Host experiences and testimonials thread

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  • silverleaf
    New Member
    • Oct 2006
    • 19

    Stay Away From Dot5.com Hosting. Hoorrribble!

    Comment

    • mincecfc
      New Member
      • Jul 2005
      • 11

      Can I ask if it would be possible from now on to add something to your posts on this thread?

      I read people saying "vB flies on this host" and similar, but in my experience (not a techie), that all depends on how busy your forum is.

      My forum has between 350 - 600 online most days between 10:00 and 02:00 and has had a record number of simutaneously onlie of 1,104 users.

      Our server must be approaching capacity as it starts to toil over the 650 online mark.

      So, could people add the average number online to their reports in this thread please?

      I will add a glowing report of my exellent hosting company in the near future.

      Comment

      • feldon23
        Senior Member
        • Nov 2001
        • 11291
        • 3.7.x

        650 users online simultaneously?

        That's not web hosting. That's your own dedicated web server (or should be!).

        If you have a dedicated server and you are still having problems, either they are using crappy hardware, crappy backbones, or it's a case of user error.

        (Shared) Web Hosting, you are at the mercy of their employees to have a decent server and not cram 500 vBulletin forums onto a 1.1GHz PC with 512MB of RAM.

        Comment

        • Exclusive Group
          New Member
          • Dec 2006
          • 5
          • 3.6.x

          I read through most of the thread and others, and did a search for windows hosting, but didnt find any, who is a good, reasonable windows host?

          Comment

          • James Kojiro
            Senior Member
            • Jun 2004
            • 580
            • 3.6.x

            Originally posted by Exclusive Group
            I read through most of the thread and others, and did a search for windows hosting, but didnt find any, who is a good, reasonable windows host?
            There is no such thing as a good windows host. If you want good hosting, you always want to start with a host that uses the Linux platform.

            Comment

            • liquidBrick
              New Member
              • Jan 2007
              • 8
              • 3.6.x

              Originally posted by jbandes
              I have two 1and1 accounts. One Microsoft and One Unix. Both are 19 dollars a month. Yes the Tech support is awful but the servers are NEVER EVER down and where are you going to get 250 GIGS of storage space for that price. That means I have a total of 500 Gig of storage for 40 Bucks a month. The only down side is the My SQL database is limited to 100MB which is why I am looking for another host for my vB board.
              I had a 1and1 shared server developer package for the past few years with no real downtime and a bunch of domains. Maybe twice for a few hours over several years it was down. Customer service always sucked. Then my business partner wanted out so I got a new shared server and put my vb forum on it; keep in mind that the forum is not even online yet, still configuring.

              In the past few weeks the server has been down twice, once for a few days and then today for over 12 hours. I called tech support and got some lady in bangladesh or god knows where who culd barely even speak english. My server is now back up and running at snail speed compared to the 2MB/sec (yes megabytes) download I usually get.

              I'm currently looking for another host and 1and1 has been added to my hitlist. Hostmysite is also on my list after the last several day digital colonoscopy I got from them. Many promises not lived up to, but at least they give 30-day money back guarantee.

              Is it me or are hosting companies like snake oil salesman? Is there actually a host that provides good service consistently, short of those massive companies that actually own real facilities that run sites like Amazon? You know, the real expensive ones that tell you not to bother unless you got big cash and want to tour the facility.

              Comment

              • redraider
                Senior Member
                • Oct 2006
                • 122

                A feedback on ASO

                A feedback on asmallorange (ASO). Worst experience I have ever had.

                I launched my website in October 2006, and based on some opinions here, took ASO's services. This was one of the worst decisions I ever made!! Here are the details:

                - I have a downtime of atleast 2 hrs / week
                - Their response time in case of any problems is 60 minutes
                - 90% of the times their response is: The website looks ok from our side can u send a tracert and we need to check your firewall. [This is when I already have attached a tracert results when I opened a ticket with them]
                - Their final response is never what the problem exactly was ... They just indicate how they cannot find any problems

                I have decided to move within next few months, I have to stick with them till then but I thought I can save you all some time and money.

                regards,
                redraider.
                Last edited by redraider; Sun 7 Jan '07, 12:01am.
                GMAT Prep

                Comment

                • feldon23
                  Senior Member
                  • Nov 2001
                  • 11291
                  • 3.7.x

                  No good webhost stays good.

                  VenturesOnline was great. So of course they had to be gobbled up.

                  Comment

                  • John_770
                    Member
                    • Aug 2002
                    • 80
                    • 3.6.x

                    Netfirms = thumbs down. I should have read this thread prior to signing up.

