VenturesOnline - anything BAD about them?

[SonciB]

Been with them for 4 months now ... Only had one time my server was down ( Today ) they had an emergency reboot on one of there servers so it was back up in about 15 mins ... They have been great so far ...

[HexOnxOnx]

VO Tech Support makes me crazy sometimes though. I have had my VPS through them for a week and using my domain name with the server. Last night I had a question and they did a search to make sure my domain name was answering to my server. They came back and said my domain name wasntt registered yet I have been using it with my server for a week. Other than this, my server was down on Wednesday because they had to do a reboot but all was working again 30 minutes later. I still would use them anyday because the reliability is second to none!

[JimF]

Overall, I'm pleased with VO. I just upgraded my dedicated server with them, and they were very competitive on the pricing. They worked with me to build the system I wanted at a price I could swing. Many props to them for that.

My main complaint is how they deal with the support tickets. In the process of one problem, I've had 5 or 6 different people working on a solution at a time. Countless times I've had to re-state something or refer to a response from another tech. It seems inefficient to me, in terms of communication. I understand why they do it though, in order to provide timely responses.

Here's an example from a current support ticket:

Tech1: do you need any further assistance from us? If so, please let us know specifically what you need and we'll be happy to assist. I partitioned your new server using our standard configuration. Please take a look at this configuration and see if it looks alright to you.

Me: Yes, I want a different partition configuration, and the salesman assured me you guys would move all my site files to the new server.


Tech 2: If you ordered the server with Cpanel you can use WHM's account transfer tool that will automatically get databases, mailing lists, etc.

Tech 3: I'm not sure if we can change the partitions. I'm going to send this to hardware for an opinion.

And this is all within an 8-hour period. I'm glad the other techs were trying to help, but they totally contradicted what the original tech said - only hours after he said it. And this isn't the first time I've seen this happen.

If you can deal with that, I think you'll be okay. I'm just stingey and picky, and for the money I'm paying I expect more personalized service, that's all.

Thanks for letting me vent a little .

-jim

[Valkyre]

I've been with them for a while, I like them.

[buro9]

Thats a good point.... I wanna switch in May to another host. Does VO have SSH?

Yes, of course

I've been using VO for 18 months now and they've always been rock solid... just outgrown their V500 though and jumping up to their VPS5000 (over the next 48 hours I suspect).

I have nothing bad to say of them at all... their service is good and I've been on three of their servers to date with 3 different accounts.

Sure they're fractionally more expensive, but when I had cheaper I also suffered database corruptions every few months and support staff who were unable to sort things out... VO are the first exception to this that I've found.

[Floris]

Nope, nothing bad about them

[Bane]

2+ Years and unless something catastrophic happens I will not change hosts ever again. I had been with quite a few before and really I've yet to find a comparable company.

I now host quite a few sites with them, and recommend them to anyone who will listen.

[scottct1]

We were doing really well with VO until this week. (Infact we have been recommending VO to others starting / running forums.

On Monday afternoon our board was gone...

When we logged in to the Help Desk there was the following message.

Greetings:

We suspended the site: dbstalk.com on Mrdo for using an excessive amount of resources. The amount of traffic that site is generating far exceeds what is considered "normal" for shared hosting accounts and is causing excessive load on the server.

This account must move off of this server onto a dedicated hosting solution. We will unsuspended this account if the following conditions are met:

Disable the forum.

We will be more then happy to answer any questions on the subject.

Best regards,

Steve

We realize we have grown (we are getting 10 million hits a month!) and we have been paying for everything (like extra bandwidth) they shut us down WITHOUT warning us and we are STILL down while we wait for them to move us to a new Dedicated Server (which was supposed to take less then 24 hours)

I am a little peaved that they did not contact us first, we would have been happy to move to a dedicated server and we could have avoided being down for 3 days. (Now going on day 3)

We believe in paying for what we use, have no problem with it, VO has been an excellent host however again I am still upset that they shut us down with no warning whatsoever.

Scott
DBSTalk.COM

[scottct1]

Btw in reply to my own message above, I was just reading at VO's site their resource abuse policy https://www.venturesonline.com/info/resource-abuse.html which states

All accounts that are found to be using excessive amounts of system resources will receive an e-mail warning from Ventures Online. This warning will inform you that the site is using excessive system resources. Ventures Online will provide options for reducing the usage and/or upgrading your account. If the situation is severe, we may suspend the account or process immediately to bring performance of the server back to an acceptable level. 24 hours notice will be given if at all possible.

We were not given such notice at all. Just shut off.

I should note that our server has been running now for months with no new hacks or additions to our site, our site has been running like it has for quite a long time. Nothing has changed. This I feel we should have been giving a warning (and again our feeling was to upgrade to a dedicated server which we did) But again we got ZERO notice.

We will be staying (for now) with VO because as I said they have been good up until this point. But again still upset to lose my forum for 3 days over nothing.

[ManagerJosh]

You might consider upgrading your plan

[scottct1]

We did after they shut us off. (and we would of if they notifed us in advance, we did know we were getting big once we hit the 10 million hits a month mark)

Just an update our new server is up now they are just moving everything from one server to the other.

[veedee]

I hosted with VO for over 12 months. I didn't have one problem with them, they really were fantastic.

I since moved from VO, because I couldn't afford their server, to Server Beach. Although I am paying 1/3 the VO server bill, the service at Server Beach isn't as good.

I'm hoping to get a happy medium at Rack Shack.

[scottct1]

Just another update,

After almost 3 days of being down we are back online with VenturesOnline.

Our new dedicated server already has 75 users on it, and it is quite snappy!

While I was upset at what happened I am now feeling better again when I see the improved performace from the new dedicated server.

[futureal]

scottct1: I had the same thing happen with VO and one of my sites. With no warning, no phone call, no e-mail, no nothing, they just pulled the plug on my site, ironically about 3 days after I had just paid the bill for that month. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy. They weren't apologetic, either, they basically said "you have to upgrade, otherwise we will not turn you back on." Making matters worse, I was out of town at the time, and it turned into a huge hassle since I could not be online to even give my users notice that this was happening.

I stayed with VO because I have 3 sites there (2 shared and 1 dedicated now) but the experience did not make me happy at all. If there was a comparable company out there that offered the same type of service and pricing structure, I would be inclined to move. From my perspective, they screwed me, and I won't forget it.

[JamieFry]

I use Ventures Online, too. Their service has been excellent - virtually no downtime. HOWEVER, I also was required to upgrade to a VPS for excessive use of resources. My site averages about 5 million hits per month. Ventures Online gave me a few days to make the decision and move to the VPS. As pleased as I am with the service, I find myself constantly looking for a lower cost option. I wonder if I could adequately manage an unmanaged dedicated server somewhere like RackShack.