Pair Networks: 2+ Years Review
Jul 17, 2008
I’ve found pair Networks via this forum and have been its customer for more than 2 years now, which gave me quite a good insight in this company. So here some thoughts about pair Networks.
Some background
Pair operates its own Data Center with over 1.500 servers, hosting more than 190.000 sites. If you are concerned about the server saturation, these numbers are speaking for themselves pretty much. Among the customers are such high-profile sites as Barack Obama, The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code), Tom's Hardware etc. Quite impressive and it actually says a lot about the host’s structural reliability.
Stability
It’s a truly business class host with an amazing stability. The server load is always nice below 1. During more than 2 years the site I’m hosting there was down for two times: once due to the massive ddos, and the second time due to the planned server maintenance.
Technical support
I’ve got phone and e-mail support on my plan (webmaster). The standard support response time is reasonably soon. The so called ‘urgent’ support reacts literally immediately. The nice thing with Pair is that you actually don’t need any support, because all services are up and running at all time.
Control Panel
Pair is using a custom CP. It’s transparent and as useful as a CP could be. I can’t remember a situation when I was missing some feature in this panel.
Price
Pair is not cheap, but it’s not overpriced either. From my point of view, they were able to find a really well balanced price for the level of services they’re offering. If you’re a hobbyist using your site for fun (and therefore the stability and uptime is not really an issue), you can find tons of cheaper hosts. If you’re hosting any critical site, where the stability, speed and uptime do matter, you’d better pay a few bucks more: servers are not oversaturated and overloaded, no kids experimenting with 'custom' scripts, best hardware, best manpower etc. I’d like not to be involved in over- and underselling discussion, Pair has earned its stripes based on this business model.
Speed
Download speed (from Belgium) is as good as it gets from any US-based industrial-grade site through our broadband line: approximately 400 KB/s. Downloads from Apple, Adobe etc. sites have exactly the same speed.
These all were PRO’S, where are the CON’S?
In more than 2 years I haven’t noticed any serious, structural shortcoming. And I don’t like to make it up just for the sake of false objectivity. Pair Networks is by far the best host I’ve ever had.
Site for verifying purposes: [url]
View 14 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Oct 4, 2009
I'm at Pair.com since 2000.
I started a website in HTML, then by different CMS (SPIP, Joomla), and now I use several PHP shopping carts scripts (Virtuemart, CS-Cart). Currently I have 10 sites.
I NEVER had a hacking attempt in 9 years. None security concerns. No downtime more than 20 minutes. Cumulated over the last 9 years, all downtime are less than 4 hours.
You can check by yourself any downtime of any Pair.com server, because Pair.com downtime archives are easy to check, on-line and updated in real time:
[url]
My only concern is spam. When one of my email address catch too much of spam, I just need to close and open up a new address to defeat it (sorry, it's the easy way to fight with spam, but I'm not enough smart to setup SpamAssassin).
The speed of my shopping carts is great (I'm on a shared server).
That's why I stay at Pair.com: (for me) There's nothing better!
View 14 Replies
View Related
Oct 9, 2009
I decided to post a short review regarding PowerVPS. I've been with them for almost 4 years, and it's been great.
After terrible experiences with some reseller accounts, I decided to get my own VPS.
Truth be told they were a bit pricey when I signed up but I decided to try and see if their support was as great as everyone was saying, and at that point I reached the conclusion that peace of mind and tranquility are more important to me.
I must say they are great and it was the right choice. Very fast and knowledgeable support, always taking care of everything, answering requests that sometimes were related to third party scripts or settings. Overall it was an amazing experience and I would recommend them in a heartbeat. In almost 4 years I can recall just one major downtime and that's because it happened recently otherwise I'd have to start searching the closed ticket logs to refresh my memory regarding the last time I had any problems.
I have really been blessed with a great and stable VPS provider, and for that I thank everyone here who have shared their experiences regarding PowerVPS.
I decided to post this review now, because soon I might be moving my VPS somewhere else and decided that before I go maybe others will find this review useful (like I found other reviews in the past). The only problem now is that I'm paying $84.50 for a VPS which comes with Fedora Core 2 (which is pretty much outdated), 20GB of disk space and 768 MB RAM. Right now, this is lot over the average price of other really good providers like ServInt, KnownHost, WiredTree. Taking into account the current economic situation and the fact that I don't make any money from the VPS, I cannot afford them anymore.
However a really big thumbs up for PowerVPS and for the quality of their hosting and their support.
The site I currently host with them: [url]
View 14 Replies
View Related
Apr 3, 2009
well I have been with imountain now since 11/01/07 and they still are by far the best hosting company I have ever been with.
I started on a simple clustered shared plan, moved to their clustered semi-dedicated plan and now am on my own dedicated server (opteron 246 with 4GB of RAM). my server runs a wordpress blog that last wednesday night had 868 concurrent connections and ran as smooth as if there were only 10 concurrent connections. WP-Cache, xCache and memcache (huge server) are utilized as well as offloading images to steadyoffload.com
uptime
There were a couple of issues in the past but nothing major for me. The MYSQL outage didn't affect me as I wasn't on the house database server cluster that went down. there are the occasional issues for a few minutes here and there but nothing major at all.
Hyperspin show my uptime 99.891% since January (there was a large DDOS attack in there).
I can live with that considering I have failover in that if the imountain server goes offline a splash page from another hosting account(In UK) shows up within 3 minutes stating the server is offline and will be back up soon. When imountain comes back online within 3 minutes the splash page is gone and my blog shows again.
support
This is imountain's strongest aspect IMO. Their support is very knowledgeable, fast and even will help with 3rd party scripts. The have helped me setup a couple of custom things, always answer my questions with personal responses, not canned messages and always get issues solved.
They also have phone support which I have used once just to ask them about an issue real quick. For me email support is better.
price
I can't go into this topic much for certain reasons but their prices IMO are competitive.
con's
HSPERE control panel which takes some getting used to. I have it mastered now but when I first signed up I was lost as hell.
what i would like to see
I would love to see a customer forum. At one point they said they were going to install one but at this point nothing has come of it.
If they don't want to do a forum, I would like to see more updates on their blog when issues arise.
Still would like to see support sign the names to support tickets so I know who is who. if the support ticket does have a name it is always imountain.com not the techs name.
