ordered a second server. Again, I did this over the phone and was given an amazing deal - one not even on their site! In the end, it'll save me about $60/month on my second server. Pretty decent I say.
Other stuff.
They have a forum! That's not what's cool in itself, but it's cool that its integrated into my portal account. Now, GNAX has a forum too, but you first have to email GNAX and ask for their blessing to sign up there.
Another nifty thing about Softlayer is their developer API. Their API enables tons of cool things, like I can see my uptime and bandwidth usage from within WHMCS. With GNAX, I would have to go find which one of my logins for their seemingly hundreds of disintegrated services. Having everything being in one place and under one login with Softlayer.
Basically, if you need a dedicated server provider, choose Softlayer. Leaving GNAX (well, being forced out) and moving to Softlayer is the best thing that has ever happened to me an my company.
Alright, Ive been with them for a little over two months and I have been with them before. Their support is excellent, their servers' are excellent, their network is excellent, their portal is excellent, and not having to deal with Cogent directly is a joy.
I first singed on with them 11/9/08 till 12/29/08 everything went well I closed my account simply because I didn't need the server again.
My current server with them as of this post is $199.00/mth and I get the following
CPU : Xenon X3230 Quad Core @ 2.66 Ghz Ram : 4GB OS : Server Standard 2008 64 bit 1000 mbps 2 TB of bandwidth Washington, DC Data Center 2x 250GB SATA II 174.37.243.170
Having a server with them has been nothing short of amazing zero downtime caused by them and most anything a managed host will do they will do for you free. I was having issues with routes and simply asked them and within ten minutes they had changed it according to what I would prefer. I have had a DoS attack before that was pushing 800 mbps of traffic and they sent me an email and I opened a ticket and they blocked the attackers' addresses at my switch. Very quickly and not much damage was done. Overall I'm very pleased and I would recommend them to anyone.
Here is my review of Virpus after being with them for 1 month.
Uptime: 10/10
So far I have not experienced any outages and I am going to have to give them a 10 on that as I have seen many threads in the outages about them but it appears they solved that issue and I was never effected by any of those.
Support: 8/10
I will give the support a 8 as sometimes on off times it could take up to about 30 minutes for the first response which is great but then after that the responses tend to be around 2 hours or so. Overall though the support is great!
Price: 10/10
I signed up with there plan that was cPanel included and had double bandwidth and ram. I was thinking it was too good to be true and that the VPS was not going to be quality, but I am glad I was wrong!
Performance: 9/10
The performance of the server is overall great so far. I have had no issues as far as the server being anything but fast. I will have to commend them on having great hardware and not overselling there services like a lot of the VPS providers these days.
Overall: 9/10
I would highly recommend them as they have been a great provider overall and I hope that they keep up the good work in the future.
I wrote an initial setup experience review of downtown host including support w/ transferring my sites a few months ago. Now I am going to extend the review with reliability, speed and performance.
So far, the support and helpfulness has been the same. Rarely does support wait longer than 10 min to respond to questions. They are always responded with a great attitude.
Reliability of all my sites has been 100%. I have seen no downtime at all since I got my account. Truly fabulous. The only time a site has gone down was not their fault...it was my fault...for messing up the database they restored it within minutes after I sent a high priority technical support ticket too.
Speed and performance go hand in hand. Sites are quick and responsive. Just as responsive as a content management system on any dedicated in my opinion. Download speeds are always the same. Never does the download or upload speed fluctuate by more than 10 kbps up or down from the average (totally unlike dreamhost where it would fluctuate as much as 400-500 kbps depending on the day).
All scripts I have used have responded very quickly without any problems that I would encounter with dreamhost (like cut off scripts due to time it took the servers to run through them).
Man, it seems just like yesterday that I initially signed up for a VPS from SolarVPS, but the truth is, I have been with them for just over 6 months now.
What can I say about SolarVPS besides that they completely rock! Not to mention Douglas, but we won't go there
The Network
The network at SolarVPS is nothing short of amazing. I get lightning fast speeds and rock solid performance no matter the time of day. I have not experienced even one network hiccup in the 6 months that I have been with SolarVPS. I constantly get compliments from people about how fast the network really is.
The Hardware
SolarVPS uses nothing less than the best hardware. The VPS node that my VPS is located on has Dual Quad Xeons and performance is amazing. They do not overload their servers and use SLM parameteres with Virtuozzo instead of the old school UBC. I know that I can use all of my resources without battling with other VPS instances on the node.
