Zone.net Review
Nov 12, 2007
I've been with Zone.net since late august and I couldn't be happier.
They always respond to tickets quickly and even called me once time when I was having a server problem to let me know how things were going with it.
The only problem I've had was when I ordered two new IPs and they were installed wrong or something as my CPU usage shot to 100% and the server kept crashing. I had this outage for two weeks but they emailed me daily to tell me how the fix was going and ended up giving me a month free for my trouble!
Brian and Sean are two great guys and zone.net has made a VPS customer for life!
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Jun 14, 2008
A few months ago, I helped a client setup some services on a VPS provided by zone.net. The setup process was easy and the VPS was activated very quickly. The online support staff is very fast at answering any questions I throw their way. I'm also impressed with their online customer portal -- very well organized.
Reliability has been perfect (as far as I can tell). The VPS is very responsive and obviously not overloaded. The price is very reasonable.
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Aug 16, 2007
I can only encourage you to check out zone.net.
My website receives between 9,000 and 12,500 unique pageviews a day and
I am now at zone.net and their VPS hosting is awesome,
not only the speed the my pages now load with, but also the custom support that helped me out with the domain transfer and setting up the VPS.
I got the VM-200 Virtual Enterprise Server that comes with 768MB memory, 25GB space and 400GB traffic a month. The server specs are as following:
Plesk version psa v8.1.1_build81070423.15 os_FedoraCore 5
Operating system Linux 2.6.9-023stab044.4-enterprise
CPU GenuineIntel, Intel(R) Xeon(R)CPU E5345 @ 2.33GHz
It is a bit pricey at 65$ a month, but one of their service staff members gave the following promo-code to me:
It is FIFTEENOFF and deducts 15% of every monthly amount-payable, leaving this server beast at 55$ a month, which is financially sustainable as long as my dear users continue to click those ads that make sense to them.
In contrast to Liquidweb the package I have at zone.net has 256MB more ram at a lower price.
Also they have five datacenters to choose from within the United States in contrast to two at LW.
I recently got to know while trying to sort out my German .de domains, that they run a special promotions campaign this summer. They got some cool new special deals this summer.
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Aug 8, 2007
I believe in giving credit where it's due and zone.net definitely deserves one.
I've been contemplating to switch to VPS for a very long time and choosing a provider is not only nerve wrecking, it was really really hard as the 'contenders' on my list all have really great reviews here on WHT
However Zone.net have really made my decision easy. I have initially decided to go for wiredtree and plan to sign up end aug. But when I saw zone's promo ad and seankoons advice to contact sales for custom coupon, that's just what I did. I was plasantly suprised that they could accomodate to my request and thus I signed up immediately.
My VPS was provisioned the next 1 and a 1/2 hr later but the VZPP link was not working. I submitted a ticket and was responded with issue rectified the next 3 minutes! another WOW factor! I've also submitted request for server hardening and this was done within 1/2 hr.
Then I realized that the memory allocated was not as per agreed, so another tkt submitted and responded within 10-15 minutes. There was a misunderstanding, nothing bad but Richard the sales person have bravely acknowledged the error and honoured the deal and that's not all, throws in an xtra bonus.
That gestures sure made an impact on how a company values their customers. My server now is up and running, accessing whm/cpanel is super fast and ping times are the best I've seen for a US based server. I'm in Singapore right now. By the way it'd be great if you guys can ping at your end (state your location) and post it here Will really appreciate that.
Reply from 67.201.40.62: bytes=32 time=201ms TTL=51
Reply from 67.201.40.62: bytes=32 time=201ms TTL=51
Reply from 67.201.40.62: bytes=32 time=198ms TTL=51
Reply from 67.201.40.62: bytes=32 time=199ms TTL=51
Ping statistics for 67.201.40.62:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 198ms, Maximum = 201ms, Average = 199ms
I'm in a midst of transferring all other accounts and hopefully it will run well. So it have been a very good WOW experience and with this level of services rendered, I'm here to stay for a very very long time Good job Zone.Net!
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Aug 28, 2007
I was encouraged by the reviews of Zone.net on this forum to buy a VPS from them on 20 August. VM-200 Virtual Enterprise Server.
Before I pay, I asked some question about the software I need and got the reply that no problem, they can install them. I want Plesk, Debian, JDK 1.5 or above, MySql 5.0 or above, Tomcat 5.5.17, mysqlAdmin. And please help integrate the tomcat and apache.
August 21, I opened a ticked to ask their support to help me install the softwares. 15 Hours later, I got reply of following: "The underlying problem here is we are missing a package known as the tomcat module, and there is no tomcat module for debian at swsoft.
If you require tomcat administration, I recommend using CentOS or Fedora as we have other customers on this and working fine."
After amost 5 hours of my cofirm, they finished the reinstalled the server.
Now, I found the JDK is V1.4 and they told me that "unfortunately this is the latest supported version of jdk on your OS+CP. If you are looking for the absolute latest version, FC7 is your best option."
Why? They didn't inform me after reinstalled, now they told me that if I want the software I have to reinstall the server again! I asked before, and got the confirmation that they can install them. But now, everything was changed.