View 7 Replies
View Related
May 1, 2009
I write this review somewhat sadly as it marks the end of a hosting experiment. It started off as a hosting experiment in which I wrote my own control panel and used mpm-itk, but unfortunatly it just wasn't that popular, cPanel is the "Windows" of the hosting world now, its very hard to get people to try something else, this combined with the exchange rate have forced me to move closer to home.
I posted a previous review about CoreNetworks some time ago (i think it may be lost now due to the DB issues at WHT), but to recap i signed up for there $24.99 server. I was intially pretty dubious due to the price, but i have been happily proved wrong! Really since my last review not much has changed, server uptime has been excellent, i've not suffered from hardware or network issues. A few months ago a 0-day roundcube exploit infected my server and started to perform a DOS and using alot of bandwidth, they dealt with the issue very professionally, shutting down the network connection to the server and giving me the oppertunity to fix the problem.
If you are after a cheap and trouble free, and i cannot stress this enough completely unmanaged server, i would strongly recommend CoreNetworks enough.
I only have one DNS record left linking to the server (katie.hostby.net)
View 0 Replies
View Related
Jan 6, 2009
Not really full five years. I signed up for essential VPS plan in March 2004 (so for few months it will be full five years).
My VPS is fully managed and support is great. It is real 24/7 and response time is always about 5-15 minutes, and almost always with problem solved (there is no annoying replies like; need more information's, please let us what you want or something like that) They always fix the problems and they always know how to fix things.
It was some big failure with hardware (I can not remember date) but they deal carefully with that, move all of us to different machines, clients was well informed, and generally there was not any long downtime (as far as I can remember)
Network are great. They have direct link with Deutsche telecom which means very good connection for Europe.
Few times I request backup for accidentally deleted files, and they recovery them fast.
Only critic for billing. One month (I can remember when) they charge me for extra bandwidth. It was caused by some attackers on server I do not know, as none of my domains cause that (It was some bandwidth leak other than http, ftp or mail, that I am not familiar with). Normally I can not spend even 10-15 % of total bandwidth , but that particular month it was 300%, so they charge me for all. I do not know if it is my fault or not, but maybe they should protect server better or whatever.
Other than that I have never had any problems.
I recommend them to anyone as they are really ''peace in mind'' company.
For the time being I will keep to use Servint services. I hope I will not forget to come back here again after five years with 10-years review.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Feb 26, 2009
I was a member of hivelocity for about a year and 4 months. I really like this company.
They have very fast support even if you don't buy the golden ticket for support for dummies like most websites want you to buy for help with your server which is called managed servers.
I went with an unmanaged server because i knew my way around the linux system. Any type of trouble i had all i had to do was go to live support and ask a question and they would right away check on the problem and fix it. I even remember sitting in the chat support for a few hours while they discussed things that were wrong and how i make my server more secure. They also even upgraded a few things for free for me that i didn't have the time to do myself. I also liked the ability of being able to go unmetered for bandwidth for a little bit more money instead of hundreds of dollars more.
Although if you know very little about linux or servers in general i would suggest the managed package.
But i would recommend them to people who are looking for a great company who doesn't lack the support a lot of websites out there tend to have with cheaper prices.
I have had servers from other websites such as managed which worked out for a while but their support was very bad and since years ago they have moved up higher in prices which lead me to find other web hosts to fit my needs.
Now before you jump to any conclusions the only reason i left hivelocity is due to i quit my job and needed to put my money elsewhere for a while.
They even let me go a month past due just so i could save my files which i really owe them one for that.
1-10 being 1 the lowest in the following catagories.
Support - 10
Server - 10
Price - 8
Company - 10
uptime - 10
View 7 Replies
View Related
Sep 20, 2009
I am so overwhelmed by the quality of hosting provided by Medialayer, that I decided to review them after being almost 2 years on their servers. My "bread and butter" website is hosted on their server and all I experienced in these 2 years was sheer quality, stability and prompt customer support (very rarely required).
It is a saying that you get what you pay for, and it shows. Medialayer is not one of those hosts with "unlimited everything" plans for $3 a month. I am on their starter shared plan which is $9.95 a month with 500 mb of space and 10Gb bandwidth. Some may find that costly, but believe me, it is worth every cent.
Uptime: Excellent. I have never seen my website down or someone complaining about it. No downtime experienced whatsoever till now.
Speed: Rocket fast. Scripts execute rocket fast too.
Ease of use: Excellent. They provide direct admin (instead of cpanel) and never faced any problem with that either.
Customer support: Blink of an eye, round the clock. I am from the opposite part of the world (GMT +5.5) and at 11 AM my time, I get instant response to a support ticket if opened. Secondly, they go above and beyond, - I had a problem with one of my php scripts and these guys studied the script and pointed out the flaw (which might have been harmful) if not rectified.
I will be more than happy to let anyone know my website, mods please let me know how do I prove the authenticity of the review, with my website. These guys deserve a lot more than just a review.
Conclusion: The best host so far I have got. In these aspect I must tell you, I have 3 more hosting service providers, Medialayer smokes them apart. And my personal thanks to Gurpreet Virdi via this forum for running such a tight ship consistently. I believe, the success of a website business depends on the hosting heavily, so Medialayer folks - it has been my pleasure to stay with you all these time and thank you for everything.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Apr 26, 2009
I signed up for service with TMS in August of 2005.
Signup - When I intially signed up I decided to pay with Credit Card I was then asked
"In order to complete processing of this order, we will need Credit Card
verification done via Fax. We will need a copy of the credit card, a copy
of a picture ID and a printout of the e-mail below with your signature faxed
to us at XXX-XXX-XXXX."
or I could have the option of using paypal... I wanted the server fairly quick so I decided to go with paypal. (This may be a problem for some people but I was given the option and if I had no other choice I most likely would have sent them what they requested).
I paid via paypal in the morning and the server was setup @ 2:17 PM.
I had absolutely no problems with this server and had no tickets until October
when TMS opened a ticket to let me know I only had 100 gigs remaining of bandwidth and by their estimates I would go over for that month. I was asked if I would like to prepay for bandwidth or I could have server port shut off once bandwidth is reached... I decided to prepay. (TMS is the first server provider who has actually gave me a warning before I went over... I was amazed)
In September I ordered another server from TMS to do some testing on server was setup within hours and I had no problems once again.
