alex-info
04-26-2004, 09:21 PM
Hi !
After many many months of banging my head on the walls trying to find a new host for my 9 domains, I finally found one, and a good one I'm very very coonfident. Here's the whole story (a review of 3 hosts):
Almost a year ago, I moved all my sites at VSHosting.net after seeing many many good reviews about them. I can say that they had NO bad reviews here a this time (a year ago) and this was very very impressive, but they really were GREAT ! The owers were very professionnal and there servers were managed with great attention, uptime was very good, server speed was great... support was lighting fast and very friendly ! I really tought that this was the BEST host in the world, and if the story would have continued this way, I wouldn't be here posting this message :)
But things got bad. One of the owners of VSHosting left (for personnal reasons) and the two remaining owners decided to sell (I don't remember the reason) so the whole company was bought by one of their resellers: Jim. The transition was very smooth, Jim is very professionnal too and he kept the original owners around for a while and everything was pretty smooth. Then it all stared: support got slower and slower, servers got slower too. There was a lot of complains on their forums and of couple of old timers finnally decided to leave after a month of continuous trouble. I felt sad to see them go since I almost kenw "personnaly" some of them (Ryan, Carl) and felt like they were "good friends" (VSHosting's forums were a very very social place at the time, people got to hang around together and have fun together... you really felt a great sense of community there....). But I decided to stay, VSHosting was great when it stared, it had to get better with time, Jim should be able to get it back up, after all, if he bought this great company, it's to profit from it's good reputation, and he should keep it as good as it was before...
5 months later, I realize he didn't. The server I am on ("The bird" as we call it, for thoses who know wich server that is) has "not so good" uptime, and a very very bad load problem (most of the time the load is 3 to 5 but often raises to 8 or 9). Jim told us he'll do something, move some resellers off this server, but we never knew if that happenened or not, since the load problem is still there. Also, MySQL has the bad habbit of dying every 3 to 7 days, andwe have to put in a ticket to have it back up. It happenened a couple of times in the last month and this is very very annoying, but all we get as answer is "It's back up now".
My final review of VSHosting as it is today: SUPPORT: Support response time is getting better (not as bad as it got before), but the support techs are not very helpful or informative. I don't ask them to tell me every details about what they did, but at least tell me you are working on the problem to get it solved. Instead, I feel that they just restart some services and hope tat it won't happen again. SERVERS: Well I am only on one server, and it's not a good server. High loads, slow speed, always dropping connections. It has a bizarre way of "freezing" FTP connections that uploads more that 10 files in a row, after that it may or may not freeze that conneciton and you'll have to reconnect. FORUMS: Well the forums that used to be a great community is not a bad neibourhood, you can see users bithcing at each other, user crying to get help (count me in), it's very very unfriendly.
It was time to move. I am sad because I really tought that VSHosting was gonna be my "last" host (never have to move) but it didn't.
After a lot of researching here, I found CredibeleHost. Bonnie (the owner) is a very very friendly person, and I contacted her a couple of times before opening an account and she was always helpful and professional. So I opened an account.
I only "attempted" to move one site on here server. Just before I redirected my DNS to here server, the server got compromised (hacked) and had to be reformatted. Well, **** happens, so I gave her a chance. Shee took about 24 hours to get it formatted and to reinstall every account, and that is an acceptable time. But then I started to hang aroung in the forum, and I saw a pretty scary pattern going on. Every day, I'd see many thread like "Server X down!" or "Can't fetch mail from server Y" or "Problem Z orn server Z AGAIN!" and this was repeating evryday. Altought the server I am on (freshly installed) did not seem to have problems, it seems that there was many things to do for Mrs Bonnie. Always some server work to do. This scared me for two things: 1- Why do her severs need so much work to be kept up, and 2- Mrs Bonnie is alone to do all that job, and that is a LOT of job ! That scared me away and I cancelled my account with her. That time, I was happy because I got a chance to see the bad things coming before any of my domains pointed to her servers (still hosted at VSHosting while trying to find a new host).
My final review of CredibleHost: SUPPORT: Support time is okay, and Mrs Bonnie is very friendly. BUT! she seems to have a LOT of work to keep her servers up, and that's what scared my away from this company. SERVERS: As I said earlier, my server did not had any problems except it has been hacked in the first week I've been there, but that's not really her fault, if was a faulty PhpNuke installation. But, again, other servers seems to be down often and the same problems seem to repeat again and again ... well that's what I felt while reading all thoses "Down!!" threads in her forums.
Now the fun begins :)
I decided to contact one of the "old" clients of VSHosting. I remembered his domain name so I got to his website and used his contact form. This was the BEST move I ever did ! Ryan (rchost here on WHT) told me about what happend to him after he left VSHosing. Him and a couple of ex-VSHosting clients and together the started NPHosting.net . I quickly checked their website to see what it was, and loved it !!!
