I read all about them, looked good, had half-decent response times to my emails, bought a 1U rackmount, configured it and it's ready to go... THEN I got a response to one of my emails from someone who was using unitedcolo.com before, and they said they switched from them due to unreliability and bad customer service.

Has anyone dealt with unitedcolo.com before? Are they someone to stay away from? (I'd hate to have dumped all this $ into hardware only to have it go down the tubes after I ship it away)

To add to this... if anyone could tell me of a site currently run off unitecolo, I'll set up Host Monitor on it for a week and report the actual uptime/downtimes of Url requests and pings here. That should clarify all the questions and comments about them.

Their colocation is on a different network. So make sure you get comments from their colo customers. That said, their dedicated isn't much to shout about. I always had issues with their integrity. I didn't stay long.

The best way is to ask those who are currently using it. Or you can try to contact them and see their response.

WOW!! Sprintserve you just really stopped me from sweating over here :) I'd just ordered the 1U off ebay, got it, bought all the hardware I needed, was all set and ready to start up a small web host, got on here, and saw all these HORROR stories about unitedcolo.com - phew, it's good to know there's at least a CHANCE they're colocation isn't as bad as people are saying their dedicated servers are. (I never knew their colo's were on a different net than their dedicateds).

Basically the usage of my box will be personal, with enough people subscribing for simple hosting services to cover it's monthly cost. If I can get 200-300GB out of it and sell off the rest in a way so that it pays the $50/month I'm happy.

So with that said, is anyone colocating with unitedcolo.com ? Obviously computer up/downtime is pretty much as reliable as the person who built and configured the thing... but as far as network reliability for colocating, can anyone comment?

Thanks a bunch!

-- less nervous in St. Catharines, Ontario

As someone who has had a box with united.colo for approx 7 months I think I speak from experience (please note alot of people on this forum are "FUD" specialists.

I would note the following re united.colo:

1 - Their network has experiences issues from time to time, initially they experienced attacks from servers mostly within their own network thus they limited (without consent nor informing existing customers) the port speed from 100Mbit bursting to 10Mbit.

2 - Customer Service I have experienced has ranged from VERY poor to very good.

3 - Customer information re changes to bandwidth suppliers, network information, DDOS attacks and other important information is non-existant - if you want to know something you have to ask.

4 - I would suggest Network uptime from united.colo is in the range of 99.5 - 99.7% in the last 7 months (I would also note some very well known more "favoured" suppliers would be close or below this)

All in all I think they're a good supplier, they have their faults like any others however they provide good value for money and provide an overall good service. I would however say united.colo struggle from a perception problem due to lack of information and an forum community who appear quite fickle.

I would be more than happy to provide anyone with a test file or any other information on united.colo, all I ask is you make up your own mind.

Matt

I think their customer service is pretty decent, depending on what you need. Reboots are pretty fast.. last night at 6am est, my server there went down and needed to be rebooted and it was done within 20 mins after I emailed them. If you are tinkering with the setup, it'd better to wait till 9am pst in case you actually need a tech to login via console to fix something.

I use them with Ensim 3.5 and frankly they have as good uptime as some of the well known.

Here is a default site there you can test.
http://e-secure-servers.com/