They do have support. But it takes ages to get anything fixed/worked out. If you are looking for decent support, I assure you STAY AWAY from this dedicated provider.

I have some tickets that are open for. "DRUM ROLE" ** 3 DAYS **!!!

Even phone support these days takes ages, they demand you have a support ticket and then once you tell them you do, they say a tech is working on it now. WHICH is obviously a lie because usually it takes an hour later before you see something logged in to fix the problem.

Network = B-
Support Responsiveness = D+

Also another factor which makes it a real hassle is these techs do NOT know how to setup servers. They don't know how to mount partitions properly, setup bootloaders, and the servers in general. Because they move too quickly to support all sorts of control panels, their techs screw up the setups. What you end up is an inferior server setup that just crashes frequently (as seen by the numerous post on WHT). Sure it won't cause problems immediately but later down the track when you have CUSTOMERS. That's when you lose a lot of money.

If anyone here is looking for critical or even decent hosting, you better run FAR away from this company. They are all about numbers now, its no longer about providing 'good service'.

Now some of you would argue that we deserve to get this quality of service for the price we paid. HOWEVER, the server I am paying for now is well over $300/mo! That is definately not regarded a "cheap" solution.

With regards to downtime, they have very small quirks of downtime, most people would not notice. Unless you have a game server or a monitoring server.

Let me know your tivket number and we will try our best to get this resolved for you.

They have been pretty good for me in the last 2 days. Had my server name changed within a half hour. Although I do agree some help tickets can take a long time.

I just got a TC server at ThePlanet.
So far, things are as expected.
The initial setup was fast, have a few loose ends that should be tied up shortly. (I had them harden the box so it caused some reschedules)

I've moved a couple sites over to test it under load, so far, so good. no kabooms from the RHE/Cpanel/Dual Xeon issues others have noted.

Support ticket responce is a little slower than I would like, but I'll rate the phone support as acceptable.

The box wasn't as setup as I would have prefered, and my own inexperience in completing things caused me some grief. Once I got that straightened out (by calling and driving someone nuts with my cluelessness until I had the fix straight :) ) everythings falling into place.

I'm planning on moving additional sites over next week once the backups and other bits are fully operational.

So far, so good. :)

I have no complaints. I use their ticketing for none critical issues. And I call for the tough ones. That has been working for me.

No major issues yet. I appreciate the fact that they do not rush to close tickets. They first confirm that the problem is solved before closing the ticket. A very refreshing difference from other companies I am with the close the ticket before the problem is even confirmed to be fixed.

I will admit I have been with them only for about 3 weeks. So I do not know how they will hold out long term. But I definitly like the fact that I can talk to a tech who will have direct access to my server.

David

I opened a ticket today about a CPanel license problem and it was resolved in 4 minutes. I wasn't expecting that, especially considering the number of complaints about them here lately.

I've only needed to contact them a few times in the past (just simple stuff like reverse DNS), but never waited too long or had to call them to speed things up.

But then again... I haven't had any problems with managed.com support either, so I must just be lucky. ;)

Agreed that ThePlanet has been on the decline in terms of technical support, however I have never had any problems getting a response within 12 hours, which in most cases is all I require (for gameserver) so nothing really important going on here.

same here w/ the tickets. I had tickets open for weeks, and I'd post "whats going on?" "anything yet???" everyday...i think those ended up taking almost 2 full weeks to get a response. (It was a reply to their ticket). I still have a ticket open w/ them thats about 5 hours over the 2 day limit, pretty sad support IMO :/

If you call them a few times it usually gets the ticket escalated..

If I had started out at SM as a dedicated newbie, it would have been disastrous.

However, this was not the case. I ordered my 6th dedicated box in December and decided to go with them. That said...

Kaith, I hear what you're saying, and the initial WHM set-up took a little doing. However I had that resolved within about an hour and sites running on the box within 2 hours. We're actually writing tutorials for our dedicated clients so that they don't have to flounder as you and I did at first :) they will have something to pick up with at Square One.

Server was set-up fine, no complaints there. It has run like a champ although I did have one kernel panic last week ... neither I, nor Karen at ServerMatrix, nor Mike at cPanel were able to account for the cause of the panic. I am not flipping out about it. Sheeeit happens. Hasn't recurred, no errors, no oopses, everything's fine.

Support: I was getting fairly irritable with support times in December and January. However having now watched other 'premier' dedicated companies' support time and quality tank over the last 4 months, I recognize SM's times as being acceptable and quality as being just fine. As a fairly advanced admin and with an advanced admin team behind me, there is very little we can't handle or diagnose remotely. By the time we get to that point, we already have a ticket open and are working with Advanced Tier techs.

I have no problem with opening a ticket for an issue. Welcome to web hosting. We prefer the same of our customers as well.

SM has a 2-ring SLA on phone support and in my experience has met it flawlessly. It is the way to assure you get prompt support on an urgent issue. ;) I don't abuse phone support, I realize others have higher priority needs than mine at any given moment, so I am happy to prioritize my own tickets as well. Not everything gets a call.