The Support
Solar's support is by far outstanding. I have never had to wait for extended periods of time to get an answer to even the most complex questions. I can rest assured that no matter the time of day, or night, there will always be a Solar rep there to answer even the stupidest of questions, in a very timely manner. Unlike some hosts that I have used, Solar's support understands my questions and gets them taken care of instead of giving nonsense responses to try and buy time to get the job done.
The Overall Experience
The overall experience at SolarVPS is awesome. I know that I can trust my online business in their hands. SolarVPS is highly recommended to anyone who needs rock solid performance with extreme reliability.
Support - 10/10 Network - 10/10 Hardware - 10/10 The Staff - 10/10
Just a warning... Watch out for that Douglas character that mans their live chat.
I've now been with Serveraxis for nearly 36 months and will make this fairly short and sweet - my experience with Serveraxis has been great. Uptime has been excellent with the vast majority of downtime coming from things such as a simple reboot for kernel upgrades. I think in those three years there have only been two cases of unscheduled downtime. Both times Serveraxis kept it's clients well informed and the downtime wasn't major - I believe due to hardware failure. There has been no unscheduled downtime for the past two years on my server, both of those cases were quite a while ago.
Their prices are very reasonable (and have even gone down once or twice) and the few times I've needed support they have been very responsive. They have also increased the amount of bandwidth and disk space multiple times at no additional cost to it's clients during the three years I have been with them.
On the whole, I think Serveraxis is phenomenal for users that just want an unmanaged VPS with rock-solid uptime and a great company behind them.
I wrote a review of Tzulo last month before that attack occurred and the thread was lost along with all the other data. So I am writing a review again as I feel they deserve this.
I rented a VPS Large package in March in 2008 through their reseller and a few months later I was shifted to Tzulo as the reseller changed.
Tzullo servers are really great. They are quad core, their customer service is really great. I do own dedicated servers from other companies and Tzulo customer service is the best among all the web hosting companies I have experienced. I have contacted them via their ticket system and crazy hours like midnight and have gotten a helpful reply from them within 5 - 30 minutes.
I run two dedicated gameservers from the VPS I bought from them and I have never had any problems with their hardware. The net connection is really good also because there is never any lag on behalf of the server, I know a person who connects to my gameserver from australia and he gets a latency of only 250. The VPS's are based in Chicago.
They are really cheap considering they are based in USA. I have never seen cheaper reliable hosts in USA. They even offer a $10 'novice' VPS for people so they can check and experience the servers.
They offer linux and windows including control panels like hypervm and virtuozzo. You can do free re-installs, restarts, repairs from the online control panel.
Recently I recommended them to my friend also and he bought the medium package from them and it got activated within minutes of his payment confirmation.
Overall, my experience with them has been the best and that is why I am going through and writing this review again, I highly recommend Tzulo to all of you if you are looking for a good quality cheap VPS.
my website is on digitallinx vps from abt 4 months. and in these 4 months i experienced 100% uptime. speed is pretty gud too. and most imp thing i liked abt them is their support that is great. they reply in timely manner no matter wat time of the day and they r really professionals whatever issue i had they always helped me. never heard no from them. i think space and bandwidth can every host provide but professional support is the most that we need. i ll stick to them as long as i could.
what can i say, you get what you pay for but i think this is expensive!
i fell to the trap of unmetered bandwith. its true, it was really freaking fast speed.
BUT, ram is limited. especially if you run cPanel. i advise people not to use it.
Tickets were answered very fast. usually within 2~5 minutes. even faster at times. downside: a bit expensive. even though unmetered bandwith, this is shared. also its tough to push much traffic because of the lack of ram. i think if you bought something with 1gig ram, you can find cheaper VPS.
also you are completely on your own with this VPS. nothing surprised i knew this going in. But then i discovered other services that provided managed VPS at even cheaper price! these were reputable companies too. Next time im just gonna go with managed service. wasted too much time compiling and learning how to do stuff.
I give : out of
I found lot of the reviews on here inaccurate. They are actually not bad.....but imo a bit expensive.
From the moment that I signed up with them to now they have been on top of everything. Right after I created the account it took about 15 minutes for my site to be transferred over from GeekStorage and up and running on their servers. They respond their tickets very quickly, most of the time in less than 10 minutes.