How many times will they reinstall it?
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Sep 6, 2007
I recently had the pleasure of working with zone.net for a project of mine and I have to say that their attention to detail and quality of workmanship was at a level that surpassed my expectations.
Their support time responses have consistantly been both swift (I would say no more than two hour response time) and elaborate and I could see that they knew what they were doing.
I thank you again Sean from zone.net and the technician that helped me - I think you know who he is - is probably the friendliest and overall best support tech I have ever dealt with.
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May 11, 2008
I recently decided to move to a VPS from shared hosting. After much research mainly on WHT I had decided on Zone.net, and since WHT was so helpful in my decision process I thought I'd post a review.
My sites all run Drupal CMS, so I was looking for fast in terms of cpu for page generation times. And also a VPS that was "managed" because it was big jump from shared hosting for me.
Anyways I had my big test May 3-4 when I was providing online coverage for a dog event.
Over those two days was pretty much averaging 50-100 concurrent users, about 40,000 page views /day, which translated into about 250,000 hits a day on the server.
I must say the server never even hickupped. All the traffic didn't even slow it down one bit. So I was very impressed with all that and very happy. I think it could have handled double that traffic. I am on the smaller plan with 512 ram guaranteed.
I submitted a few support tickets that were all answered pretty quickly. Don't have any complaints or negatives to say.
When I ran some admin tasks on the site that on the old shared hosting would take a long time and frequently time out. on the zone.net vps those same admin task would finish in a couple seconds. I couldn't believe, we are talking like 20x faster.
I am most impressed with the hardware and performance of the VPS. And would recommend to anyone looking to run CMS type website.
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Apr 1, 2008
I signed up with these guys about a month ago. My managed cpanel server (VM300) was setup within 2 hours and I immediately logged in and started playing around. Let me tell you, these folks advertise they have fast servers and they mean it! I've been playing with some java based calculation software and I was able to run a batch that usually takes 40 minutes on my servint vps to run about 10 minutes on my Zone box. The peformance increase is absolutely incredible.
On to the support part. I sent in a few tickets asking for my apache to be recompiled with different components of PHP and httpd, as I went through a few programmers (couldn't find one that I was happy with) and each one had a different set of requirements for the tools they wanted to use on my site. I thought by the third time I was asking for a full recompile these guys would get nasty but they were nothing but smiles and politeness personified! That's true customer service in my book. They also have live chat support and phone support, but i tried both and they are really just level 1 and most times for anything complex they just ended up openeing a ticket for me right then and there on the phone. That's another thing that gives me peace of mind, knowing I can call them up while I'm on the road and have their engineers take a look at my site or anything if I can't get to a pc. Some of the other providers on my to-try list I had to take out because although they had great reviews email and ticket was the only option and I believe in options.
I finally transferred my site, alternativestudies.com (soon to be officially launched), a little while ago onto the zone.net vps and I setup pingdom and montatstic and so far the uptime has been 100%. I'm in the miami datacenter and the connectivity is great from various different places I ran download and speed tests. I expect most of my students to connect from within virginia as we are concentrating locally so it was very important I pick the right datacenter.
In all, I have to say that I think I'm going to be a customer of Zone.Net's for a long time. They have the best servers, support and price to performance ratio that I have seen since I switched from shared hosting. If your looking for worry free hosting and don't want to deal with upgrading your apache or php whenever your site needs it, and want the fastest site responses these are the guys to go to.
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Nov 25, 2008
The following is my review of Zone.net. I am currently hosting with them using one of their "Enterprise Managed VPS" products. I will be reviewing Zone.net on the following criteriaricePerformance
Stability
Support
Each section will contain a score of 1(poor) – 10(excellent)Introduction:
I signed up for a Zone.net plan in August of 2007 after doing extensive research here on WHT. After spending a significant time comparing other users reviews and the resources of the different offerings I selected Zone.net as my new hosting provider. While Zone.net's prices were higher they were running an attractive special at the time that made them very reasonable.Price: Pricing is comparable to other providers. As I mentioned above, when offers come up on WHT the package can be very attractive.Rating: 8 (good) Performance:
Zone.net's servers perform very well when they are up and running. There does not seem to be any overselling or other issues that would create performance problems. Load on my VPS is usually light and latency is very good. MySQL performs well as does the control panel (WHM/cpanel).Rating: 9 (very good) Stability:
Uptime was good for the last half of 2007. Unfortunately, I experienced a significant outage in May 2008 and then two more significant outages in November 2008. These outages were both in the several hour – days range. Unacceptable for a service provider and far below the SLA Zone advertises.Rating: 6 (needs improvement) Support:
Shortly after signup I needed assistance moving accounts over to zone.net. Tickets were responded to within an hour (even with an urgency of "medium"). Unfortunately, five months after signing up, my services went down and were having significant issue. I opened a ticket with a "high" urgency as several of my applications depend on db access.
The ticket response time went down to approximately 7 hours. A month later (about 6 months after signing up) and the response time was down to 9 hours for a "high urgency" ticket. With the two significant outages the response time was consistently poor.
