I started this Topic to discuss the new www.mosso.com hosting platform.


Goodpoints:
80GB of webspace
2000GB of bandwidth
Rackspace.com - backed.
Can provide support for our customers.
Can provide billing.
100% SLA
Windows and Linux hosting.
24x7 True Human USA support.


Badpoints:
Control panel does not offer a lot of features.
Dont offer dedicated IP's
Dont offer SSL
Dont offer private name servers.



Please post your good points and bad points, and I will keep updating this thread.

My personal opinion is that it is a very good concept and perfect for web designers that don't want to have to worry about the hosting portion of their services, but I doubt this product offering is enticing to the general reseller market as private name servers, etc. like you said are not available. They also have a proprietary control panel which isn't that good due to the fact that most prospective customers are used to cPanel or other popular control panels.

All in all, Mosso is a great idea but it only attracts a small portion of a huge market.

elix... I believe that the webdesigners will not be very pleased to spend 100$ every month when they can have the same service with less.

Mosso would be great if they had cPanel or Plesk (I preffer cPanel) ssl and private name servers. Without that I do not believe I would sign with them. It is very interesting to see how this is going as they might become a VERY important player in the market (RACKSPACE is a big plus for them).

I for one am very intriqued by Mosso's offerings. What stands out particularly is their toll-free phone and chat support for my clients ($3/month per client) and billing for my clients ($2 per client or 4%).

I've spent some time on chat with Mosso to ask more about thier offerings. It is a proprietary control panel. As of right now, you don't have access to a "file manager" like you do with cPanel. There is no automatic signup for clients. You have to enter your clients manually for billing. You're still in a "shared" environment, so unlike VPS, you're not guaranteed ram or cpu usage. They'll cut off your site like others will if you get temporary spikes in traffic that affect the other mosso clients.

The person I was in chat with did say that a file manager was in the works and would be offered soon. All that being said, I think that if they up the offerings with their control panel, to at least have the same functionality as cPanel or Plesk, then they will be a major contender for my reseller business..

We currently pay about $800/month for a clustered server solution directly from rackspace.

And now, according to mosso.com, we can get it for $100 month. That's pretty amazing.

I received an email response saying that private nameservers are going to be offered eventually... but they don't know if there is demand for it. So if you all (if you want this feature) could email them and ask for it.. they'll more likely implement it sooner.

Personally, I think the infrastructure they have setup is amazing. Redundant everything, clustering, etc... it seems like a pretty good setup for "high end" hosting.

The only thing that is unbelievable is the price. I don't know how they can do it for that little. I think I read somewhere they have a 60 second guarantee response for chat or phone, if you also purchase their support service...

If they can pull this off, then I think they'll be a major contender in the high-end reseller market space.

mrzippy...your right on everything you said.

botchka, you said "they'll cut off your site", I asked about this and they said they would not cut off your site, hence the 100% SLA.

jordanss, where can you get this type of service for much less?

You're still in a "shared" environment, so unlike VPS, you're not guaranteed ram or cpu usage. They'll cut off your site like others will if you get temporary spikes in traffic that affect the other mosso clients.

Do you know this for fact, or are you just guessing?

The sales agent I spoke with claimed they have some customers who have active forums with a million hits/day, and no problems.

I specifically asked what they would do if a website "we" were hosting went crazy with traffic or cpu usage, and they said they would simply move the site to a new server if needed, and then let us know about the move.

If anyone has a different answer (ie: more then just your opinion), please feel free to post it.

elix... I believe that the webdesigners will not be very pleased to spend 100$ every month when they can have the same service with less.


Please name one company that offers the same infrastructure for less then $100/month.

elix... I believe that the webdesigners will not be very pleased to spend 100$ every month when they can have the same service with less.

Mosso would be great if they had cPanel or Plesk (I preffer cPanel) ssl and private name servers. Without that I do not believe I would sign with them. It is very interesting to see how this is going as they might become a VERY important player in the market (RACKSPACE is a big plus for them).
Mosso cannot be run on cPanel or Plesk. cPanel and Plesk is built to have one-server setups with everything running on that system. Mosso has seperate CLUSTERS to run one software - such as PHP, ASP, etc. I have a pretty good idea of how they are doing this and I do find it to be quite a reliable setup.

As mrzippy stated, there is not another company that can offer a fully clustered environment on a 100% SLA for $100/month - you will not be able to find that. Also look at the space-bandwidth : price ratio. You get a dedicated server's resources (if not more) at $100/month which sounds just about right.

Mosso is a GREAT idea, but it is NOT for the WHT crowd - most of the people here are in search for cPanel, Plesk, etc. But, the true market lies outside WHT. This is what Mosso is targetting and they definitely will appear as an eniticing choice for a reseller solution to that outside-WHT market.

Just my 2 cents.

I don't normally just blindly offer my opinion on subjects like this since it could tarnish a companies reputation. That being said, I spoke to "Phil" yesterday and specifically asked him if my site saw a temporary spike in traffic, like from the digg effect, what they would do. He specifically mentioned that if it affected other clients, they would cut my site off and talk to me about it. He never mentioned that they had clients that had forums with millions of hits per day with no problems.

I don't normally just blindly offer my opinion on subjects like this since it could tarnish a companies reputation. That being said, I spoke to "Phil" yesterday and specifically asked him if my site saw a temporary spike in traffic, like from the digg effect, what they would do. He specifically mentioned that if it affected other clients, they would cut my site off and talk to me about it. He never mentioned that they had clients that had forums with millions of hits per day with no problems.
What they said is a pretty standard practice amongst hosts, but if their cluster is really what they describe I doubt a site getting digged would affect the *overall* performance.

Instead of site cut-offs I would be more interested in their spamming/phishing policies.

If one of my customers has unsecure phpbb and gets hacked, and is phishing will they shut off his account or all of my customers?

Same with spamming, etc. Will they handle it on a domain by domain basis or all clients pay for one?

That would be my biggest concern. I will contact them about this when I am ready to sign up, but the truth is they can say one thing and do another when faced with a problem.

Do you know this for fact, or are you just guessing?

The sales agent I spoke with claimed they have some customers who have active forums with a million hits/day, and no problems.

I specifically asked what they would do if a website "we" were hosting went crazy with traffic or cpu usage, and they said they would simply move the site to a new server if needed, and then let us know about the move.

If anyone has a different answer (ie: more then just your opinion), please feel free to post it.


I had actually spoken to mosso and was only offering up what they told me. No they didn't specifically say that it was a shared environment (it is). When I asked my question about high temporary traffic, it was never offered up that they have clients now that get "a million hits/day, and no problems". I was worried about my current sites because they sometimes get on digg and my current host just cuts off the site because they think it's a ddos attack.

Frankly, I don't appreciate the implication that I offered up nothing more than my opinion or guess, but thank you for the "permission" to post here if I don't offer up an opinion next time...

Last time I looked rackspace was sitting on 99.846% network uptime so I take
the 100% SLA with a pinch of salt.

We offered a similar service over a year ago but people didn't seem that interested.

After all its still a shared system that you have little or no control over, but for
resellers who don't need this then it seems to be a good offer.

Why don't they tell you how many servers are in the cluster ?
Unlimited MySQL is NOT possible.
More info needed on SLA - what compensation is payed if they fail 100% ?

I must say though its a very nice looking site :-)


John

The only disappointing featuer is the CP :(
It's not Userfrendly...

Althought its not important for some users,
NLB and clustering is more important
and The price is some thing unbelievable

We currently pay about $800/month for a clustered server solution directly from rackspace.

And now, according to mosso.com, we can get it for $100 month. That's pretty amazing.
I don't think you'd get the same performance from their $100/mth shared environment, as compared to your $800/mth dedicated cluster. There has to be a performance drop, the higher you push things, but when you'd hit that ceiling, is another thing.

Mosso is a GREAT idea, but it is NOT for the WHT crowd - most of the people here are in search for cPanel, Plesk, etc. But, the true market lies outside WHT. This is what Mosso is targetting and they definitely will appear as an eniticing choice for a reseller solution to that outside-WHT market.



Yes, so true !!! I am hoping to see some real feedback or reviews on them soon.

We have signed up. We will be doing extensive testing for the next two months.

I was told today SSL is being worked on.

Hi Keith, do you think you could contact via MSN. Thank you

They don't offer Zend or ionCube with their PHP installations. Becareful when checking these guys out, as many large PHP packages (like forums, help desks, etc.) require Zend or ionCube.

Mosso seems pretty kick-A regardless.

They don't offer Zend or ionCube with their PHP installations. Becareful when checking these guys out, as many large PHP packages (like forums, help desks, etc.) require Zend or ionCube.


Couldn't use use either one of these with the "runtime" loaders instead?

Couldn't use use either one of these with the "runtime" loaders instead?
That should work just fine...though it is more convenient to have it installed server-wide, I actually don't see why they don't. If anything they should take the Zend Performance Suite..

What features does there control panel lack?

What features does there control panel lack?
Pretty much everything except:

- email accounts and forwarding
- mysql databases (although there is no phpmyadmin)
- basic stats

I stand corrected. They do infact support Zend on their PHP install, but they don't have ionCube.