I have not had many issues with them; the only issue I can recall was when a bot posted some weird scripts on my site. Even though my site was the only one attacked Tyler was very quick to respond and even offered me one on one support via Messenger. The problem was resolved with a quick password change.
Not only do they provide excellent support but they keep in contact with their customers. They email me from time to time to see how things are going and if I need any additional help. Most importantly, their servers are blazing fast and by no means do they overcrowd them. I can run Wordpress and Invision Power Board with no hiccups.
If anyone is in need of some quality inexpensive shared hosting then I would defiantly give StableHost a try.
I have had a VPS with Level3Hosting for 1 month now and am happy to report that I am very happy with the VPS and the service and support. There was a couple of minor issues at first but these were quickly dealt with. The VPS is semi-managed and since I am quite new to the whole VPS thing I did have questions and concerns and Brian has always been fast to respond (where possible) and always been helpful and informative. Not all support questions were answered as fast as others but always easily within 24 hours and the higher priority ones answered sometimes within minutes. I had seen some negative comments about Level3Hosting here on WHT, as well as positive but I decided to go with what was advertised and so far am very glad that I did. Server uptime has been great (100% for me so far) and the VPS copes with what I have on it which is my own 4 websites and 4 radio ports all running 24/7 with no problems. I have searched for a cheaper deal that has everything I have now and no-one can come close, having said that, I purchased this VPS during the 50% off for life promotion so that explains a lot, however, even at full price it is still a good deal. So to summarise, my own personal experience of dealing with Level3Hosting has been a positive one and I hope that the service I get now is maintained and can continue for a long time as I will be a long term customer if it does.
This is a quick review of the VPS Provider [url] I will highlight four things: Support, Speed/Network, Sales/Setup, and Overall.
I have been hosted at [url]for 1 month now about, with my domain [url], we have 3 Dedicated for VPS hosting and a Hybrid VPS for sales, but I preferred a offsite provider for our main domain [url] So we went with GeekStorage! Support
Support has been excellent. Usually I have to request rDNS PTR but guess what, I didn't! It came all configured and everything. I've had two support tickets, one of which I've quickly resolved myself and the other one was fixed within a few hours. Overall the support is excellent and nothing is wrong, a few extra techs could do (this is a personal pet peeve of mine but it isn't a problem with most, actually it's not much of a problem with me as I only had 2 support requests.) Network and Speed
What can I say? They have their nodes at WebNX, a great provider! I get excellent pings, speeds, and my mail server etc. is nice and fast. I have 512MB guaranteed RAM but there are only 2 main sites on the VPS, using about 200-300MB of RAM (with cPanel/WHM). Uptime has been superior, I've gotten 100% Network and VPS Uptime! Not even a second I've seen the network go down, for any reason. Only time when it was down was when I accidently blocked myself via IPtables, had to use a proxy to get in SSH/WHM and unblock myself , but that's another story there..
Sales
Setup time was average. Took about 36-40 hours for my VPS to setup, a bit long, but they made sure it was running great, gave me status updates, and Jay did everything he could to make my VPS run faster and smoothly through the queue. I used the 'WHT50MORE' special and got a generous 50% off my 2 month prepayment .
Sales is also great. They have an excellent portal and everything. I'd say there are no problems with their billing. I haven't had a chance to open a sales ticket but I'm sure that there would be no problem.
The free control panel that comes with each GeekStorage VPS is perfect, I find that a great need aswell.
Overall
GeekStorage is a excellent, top-notch company. I'd give it 5+ stars, and reccomend it to ANYONE else who is looking for a stable & fast VPS provider. Don't hesitate: Go Geek! Verification for the MODs: Domain is [url] hosted via GeekStorage (they use dedicated servers/colo at WebNX)
We're coming up on around 7 or 8 months with a low-spec machine at CoreNetworks, and overall I'm pretty happy with the service. I picked it up as something cheap for my personal sites, but I've snuck some work stuff on there too. At the time of ordering, the specs of the machine I was given exceeded the specs they were offering (3.0ghz instead of 2.4ghz, if I'm not mistaken), it was provisioned quickly and the option to use KVMoIP and do your own install was great.
Sales were exceptionally helpful prior to ordering the machine, and support were fast and friendly every time I needed their help. The on-demand KVMoIP was setup fast on the one occasion I've needed it - ticket created 9:23AM, Chemito responded at 9:26 and had it hooked up and emailed me the details at 9:34. When I first configured the machine, my third IP address was unusable because something got goofed. I filed the ticket at 12:27PM, it was fixed and I had a response by 12:34PM. In fact if I average out all the tickets I've filed (which admittedly are mostly silly issues), the average resolution time is under ten minutes.
