Dear All,

As we all know Sonataweb.net was a great host until Terry (the owner) sold the company and left.

Sonataweb, especially Terry spoiled each of their customers with excellent support and services. This created a kind of benchmark in service standards and still I can't forget that.

I really think whosoever selected sonata at that time (2004~2005) will now require a real good host to be satisfied.

I would be really interested to know their(ex-sonata client's) existing host that they have selected after sonataweb. I really think whosoever selected sonata at that time (2004~2005) will now require a real good host to be satisfied.

And I am sure that your new host will be having something :agree: to meet your expectations and satisfy your needs.

Come and share your existing host and your experience with that host.

Let me start:

Host(s) after sonata:

budgetreseller.com

Comment: Kind of very happy to find them, very stable and good host. Excellent support, always there to help you. Able to meet my expectations.:D

duportonline.com

Comment: New find, but am satisfied with resources and support. Current deal is value for money and that is good for me. Only concern: Though host is present at WHT, but his activity are bit limited. For sure that doesn't raise any issue/concern on their capability as host.:D

Next person please share their host post sonataweb..

I've been unofficially summoned to this thread.

As your former leader though, I can recommend a few different hosts who I strived to be when I ran SonataWeb. Several I have used in the past, or I'm using now.

BlueWho.Com/HTTPme.Com - Steven runs an excellent operation over there. No doubt he'll be able to treat you just as good as I did.

HostMaven.Com - I recently posted a review of them. Great as well. I'm sure Tyler will be happy to be helping you again, this time under his wing.

Cernax.Com - If you're looking for a shared host, Ankit will serve your needs with no problem.

Hello Terry, we miss you! Should you come back to the industry as a host, let us know ^_~

As I said in my post (http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=566782), I have been spoiled by Sonataweb when ran by Terry. Everything worked, and any problems worked on until solved. No canned response, not left hanging. Sonataweb+Terry as a benchmark is quite hard to top!

Amongst the criteria hosts must have include:

- The usual criteria, uptime, professionalism in website, support provided

And the extras that we all like to have but now feels every host should give:

- Friendly support where you dont get canned response. You feel special and valued!
- Credibility that leads to trust. Hosts are transparent, no hidden anything.
- Host should have a presence in WHT, at least in reviews by honest objective clients

I wish Terry in the best in everything =)

As for me: After Sonataweb, I joined Innohosting. The reason why I chose them was:

- The owner had a lot of contribution in WHT
- There was no bad reviews about Innohosting in WHT and the one review was good and of a long-time customer (1 year plus).
- A lot of support channels (helpdesk, forums, emails, PMs)
- Uptime stats from here (http://www.webhostingstuff.com/uptime/InnoHosting.html) showing 100% uptime since monitored in December 2005!!
- Up to date cPanel and extras such as ImageMagick, up to date Fantastico

My experience, just to share:
- Signup process was good. A little hiccup but handled well.
- No file transfer to be done. So only my side to upload sites
- No complaints until now, because I need minimal support (been using reseller hosting since 2002. Stuff I can't do myself such as like only if server down, adding more space/transfer or really technical stuff or billing)

All in all, good experience so far ^_^ I hope IH keeps it up!

edit: Sonataweb also initiated queries on any file transfer to be done. Two thumbs up!

Sonataweb was indeed a disaster, they still even send me billing emails.

I went with www.qoozz.com and have been very impressed so far.

Andrew

Andrew, me too. I received the "Your account is due in 5 days" reminder just a few days ago. Crazy.

I've been unofficially summoned to this thread.

As your former leader though, I can recommend a few different hosts who I strived to be when I ran SonataWeb. Several I have used in the past, or I'm using now.

BlueWho.Com/HTTPme.Com - Steven runs an excellent operation over there. No doubt he'll be able to treat you just as good as I did.

HostMaven.Com - I recently posted a review of them. Great as well. I'm sure Tyler will be happy to be helping you again, this time under his wing.

Cernax.Com - If you're looking for a shared host, Ankit will serve your needs with no problem.

Hi Terry,

Trust you are doing good. Really miss you a lot..

