..... is over!

Supposdly the party was good while it lasted. :)

Not with 9 threads, over 5000 views and 200+ messages. I don't think it's going away anytime soon.

I'm kind of enjoying watching the downward spiral of a company that most, at least myself, thought was the best or one of the best companies out there.

Can't wait to see what happens next. :D

It amaze me how a single company can do such a weird decision and get so much flamed... from the heave straight down to hell in 15 minutes.

ouch.

Originally posted by MikeA
I'm kind of enjoying watching the downward spiral of a company that most, at least myself, thought was the best or one of the best companies out there.

Can't wait to see what happens next. :D


*wonders if it is part of a P.R. campaign?* Remember when Coca-cola decided to stop making 'original' Coke?

Uh .. Please, it will never go away even it won't fade away :D

BTW, chicken, why not setup http://www.voteforchicken2000.com ? :)

Originally posted by Chicken
>>> VOTE CHICKEN - WHT MODERATOR 2000 <<<
Motto: He won't ban you, unless you bloody well deserve it!

ROFL....You kill me sometimes :D

Originally posted by Félix C.Courtemanche
It amaze me how a single company can do such a weird decision and get so much flamed... from the heave straight down to hell in 15 minutes.

ouch.

*lol* you have to admit the internet is a quirky beast at the best of times. There's nothing like millions of people all hooked to each other with instant communication to spread the working of a company - especially one so highly regarded as our friends of 'that A company'. Instant gratification is something we're all pretty used to these days, and soon as someone pokes us in the eye, it's easy to voice disgust to thousands of people, and spread the word worldwide in a matter of minutes.

You would have thought they'd take that into consideration. *lol*

Greg Moore
http://www.akashik.net

voteforchicken2000.com I like that! Though just a few short months and that domain'll be done with (not to mention a day before Matt decides).

Chicken thinks back to the time when people on horses had to relay news verbally. Ain't like the old days. Now-a-days you have to watch out for ONE bugger who'll post something on one board. My my my, could spread like mad. Just another thing companies have to deal with these days I suppose.

Chicken,

What is your email address so I can send you a surprise :)

chicken/NO@SPAM/woobster.com (take out the /NOSPAM/)

*loves surprises* is it a BIGGGGG box? I like BIG boxes :)

Done send the surprise email :D

I think that calling what has happened here a "downward spiral" of alabanza is a little extreme. They raised their prices, and lost some customers as a result. Thats really all that happened. It may result in the downward spiral of a few of the smaller hosts that are unable to absorb the price increase, but it isn't really a downward spiral for alabanza.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

Brendan,

Either you are not a customer of Alabanza, or you don't have many web sites under your belt. What if gasoline prices where all of a sudden raised to $5 bucks a gallon just because the oil companies wanted to make more money? Hmmm... You'd call that price gauging (sp?) and the government would step in to prevent it.

What makes Alabanza's current price increase extremely unfair is the fact that they are not grandfathering it with their current customers.

If nothing else, the downward spiral is an ethical and moral issue. They no longer can be trusted and they've displayed the fact that they care more about money (as in greed) than they do their customers.

Alabanza has backed their customers into a corner. As a result, they may have a very big suprise in store for them that can very well make them lose over half their customers if not more. Time will certainly tell...:)

Try buying gas for that price in the uk then lol if u think thats unfair.

Originally posted by Deacon What if gasoline prices where all of a sudden raised to $5 bucks a gallon just because the oil companies wanted to make more money? Hmmm... You'd call that price gauging (sp?) and the government would step in to prevent it. Apples and oranges. Alabanza, or any one host, raising prices is analogous only to one oil company raising their prices. A valid comparison using "the oil companies" could only be made if Alabanza acted in coordination with a coalition of providers, and they all raised their prices.