As far as their panel, I cannot tell you what it lacks b/c I'm not a customer (yet). They don't offer SSL's or custom Nameservers yet either, but I have been assured those are the next 2 things to be installed.

Last time I looked rackspace was sitting on 99.846% network uptime so I take
the 100% SLA with a pinch of salt.

We offered a similar service over a year ago but people didn't seem that interested.

After all its still a shared system that you have little or no control over, but for
resellers who don't need this then it seems to be a good offer.

Why don't they tell you how many servers are in the cluster ?
Unlimited MySQL is NOT possible.
More info needed on SLA - what compensation is payed if they fail 100% ?

I must say though its a very nice looking site :-)


John


How did you figure the the uptime %?

Thanks!

Dan

I don't think you'd get the same performance from their $100/mth shared environment, as compared to your $800/mth dedicated cluster. There has to be a performance drop, the higher you push things, but when you'd hit that ceiling, is another thing.
According to their sales people (I've asked 3 different people now), they have no ceiling. If your site does a million hits/minute, they say they'll be able to handle it.

Doesn't make sense to me.. but I don't understand how they're doing their load-balancing.. so who knows?

Personally, I think the infrastructure they have setup is amazing. Redundant everything, clustering, etc... it seems like a pretty good setup for "high end" hosting.

The only thing that is unbelievable is the price. I don't know how they can do it for that little. I think I read somewhere they have a 60 second guarantee response for chat or phone, if you also purchase their support service...

If they can pull this off, then I think they'll be a major contender in the high-end reseller market space.


According to their page: "Mosso is a venture company of Rackspace Managed Hosting."

So I guess they have plenty to back up their promises with. Definitely an up and coming player in the high end hosting market.

Given the resources (people as well as money) they have access to I expect they'll have their CP issues sorted out in no time.

jsaniuk - I am out of town returning tomorrow, where are you located?

I started this Topic to discuss the new www.mosso.com (http://www.mosso.com) hosting platform.


Goodpoints:
80GB of webspace
2000GB of bandwidth
Rackspace.com - backed.
Can provide support for our customers.
Can provide billing.
100% SLA
Windows and Linux hosting.
24x7 True Human USA support.


Badpoints:
Control panel does not offer a lot of features.
Dont offer dedicated IP's
Dont offer SSL
Dont offer private name servers.



Please post your good points and bad points, and I will keep updating this thread.

No SSH is available for mosso. Members might want to clarify this http://www.mosso.com/servercompare.jsp, and have keith70 to add it to his post.

We have signed up. We will be doing extensive testing for the next two months.

I was told today SSL is being worked on.

who told you that?

I ask phil about the SSL and here is the answer:

Phil: I am not sure were he got that news, but SSL is still not a active feature at this time. Any large changes like that we would post to our website

Did you ask him if they had it? They don't yet... SSL is their first thing on their to do list which should be implemented soon and then private nameservers. It is not an active feature at this time, like Phil said, and when it does become an active feature it will be posted on the website. He said it was being worked on and it is.

I've heard now from 3 different people over their "live chat" that SSL and Private NS' are a top priority and should be out "soon". I was assured by one guy that those 2 features are of the utmost importance to them.

Incidentally, I asked for, and received, a logon to a demo of their "control panel". For those of us used to cPanel, it's VERY lacking.

There is no File Manager. Websites can only be uploaded via FTP.

There is no automation (as best as I can tell ) for account signup. I'm not talking about account creation on the server. I'm talking about signup. Every customer of yours has to be entered in manually. Their mailing address, billing info, name, etc.

No SSL.

No SSH.

After I've had a chance to check it out more, I will report more. As of now, I think that the service has HUGE potential, but it's proprietary control panel, leaves a lot to be desired.

Greg

EDITED TO ADD:

No manual backup process from control panel (as near as I can tell).

No stats other than bandwidth and disk space.

No error logs.

No cron jobs.

tsotodeh: I didnt say it was SSL ready now, I said they are working on it.




Webmail is squirrelmail with nutsmail theme.
Stats is Webalizer.
Zend is supported.
Cron jobs was told they are working on possibley adding this feature.



Sometime over the weekend, I will have the 1st topic here "edited" with the other knonws now for Mosso.com.

tsotodeh: I didnt say it was SSL ready now, I said they are working on it.




Webmail is squirrelmail with nutsmail theme.
Stats is Webalizer.
Zend is supported.
Cron jobs was told they are working on possibley adding this feature.



Sometime over the weekend, I will have the 1st topic here "edited" with the other knonws now for Mosso.com.
I thought you said begin to work!

I don't think you'd get the same performance from their $100/mth shared environment, as compared to your $800/mth dedicated cluster. There has to be a performance drop, the higher you push things, but when you'd hit that ceiling, is another thing.According to their sales people (I've asked 3 different people now), they have no ceiling. If your site does a million hits/minute, they say they'll be able to handle it.

Doesn't make sense to me.. but I don't understand how they're doing their load-balancing.. so who knows?Yeah, this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. Are they trying to say that someone like iNET could move from their $20k per month Rackspace hosting setup over to a $100 per month plan with Mosso? It just doesn’t add up to me. If this is indeed true though, then I think they could be in for a rude awakening in terms of revenue to their Rackspace division being hit pretty hard.

- Chris

I think they are after a much different target.

I get they feeling they are after the typical Web Designer who wants to setup his clients in a reliable hosting solution.

I would do this hands down. I can easily charge $50-$100 per customer with that kind of reliability and support.

Yeah, this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. Are they trying to say that someone like iNET could move from their $20k per month Rackspace hosting setup over to a $100 per month plan with Mosso? It just doesn’t add up to me. If this is indeed true though, then I think they could be in for a rude awakening in terms of revenue to their Rackspace division being hit pretty hard.
I can't see them cutting into that marketspace much. Someone like inet has a very complex and custom hosting setup, and they can't replicate that in a mass shared environment, no matter how clustered and redundant that shared platform is.

Mosso's offerring is powerful, but I can't see it suited to the reseller marketspace now. Hosts also like to use reseller accounts as a stepping stone on the path to their own servers, be that rented or coloed, so the Mosso platform would only serve for a limited time. Also they use an in-house control panel that would not be migration friendly going out or coming in.

But they do have an incredible offering, none the less. No doubt like rackspace, they'll carve out a niche for themselves, and establish themselves as a player in the market.

. . . I get they feeling they are after the typical Web Designer who wants to setup his clients in a reliable hosting solution.
Yes, I think you're right.

I agree, that their market is for the typical Web Designer who just wants very high reliability for their own clients.

I don't think the "reseller market" (as known around here) is their target market at all.

I was a beta tester for mosso for more than 2 months. Many of your comments about limited functionality in their control panel is correct. I believe they are targeting web designers. I have found it too limiting as other beta testers complained of non-standard configurations because of the clustering. It's not nearly as robust as a 20.00/mo. reseller account. Uptime, billing, and support sounds really good but I couldn't tell if they offshored the support work.

Just my 2.

All of their support is located in one office in the US. All the sales support for them and the techs and the dev's are all beside each other. There support is really really good, you always get a response in less then 60 seconds with the live chat also.

Considering they opened on 3/1/06 I would expect they are overstaffed at this point and I would expect a 60 second response. Let's wait and see if they pull it through the longhaul.

I am waiting for them to finish SSL, and I am sold.

From a Redundancy point of view and keeping a customers website "online" I think its a fantastic idea.

The billing would be a big plus to me, as well as the billing system it seems to feature (wont have my account setup till monday so I have not seen it only from the screen shots)

The support is also a huge plus for many people, then again I personally wouldnt outsource my companys support, as I feel my clients should deal with my company.

The control panel is a little bit of a draw back cpanel or plesk with be really great.

SSL customers must be able to have ssl certs.

To be honest, this seems like the first release of many. Will these guys shake up the Reseller Market?

They are releasing SSL and private nameservers very soon and will be making updates all the time. Adding features to the cp also. Things will only get better from here! I am personaly very excited and am a big fan!

Damn, they beat me to the punch ... :uzi: :bawling:

Ah well, different customer base. :)

Damn, they beat me to the punch ...
what happened?

The whole setup seems awesome! I will be waiting till they add more and more features (ssl, priv nameservers, probably more email add ons, phpmyadmin, crons etc..).

Especially cron jobs is required to automate offsite backups - I cannot imagine I will do manually backups every day of my clients' sites!

Do you know if the plans are offered at Rackspace's UK datacenter? That would be great !!

As of the price : it is really excellent, you can not find anywhere 80gig space for 100$ !! I also wonder if they could offer smaller plans like 20gig for $40 let's say for smaller designers and testing.

