Virpus Review 7 Month Review - My "ups And Downs"

I have been with virpus for the past 7 months

I have posted an review earlier as well for 2 month : 2 month review

Let me summarize my experience so far,

Technical Support - 10/10 Really fab. even though I was on semi-managed plan, they never made me feel I was on a semi it always felt as if I was under complete management, they did every task I had asked them to do, which I didn't get on any other semi-managed host earlier.

I have no sort of complaints about their technical team, they tried to solve some problems which were due to the billing dept.

The minimum response for a ticket generally around 10-15mins and the completion with in an hr.

Billing Dept - This is some dept. that has kept me in wonder-land. Some times the replies were so pleasing and most other times the tickets are ignored. From, almost 2nd r 3rd month, the billing dept. tickets don't get regularly replied and used to bump the tickets in order to get a response to the query. Which I got some how, in a apologizing manner (no complaints for that :p)

Now, for the past 1 month we have been having some serious problems.

First, I had recd. some black-listed ip's when we joined virpus, we failed to check them (mistake on our end agreed 100%), which probably even they might not have been aware of.. As, we had a minor mis-understanding with godaddy during domain registration, my friend registered the domain using one of our partner address who resides in Singapore, where as the registration was done from India. Godaddy, assumed this was a spam registration and refunded the amount. So, we had to register the domain through another partner who resided in India. Godaddy was cool after we gave them the complete details, where they wanted some ID proof, and we provided them.

Our ip was on the black-list, we thought since our domain was spam-listed for a day, (until godaddy took it off) it made the hosts to assume the domain was black-listed, so we had manually submitted forms and proofs to most of the anti-spam agencies and mail providers, where they took the ban off the ip with in 15-20 days after we joined virpus.

Our domain was no longer under black-list, but ip was still under black-listed in some sites, such as rediff, it took more than 2 months to set the things straight at rediff, where we did some config added from the tech.dept. such as setting up spf record, and did a few tweaks here and there.

Even after making all these efforts, our ip was still under black-list of some ISP's. Our main domain (the domain which was under bl list earlier) loads well for every user, but our child domains where we have blogs and other activities do not load for lots of users. The ping results in the internet gives 100% but on their particular systems it gives no ping. Some times, the site loads wierdly such as,[url] might load but [url]might not load, and vice-versa, some times local ping fails but site loads, its all wierd and we found the reason to the problem to be ip after some minor confirmation from our end. We were losing our revenue of more than 60% just because of the failure of loading on the site, the tech. dept used to ask the ips which are facing prob to check if they are blocked, but its not possible to give ips of users who visit as guests and others, we have noted reports on other sites that our site wasn't loading for them. We still were able to give few ips for check and found them not-blocked on the ip. The sites are able to be viewed for all from proxy sites such as stage6.info but we can't ask each viewer to go to proxy site to view if they are unable to load, it will become ridiculous and we might lose our entire traffic some day.

We had shifted our domains temporarily to other vps where we noted none of the users had a single complaint, we were there for more than a week, which ensured the problem was not the domains but the ips, again after returning to the virpus hosts, we had created 3 tickets to sales/billing dept. to issue fresh ip's, got 0 reply and mailed to mr.Ken using : kenneth.odem@virpusnetworks.net got no reply after 48hrs.

We have to agreee, Earlier,mr.Ken was so helpful he helped us when we didn't have any funds to issue, since we had an dispute with an item where our payment was delayed by paypal. So, we had paid them almost 10 days later than the due date where mr.Ken was so helpful and saw to it our VPS could stay online despite the payments not been released.

In thanks, we had directly mailed our check we got from an ad-agency, which again made around 5-10 days in the payment, which made our balance stand in the positive note, we have our balance in the account for the past 3 months so that there are no dues left.

But, in the past 1 -2 months the replies have been disappointing.

We planned to leave virpus and join other host, where we burnt our hands, we looked for other reputed VPS and had a few in mind after our staff suggested few good organizations(don't prefer to name them here as it would be mis-leading).

Since, virpus wasn't ready to refund the amount in the credits we decided to continue with virpus atleast as a sideby host. Later, some how our members suggested we used virpus as a main host, so we wanted fresh ip's to get rid of the damn problem we are having but we have recd. no response for the past 1 week.

Now, lately after the maintenance our VPS was down for approx. 26-27hrs on april 25th Saturday, where our traffic is usually on the weekends. We lost the compelete traffic and revenue. When we asked if it come under credits, we got response as : This was the result of scheduled maintenance we cannot, it would not qualify under our SLA. (just giving the main result statment off the entire reply recd. from sales). Its some thing we would like to regret but for sure this isn't some issue, which could make us think to get to a new host.

The reply from the sales dept. has made our staff making funny betting, as one would win if we get a reply and other would if its not replied with in 48hrs, lately the first one is winning () due to lack of communication.

This might be our last month. Our next due date major amount would be taken from the credits, so a very little amount would exist in the account. We will stay with them until our amount with them is spent.

We had enjoyed really good with the tech. dept but the sales dept has been really poor in the recent past. I am forced to say this as even after mailing we haven't got response where, mr.Ken stated if our tickets were lost or some thing, mail to him but either didn't work so far.

Once, earlier when we requested for change of ips we were said some $7 or some thing would be charged for the swap, when we made other enquiries about it we didn't get a response till date

My tickets which lay un-responded:
203497
509467
385781

509467 and 385781 are double-post of the ticket, but got reply for none of the above tickets. Was expecting a reply for 1 atleast.

I was ready to pay excess charge for the new ips as there some mistake from my end in failure to check the ips before getting them but I wanted some concession as the major mistake was from their end while dispatching ips. I am not refusing to pay but I wanted the concession, got no reply and the above tickets are a proof of them.

Our staff online time and their live chat time don't tally, so we can't make any contact to them on live as well.

I am not sure if this is mis-understanding or what, but it has been a mixed experience for me. For sure, their sales crew have to be increased that's some suggestion I would strongly do.

I can recommend this host to any one for the tech. support they provide but can't guarantee them for the sales dept. replies based on my past/recent experiences.

Totally my site down for around ~30hrs including all the maintanence and other reasons, it could be a bit less but I am rounding it off, for sure its more than 28hrs

My over all rating: 7.5/10
Tech. Dept - 10/10
Sales/Billing Dept - 5/10

my site submitted for review via report feature
I tried to give all my experience on virpus and I am not against any one for joining virpus nor have any fights with virpus team.

May be if we get response from sales we might still consider continuing with virpus but that stands low at the moment.