                    Cheap, lots of space and bandwith, but not too VB-friendly it seems. Issue I had was the Max_timeout on their SQL is set to 20. I asked to up it to at least 7200 or 14400, but preferably 28880 to alleviate timeout errors. The response:

                    Please be aware that Netfirms is a shared hosting environment and if a
                    setting is changed for one customer, it would have to be changed for all
                    customers. As well, this value represents a timeout of 480 hours and would
                    render the Netfirms database servers useless.
                    480 hours they say? I think they need some schooling as they think the variable is minutes not seconds. I informed them of their 'mistake', but still would not change the value - got the standard:

                    Increasing the wait-timeout has been added to our list of client requested features and may be included in a future service upgrade. Thank-you for your suggestion.
                    Thanks. Buh bye.


                    ASmallOrange = thumbs up so far. Had my space ready to go within 1 hour of signing up, my domain transferred within 12 hrs, fast uploads to server, and ran a 'bigdump' on three uploaded ~50mb sql queries without issue. I've read a couple negative posts in this thread about asmallorange - as stated I haven't been with them long so can't speak for downtime or other issues posted.

                    Comment

                    • Zia
                      Senior Member
                      • Dec 2005
                      • 178
                      • 3.6.x

                      most bad host ever found is www.siteground.com ...

                      bluehost.com - mediam

                      knownhost.com -is really good

                      Comment

                      • gekko
                        Senior Member
                        • Jul 2000
                        • 191
                        • 3.6.x

                        HostingDelivery - Two Thumbs Way Up

                        I can't say enough about HostingDelivery. Not ideal for a high traffic site, but the customer service is something I've only seen in dreams. I emailed them asking what version of PostgreSQL they were running, they told me 7.4. I replied asking if there was any way they could upgrade to 8 or 8.1, since I was developing a site that used some features exclusive to version 8+. They said "Sure, it will be on all servers within 24 hours."

                        After emailing over 10 hosts asking them to upgrade, none were willing. Some said "We might look into it" which does me no good as a potential customer. HostingDelivery had it installed quickly, even emailed me to let me know they were finished, and for what? I wasn't even a customer... yet. Nothing but good things to say about them.

                        I finally left because I was using it as a development server, and I was moving on to .NET projects. If they had Windows hosting, I would've signed right up.

                        Lunar Pages - Two Thumbs Down

                        I've had bad experiences with Lunar Pages in the past, with uptime and the like, but needing it for a secondary development server, I felt I'd get their Windows hosting. Bad idea.

                        I emailed them asking for ASP.NET AJAX installation, since there were a few customers interested in it, myself included. I got a reply back saying telling me AJAX is a technology and it should work on all accounts by default. I was baffled, were the Windows server tech support guys completely clueless to the new framework released by Microsoft that I even provided a link to?

                        Dug a little deeper and found out they refuse to do install any updates, frameworks, etc. In other words, they refuse to lift a finger to keep up with the new technologies. I then found a job opening for a Windows System Administrator which listed knowledge of ASP, the .NET framework, and SQL Server as "helpful" but not required. I'm truly shocked to find that's not a requirement of the people in charge of the Windows servers.

                        After my two experiences with them, they should great, but I would avoid them like the plague. The Linux servers weren't up to par, and their support for Windows servers is a joke.
                        The Wiire

                        Comment

                        • Dan@TT
                          New Member
                          • Feb 2007
                          • 10
                          • 3.8.x

                          Any experience with EV1servers.net (ThePlanet right now) ?

                          Comment

                          • Alteran Ancient
                            Senior Member
                            • May 2005
                            • 333
                            • 3.8.x

                            ubyu.net - Formerly Dedicated Networks

                            ***********************************

                            DediLand - http://www.dediland.com/ - Dedicated Servers

                            ubyu.net - http://ubyu.net/ - Unmetered Web & Reseller Hosting

                            Includes Domain Name Registration & Fully automated sign-up service.