The network isn't bad, the pings are slightly elevated and there are periodic bouts of DoS which are dealt with quickly. The network status page is updated frequently with regards to these incidents, which makes me happy as I'm all about honesty when something stops working. I decided to go with the 3mbps unmetered, because I don't really use the server for much and at the time I ordered it overages were crazy expensive - they appear to have come down in price quite a bit.
The one-time upgrades for RAM and suchlike are great, it helps to keep the bottom-barrel monthly pricing with only a modest up-front cost. They also have an automated remote-reboot system in addition to the on-demand KVMoIP. The setup fees can be a little hard to swallow for the budget market, but on the whole it's completely worth it if you plan on staying any length of time.
A few reasons I got hosting with this company. I was having some issues with the support staff at hostpc.com I mean to me they just made me feel they did not care. So any way knowing how busy my site has gotten on hostpc I thought I needed vps. So came in and looked through the offers section and asked many questions to a lot of them that looked interesting and in my price range.
Mddhosting was the one that stuck out the most and every time I talked to support before I got service they really showed they cared about me and were honest and helpful. Much like the feeling I get with downtownhost and everity.
I went ahead and signed up for a vps with them and support iis still the same I mean good. They even helped me with my shoutcast needs which is actually above an beyond and wow have I had to contact them a lot of shoutcast issues which at this time are all fixed and none really had to do with my vps server. All the issues were either the bouncy radio software I was using or a dj messing things up.
the service has been great no down time that I know of and its fast.
This is why I added them to my great host list. Sites with them are: [url]and [url]
INITIAL CAVEAT: My site is not yet live yet so none of this review takes into account production loads. I am currently using the vps mostly for learning and development.
Website is [url] Yes I know it's under construction this is more of a side project/learning experience for me in the realm of server management/setting up and running a site through Drupal.
tl;dr 9/10 Much better then I expected for the small price I'm paying. I would highly recommend them.
Sales 10/10
I emailed Rick before signing up and I explained what I would be doing with the site and which level of serviced he recommended. We came to an agreement on there Mach 2 service. His response to this email was quick. Once I signed up setup was instant
Value 10/10 I have there Mach 2 service which for $12 a month (after a coupon I used) offers: 512 mb Ram guaranteed with 1 gig burst, equal cpu and plenty of disk space/bandwidth (honestly I'm not too concerned about those so I dont' know the exact figures of the top of my head)
Uptime 8/10
Had a few hiccups over the first 3-4 days with a total of about 3-4 hours downtime over 2 incidents but was kept informed the whole time and they regularly update the network status page in wmhs if something goes awry. Since then I've had 0 downtime.
Speed 8/10 Again during the first week I experienced some slow down doing various YUM updates but after they performed some work on it everything seems to be going quite fast. I'm EXTREMELY pleased with the download speeds I'm getting from home. I've used this as an intermediary for some video files that my friends and I are editing together and we're consistently getting 400k downloads everywhere from Ohio to Maine. Uploading is a little slower but at 100k it's probably limited by our home pipes. None of have access to a t1 to check.
Tech Support 7/10
I've put in 4-5 tickets and the response times have varied from a few minutes to a few hours. Nothing egregious and certainly better then I would expect from 12 bucks a month (I've got no illusions about you get what you pay for!) They have been very knowledgeable and never have I put in a ticket only to find out I had to explain as if to a child what I needed done (Yea I'm kinda bitter about this from other experiences, does it show )
Overall 9/10
Let me just say that I'm not sure if this is somethign standard among openvz/hypervm vps's but I am in love with the included backup and restore options along with being able to set up notifications if my services go down without having to figure out how to do it using monitoring daemons myself (nor would I know where to begin...)
They have a ton of os options and they load quite quickly if you need to reload (about 5-6 minutes) and I really love the ability to be able to do a quick (like 2 minutes) backup of your entire system once you have it the way you like. I've used this numerous times as inevitable I screw up something while playing around and with 3 clicks and 5 minutes I can have the system the way it was last time it worked. Then once I get everything working I can make the next incremental backup (again quickly) and move on. Again I cant say that this is unique to vpsspeed but it sure is awesome.