In January I added another server to my account. Once again setup was fast and I had no problems. 1 year later I cancelled this server (mainly because I could not justify the cost and it usually just sat around doing nothing)
April 2007 is when TMS Moved from The Planet to Colo4Dallas. I was in my opinion given short notice to schedule my server move but once again I really did not have a problem as the servers are just for fun projects I am working on. Move went smoothly and servers came back online faster than I expected.
Every server at TMS is on 100mbps port, I am always able to burst to the full 100mbps - which is something I have never been able to achieve anywhere else I have been.
In the almost 4 years I have been with TMS I have only had 21 Tickets on my account and only 1 of those has been because of a problem with TMS (A server was acting weird so they replaced it for me completly), Tickets are always answered within minutes reboots are fast and quick. (I usually request reboot even tho Every server comes with remote reboot port)
I do have one negative but it is an industry standard and not limited to TMS.
I saw some offers on WebHostingTalk for new TMS Servers. I had asked if I could be upgraded to one of these new servers... Unfortunetly I was told I could not, however I could upgrade at the normal price which was $40.00 more than the Advertised price... I did upgrade one of my remaining servers but the other I decided not to. I just felt being a customer for so long I should have already paid off the hardware and upgrading should not have been a problem at promotional pricing. HOWEVER I do understand this is an industry standard and every host that I have used has this same policy.
Overall I would give TMS a 10/10 I love TMS and would recommend them to anybody! Price is good / Service is Amazing / Staff are friendly
I however am always on the lookout for new hosts and I will most likely being cancelling my second server to find a provider with a more competitive price(TMS New Customer pricing is awesome). (I moved my third server to FDC and have been very happy).
My review is mostly how I "feel" about the company, if you have anymore specific questions feel free to post them.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Aug 31, 2008
I want to share my positive review of The Planet service.
I have been using servers at The Planet for almost 3 years since the time YourHost posting weekly deals on WHT.
If you're an old member here, you would remember how people waited for the new weekly special (especially the Christmas one).
In general, i'm satisfied with their service, very stable network, fast support, competitive offers from time to time.
I really like The Planet "Escalation Procedures", which i request phone call for any issues affecting server uptime.
I received a few phone calls when doing hardware upgrade, monitoring system notify server down ...
They don't just send an alert email but they call me to notify server down.
Support response time is usually 15-30 minutes.
There was a period that it takes a few hours to get a reply, i think during the merging of EV1, but it was improved shortly after that.
Hardware quality: I never experience any issues with hardware, the oldest server is 3 years old and running well.
My Rating:
Network: 9 (there is no 10)
Support: 8.5 (some room for improvement but still the highest ranking among other providers i use, LT, SL, DN ...)
Hardware: 9
View 13 Replies
View Related
Dec 19, 2008
I got a VPS with smokyhosts in summer of 2007, and now is as good a time as any to write a review here on WHT (where I found them in the first place).
Quite honestly, the reason I went with them initially was that they were the only ones meeting my requirements (price!) at the time - with their discount offer.Support
My VPS was setup fairly quickly. I made the payment during the night and had the access details when I checked again in the morning, can't say exactly how many hours but surely fewer than five.
In all, I've called upon their support three times -DNS settings in resolv.conf got cleared (and I obviously didn't know what they were before) - they responded with the nameserver IPs, which I then put in myself.
VZPP backups not working due to some reverse DNS issue - Fixed overnight.
My IP range blacklisted at outblaze (I contacted Outblaze, who obliged by whitelisting my IP) - I also contacted smokyhosts support, so that they'd be able to identify which one of their clients caused this. Not sure of the action taken one this.
I always was ready for the "unmanaged" service I had purchased - so I always asked for support I "deserved" and not what I thought "would have been cool to have".
eg., instead of "I'm unable to send emails" I first found the root cause myself and then did a "my NS settings are messed up - please re-send details" instead.
All in all, although I never really taxed their support with anything large (which in itself might be considered a good thing), I always got satisfaction when I did.Uptime
I have been with two other VPS providers before this and I have to say the uptime here has been the best.
There hasn't been an instance when I wasn't able to reach my site (or someone else reported having problems) when I wasn't aware of the issue beforehand. I was always notified in advance.
I'm not having site monitoring/tracking so no numbers, unfortunately.
Total of three known downtimes. The longest one being due to data center outage.
But if it's any good - my VPS's uptime as of writing this is 154+ days and even the last restart was of my doing.Speed
On my VPS I'm only running three low-to-medium traffic sites for my friends - one SMF forum and two wordpress blogs. That includes HTTP/SQL/MAIL/POP/IMAP/FTP ... the works).
Mainly command line administration assisted by an extremely light control panel (ISPCP - for my friends to manage their own sites).
Each of my friends is happier now with the speed/stability than with previous VPS providers (slower speeds) or shared hosting providers (messed up/badly configured/unstable hosting environments).
Server load as of writing this, with 6 users online on the SMF forum - 0.07 0.06 0.03.
The only times I've seen load figures close to 1 are during the nightly backups that ISPCP does (gzip).
Data transfers are slower than you'd expect with a 10 mbit connection, but still good enough. Various site speed test tools report that my SMF forum loads in about twice the time WHT does.Overall
My hosting requirements are pretty simple (and easily met, imo) - a plain-vanilla, no-frills, unmanaged, low-medium config VPS with an excellent uptime. Constant/recurring nagging issues, no matter how trivial, are a total turn-off - I like my environment to be stable.
So far smokyhosts has met these requirements pretty well.
I understand I'm supposed to report my own post and submit one of the domains hosted ?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Aug 7, 2008
I signed up with tronictech.com on 2004/04/22 after seeing them on WHT offers section.
It has been 4 years and about 4 months now.
It is unsupported hosting. I don't need support as long as the server and services are up, so it was a good deal for me.
Speed has always been satisfactory. I had no problems about it. Both download/upload speeds and script execution has always been fast enough.
Network and uptime: I have noticed a few downtimes (i am talking about 4 years) but they didn't last long.
Support : Surprised? Yeah, i had opened a few support tickets about WHM / Cpanel or payment issues. The few problems were after a server move,caused by Cpanel/WHM and the way i had played with NS records. David replied them quickly and with an exact solution. Support was very fast and helpful considering it was unsupported hosting.
