At the new year I decided to go with dialtone as our new server provider.

The seemed to get good reviews and the offer price was good. Since then they seem to have experienced the curse of Interland.

They are very slow to respond to tickets, when you ring them the tech support guys just don't seem to know there stuff.

As in all I have that weird feeling inside that tells me it’s all going to end horribly.

We are launching a very important new site soon and the past while the thought of the server going down and dialtone not giving a damn is keeping me awake at nights.

So I am contemplating switching to another host before we go live.

From reading the reviews/posts it seems the best managed hosts are Servint and Fastservers, but which one to choose?

From looking at the sites fastservers seem a more professional operation, there is not much info on the servint site.

I am happy to pay around $500 a month for a linux server.

Does servint offer a backup service?
Most of the sites users are based in the UK and Ireland, does anyone of them have a speed edge to Europe?

The main thing I want is a good managed service with excellent customer support. I am a linux newbie so I would prefer a host that does a lot of the patching, admin for you, the PSA service of fastservers (http://www.fastservers.net/dedicated/monitoring.shtml) seems interesting, do they actually do this or is it just sales talk?

Thanks in advance.

Brian

Servint speeds to Europe is fairly fast. And for sure, you won't get the same issues such as unknowledgable techs.

I have not been with FastSErvers so I can not comment on them. However, in ServInt's case, send Reed (goes under the name here of BobFarmer) a PM or an email (caldwell@servint.com) and ask what kind of a deal they can give you. He might be able to work something out for you.

As for support, ServInt answers the phone in two rings. I have frequently spoken to Jorge who is more than competant as well as a few others (Giles most recently) but I forgot a lot of their names. Leslie is a very nice woman who contacts me about billing.

Email turn around time I have found to be under 10 minutes. Usually the response is "No problem, took care of it. Anything else?" as oppsed to "I'm looking into it, I will get back to you in a day or three". Frankly, I've been places where the last response was the norm. Its nice to know at ServInt, that I have not heard that. I've head only the first.

Yes ServInt's website is lacking, but I guess its not something they put too much of a priority on. I prefer the lack of Flash and glitz, but yes, it could use a little more to it.

The backup service? Email Reed or send him a PM. You would need to talk to him about that.

I don't know if FastServers comes thorugh on the PSA. I would assume they do waht they say they do. ServInt does the same. Quite often I'll notice they have logged in to the server at teh same time as me and I call them up and ask if something is wrong that I haven't noticed and I usually hear "Things are fuine, just patching a few things, don't mind us."

$0.02

I was also considering fastservers.net. I didn't like the fact I had to pay the hosting fees quarterly, and I do not like paying monthly or quarterly for extra hardware. Servint hosting fees are month to month, (with a $199 setup fee in my case) and one time hardware upgrade charges. For example, Servint charges a one time fee of $150 for an extra 80 gb hard drive and Fastservers.net would charge $75 per quarter for a 60 gb hard drive.

I am sure fastservers.net is worth it, as they have a great reputation. But these main two factors weighed heavily in my decision to choose Servint over Fastservers.net.

Servint all the way.
Its a fully managed server against a personal administrator that gives you only some time per month.

In my experience, Servint has been great. Uptime and speed has been excellent.

A few months ago i was in your shoes, chosing between Servint and Fastservers and i can tell you now that you cant go wrong with Servint.

Just make a search and you will find recent issues with fastservers and downtime for almost a day i think.

Fastservers is a great provider in my opinion, but servint is a lot better. I dont use phone support, just email, and they have almost all the times a quick response.

Regards

Yep same here ....
ServInt has been more than great to me.
If your looking for reliability and great Support for a good price, your definitely right there! You just can't go wrong ... i love them since more than half a year :)

Originally posted by iago
Servint all the way.
Its a fully managed server against a personal administrator that gives you only some time per month.


What does that mean? I can't imagine servint have a guy sitting staring at my server all day ;-)

Can you give me some examples of how fully managed would be different from what fasthosts would offer?

