The following is my personal experience with Communitech.net:

1) Communitech.net hosts more than 1,000 virtual clients on one server, so it's easy for them to kick you out to ensure their "the Quality of Service" to all others, so their profit is fully maximized. Therefore, If you aim to grow your site, stay away!

2) Their features offered include 500 megabytes web space and 40gb bandwidth per month, which is what caused me to join them, but I used only 40 megabytes web space and less than 20gb per month when I was suspended and robbed of the money. So their offer is tempting only theoretically;

3) Well they would say it's the CGI scripts on your site that consumes excessive CPU and RAM resources, however, after I followed their instructions to make my site a plain HTML site, they still conjured up reasons to suspend my site.

4) They would say it's their sole discretion to determine what constitutes excessive usage. Therefore the reason I got for my site's suspension is " the java scripts and ads banners on your site dragged down the server", while anyone knows all java scripts are processed at client's side through browser and all ads banners are pulled from the servers of the ads network. This is most ridiculous of all! This does not mean their support technicians do not know these because the same technician suggested to me one week before the suspension that I should place all ads banners on outside servers(when actually they were), this only proves that they would try all means to push you into dedicated server for them to take more money from you.

So stay away from Communitech.net if you have other choices.

Well there has been several stories like yours.
You didnt mention how long youve been there but maybe its a blessing if youve gotten out now, rather than later.
Im sure if you do a search here...upper right hand corner, the search I am sure will produce tons of postings.
Best of luck in the future...there are many good reputable hosts that are available!
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=3053

One thing about the servers they use, they can handle 1000 account on a box without breaking a sweat, unlike an intel box which would have crashed long ago under those loads. The amount of sites per box really doesn't matter as long as the server can handle it, and theirs can. Not really trying to defend them, but one of your gripe is out of place.

Communitech.net used to offer "unlimited" bandwidth and I read many stories of them kicking people off for using "excessive resources." When they changed the Unlimited to a set amount I got the impression that they had realized the error of their ways.

Guess not!

The big thing with CT is NOT to use any cgi scripts if you can help it. Those are what gets you in trouble with their reaper. If you are gonna require scipts, try to use PHP and MySQL when possible.

One of the things CT did in the last several months is pressure shared server customers to move to dedicated servers. Aside from giving them short notice, they seem to have inflated their reports on how much bandwidth was being consumed. You can do a search and find reports here of people who said that once they moved to a dedicated server (not with CT) they discovered their bandwidth was a third of what CT said it was.

That's not an error in their ways, it's an indication of their attitude and how they choose to treat people. That's the kind of thing that is only changed by a change in owners and/or upper management.

Found this article on Slashdot today: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/05/1928226&mode=thread

Originally posted by IntelligentHosting.com
Found this article on Slashdot today: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/05/1928226&mode=thread
Just noticed someone posted this article to the "General" section... sorry about the double posting.

to punish the bad provider, the word of mouth is important. hopefully, no body would again fall into Cummunitech.net's trap!!!

i just moved from communitech yesterday lol! ;)

All I can say to this thread is -AMEN- I have been wanting to get my story with them off my chest for a long time, so here we go.

Anyone in there right mind should stay away from Communitech.net. During my stretch with them (September 2000-January 2001) my account was suspended three times for the same reason as many others, "Excessive CPU usage." They constantly tried to get me to get a dedicated server with them ($300/month+!!!) At the time i was only using around 25GB transfer/month and was on their unlimted plan.

Now I can see.. to an EXTENT (looking at the situation from their point of view).. that my site was perhaps lagging their server to their other 999 clients that shared the machine I was on. However, I prepaid in advance for one year of service. When they finally forced me off the server, they refused to return any of my money. What kind of shotty business practice is this?!?!?! Over 2/3 of the hosting that I pre-paid for was not delivered, and I should gotten my money back. However, CT refused to return anything, in turn pocketing my cash.

Overall, there are many better hosts then CT and I personally recommend SmartHosting.com (35GB transfer for $40 month :) ) Just stay away from Communitech. :mad: :mad:

Originally posted by purewwfrage
However, I prepaid in advance for one year of service. When they finally forced me off the server, they refused to return any of my money. What kind of shotty business practice is this?!?!?! Over 2/3 of the hosting that I pre-paid for was not delivered, and I should gotten my money back. However, CT refused to return anything, in turn pocketing my cash.
Don't take it. File a complaint with the BBB, which may help keep others from making the same mistake. that probably won't get you your moiney back. This might: contact the state attorneys office for the state they are located in. I think I may have a link to them on my site and I'm sure I posted it here a while ago. Just do a search. If you live in the U.S., you might even contact the s.a. in your own state jsut to see if there is anything they can do. I doubt it, though it is best not to leave any stone unturned. These slugs hide underneath stones and shoudl be exposed.