Additionally, support often responded with "support elevation" messages – meaning the message usually said something like "we need to escalate this issue to a higher level of support".
Along with the current support response time issues, Zone.net also appears to have either issues with its support ticketing system or a policy of removing unresolved tickets. Within the last month I have had three tickets deleted entirely from the system – support has ignored my request regarding the status of these tickets and what happened to result in them being cleared from the system. I have also had one ticket "closed" automatically while I was waiting for Zone support to respond to it.
When I initially signed up Zone was in the process of implementing a user forum to facilitate communication with users. A few months in, and the forum was up with a section to provide service announcements etc. With the recent outages, I was surprised to find that the forum had been pulled.
During the two significant November issues Zone.net failed to provide users with timely detailed updates on the cause of the issues. In fact, for the November 14 outage that lasted 3 days they didn't even have a page up in their "announcements" section. Several questions posted here in the WHT forums regarding the issues still remain unanswered.
Zone.net used to have a strong presence here on WHT – answering questions, addressing problems, and advising users. That presence has declined significantly over the past 6 months. It is good to see Sean K. back here, his involvement here will go a long way to improving customer communication.
In summary, Zone's support was once very good. Current support issues including long response times, ineffective support personnel, and ticket management issues create an environment where users are not receiving quality service. Zone.net also does not currently have effective customer communication policies in place, particularly to address and inform users in the event of network problems.
Rating: 3 (inadequate) Conclusion:
My overall rating is weighted based on the needs of a typical managed VPS customer.
While Zone provides good performance in the services they offer, the support quality of their offerings has declined through 2008. While an outage is bad for a provider, the manner in which a provider reacts and supports its client base during these difficult times reflects a lot about the core of a company -- and ultimately is when a customer needs his providers support the most. In this regard, Zone has done little to encourage confidence in their users. That being said, if Zone.net can return to its customer service roots and build its support/ client communication infrastructure they may once again be a company worthy of recommendation. Unfortunately, until these changes and improvements are made I cannot recommend Zone.net in this review.Overall Rating: 6 (need improvement)
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Nov 13, 2008
I've been a Zone.net customer (actually still am but not for much longer)for about a year now. Up until the major outage they had this week, their service worked well.
Whenever I had an issue level 1 escalated to level 2 support and got to the problem very quickly. Overall, the service worked well enough and I was happy.
Here is where I become critical...
There was a outage this past weekend that had my VPS down from Friday to Monday (4 days). This is where their lack of support showed. First, the level 1 support can't do anything except forward tickets. You can't get anyone on the phone who can actually impact your situation. Second, the flood of calls meant that their level 2 support and higher took longer to respond. During normal situations this is fine...During a crisis, this is a nightmare. Third, the ticket system took hours at times for a response or action during the outage. Last, the web page they put up for the outage was not updated "every hour" as they stated. Their site even went down a few times.
In short, Zone.net did not have the resources to deal with this outage in a graceful manner. The worse part was their lack of communication at all levels.
Granted, they are offering free service and backup systems for 3 months. The damage has already been done with me. I estimate that I lost customers with this outage in the thousands in those 4 days. I can't risk that happening again.
I signed up with Zone.net because of their reputation as a solid company and happily recommended them...until this past weeks outage.
Nobody wants to move to a new service. It is a big pain. You only move if you have to. I've decided to leave Zone.net
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Aug 30, 2008
i currently have a vps with zone.net and im really satisfied with their service. Thank you .. Jeffrey, Sean, especially Robert, John D, ( with their amazing support whenever i need something)
and especially JenniferL (the best sales representative who never close the chat window before im satisfied with his answer, say goodbye and close it). that's why im surprised and i think he's a strange person, who treat the company clients very well, i have never seen this treat from any sales at other hosting providers i had chance to work with,
if i forget to reply in the chat window for a hour, he will keep the window at his end too and wait till i get back to him...he always help me to answer any question and forward my ticket immediately to the admin whenever i need a priority.
im really new with this business and i submited a lot of tickets, about 30 tickets in first month, but they are willing to answer all of my stupid questions.
very fast and helpful
dont know how to say thank you, just want to go here and say thanks for your awesome service Zone.net
Highly recommend to everyone
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Nov 23, 2007
I have been with Zone.net for a couple months, now, so I thought that I'd post a review about their services for other members here to consider as they wish.
For the record, I have two VPSs, one through Zone.net and another one through another hosting company that gets high reviews through these forums, so I can directly compare them both pretty easily. I moved to Zone.net for one of my web sites because I was quickly outgrowing what I had available, and I also wanted to implement some redundancy within my web environment. If one VPS fails for whatever reason, I can quickly switch to the other.
I signed up for service after asking a few pre-sales questions, which were all answered surprisingly well, which does not seem to be typical in the web hosting industry (this was before their new forum system opened up at zone.net/forums). I was quickly convinced that Zone.net was a company to try, so I signed up for their VM200 server, which is a managed VPS. My web site is important enough to pay for the managed support, and I'm glad that I did.