Thanks

Brian

To be honest I am verring more towards fastservers.net at the moment. If not that I have anything against servint but fasthosts are looking good for the following reasons:

-Aaron was very quick to respond to my sales query (5 mins and it was a sunday) and he has been very helpful. Not that the servint people have not been helpful, if just kind of Aaron nabbed me first.
-The fastservers website makes them look a more professional opperation. It shows you the power the WHT has ,I would not even consider servint if I just had there site to go on, but all the recommendation from WHT make me consider them.
-fastservers have a UK freephone number.

The spec and price from both is simialar. Aaron is offering me a monthly contract from the start although the setup cost is a bit higher.

Is it the case that both are equally as good?? There is a lot of favourable comment from servint customers, are no fastserver customers going to give their viewpoint?

God I hate making decisions :confused:

Brian

From what I've heard through reviews of both and friends who use ServInt they are better, but cost a lot more.

I hosted a server at Servint for almost 2 years...

Overall, service was excellent. I didn't run into too many big problems, but they were great... very very fast responses. Helped out with whatever I needed.

I started looking for a new host about 7-8 months ago because of rising hosting costs. My servint plan didn't include enough bandwidth for my needs and I was increasingly paying more for bandwidth charges. I settled on Fastservers and have been with them since.

Cost of hosting dropped dramitically. Support has been fine. I haven't required too much additional support... but they are timely in their responses and assistance. So, no complaints at all with Fastservers.

You should price around... but last I checked, Servint was significantly more costly - especially when you include significant amounts of bandwidth. They may provide more support however, if you have more extensive support needs.

arn

Originally posted by leftofcentre
What does that mean? I can't imagine servint have a guy sitting staring at my server all day ;-)

Can you give me some examples of how fully managed would be different from what fasthosts would offer?

Thanks

Brian

I am with ServInt now since 1997 and always only had the very best service with them.
As far as I know the servers are pinged every few seconds and the NOC is informed
immediately when your server doesn't respond or is down. If there is a problem and I call
the NOC they are usually working on it already.
In the 5+ years I am with them my server was down I think only 3 or 4 times (for a few minutes) and that
is 5 star service which I think is unbeatable.

Their web page may not look that fancy but what really counts is their service and the people behind it.
Every body can make a nice web page to sell servers, but it will not increase the performance
of the network or the knowledge of the techs.

Regards,
Mike67

I would prefer servint all the way. There is another post about servint somewhere recently . They are proactive in there support and as far as backup they do provide very good backup system.

Dont go for the price they have onthe website. I will say wait for few days if u can they are having a very good Special coming up as my friend talk to them. Lets just say its better then the one they had before ofcourse a very little bit more pricy though but under $400 with 600gb transfer :)

sorry, duplicated post ;)

Yep, Mike is right about the website. It may not have a lot of whistles and stars. Maybe they can just buy a nice template from *************** :)

The fact is that the service has been great. Many custumers have compared Servint with Rackspace and some others say Servint is even better than Rackspace.

I have contacted for support at 3 or 4am and received almost always a fast response.

So, it even seems theres a guy looking at my server 24/7
lol :cool: , that would be really nice....

Servints support is also more flexible than FS, read the FS sla and you will see what issues are covered.

I havent had yet an outage issue with servint, but i did see here the problems that some costumers had with FS regarding servers down for more than a day because of the SQL worm. At servint i didnt notice any downtime (though my bandwidth showed an extra 100 gigs of transfer but i was not charged for that extra amount that was provoked by the worm)

Still, i have yet to see servints service when i have a real critical situation, thats when you really appreciate your providers quality. Until now i can say it has been excellent, though, as i said in other posts, i would like them to have more cpanel knowladge, because sometimes i have to open a ticket directly with cpanel to have an issue fixed, and cpanel support happens to be reeeealllly slow :(

Maybe you should send a message to Reed (BobFarmer), he is a very nice guy and maybe you can work a deal.

Thats just my experience with Servint. I would like to hear some comments about FS and also (if they even are) some bad comments about Servint. :rolleyes: ,... sometimes bad comments help you on a decision, just make a search, and if you find some bad posts please put the link here, lol,.. i have to see that!

By the way, how many servint clients are here on WHT? I always notice Acronym boy, big will, sprintserve, on servints related posts.... anyone else out there?

Regards, and let us know your final decision and experience about your new host :)