I read your review on hostmaven, and am really impressed. Seems like, I am going to be Tyler's new customer.:cool:

Didn`t Tyler used to work your support desk Terry? :) The name sounds familiar that`s all.

The name sounds familiar that`s all.

See here:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/member.php?u=84922

See here:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/member.php?u=84922

Oh right :)

I just thought I remembered a Tyler answering tickets during my Sonataweb stint last year.

As for hosts, I`ve been around the block so to speak several times. After Sonataweb I got myself a semi-dedicated server with Bliksem. It was fantastic for several months, until the problems started much the same that everyone else has reported. I wouldn`t touch them even if they offered me a lifetime of free hosting!!

I have accounts at two different providers, and I`m happy with them both.

Dotable: I have a reseller account with them. No issues whatsoever. Bob and Steve are extremely friendly, and always willing to go take that extra step to help. It`s so good, I almost forget who my host is!

PowerVPS: I have both a reseller and VPS with them. Nothing more can be said, both accounts are superb.

...I just thought I remembered a Tyler answering tickets during my Sonataweb stint last year.

You did :)

I worked for Synergy Blue LLC. for a few months, and due to some issues I left that position a bit ago. Sadly, I can't match WHT username to SonataWeb customer, but I certainly do remember a lot of names. Fantastic bunch of customers, and it was really sad to be leaving that position but unfortunately I was without a real choice to.

Andrew, me too. I received the "Your account is due in 5 days" reminder just a few days ago. Crazy.It's scary to see these billing issues unresolved like this. I hope you guys made sure the money won't leave your accounts.

I couldn't do anything for October (I assumed the Billing section will handle it as they promised 2 months free due to the server hack aka October and November) but I got charged anyway. I reminded them about the promise and wanted a refund of it. But nope. So I unsubscribed the Paypal subscription. Even though I got the reminder that the account is due, the money doesnt leave my account.

You did :)

I worked for Synergy Blue LLC. for a few months, and due to some issues I left that position a bit ago. Sadly, I can't match WHT username to SonataWeb customer, but I certainly do remember a lot of names. Fantastic bunch of customers, and it was really sad to be leaving that position but unfortunately I was without a real choice to.
yeah sonatawas fun , ath the beggining, but at some point ppl were forced to bail out, i was among first who disappeared. had 2 hosts from that time:

dathorn.com - very happy with their service ( but is for a bit more experienced ppl )

dotable.com - my current host, everything is great there too.

I went with SYN Hosting and Budget Reseller afer Sonata. So far, so good.

I was a sonataweb customer for just over a year. I was very happy with the service Terry provided. It's too bad the new owner couldn't provide the same level of service. After reading about the problems others were having, I knew it was time to look elsewhere before I started to have problems too. So glad I did! I signed up with budgetreseller.com 5 months ago and I'm very pleased with the service that Greg and his staff provides. Support is awesome and no canned replies....they usually respond within 30 minutes too :)

I've been unofficially summoned to this thread.

As your former leader though, I can recommend a few different hosts who I strived to be when I ran SonataWeb. Several I have used in the past, or I'm using now.

BlueWho.Com/HTTPme.Com - Steven runs an excellent operation over there. No doubt he'll be able to treat you just as good as I did.

HostMaven.Com - I recently posted a review of them. Great as well. I'm sure Tyler will be happy to be helping you again, this time under his wing.

Cernax.Com - If you're looking for a shared host, Ankit will serve your needs with no problem.
Terry impressed me with his energy, knowledge, and business approach when I decided to initially host with him but after that I got busy with other matters and I did not pay attention when he sold Sonataweb. To be honest, I did not have any problems even after he left. After going maybe a year without a support ticket I recently lodged one looking for spam related help with one of my domains. When I went to Sonataweb.net to check on the ticket I was surprised to find the site had been taken down except for a phone number. Andy at SynergyBlue did get back to me on the support ticket but by then I had already signed up with HostMaven. I did not have time to go shopping. I was glad to find this thread and glad that Terry had weighed in on the discussion.

