Morning all, wouldn't normally of posted, but supanames have been doing my head in.

So, here I am to warn anyone thinking of using them.

The first problem is they restart apache every hour, which means your site goes down for 10 - 40 seconds every single hour.
That and I run a forum on my site, and during this downtime, everyone is logged out, and anyone posting at the time will lose their post.

The second problem might not be such a big thing, but I am with affiliate window, and they have a new product feed (display merchants products on your own site), but to use this, you need to have outgoing http requests enabled, supanames don't.

Im afriad for security reasons we are unable to allow this access as our firewalls are setup in this way to prevent people from using proxy scripts to launch attacks.

Other things bug me about them too, certain 'employes' have ego problems, they're great, were not.

To change your account password, you have to email them a new password, and they change it for you (you can't do it yourself), they say this takes 24 hours. Ive been waiting since June 22nd (several mails sent).

As you can see, im not saying "Don't use them", I just wanted to point out some of the 'bad' points.

So that's about all I can think of at the moment. Now time to find me a new host.

Cheers.

Marc, I have usually heard good things about supanames, however, I was not aware of the apache reboots every hour or charge for password changes.

Maybe this is a recent change in policy for them. If that is the case, I can see quite a few customers complaining.

Regards
Jay

That is a good way to lose customers...Apache reboots every hour? What do they expect to accomplish from this besides drastically reducing their uptime? Charging for passwords is a good one too, I cannot believe that they have gone to this.

You misread me guys, there is no charge for password change

password, and they change it for you

I heard good things about them too, have used them for over a year now, but things have started going downhill.

And the restart every hour, your not the only ones to think it's a joke.

Here what Barnaby had to say

June 20th
>> Marc,
>>
>> All of the companies I have used restart apache every hour - it could be
>called standard practice.
>>
>> As i've said before our own website is hosted on the same server - turning
>over £1million + in sales every year and we've not experience the same
>problems or reports of the same issue as a result of apache restarts - I
>certainly dispute your "up to a minute" comment also - every apache restart
>is recorded in the standard server logs and they don't take anything near a
>minute to complete according to these.
>>
>> I fully understand your points - there are, however, several points to re
>enforce as above.
>>
>> regards,
>>
>> Barnaby Lashbrooke

June 22nd
Marc,

I'm afraid that I am not going to enter in to drawn out and protracted emails with you about how we run our network or servers.

In *my* extensive experience of running a busy web hosting service for over 17,000 users you *do* need to restart Apache because, as good as Apache may be, with millions of hits and website visits it fills up resources and does not let them go again - restarting it helps to clear this resource usage completely and keeps the server operating in a good state. I know plenty of other web hosting providers and friends within the industry who would agree with this statement.

Apache is a great tool - but not too many people have the experience that we do of handling many millions of hits each day with it and those hits being on many different websites running many different scripts and languages. When looping scripts, incorrectly configured .htaccess files and a whole bunch of other factors are taken into account you'll find a restart does Apache a power of good on a regular basis. It's not really the same as someone running it in ideal conditions on their PC which, I dare say, would result in no need for a restart at all.

I would also add that if you ran Apache on a dedicated server with a even few standard traffic websites on it you could probably get away with not restarting it too often - but such scenarios cost more for the benefit of having a server to yourself - there's a whole industry dedicated to providing such solutions as the next step from shared hosting.



Barnaby

Interesting eh.

Sorry for the misread there. It still does not take 24 hours to change a password, much less days to do it.

Well why restart each server unless all 17,000 are on one single server? ;)

opps, sorry about the "charge" comment too...my bad.

Originally posted by CrazyTech
Sorry for the misread there. It still does not take 24 hours to change a password, much less days to do it.

Well why restart each server unless all 17,000 are on one single server? ;)


That's what I was thinking. If they have to restart every hour maybe it's time to start adding more servers to share the load.
Of course I don't have extensive experience of running a busy web hosting service for over 17,000 users

Just go to Clook (http://www.clook.net/) instead!

Nice spam there...

