[web] Let's talk about your hosting...
I really like 1and1. $9.99 a month for php/mysql, 50gb bandwidth and 2 GB of space. Their online configuration panel is very impressive too.
Quote:Original post by Sander
I forgot one that you definately need to know about:
AIT (Advanced Internet Technologies)
This is the worst of the worst. I cannot name a single good thing about these bunch of fraudsters. First off, they will sell you a dedicated server but in reality give you a virtual server (that is, they run multiple virtual servers off a single machine). Sneaky, you will never know the difference untill you actively investigate (e.g, your neighbouring virtual server does something stupid that kills the machine so you go down with it). Their connection permanently sucks so bad that you think they have their entire datacenter hooked on a single 56k modem. We could never get a download speed of greater than 20 kbps. Ofcourse you start calling the support department about this. The "fix" lasts for about 24 hours after which the connection is back to 20 kbps again. Then you get the first bill. They overcharge you on everything. Support calls are billed twice, you get billed for services you did not recieve nor asked for. The support staff is unfriendly, especially when it comes to billing questions.
We had a 60-day money back guarantee (they have since lowered it to 30 days). We were so much displeased with them that we cancelled after 25 days giving a term untill the end of the 60 day money back period so we had time to find someone else and move our stuff over. At the end of the 60 day period they indeed cancelled our server access but they never cancelled the contract which resulted in 4 more monthly charges to our creditcard on top of the two months in the beginning. AIT claimed we never cancelled and they were going to charge us untill the end of the year. At this point we contacted a lawyer and threathened with a great bunch of lawsuits (quite easy, because they did cancel our access to the server and we kept all communications with them, full headers and all). AIT backed down and ended our contract immediately but we never got a refund for everything they overcharged us (about $400,- all-in-all).
In short, avoid this company like the plague. It's one of the worst bucnh of scammers I have ever come across. We cannot not afford a lawsuit against them to get the $400,- back but I really hope some rich dude will take them down someday out of principle.
[flaming][flaming][flaming]
If you paid via a credit-card then the credit-card company should have insured you - given your legal success the c/c company should refund the money & then sue AIT for you at their expense ... that's what the 5% credit-card charges on purchases cover :)
Thanks for all the responses, there's a varying range of experiences there as I predicted.
For you low-end users:
Would you rather have a web host that is:
a) Cheap and has standard or basic features
b) Has customisable features but comes with a higher pricetag or
c) Has a unique selling point (eg: full software bundle) for a higher pricetag
How important is access speed to you? How about customer support? Do you think "oh well, it's cheap - I get what I pay for" or do you always expect the best for whatever money you put out.
For the higher end (eg: more money to spend):
a) Do you research the reputation of a company before signing up with them? If so, what sort of factors to you take into account?
b) How important is customer support to you? Would you pay a premium to have 24/7 instant-response support?
c) How important is security/stability to your business with your host? If you internet connection was down for a day would it affect your decision to stay on with them?
I personally would expect good customer service with a more customisable package. I don't get along too well with hosts that aren't willing or in the position to accomodate my growing needs - which probably rules out a lot of resellers. I don't mind paying more money for something that I know is going to suit my needs.
Sorry about all the questions, I'm not really fishing for anything in particular - I'm just trying to detangle the web (har!) of hosting available to people. I suppose it'd be nice to have a thread with an open discussion about hosting that we can refer people to for them to make up their own minds about hosts. It's all well and good recommending package abc from xyz, but often you're with a host for a set period and it can be extremely frustrating having to change. Obviously it won't be as simple as drawing up a chart but a discussion could turn up enough qualitative information (and of course links) to help people make up their minds about a host.
Perhaps more importantly, I'm growing slightly concerned that people will recommend a host based on price alone with no prior experience of dealing with them. Where money and contracts are involved I want people on this forum to feel secure in making their choice and hearing from a few people on here might just give that extra peace of mind. It's never 100% safe, but I think that most of the time past experience will speak the truth.
For you low-end users:
Would you rather have a web host that is:
a) Cheap and has standard or basic features
b) Has customisable features but comes with a higher pricetag or
c) Has a unique selling point (eg: full software bundle) for a higher pricetag
How important is access speed to you? How about customer support? Do you think "oh well, it's cheap - I get what I pay for" or do you always expect the best for whatever money you put out.