Please wait for a site operator to respond.
You are now chatting with 'Mike'
you: Hi Mike
Mike: Welcome to Mosso!
you: Moss looks good, but do you have detailed specifications of the hosting features?
Mike: How are you?
Mike: I have some - it depends upon what specifically you're looking for...
you: Need to know all the technical specs which can be included in client accounts
Mike: We don't have a laundry list of what's in the client account - it's basically the same as your main account, minus the creation and management functions...
you: That is very poor.
Mike: I can send you a demo of the control panel from which you can access the client account...?
you: We need to know tech specs such as what version of php, what scripting features are included, mysql, etc, jsp?
you: Okay. What is the demo location?
Mike: That I can get your - I thought you emant a general "what can I do" list... :)
you: Do you offer static IPs?
you: Do you offer private nameservers?
Mike: https://manage.thehostingsystem.com/
Mike: User: tmwelshy
Mike: Password: welshy
Mike: We do not offer static IP's or pricate nameservers, though we will offer the private nameservers eventually.
you: That is bad
you: Do you offer SSL?
Mike: Not currently - it is scheduled for release shortly.
you: That is even worse!
you: Do you offer automated signup capabilities?
Mike: You are mentioning poor and bad - do you mind if I ask what type of business you are in?
you: web hosting
Mike: Are you a straight reseller?
you: what do you mean by a straight reseller?
you: we are a reseller and retail provider of web hosting
Mike: Is that your primary business, I meant.
you: yes
you: Do you offer automated signup capabilities?
you: Hello are you there?
Mike: No, we do not currently offer API or automated signup capabilities.Mosso is geared towards the designer/developer and integrator, so there will be some reseller functionality that you may like that we don't offer.
you: That is very time consuming to manually add customers!
you: I can't believe you dont offer automated signup
you: Do you offer error logs?
Mike: What do you mean by error logs - can you be more specific?
you: Do you provide web server error logs relating to each domain?
Mike: No, we would take care of that for you.
you: that is terrible!
you: we need logs to diagnose errors in customers scripts, etc
you: Do you allow cron jobs?
Mike: I'm sorry you feel that way. As I said, we would do that for you. No, we do not currently offer cronjobs.
you: You don't offer cronjobs?!! What sort of system is this.
you: Cronjobs are essential for reseller hosting
you: Do you provide a manual backup process which can backup individual web sites from the control panel?
Mike: AS I said, we are not a "reseller" option.
Mike: You would back-up by FTP to a local machine.
you: Doesnt matter if you are a reseller or not, all hosts should provide cronjobs. Many scripts require that functionality.
you: You didn't answer my question.
you: Do you provide a manual backup process which can backup individual web sites from the control panel?
Mike: You would have to use your own FTP client.
Mike: There is no option on the control panel.
you: Also I cannot believe you said you are not a reseller option, as your web site boasts about being geared towards resellers, billing clients, etc.
you: Oh dear - your control panel really is extremely basis isn't it.
you: Do you provide a file manager then
Mike: I first said what we were geared towards, then I mentioned again that we were not a "reseller" option after telling you that you would not have some functionality a straight reseller might want.
Mike: No, we do not currently provide a file manager, though we will.
you: That is pretty bad.
you: Your service is very basic right now?
Mike: So you said.
you: Do you provide SSH?
Mike: No, we do not allow SSH.
you: Unbelievable!
you: What OS are you running
Mike: We operate on Windows and Linux simultaneously - that's on the site, by the way.
Mike: How many sites do you currently manage?
you: I mean, what operating system specifically are you running
you: hello?
you: are you there?
Mike: Yes, just a moment please...
you: Seems like you don't understand my basic question. I'll clarify then - are you running Windows 2003 for your Windows platform? Redhat Enterprise 3 or 4, or centOS for your Linix based service?
Mike: The Hosting System’s Linux side of our platform is built on a customized Linux distribution based on Debian 3.1 (Sarge). On the other side of the fence, The Hosting System’s Windows platform runs on Windows 2003.
you: thank you.
Mike: I understood your question.
Mike: You're welcome.
you: do you provide any preinstalled scripts/applications?
Mike: Is there anything further I can help you with?
you: Yes, plenty.
Mike: Let me ask you a question, if you don't mind - You have made it pretty clear you are not satisfied with our offering. What further purpose do you have here?
you: I am evaluating your offering.
you: Please advise whether you provide any preinstalled scripts/applications?
Mike: No. We are designed for domain management for someone who hosting is a second, third or even fourth priority.
you: Okay, well that seems very odd because you say that your system is designed for someone who is hosting a second, third or even fourth priority, however on your web site it suggests that your system is suitable for hosting unlimited web sites, and geared towards hosting resellers. Is this not true?
you: I am just trying to get an understanding of exactly what features you offer so we can consider it.
Mike: Ah. I see. I must have misunderstood your motives. My apologies.
Mike: Our system is suitable for many types or providers.
you: I dont know how you could have misunderstood, as my questions rare very clear.
Mike: not your questions, your comments. As I said, I must have misunderstood your intent.
you: Very strange.
you: How many servers are in your enterprise clusters?
you: You mean you have clusters on your homepage
Mike: Server numbers vary considerably based on volume. I can't give you that number.
Mike:
you: Do you support tomcat?
Mike: you mean you have clusters on your homepage? Can you tell me what that means?
you: mean=mention
you: Do you support tomcat?
you: Hello?
Mike: Do you mean do we offer Java support?
you: I am referring to Apache Tomcat support
you: Java servlets, etc
Mike: No, we do not support Java.
you: Seems like you don't support most things which is a shame
you: Do you provide phpmyadmin then?
Mike: I'm sorry you feel that way. May of the things we have discussed are coming, however.
Mike: Yes.
you: At last - you support something!
you: Do you provide support to edit DNS zones through your control panel?
Mike: I must be misinterpreting you again. That seems somewhat hostile....
you: I am just pleased that you finally support something I have requested
you: Many of the basic things I would have expected are not supported
Mike: Then I share in your joy.
you: So do you provide DNS zone management through your control panel?
Mike: For now you would make your request through support: there is no option through the control panel.
you: How about password protected directory support?
Mike: But in the future you will have DNS options in the control panel.
Mike: Yes, you can password protect directory support.
you: On your Windows offering, do you support ASP.NET 2.0?
Mike: No, we are currently on .net 1.1.
you: Oh dear.
you: Well it seems like your features are very basic at this time.
Mike: You mentioned that.
you: Well I mean many of the things which I have requested are very common thesedays, yet you dont support them
you: Thanks for answering my questions.

You put the wright questions. An webhosting company that is not addressing to the webhosting industry is no good. A dedicated server with cpanel is a lot better than what they offer. It seems that they are not ready to fight with dedicated servers.

sallyanne: You are a rude jerk. Most of the chat you have there we already knew, and you do not have to be an ahole to the operator. He is only doing his job. Your comments were uncalled for and arrogant.

You obviously do not understand the concept of a niche market. Their service is geared towards web designers period. I agree their service lacks certain important features but I would not call it "poor" and jerk the operator as you did. It is only a matter of time before those features are implemente

I stopped reading sallyanne's up to the middle - it make me feel so angry...

DevelopAl says it all....

His comments are rude, but his questions are OK.
Have somebody tested their connection speed?

What the hell Sally? I've talked to Mosso people several times and they've always been very nice and surely do not deserve the crap you spewed towards their direction.

Why were you such an A to them? It was totally obvious after the first few questions you wouldn't fit their hosting package, yet you kept on with being a 10 year old.

I wouldn't want you as a customer even if my offerings fit what you were looking for.

Mosso is new, geared for a specific market, and will always be adding new features. They're backed by Rackspace for crying out loud...they definately aren't going to sit around and not innovate. Lame.

I can't believe Mike stayed through that whole chat. That is incredibly impressive.

I can't believe Mike stayed through that whole chat. That is incredibly impressive.

You are right... The only thing Sally proved to me is how well trained, courteous and educated their employees are.

Goes to show...

Surprising comments, however in my opinion I was certainly not rude at all. I asked straight-forward questions, as well as made comments regarding their hosting service. If some people take offense to these comments, that is very unfortunate.

It is disappointing the representative did not answer many questions specifically, and tried to - quite frankly - beat around the bush. Nevertheless, upon evaluating their service it is clear that Mossmo does not even offer many basic features which are essential for multiple domain hosting requirements, not to mention features which are offered by many other providers.

My post here was not in any way made with the intention of being rude, but merely to provide the community with more detailed information regarding the features which Mosso supports.

Sallyanne, it's customers like you that I give the boot to.

It's OBVIOUS that mosso.com is not a hosting solution for "reselling" in the same way as you would resell something like a cpanel server.

Sure, you can get a million "pre-installed" scripts from a cpanel server... and you can get all kinds of nifty automation, etc...

But that doesn't appeal to the average WEB DESIGNER who wants a 100% uptime for thier clients. People who are looking for this kind of clustered solution probably don't care much about whether they can install phpBB with 'one-click' or if they can push a button and have the account set up using an API.

Mosso.com is obviously targetting the 'average' web designer who wants a highly reliable solution for their clients.

Thank GOD they aren't targetting people like you, who undoubtedly would cause service/support quality to drop, as a result of the techs shooting themselves.

:)

But ya... I'm REALLY impressed the online sales guy didn't just ban you, and actually stayed on and answered all your idiotic questions, depsite BOTH of you knowing exactly what you were "really" trying to do.