Of the calls, all we've placed have been handled beautifully. Karen is outstanding both in knowledge and in service style. :) She rebooted the box and resolved some odd errors, restored service, and updated our ticket, within 30 minutes. Having done contract work for data centers I recognize this as very efficient work. :)

The second call was placed only because our IP request on a box sat with no activity for a full 24 hours and we had 90-some sites to migrate in within the coming 2 hours. ;) Troy had us fixed up within 20 minutes. Very nice fellow.

This week we also asked to schedule a RAM upgrade on a server. One particular tech seemed to "own" our ticket and even made the offer to pop the RAM in "any time tonight, I'm here all night, if you don't need it scheduled in advance it would only take about 15 minutes and I'd be happy to do it for you." Like, how nice is that! :) It was a very friendly and thoughtful offer, the kind of personal touch that makes me feel important and valued. I had to ask this tech to schedule the time because we did have live clients on the box; he happily obliged and took the box down at exactly the time he mentioned in the ticket. The box was down 9 minutes, came back up perfectly, and with a very nice confirmation note.


Basically we have just reprogrammed our expectations a little bit. If it is not so urgent, we let it sit. If it is more urgent, we place a call after an appropriate period of time. Yes, I have had tickets sit 3 days, and for some tickets that is perfectly fine. In some cases it was not, and I complained, and in every instance the ticket was mis-assigned. Well guess what, I have screwed up and mis-assigned/tagged a ticket or two in my tenure too. ;) It's not as if I can't relate.

SM's cPanel support is nothing to write home about. However again our tech support is at the stage where we simply open tickets directly with cPanel rather than bothering SM about it. Our team is very familiar with the guts & workings of cPanel and its backend, and by the time we need help, SM would be a redundant step. So in this case, it's no biggie. ;)

Anyway there's our experience thus far. I understand our server hardware and OS has been a smooth sail, I would simply have to hope we would get some help if there was trouble in that arena. So far I have personally not experienced anything to suggest we wouldn't get it.

Edit: forgot to mention, the SM forums are a wonderful resource as well. ;)

:D bailey b.

And what you will say about suppport from EV1?

Originally posted by exstudio
And what you will say about suppport from EV1?

If I am not mistaken EV1 is an unmanaged service provider so you can't compare SM and EV1 ;)

On SM it is possible to reserve only a standard configuration? Or it is possible a configuration under the order?
And it is bad that at SM setup there are 99 dollars.
Interestingly, what difference in capacity of channels EV1 and SM?

Originally posted by BVS
Let me know your tivket number and we will try our best to get this resolved for you.

Are you now representing ServerMatrix here?

Originally posted by Matt
Are you now representing ServerMatrix here?

I am not representing ServerMatrix here, we are their resellers and we try to help around thats all...if it is against the forum rules I apologize for the inconvenience done and you can delete my post.

And it is bad that at SM setup there are 99 dollars.

How do you figure? Every stage of a server set-up is physically labor-intensive -- from analyzing and establishing inventory, ordering parts, building each server, formatting each drive, loading the OS and control panel. That's if it all goes right. cPanel can be a beast to install. (Can be, isn't always)

If you choose the $99 set-up, you will make up the difference between the $49 set-up and the $99 set-up in cheaper monthly fees, within 2-3 months. From then on, the savings is all gravy.

Their prices are already plenty competitive, it's not showing much foresight to expect them to give away the farm for everything.

Interestingly, what difference in capacity of channels EV1 and SM?
Have a look on their websites..... it's all there.


:D Bailey

We just had to wait an hour for a reboot. 20 minutes after we got an update saying the reboot was being done. I am highly annoyed right now.

there great i love there network,prices and hardware and as far support its slow some times but if you cant handle running a server i recomand going fully managed

server1
-bash-2.05b$ uptime
09:59:14 up 37 days, 21:25

server2 "new"
-bash-2.05b$ uptime
10:00:58 up 12 days, 5:22

I've experienced the same slow support from SM.

Something that needs to be remembered is you get what you pay for. If you want answers to all your support requests in under 5 minutes you're going to have to PAY for that service.

Hourly support charges can be expensive, but don't expect to get great support at the lowest possible prices.

learn how to manage your box properly and you wont need to run to support everyday. I understand they sell managed services and could be quicker with support, at the same time being self proficient will save you time and money. Ive actually found sm to be rather fair with there offerings.

Learn to how manage your box? Oh please! :stickout:

What happens when their boxes had some faulty hardware in it or waiting hours for a reboot. I guess if we learn how to manage our box we can magically login and fix it outselves ;) I don't think we have a problem "managing boxes" we have several good techs here, I think the problem is more how long we are waiting for them to fix issues.

Originally posted by case
learn how to manage your box properly and you wont need to run to support everyday. I understand they sell managed services and could be quicker with support, at the same time being self proficient will save you time and money. Ive actually found sm to be rather fair with there offerings.

Their support has some issues but I would not give their network a B- Their network has been great for us.

Rob