The account was setup pretty quickly and I was off and running with no problems. The servers are still awfully fast, faster than the other VPS that I have. Cpanel loads so quickly with Zone, and PHPMyAdmin whips through the pages at an impressive speed, much faster than my other VPS provider. That is what immediately impressed me with Zone.net.
I've put in 4 different trouble tickets since I signed up, all of which were solved to my satisfaction. My VPS wasn't compiled with Postgres support, so I opened a ticket with their support team and it was taken care of quickly. I then couldn't send email with PHP. Again, I put in a ticket and it was done. Regardless of what provider you choose, you'll always have problems. What I value most is how the web hosting provider deals with those problems and the service their technical support team provides to their customers. Both VPS providers are exceptional in terms of technical support.
But back to the speed – that is what really impresses me. My other VPS isn't exactly slow, but this one is just damn fast. I immediately noticed a huge difference in speed, like I alluded to earlier, with Cpanel and WHM. I'm definitely digging the speed. It's like driving a Honda S2000 with my other VPS, and a supercharged Corvette with Zone.net. I have a supercharged Corvette sitting in my garage, so you can probably guess which car (host) I prefer.
And Sean, the General Manager, is one of a kind. It's nice to be able to chat with the ones who run the web hosting service directly, rather than their hired help. I'm not disparaging their hired help, because they are quite good, but...just imagine being able to call up Bill Gates every time your Windows desktop “Blue Screens”.
Anyway, there you have it. Zone.net is a great service and I would recommend them to anyone looking for a good, fast VPS provider. Their technical support appears able and willing to help, and with their new forum system, I honestly believe that they want to build a good, solid community among their customers, getting them chatting with each other, asking questions, getting help, relaxing and just enjoying the service.
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Apr 26, 2008
Unhappy customers are usually highly motivated to write on forums. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for happy customers that are relaxing on the couch because a job gets well done. However, as this forum provided me with substantial support in finding a VPS provider, it is time to give back to this community with my own review.
I signed up for a medium-sized Zone.net enterprise package in March 2007.
During the last year, I submitted 28 tickets on a wide variety of issues including general questions to help me understand things better, all of which got answered, realized, and/or resolved with great competence and speed.
The VPS is running stable, and I cannot say that I recall any downtimes.
So I am afraid that I cannot provide you with any horror stories unless you want to laugh at my very own learning curve. Zone.net is very good value for money, and on that note, let me return to my happy couch and give two thumbs up to Zone.net.
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Mar 27, 2007
Let me start out by saying that I’m fairy competent when it comes to managing my own server, but I’ve had my fair share of problems that I have caused myself on my own VPS.
I’m probably more of a burden than anything on my hosting company. I use my VPS right now for developmental purposes for a upcoming game hosting company. I also sell some shared space on the side to coworkers/friends to help try to pay for the VPS,. I have about 20 websites running on my VPS, all with little/moderate traffic right now.
I first signed up with zone.net mid-October of 2006, which makes this my 5 month (and change) review of zone.net. When I signed up they were running a huge promotion and I got in on the deal (it was too good to pass up). I got myself one of their small plans called the Developer. This was fine while I started up my other sites, but then I put a gameserver on the VPS, and immediately had to upgrade to their Enterprise server, which I am on now.
My plan has:
512-1GB RAM
30 GB HD
3 MBPS uplink
3 IPs
And all their other goodies that they throw in, like their fully-managed support, plesk, etc.
Speed:
The speed of the VPS has been amazing. I’ve benchmarked it well over some dual-core dedicated servers via WHT. It truly does make going the extra step and getting a dedicated look unreasonable at this time. I’m getting the performance for around $100 less per month, with full management.
Support:
Before signing onto zone.net, I sent many support tickets and called their number, to test their support speeds. Since then, I’ve opened up countless tickets, and all get responded to within 10-15 minutes, which is a pretty good time. Even my outlandish requests that aren’t typically covered by their management (I had them install my gameserver) was 100% done within 2 hours.
Overall:
When I was researching VPSs, I thought that performance was going to be about the same on all VPS hosts, and that support is what was really going to make a difference. The support I receive with zone.net is absolutely amazing, and the benchmarks I ran for my VPS were the fastest that I saw (literally) for the same spec VPS. I would STRONGLY recommend zone.net, as they have been nothing less than perfect.
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Oct 10, 2007
I paid for a VPS yesterday and have yet to receive my details for login.
What is the usual wait time on vps setups?
Ive never gone longer than 10hrs for even dedicated server setups. Im still at hour 32 and still no VPS.
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Aug 30, 2007
We bought a VU200 VPS two days ago since we want to have a server in a stable environment mainly for our web site and email. We run a small Information Security consulting firm in the Silicon Valley.
Our experience with Zone.net has been a total disaster!
Zone.net installed a very bare CentOS 4; when we tried to use yum to install Dovecot IMAP we got a series of errors due to some missing libraries! Not a good sign. We contacted customer support and after they complained that this is an unmanaged server (like it is our fault they don't know how to install a stable system) they eventually agreed to install imap for us. If they installed a solid system in the first place we wouldn't have this problem . After we received an email from them saying that imap was installed, we login into the system and sure enough imap was not intalled! What a joke.