It is disappointing the representative did not answer many questions specifically, and tried to - quite frankly - beat around the bush. Nevertheless, upon evaluating their service it is clear that Mossmo does not even offer many basic features which are essential for multiple domain hosting requirements, not to mention features which are offered by many other providers.
This is by far one of the most ignorant posts I've read here on WHT. Mike answered your questions as best he could, even when you weren't very obvious and kept saying things like "Terrible". Once again, your ignorance shows, because you didn't research what type of host Mosso is...they don't targe the flea-market crowd you are in. They are hosting for high-end developers of webdesign who want quality uptime for clients, backed by great support.

Also, you make statments like "essential for multiple domain hosting" and "Cronjobs are essential for reseller hosting". No...they aren't. Mosso obviously has a system in place that offers what websites need to function, or they wouldn't be in business to begin with.

Do you have any idea what YOU are doing? I feel sorry for those people that you host for (if you do at all). It's quiet obvious you have a very limited education in regards to how hosting works.

Thank GOD they aren't targetting people like you, who undoubtedly would cause service/support quality to drop, as a result of the techs shooting themselves.
Amen brother. Sally is a great example as to why I have a dedicated box.

After reading Sally’s post, I’m actually more impressed with Mosso.com now than I was before. Not because of their product but because of their customer service.
Good job Mike!:agree:

You put the wright questions. An webhosting company that is not addressing to the webhosting industry is no good. A dedicated server with cpanel is a lot better than what they offer. It seems that they are not ready to fight with dedicated servers.
They're not chasing the reseller market with their offerring -
Mosso is geared towards the designer/developer and integrator . . .
you: That is very time consuming to manually add customers!
Yeah, why bother with fraud screening and unnneccessary things like that? :eek:

It only takes a few minutes (if that) to setup a client on the server, after youi've checked them for fraud etc, and handling that manually is safer for all parties concerned. It's not like your signup rate as a reseller is high, and the workload to setup these new clients becomes too much.

A dedicated server with cpanel is a lot better than what they offer.
Well that statement certainly represents your intelligence quite well.

WOW! sallyanne (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/member.php?u=44058), could you have been any more mean? You asked many questions that easily could have been found on their site without any trouble, you were negative about their service the whole time. Mike is not the owner maybe you didn't know that but he did not create Mosso.. You were being mean, condescending and he was answering everything he knew and getting information for you when he was not 100% sure, he was pretty much giving perfect support even when the potential customer was being the worst one they could have. MOST of what you asked was already answered in this thread and really was just a waste of time. I am REALLY impressed with their support, they will talk to anyone, through anything. Even you if asked EVERY possible question like you did, even though they were answered in this thread and some on their homepage you could have at least done it nicely.

I too must weigh in here. I'd have to say that what you posted sallyanne, came across as very antagonistic and uncouth. I'm embarrassed that you posted it here as a member of WHT. Just about everything you "asked" about, had already been discussed in this thread and served no purpose other than to feed your ego. It reminds me a bit of that one person in I.T. training classes that always comes across as a know-it-all and deliberately asks questions to stump the trainer. Extremely annoying.

You should hang your head in shame because you came across.....not so good.

Well that statement certainly represents your intelligence quite well.
You are as rude as sally. But at least he had something to say.
Untill now everybody said that mosso is a great reseller opportunity. Well, is not. They say it, not I.
And I think they are overselling. 2000 GB = ~8-10 mbps dedicated. Not even with cogent they will not be able to offer that much bandwidth.
Just because they put the Rackspace name on their site, does not make them perfect and does not prohibit us to ask question. With a dedicated server you know exactly what you can do or what you can not. Here, you must ask, test, spend time to figure out if you made a mistake or the sistem do not suport your script, etc, and time is money.
Have somebody tested their data transfer speed?

News story about Mosso (http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/03/04/new_reseller_service_offers_utility_computing_for_100_a_month.html).

I think they're not expecting to convert bedrock dedicated server users, but have prioritized the feature set for designer/developer resellers who like the discount dedicated prive point but want a simpler interface. I doubt these folks are running a lot of cron jobs. The outsourced tech support and billing will be an attraction for a lot of these folks.

I understand they have 18 employees. The support staff is separate from Rackspace, but I gather the "fanatical" theme will still be central to their approach to support.

I was also impressed that Mike the Support Guy stuck with the SallyAnne inquiry.

Well, at least we know their support it capable of sticking it out with "customers" though yeah, I'd be issuing a refund and tossing them out the door.

KGIII

I think you guys were much more rude to Sally than she was to Mike.

If one guy pointed out Sally's mistake I see no point in everyone repeating the same thing. I think Sally's intention was to provide detailed information on Mosso's features with first hand information. Other posts on the thread were conflictng. She was rude to the OP, her mistake but I think her intention was to provide information and she didn't deserve all that unneccessary B.S from so many of you. First 2 replies were enough.

I think I am going to have to repeat this again.


This product is not intended for most WHT-hosts (or that's how I classify them at least...). I repeate, not intended. If you do straight up reselling (as said by Mike) this product is not for you. This is for web designers who would like to compliment their service with *reliable*, *secure* web hosting. Those web designers don't care if they have cron jobs or the ability to edit a DNS zone. That just isn't needed for them. They want peace of mind - and Mosso delivers that with 100% uptime.

All of you need to realize that Mosso is most likely not for you, but they fit their target market very well. You can bash them all you want, but I can tell you that their idea will be very successful.

Have a nice day.

P. S. Sally - you are the type of customer that I would personally terminate as soon as I heard them speak. Granted, I guess that's why I'm not a customer care rep. ;)

I think Sally's intention was to provide detailed information on Mosso's features with first hand information.
If Sally's intention had merely been to obtain detained information, he/she would have merely asked the questions and then posted the answers. Instead, we are treated to a moronic conversation between a *very* patient sales rep and one totally off-base person with a hidden motive. A conversation full of leading questions, rude and snide remarks to try and provoke the sales rep, etc.

It's one thing to ask a lot of questions (I did the same thing with their livechat AND via phone call), and then ask again for clarification/details. But it's quite another to make all the idiotic remarks. That's the dead "giveaway" behind Sally's true intentions.

How would you feel if a prospective customer phoned you up and asked, "do you support UIM"? (Not a real technology.) You reply, "Not at this time, but please let me take your info and I'll have my manager call you.".. the response is something like:

"You are an idiot. Your company SUCKS. Everyone else offers UIM, so I don't see why you don't. Do you offer UIM2?"

Pretty sure you'd hang up and quickly use the "ban this caller" feature of your phone.

:)

Massos setup is very impressive..

Yeah I wish they had a few other features and I would be there super fast..

I find the simplicity (elegance) of the Mosso panel to be valuable. It doesn't have all the clutter and confusion of the commercial panels, though it is limited in features. To designers (and specially to end-clients who are not techies) this is a friendly, usable, and clean control panel.

Designing and developing something that's simple is often more challenging than throwing all the features in a linear craplist.

As soon as they get SSL + SFTP, I think they'll have a rush.

Well, I don't think it is friendly at all. If you want to ad a subdomain, you will find it very confusing, because subdomains are treated as domains, and you have to set every aspect of a domain- bandwith, space, etc, even if you create only a subdomain. This is not a friendly control panel. Can somebody tell the mosso bandwith speed they got? If somebody has a file hosted with them, can we make a speed test?

Well, I don't think it is friendly at all. If you want to ad a subdomain, you will find it very confusing, because subdomains are treated as domains, and you have to set every aspect of a domain- bandwith, space, etc, even if you create only a subdomain. This is not a friendly control panel.

Again, the answer to this question is that the target market they are pursuing is highly unlikely to even know what a subdomain is.. let alone actually "need" one. We have many "premium" hosting customers, and none of them use subdomains. None. Not one.


Can somebody tell the mosso bandwith speed they got? If somebody has a file hosted with them, can we make a speed test?Click their livechat button and ask them. They'll give you a file, IP, website, and anything else you need to test their service.

Again, the answer to this question is that the target market they are pursuing is highly unlikely to even know what a subdomain is.. let alone actually "need" one. We have many "premium" hosting customers, and none of them use subdomains. None. Not one.
This is my point exactly. They do not offer webhosting for general public. They are not in "webhosting bussiness", but more in webhosting suport.
Click their livechat button and ask them. They'll give you a file, IP, website, and anything else you need to test their service. I was interested in real life situation, and the speed to be tested by people whit servers in different locations. I do not think that somebody would exceed their bandwidth by putting for a short period of time a file to be downloded. I ask because I do not get very good speeds, and I do not want to say something bad about them that actualy is not true.

I was interested in real life situation, and the speed to be tested by people whit servers in different locations. I do not think that somebody would exceed their bandwidth by putting for a short period of time a file to be downloded. I ask because I do not get very good speeds, and I do not want to say something bad about them that actualy is not true.

There servers are in the rackspace datacenters, so you can use any server that is hosted at rackspace and you'll get the same results.

There servers are in the rackspace datacenters, so you can use any server that is hosted at rackspace and you'll get the same results.
I'm interested in speed, not ping.