For the higher end (eg: more money to spend):
a) Do you research the reputation of a company before signing up with them? If so, what sort of factors to you take into account?
b) How important is customer support to you? Would you pay a premium to have 24/7 instant-response support?
c) How important is security/stability to your business with your host? If you internet connection was down for a day would it affect your decision to stay on with them?
I personally would expect good customer service with a more customisable package. I don't get along too well with hosts that aren't willing or in the position to accomodate my growing needs - which probably rules out a lot of resellers. I don't mind paying more money for something that I know is going to suit my needs.
Sorry about all the questions, I'm not really fishing for anything in particular - I'm just trying to detangle the web (har!) of hosting available to people. I suppose it'd be nice to have a thread with an open discussion about hosting that we can refer people to for them to make up their own minds about hosts. It's all well and good recommending package abc from xyz, but often you're with a host for a set period and it can be extremely frustrating having to change. Obviously it won't be as simple as drawing up a chart but a discussion could turn up enough qualitative information (and of course links) to help people make up their minds about a host.
Perhaps more importantly, I'm growing slightly concerned that people will recommend a host based on price alone with no prior experience of dealing with them. Where money and contracts are involved I want people on this forum to feel secure in making their choice and hearing from a few people on here might just give that extra peace of mind. It's never 100% safe, but I think that most of the time past experience will speak the truth.
Quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
If you paid via a credit-card then the credit-card company should have insured you - given your legal success the c/c company should refund the money & then sue AIT for you at their expense ... that's what the 5% credit-card charges on purchases cover :)
I am not exactly sure how it went down in the end (since I was not the one doing the actual paying) but IIRC AIT claimed that they had supplied us with a service so we could not get the CC company to charge back easily. Or something to that effect.
Anyway, dealing wih AIT was so terrible that we didn't want to start a prolongued fight with them over this. We just got the hell out of there.
Quote:
Original post by Evolution
a) Do you research the reputation of a company before signing up with them? If so, what sort of factors to you take into account?
b) How important is customer support to you? Would you pay a premium to have 24/7 instant-response support?
c) How important is security/stability to your business with your host? If you internet connection was down for a day would it affect your decision to stay on with them?
A) Yes (I learned from the AIT disaster). Top priority for me is customer support combined with a good price. I don't need support often but if I need it then I want it to be good. If a hosting cmpany gets bad reviews on customer support then I will not use them.
B) See A. 24/7 support is overdone for me but I do want a reaction in < 24 hours (and willing to pay for that) on normal hosting. As for a dedicated server: I think 24/7 is pretty much a must to have. I would not want to wait 12 hours for a technician to press the reset button if something went awry!
C) I don't use the bigger websites I work on as a business website, so this is a tad less important for me. I can live with a few hours downtime (provided there is a good reason) because I won't loose money over it, though I will get a load of complaints from a large userbase telling me they need their daily fix [wink]
Just switched from 1and1(who had horrendous support) to wb-hosting(www.wb-hosting.com), and it is the best hosting i have ever had.
Until now, I had been hosted by my ISPs, first noos.fr:
Great tech support, maybe the best I've seen so far, with talented people and excellent service, but only 20 Mb and no server-side scripts or databases.
Then free.fr:
Horrible tech support, the worst I've encountered anywhere in the IT world, with "overnight mySQL database initialization" turning into "wait for one week for us to do it right without answering your questions" and the funniest phone conversation I've had in years with a support guy. But they did support a custom, watered down version of php/mySQL.
Now I'm using ovh.com and the bill so far is: €12 for 60Mb, php/mySQL, €9 for a one-year .net domain registration, and some €1 initial fees. The total (with taxes) is €26 (~$34) per year, quite the best price I've seen so far for something like this around here.
As you might have guessed, competent tech support is important to me, although I wouldn't pay an additonal fee ONLY for 24/7 support (although if I were doing this for a company, I would anyway). Next thing I look for is services (fully working php or asp are minimum requirements), and finally the price.
[Edited by - ToohrVyk on December 30, 2004 5:40:59 AM]
Great tech support, maybe the best I've seen so far, with talented people and excellent service, but only 20 Mb and no server-side scripts or databases.
Then free.fr:
Horrible tech support, the worst I've encountered anywhere in the IT world, with "overnight mySQL database initialization" turning into "wait for one week for us to do it right without answering your questions" and the funniest phone conversation I've had in years with a support guy. But they did support a custom, watered down version of php/mySQL.
Now I'm using ovh.com and the bill so far is: €12 for 60Mb, php/mySQL, €9 for a one-year .net domain registration, and some €1 initial fees. The total (with taxes) is €26 (~$34) per year, quite the best price I've seen so far for something like this around here.
