I have been with SonataWeb for more than one year, here is my review when I signed with them:http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=334924

I feel after completing one year with them, I can to some extent properly assess their services by now.:stickout

Customer Support: it has been excellent. The sonata team is very helpful and demonstrates high degree of energy and commitment to help me out with stuff. Though, there was very little opportunity wherein I needed their support. The recent support I availed was to restore database of a phpbb forum of one of my site, that got hacked (of course, I failed to upgrade the forum software), the support was very quick and within few minutes the site was up and running. Frankly I have yet to receive any canned response from them.

Reliability: Very high, I have nearly no downtime; the only downtime I faced was fractional during transfer of my account from one server to another. I learnt they constantly patch and keep on upgrading their software to ensure 99.999% reliability.

Speed – Excellent, I have not faced any issue with respect to speed. Only issue that I faced was few months back that lasted for about a week (Some DDOS attack). However, that was taken care of swiftly and I was moved to a new server.

Value for money: Absolutely! I took a custom package to host score of my websites and am able to recover every penny of money spent.

Concerns: Hmmm for sure it seems that are cropping in my mind, now as I have completed one year with them and have paid for the services. I am beginning to think for what I paid for; on average I just used their support services once in three months, damn it they are so damn perfect that they never gave me a chance to brash, thrash, or to do any blah blah… feeling so lonely…:erm:

Anyway, as mentioned in my earlier post, I think I am spoilt by now with their services and support. I will give them 9.9 out of 10 for their contribution in spoiling me!

Great show Terry, keep it up! :beer:

Good to hear! Dont see many good reviews like this.

Good review! Glad to hear you are getting what you pay for :)
Hope the pleasant experience continues!

Concerns: Hmmm for sure it seems that are cropping in my mind, now as I have completed one year with them and have paid for the services. I am beginning to think for what I paid for; on average I just used their support services once in three months, damn it they are so damn perfect that they never gave me a chance to brash, thrash, or to do any blah blah… feeling so lonelyI see that as a mark of them and you both knowing what you're doing. :)

Well done SonataWeb and thanks for writing this review NeoGen!

Funny, I've had horrible experience with them. I was promised that my sites would be moved over from my old host to sonataweb when I signed up with them about a year ago. I gave all the information they asked for so they could log in to my then-current host and get everything.

Everything transfered fine -or so I thought, so I closed my account with the old host and everything was lost. No big deal, it was all transfered, right?

None of my databases were moved over. None of them. I had forums on multiple sites. I had free pic hosting, almost a gig of pics for quite a few people. May not seem like much, but hey.

Anyway, none of my forums worked and neither did the pic hosting for anybody. I asked about it and they said the databases were too big for the program they were using to do unattended transfers. Great. Were they going to do it by hand so I didn't have THREE FREAKING WORTHLESS SITES? No.

Thanks, sonataweb, you ultimately took me from three great sites to basically nothing but email for me. No, really, thanks, I appreciate it.<img>

The sites were pretty much SCRAPPED and the only thing I used them for was my own half-assed host for random things here and there and email.

Funny, I've had horrible experience with them. I was promised that my sites would be moved over from my old host to sonataweb when I signed up with them about a year ago. I gave all the information they asked for so they could log in to my then-current host and get everything.

Everything transfered fine -or so I thought, so I closed my account with the old host and everything was lost. No big deal, it was all transfered, right?

None of my databases were moved over. None of them. I had forums on multiple sites. I had free pic hosting, almost a gig of pics for quite a few people. May not seem like much, but hey.

Anyway, none of my forums worked and neither did the pic hosting for anybody. I asked about it and they said the databases were too big for the program they were using to do unattended transfers. Great. Were they going to do it by hand so I didn't have THREE FREAKING WORTHLESS SITES? No.

Thanks, sonataweb, you ultimately took me from three great sites to basically nothing but email for me. No, really, thanks, I appreciate it.<img>

The sites were pretty much SCRAPPED and the only thing I used them for was my own half-assed host for random things here and there and email.
did you even further address the problem with them?

i ran into a few detours when transferring my sites a month ago, but everything went fine in the end...

some of the DBs for my mySQL-powered sites were screwed up and not transferred correctly to my new hosting account. so i just talked to one of their support techs via AIM (Mike) and he logged on to my old host, and found the problem right away. (different PHP version) not only that, he stayed up ALL night to make sure the re-transfer went without a flaw. now if that's not good customer service, i don't know what is.

