survey - your host

[Kaiser_Sose]

I am shopping for a host and a bb for a upcoming site so I was wondering where the users of Vb are hosting.

Please list your host and the good and bad.

As of know I am considering http://www.hyperhosting.com

[SonnetCelestial]

Out of a ranking of 10

(free) prohosting - 8
(free) virtualave - 8
(free) fortunecity - 7 -no cgi or php

HalfPriceHosting - 5 (bad service only good thing about it was they didn't measure resources)
WebAxxs - 7 (major gripe is with the bandwith prices)
Communitech - 8 (only gripe is that php hosting is not zippy at the moment, tech support is okay)

I've heard from quite a few people that vservers, futurequest and site5 were good. As for hosting vb...I would say that the best choice is probably vservers or site5. Futurequest is good for anything else but I would say that their php still needs *a little* work just like communitech. :)

[Martin]

add to your no funking way list.

pair.com - they are still using PHP 3.0.5
interland.net - I currently have a server through them and the support is somewhat less than stellar plus they have been known to lie and decieve about what you're really getting.

[steven]

I am almost done setting up my site, and I use tera-byte as a host, and they are awesome. I can speak to tech support with 2 minutes EVERY time I call. Prices are cheap as hell!! Their web addy is
http://www.tera-byte.com

A couple months ago I was in the need of the same thing and I posted my question. Here is the thread
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=1047

Steven

[Kaiser_Sose]

Steven:

I was cosidering them a while back and I decided againstthem then because they took for ever to answer messages.

ALso on the UBB forums they were not to popular for virtual hosting bt seemed ok for dedicated servers.

I just checked their site and they are using cobalt servers and that is a no no

[SonnetCelestial]

Originally posted by Martin
add to your no funking way list.

pair.com - they are still using PHP 3.0.5
interland.net - I currently have a server through them and the support is somewhat less than stellar plus they have been known to lie and decieve about what you're really getting.

Oh i didn't know pair.com was bad now. I thought they were one of the best! :eek:

[Edited by SonnetCelestial on 07-14-2000 at 05:43 PM]

[werehere]

I have to mention again that Interland has been horrid with billing, tech, and sales (which covers about everthing)!

[vbsquare]

Anyone in the UK - watch out. Interland have setup in the UK and are advertising. If they are as bad as you say, then steer clear!

[Mas*Mind]

Oh i didn't know pair.com was bad now. I thought they were one of the best!

They were one of the best hosts, but they didn't improve. I'm also with them, but will switch as soon as possible.

[Susan]

Kathy and I just switched to the Vservers Ultra plan (semi-dedicated) and so far so good! Their tech support is awesome! We're on a dual PIII 600 with a gig of RAM; we have 800MB of webspace to play with 300,000 hits a day, 40Gigs of transfer a month, unlimited pop/alias/forward/telnet accounts. Their admin panel is FABULOUS....want Perl5? click a button. Need a sql database? Name it and click a button. Granted, we haven't been there long, but from what I've seen, this is the most AWESOME webhost we've ever dealt with...and that's pretty high praise considering we've been on some very highly reccomended servers.

Susan

[Martin]

Here's a short list of the problems that I have had thus far with Interland. After you read through them, check out the solution they offered me.

[list=1]
My server has been taken offline for apparently scheduled maintenance twice without me getting any notification at all. This resulted, both times, in loss of data and me getting bombarded with e-mails from my 3000+ users wanting to know why the server was down.

The second scheduled maintenance I was shut down for the tech weenies told me that the reason was that my server was being relocated to the new data center. They out and out lied. My server is still located in the old data center.

My server has gone down at least 10 times since we started using it in May. It cannot be that I'm overusing it. I only get about 40-60k pv's a day and have never had more than 120 simultaneous users.

My server went down on 6/28 due to a power outage at the old data center. This caused me to lose about 45 days worth of data and my users to become highly agitated because we had lost data due to server crashes twice in
the previous 2 weeks.
I was told (and apparently lied to again) that there would be a UPS on the server. If there had been a UPS, the server would have stayed operational and all the data would not be lost.

The throughput I'm getting is far less than I would expect from a dedicated server. I have run tracert on the IP and the results really shocked me. It seems that once I hit the gateway I still have 3 more hops to my server that time at about 600 ms. That's pretty damned ridiculous for an internal network. It causes slowdowns on my site and my users get on my ass.

I requested a domain name setup (beta.atforumz.com) that took over a month to get done. I finally got it done on the night after the big crash when I was having server problems related to the powre outage and I had a tech weenie on the line. He did it for me then. I think mostly to relieve my agitation.

When we set up the server they assigned us the account name simplyfabulous.com. We said from the beginning that we did not intend to transfer that domain to the server and asked that the account name and default domain be atforumz.com. It took over 3 months to get this straight.

We were told that we would have a 5 x 9gb system. What we have is a single 45gb drive partitioned into 2 (C and D), with C having 1.95gb and D having 31.9gb. That's 12 gb of storage we paid for (a year in advance) that we aren't getting. Yes, I know that RAID 5 takes space, but they said 45 gb of storage space available, not 45 gb with 12 dedicated to RAID.
Also, partintioning such a large section (32 gb) impedes performance somewhat, doesn't it? I've been taught time and time again to not exceed 9gb per partition.
[/list=1]

Now, after getting the runaround time and time again on the phone, they shunted up to the head of sales. I couldn't believe what he told me.

