I've seen it and I can't beleive it. Have you ever done bussiness with them, are they good?


NOTICE THE POLL IS BUGGED :)

good for bandwidth hogs, who don't need much reliability and uptime ...
worst for webhosting and mission critical stuff.

Bad reliability, wtf do you mean.


I need to host gaming servers to I need reliability, what kind of reliability do you mean, slow downs, or complete failures?

http://webhostingtalk.com/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=924884&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending

.... I voted on good but my vote count from the "bad" option ????

Whats with the link, how the hell do I use it? Is it search?

You click on it :D. It is search, read some of those threads. UnitedColo has a very bad reputation.

- Matt

trying out that link is certainly out of question or?

Is it a long term thing, is it bad right now??? It's cheap, and it seems too good to be true. Any horror stories about them right now??? Oh, and any other "cheap, but good" providers?

I unfortunately didn't know what I was doing or what to look for when I bought my first dedicated server, and I bought a reseller of theres. If I were smart enough at the time to realize who/what I was buying, I would have never bought there.

SO THEY ARE REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD?

Okay, if enough people say so I guess,

Any *OTHER* providers that are good, and the bad ones that I should watch out for?

Good and Decent Hosts:

Nocster
DedicatedNow
RackShack
DV2/TransxactGlobal

There are a lot more, those were just the first that came to mind. Any others to watch out for? None really stick out at me right now.

- Matt

Watch out for DonHost, there are some horror stories about them.

But if you're in the US you wouldn't probably use them anyway, they're UK hosts.

My experience with United.Colo has been the following:

Over a five month period approx 99.4% network uptime.

Overall lack of communication on network issues, this includes removing the 100Mbit burst ability and capping all servers to 10Mbit (trying to remove internal DDOS issues) United.Colo have in the past blocked ICMP (ping etc) for days at a time with little or no explanation.

Overall lack of customer service "If you don't like it, go somewhere else" - this isn't really "constructive" customer service.

I wouldn't call United.Colo terrible, I just think they're a realitivly new player in a tough market.

Let's remember that recently NAC had some serious downtime with little customer communication and other providers such as FDC were down for DAYS, not hours.

They all have their own problems, they all deal with them differently from my side of the fence Rackshack probably look to have one of the best offers and networks available, it's just a pity about the Cpanel and lack of any real "support" response.

Matt

Okay, no problem for me with them. Anybody know why those united guys sux?

Anybody know why those united guys sux?
Bad communication, originally it was pretty much a bait and switch - they offered 100Mbps ports and Internap, now it's 10Mbps ports and Williams...

- Matt

I knew it was too good to be true :) Good thing I didn't fall for the bait.

We once tried a server there and cancelled 30 minutes after it was set up.
Lots of reasons; I've posted them in a previous UC-thread.
Of course, only your personal opinion counts, so give them a try and let us know :D

Carl

Well 100 Mbps, vs 10 Mbps, me I'l take the 10, so if you do go over, you don't go over by much :).

I've pinged them, I like the speeds, sure williams isn't the best for latency, but I'm in the middle situation according to what I need.

Originally posted by mswordman
I've pinged them, I like the speeds, sure williams isn't the best for latency, but I'm in the middle situation according to what I need.

It's not about the speed at all -- they have a horrid support system & business model in general. Their "24x7 support" is an absolute joke. It basically consists of one guy sitting in UnitedColo's little 20x10 foot rented cage (they don't actually own their own datacenter) who works from 9AM - 4:30PM... after that, good luck getting ahold of anybody.

A few weeks ago (before I cancelled my server with them) my server was down for 8 HOURS merely because the "24x7" support was not there to simply reboot it... (this wasn't even at night... it was morning-evening)

Finally, after being out all day it was rebooted by their server monkey at around 9:30PM. (this was after leaving multiple phone, email and even faxes begging them to reboot it).

Overall, you get what you pay for.

If you're looking for a similar deal, but with better service, go with ServePath(.com). They have their own data center (I visited it a few months ago) as well as a great customer support service.

Well, I'm a United Colo customer for several months. I would not classify my experience with them as "wonderful", but more like "barely acceptable, but improving..." I, too, experienced the "If you don't like it, go somewhere else", which floored me, but I think it's just the way Jacques (the owner) does business. (BTW, Jacques ran EContinents.com until he sold it a few months ago; United Colo is his new venture.)

