Greetings All!

I'm in something of a bind.

A few months ago, I decided to lease 250 Megs of space under a reseller's account with Site-Host.com. The price and features seemed right... and their speed was definitely fast.

Actually, my original intent was not to resell, but rather to develop several Web-site projects... and just resell "on the side".

You see, I run a small computer users group in my area... plus I have a wide variety of contacts. So, I figured I could occasionally recommend/resell web-hosting.

Meanwhile, I'd work on my other projects and attempt to turn one of them into a money-maker. In a sense, I was attempting to "overlap" a lot of areas and interests in my life in order to get one of them to "take off" successfully on the Web.

Well, since then (and it's only been about three months), I've encountered some problems with Site-Host.com's customer service.:

1) A phone number that doesn't work. When asked about it, they cite how high it cost them to operate it... and that "user abuse" forced them to shut it down.

2) A CGI-mapping outtage that lasted all weekend. Evidently they don't have weekend support that responds to Emails.

3) A mail-server-rerouting feature that doesn't work. I wanted some of my subdomains to have their own email addresses, but this feature is broken and they say they'll have a replacement ready by 07/04.

4) I posted two trouble-tickets online to them early this month. Though they were marked "medium" and "low" criticality, after 10 days, they were still unanswered. After finally getting through to them by Email, they said "our online support script is broken" / they were unable to access my tickets (again, they cited "user abuse"... and I should log them again.

5) In general, when something's broken, I stumble upon it myself. I question myself as to what I'm doing wrong. In the end, I email them, and they either basically say "check our online docs" or "it's broken due to user abuse".

5) Their attitude towards me has consistently been one of "don't bother us -- we don't hold hands". (Not that I was looking for any... just prompt replies to Email and some courtesy.)


It is now come to a crucial point: Yesterday, one of my friends referred his radio station to me for web-hosting... They, when they heard my low rates, are about to refer me to the college they are affiliated with. In fact, I'm suppossed to send them a quote.

The problem is, I'm afraid to put my name and reputation on the line here. I realize that I'd be their customer service, but when I'm in a bind, who do I have to rely on ?

Certainly not my providers.

Well, I still have the space leased for several months... so I can locate a new provider and start moving things over.

My concerns are:

1) I'm not going to get a dime back from my current provider. I sure haven't made any money yet. So, I can't afford to plop down another $500.

2) I'd still like the reseller rights, or at least a hefty referral bonus.

3) Despite the fact that I've located a few good/recommended hosts (FutureQuest, Interland, and DreamHost), I'm not really sure about the customer service of any of them (I'm leaning towards FutureQuest, but they don't give resellers their own nameservers.)

4) I still want a site that will allow me to work as a developer... with cgi, php, and ssi capabilities.

5) One of my project-sites is a perl auction site that shows great potential. For this, I'm going to need something with high-traffic allowances and who WON'T delete my stuff if CPU usage gets too high... I guess that means I want someone who's willing to WORK WITH ME.

Any recommendations ?

Thank you for your time !

-= Dave =-

Act quickly, don't spend time and ruin your own reputation with a company that is clear only going to get worse (trust me I saw dozens of companies, and things never get better only worse). Find another hosting company with low setup fees and NO annual contract, most offer monthly contracts or at max 3 month contracts. FutureQuest does have great customer services and they have a real interest in the industry. Virtualscape are very good for customer service (I was past client before switching to dedicated server).

Search these directories: http://www.hostinvestigator.com http://www.webhostdir.com http://www.tophosts.com (but beware of their Top 25, don't even bother looking at it) http://www.ispcheck.com

You've also gotta ask yourself if a DNS alias is really worth it, most won't check and if they're happy were they are won't move anyway. And even if they you did have them there are at least 3 others way of finding out which you can't mask.

BTW, nearly all hosting companies have cgi/perl/msql/mysql/custom cgi, some just market it more whilst one sites may say "your own cgi" another might say "FULL CGI SUPPORT, LATEST PERL 5, MSQL DATABASE etc...", when basically you just get the same.