Mosso runs PHP in safe mode and has disabled mod rewrite.

Thought this might be useful information. So far I`m really impressed by their support.

Mosso runs PHP in safe mode and has disabled mod rewrite.

According to phpinfo, safe_mode is Off and open_basedir is unset.

Support for mod_rewrite is on their todo list.

Strange. Just talked with one of their sales reps about this. He claimed safe mode was on serverwide 1 hour ago. I still haven't ordered yet so I do not have access to the server.

This is my point exactly. They do not offer webhosting for general public. They are not in "webhosting bussiness", but more in webhosting suport.

Which was his point exactly. The crowd browsing this forum is not the market they are after. I also have a company serving high end clients, and I believe we have 1 of them using a subdomain. They want their website to be up and their email to be delivered. Beyond that they really could care less.

Yeah, this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. Are they trying to say that someone like iNET could move from their $20k per month Rackspace hosting setup over to a $100 per month plan with Mosso? It just doesn’t add up to me. If this is indeed true though, then I think they could be in for a rude awakening in terms of revenue to their Rackspace division being hit pretty hard.

- Chris

This is the best point I have seen on this thread as I just got off "live-chat" with both RackSpace dedicated and Mosso. RS dedicated sales wouldn't give me the contact info on their spin-off Mosso when I inquired - they just didnt answer the question. I have sales reponses from both in my inbox. This particular client would do fine on Mosso - they have little bandwidth demand - just need a lot of hand holding on the support end. This is a direct loss to RS dedicated because I was originally steering this client towards the dedicated division due to the support.

Thx.

GW

This is the best point I have seen on this thread as I just got off "live-chat" with both RackSpace dedicated and Mosso. RS dedicated sales wouldn't give me the contact info on their spin-off Mosso when I inquired - they just didnt answer the question. I have sales reponses from both in my inbox. This particular client would do fine on Mosso - they have little bandwidth demand - just need a lot of hand holding on the support end. This is a direct loss to RS dedicated because I was originally steering this client towards the dedicated division due to the support.

Thx.

GW

For $100, why not try it? Plus, you could tell us how it went!?! I am very curious. It really looks impressive. The sales guy gave me a demo and it looks very very good. I have not heard anything negative, so I am leaning towards going forward. Would appreciate any more insight.

Hi,

The service is very good! Sales guy Mike was on hand and let us know all we asked and the support is far better than i have ever used before. Even just asking small things like were is this... on the control panel.

We will now more all of our non SSL websites and customer sites over and as soon as they add the SSL all will move over!


James

Hi,

The service is very good! Sales guy Mike was on hand and let us know all we asked and the support is far better than i have ever used before. Even just asking small things like were is this... on the control panel.

We will now more all of our non SSL websites and customer sites over and as soon as they add the SSL all will move over!


James

Can you give us any more details? Where are you moving from? How is the performance? Last time I talked to their rep, they were putting SSL in beta--do you have other news? No hassle admin with great, dedicated like performance sounds too good to be true, but there model seems intent on doing it. Thanks for any info.

Hi,

We have moved over from oneandone UK after been told they were the best for what we needed at the time. As a year pasted there customer service and support was shite. So we were lookng at moving our and our customer sites to rackspace and then Mosso poped up.

As they were part of rackspace we gave them a go and its working well. As many of our customers did not have the need for SSL it has been ok. we have a few that run online stores and we will move them over as soon as SSL is added. They keep saying its number one on there list but as of yet no dates. But in there forums its all we tal about with the reps and they are working on it.

James

According to phpinfo, safe_mode is Off and open_basedir is unset.

Support for mod_rewrite is on their todo list.

I thought safe_mode is on.

Mike you are my hero!

I thought safe_mode is on.

Well...I'm looking right at the phpinfo() output on my Mosso account and it says safe_mode is Off.

I do not have a production site on Mosso, but the system looks very promising. I'm just waiting for the deployment of SSL and mod_rewrite, both of which are coming sometime soon (hopefully very soon). I'm betting these are challenging features to deploy because of the mixed Windows/Linux cluster environment. It's a bit strange that they've launched the service without these standard features (especially SSL), but they do have a solid platform that's great for many sites so I guess they went for it.

Wow, I'm glad I found this thread, I had never heard of mosso before. It looks really interesting, I'm going to try and get a demo login.

Wow, I'm glad I found this thread, I had never heard of mosso before. It looks really interesting, I'm going to try and get a demo login.

Same. Earlier in the thread someone posted a demo login thats still working.

I'm interested in this, something to keep an eye on once they add in more features.

Yeah it is a very nice offer and I will def be signing up shortly now actually. I have been told by Mike the lead sales person that SSL is being tested by existing customers at the end of this week, that would be tomorrow but this is not a 100% set date.

I think mosso would be targeting people that generally go to companies like mt -- and I think that they would have a good fight :D

Nice website design though; very impressive. For whom they are targetting, this is a very well thought out plan. Give them the right assurances (uptime, support, friendly control panel, known-name backing) and they will sign up in droves.

Most of their clients won't know what is vb or mod_rewrite, its just the kind of people that want to host a portfolio or maybe a blog, and for that, I think this is perfect.

Good job Mosso :)

I think mosso would be targeting people that generally go to companies like mt -- and I think that they would have a good fight :D

Nice website design though; very impressive. For whom they are targetting, this is a very well thought out plan. Give them the right assurances (uptime, support, friendly control panel, known-name backing) and they will sign up in droves.

Most of their clients won't know what is vb or mod_rewrite, its just the kind of people that want to host a portfolio or maybe a blog, and for that, I think this is perfect.

Good job Mosso :)
Couldn't have said it better myself. :gthumb:

Does mosso changes the rules of hosting business?

Does mosso changes the rules of hosting business?
No, because there are no "rules" in a free and competitive marketplace. :)

They have a great product there, and are overselling to the hilt, but I'm sure their platform can handle it. They'll attract a lot of developers and not so much resellers. It's a dodgy supply for a hosting business, as it means you're trapped using their platform and it's not like switching suppliers who both use cpanel. Most hosts using a reseller account for supply are also itching to get into their own servers, and grow their business that way.

I wouldn't expect it to be too hard to transition from them to someone else as long as you didn't run multiple accounts, which is why I am interested in trying it out.

Thier MSSQL is $10 per 100MB per month, for a serious windows end user needing mssql, this could be a very big issue. If you are a reseller for them I could see this being the biggest expense you incur with mosso in the long term, more expensive than the hosting itself. To have a very usable MSSQL DB(transaction logs and the like, even on simple) you need at least 20MB space per DB, at $10 per 100MB that is not many DBs.

mosso it's only available in english :(

Is everyone happy with mosso so far?

I think mosso would be targeting people that generally go to companies like mt -- and I think that they would have a good fight :D

Nice website design though; very impressive. For whom they are targetting, this is a very well thought out plan. Give them the right assurances (uptime, support, friendly control panel, known-name backing) and they will sign up in droves.

Most of their clients won't know what is vb or mod_rewrite, its just the kind of people that want to host a portfolio or maybe a blog, and for that, I think this is perfect.

Good job Mosso :)


Who is mt?

I have seen the demo and for me, this is a great option. I have not signed up yet, but it appears to have almost all I need. In the forums, there is mention of mod_rewrite capability on the way very very soon, so it does look like mosso will get more robust.

MediaTemple - http://www.mediatemple.net/

I'm thinking of switching to Mosso as well when they sort their mod_rewrite stuff out. I really need that.

I haven't really been able to confirm wether or not PHP runs in safe mode yet. Some say it does, some say it doesn't. Mosso has so far told me safe mode is on, but I see several customers in this thread claiming it is off. Anyone know what the policy really is?

Bob,

and are overselling to the hilt
How do you know this?

They could very well have the resources to offer that space / bandwidth ratio should every customer need to use it ...

How do you know this?

They could very well have the resources to offer that space / bandwidth ratio should every customer need to use it ...
Very highly unlikely. You can't offer 80GB disk and 2TB of rackspace quality data transfer for $100/mth, and not expect to have an element of overselling. Overselling is not questioned, it's just the level of overselling, needed to make those numbers work. I don't think they'll have much of a problem. Look at Gmail with 2TB disk space for every Gmail account. Google took overselling through the ceiling there.

Look at Gmail with 2TB disk space for every Gmail account. Google took overselling through the ceiling there.
I thought it was 2GB? Either way, Your right, 2GB of free space is nothing but overselling.

I haven't really been able to confirm wether or not PHP runs in safe mode yet. Some say it does, some say it doesn't. Mosso has so far told me safe mode is on, but I see several customers in this thread claiming it is off. Anyone know what the policy really is?

I just asked Mosso via live chat. I was told that safe_mode is supposed to be off (and it is), and that it will remain that way.

I thought it was 2GB? Either way, Your right, 2GB of free space is nothing but overselling.Oops, yeah, I meant 2GB space for Gmail. :D

Oops, yeah, I meant 2GB space for Gmail. :D

It would be cool thought :D because I'm already using 95% of my account so far :)

any try to mosso yet ?