They just added another person (doubling the size of their support staff), so they will now have 24/7 coverage M-F, and they are supposed to have additional people for the weekend within the next couple of weeks... and they are adding additional capacity and another Foundry router. But it is what it is (dirt cheap bandwidth, in the "you get what you pay for" model), and if you view it as reasonably reliable (maybe 98-99%) bandwidth, it's been a good value for us.

My take is, I would *never* use United Colo as my primary or only data center, they just don't have the reliability yet... but as a secondary data center for high-bandwidth applications where short downtime is acceptable, they're OK.

Today, for example, I had a server down. I emailed for a reboot, and they emailed back in under 5 minutes and rebooted the server immediately. Of course, the other night, I emailed at midnight, and it took until 3:30 AM to get it rebooted... but that was before their graveyard shift guy started.

And, just for argument, I should say that we used to have a Cobalt at RackShack. We left them after they were unable (after 4 attempts) to provide a factory-fresh OS restore. The first time, we got somebody else's used drive. The second time, they replaced the wrong drive. The third time, they put in the original drive that got rootkitted. The fourth time, they put in a "fresh restore" that had somebody's Pine files and remnants of 2 domains that had been deleted off of the server (which was apparently on the image file from which they burned the drive) and wouldn't guarantee the integrity of the image they were giving us. Prior to that, our experience with RackShack had been excellent, but after 6 days of runaround with an unusable server, we'd had enough.

I also have to say that, as far as network reliability, AIT (www.ait.com) has probably been the best colo we've been with (out of, I think, 5 providers) bar none. Their billing is still pretty awful, and you have to understand that they're a bunch of military types, so if it's not in the policy manual, you WILL NOT get an exception, but if you can handle that part of it, their service to colo customers is quite good, they have very competent network techs in the data center, and I think we had maybe 60 minutes of downtime total in an 18 month timeframe.

My gribes with UC has been documented before. But yes, basically a bait and switch, and total disregard for the customer. One of my 299 order was already through halfway before they answered and mentioned that they are reducing from 100 to 10mbit. My first server also got capped to 10mbit without any notification.

On top of that, they constantly change their terms and conditions, but simply changing their websites. (if you are a risk taker, I suggest you simply take lots of screenshots and such)

And when I was with them, the only thing they can do really during nights is press the reboot button.

The switch from internap to Williams is also a classic example. Changing from something premium to something that's been compared to Cogent isn't what I call an acceptable move.

If you monitor their website, you notice they change the plans often enough and a lot of times they just apply it retrospectively to all clients. In short, they have possibly scant business ethics or morals and in business, where a lot is about trust, they aren't going to get it from me ever again.

Looks like I'l have to ask them for locked in deals.

I doubt they will entertain you. Their standard customer service response is that "If you don't like it, go elsewhere" So good luck there. And I am not paraphrasing, some replies really have that sentence as the reply.

Standard communication between UCG and a customer.

"_____ and ____ doesn't work correctly" -Customer


"its your fault, you are a crappy admin" -UCG


"no im not" -Customer


"maybe you should find a company to better suit your needs" -UCG


fin

also take notice... this vote is not all that good at all... cuz i bet a lotta small hosts and resellers that are jealous because they can't compete in pricing/etc hence they post negative comments...

take note: i have written lots of good and lots of bad about ucg... overall, i say they are a really good bang for the buck... but in the end, its more dependant on the application of the server, not on bandwidth consumption/pricing.

I had a server with them (and I was paying way more than $49) and I must admit that their uptime improved.

The reason why I decided to get rid of the server is because they change policies on you and do not notify you that it changed. They did it once too many times, and legally, I can not run a business that way.

My server started off as Internap, it turned into I don't know what. My server had XX amount of bandwidth and they changed that (increased but I had no idea that happened...it was a fluke I found out). They had a refund policy which they changed - they no longer give refunds they give extra bandwidth which did not suit my needs because there was no way I could all the bandwidth they gave me in the first place.

So I began thinking, if they change policy and don't tell me, what if they change something crucial, like IPs? How they handle spam reports (I was using mine for hosting), etc? I can't run a business that way.

Their support was most times prompt and I never had an issue with the server - and I had my server for at least four months.

Personally, I think you can get a better deal for the money and with a company which is more honest with their customers.

Everything we had posted has been cross-verified and agreed by so many others. So I doubt it's just us especially when we don't even do Dedicated machines usually. Why should we be jealous :)

I had no intentions other than to share my experience as a customer with others, so that they are forewarned. If they still think that it's worth it to take the risk, all the best, but we had warn them.

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=unitedcolo.com