Yup, I asked them to transfer it manually. I was basically told too bad so sad and that they weren't going to bother keeping their word about transfering it because they didn't have time. Didn't have time? I'm a freaking paying customer. This was done through AIM (sonataweb) which, after that, I was ignored for IM support. I *just* found out tonight that they're no longer acknowledging IM as an acceptable form of support communication. Nice to finally tell me after a year of asking about this-and-that, eh? Nice to actually GET A RESPONSE.

I've got a new issue to deal with. The card attached to Paypal expired and I have my new card, but the monthly transaction didn't go through. I didn't have money in my account (lost my job, paying bills left me broke) so my bank denied Paypal the transfer, LEFT that 12.95 as a negative balance (where'd it go?) and charged me a -$20 non-sufficient funds fee. Paypal shows the balance denied, but I have a negative 12.95 balance there too. Where'd the money go?

I asked via IM if they could verify if my account had been properly paid because I can't get to my email servers (using Outlook) and wondered if my account had been closed or where the hell the money went. That's when I actually received a response talked about earlier in this post.

At the end of the night, I have a closed account with sonataweb, and I'm out about $46 for no apparent reason. I don't know where my money's gone to actually justify the NSF fee from the bank, don't know where the 12.95 went from my bank account to warrant the NSF, don't know where the 12.95 went that Paypal shows as a negative balance, and a closed reseller's account.

I will *not* be reopening my account with sonataweb and I will *not* give them a positive review anywhere or reccommend them to anyone.

Sorry, I just realized that I'd thread crapped. :( Sorry, NeoGen. I should have made my own thread but I can't seem to edit/remove my posts to make a new thread. :(

Germin: Just wanted to ask you, if you did not find it important to check the sites before closing your old account? I believe you should have checked using the IP address and temporary link on new host to see if the transfer was successful or not. I am so sorry to note that you lost 3 of your sites, but don't you think you are yourself at fault for closing your old account without verifying if things are OK.

Yeah, I guess I AM at fault for trusting a webhost to actually follow through with something that was part of the sales agreement. Man am I stupid!

I'll address your "claims" when I get the time ... for now it's not even worth it. What a joke ...

I'll address your "claims" when I get the time ... for now it's not even worth it. What a joke ...

Sorry, I don't recognize your screen name. Are you part of sonataweb? If you are, thanks for proving my point.

Good review there NeoGen :) Your review presentation impressed me .. moreover your earlier thread and this review ... It summarizes your entire experience :)

Good work there by sonnataweb too :)

Okay, I've finally had some free time to the point where I can investigate your account and provide my side of the story, with entire AIM Logs.

Funny, I've had horrible experience with them. I was promised that my sites would be moved over from my old host to sonataweb when I signed up with them about a year ago. I gave all the information they asked for so they could log in to my then-current host and get everything.
It's funny that during your entire time with us, you submitted one ticket, and that near immediately after signup, letting us know of some email issues. The email problem in question was with the fact that we were running the CPSkin set, and the incorrect language file had been selected, so no text was showing up on certain pages. I updated the skin set, and the problem was corrected. That was the only problem that we were ever made aware of. The fact that you posted this here is truly entirely shocking to me, as I've never treated a customer in the fashion that you describe -- even the ones that woke me up at 3 AM calling me on my personal cell phone due them hosing their sites. The claims you make here are borderline libelous, which I don't really care about, but it's just ridiculous that you would even post something like that, when all of us at SonataWeb work our butts off to please our customers.

Everything transfered fine -or so I thought, so I closed my account with the old host and everything was lost. No big deal, it was all transfered, right?

None of my databases were moved over. None of them. I had forums on multiple sites. I had free pic hosting, almost a gig of pics for quite a few people. May not seem like much, but hey.