It would be cool thought :D because I'm already using 95% of my account so far :)
:peace:

I've logged into a (demo?) panel, as for the conversation log somewhere in this thread.
Seems interesting - very simple stuff. I looked on adding the users - really quiet not happy about that - no idea why
The whole thing [at least for me], was quiet confusing. There was hsoting plans or something - what the o_O, not making much sense.
Looks more of some kind of inventory or something... no idea.

The design is very nice and loved it =]

Hadn't tried out anything yet really and not going to.

I think that they're a very reliable good host, from so far seeint these things, and why are web developers trying to get this host to a bad position? So far- this is to be for Web designers, who need to setup websites quickly without problems using their designs. The company seems honest about what they offer. Bt I don't understand why is "System" portrayed as better than a dedicated server there. It's got all the points marksd nicely except SSH :)

I don't understand oen thing - TrueHybrid o_O?
How can this work? Linux + Windows in one? :peace: On their flash banner it's quiet nicely said that PHP is a Linux technology - which doesn't make much sense to me. Their website is running jsp pages, Apache/Tomcat. Sound more of a thing like it's all on a Windows server rather than some kind of Hybrid.

Anyne who's using the host, can you do phpinfo(); test and show some paths please? As well as .NET checking (Idon't know how ;)) to see what this is. I've never heard of anything as such [in my life].

I've read through the FAQ, seems to answer soem of my questions but still sounds quiet "crazy".

Well, still it's definately aimed at Web designers and not techy guys like me. I don't really like to have no SSH access, I just love it! One of the greatest things that could be ever offered. Maybe #2 (Support is #1!!).

From my understanding, and yes I do have a account with them that I am testing, the load balancer passes the appropriate scripts to the appropriate server. Currently, html as well as asp and other windows type scripts are passed to a windows server. php is passed to a linux server. Although I am not sure how many would need this, it does allow you to use php, asp and html on the same site and get native performance for each one.

From what I have been told, they are beta testing a system, where you can select which system the .html is served from. This would allow you to use .htaccess as well as mod_rewrite on your sites.

Control panel still needs some features as well as a few fixes as well. But it is worth a try for me, someone who hosts quite a few sites of my own and wants very high reliability.

I bit the bullet and signed up with them. So far I am very unimpressed, for a number of important reasons.

1) They are obviously a BETA service. Most features do not work as expected, or at all. No where near 100% reliabilty yet, they've had some major crashes with 45 downtime.

2) Their customer support by chat is fast and available, but crippled. Most things have to go through a ticket system. This ticket system has so far proved VERY slow. I'm used to the response times of Vortech of about 5-30 minutes. Thus far I've been waiting 36 hours on two fairly major errors.

3) Here's an example of the bugginess of the system: my first site move was a disaster - for some reason, the server never pulled up the image files I loaded, even though they were clearly in the ftp server. This has been resolved, but the ticket has not been responded to. The CP has thrown several unhandled errors at me and it's obvious they rushed it into production.

4) Or take the lack of features: no htaccess support, 5-minute+ server-wide caching of dynamic pages, a strange lack of support for pages with brackets in their forms or URLs (i.e. countries[] would break the system). Case in point: when I asked the instant chat tech how I could add a database to an existing client I just set up, I was told I would have to delete the account and check "Additional Databases" during the account signup process. The ability to add databases to an existing client is a "feature" that is "being worked on". Riiight.

All these things are "being worked on" with no ETA. I don't mind a work in progress, but I don't appreciate being sucked in by some slick marketing that describes services as they will be in six months.

Pay $100/mo to be a beta tester, with my paying clients? Please prove me wrong mosso, and get really good really fast! I want this to be the solution for me!

What domain are you using with them? And with the lack of features, you should have asked before you signed up :P

I did ask, and did a lot of thinking. But no, I guess I just assumed that there would be support for brackets in forms. Oh yeah, I guess I should have asked. My bad SSX.

my personal site, aboutbryan.com is up there and seems to be working fine.

electricfox,

Very nice personal site by the way. I like the use of sticky notes :gthumb:

Simply saying that he should have asked before signing up is besides the point. Electricfox is offering up his opinion, as he bit the bullet and signed up with them. I appreciate any and all reviews about mosso since it saves me spending $100 / mo on finding these things out on my own.

Greg

I can back up Electrofox's assessment.

Mosso only went live around March 1st, 2006. They they started building/hyping "the hosting system/thesystembeatstheserver.com" back in August 2004 (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=311525) (or earlier), so I imagine they were eager to go live as soon as they felt they had a functioning system.

A fix for the brackets problem, .htaccess/mod_rewrite support, php5, and SSL are now being tested by some customers. I've kept testing because I want this platform to work, but it's a frustrating start.

If you need a huge, reliable shared hosting account (and these issues aren't a problem) then Mosso is worth considering. If you actually *need* the same site to have both Linux and Windows technologies it's a revolution. Otherwise, you should probably wait and let Mosso polish the rough edges, improve its support system and round out its feature set. Hopefully the wait won't be a long one.

I am looking at a community site which can have say 100K users everyday. will mosso support that kinda load?

How did you figure the the uptime %?

Thanks!

Dan

http://www.hyperspin.com/ranking.php?type=3

I am looking at a community site which can have say 100K users everyday. will mosso support that kinda load? They might support it, but I don't think they will lett you stay. Mosso is for little sites. Don't belive everithing you read. "The system" vs server is just for marketing. If you want performance, take a dedicated server. Or a cluster. Their target is little developer who don't like to deal with hosting problems, and like to have somebody to talk whith if he has a problem.

Mosso is a shared system, so the restrictions that any shared hosting provider has almost the same apply to mosso, too.

Well, since I'm in the system, I might as well tell you guys on the outside what's up. I won't be on the inside for long though, whatever sites and customers I had on the system on a trial basis are moving back asap.

Event: Today, mosso's entire cluster went down. As of 1 hour ago, you'll notice on my personal site, all my files are gone. Thank goodness for backup and that I kept the account open at Vortech. Of course, I discover this only by visiting the forums, I never got an e-mail from them and would not have known my sites were down.

My conclusion: mosso is a good idea that was launched way too early. I will be requesting a full credit and cancellation with them shortly.

Evidence and reason for this from mosso.com client-only forums:

Posted by Todd (mosso's founder) at 1:30pm est:
As you might be aware sites hosted on Mosso are currently affected by a hardware issue. We are doing to our best to discover what led up to to this outage.

Please understand that your success is foremost in our minds and we are doing all we can to remedy this issue as expeditiously as possible. I'll post more info as soon as I have a more definitive explanation.

Another post at 4:30pm:
Mosso's web content downtime continues to persist. I would like to provide you with an updated status. I will post in depth once the issue is resolved, but for now we have our entire team focused on resolving this issue as quickly as possible.

Problems with multiple nodes of our cluster continue to affect the availability of web content. (Email, the control panel, and MySQL / MS SQL clusters are not affected.) Fixes are being deployed immediately and a full restore of your websites and content is expected. Timing at this point is unclear, but I will continue to provide updates every 30 minutes on this forum, and will post a full report when the issue is entirely resolved. Thank you for your incredible patience. More to come.

As of 30 minutes ago:
Isaac, to answer your question (electricfox: about why mosso.com is up, but not our sites), the site Mosso.com is a Java application that is served from the same service cluster that runs the control panel. Once Java is available for Mosso customers, we look forward to bringing the site and control panel into the same architecture. Currently, customer sites have been impacted by a confluence of events that have prevented all of our front-end servers from accessing customer data stored on our SAN cluster. That's a short take at the explanation, I will have a full report once the issue is resolved. We are now on a fixed path to resolution and I should be able to provide an ETA shortly.

I hope for their sake this is a temporary growing pain, and not proof that a shared cluster is simply not workable.

Yup, all web sites were down all day EST and are currently being restored from last night's backup. Very disappointing, including the level of communication during the first hours of the downtime. Email/webmail and database systems have kept running, so saying "Mosso's entire cluster" is not quite accurate. I was pretty surprised when my test email went out and back without a problem.

I was there too. Pretty sad. But I have to say that their tech support lines were well prepared for what I'm sure must have been an onslaught of calls. I never waited more than 10secs to get through. (Perhaps because they still have a small base.) I thought it was THE solution despite certain features yet to come into place.

But this does make me question a huge complicated "infrastructure" vs. simple series of dedicated or shared servers that can more easily be restored.

As for the bandwidth issue above... 2000GB /mo at an average (without spikes) comes to 0.77Mbytes /sec continuously. I don't know (haven't asked) if there are penalties for overages. But do you have a site that's pushing 800KB/sec? Or in other words the 100K users/day would each need to pull 667K/day which raises the question what type of content are you serving in the "community"?

Currently, all my sites on The Hosting System are pushing 0.0000 bytes.

I expect should get covered on netcraft.com where I first read of Mosso.

MediaTemple - http://www.mediatemple.net/

I'm thinking of switching to Mosso as well when they sort their mod_rewrite stuff out. I really need that.