Their plans are a little more expensive than what I used to pay at other hosts, so it took me a while to decide to go with NPHosting. For more than a month, I harrassed Ryan with questions, and he was always very happy to answer and made me really feel "welcomed" to swtch to NPHosting. At this time, the only one i "knew" was Ryan, but then I joined their forums and met with Mark (ex-VSHosting owner), Carl (Chicken) and Tech, two ex-VSHosting clients. Together, they run NPHosting. I knew all of them almost personnaly before they left VSHosting, and finding them was a very very good thing. I was very! very! happy to find theses guys again, ask my girlfriend, I was almost euphoric ! That convinced me that I MUST switch to them. They have only one server yet, and there's not that many resellers on it, but they have a great uptime, and the servers is FAST !!!
So I decided to join them. Ryan and the others built me a custom plan (I only needed one GB and their lowest plan was 2GB) just for me! I signed up, and Mark helped me transfer my biggest account to their servers. It's a not-so-busy phpbb forum, and when it was on VSHosting, page loads were in the 3 to 4 seconds range, and now it dropped to less than 0.1 second !!! (Snapshot taken live: Load Averages 0.34 0.45 0.37) Also, no more connetion dropping (web or FTP like I was used to with VSHosting ! Wow, this server is a monster ! It's fast, stable, I did not have ANY issues yet. It's has been only three weeks since I signed up, but thoses three weeks have been very very relaxing, I finally "found" the old VSHosting spirit of friendliness and pure webhosting talent. Theses guys are the BEST at what they do, and they do it in such a friendly manner !
My actual review of NPHosting: Well as I said earlier, its been less than a month since I moved, but thoses three weeks were very promising. SUPPORT: Mark and Carl moved all of my sites from my old Host to their servers. Tickets have always been answered in less than 15 minutes. In fact, one of my "low" priority ticket was resolved in two minutes ! SERVER: Well there's only one server yet, but they promised us that they WILL NOT overload it like many many other hosts do now. In fact, that's the company policy, put enough resellers on the server so that it pays for itself, and stop adding resellers. See their homepage for their exact wording. FORUM: Quite empty yet (not many resellers frequent the forum) but now that I am here, I'm gonna put some more life and fun in theses forums :) STAFF: The friendliest guys I've ever met, VERY professionnal, they know what they are doing.
I understand that their server is quite empty yet, so that makes support, speed and uptime much more easier, but I know theses guys, and I am VERY confident that they will not screw up in any way, I can sleep well now that I know that I am on a good server managed by great people.
I really want to thanks these guys, they are great ! Ryan, Mark, Carl and Tech: THANKS !!!
In a couple of months, I'll update my review of NPHosting (here in this thread) so stick around for more good news !
After many many months of banging my head on the walls trying to find a new host for my 9 domains, I finally found one, and a good one I'm very very coonfident. Here's the whole story (a review of 3 hosts):
Almost a year ago, I moved all my sites at VSHosting.net after seeing many many good reviews about them. I can say that they had NO bad reviews here a this time (a year ago) and this was very very impressive, but they really were GREAT ! The owers were very professionnal and there servers were managed with great attention, uptime was very good, server speed was great... support was lighting fast and very friendly ! I really tought that this was the BEST host in the world, and if the story would have continued this way, I wouldn't be here posting this message :)
But things got bad. One of the owners of VSHosting left (for personnal reasons) and the two remaining owners decided to sell (I don't remember the reason) so the whole company was bought by one of their resellers: Jim. The transition was very smooth, Jim is very professionnal too and he kept the original owners around for a while and everything was pretty smooth. Then it all stared: support got slower and slower, servers got slower too. There was a lot of complains on their forums and of couple of old timers finnally decided to leave after a month of continuous trouble. I felt sad to see them go since I almost kenw "personnaly" some of them (Ryan, Carl) and felt like they were "good friends" (VSHosting's forums were a very very social place at the time, people got to hang around together and have fun together... you really felt a great sense of community there....). But I decided to stay, VSHosting was great when it stared, it had to get better with time, Jim should be able to get it back up, after all, if he bought this great company, it's to profit from it's good reputation, and he should keep it as good as it was before...
5 months later, I realize he didn't. The server I am on ("The bird" as we call it, for thoses who know wich server that is) has "not so good" uptime, and a very very bad load problem (most of the time the load is 3 to 5 but often raises to 8 or 9). Jim told us he'll do something, move some resellers off this server, but we never knew if that happenened or not, since the load problem is still there. Also, MySQL has the bad habbit of dying every 3 to 7 days, andwe have to put in a ticket to have it back up. It happenened a couple of times in the last month and this is very very annoying, but all we get as answer is "It's back up now".
My final review of VSHosting as it is today: SUPPORT: Support response time is getting better (not as bad as it got before), but the support techs are not very helpful or informative. I don't ask them to tell me every details about what they did, but at least tell me you are working on the problem to get it solved. Instead, I feel that they just restart some services and hope tat it won't happen again. SERVERS: Well I am only on one server, and it's not a good server. High loads, slow speed, always dropping connections. It has a bizarre way of "freezing" FTP connections that uploads more that 10 files in a row, after that it may or may not freeze that conneciton and you'll have to reconnect. FORUMS: Well the forums that used to be a great community is not a bad neibourhood, you can see users bithcing at each other, user crying to get help (count me in), it's very very unfriendly.