We got in at Interland at a time when they were trying to beef up ther quarterly numbers for their impending IPO. We got one hell of a deal on the server. We got a Dual PIII 600, 45 gb, 512Mb 100 SD RAM, for $500/month.
The head of sales told me that since we got such a great deal, they were losing money since they had to use a Compaq instead of the HP they were offering and that the only solution they could offer was to put me i the new Data Center on an identical machine. The catch was, I would have to sign a new customer agreement and pay an additional $500/month since they charge more for the servers in the new data center.

I told the head of sales that I would do him a favor. We are in the process of selling our small webmaster resources site to a network. They are a network of sites that get 10 million unique visitors per month with 230+ million pageviews.
If our problems were resolved to my satisfaction I will not put up a full, interactive page on the site we are selling, which I will still be paid to maintain, explaining in great detail why a person should never use Interland as a webhost and let others post their piss poor experiences as well. There would be a prominent link on the front page of the site to make sure that they didn't miss it.
I would also spam the link out over ICQ, e-mail and through Usenet to make sure I attracted attention.
Further, I would post the link on every message board I knew of that dealt with web-development.
Lastly, I would talk to other people I knew who had bad experinces and set up some sort of deal to run banners on their sites to the tune of "Why does Interland Suck? Click Here To Find Out!", linking to that page.

I guess I got their attention. The VP in charge of sales/support is supposed to call me Monday.

Aaron, if he doesn't call, you want to help me out?

[werehere]

I could add a list longer than above with complete incompitance on the part of Interland, but do not even need to, since I believe everyone already understands:)

[Alwaysmefirst]

Originally posted by Susan
Kathy and I just switched to the Vservers Ultra plan (semi-dedicated) and so far so good! Their tech support is awesome! We're on a dual PIII 600 with a gig of RAM; we have 800MB of webspace to play with 300,000 hits a day, 40Gigs of transfer a month, unlimited pop/alias/forward/telnet accounts. Their admin panel is FABULOUS....want Perl5? click a button. Need a sql database? Name it and click a button. Granted, we haven't been there long, but from what I've seen, this is the most AWESOME webhost we've ever dealt with...and that's pretty high praise considering we've been on some very highly reccomended servers.

Susan

Hi Susan,

I am glad you are happy with vservers :)
I was wondering how many web sites are hosted on the Vservers Ultra Plan? What is their limit?

Regards,

Olly

[Edited by Alwaysmefirst on 07-15-2000 at 07:40 PM]

[werehere]

I am happy with vservers as well (even if my forum is not live on them yet). WE have a fairly large dedicated machine that seems to scream. They also have a very professional staff, which is a good thing to have in the hosting world.

[Susan]

Olly, they told us that there would be 7 other accounts on the Ultra with us. Now, each of them can resell if they choose or bring domain names in with them up to their hits/bandwidth limits. Still...this is a MUCH better option than being on a normal shared server which has sometimes HUNDREDS of clients on one server of these specs (or less!) For now, we're the only ones on the server that we have (they built this one when we ordered it.) The site SCREAMS.

Hope this helps,

Susan

[Kathy]

I'm with Susan...Ultra plan on vservers....
In our space there is no limit to the number of websites we can run. The only limit is the 800mg of space and the bandwidth.... In fact, I have several other domains and rather than spend money hosting them on other hosts, I'm bringing them with me to our space on the ultra server.

We are very happy with vservers. :D

[Michael]

I'm on a Deda 2 with Virtualis. Good tech support - fast server.

[Alwaysmefirst]

Susan and Kathy:
Thank you for your replies :) I wanted to go there for their Ultra Plan too but didn't because of the bandwidth limit. It is not easy to find a good and not too expensive web host when you have a site that isn't popular enough to pay itself but is too popular to be on a shared server. I will try Virtualis Deda2 (mainly for their bandwidth limit).

About this topic now :)
Out of a ranking of 10
Simplenet (now Yahoo): 8, but no CGI at that time. It was ok even with 45gb/month with their "unlimited bandwidth".
Halfpricehosting: 4, email often down, and your site is visible through another url: yourdomaincom.halfpricehosting.com
Communitech: 8. I have no problem with them but I can see on their forum many customers complaining about their service.
Icom: 5. Email often down. Same for the site. Tech support very slow (when they decide to email you back, which is rare).
Futurequest: 8. Great support. Email and site sometimes very slow or down though, especially in the morning (in France).

Olly

[TWTCommish]

I use http://www.ThinkHost.com - quite good for something like vBulletin, and the tech support is awesome...10 out of 10. :)

[Kaiser_Sose]

I was actually considering thinkhost but the bandwidth is very low for running something like the vbulletin.

Thinkhost is not a good choice if you want to run the vbulletin.

[TWTCommish]

It's working fine for me! If your vBulletin is doing well enough to go over their bandwidth limits I'd imagine you'd be making enough dough to upgrade to a better plan.

[Kaiser_Sose]

how many members do you have so that you can stay within the 2gb, if that is your plan

[TWTCommish]

That's not my plan...and I have no way of totally measuring how much space it takes up, it just seems like common sense to me...a thriving community can make money quite quickly, I'd imagine at least to the point where $25-50 a month would be reasonable.

[WebStyles]

Originally posted by Martin
I would talk to other people I knew who had bad experinces and set up some sort of deal to run banners on their sites to the tune of "Why does Interland Suck? Click Here To Find Out!", linking to that page.

I guess I got their attention. The VP in charge of sales/support is supposed to call me Monday.

Aaron, if he doesn't call, you want to help me out?

I'd be more than happy to donate a banner. :D