I'm not a reseller but i have an account with reseller capabilities , i host 6 projects of my friends and i host my 3 domains with them. Neither me nor my friends who are using this service ever complained about the service.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Sep 14, 2007
The Beginning
I moved over to Power VPS after having been on shared hosting at my first provider for 4 years. Basically, they were overcharging me like crazy. Then I had a very brief false start with a big name hosting company. They didn't answer my very first ticket "My SSI includes are not working" for 2 days. By that time I had already been spooked and signed up with PowerVPS.
I got a 256 mb "Managed" VPS with CPanel plus a few extra IPs; and the signup process was painless. With one or 2 exceptions everything seemed okay. I heard a few comments about my sites being slow, but no other problems.
The Middle
Things went well for the first year or more. Tickets were answered promptly, and because I was serving just my own sites (not reselling), I encountered very few problems. One that did arise and perhaps should have been a signal of what was to come. I honestly can't remember the issue, but when support told me that if I wanted such-and-such to work I should log in as root and modify some obscure (to me) *.ini file. I didn't want a dummy like me poking around in the nether regions of my server. After voicing my concerns, a tech went ahead and edited the file.
As time went on I noticed that more and more I had to explain my problem issues more than once. It appears that when an email ticket is escalated, the details from the previous email do not go along for the ride. I occasionally had to explain and/or clarify the problem a number of times. In fairness, some of the problems may have arisen from my non-tech descriptions .. but! .. what should PowerVPS expect from folks who rent a "Managed" VPS?
The End
I had a problem with my site email not working, so I submitted a ticket. The answer I got back was from a tech informing me that email was working no .. and had tested it. The problem was he had turned on and tested "Squirrel Mail".
Getting the regular email working took several more tickets with occasional shards of information/advice coming from different techs. There was no 1 definitive answer.
On 2 occasions, someone changed the password on my WHM.
A couple of months back I got an email telling me that PowerVPS would be doing a kernel upgrade on the server. (I honestly believe that, at that time, management already knew about the <iframe problem with a number of servers). Okay, so we were down for an hour .. fair enough.
Then I noticed some malicious (iframe) code in on a page. I alerted support. They told me the entire server was infected and would have to be rebuilt. According the the info I got, Fedora 2 had a vulnerability.
Now begins the insanity.
Removing all that malicious code from all my sites (and Apache man pages), ten uploading again took more than 8 hours. Rebuilding the server took almost 7 hours. I was glued to the forum reading, "We're working on it," messages until I couldn't stay awake any longer. Next morning I woke up to find all my sites still off line. A support ticket informed me that all was well with my server .. and had been for 8 hours.
"No it ain't!" It turns out that an Apache module had been installed wrong.
Come on folks .. check your work!
Then I started reading about more servers on PowerVPS being infected ans asked support what was going on. They still had the infection.
They had rebuilt the servers with Fedora 2 yet again!
A long frustrating email to management resulted in an admission that my server had been rebuilt wrong. The only recourse I had was to backup my files (not a CPanel backup), let them rebuild the server, then reload everything .. including setting up and loading a number of mySQL databases.
So about that ime PowerVPS had a sale going. The only way existing customers could benefit from more ram, more space, more bandwidth was to upgrade to a bigger new server.
So I asked about upgrading but to a DirectAdmin Control Panel and they said fine .. but I either had to backup and upload, or pay for 1 months backup space. They pointed me to a script that "might" work for a CPanel to DA restore.
C'mon guys .. I've been here 2 years, had all sorts of problems that were your fault .. twice .. and you want me to pay for what most hosts would do for free?
"Our 10GB of ftp backup space runs $7.99 per month."
Summary
PowerVPS was a good company when I started with them. They offered good services and seemed to be good folks. IMO, somewhere along the way, they seemed to have lost or changed their focus from "good service" to "strictly bu$ine$$". I have moved to another provider. Would I ever consider going back to them? I don't think so.
... the end
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jun 8, 2008
i am a customer of jetnethost for 2 years hosting dedicated servers from them.
the first thing in mind of reviewing them is that they provide excellent support. Some hosters such as dreamhost or etc, require a 24 hour response cycle. Jetnethost has an instant response cycle. Not only do they do some instantaneous response thing, but they also fix the problem instantly. One time, i accidentally clicked "block all incoming connections" on my windows dedicated and locked myself out from windows remote , and i asked for support. Byran, the guy from jetnethost, personally opened a KVM within 15 minutes and i got my server back functional.
prices
of all the servers i have seen from various companies, from karyhosting and hostgator or such and such, i have never seen competitive prices before. Because i am a long term customer, byran gave me discounts and discounts, and i currently got a great deal. i have a Xeon 3.0GHZ with 4 cpus for such a great price.
actual hosting
some sites such as dreamhost offer you 2.2tera bytes of transfer for 9 bucks. that's not true at all. because once you reach 500kb/s of download speed from your users, your whole site lags and slows down, this is because dreamhost oversells. but in jetnethost, they don't oversell. i get premium bandwidth, and whenver my site gets overdue for bandwidth, byran kindly increases some so that my site is functional. He cares about individuals, and not just money. I currently pay some worth of money for 500gb's of premium bandwidth, but i'm sure he will kindly raise it to 800gb if i max out before the month is over because he is such a great guy.
reliability
because they do'nt resell, they have great response times. as well as that, their servers never lag, i am put on tier 3 bandwidth as he speaks, and i get ultra low latency even if i'm far away about 13000 miles. i'm not sure how he makes money ,but it's awsome. i get twice the value of my money when i host here. Before, i hosted for server4sale, where they resold servers from burstnet, and they lagged decently. in jetnethost. byran owns the servers himself and colocated them in datacenters, that is why you never receive lag.
so if your interested with jetnethost, i suggest you speaking with support because they will glady provide you instant stuff such as quotes and etc. jetnethost is great!
View 7 Replies
View Related
Sep 9, 2008
How did A Small Orange get the name? Years ago Tim Dorr, owner/operator, used it as his AYM screen name. There's a great interview with him from 2005 here. Even have a look around if you want.
"A Small Orange" is an Atlanta based web hosting company with a great attitude. It began as my backup host for my web based voiceover site and now it is my main host. I first read about them on this forum where they came highly recommended. When I first joined they would only accept 25 new accounts a night to ensure the best customer experience.