Anyways back on topic, these guys have to be doing something as far as stuffing a server because it seems to me that if a server is filled up without overselling or with a bit of overselling, you still would not need to reboot it every hour.

Well, just thought id let everyone know about the happenings of supanames.

Hope it helps a few people out.

:)

P.S, the server is reset at 5 past the hour for future reference.

Originally posted by GigaBikes
Just go to Clook (http://www.clook.net/) instead!

Gigabikes is just another happy customer, of many, like me of clook :)


Back on topic though... Surely they should just learn not to place so much on one server if the load on Apache is that high?

I was with these guys for 7 months on a Value Pro account.

I hosted a downloaded that was 1.3MB in size, a total of SEVEN people downloaded it.

They suspended my account indefinitely, refuse to answer my support E-Mails and my attempts to transfer the domain out seem to be futile.

This was over almost 6 months ago now.

Now just to continue hosting my site, which at the time was receiving in the region of 60,000 hits every three days [I wish I could repeat that on my current sites <_< ...] I signed up for their Premier Account, just £99.99 per year.

What happened? Well firstly, they do not allow most file types, even on there Premier Accounts, they offer you 400MB / 2GB and call it "The highest specs in the business" and virtually claim that they are the largest company in the world.

On this Premier Account, I also be happened to be hosting my parents site, a fairly successful Stargate SG1 Fan Site. Now they barred all access to the site for no reason, we were not over the space OR bandwidth limit, but it was suspended without reason and warning.

So I go to transfer the domain away to CredibleHost, and is it just me, or do they have the weirdest ever transfer methods?


.com / .net / .org domain names

To transfer away any of the above domain names please follow the procedure below:

1. Please visit www.ukreg.com and signup for a free account, this will then allow you to manage your own domain name(s)

2. Create a signed fax to SupaNames including your domain name, ukreg.com username, postal address, and sitecontrol login information. This should be on letter headed paper, or if you are not an organisation, with your full postal address at the top. It should also be signed. You MUST state a reason for the closure of your account

3. The fax should then be sent to: 0870 125 76 78

4. Please allow 7 working days for all transfers to be completed, and ensure that you check the "incoming transfer" section of your new ukreg.com account.

.co.uk / .org.uk domain names

To transfer away any of the above domain names please follow the procedure below:

1. Please contact your new ISP and ask for their "IPSTAG" - this is a single word all uppercase which will allow them to manage your domain name.

2. Create a signed fax to SupaNames including your domain name, the IPSTAG, postal address, and sitecontrol login information. This should be on letter headed paper, or if you are not an organisation, with your full postal address at the top. It should also be signed. You MUST state a reason for the closure of your account.

3. The fax should then be sent to: 0870 125 76 78

4. Please allow 7 working days for all transfers to be completed


So we try and try to transfer away, it's been three months.. we'd kind of like both of our domains back ;)

Now don't get me on to their speeds. I'm running a 576KBPS connection, and I was uploading at sub 2kbps speeds, I tried it from my schools connection [Multiple ISDN / Sponsored T3 Line]. What did I get? 3KBPS. I decided to test the connection to see if it was my fault, on both a DL and an upload. At home, I got a 51KBPS upload to another host, and a 140KBPS DL.

In school? I don't remember the exact speed, it was just plain fast.

Conclusion? Supanames is hell.

PS: Any suggestions on the domain issue? One's a .com.. the other is a .co.uk

Is he trying to say they have 17,000 clients on one server ?

TAH-Max shiveres

Oh' may I add, they claim their Reseller Accounts state of the art. What do you do? Sell someone a standard account ;/ and claim it's you doing it.

Edit: They once claimed a hack attack on their servers, and the reason everything was down for so long was because they were checking 8 months of logs. What would logs from before the attack happened help with!?

I love they way they say this:
Im afriad for security reasons we are unable to allow this access as our firewalls are setup in this way to prevent people from using proxy scripts to launch attacks.

And then, if this is indeed their policy, this:

To change your account password, you have to email them a new password

So you cannot retrieve via a http port (for a news feed, or something like PayPal IPN) for "security reasons", yet they're happy to compromise your site by insisting you e-mail your new password to them in a nice clear-text e-mail!