Sorry I can't offer any company names etc.. I'll look into it for you and post back tomorrow...

Good Luck :)

We have a reseller program, our reseller site is at reseller.netfronts.com

Chris Marks http://www.netfronts.com

Have you though about a dedicated server, from someone like DigitalNation. I've never used them myself, but their reputation is the best I've seen.

It looks like you have to move anyway, and if you are in line for two major contracts from a radio station, and a college, as well as a high site like you stated, it should pay for itself (I don't know how much your quoting them). You also have complete control over it, so more "user abuse" stories.

As an example, take their base NT rental, reselling 9 accounts on the space would pay for it assuming your charging $50 a month. Just a thought.....

Dave, I can't help you much, but I will just comment on one of your points. Point #5 (the THIRD point 5 at the very bottom of your post)...

Seems you are worried about having that auction site, and I just wanted to mention that unless you are leasing a dedicated server, EVERY host is going to kill an overly active script that is taking too much of a SHARED server's resources.

You may have problems with any host you pick unless you at least realize that a $20 or $30 virtual account, hosted on a shared server, won't necessarily cut it for all sites. Just be aware of this, and request info on high resource web sites, etc. :)

You've also gotta ask yourself if a DNS alias is really worth it, most won't check and if they're happy were they are won't move anyway. And even if they you did have them there are at least 3 others way of finding out which you can't mask

I'm not sure of the ones he was thinking of, but here are some. Note that not all of these will note it in every case, but at least one will:

1) Traceroute. If the web host owns their own NOC, they're going to show up in a traceroute. Even if they don't own their own NOC, there is a good possibility that they'll still show up in the traceroute.

2) FTP access - when you FTP into your site with most FTP programs, it tells you the name of the server you are on. Now, a lot of hosts, especially if they are dealing with a lot of reseller customers, won't indicate identifying info (for example, if you FTP into my company's Mercury server, you'll just see "mercury" as the server name that pops up). In a lot of companies, however, what you would actually see would be something like "servername.webhost.com".

3) E-mail headers (outgoing SMTP) from web page forms - most form mail scripts that come as pre-installed CGI scripts on the web server use the web server's default SMTP servers to send outgoing mail - and these will show up in the headers of the message (for example, a form response sent from our Mercury server would show "mercurymail.hostingsolutions.net" in the header. Yes, if a user installs their own form mail script instead of using the server's included form mail script that won't happen - but most people just use the script we provide.

4) (And this one's completely impossible to avoid) - they can look up the IP address at ARIN. Just by going to www.arin.net, (http://www.arin.net,) clicking the whois button, and entering their IP address. Very easy. For example, if you go there and enter 216.65.34.2 (the address of our primary DNS server), you will see our company listed ("Hosting Solutions"), and also "Maxim Computer Services" which is our immediate upstream provider who issued us those IP addresses.

There are other ways to tell, I am sure - in fact Matt might even have been thinking of others when he posted his post. But this #4, the ARIN whois lookup, is the biggest one, and there's no way around it. Even if the host doesn't have their own Class C or higher (which is what is needed to have that show up in the ARIN database), you can at least see their immediate upstream.

Thanks,

Jason

---
Jason Ellis, CEO
Hosting Solutions, Inc. www.windowswebhost.com (http://www.windowswebhost.com)
Now offering fully Managed Servers!


[This message has been edited by Jason Ellis (edited 06-30-2000).]

The only thing I would add to what Jason said, is that when you use one of these methods, you have to keep a few things in mind.

Things like trace routes and IP lookups generally show the noc that the host is in. It doesn't mean that the host isn't a "true host" so-to-speak. It just means they are leasing servers or colo'ing them in that NOC.

Hopefully you understand the small point I am trying to make. I just don't want you to do one of these, and think BLAH.HOST.COM isn't really a host because the IP address is registered to Digital Nation or Alabanza, etc.