It was time to move. I am sad because I really tought that VSHosting was gonna be my "last" host (never have to move) but it didn't.
After a lot of researching here, I found CredibeleHost. Bonnie (the owner) is a very very friendly person, and I contacted her a couple of times before opening an account and she was always helpful and professional. So I opened an account.
I only "attempted" to move one site on here server. Just before I redirected my DNS to here server, the server got compromised (hacked) and had to be reformatted. Well, **** happens, so I gave her a chance. Shee took about 24 hours to get it formatted and to reinstall every account, and that is an acceptable time. But then I started to hang aroung in the forum, and I saw a pretty scary pattern going on. Every day, I'd see many thread like "Server X down!" or "Can't fetch mail from server Y" or "Problem Z orn server Z AGAIN!" and this was repeating evryday. Altought the server I am on (freshly installed) did not seem to have problems, it seems that there was many things to do for Mrs Bonnie. Always some server work to do. This scared me for two things: 1- Why do her severs need so much work to be kept up, and 2- Mrs Bonnie is alone to do all that job, and that is a LOT of job ! That scared me away and I cancelled my account with her. That time, I was happy because I got a chance to see the bad things coming before any of my domains pointed to her servers (still hosted at VSHosting while trying to find a new host).
My final review of CredibleHost: SUPPORT: Support time is okay, and Mrs Bonnie is very friendly. BUT! she seems to have a LOT of work to keep her servers up, and that's what scared my away from this company. SERVERS: As I said earlier, my server did not had any problems except it has been hacked in the first week I've been there, but that's not really her fault, if was a faulty PhpNuke installation. But, again, other servers seems to be down often and the same problems seem to repeat again and again ... well that's what I felt while reading all thoses "Down!!" threads in her forums.
Now the fun begins :)
I decided to contact one of the "old" clients of VSHosting. I remembered his domain name so I got to his website and used his contact form. This was the BEST move I ever did ! Ryan (rchost here on WHT) told me about what happend to him after he left VSHosing. Him and a couple of ex-VSHosting clients and together the started NPHosting.net . I quickly checked their website to see what it was, and loved it !!!
Their plans are a little more expensive than what I used to pay at other hosts, so it took me a while to decide to go with NPHosting. For more than a month, I harrassed Ryan with questions, and he was always very happy to answer and made me really feel "welcomed" to swtch to NPHosting. At this time, the only one i "knew" was Ryan, but then I joined their forums and met with Mark (ex-VSHosting owner), Carl (Chicken) and Tech, two ex-VSHosting clients. Together, they run NPHosting. I knew all of them almost personnaly before they left VSHosting, and finding them was a very very good thing. I was very! very! happy to find theses guys again, ask my girlfriend, I was almost euphoric ! That convinced me that I MUST switch to them. They have only one server yet, and there's not that many resellers on it, but they have a great uptime, and the servers is FAST !!!
So I decided to join them. Ryan and the others built me a custom plan (I only needed one GB and their lowest plan was 2GB) just for me! I signed up, and Mark helped me transfer my biggest account to their servers. It's a not-so-busy phpbb forum, and when it was on VSHosting, page loads were in the 3 to 4 seconds range, and now it dropped to less than 0.1 second !!! (Snapshot taken live: Load Averages 0.34 0.45 0.37) Also, no more connetion dropping (web or FTP like I was used to with VSHosting ! Wow, this server is a monster ! It's fast, stable, I did not have ANY issues yet. It's has been only three weeks since I signed up, but thoses three weeks have been very very relaxing, I finally "found" the old VSHosting spirit of friendliness and pure webhosting talent. Theses guys are the BEST at what they do, and they do it in such a friendly manner !
My actual review of NPHosting: Well as I said earlier, its been less than a month since I moved, but thoses three weeks were very promising. SUPPORT: Mark and Carl moved all of my sites from my old Host to their servers. Tickets have always been answered in less than 15 minutes. In fact, one of my "low" priority ticket was resolved in two minutes ! SERVER: Well there's only one server yet, but they promised us that they WILL NOT overload it like many many other hosts do now. In fact, that's the company policy, put enough resellers on the server so that it pays for itself, and stop adding resellers. See their homepage for their exact wording. FORUM: Quite empty yet (not many resellers frequent the forum) but now that I am here, I'm gonna put some more life and fun in theses forums :) STAFF: The friendliest guys I've ever met, VERY professionnal, they know what they are doing.
I understand that their server is quite empty yet, so that makes support, speed and uptime much more easier, but I know theses guys, and I am VERY confident that they will not screw up in any way, I can sleep well now that I know that I am on a good server managed by great people.
I really want to thanks these guys, they are great ! Ryan, Mark, Carl and Tech: THANKS !!!
In a couple of months, I'll update my review of NPHosting (here in this thread) so stick around for more good news !