Support at HostMaven has been tremendous during the transition, response times were immediate. I asked for more help than I would have otherwise because the site is just a hobby for me and my real job does not allow me the time to invest. However, I still have a couple clients that would suffer with any downtime so I felt I had to get something accomplished in a hurry. The whole thing went rather seamlessly and Tyler et. al. came through in spades.

To say the least, I'm a little concerned about the future of this company (Sonataweb / SynergyBlue) after reading this thread.

I have 1 reseller account with them, and since reading this thread, I am now hunting for a new service provider, strictly because I'm worried that they will totally disappear without notice and leave me high and dry.

I have full backups of all the sites I host, I do it on a regular basis in fact.

I haven't experienced any major downtime (maybe 1/2 hour in a year), server performance is great, all my customers are happy, and I was happy that I had found what I thought was a reliable host.

In fact, the service that I have received when I asked questions has been answered promptly and to my satisfaction.

In fact, I purchased a separate reseller account for a customer of mine, had absolutely no issues cancelled, none of the "billing" issues I've read about ....

However, I now feel that I must change to another host, simply to find someone that's more "stable", and to give me peace of mind once again!

Interesting to say the least!!

Just to reclarify again, my billing issue was because they did not entertain my refund request and did not complete their side of cancellation, hence the continued billing reminders in my inbox. However, if SynergyBlue has completed your cancellation, it would've been fine.

Its really great to note that all ex-Sonata guests have found pretty good and decent hosts for themeselves.

Just to update I have signed with hostmaven.com also and am very excited. Will post my review on all my three hosts in time to come.

So to tally the score, here we stand on people's choices post Sonataweb:

Budgetreseller - 3
Hostmaven - 3
Dotable - 2
Dathorn - 1
Duportonline - 1
Innohosting - 1
qoozz - 1
PowerVPS - 1
SYN Hosting - 1

Good show leaders :agree: ..

I'm looking at a VPS on Hostmaven too and will let you know how it goes if I do sign up

I would like to thank the community here, after reading this post, I did switch.

And in the last 3 - 4 days I've picked up some of my own customers who was dealing with Andy @ SynergyBlue.

Apparently, their servers have been down for some time, no contact, not answering their phone, no support tickets being acknowledged.

I would like to thank the community here, after reading this post, I did switch.

And in the last 3 - 4 days I've picked up some of my own customers who was dealing with Andy @ SynergyBlue.

Apparently, their servers have been down for some time, no contact, not answering their phone, no support tickets being acknowledged.

So where have you moved?

haha, strange. i had never noticed sonataweb being sold. my site hosted on sonataweb is still running! and i've had no problems thus far.. guess i've been living under a rock.

So where have you moved?

For most of my sites that I had with SonataWeb, I moved to a reseller account here with the local Telco company (Aliant). We have entered into a strategic partnership and I had a few connections inside the company which threw me some business from my consulting company as hosting is only a small portion of my business.

I recently did pick up a new reseller account with LaneHost and have to say, I'm very impressed with what they offer, their dedication to support and service. I'm blown away by Derrick and his team!

I still maintain a reseller account with HiyaCorp who had been sold to Ambient Solutions. We had some hiccups but in working with Kash & Fred, these appear to have been ironed out and things have improved greatly there.

I did just notice that if you go to:

www.secretservers.biz ... it may shed some light as to why Andy appears to have disappeared!

It's definitely not good there anymore.

haha, strange. i had never noticed sonataweb being sold. my site hosted on sonataweb is still running! and i've had no problems thus far.. guess i've been living under a rock.

The writing IS on the wall with SonataWeb & SynergyBlue.

As I've said .. check out www.secretservers.biz ... it will give you an idea of what is actually going on!

hmm, guess i should switch hosts soon! :o

hmm, guess i should switch hosts soon! :o

I think I would make it a priority!!!

:-)

But that's just me.

I think I would make it a priority!!!

:-)

But that's just me.lol, yeah.

i'm looking for one right now! i just wasn't aware of what was happening, and i haven't needed to contact support for a few months now, so i haven't experiences any service problems.

lol, yeah.

i'm looking for one right now! i just wasn't aware of what was happening, and i haven't needed to contact support for a few months now, so i haven't experiences any service problems.