As I've said before, I think prepaying a year for shared server hosting with a company you are unfamiliar with is a bad idea. Sure, many offer a discount if you do to entice you, some even require a year prepaid. It is often a way to fleece the gullible, ignorant, and trusting.

No one can lead you to slaughter without your cooperation.

I've got clients who pay by the year or half year, though there are differences. The ones who pay by the year knew me already and trust me. I've handled their computer needs for years, including finding reputable resources for those things I can't handle. One that pays semi-annually (so far, he may switch to yearly) knew the level of support I provide even before I hosted his site. We use the same forum program and I provided assistance. We determined that his hosting company at the time (a rinky dink company that didn't know what they were doing and kept lying to him) was at fault. I hadn't even suggested he move to my company, he brought it up. Based on that service I provided, he paid to the end of the quarter (how I bill) and then a half a year at a time.

However, I would not recommend prepaying that far ahead to anyone unless they were as sure as my clients are that they would receive the service they thought they were getting.

You may as well give it to charity or go have fun with it if you're going to waste it.

I look at it this way, if the service is good, the majority of people will stay with a host without being forced to. Sure, you'll lose some for various reasons, from the cheapskates who chase after the cheapest hosts and don't appreciate value, to those who depart for seemingly inexplicable reasons. Alll in all, I would trust to service to keep a customer willingly rather than holding them hostage by collecting the ransom up front.

Hey Duster, thanks alot for your advice. I'm going to ask a few more questions and add some things I forgot origionally:

File a complaint with the BBB, which may help keep others from making the same mistake. that probably won't get you your moiney back.
-------------
Does it matter that 4 months has passed since these incidents, and should I alert CT that I have filed a complaint against them?

contact the state attorneys office for the state they are located in.
-------------
What do you recommend actually saying to them? Asking them to get my money back?

As I've said before, I think prepaying a year for shared server hosting with a company you are unfamiliar with is a bad idea.
--------------
I've certainly learned my lesson there :rolleyes:


Here are some things I left out in my first post which was done in a rush. These probably complicate my side of the story, but here we go:
1) My website is a pro-wrestling site, and it turns out that buried in their huge 'Affiliate Agreement' they actually ban wresting sites from their servers.
a) Does this give them the right NOT to return my money and
b) If wrestling sites are banned, why was I accepted in the first place.
2) My account is actually still active (they have not disabled it from when they re-enabled it after my 3rd suspension a while back), but had i left my DNS pointing to it they would have pulled the plug. Now I am left with just an IP address, and i have not used the server in months.

I do have all of our emails on record, and their methods for trying to kick me off are actually kind of funny. First they said I was slowing the server, I offered to move my images to a diff. server which would drastically drop my bandwith consumption, and THEN, only THEN, did they point out their 'ban' on wrestling sites (in that category is also 'pokemon' sites and any other 'fad' sites)

Some other random things to note about Communitech:
1) My friend has a dedicated server with them, it was hacked, and he said that they were going to charge him $100/hr + to fix it! Yikes!
2) 3/4 of the time when I called, their phone support was not working.
3) Their 'highly trained technicians' or whoever answers the phones are not quite up to par with this webhosting stuff, i mentioned something about 'Apache' to one of them and they had no idea what i was talking about... :rolleyes:

Thanks again and if you or anyone else can respond I would certainly appreciate it :cool:

Originally posted by purewwfrage
Does it matter that 4 months has passed since these incidents, and should I alert CT that I have filed a complaint against them?
Nope. The BBB will notify them that there's been a complaint and ask for their response. You don't have to notify them.

That it's been four months doesn't matter; it just means you've spent four months trying to deal with them directly and are now going to the BBB.

I copied the slashdot post to Communitech.net and their director of operation replied as follows:
______
CommuniTech.Net does not open attachments sent by people, so I was unable to open the file you attached. However, reading the title, I presume it is the Slashdot thread, which we are well aware of.
______

have you ever come across people as unscrupulous as they are? they said they were well aware and proud of being a thieveing company?

I think they need to be punished and the way to punish them is for us victims to work together! DO NOT let them get away!!!!!!!!

Let's unite

I had an account on one of their servers that totally died, they said they would credit 3 months hosting for the inconvenience.

As it turns out the renewal date came about, and I was not credited what i was entitled to until i actually emailed them and told them that they owed me 3 months hosting

They also disabled my vb scripts twice when my site got slashdotted.

needless to say... i have left them eventhough one of my accounts still has paid hosting there till June because of the credit.