I haven't really been able to confirm wether or not PHP runs in safe mode yet. Some say it does, some say it doesn't. Mosso has so far told me safe mode is on, but I see several customers in this thread claiming it is off. Anyone know what the policy really is?

It is off...if they told you it was on, they were mistaken.

On both the php4 and the php5 interpreters, it is switched off.

Just curious, Why mosso is most cheapper than Hostopia or inquent ?, Because they're running the same business model, I think so.

>> what type of content are you serving in the "community"?
That's is a nice one. But I will like to correct : 100K users / day to take in 667 K bandwidth. We should take a note of page views. at a normal page size of say 66 KB, there will be 100K page views per day. That sort of traffic is pretty normal for a decent site.

Electricfox, You said about Vortech. They look to be cheaper. What is your opinion about them?

I'm sure a Vortech thread is on the forum someplace, gattoo, so I don't water down the mosso thread wit info about them. I've been with them awhile (several years) and I really like their services. No end user support, but everything else is top-notch and super-affordable for what you get.

Now, in follow-up to my previous post, I wish to communicate how very impressed I am with how mosso handled the situation at hand. Realizing the downtime reflected very poorly on their promises, they went WAY above and beyond their already generous SLA. By that I mean I would know of no other host that would extend such an offer. And get this - not only did they e-mail me to let me know, they also called me. That's right, my account rep called me. I know of no other reseller host that would bother.

I know the offer only applies to people who were on board before the downtime, so I won't bring up specifics, but what I can say is that I'm sticking it out and staying with them for awhile. I'll probably move my personal site back over (aboutbryan.com), and I will try to come back every few months to update you on the going-ons with that.

But I must stress here - while I'm not entirely convinced in reliability of the mosso system, I can definitely say that the people behind this solution are really good people, who care about their customers and speak to their concerns. They obviously have a lot to work on, but having good people is a great start.

But I must stress here - while I'm not entirely convinced in reliability of the mosso system, I can definitely say that the people behind this solution are really good people, who care about their customers and speak to their concerns. They obviously have a lot to work on, but having good people is a great start.

I have agree with electricfox on that.

Also, I've setup monitoring on Mosso against other resellers I had "trial" accounts on (30-day money back) on hostingspeeds.com. My Mosso domain has had rock solid rankings--top 20% for USA, top 12% worldwide--and hitting ranks of 7 and 8 on some days... though generally hovering around 65-75 (U.S.)
Edit: Vortech is at 119/491 US and 373/1269 today.

Their CP still needs maturing. As do many features. But their customer service is truly unmatched. They are a company that really listens to their customers, and I've witnessed over the period of a month I've been with them that they are working hard to implement what their resellers request.

Electricfox....thanks for that information!!! That is what we are looking for. I also have accounts at Vortech.

Please keep us posted of events there at Mosso.com

Honestly,

hostingspeeds.com doesn't exactly use the most logical methods for finding the 'fastest' hosts, I honestly would not trust it one bit.

Useless data, IMHO.

Honestly,
hostingspeeds.com doesn't exactly use the most logical methods for finding the 'fastest' hosts, I honestly would not trust it one bit.
Useless data, IMHO.
Please explain...
They batch test from 16 different locations worldwide. They measure server response time and pageload time using a 100k file. In my humble observeration, the numbers I see support my experience with the hosts I've put on trial (with my own accounts).

Granted there are fluctuations. And I expect that the pageload time could be tweaked for advantagous results (by unethical registrants).

Please explain...
They batch test from 16 different locations worldwide. They measure server response time and pageload time using a 100k file. In my humble observeration, the numbers I see support my experience with the hosts I've put on trial (with my own accounts).

Granted there are fluctuations. And I expect that the pageload time could be tweaked for advantagous results (by unethical registrants).
I re-call once they had an issue with their script causing extremely low results (0.0000 we are talking) in page generation time for hosts with a PHP accelerator compiled.

Hosts could also simply place this on their 'fastest' server, perhaps one that hosts very few sites. Also, they measure ping time which isn't necessarily indictive of speed.

I honestly would not use that to guage whether or not a host's server is fast. The best solution is to put your own application on the host's server and see for yourself how fast it runs. You could be last place in Hosting Speeds but as long as you are satisfied with how your application runs, there is no problem with that host.

....and not proof that a shared cluster is simply not workable.

Hmmm.... there are *many* shared clusters that have been operating flawlessly for several months/years - though, it really all depends in the planning that's been put into creating the clustered environment and the subsequent execution of said plan.

electricfox,

It depends on what you mean by a shared cluster...I have personally seen a shared cluster perform beautifully and average with 99.9x% uptime across each machine. Now, of course this is not the 'load-balanced', 'zero-downtime' architecture that Mosso is trying to advertise. But, IMHO, it's pretty sad that they had their HTTP cluster segment down for so long, despite their claims of a reliable, near 'downtime-less' setup. They can of course make this up by having 100% uptime from this point on, but I somehow doubt that will happen ;)

the good points are good, but bad points, it depends on what you need. if you dont need private server or dedicated ip, then they are not really bad.

I hope for their sake this is a temporary growing pain, and not proof that a shared cluster is simply not workable.

We havent had any issues what so ever with our shared cluster

It depends on what you mean by a shared cluster...I have personally seen a shared cluster perform beautifully and average with 99.9x% uptime across each machine. Now, of course this is not the 'load-balanced', 'zero-downtime' architecture that Mosso is trying to advertise. But, IMHO, it's pretty sad that they had their HTTP cluster segment down for so long, despite their claims of a reliable, near 'downtime-less' setup. They can of course make this up by having 100% uptime from this point on, but I somehow doubt that will happen

Well, several companies have advertsied 100% uptime, high availability clusters for quite some time. The reality is, this doesnt exist (at least nowhere near the price that Mosso is talking about) Whether it is shared storage arrays, load balancers, etc - there are potentially multiple single points of failure for this type of system.

In the price bracket Mosso, Hostopia, etc are playing in - a well maintained, undersold, services cluster will always perform better (in my opinion) then an oversold "high availability" solution...

I wonder why a company would target high end users, who supposedly do not want the headaches associated with hosting and who are willing to pay a premium for near perfection - would go to market with the pricing model they are advertising.... Seems to me that the concept is sound, however, personally, I don't think they have approached this the right way nor are their price points attracting the most obvious target audience...

Great to hear their support is excellent - that will certainly make up for any growing pains, but, I wonder if you won't see their pricing go up over time...

the way i looked at the description for me is a good deal even if doesnt have a control panel and a ssl certificate...

I wonder why a company would target high end users, who supposedly do not want the headaches associated with hosting and who are willing to pay a premium for near perfection - would go to market with the pricing model they are advertising.... Seems to me that the concept is sound, however, personally, I don't think they have approached this the right way nor are their price points attracting the most obvious target audience...

Hmmm.... I wonder indeed, especially being a Rackspace venture and in a Rackspace facility.

[QUOTE=CartikaHosting]W

I wonder why a company would target high end users, who supposedly do not want the headaches associated with hosting and who are willing to pay a premium for near perfection - would go to market with the pricing model they are advertising.... Seems to me that the concept is sound, however, personally, I don't think they have approached this the right way nor are their price points attracting the most obvious target audience...


What do you mean by this? Do you think they should charge more? You can buy a discount server for much less than $100.

What do you mean by this? Do you think they should charge more?
Yes, for those who cannot comprehend his perfectly fine English, he does want them to charge more realistic pricing.
You can buy a discount server for much less than $100.
I'm not even going to bother responding to that ignorant, irrelevant statement.

Yes, for those who cannot comprehend his perfectly fine English, he does want them to charge more realistic pricing.

I'm not even going to bother responding to that ignorant, irrelevant statement.


Wow. Tough board. Seems like a utility like offering with the same specs as a dedicated server could be offered at the same price. Even though reliability is better and there is more flexibility, this is the whole promise of the utility hype - pooled resources; 1+1=3. Am I missing something?

All this said, it does seem like a screaming deal.

Seems like a utility like offering with the same specs as a dedicated server could be offered at the same price.

You cannot compare an offering like Mosso with a budget dedicated server

Am I missing something?

Yes, you are missing the following:

1) dual platform (ie 2 servers)
2) server management
3) high availability
4) white label
5) end user support (email, phone, live chat)

Wonder what the cost of your budget environment is now?

I talked to Mosso again, they now do support mod_rewrite which is what makes me ready for the switch.

You cannot compare an offering like Mosso with a budget dedicated server



Yes, you are missing the following:

1) dual platform (ie 2 servers)
2) server management
3) high availability
4) white label
5) end user support (email, phone, live chat)

Wonder what the cost of your budget environment is now?

Good points. What do you think it should cost?

Good points. What do you think it should cost?

If I was to put together an offering like Mosso (with the assumptions that it was exactly as advertised - ie) Tier 1 hardware, bandwith, true HA with 100% uptime, full end user support - the real kind, where you service your customers end users like your own - )

Our pricing model would look closer to what dynamicnet is doing vs what Mosso is doing...