I just purchased one for another venture I started .. using LaneHost.

I have to say that I'm impressed with the service. Blows me away actually!

I see that Andy must have awakened from his sleep.

LOL!

One of his servers is back to life right now.

haha, strange. i had never noticed sonataweb being sold. my site hosted on sonataweb is still running! and i've had no problems thus far.. guess i've been living under a rock.

Yup for sure, you are far deep below rock.. have my advice run run run...

There are plenty of good hosts that can help you..

All the best!

Which company bought Sonataweb and made all of you customers so miserable? Looks like the web site has completely disappeared and it only displays a message to call a number for assistance. Looks like whomever bought it had no idea what they were doing and sunk the ship pretty badly.

SynergyBlue bought it.

They have there servers under the secretservers.biz domain name. Check out www.secretservers.biz to see some more about why this company has sunk pretty deep.

I hadn't heard of the sale until I stumbled on this thread and another one way back and I bailed.

I thought that Sonataweb was a great company when I had initially signed up. The old owner (Terry) ran a great operation. The owner that bought it (Andy Wu) sank it.

The thing being, I never had any issues but when I read these threads, I got concerned, jumped ship!!!

Boy am I glad that I did.

I went ahead and bought my own deditcated.

BTW: All the accounts are recoverable. I can get the email to the NOC that has them backed up. Let me know if you want it.

I'm going to move to budgetresller.com

hope to move hosts this week :)


damn, i'm glad i didn't miss this thread! :P

Well, Andy sweet-talked me last October when it took 12hrs to get a server back up (supposedly the GNAX guys couldn't get a motherboard that worked), and in late Feb his support was decent.
Now I don't know if it's looking worse or looking 'the same'
After 4 days, the Ticket system isn't emailing out (his 'support' phone is disconnected), with my server pinging and that's about it.
GNAX still has 3 racks for Synergy Blue's servers down there. Or maybe 3 racks of empty space.

So here's a hundred if someone can get a drive yanked out of GNAX for me, unless I just need to wait the normal 2 weeks.

R

yeah sonatawas fun , ath the beggining, but at some point ppl were forced to bail out, i was among first who disappeared. had 2 hosts from that time:

dathorn.com - very happy with their service ( but is for a bit more experienced ppl )

dotable.com - my current host, everything is great there too.

So, are you still with Dathorn?

What do you mean "but is for a bit more experienced ppl" ?

What do you mean "but is for a bit more experienced ppl" ?I guess it means they're not specializing in hand holding. Andrew himself once stated that their service is probably not the best choice for newbies.

I guess it means they're not specializing in hand holding. Andrew himself once stated that their service is probably not the best choice for newbies.

That may be true since the person who directed me to them to consider was and is experienced in Reseller Services.

So, I guess if you have been doing this for sometime and know how to setup and function with WHM, cPanel, and VPS settings you may find them a good choice.. :)

I feel I should follow up. Andy called noon-ish and said that they were working on mine, and it's the second time plagued by a Socket754 board gone bad.
Since the server was pinging they thought an earlier reset fixed it.

No good excuse for the ticket system failing or not letting me know about his new contact info.

He's concentrating on a big client, so if you're with him now, definately get a ticket started for his new number, and migrate off the AMDs he leased from GNAX a while back (if you're on one). I don't think he's closing shop anytime soon.

Likely story. I picked up a client from there and the number apparently listed on the site doesn't work, the number for the cancelled subscription that I had worked, but it definitely wasn't Andy. I tried to get the server rebooted to get some files off for the client, no luck.

Support tickets have gone unanswered. I even just checked and there are support tickets that I opened 5 months ago that were only just closed a few weeks back.

Greetings all. Please, if anyone has the contact number for Andy I need it desperately. His cell seems to be disconnected and my server is down. Thank you so much.

Down for me too. I'm trying to get in touch with him also.

Does 917-637-0702 still work for him? I haven't called him in almost a year, but that's the last I had for him.

Well, my sites came back up about 20 minutes after my post. At the time, even the Synergyblue support sites were down. I came back to post here when they came back up, but WHT was down.