Anyway, none of my forums worked and neither did the pic hosting for anybody. I asked about it and they said the databases were too big for the program they were using to do unattended transfers. Great. Were they going to do it by hand so I didn't have THREE FREAKING WORTHLESS SITES? No.You're somewhat correct there. The transfers are neither unattended, nor automated, especially considering I updated you as I did the transfer through AIM, and made you aware of the fact that it didn't go through as we can see here;

SonataWeb (1:42:23 AM): these accounts won't copy
SonataWeb (1:42:28 AM): they get stuck at creating archive
SonataWeb (1:42:29 AM): and fail
SonataWeb (1:42:52 AM): I can do it another way, but it'll have to wait until tomorrow in order to avoid a few issues.
MagnusKainen (1:42:59 AM): no problem
MagnusKainen (1:43:07 AM): keep me posted on when it's done
SonataWeb (1:43:09 AM): alright
SonataWeb (1:43:17 AM): i'll send you an IM when I get it all copeid over

Fast forward a day;

SonataWeb (12:36:55 AM): i'm downloading your sites now
MagnusKainen (12:37:02 AM): thanks
SonataWeb (12:37:05 AM): the server i'm downloading from though is slow
MagnusKainen (12:37:10 AM): yeah, UU sucks.
SonataWeb (12:37:19 AM): UU?
MagnusKainen (12:37:22 AM): Ultra Unix
SonataWeb (12:37:25 AM): oh
MagnusKainen (12:42:56 AM): will you also be transfering DB's?
SonataWeb (12:43:02 AM): yes
SonataWeb (12:43:04 AM): if I can
MagnusKainen (12:43:08 AM): nice.
SonataWeb (12:43:20 AM): for this predigi account I probably won't be able to
SonataWeb (12:43:26 AM): far too many databases to sync with usernames
MagnusKainen (12:43:51 AM): ****
MagnusKainen (12:44:01 AM): can you get the ones associated with pics.predigio.net?
MagnusKainen (12:44:17 AM): that's the only one I care about
MagnusKainen (12:44:24 AM): all the others can be left alone
MagnusKainen (12:46:18 AM): that db should be relatively small
SonataWeb (12:49:57 AM): which database is it?
MagnusKainen (12:50:16 AM): I can't log in to find out
MagnusKainen (12:50:23 AM): I don't know what the DNS was :-P
MagnusKainen (12:50:43 AM): it's associated with some image gallery software
SonataWeb (12:50:48 AM): http://69.61.56.98:2082
SonataWeb (12:50:50 AM): use that to login
MagnusKainen (12:51:45 AM): coppermine
SonataWeb (12:51:54 AM): ok
MagnusKainen (12:51:59 AM): it's either predigi_copp1 or predigi_copper13
SonataWeb (8:24:02 PM): alright got 2 out of the 3 accounts copied over
SonataWeb (8:42:58 PM): all moved over
MagnusKainen (9:45:03 PM): ah, I see. Thanks for the update.
SonataWeb (9:45:34 PM): all your accounts should be copied over now. I wasn't able to setup some of hte mysql users though as I couldn't find the config files that had the information in them.
MagnusKainen (9:46:03 PM): okay
MagnusKainen (9:46:33 PM): what's cpanel user/pass for predigio.net?
SonataWeb (9:46:49 PM): predigi -- not sure on the pass. let me reset it.

So let's get this right -- every database you requested to be copied over, was. I made you aware of the fact that I wasn't able to setup some of the MySQL users.

After I get done editing all the logs to remove references of your password, I will have each and everyone posted, to further prove my point that you never let us know of any kind of trouble that existed on your account.

Thanks and have a wonderful day!

Here are the entire AIM logs I have, which is all of them, as I run DeadAIM.

http://www.sonataweb.net/predigi/

As you can see there, there are logs dating up to May, 4 months afte the original signup took place and at NO TIME were we made aware of any problems with the databases or files not being transferred.

I'd greatly appreciate it if you would subtract your claims of us ruining your website.

Well considering that you keep better logs than I do, I obviously don't have anything to post. However, you still didn't keep your end of the bargain. You left me with absolutely worthless domains. You said you'd transfer everything and you didn't. If you have a limit on database size for transfering it for people, then SAY SO instead of saying that you'll do it, then NOT doing it, leaving your customers out in the cold.

I'd say that you get what you pay for, but 12.95 for about a year isn't cheap.

err "per month for about a year" instead. :P

Great review NeoGen.