If I was to put together an offering like Mosso (with the assumptions that it was exactly as advertised - ie) Tier 1 hardware, bandwith, true HA with 100% uptime, full end user support - the real kind, where you service your customers end users like your own - )

Our pricing model would look closer to what dynamicnet is doing vs what Mosso is doing... And haw did you came to such prices? At 10$/GB, only if you sell weapons or drugs online will make any sens in buying such a hosting.

And haw did you came to such prices? At 10$/GB, only if you sell weapons or drugs online will make any sens in buying such a hosting.

I disagree - because some people (who's primary market is not hosting) will want/need a system like this where the provider does all the work for them under a private label (or unbranded label) and are willing to pay for that kind of service. What Mosso is offering is too many resources for too little money. It's pretty clear (to me, anyways) that they're overselling their HA cluster (which should NEVER happen if you want true HA that you can depend on).

I think IHSL hit it right on the head when he said that this is all a marketing ploy for Rackspace Managed Servers for people who either outgrow "the system" or are unhappy with the performance of the cluster.

Just my 0.02 cents.

I know its an old thread but lots of info in here that would be lost with a new thread...

Anybody have any more comments about their experiences so far with Mosso...Especially anybody who has used the RackSpace brand before...

I used mosso for some busy sites I was hosting to see if they could handle it. In the two weeks they were hosting me, there were 2-3 occurances of downtime, the bandwidth reporting didnt work and they forced me to remove the sites from their cluster stating they were using too much resources (two moderately busy proxy sites).

I moved the sites back to their dedicated server (p4 3ghz 2gb ram) where they have been running happily ever since.

Thus concludes my experience with their clustered hosting.

I used mosso for some busy sites I was hosting to see if they could handle it. In the two weeks they were hosting me, there were 2-3 occurances of downtime, the bandwidth reporting didnt work and they forced me to remove the sites from their cluster stating they were using too much resources (two moderately busy proxy sites).

I moved the sites back to their dedicated server (p4 3ghz 2gb ram) where they have been running happily ever since.

Thus concludes my experience with their clustered hosting.

I tested it out and found it quite slow as well.

Hmm interesting experiences...

How many sites do you run off of that dedicated server you put your sites back on?

Seems like it may be a good option for alot of smaller sites than a few big sites...As what most designers will bring to the table...

Hmm interesting experiences...

How many sites do you run off of that dedicated server you put your sites back on?

Seems like it may be a good option for alot of smaller sites than a few big sites...As what most designers will bring to the table...

One optimized machine handles it properly. Since then, the sites have been growing but the same machine is still handleing the load.

I would like to put in my two cents about mosso so here goes.

<two cents>
I have found their service to be good, fast, and reliable. Granted, we have not been hosted through them for very long, we are running one particular website which pulls ~8.5 million hits per month. I have yet to have a problem either with the speed, setup, or service. We will see if it continues this way or not. I will post here again in a couple of months for an update.
</two cents>

Now, for those of you who are whining about the lack of features in the control panel, most of the things you are wanting to do can be accomplished through other means, like .htaccess files. And how many people really use the pre-install scripts that cpanel and plesk usually offer? Personally I prefer to take a little extra time, and be sure everything is setup right.

I would like to put in my two cents about mosso so here goes.

<two cents>
I have found their service to be good, fast, and reliable. Granted, we have not been hosted through them for very long, we are running one particular website which pulls ~8.5 million hits per month. I have yet to have a problem either with the speed, setup, or service. We will see if it continues this way or not. I will post here again in a couple of months for an update.
</two cents>

Now, for those of you who are whining about the lack of features in the control panel, most of the things you are wanting to do can be accomplished through other means, like .htaccess files. And how many people really use the pre-install scripts that cpanel and plesk usually offer? Personally I prefer to take a little extra time, and be sure everything is setup right.

And which site is this?

And which site is this?

Sorry, I guess that information would have been helpful. The site is emovieposter.com. Now this may be a little bit different kind of site, most of the areas of this site were custom-made, mainly because there was not an open source script out there to do what I needed to do.

emovieposter.com is very fast. i looked at dnsstuff and it seems to be hosted at rackspace (mosso). So he is telling the truth.

emovieposter.com is very fast. i looked at dnsstuff and it seems to be hosted at rackspace (mosso). So he is telling the truth.


I don't mean to blow my own horn, but that is partially due to good coding techniques. It can make a real difference in page load time and general site responsiveness.

one critical issue, no backup plans? nor automated method to pull backups off remote location?

actually for backups, I use a desktop app called cobian backup. It can pull files from ftp server, zip 'em up and do incremental, diff., or full backups.

Anyone got any in-depth reviews at this point? I'd be VERY interested in hearing what people have to say now that they've been around for a bit and, I believe, a number of folks are giving them a trial run. How are they doing at providing the features they said they'd be including for instance? They mentioned SSL and a few other things would be coming soon and, well, I'm interested in finding out if they're really going to follow up on those because that, right there, tells me their true intent of keeping people satisfied AND improving their product/service.

KGIII

is overselling allowed?

Yes, it is.

anyone know when spanish will be available with this system? they tell me that have no idea :(

Is there a max_questions limit per db user on mosso?
If yes what is the limit?

The panel is available in English only for the time being.

I don't know about max_questions limit, you should ask them, this is a very specific question. You can open a chat at any time from their website.

No APIs - that is quite a dealbuster for me. Otherwise, there's a lot that can be done with this platform.

I talked with a lower level support person on live chat and was told my technical question would have to be answered by sales when they returned the next day. He took my information down and I haven't heard back for about a week now. They lost my business.

I talked with a lower level support person on live chat and was told my technical question would have to be answered by sales when they returned the next day. He took my information down and I haven't heard back for about a week now. They lost my business.
Did you give them a phone number as well? (if it was just e-mail then it is possible that their e-mail ended up in a junk mail folder)

We have just terminated an account with them. The idea behind the system is excellent but the system itself is not ready.

We have just terminated an account with them

Hi,

Would you mind to share with us the reasons you did so?

Thanks!

We were looking for a solution to provide PHP5, MS SQL, ASP... to our customers. Mosso’s solution was well presented, so I decided to sign up with them and my webmaster started building new website to promote these new solutions.

We worked more than 300 hours on the project. More than the website, we wrote many tutorials and “how to” for our customers.

We put the first customers and the complaints started right away. There were many small problems, but without SSH access and no logs, there is no way to solve them or even understand them.

I am going to give you some examples:

- Some customers reported slow FTP connexions. I tested these from another server (using lftp) and from my office where a I have high speed connexion:


lftp xxx@ftp1.ftptoyoursite.com:/www.xxxx.com/web/content> mput *
97792 bytes transferred in 149 seconds (655b/s)
Total 2 files transferred

For the speed from my office, please look to the attached file. The account I am moving away has 210 Mb files. 9872


- PHP mail() function works or not on random basis. It sends emails to some addresses and not to others. I chatted with the support but I was told that they cannot provide logs and they cannot troubleshoot our php scripts. The scripts were moved elsewhere and they work without any modification or troubleshooting.

- We wanted to use our DNS but they never provide the various IP addresses. As every service (mySQL, FTP, PHP4 server, PHP5 server, mail…) has its own IP, we had to ping and guess every single IP. However, someday, 1 IP changed for a couple of hours and during this time the websites that relied on this IP were down. In fact, we were supposed to use their own DNS as if we were on a sub entry level reseller hosting.


- We experienced about 10 hours of downtime during our first month including 7 hours of maintenance so we cannot sell this hosting to our professional customers.

- We created an account 10 days ago, but our customer cannot put any file on his account, he has always a Permission Denied.

Connect socket #2592 to x.x.x.x, port 35996...
550 welcome.jpg: Permission denied
TYPE A
200 Type set to A
PASV

We have no logs, no SSH access to check and correct the permissions and the support service wasn’t able to solve the problem. On our servers, such problems are solved in matter of seconds.


- On the live support, some techs are competent and some aren’t. We had a problem with an account with a .name domain name and the tech told us that the .name domains are not supported. They are supported and the problem was elsewhere.

- On at least 1 website, .htaccess never worked (on an Apache server). So our customer wasn’t able to protect some of his folders and we had to move it to our dedicated.


- The system uses PHP 4.3.11 – We have PHP 4.4.2 on our servers and most of our customers developed their websites on PHP 4.4.x


Basically, every time we had a problem (and there were too many) we had to move the website to our dedicated to solve it. With a slow FTP and no backup function, it is a very difficult task. Last week, I spent 12 hours to move away manually a website that belong to an important customer (many files and DBs).

I think that the people who are behind Mosso must put themselves on our perspective if they want to do business with us. Their hosting system looks great on the paper but it was absolutely unusable for hosting purposes when the tried it. I am very for sorry for that.

Now, those are very good reasons.

Thanks for your time. :agree:

Yes. I chatted on a couple of ocassions and the lack of a backup function / shell access means there's no real way to automate backups. Which as everyone on WHT will say: "If the site is so important, why didn't you keep your own backups"

The answer is that here it will be very difficult. Imagine backing up 40GB 60GB 80GB regularly.

It's great marketing speak on their website like another host that has been recently maligned all over here. The marketing guys however are always ahead of real capabilities.