I also love this one:

Please allow 7 working days for all transfers to be completed

For transferring a .co.uk domain, when it takes them all of 5 seconds to e-mail a PGP signed e-mail to the NOMINET automaton which processes the tag transfer within a few minutes.

You can work out yourself on this forum what "normal hosting practices are" and what you should do about a host that operates outside of them.

The only reason I've ever heard of having to do this is because of low memory on a server. Why can't they do a reload instead of a restart anyway?

And to think, before my problems started, id heard nothing but good things about supanames.

Didn't need to move my domain away from supanames, as I had the domain I needed one oneandone.co.uk and used ockywhite.co.uk (which is on supanames) to host eryc.

Confused ?

Basically I was just being cheap when I started the site.

ockywhite is still on supanames, but im just going to let it expire, and eryc is now with 100megs.

Good luck with your domains. When I moved eryc.co.uk, it was all done in 4 days (from the start to finish), but ive never moved a .com.

:)

Hi

Juts read this thrad coz someone had the temerity to post a 'get your act together or else' message on the SupaNames forums. Can't see Barnaby leaving that one up for long!

A recent email letting me know that my four domains were being moved to another (differently configured) server (the old server was seriously in need of it) let me know they had 17,000 customers.

SupaNames also state they take over £1m ($1.5m) a year. Based on what they charge, that would probably suggest 20-40,000 domains.

Each server is numbered, and I think they have 10 or 11. Work the sums out for yourself as to how many domains are on each server. Based on what I know of these servers, that suggest a minimum overselling of space of 100%.

I know my accounts do not use anywhere near their space, so that is entirely possible. No wonder they have to re-boot every hour, the system resources would drain away in no time with open mySQL connections alone!

The funniest thing is that their servers are in London, but they are based in Birmingham (UK). They recently had a major power failure and it took hours to get an engineer on site to start to repair the damage caused to the servers.

As to how long they take to change the IPSTAG on a domain, I asked for the change on Wednesday and it happened today, less than 48 hours. Not too bad.

My account with ************ is up and running. It costs less than half what SupaNames charge, and is so much better specified to make a comparison would be to compare a Porche to a Neon.

I don't doubt SupaNames make a healthy profit, but they won't if they haven't got any customers, and the way they are going they won't have. Once the pyramid starts collapsing, down it tumbles.

Barnaby is so 'pissed' at the number of complaints now aired on the support forums (he says they should be directed via email to suport) that he is 'threatening' to stop posting on the forums.

They USED to be good, but I doubt they will last long unless they change their attitudes. One support email I got berated me for criticising the lack of response and explanation I was getting and said I wouldn't get any help UNLESS I grovelled. I did. And they still didn't help me. I left.





Trevor

Yeah, that was me, thought I would give them a piece of mind in the hope lots of other people would see it before they did :) They soon moved it to their private forums though.

It's a shame they have gone so far down hill, I used to recommend people to them but not I would point everyone in the opposite direction. It isn't just people like us who are annoyed with them either, people who are either afraid to speak up, can't be bothered or people who aren't that bothered but think it is a bit of a sham, also think that their quality of service is now bordering on an "abysmal" level.

1500 users on a server is obscene as well, perhaps invest some of that 1 million they seem happy to brag about in some new servers, a few capital costs are hardly going to drag down "The Market Leader in good value hosting"

Do not use this company, at least until they have sorted themselves out.

I must say i had a healthy laugh while reading this thread.
Okay, i guess that's the worst hosting company i ever heard of. Isn't it? :P

Thanks for heads up - I was about to go with supanames and only googled them to find a promotional code for discount which is how I found your warning! Am thinking easyspace is more my pace now.

Thanks for heads up - I was about to go with supanames and only googled them to find a promotional code for discount which is how I found your warning! Am thinking easyspace is more my pace now.

Mr Original post was years ago, so I cannot say that my comments have any relevence to how things are now.

Personally, I use mkoh (my kind of host), who often do offers in this forum.