Does 917-637-0702 still work for him? I haven't called him in almost a year, but that's the last I had for him.

Thanks, but that number is "no longer in service."

Hey thanks for that but unfortunately that number is now disconnected, same as what I had before. Anyone else have a more updated number? Thanks.

Amazing, people are still hosting at Sonataweb? I thought they should have run away long time back!!!

The resilience of hosting companies is nothing short of astounding. IMO, much of it is owed to the customers' habit of postponing the decision of changing hosts, either because of fear and laziness with regard to the moving process, or (less likely/important) because of the fear that the next host might be even worse.

Hey guys,

I've been out of the whole web hosting stuff for almost more than 8 months and I just realized I had a bunch of sites hosted with Synergy Blue/ Sonata Web... All of my sites are still up, but I have no access to the Cpanel, etc. I was wondering what I should do and how I should go about recovering all of my sites and their files so I can move to a new host.

Thanks,

Download all of your files via FTP, and if you remember your PHPMyAdmin URL, use that to dump and collect your SQL databases.

You can also do that via SSH, if you have access.

I'd do that, but like I said, all of my access to my sites are gone.. i.e. my ftp access, cpanel access, ssh access. and also it looks like the secretservers.biz site says account suspended.. so I don't know what to do.

Thanks

Server down again, finally came back up last time. This is making me sick... please if anyone has a contact # that would be great. They have not responded to any of my tickets I entered since mine and their sites came back up. The least they can do is sell to a company that has the resources to support their clients fairly. I will have to move over to new servers elsewhere but that is such a pain when you finally get everything on autopilot. Thanks.

I have been in the process of moving some 25-30 sites off of xena for the last week or so and now POOF! They are down again. I am with the last guy, this makes me sick to my stomach. I used to be on the phone with Andy on a monthly basis and he was great to work with (not as great as Terry who I still talk to from time to time). The fact that I could call Andy and he would walk me through my problems is why I stuck with Synergyblue for so long. But now? They've been incommunicado for too long for my comfort level. Here is the LAST communication I had from anyone there: Posted On: 19 Mar 2007 06:57 PM
Hi Adam,

I just started with Synergy Blue LLC for about two weeks ago. So I don't really know the whole story behind it. I have forwarded your question to andy@synergyblue.net. He should be able to answer all your question as he calls the shots on whats happening. He will be covering night shift from 8 PM to 8 AM tonight.

As for the number of clients, I am not sure on the exact numbers but we do get a few tickets from different webmasters a hour. I am waiting for the VOIP phone/line to be set up and maybe we can start accepting support via telephone really soon.
Rob Vasera
Technical Support

I found a paypal receipt with what appears to be Andy's cell number. I am going to give it a call. Wish me luck.

I found a paypal receipt with what appears to be Andy's cell number. I am going to give it a call. Wish me luck.
Could you drop me a line with the cell phone number? I need to get in touch with Andy, but I haven't found any way to do so at all.

You can email it to me, or PM it to me.

Thanks,

Terry

Is Sonataweb still going?

They used to be a good company until they got sold to Andy Wu. I was on Greenday which after the sale went downhill big time with almost daily problems.

I signed up a while ago and it must have been Terry who was in charge. Everything was great!

Now, I have been getting my monthly bill from Paypal with Andy's name on it and a phone number. The number is a Nextel cell phone from Boston and the person who answers it claims that Andy has not lived there in over two years. The same number is listed in his domain registration.

My site does not show up on the net. Luckily it was just a development site and I don't care about it. I stopped the Paypal payments, have lodged a complaint with the domain registrar, and plan to file fraud charges with the local police.

An out of date phone number on an old domain registration is understandable. But using that same number with a new Paypal billing is outright fraud.

i think, synergyblue shutted down 1hour ago.

synergyblue.com
synergyblue.net
synergyblue.info
secretservers.biz

Have a friend that procrastinated and didn't move from there ... no backups, and now he's in a bit of a jam. He just called me in a panic. I feel for the guy because I had recommended SonataWeb when it was not in the hands of Andy. He didn't take my recommendations to bail when troubles started up so ....

secretservers.biz is back alive, no site just a shell.