We then decided to reinstall the VPS from the Virtuozzo panel, since we figured out that these people at Zone.net are incompetents. The new installed system was even more bare: no yum , no imap, nothing. We called support again and ask to have access to the CentOS distribution via NFS for example. We don't want necessarily to install yum or other packages using rpmfinder, which would not be very clean; nor we want to have to upload a ton of rpm packages to the server, which would be a huge waste of our time. We talked to Jeffrey about it and he came up with a bunch of excuses why this is not possible, and why it is the way it is since this is a an unmanaged system. It was clear from the conversation that this yahoo is incompetent and he is just a button pusher. Furthermore he was unwilling to help whatsoever.
We have taken this matter to our credit card company and have them reverse the charges that Zone.net posted on our account and barred them to post any future charge on our account.
We strongly recommend not to use Zone.net!
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Oct 23, 2007
I joined WHT just yesterday I think. I read good reviews on zone.net from 2-3 people I think. I ordered with Asmallorange.com but to go with zone.net, I cancelled the order there and got a refund immediately. I don't know what on earth made me do this. Look what I receive.
At first, I left a support ticket asking server specs etc and other pre sale questions so I can go ahead and buy. Got my fist responce after 6 hours. Kind of turn off but still thought of givnig them a try.
I must say that they said VPS with plesk can be setup in 30minutes but cpanel takes 1 day. They got me the server in 10 hours. It was well appreciated. I was happy.
Now since this is my first time with VPS, I asked for support that I am not able to transfer my Vbulletin forum (teenhut.net) an active teen site. I did everything fine. I have got more than enough experience on transfering and installing VBulletin or other php scripts. Now, Database errors starts coming in. Whole day spent thinking it is my fault somewhere.
Finally today I tried to install wordpress and even that doesnt work. Zone.net said they don't offer script installation help but only help if there is a server problem. It was no script error. The script doesnt connect to database only. Thats horrible! Ofcource, maybe some kind of mistake. I realized this when even a WORDPRESS BLOG could not get installed. I have just done too much, tried EVERYTHING but nothing worked.
I initiated another ticket asking for support on this. I submitted at 1pm and now it is 11pm. Only reply I got is : -
Quote - Richard, Zone.net
Hi,
Did you create the database in cPanel first? When you login to WHM/cPanel go to List Accounts, and then click on the cPanel icon for that domain, and then from the cPanel page go ahead and create the database.
In the config file, put localhost as the mysql server, and the username and password you selected. Let me know if this works for you.
Regards,
Richard
ZONE.NET
/Quote
Last night, Brian named guy also entered config file but could not make it to work.
So, Zone.net staff made an attempt to ask "Have I made a database in cpanel?" I am talking about vbulletin installation and that is the support I get for VPS.
I bought Managed VPS for $65.
I requested cancellation and then read TOS - No refund policy on VPS. $65 is not a big deal but this is not how I wanted to spend my $$. I am still hoping to get some reply.
Either Problem Rectification(Hope, so I can spend 1 month and run away) OR Refund (not so hopes in this). What do you guys think will happen? Will they rectify the problem? Or refund may it be partial refund? Or they wll just leave as it is and wont respond to my tickets also.
To be specific, RENT A SERVER, where there is a way to connect to database not known to you and them as well. Host HTML PAGES, thats all you get for $65 in Zone ?
And now I think the good reviews of Zone.net were Paid! Sorry, but thats all comes in my mind. I feel cheated.
Look at my site, it is down since a day - teenhut.net
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Aug 25, 2007
I ordered VM200 (Enterprise VPS) with cPanel/WHM + Fantastico from Zone.net 2 days ago and here's my review:
Sales: 9/9
I can't say any bad about their sales team, they're (at least Jefrey) excellent. Keep the good work guys
Setup: 5/9
I've had & still have another vps from another provider, it was set up within max. 3 hours with complete setup like what was ordered.
With Zone.net, I have to say I'm disappointed, setup took 9 hours from the time I paid it.
And then the next issue is Fantastico has not been installed, I've contacted them about this yesterday; they said Fantastico license will be arrived within 24-48 hours. This is issue that I didn't find with other providers before (Jaguarpc, Knownhost, SLhost & Futurehosting).
Fantastico has not been installed yet until now.
Speed (network & hardware): 8/9
I can't complain, I choose LA data center and the speed is good from here (Indonesia) also the server seems a monster server (8 CPUs)
I can't mark it 9 yet, because I've been using my VPS only for 2 days.
Support: 6/9
I have sent 1 ticket to support, and it took about 2 hours to be replied. The other ticket sent to billing was replied in about 20 mins.
This is early review, this is purely for information to the community, I'm not doing this to make bad impression about Zone.net.
I will give another review within 2-3 days and the next 1 or 2 months.