It took me two nights to get mine and I'm still there. Don't worry, they haven't done that in years and you can sign up any time.
The first thing I check when selecting a new host are their forums. A Small Orange (ASO) has a very active one that has "support" members who post, and even Tim himself. "Pre-sales Questions" is a popular area.
Not that this takes the place of a superb tech support who won't quit until the problem is solved. I've found them to be very patient with folks who may not be the most tech savvy. That would be me. There is a thorough Knowledge base online as well as an ASO Wiki written by staff and customers. Plus, step by step demonstrations of CPanel functions. The only issue I've ever had happened a couple of weeks ago. I had a problem with a disappearing sub domain. It was a CPanel code problem. Tech support was nothing short of amazing.
Their plans are very reasonable. All have the same features. Even their "Tiny plan" with 75 MB of space and 3GB Bandwidth at $25 a year has all the features of their most expensive "Super plan" with 4500MB of space and 100GB Bandwidth. Turn any account (except Tiny) into a Reseller account for $5 more a month. You can easily upgrade or downgrade as needed. Plus there's ASO Extreme which is just for file sharing. No scripts, e-mail or Cpanel. But, you get 1500MB of space and 100GB Bandwidth for $20 a month.
As far as up time, I don't think my site has ever been down for longer than a few minutes. The time I caught it they were doing some server maintenance. I'm always on my site since one of my web pages is my browser start page. I've hosted two sites with them, one for me and one for a local band. They were on different servers and both had the same great performance and reliability. ASO's business concept is to not overload shared servers. Period. I can go online any time and check my hosts status from a web site and CPanel. If there's any problem it's corrected quickly.
ASO offers CPanel and the latest updates and features. I like to check my stats often and use a lot of subdomains. Latest Visitors and AWStats helps me keep tabs of things. It has everything you'd expect from CPanel.
Believe me, I'm no expert. But, I do recognize a friendly attitude and willingness to help when I see it. The most important thing is that my web site up and online. If it didn't work well and consistently, I wouldn't be there. If that ever changes you can bet I'll be the first to leave. So far I am very impressed with A Small Orange.
View 11 Replies
View Related
Sep 23, 2009
I see it only gives me the option for monthly, quartly, semi-annually, and annually, what if i want the billing cycle to be 2 years and 3 years?
View 6 Replies
View Related
May 27, 2009
We started off with them early on with a webserver + DB server special a couple of years ago.
Even at that point, they had the best value for money offer in terms of dedicated boxes. Nothing has changed, thankfully
Today we host 6 boxes with webnx, all 6 boxes are required to power a single website, so we have the full gamut of servers from multiple db servers, webservers & load balancers. All of these boxes are well decked out in terms of configuration thanks to the great pricing Dan/Dario & their team offer.
In terms of service, it is tough to beat them. In terms of a personalized approach to service, it is next to impossible to beat them. Their advice is spot on, their abilities are phenomenal and their focus on consistently providing you with the best offers is something that very few companies can aspire to become.
Their networks are fast and over the last couple of years, there have been some blips - but most of them have been resolved rather fast. In terms of communication, they are succinct and accurate.
There have been two instances when I lost/changed my credit card and had to delay payments to them - but they have always stepped up and allowed me the flexibility to do so. The folks at WebNX understand people and businesses - it is wonderful to keep growing with them. I don't worry too much about scaling infrastructure anymore thanks to WebNX because I know they are going to be around to provide the best infrastructure you can buy at the most value for money price point.
They are also flexible - no cookie cutter approach to business or servers. They understand needs and advice accordingly and when are you are working with them you don't need to worry about if they are trying to sell you something extra without needing it.
It is one of the few businesses I have worked with which makes me feel good that I've been a customer with them for so long.
The kind of folks who help you grow without too much of a worry because you know they're great folks when it comes to their business.
A lot of folks on this forum mention that the sales reply speed could be used as a proxy for the company's support response times. IMO, it is the exact opposite for WebNX - sales queries to them get responded to rather late. But support queries are sorted out really fast. Three years of experience with them bears this out
WebNX does a lot of things that come well together and you will appreciate it once you've spent some time with them. For your growing business needs - they might be a great beat.
Wishlist:
1) Their reboot times are consistently fast - but I can't wait for the automated reboots. That would make our life a lot easier.
2) More locations
View 13 Replies
View Related
Aug 5, 2008
I've been with Blurstorm for 2+ years and I can say alot of good thing about the company and support. I even gave them a 5 out of 5 of webhostingjury and went as far as to say I would give them 10 out of 5, so you can imagine how happy I WAS with their service until this past week.
I has been an absolute hell. First the server kept blocking my ip and locking my session, when I would try and upload files with filezilla. They suggested to try a different ftp software which I did and it worked. At first I thought it was my computer/isp/router, so I tried it from my friend computer, same thing. And by the way, I never had this problem before. So I didn't make a big deal out of it, even though I prefer filezilla.
Now a couple of days ago, seems every time I would browse the pages or try and use the admin section the site would go down, or at least that's what I thought. After sending 8 hours going back and forth with support(Robert) through their support ticket system, because there is not live chat, Robert tells me there is nothing else they can do because they dont see any errors happening and I would have to pay a 3rd party monitoring service to find out what the problem is.
I mean I completely understand that if they cant find the problem but the site was working couple of days ago and I havent done anything different, so something must of happened on their end. Also I uploaded the site onto a friends server with a different hosting company and the site works perfectly with no problems.
Now being left high and dry with no help from Blurstorm, I did a couple of more test and found out that the site was not down but was blocking my ip and locking my sessions and the only way around it was for to renew my ip and to try again, but that would only help me for a couple of mins before it locked it again. Again, I also tried it from my friends computer and same thing. So I know for a Fact that it has to be from Blurstorm's end. I told that the server was blocking my ip and locking my session and haven't heard from them for over 16 hours, which is horrible customer service compared to the way they were before.
The main reason I stayed with blurstorm was for their support and quick response and I've referred them a boat load of business, and this was not the first time i've had problems with the server and support but I didnt make a big deal out of it and from now on no more referrals.
Well there is my review, sorry it's a little lengthy but just wanted to give an indepth review.