Alabanza has backed their customers into a corner. As a result, they may have a very big suprise in store for them that can very well make them lose over half their customers if not more. Time will certainly tell...:) Right, time will tell. As of now, though, it certainly doesn't appear that they'll lose "half their customers." Consider for one thing that the hosts represented in this forum make up a very small percentage of Alabanza's customer base, and those that aren't here or someplace similar aren't seeing the organizational efforts that this small minority is. The hosts whose management is active in the forums aren't necessarily representative of the rest.

And even at that, over at the hostcoalition.org forum there's an ongoing thread titled "Anyone staying?" I just took a count of the posts, one host is leaving and seven are staying at Alabanza (count my company, and make it eight). A few of those staying also have or are getting servers elsewhere and some are "keeping their options open" but nowhere is there a sign of a mass exodus.

And if there was, nobody would know it better or sooner than Alabanza. If the new policies they've implemented turn out not to have the effect they want, whatever that is, they'll change them again.

[Edited by JayC on 09-29-2000 at 01:37 PM]

We also are sticking with alabanza... I dont think theyre going to lose many customers at all. Maybe piss some of them off, but not lose them.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

Originally posted by Brendan at HostRocket
We also are sticking with alabanza... I dont think theyre going to lose many customers at all. Maybe piss some of them off, but not lose them.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com


See Brendan (this is not directed to you, but to all people who think that Alabanza is still the bomb), the $1.00 isn't the bad part, though it isn't a good part either. The part I don't like is that we are paying probably the second (I say probably because I think the highest is verio, then Alabanza) prices for servers and bandwidth. When I signed up, I thought that the high prices was for the incredible control panel (which incidently is very buggy at the moment).

But it turns out that the $800 (I pay the $400 right now) is just for the server and NOT the control panel. I'm sorry but that server is not worth $800. Who else on the Internet charge $10 per GB of bandwidth? Also an extra 9GB of HD space isn't worth $95 extra a month. I don't even come close to using what I have now.

Lets look at the facts. This is not slamming Alabanza, these are FACTS:

Support has slid into the toilet. I sent an e-mail last Thursday, fixed the problem myself by Saturday, then got an e-mail Monday night that the problem had been fixed.

Control panel is buggy as heck. I had a problem with a domain that only deleting and recreating would fix. I deleted the domain and it failed on removing the java servlets (which they didn't install). This is the support issue above.

They said we are getting lots of new things out of this. Like what? I have seen nothing except the new web mail. Everyone at Alabanza is tight lipped. Why is it such a big secret? If these features are so good, tell us.

MAJOR LAYOFFS. A company that is in the black shouldn't lay off it's entire sales staff. I heard that they canned over 20 people.

Notification of upgrades don't always happen. My sendmail was upgraded to the new pop auth and I've never been told. While this is not a critical thing, it would be nice to know.

Lots of downtime. Lately the servers and routers have been having problems resulting in sites being down.

So what's gonna happen? Well I don't know. We are going to ride this tidal wave out and see what happens, but I'm NOT putting all of my eggs in the Alabanza basket anymore. I got another server (from ultraspeed) and will start putting clients on that server until we see what Alabanza's plans are. As for people leaving, no, not that many are, but SEVERAL have gotten a server from Ultraspeed.


[Edited by MikeA on 09-29-2000 at 05:18 PM]

The control panel is worth more than $1 each however, especially if you factor in the money saved by the automation of account management and billing, along with reduced support because of a good control panel. Comprable control panel software (sphera) for instance is signifigantly more expensive.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

This is $1/mo right? i.e. $12/year

How much does sphera cost per domain per year?

David

Originally posted by diyoha
This is $1/mo right? i.e. $12/year

How much does sphera cost per domain per year?Per year, $48. Sphera Corporation, by the way, is the company name; the product is Hosting Director.

JayC .. Sphera's CP costs 48$ a year per domain ?, wow that's not cheap, but hey, there are other options out there, becides, I do believe the albanza CP is worth the 1.00 .. but the server is NOT worth 800.00 (the server with 500 IP's and 500 CP ... maybe ;)