((First, sorry to join this forum and post 2 questions. Its just that I found this site after searching for hosts forever, and it feels like I struck oil! :) I do plan on helping people back with my experience. Anyways...))

I need a dedicated server, and until I found out about http://www.maxim.net, I was set on http://www.tera-byte.com. I know tons of people who use them for small accounts, dedicated, and colo, and everyone says they are pretty good.

But then someone told me about Maxim, and their prices are even better and they seem like a bigger company with more customization features. (sorry, not trying to make this a comparison, but does TB offer custom servers?) I talked to a sales rep, and their bandwidth prices are rising 15% come March 1st because of the merger with Hostcentric, but its still the best pricing I have seen.

The only thing I am afraid of is if something really bad happens like a hard drive crashes, it seems like some people are saying Maxim isn't exactly too speedy in helping out? What have you guys heard? I don't expect help at any another time than a hardware failure and I can even do my own backups (just in the early morning.. and it won't be a huge deal if I get set back a week, worth the risk I feel).

I figure the Hostcentric merger would definitely help service, as they will still be offering Maxim's prices (just bumped up a bit), and surely when you call tech support they won't be thinking "this guy is with Maxim, I will do his stuff later"? Also, I read in this forum Hostcentric will be doing a lot of upgrading with the recent merger (not to mention the $33.5 million in funding they just got!).

Any input is appreciated!!

In our 3 years in business, I have worked with 5 different datacenter companies, from a low-end of Interland (I know, what was I thinking???) to a high-end of Frontier GlobalCenter (now part of Exodus). I can tell you with utmost certainty that:

1) Every time we ever had to call Frontier GlobalCenter, we had to provide our account number, rack ID number, and the server ID number on the rack that needed service. On the other side of the coin, every time we have ever had to call Maxim, all we've ever had to give is our company name and the name of the server and they have known exactly what we were talking about.

2) When we were with Interland, we would call for support, and despite their claim of 24/7 service, things would only happen during business hours (I remember one time a server went down at 2:15 a.m., I called within 5 minutes - and Interland rebooted it at 9:15 a.m., 7 hours later). With Maxim, 95% of the time we get a live human being on the phone, regardless of the time of day. The other 5% we leave a message and typically get a call back within 20 or 30 minutes.

3) With Interland, it could take hours to get a reboot. With GlobalCenter it would often take 20 or 30 minutes. With Multacom it often took over an hour. But with Maxim I cannot ever remember a time when they didn't get a server rebooted within 10 minutes of when we notified them. Ever.

Now, all of that being said, lest you think I'm just glorifying them, I won't lie to you - things have not been entirely wine and roses using Maxim. Although they have very solid connectivity to a lot of providers, most of the providers they peer with are overloaded (most specifically, UUnet, AboveNet, and Globix all have *horrible* network latency during prime time hours). And although Maxim peers with several other providers who don't have those problems, it seems that 90% of the ISPs we've found out there are using one of those 3 for their upstreams, so we find most of our traffic flows over those networks unfortunately. They do, however, peer directly with a few ISPs - I know my connection through RCN drops right into HostCentric's network, which is great. But unfortunately not everyone is that lucky.

Also, this whole merger with HostCentric has in itself caused a few problems. There has been a major change in staffing in the last 2 or 3 weeks - staff from all the various HostCentric companies are being merged together, and at least from our end it hasn't been an easy transition. The people I am so used to dealing with at Maxim are either gone entirely or have been moved to new positions. Ted Smith, who was Maxim's CTO and was our primary point of contact for all networking-related stuff, has been moved to other areas, and now we're working with someone named Marie for the network stuff. Although it's too soon to say how Marie will work out for us, she doesn't know our operation like Ted did, so there's some learning curve for both her and us.

Michael Butler, who was Maxim's NOC Manager, is gone entirely. I do not yet know who has replaced him, but I can say he was a great guy and we'll miss him. Their former VP of Sales, Dave Brown, has been promoted, and their new sales manager, some guy named Reggie, came over from VirtualScape - again, it's too soon to say how he'll work out, although he seems to be pretty responsive to stuff, answering e-mails the same day I send them.

I guess the end result of this novel I've written here is to say that historically we've really enjoyed working with Maxim, but there's no way now to tell how things will be going now that they're integrating all of the HostCentric companies into one operating unit. The announced price increase, while mildly disappointing, wasn't unexpected. We argued against new access policies and managed to get a couple of them changed back in the customers' favor, so that was good. And hopefully with the HostCentric backbone coming online soon they won't be quite so dependant upon UUnet, AboveNet, and Globix to carry traffic in from PAIX.

Only time will tell if Maxim maintains their previous quality or if the HostCentric merger was a bad idea. One really nice thing about Maxim over other colo providers is they don't lock you into a contract (this is true of colo - I don't know about dedicated servers), so if you decide you don't like them you can move without any legal hassles. On the other side of the coin, though - no contract means no service level agreement. And although we've rarely if ever wished we had a service level agreement with them, there's always that concern hanging over your head.

Anyway, hope my ruminations have helped you some rather than just confusing you more. Maybe I shouldn't be writing these messages at midnight, but hey - I'm up, so I might as well.

Good luck,

Jason

Thanks a lot Jason, that was *very* helpful! I was specifically glad to hear that you were almost always able to contact a live person and get help immediately.

And yes, they dedicated server is also on a month-to-month basis. For me, I think the upside is bigger than the downside.

I think I will go with them and bet on only an improvement in service and pipes with Hostcentric, even if the prices get bumped up a bit and the staff need some time to adjust.

Please keep us informed as to how it all goes! (Good luck :))

Will do :) I will also keep my eyes open for people asking about Jumpline (great speed but poor service) and Virtualis (not recommended).

Well maxim were friendly all the time, and it´s true that you can get one on the phone 24-7 but nevertheless, if speed - not only in the US but also europe, asia etc. - is of concern for you, I´d say better do some more extensive tracrt, ping, put-through etc. tests from all the locations (europe, asia,...) that are important for you before you start over with maxim. My recommendation would be dynamichosting. Been there a week only, but have tested their network speed on a regularely basis over the last months and so I switched over to them few days ago. Can´t say anything about the service but my focus was speed and good put through and reliability, not service. Not affiliated with them, just saying the connectivity is very good. Adult allowed. Only thing I didn´t like so far, only 50 IP´s come with the server, for more you´ve got to pay. Maxim does provide whatever you need with no fees (almost everything else IS with fees there).