Hi

I'm considering moving my high-traffic website to alwayswebhosting.com and before I do, I wanted to see if anyone here has used them and how good they are. Let me know what you think of their tech support, how often they're down, and what you think of them overall. Also let me know how long you used them. If there's anything else you think I should know, please tell me.

Thanks,
Aster

there is a lot of posts regarding AWH, just search and you will find =)

here is one post

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39834&highlight=alwayswebhosting

Thanks Asian Guy. Waded through a few posts regarding them. Wasn't seeing the negative that I usually do. The way they list the hosting plans is in a fiarly complete manner without all the typical holes and un-answered questions.

I'm pretty happy with what they have to offer. With most hosting plans I've reviewed there's so many unanswered questions not outlinesd in the plan or the TOS that this one as complete as it is has me wondering what the catch is and what questions about it I may be over looking.

So many of these plans are full of loopholes.

My existing host advertises as unlimited, confirmed that to me stating that my needs were well within acceptable. A few months down the line we get mail stating that if we plan to use more than 3 GB of bandwidth this moth we need to make plans to pay for our overage. This after initial confirmation that 50GB or more monthly would be of no issue to them.

So, what I'm really looking for is what's unsaid.

I'm pumped about these guys and really want to be sure I'm not getting right back in the same mess I'm getting away from.
Thanks for your reply

Aster

a friend uses them and has used them quite a bit and i hear nothing but good things about them. enough so i'm actually considering dropping my dedicated box and moving to them. heh.

I may be the only person who wasn't happy with their services. I tried them briefly and was put on a new server which had problems. Even when it was up, I found it slow, though. While I think there may have been only about 1 or 2 hours of total downtime over a weeks time, I found I had a 50% drop in page views. I tried one site on another one of their servers, and that site seemed slow as well.

There also were problems with e-mails, but that likely was just configuration problems with the new server but it took a few days to sort it out, and I totally depend on e-mail.

I found it wasn't worth the possible headaches because I was able to get services that I need at lower costs elsewhere. I don't need the huge bandwidth amounts that are the biggest plus of the plans. The multiple domain hosting is the other big plus, which is what attracted me, but again, it just wasn't for me.

Maybe I just had bad luck, but I'd recommend you ask for some users sites to preview and check out their speed.

They do seem to offer great support, and the new forums they have will only add to that. I do wish them luck, as when they are more established and the servers seem more reliable, I may reconsider them.

I've spoken with the owner of AWH who was very friendly and gave me some good advice. I'd say they know what they're talking about!

--Brian

Hi

I'm interested.
If anyone has a website at alwayswebhosting.com, please provide me a URL to big file (more than 2MB) I will try to test their downloading speed because it's important thing for me.

Thanks.

for me it actually wasn't so much the downloading speed, but the time it took to pull up the pages. I never checked the downloading of a large file.

I used the free tracert.com service and the time to pull up pages was much slower than from my current provider. For the same pages an average speed of 4.7 seconds on alwayswebhosting vs 1.3 seconds on veoweb. It's interesting when I check the pages now, I get similar times between veoweb and alwayswebhosting, so it may indeed be it was just a hardware configuration issue at the time.

I believe they are using single 1gig amd processors on some servers.... is that enough power to handle lots of website clients?

I'm into high end graphics so even dual xeons arent good enough :)
d

Serg - My site has a few large files if you'd like to test :)

My site is iBetas.Net (http://ibetas.net), and there are downloads in the forums for you to test ;)

Hope that helps!

Rick - The problems that you likely experienced were that of server4's problems, which troubled us for a few days, and it is now fixed and you could ask anyone on server4 if they are happy with the current conditions :)

P.S. some current server4 sites include:

http://354design.com/
http://affiliateguide.com/
http://tumppi.com/
http://wrestletrons.com/

FnArFy:
do you work for AWH or is that just a support the company signature?

I work for Ronnie ;)

67.7KB/s.

No complaints here. That was one fast mp3 download!

LOL, I get about 300kbps usualy...

How do you like my music selection?

Suuuuuuuuuuure. Such a guy thing to brag about his big, powerful... uh... connection. hmpf!

Your music is ok. All people I've heard of which is good or bad, depending on your perspective. :laugh:

Originally posted by FnArFy
LOL, I get about 300kbps usualy...

How do you like my music selection?

<<Please email all pre-sales questions directly to the host>>

Pixelchiq - LOL

PennyCentury - 1) I'll ask Ronnie and get back to you ;)
2) Yes, that's possible :)

Pixelchiq - How have you heard of Lucky Boys Confusion?

Ok I missed that one... but they're not good. Like ***reallllllly*** bad. Horrible. I downloaded it here at work and we're all laughing our butts off at it. It's like... Shatner/Nimoy meets Pat Boone bad. :puke:

































... I assume it's yours? heh. I'm only teasing. I didn't listen to it yet. :D

Hey, thats not nice :)

LOL, LBC is a Chicago band who has recently gotten some measurable national airtime...

They are very good, I guess I would classify their genre as "Pop-Ska" or "Pop-Punk."

Heh.

I'm not a nice girl.

:dgrin:

Originally posted by clearstr
I believe they are using single 1gig amd processors on some servers.... is that enough power to handle lots of website clients?