                            Server Hardware Specs:

                            Processor #1 Name: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
                            Processor #1 speed: 2000.870 MHz
                            Memory: 968152k/982976k available (2518k kernel code, 14096k reserved, 690k data, 180k init, 65472k highmem) (1GB DDR)
                            hda: ST3160212A, ATA DISK drive
                            hda: max request size: 1024KiB
                            hda: 312581808 sectors (160041 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=19457/255/63, UDMA(100) (160GB HDD)

                            100mbit Connection linked up with fibres in IP House, London


                            System Features:

                            CGI-BIN
                            Perl
                            PHP5 & MySQL5
                            Python
                            cPanel, Fantastico, WHM
                            Regular Global Backups

                            Pros:
                            • Very powerful servers
                            • Very good network uptime
                            • Low fixed priced for unmetered resources per month (within reason)
                            • Fair downtime crediting policy
                            • Very quick and effective Help & Support
                            Cons:
                            • If you don't read the Acceptable Usage, then you could risk having your account suspended for accidentally breaking any of the rules that are stated inside those terms. (Not a biggie, though!)
                            Conclusion:
                            Since I first started using ubyu.net, I have been receiving great hostingI have been a customer for over a year now. Each time I've had a problem, it's been fixed up-front. I would recommend this service to anyone.
                            -- David.

                            If I spend much more time browsing these forums, I could be subjected to: 1. Burnt retinas, 2. Angry customers, 3. Lack of moderation, 4. Arguments.
                            This used to be a nice place; what the hell's gone wrong?

                            Comment

                            • GreysAnatomy
                              Member
                              • May 2005
                              • 43
                              • 3.7.x

                              I've been with A Small Orange for a few months and left them last week because I wanted all my sites on one hosting account and SurpassHosting had this Valentine's Day offer going - 1$ for any of their plans for a whole year - it's still up until the end of February I think. Anyway, I've never had any problems with A Small Orange. Their replies were usually fast but this is probably relative. Living in another timezone, I'm expecting waiting times and 1 hour is fast in my opinion. The only thing I didn't like was the interface and that you can't change nameservers yourself. I had to ask someone to change them for me but it was still pretty fast - almost as fast as if I had done it myself.

                              Now on to a really bad host for all things vBulletin: Dreamhost! I know their plans are unbelievable and everything but if you wanna send out admin emails via the UserCP -which I like to do about once a month- they threaten to delete your account because of SPAM mails you've been sending out. They don't care that people checked the checkbox while registering and that they can uncheck it anytime. They don't care that you include a link and description on how to unsubscribe from admin emails. They say it's spam. I've discussed that issue with them back and forth and there was nothing I could do but switch hosts.

                              Now, I'm with SurpassHosting. Their waiting times for responses are usually around 12h, but as I said: I'm in a different time-zone. The people are really helpful and friendly. The site is very complicated though and I can hardly find my way around to get to do what I want to because there's SurpassDomains.Com and SurpassHosting.Com which confuses me to no end. But that could be just me, hehe. They're very cool when it comes to vBulletin hosting and as I said, their special offer for 1$/year for any plan is still up.
                              Last edited by GreysAnatomy; Wed 21 Feb '07, 3:26am.

                              Comment

                              • Gene Steinberg
                                Senior Member
                                • Dec 2006
                                • 448
                                • 3.8.x

                                Originally posted by GreysAnatomy
                                I've been with A Small Orange for a few months and left them last week because I wanted all my sites on one hosting account and SurpassHosting had this Valentine's Day offer going - 1$ for any of their plans for a whole year - it's still up until the end of February I think. Anyway, I've never had any problems with A Small Orange. Their replies were usually fast but this is probably relative. Living in another timezone, I'm expecting waiting times and 1 hour is fast in my opinion. The only thing I didn't like was the interface and that you can't change nameservers yourself. I had to ask someone to change them for me but it was still pretty fast - almost as fast as if I had done it myself.

                                Now on to a really bad host for all things vBulletin: Dreamhost! I know their plans are unbelievable and everything but if you wanna send out admin emails via the UserCP -which I like to do about once a month- they threaten to delete your account because of SPAM mails you've been sending out. They don't care that people checked the checkbox while registering and that they can uncheck it anytime. They don't care that you include a link and description on how to unsubscribe from admin emails. They say it's spam. I've discussed that issue with them back and forth and there was nothing I could do but switch hosts.

                                Now, I'm with SurpassHosting. Their waiting times for responses are usually around 12h, but as I said: I'm in a different time-zone. The people are really helpful and friendly. The site is very complicated though and I can hardly find my way around to get to do what I want to because there's SurpassDomains.Com and SurpassHosting.Com which confuses me to no end. But that could be just me, hehe. They're very cool when it comes to vBulletin hosting and as I said, their special offer for 1$/year for any plan is still up.
                                Are you quite sure about your DreamHost experience? That doesn't sound right. On the other hand, I use their Announce List feature for monthly stuff, but I realize that's not the same as a message board. Just how many messages are you sending? And did you get complaints ? The latter would seem to be the only reason why they'd be concerned about a lack of a sufficiently clear opt-out provision.

                                Peace,
                                Gene

                                Comment

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