In short I would highly recommend Rick and his team if you are thinking about getting into the vps domain (for lack of a better word)
We've been with WebNX for about 2 months now, and we're loving it. We already rent 11 servers there and are looking to purchase another 10-20 in the near future!
Support/Sales
WebNX support is excellent, I must say. From the start their sales team has responded promptly (within a few hours) and almost always had a solution for my requests. We had (1) ticket opened in the support department and that was promptly handled in a few minutes.
I'd like to thank Dario and Chris who have helped me with my sales inquiries. I had a dedicated server purchased a few days ago and I needed rush setup, they gave me some options and I really loved the flexibility.
Hardware
Hardware is amazing. Fast, good quality, built to order. I like it. The thing about WebNX (as many others say), is that if you're only looking for one or two small Q6600's, they're not the provider for you. If you want a 32 core server with 20 hard drives, they can do that. Or if you want to buy in bulk, they can do that. When you follow those two "rules", they're one of the best providers in terms of bang for your buck.
Network
Network is top notch. They use lots of bandwidth providers and for the price you're getting, it's amazing how fast these servers are. We'll always be buying from WebNX for our Los Angeles needs. I'm sure if they expanded to Dallas, Chicago, even NYC they'd get a lot more business though! .
One thing I do wonder - do they use a BGP transit? Because whenever I traceroute my servers I only get connections though Cogent.
Overall, WebNX is amazing. We'll be with them for the months to come, for sure! They have my business and my future business.
I feel like I should give a review on the service I've received from Unixy. Don't normally give reviews but feel I should get this out there.
Background: I have a few dedis with Softlayer, Burst and one with Unixy.
All are fairly high end.
I am fairly happy with Softlayer. Their backend system is second to none in my opinion and support is pretty good as well. I am fairly technical (Oracle developer) with server management and can normally work out most issues but occasionally I need something that is beyond what I can do quickly. The software I run is extremely resource intensive which requires a lot of tuning (DB), something which I am not totally competent with.
I signed up with Unixy as they offered a managed service. When my setup goes down I lose money fast so I need somebody there to fix it.
When I first got setup with Unixy the bespoke app that I run was having issues due to an application defect. This required constant monitoring and tuning until a fix was put in place.
Unixy went above and beyond what I expected of a managed service. They proactively monitor my setup and sometimes alert me to issues before I know about them.
They are a little bit more pricey than most but for the service you get it is more than worth it.
The response time is faster than anywhere else I have used and they are very technically knowledgeable.
I've been with ColoCrossing.com in all of my service locations for over 6 months now, and I would like to say the service is incredible. There has been very little downtime, the only downtime I have ever experienced has been caused by scheduled maintenance which I was notified of at least 24 hours before it took place.
And as many of you know their network in all of their locations are some of the best available.
Support tickets are always answered quickly, even at 4 or 5 AM in the morning.
I recommend ColoCrossing to anyone looking for a quality dedicated server or colocation provider. We colocate with them but I have rented their dedicated servers with equal results.
it's been a month, there has been a lot done and said so far with them. Jason Scales I guess no longer works there.
Had issues with KVM on demand, took 3 days some times to get this so I went and then bought a KVM unit. Sent a server for colo this took a week because the power unit they did not have and couldn't find one to fix this so i was billed half the price on the night ship. I was told when I signed up IPs were free now i'm being charged even after I have Jason in AIM telling me to order 5 and I won't be charged. It's funny because the actual provider sells them for free.
Reboots most nights take a long time. Server setup well I paid on the 3rd for 2 new servers and i'm still waiting. I had requested to the actual DC for a reboot and I got an email back saying I'm not authorized to request such things. So that really ticked me off but i understand why.
There are only a few things I can say good right now and that's the network is very amazing! Last night I had to make a threat to take my servers else where if they didnt update me on my server setup and KVM setup status which they said would be today for "1" which I paid a few days ago so I'm paying for time its not online.
The IP I went and ordered took about 2 weeks to get 5 IPs. If this stuff is not settled and I get more issues I think I'm moving my services.
Once stuff is up and going it's all awesome and things go smooth it only seems to have issues when I need new services setup or a reboot.
LOL I had a ticket and had a reply they got my name wrong.... "its Jason not Josh."
The last KVM I wanted took 6 days to hookup, this is mostly because they have like 16 KVM units at least that's what Jason had told me before he left them which would of been nice to know been emailing him.
Lets see if things get better this and next month if not I'm going elsewhere.