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Jan 25, 2009
First, while my sites aren't currently on Zone (I have moved them away), it is easy enough to prove I have been a customer, because there a numerous posts on here where Sean and I discuss things, including in the Benchmark thread where he encouraged me to rerun the benchmark after they moved me to one of their faster Dell nodes, about a year ago.
Ok, I am someone that likes to give companies 2nd and 3rd chances and benefits of the doubt. But, I can no longer do that.
About a year ago, or a little over, I needed to move my vBulletin site off of shared hosting, because it was becoming unreliable. Fast one minute, slow the next. After reading lots of reviews and asking questions, I was told I could probably get by with a 384MB or 512MB VPS. At the time, Zone was getting very good reviews and touted as having really fast equipment. So, I took the plunge.
Because I not only didn't want to be memory bound, but also wanted the greatest possible CPU share (not that I needed it, but to make sure I didn't see slow downs caused by other sites like on shared hosting), I went for a 1152MB SLM package.
In the very beginning, things went pretty well, but I wasn't overly pleased with support times when I submitted a ticket. It could be anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours for a response, and then sometimes longer to resolve, BUT whenever they did resolve it they fixed the problem, and as I often asked for an explanation (I was trying to learn how to do some of this stuff on my own), the techs typically gave me a nice overview of what the problem was and how it was fixed.
Bottom line, I wasn't happy with how long it took to respond, but when they did, they were thorough and polite.
In the months that followed (early last year) a few things happened. First, I started to have VPS problems, which was always related to other VPS's on the machine hogging resources. As I had guaranteed RAM and should have as much CPU as anyone (I bought the largest package for this reason), I was told that the Virtuozzo software didn't protect a node from one VPS overloading the I/O, so that was the problem. This started to happen with increased frequency, and two problems occurred in terms of support.
First, since they were slow to respond (now starting to be int he 2-4 hour for initial response time frame), my site would be experiencing high load times and sluggish performance or at times even unreachable, and support would take hours to respond, and then might look at it and say "everything looks fine", and I would have to update the ticket multiple times with load averages from top, before they would finally investigate and say, "another VPS was compromised, but it is fixed now, you shouldn't have anymore problems". The problem was that it took hours for the initial response, which was almost always "we don't see a problem", until I 'proved' there was a problem, then they investigated the other VPS's on the node and addressed it.
Second, many issues they had to "forward to admin". Now, whenever that occurred and Sean worked on it, he was a pleasure to deal with and typically fixed the problem, but it got to the point where it seemed like almost all tickets wound up with "will need to forward to Admin" and Sean apparently was overwhelmed and it cut sit waiting for admin for some time.
Now, at this time I should say that the ONLY reason I hung with Zone as long as I did was because Sean went out of his way to try and help me in every possible way. Gave me his cell phone number, told me to call day or night if there was a problem/down time, etc. He moved my VPS on to a node that didn't have VPS's overloading the I/O and I was very grateful for his support, even if he was addressing problems that were not of my own making.
On a number of occaissions, both on here and via email, I was told how Sean understood about the service problems, and they have done xyz to fix them. I was assured that in
the coming months, I would see a completely different level of service from support. However, the support continued to go down hill.
I just typed a couple more instances, but deleted, because I felt this was getting too long, so lets fast forward.
Ironically, one or two days before zone had that 4 day outage on a node that so much was written about, I emailed Richard Alvarez, who appeared to be the man in charge. I gave him multiple examples of poor support (some he termed embarrassing after investigating) and told him how they had gone from a company with a great rep on WHT, to one that is referred to as having fast servers and horrible support. Anyway, he talked about how they were going to improve and standard stuff, and then bam a day or two later, the node is down. While I wasn't on that node, I was on the node they were using to move nodes off to as they were trying to bring sites up. All those times Zone.net was unreachable, I was unreachable because I was on the same node as Zone's main site.
So, while my node didn't have a hardware problem, for four days, my site was going up and down, and support wasn't responding.
At that point, I couldn't risk my primary site (a Broncos football message board on zone), so I got a leased server from hivelocity (became gunshy of VPS's) and moved my message board to HiVelocity, but left a handful of other sites my second VPS with them in their Miami datacenter. As I had been assured by Richard, and then Sean who resurfaced, that they were going to make major changes and there would be an announcement in a week or two about the changes (this was in November and still nothing), I decided to keep my small sites on the Miami VPS and see if the support improved.
Starting in December, I started getting MYSQL crashes. Apache would still be running, but my wordpress and other DB backed sites would get DB errors. On I believe three occaissions I put in tickets and was told "we have fixed this error, it won't happen again" or something to that effect, and it did.
I was growing tired of the same old support problems, either very long waits for response, or failure to fix problems. Finally, on January 2nd, sql crashed again. I put in a "site down" ticket and waited two hours, and nothing, so i bumped the ticket, then bumped the ticket after 3 1/2 hours, still not even a reply. After 3 1/2 hours, I stated that once the problem was fixed, I wanted an explanation from Sean or Richard as to why a "site is down again" high priority ticket goes 3+ hours without a response.