I'm into high end graphics so even dual xeons arent good enough :)
d

you're doing high-end graphics on dual xeons, for web-related applications?? considering the size those files would end up being, wouldn't you end up blocking out the non-broadband side of your clientele with huge page loads?

a single 1ghz proc running a linux webserver can handle a fairly large amount of sites, including large WEB-graphic intensive sites and dynamically driven sites.

i have a raq4 (k6-2 450 processer) with 512mg RAM running only 6 sites, but one of which has over 5200 active users, pushes about 60gb of bandwidth per month and is completely mysql/php (dynamic) driven and the server barely makes a peep even during the busiest of day. i could probably put another 50 or so small - midsize sites on there.

i'm sure alwaysweb tweaks up their boxes well also, so i'm sure they can handle it.

Originally posted by skylab


you're doing high-end graphics on dual xeons, for web-related applications?? considering the size those files would end up being, wouldn't you end up blocking out the non-broadband side of your clientele with huge page loads?



Actually it's mainly a digital stereoscopic uncompressed video/audio editing system whose resultant content could be destined for DVD, web, video etc... Also running 6 ultra 160 15K rpm scsi drives etc.. etc..
It's not used for webserving except for doing streaming occasionally...

Skylab thanks for your post it's helping to educate me a bit about what horsepower is required for hosting. Of course since I mainly use windows machines you know how it is we need at least 8 gigahertz machines just so notepad will boot up :))

d

no problem.

linux is a whole nother world when compared to windows machines. i'm new to it all (only about 8 months expereince), so, at first i was like, "my websites, on a 450mhz processor? you're joking.")

but yeah. it's working out well. i'll be upgrading to a new package here shortly however. probably a 1ghz system (mainly because i'm getting a better deal on bandwidth, not because of the system).

Hi Rick,

I'm sorry you had trouble with us -- You're right, you were placed on server4 that ultimately did have faulty RAM (was replaced asap of course) But this did cause infrequent crashing. This issue has long since been resolved and the server is purring along nicely. I can't remember specifically what issue you were having with email, you could remind me privately if you wish and I can double check what was going on. ;-)

As you mentioned slow loading on multiple servers of ours and veoweb, I believe it could have been a network issue or PC/hardware issue on your end, those are both worth checking. We use Alertra.com for server monitoring (every few min, checks most all protocols) that includes page load time monitoring, and haven't seen any alerts on that in ... ages.

You're absolutely right that the forums are starting to take off, and in conjunction with the FAQs are really starting to be a great source of information.

It might have been just bad luck on your end and ours, but again I can only sincerely apologize for any troubles caused (email is important, you're absolutely right!) Perhaps I could make it up to you with a year of free hosting, if you're game to that. :eek:

(skylab's right, we do 'tweak up' the boxes too :D )

Originally posted by alwaysweb
Perhaps I could make it up to you with a year of free hosting, if you're game to that.

Now that's customer service - you have a private message :)

the alwayswebhosting.com site was down last night and this morning (i am trying to load it as we speak at 11:47am central time). hmmmm.

Uh, dude... ( :nuts: )


... April 01 was like almost 3 weeks ago. :uhh:

its back up...

Suuuuuuuuuure it is. *pat on head*



:laugh:

Hi Gang,

Apache on server1 is coming and going -- We're working on it since it started and should have it going smoothly again soon.

We haven't added sites to server1 in months, nor modified its configuration in any way, so this is boggling to us too.

Please bear with us, thanks!

I'm thinking its a problem with Apache when RackShack tells me its a 'temporary network issue' on their end. I'll keep on them... :(

Sorry Chicken, trying not to support our customers here. :-)

Its back up :D (RackShack had a brief period of network-wide outages)

Ronnie

I just have to add my two cents here.

I have been hiding out in the AWH forums, reading thoughts about AWH here and talking to Ronnie a couple of times (extremely helpful and friendly!) and decided to host there.

So tonight I did the payment thing and I was all set up within 5 minutes.

The server I was put on is extremely fast, very nice.

So so far, two thumbs up :agree:

Thumbs down to date?
Binary Blocks
Aletia
NMF (yearly fee is becoming a full year of monthly fees rolled into one!)
Addr - billing, been waiting on a refund - finally did a charge back tonight :(

I signed on to AWH not too long ago. The tech support and friendliness of the company is top notch. Not often I say that about hosting companies.

The speed has been a little disappointing. There are times when the thing slows to a crawl, or fails completely. I understand that rackshack was at fault for at least one of those days. But not sure about the other days.

So if you want quick tech support with friendly people Id give it the thumbs up. Their tech support response time is quick as well.

The only bummer is the speed of the sites they are hosting (at least on my server). That has been a disappointment. If a really fast server is something you need or desire, you may want to go elsewhere.

Hi DingleBerry,

Thanks for your post (and welcome to WHT!) If you are willing, I would like to work with you off the forums and see if we can determine what slowdowns you are experiencing -- whether its with our servers, your isp, net congestion, etc.

You mentioned the RackShack network glitch the other day but everything is great right now.

I really want to make this right for you, lets talk! What's your domain name, Mr. anonymous? :D