As you might have guessed, competent tech support is important to me, although I wouldn't pay an additonal fee ONLY for 24/7 support (although if I were doing this for a company, I would anyway). Next thing I look for is services (fully working php or asp are minimum requirements), and finally the price.
[Edited by - ToohrVyk on December 30, 2004 5:40:59 AM]
using gibbering.net
I get a subdomain, but it's completly free. 50mb, unlimited use, no ads. Developers only. Came from the ashes of IllicitDev.net.
Very good :)
currently not open to new registrations, but they will be launching a new service in the near future which will offer a new set of free team-orientated services, and several paid services.
Yeah. I like it [wink]
I get a subdomain, but it's completly free. 50mb, unlimited use, no ads. Developers only. Came from the ashes of IllicitDev.net.
Very good :)
currently not open to new registrations, but they will be launching a new service in the near future which will offer a new set of free team-orientated services, and several paid services.
Yeah. I like it [wink]
I use iPowerWeb and SpiralPages for my website (which is currently not being used).
I use iPowerWeb for domain services, mainly because they give you full administrative privileges of your domain, so you can manually change the nameserver with paying a $10 fee like some of the other hosts.
I use SpiralPages for web hosting because the beginner plan costs $4.95/mo for premium hosting, which has 1.5 GB space and 30 GB monthly bandwidth. Compared to my previous host, InfluxHost (which has disappeared), it was much better.
I use iPowerWeb for domain services, mainly because they give you full administrative privileges of your domain, so you can manually change the nameserver with paying a $10 fee like some of the other hosts.
I use SpiralPages for web hosting because the beginner plan costs $4.95/mo for premium hosting, which has 1.5 GB space and 30 GB monthly bandwidth. Compared to my previous host, InfluxHost (which has disappeared), it was much better.
I'm currently with Host Europe, who are now part of Pipex.
For what I know it's pretty cheap (I don't pay for it myself [smile]) but you're limited to an old version of PHP (4.1) and all emails to tech support regarding upgrading or installing new modules are ignored. In fact, all emails sent from the support page are ignored.
When I initially set it up I selected FrontPage components as an option (it's a lot less hassle to set them up and open the remote site in FP than editing locally then uploading via FTP) the FrontPage folders were there, but none of the DLLs were in them and thus FrontPage refused to connect. After calling up they claimed that FrontPage components had been installed, where they clearly hadn't been. In the end they reinstalled them, recharging us for them.
For some reason, my site (see signature) is pretty fast with them (but still goes down once every couple of weeks or so). Some of the other sites we have hosted with them go down fairly frequently (multiple times a week) and are infuriatingly slow at moments.
But, as I say - you get what you pay for. I think there's a glitch in the bandwidth/month details - we paid for 10gB/month, but it says 1000mB/month on the main page. When I first set it up I transferred 3GB in 4 days (image hosting) but never heard from them - either they didn't notice or I do get the 10gB/month that's being paid for.
For what I know it's pretty cheap (I don't pay for it myself [smile]) but you're limited to an old version of PHP (4.1) and all emails to tech support regarding upgrading or installing new modules are ignored. In fact, all emails sent from the support page are ignored.
When I initially set it up I selected FrontPage components as an option (it's a lot less hassle to set them up and open the remote site in FP than editing locally then uploading via FTP) the FrontPage folders were there, but none of the DLLs were in them and thus FrontPage refused to connect. After calling up they claimed that FrontPage components had been installed, where they clearly hadn't been. In the end they reinstalled them, recharging us for them.
For some reason, my site (see signature) is pretty fast with them (but still goes down once every couple of weeks or so). Some of the other sites we have hosted with them go down fairly frequently (multiple times a week) and are infuriatingly slow at moments.
But, as I say - you get what you pay for. I think there's a glitch in the bandwidth/month details - we paid for 10gB/month, but it says 1000mB/month on the main page. When I first set it up I transferred 3GB in 4 days (image hosting) but never heard from them - either they didn't notice or I do get the 10gB/month that's being paid for.
I've been with Generic Webhosting for exactly a year now, however unfortuantely I have hardly done anything (live) with the webspace so I can't really comment on how a webstie would handle. Futhermore, they've just switched/merged/were bought out by shadowcore.ca. This month I hope to be launching my site, which may attract a lot of visitors given it's content, so we'll see how everything holds up.
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