Bump it again at 4 hours, state I am going to bed and hope it is fixed when I get up.
However, i decide I can't do this, as I have had some tickets go 12 hours with zone without resolution or response, so at this point I post an update to the ticket that after 4 1/2 with no response, I state that i am attempting to restart the VPS and then if it comes up, I will begin moving my sites to another host (to my HiVelocity dedicated).
At the 5 hour mark, I update the ticket and state that I have begun migrating my sites to another host, so please do not mess with the server in any way, and to forward this ticket to Sean and Richard.
Finally 6 hours and 58 minutes after I submitted the ticket and with all the updates I described above, including stating that I have just moved all my sites/cpanel account off of my VPS, I get this response:
Hi,
I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused, the servers Mysql is performing fine and I can access the domain [url]well from my end. The domain broncos07.com is not resolving to the IP and it has DNS problem, you need to contact the name server registrar. If you cannot access the working site [url]then you should be having some network issues on your end. Thank You.
Regards,
Binny E.
ZONE.NET
This sums up how zone support has been for quite some time, and what Richard Alvarez deemed embarrassing (when referring to similar support responses). Binny clearly never even read any of the updates, or possibly didn't understand. It is my belief that Binny and Ravi, seemingly the only guys that address tickets these days, do not fully understand English, as it is the only explanation for some nonsensical responses.
So, now I am fed up. I get a VPS with futurhosting to permanently house the sites I moved to my dedi on a temp basis. I move them over and once all is fine, I put in a ticket with zone to cancel both of my VPS's and also an explanation of why, and ask that Richard and JEffrey (the guys that seem to be in charge) see it. I state do no bill my card again.
I put in the ticket to cancel the VPS's on 1/13, and 48 hours later I get an email stating since I haven't updated it in 48 hours, the ticket has been closed. I go and reply to it, reopening it, and again, get no reply for 48 hours. Bottom line, they have still not replied to my cancellation ticket that I entered on 1/13. Then, I get a bill, I reply to the email (which creates a billing ticket), stating I canceled my VPS, not to charge me. Same thing, the ticket is never answered and is closed after 46 hours.
I don't like to bad mouth companies, but people looking for a VPS provider should know that the support from Zone.net has become horrible. Not only can it take hours (7 on my last "SITE DOWN" critical support ticket), but the quality of the support is also now greatly lacking.
At this time, after 11 days, I can't even get them to acknowledge my support ticket about wanting to cancel both VPS's that I have with them.
I cannot recommend this company to anyone looking for a VPS provider.
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Aug 6, 2008
First of all, before I comment on Zone.net's support, I want to say that their servers are top-notch, fast, and extremely reliable. I have absolutely no issues with Zone.net's servers, but I am a little disappointed with their support.
On their website they tote "superior 24x7 support and service" but I can't say that I've experienced "superior" support. It may have just been a fluke with the three times I've had to use their support in the past month that I've had a VPS with them, but I certainly was not impressed with their support and service.
Let me start from the beginning.
I was doing some research for a new VPS that I needed and I read tons of reviews and recommendations and found that Zone.net came highly recommended. I checked out their website and found out that they offered fully-managed VPS options and the price and specs seemed right. So at 18:28 Pacific time on July 8, I placed my order.
Now, I know that it can take a while to provision a VPS. This was not my first VPS, but all of my providers, current and past, provisioned my VPS anywhere from 4-8 hours. I was not ordering a custom VPS, I ordered the VM100 that was offered on their site and I ordered it as is.
In their knowledgebase they state how long it should take to set up a VPS account with them.
I'm quoting here:
Once an order is verified through our billing department with the billing agent, we are able to process and activate your order in under 30 minutes. The verification process can be instant, or take up to 24 hours depending on various factors.
When I hadn't heard anything after waiting about 4 hours or so (I honestly can't remember the time when I contacted live support), I contacted support via their live support. The agent was very pleasant and said that it could take up to 24 hours and that if I had placed my order in the morning, it would have been done now.
So I waited until 23 1/2 hours and I submitted a ticket at 18:01 on July 9th requesting an update as to my order. I also asked if there was a problem with verifying me for fraud purposes and if I could offer anything to speed this along, to let me know. I didn't hear anything back on the ticket.
I later that evening placed a call to their support line. The agent again was very pleasant and said that he couldn't access anything from sales but that he would give a message to Jeffrey and he would call me first thing the next day.
I didn't receive a phone call .......
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Apr 7, 2008
for our DNSs, should I add A record or NS record for my domain?
for exmaple I have ns1.mydomain.com now should I add A record or NS record for NS1 in mydomain.com DNS zone?
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Jul 14, 2007
I came in here a couple days back looking for a reliable, powerful, and well priced VPS. I went through a couple companies and one of the first that I really seriously considered was Zone.net.
It's really all about first impressions and zone.net wins this. Their site looks great and definitely made a good impression on me. I had some questions about hosting a Debian VPS; they answered them quickly and completely. Their support is first-class and very personable. I waited on hold for less than a minute, and was instantly directed to a very knowledgeable agent.