Second part - need suggestions for new hosting
From what I've gathers from searching that are reliable
precision effect
jaguarpc
innohosting
which would you recommend from those or any others?
And my site is based on joomla 1.5 + virtuemart so it should work with it.
View 15 Replies
View Related
Oct 8, 2009
Well it's been one month since I purchased my dedicated server from Limestone Networks, and i'd like to post my experiences with them, so here it goes.
About a month ago I stumbled upon Limestone networks, read a few reviews, and thought i'd go for it. The the next thing I did was start a live chat, a friendly chap by the name of Felipe responds. I have a nice long chat with Felipe, what a delight it was! Not only did he answer all of my questions promptly, but he certainly knew what he was talking about. Unlike my previous experiences with other companies.
After a nice long chat with Felipe, I was ready to get my server. So I went straight ahead and ordered.
Specifications:
Dual CPU Quad Core XEON 5504 (2.0ghz)
8GB DDR2 ECC registered RAM
2x500GB HDD in RAID1 (WD RE3, AWESOME HDD'S!)
4TB bandwith
100mbps up/down speeds
IPKVM included
All up cost me around $280 + ~$30 setup fee
Within about 2 hours I receive an email stating that there were some minor problems during setup because of the RAID configuration, and they will fix it as soon as possible. I must admit, it got me slightly worried, but a few minutes later, I receive another email saying that it's all setup and done! Boy was I excited!
I Instantly SSH'd into my server to check on things, all good. I install the XEN kernel and reboot to make sure it's working all fine, boots without any errors. So far so good.
A few days later I realised I was running out of IP Addresses, so I open a support ticket to ask for more, the invoice is created, I pay it then respond saying that I have done so. 6 minutes later they respond saying that it is being set up, and another 3 minutes later they respond with the IP addresses, sweet.
Later on I opened another support ticket asking a question referring to upgrades. Out of pure boredom I clicked the send receive button on my email, and sure enough, I already had a response! all within about 2 minutes after sending it.
Limestone's service has been great, I love their support and prompt response to tickets! One minor problem is that their accounting department isn't available during all hours, no biggie though. Their technical support department is open 24/7.
One great bonus with Limestone is that they keep you informed every step of the way, rather than leaving it to the last minute to say "sorry about the wait".
When i'm ready for my next server, i'll definitely be going for Limestone.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Apr 4, 2009
I ordered my server on March 6th, and asked for the server to be provisioned the 10th. I wanted to test some things out, and so I wanted the server earlier. I called up LSN and got to Carl. He was great and totally understood everything and provisioned our server in a matter of 1 hour 59 minutes!
Sadly, because I had told them we were going to need the server on the 10th, they thought they would have the RAM we needed. They compensated us by adding a better CPU(Q9400).
Then the RAM came in, I think 5 days later because of a shipping mistake where it didn't get on the truck I think(Not LSN's fault). The server went down, and they installed the RAM. The server wouldn't boot, so we had a few problems there. In the end it was just an oversight of the max amount of RAM that the MoBo could support. The downtime was a bit excessive in my opinion, and LSN compensated me.
I have had zero problems with them since that incident.
Right now, I am purchasing a 2nd server with LSN.
Support 9/10
Sales Staff 10/10
Accounting 10/10
View 14 Replies
View Related
Oct 1, 2009
6 months ago I signed up for their services, moving away from 1&1 shared hosting. So I spoke with Andrew about getting a server for the things I do. We worked a deal, which is probably too good to be true.
Im running on one of their Dell 1425s. I have servers here at the work (designing agency), so I know my way with servers etc etc. The performance of their network and support 10/10 I had no problems and although unmanaged, I was always able to get help and support.
They look like a new emerging host, but I recommend to give them a try. I've just picked up another server with them ($15 for my first month is quite a steal imo)
View 4 Replies
View Related
Aug 31, 2009
After stumbling upon limestone networks amazing offers, I decided to take advantage of their cheapest special for it was more than what I needed. For 135 dollars a month, I got this special:
[url]
With an 100mbps uplink connection. With this dedicated server, I planned on running game servers, and so far it has far exceeded my expectations.
Let's begin with the set up time:
Before leaving my old host, I found out that the location was doing no good for me. Players were not able to query my game server in the game's server list, so I decided to switch hosts. After finding limestone networks, as listed above I went straight ahead and bought the server at 4:00 AM EST time. After two hours of waiting, my dedicated server was set up with HPET enabled like I asked. I was amazed at how limestone was able to set up the dedicated server so fast and at such an early time!
The support:
The support is absolutely hands down AMAZING. Every support ticket I have made was answered (not over exaggerating here) within 4 minutes.
The control panel:
The control panel limestone has to offer that comes free with your dedicated server is so simple to use. (I believe they call it rockware.) There is an option to manage each one of your purchased servers, an option to restart your server, add new ips, change your uplink speed from 10mbps - 1000mbps (depending on what you have), the ticketing system, and much more.
Now the only problem I have came across which isn't all that huge, was that after redirecting all the traffic from my previous game servers to my new game servers hosted with lime stone, I had a problem installing the game files off Steam via hldsupdatetool.exe for Team Fortress 2. The install just froze. So I decided to contact limestone support. They decided to give it a shot, and it seemed that it froze for them too. However they did not give up, they kept trying and trying keeping me updated. (let me also remind most of you that team fortress 2 is a 3.2gb game so it takes atleast 20 mins+ to install all the necessary game files.) Finally after 2 hours, it worked. I was happy. The point here is that the support is probably their best feature aside from their prices and amazing specials. They just never give up and work to their potential in helping every customer. I would recommend limestone to anyone who is willing to try a new host.
Although I have been with them for about a week, they have so far never ceased to amaze me with their support, and quality they have to offer. I will keep everyone here updated on what limestone has to offer me and how well or bad they have been doing at the end of the month when I have to pay my next invoice.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Mar 2, 2008
Hey all. Its been a month and I thought I better post a short review of my experiences with LimeStone Networks.
Before signing up for my server, I spoke to Logan who answered a few of my questions regarding the setup of the server and the running of some of the software I wanted to install on the server.
I eventually ordered, with Logan's help, there Obsidien 1 plan which was a Athlon 64 X2 5000+ CPU, 1GB of RAM and 1500GB of Bandwidth for $99 a month. I had also chosen to have Virtuozzo installed, which was licensed and online very quickly. The total time I had to wait for the server was about 3 hours. In that time, I received an email from Mike, which told me he had given me a complimentary upgrade to the Intel Core2Duo E4500 CPU for better performance with my VPS software. This thrilled me to no end.
After asking for help a few times, despite the fact they are an unmanaged host, Logan kindly helped me fix a few problems on the server.
About halfway through the month, I began to realize that Virtuozzo was not exactly what I wanted and I asked them if it was possible to get it changed to a cPanel server. I can't remember who I spoke to about this, but the change was done very quickly and was re-deployed with cPanel ready and going well.
Then, at the end of the month, I found that the RAM installed on the server was just not enough, I then upgraded the RAM with the help of Ryan. The RAM upgrade took about 30 minutes to go through, and I only suffered about 3 minutes of downtime.
All in all, my first months experience with LimeStone Networks has been fantastic! Which is probably why you have seen me recommending them on a few threads. There service is amazing, which compliments there very reliable and kind Customer Service team. I could not ask for anything better.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Dec 23, 2008
well ordered a dedicated server from LSN about 4 days ago, and I still havent recieved the server so I thought I should make a review here for others to know.
4 days back I ordered their most expensive server and made a payment the same night, and I went through the verification process after about 24 hours. the same night that I uploaded the files needed to get my account verified I talked to ryan, and he said my account would be verified in max 2 hours but it ended up being 2 days! after taking 2 days to verify my account (yesterday) I talked to mike and he said my server will be ready in the next 2-5 hours, so i waited about 8 hours and I still didnt recieve any mail from them, so this time I talked to ryan and he said he is gona check and see why its taking so long, and after he checked he said my server should be ready in the next 4-5 hours, but now its been almost 10 hours since then and I havent recieved ANYTHING!
I understand if they were late by a day due to the fact that its christmas, but its been 4 days and all I hear from them is that my server is gona be ready in the next 4-5 hours!
generally their support crew is really friendly but they dont tell you the truth (atleast they havent told me the truth) and ticket responds take from 2 to 6 hours.
I would have given them a good rating if they were on time because they are friendly, their servers are good.
View 14 Replies
View Related
May 29, 2009
After hitting my head with few of the dedi providers, i came across Lime Stone Networks. I went to their site, selected the server I wanted with addons etc. I initiated live chat for sales query and instantly all was finalized.
I paid the amount and after 4-5 hours the server was ready and details were in my email. This is the most speedy server setup i had seen. Their RockWare control panel is very flexible and easy to use. Most of the things which have/are not provided by other dedi providers are in their control panel for easy access.
Basic stuff like remote reboots, dns management etc. is free and already included with your server. Their support is also very good, I opened a few tickets with them all were answered within 1-2 mins. Its been more than 10 days with them now and my all data is moved to the new server and everything is running fine and stable.
The only thing is that their sales rep was unable to given a discount of 0.99 cents! My order totalled to $200.99 and I asked sales rep to reduce the 0.99 to make it rounded but he did'nt. I know they won't built a palace and neither will I but what the heck if he could ?! Just would have pleased me.
Anyways overall the experience is great and support is good. There were also some abuses on the server by some of my clients and they were able to find them asap and informed me and gave ample time to resolve the issues.
I suggest that if you're also looking for a dedi then be sure to visit their site. I will post more review on this after few months.
View 10 Replies
View Related
Mar 30, 2009
I signed up with Enotch Networks a day before I lost my VPS with a different host (I was scammed by Level3Hosting basically) I chose Enotch for Two main reasons, One reason was they had been in the hosting business for a number of years and the second reason was the VPS met my criteria and was a very good deal. After an initial minor issue which was sorted very quickly the service has been fantastic and NO downtime at all. I have had the odd issue myself with things which were not their fault and they happily helped me sort these things and support is always helpful and fast. They are the type of host that appreciate you as a customer and will be loyal to you if you are to them. I thought I would never find an ideal VPS host for my needs but it seems like I have and I am happy to recommend them to anyone at all. If the level of service I receive now continues then
I will certainly be a long term customer for sure.
I will post another review after some months to update on this.
View 10 Replies
View Related
May 18, 2009
Just wanted to update everyone on my 6 months with Limestone Networks.
It's been nothing but joy.
Network 10/10
Network is rock solid, I run a couple of game servers, I have no lag even for people coming from Australia and having their ping at about 250-300.
I also run a few websites (1 of them has about 3500-4000 unique visitors daily with roughly 20k page views), the site loads extremely fast. We've been down once (some network hiccup, which I didn't feel cause I was sleeping).
Support 10/10
I've had to use support a few times and it's been always a pleasure. These guys went backwards to help me every time. One time I had my debit card (which I use for PayPal) compromised so I ordered a new one from my bank and also changed my bank account. I could not pay them on time (I had to wait for 5 days for my new card to arrive), LSN did not suspend my account, they went backwards to help me and prolonged my due date 5 days forward, which they didn't have to do but still went to understand my situation.
Hardware 10/10
I have 2 servers with them both Q9300. Those monsters are simple awesome. I never had even a single glitch with any of them. My servers are running for 4.5 months now without a single reboot (I had to reboot them a couple of times at the beginning due to software installation).
Satisfaction 11/10
There is nothing else to add as you probably get my feelings about LSN already. These guys run a very tight ship. Sometimes I get on their live chat when I needed support and Ryan and Mike were always helpful to me, they sped things up in the support department.
Great company, knowledgeable people, friendly and professional support, great network. What else do you need from a provider.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jun 7, 2008
Since all the talk lately about Virpus Networks here on the boards lately has been negative, I figured I would put a positive light on Virpus.
Price = 10/10
The price was one of the main things that drew me into Virpus. For $12.99 a month, I am getting 12 GB Disk Space, 300 GB of Bandwidth, 192MB Guaranteed RAM, 512 MB Burst RAM, and DirectAdmin. I would consider that a steal.
Uptime = 9.5/10
My VPS has rarely been down. If it has been, it is because of either:
a) the recent 1.5 hour downtime for the migration or b) something I did to screw up my own VPS.
Support = 9/10
Whenever I have a question for the Virpus staff, I usually get a response within the hour. However, for the past few weeks, it has taken a bit longer than that, sometimes up to two days. However, I believe that is because of the recent migration.