After setting up my VPS, I can tell you that my sites get some good traffic and zone.net is handling it all great. Their bandwidth is fast, their servers are first class, and they're definitely the kind of host everybody should have.
I've been through many other hosts in search of a decent VPS and I definitely will be staying with zone.net for a while. I'm not affiliated at all with them, just a very satisfied customer. If you're thinking of opening something with them and would like an honest, third party opinion, don't hesitate to PM me.
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Apr 18, 2007
My VPS is down at Zone.net!
My VPS is down at Zone.net and its been more than 12 hours, it is down. I submitted a ticket more then 7 hours ago, but no reply whats so ever from them.
I called on their number, but it goes to voicemail. Any one facing the same issue with them?
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Nov 4, 2007
I just wanted to take a minute to express how happy I am with my new VPS from Zone.net.
There was a minor delay getting my VPS set up and they were upfront and gave me a good credit for it. This is rare in this day and age and I felt I should share how well they communicated.
So far the VPS is screaming and hosting my 3 sites without breaking a sweat.
Ill post a week or month report as I get time. This site helped me find Zone.net, so some more good feedback can't hurt. :-)
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Aug 17, 2007
Before aweek i was looking from good company to take VPS so i saw here some poeple commend with zone.net. so i take VPS from them they are not to bad they have excellent dealers but the support slow if you issue ticket its will take hours to answer you.
so i will write my problem to (web hosting talk members) maybe they will help me one it
my web some times normal for me i can inter it but some visters can't inter the web
& some times i can't inter the web but some visiters can inter & if am used the PHproxy i can inter.
the masseges that come to the web
(The requested item could not be loaded by the proxy.
Proxy server is unable to locate the server: tdwl-academy.com. The server does not have a DNS entry. Check the server name in the Location (URL) and try again.)
(network error (dns_sever_failure)
&
(The page cannot be displayed)
they told me there is nothing wronge on DNS
really i will be crazy from my web
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Mar 30, 2009
what happaned if we set TTL 300 in ZONE...
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Feb 10, 2009
I have multiple valleywag friends who have gone with Zone.NET for server hosting. I decided to do the same a few weeks back and use them as well. I never got my IP and server info and called customer support. No kidding... been 9 days and Level 1 support kees saying someone will get back to me.
So today I call them and ask them if they are going out of biz because customer support is impossible bad, and he basically said yes!!! Wish they would have told me that upfront.
Anyway, wasted a few weeks with them. Now my cohorts and I are on the lookout for some new hosting companies. All recs welcome
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Aug 26, 2008
I'm trying to setup an option on my server. I hope one of you can help me out a tad...
I'm trying to configure my server to allow an option that I usually call wildcard DNS. I need any domain that's pointed to a server to go to a parked page (just like a welcome to <domain> it's coming soon). I can do the parked page, just need to figure out the DNS/Apache settings.
I know it can't be too hard but I just can't find it...
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Nov 9, 2008
It has come the time to find out who REALLY IS Zone.net
This is the moment where zone.net is experiencing their worst situation ever. We are all offline since friday, we are all extremely nervous and some of us are even losing clients because of the prolonged downtime. Many of us have sent awful emails to zone.net and there are thousands of complaints arriving continuously to zone.net.
I'm amazed to see how zone.net is behaving in front of this awful & critical situation.
Believe it or not, they are politely answering the emails, they opened a special page where they update everything that's going on so that we all know what's happening and what they are doing, they have a lot of engineers working continuously to solve the situation as soon as possible and they really are devoted to end this nightmare. So this is NOT only our problem -as their customers-, but their problem as well and therefore, we are all together on this and as such we should help each other instead of screaming at them.
Zone.net is showing with facts and with their behaviour that they are a SERIOUS AND VERY DECENT AND PROFESSIONAL company who deserves our support & help because it is nowadays extremely difficult to find decent and professional people like the one at zone.net. The fact that there's a problem today doesn't mean more than what it really is, and that problem we are suffering now has taught us that zone.net is one of the best companies we can possibly find. I'm pretty sure & confident this great people will satisfactorily solve the situation in a short while.
You actually know a company when that company is in trouble. Otherwise they are all great....
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Mar 11, 2008
to edit a DNS Zone (via WHM=> DNS Zone Edit) of a domain hosted on my server & which NS's are routed to.
New setting should route domain to a seperate server (i.e HTTP, FTP) and leave EMAIL on my server.
I've changed all settings, except MX & mail CNAME, to the new IP (This includes NS's, A's, CNAME's - WWW & ftp). Still the WWW is not working and email has stopped working localy.
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Jun 20, 2007
Anyone out here using zone.net for VPS hosting?
I'm considering their VM200 fully managed package. Via current special it's a little over $50/month. 1024 MB SLM (Guaranteed), 30 gig disk, 300gig transfer. 6 ips. This includes cpanel or plesk. I also like the fact that they offer incremental upgrades.
Sounds good, but being a newbie, I just don't know. I really want a reliable host with good support. I don't see too many reviews on them here... is that good or bad?
I'm also considering Liquidweb.
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