Overall = 9.8/10
I am pretty happy with the services from Virpus Networks. I would definitely recommend them to anyone who is looking for affordable, reliable VPS hosting.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jun 6, 2008
I'll try to make a long story short. I was in the market recently for a low-cost dedicated server. My requirements were fairly low in terms of server specifications and bandwidth. I just wanted a reliable server on an extremely stable network. (The latter requirement is usually the hard part.) I had browsed Sago's website about a year ago and recalled that they had reasonable prices and what seemed to be tolerable peering. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Sago had a rather nice list of peers, and Cogent was not one of them! (Queue the fireworks and popping corks.)
After a couple of conversations with Shawn from Sago, I was sold. He went above and beyond to find a solution for my needs. The order went through quickly and I had a nice, shiny.......... I get distracted by shiny things... new FreeBSD server ready to go.
I had a couple of issues of my own making early on, and Sago's support helped me promptly and effectively.
Unfortunately, I'm unable to convey long-term reassurance for anyone considering Sago, since I have only been a Sago customer for about 2 months, but so far I'm very impressed with their service, and I look forward to posting another positive review later down the road.
View 6 Replies
View Related
Sep 1, 2008
I felt the extreme and desperate need to post my experience with Limestone Networks here with the rest of you. Please take time to review it as I find it a vital piece of information when making a decision. I normally don't post my problems here, but this time it's needed.
I have been a customer since 5/17/2008. I was able to get someone via Live Chat when I fist went to the website. I got an instant response on the phone. It all seemed great. The server was up and online within a few hours, I was pleased. The network seemed fine and I'm fairly low maintenance, so I didn't have many complaints.
After having the account for a while, we started getting blacklisted on spam lists. I would submit tickets to see if they could work to get us removed. Typically support tickets where answered fairly slowly - I'd see a response time of a day or two. I didn't complain as I can accept things fairly well.
Next, they released a new server that was almost identical to the one I already had.
They both had the same amount of memory, similar cpus (both quad core), the only difference was one 750 GB drive vs RAID-1 750 GB drives. The price for my system was $249/month, while the new server was priced at like $130/m (the WHT special they just ran). I asked about a price adjustment for my server. They wouldn't do it. So, I asked if we could keep our IP addresses if we moved to another server. They couldn't do that either.
I ordered the new server and moved my customers over to it. It came time to cancel the old server, so I submitted my request for cancellation. I know they automatically bill everything, so I removed my credit cards that were on file to avoid this. I was then told I needed to give a 5 day cancellation notice as per my ToS when I signed up. Unfortunately, I didn't read the ToS close enough - my fault. Somehow they ended up removing the server and I guess they just waived the 5 day notice. I never really got any response on that (or bill for it either).
As of yesterday, I've had the new server for one month. I signed up for it on 7/30, so that'd make my next billing date 8/30. I did forget to add my credit cards back on so it could be auto charged again - my fault. However, less than 24 hours after my due date, I find my server is offline. I submitted a ticket which I will paste below. Bottom line, because I was late (not even by one day), they shut off and reformatted my server. Here's my support ticket:
---------------------------------------------------------
My server LSN-D1595 is offline due to non payment. I need it back online asap! I will add a payment option to the billing system which you can charge. Just get the server back online please. ***-***-**** if you need to reach me.
Ryan G. - Support Technician - Limestone Networks Employee
Posted: 08/31/2008 10:52 AM CDT
Hi Breck, Unfortunately your servers have been canceled for non-payment. If you wish to purchase new servers with us you can still go ahead and do so, however I am not able to return your original servers to you.
Breck B.
Posted: 08/31/2008 11:11 AM CDT
Ryan, this is completely unacceptable. I am not going to tolerate this! That server has valuble data on it that can't be recovered! I don't care what your policy is, I need that server back online immediately! If you can't make this right, I will be posting my experience on WHT. Bill me hourly if you need to. Just get it online.
Bryan P. - Support Technician - Limestone Networks Employee
Posted: 08/31/2008 01:19 PM CDT
I'm sorry, but server LSN-D1595 has already been reformatted.
Bryan P. - Support Technician - Limestone Networks Employee
Posted: 08/31/2008 02:17 PM CDT
Closed Ticket
---------------------------------------------------------
So, there we have it. My server has been reformatted because I'm a day late. I've never seen anything like this in my entire life. Money wasn't a problem - I was away and just wanted to have a good Labor Day weekend. Also, I NEVER received an invoice via email, snail mail, nor a phone call. I got no notice at all. Along with that, according to their ToS, my data should be available within 15 days of my non payment (whether or not the server is).
I do plan on taking this to court- I have several people who also had access to the server who are interested in a lawsuit.
If slow responses, being blacklisted on spam databases, and being reformatted if you are under 24 hours late is okay with you - I'd really recommend Limesone Networks! They give you a great feeling like nobody cares about you. I'm not sure why a company would invest so much money in advertising, if they really aren't serious about keeping the customers that they get. This has been the worst day of my life. I hope all of you can get something from this and learn to stay away from companies like Limestone. I definately have learned my lesson the hard way.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Mar 5, 2007
it was about 2 yrs back when I subscribed to WHT and diligently went through the webHosting threads to decide on a suitable webHost. My search ended with PAIR. I chose PAIR basically bcuz I wanted peace of mind which I wasnt sure that other cheaper webhosts cud provide after reading lukewarm reviews(-ve and +ve) about them. The only downside to PAIR was it was costly and I did a lot of spelunking online(for a week atleast) but found almost zero -ve reviews about PAIR.
i am not here to praise PAIR cuz its a solid company anyway.
The thing is I have a basic account with PAIR which doesnt have MySql/CGI....etc. I am planning to start a few blogs and install a CMS like Joomla. Obviously I will be needing databases and scripting. I can upgrade to an Advanced account with PAIR which has all the features I need. BUT that will cost me double the basic accnt.
So heres the dilemma-
Should I upgrade and stay with PAIR.
OR
Should I change to another cheaper Webhost
The deciding factor-
1) PEACE OF MIND- translates to A class service and support.
2) Somewhat ECONOMICAL
I was wondering whether Lunarpages will be a good idea.
forgot to add- my bandwidth(10GB +) and storage(1GB +) requirements aren't high.
View 14 Replies
View Related