Communitech, well they really take the price. If you eat to much resources they kick you out, and if you don't use any the kick you out. I just got this for one of my clients account with them;

NOTICE OF ACCOUNT SUSPENSION

This e-mail is to serve you notice that the account listed below has been
suspended by CommuniTech.Net. Details of the suspension are listed
below.

Account ID: xxx
Domain Name: xxxx.xx


Reason for suspension: Inactive account


Best Regards,


CommuniTech.Net, Inc.


Do not reply to this e-mail, as it will never be received.


So I guess that you can't please them

Nordic

What kind of idiot would cancel an account because its not using system resources?

CT must really be bored or just simply looking for more enemies!

What kind of idiot would cancel an account because its not using system resources? Communitech:sickface:

Anyway, after a 20 minute international call the issue was solved. But not before me getting quite upset and raising my voice. Got even more angry and upset when they tried everything listed in the "support" manual for shutting down an account, if one excuse don't fit try the next.

Nordic

We'll I'll be filing a complaint :smash: with the BBB and the State Attorney General's Office later today as my email to the President of CommuniTech & the person I previously dealt with have gone unanswered. Thanks for all the help everyone

I work for CT - I don't want to be flamed here or anything, but if you have specific questions to any issues posted here I'll be happy to answer them. Feel free to email me at LanceH@communitech.net. I would respond to the issues currently presented here but I do not know the specific situations. I apologize to those of you who believe you have been mistreated, but please know it is not our goal to treat anyone unfairly.

Thanks,

Lance.

purewwfrage:

We certainly support you!! if you need evidence, better give this thread and other threads you can find on the web to the BBB, in order to impress them how bad Communitech.net is.

They must pay for what they have done!!

Please keep us informed about your complaint.

I heard many similar stories about Communitech.net, look like they could not get away easily this time.
I'd like to frequent this thread to see the final result.

Amen!

what is real reason why CT doens't istall php4?

thanks!

Wow .... I thought Communitech had a pretty good reputation .... They were on my "possible hosts" lists ... you can learn a lot on this board. :cool:

Originally posted by WiredOne
Wow .... I thought Communitech had a pretty good reputation .... They were on my "possible hosts" lists ... you can learn a lot on this board. :cool:
They do have good equipment and good reliability. Their problem lies with the attitude of their management, which works it's way down through everyone else in the company. They tend to "shoot first and not care about the answers later."

They have many scripts and programs that can be installed directly from their control panel for each domain. These are all cgi scripts, including webadverts. These are the scripts that tend to get the customers in trouble with cpu usage. Why don't they just substitute some of these scripts with others that are not so resource hungry? They have php and mysql, so why not take advantage of that and use those types of scripts?

Because they "shoot first and not care about the answers later."

Their problem lies with the attitude of their management, which works it's way down through everyone else in the company.

I'd definatley have to agree. I tried talking with Lance about my account and after I made a negative, but true, comment about CT I was ignored. I hope his computer crashed or something but I'm not sure if that was the case... :rolleyes:

BTW, adure, thanks for the support. If we all (those who have been wronged by CT) file FORMAL complaints with the BBB & Attorney Generals office we can get things accomplished.

I have been hosting with CT for over a year. They have been great until a couple of months ago. All of a sudden their servers started getting very slow. E-mail was at many times unreachable. I guess they were trying to maximize their accounts on every server...
What also irriated me was that they never upgraded their MySQL and PHP versions!!!! As my site totally runs on these technologies, they lost me as a customer...
After setting up a monitoring service on my site, it looked like a rollercoster!!

Anyway, even though I have some time left with them I decided to go dedicated with rackshack! I have been very happy with rackshack so far, much faster and more stabile, and I have all the latest goodies installed...

CT where very good around a year ago, but now as competition grows they need to modify their structure and services to be more competitive. They need to listen to what their customers want (PHP4)!

If they don't upgrade to php4 I leave their services on next expiration date!

bye

We have been with CT for 1 1/2 years. We dont resell nor run ad's or have anything really advanced going on beyond streaming a number of video clips from our site. My CGI scripts are fairly simple, a few custom calendars and your average forms customized a bit. We have had pretty complex stuff up as we were deploying and testing for clients and never had any trouble. We have decent speeds and have never run into anything the site wouldnt run.

I have not had any real trouble with them.

I have been charged 10.00 for going over the alloted space once or twice, but it was legit and I got 2 warnings.

I am grandfathered into the unlimited. I will say that the tech support has never been very good, read timely, or polite, but they have good forums and a pretty decent control panel. I would say that they are decent for simple to mid level sites that you can administer yourself. But you are right, for the PRICE you can do better.
I am happy about the unlimited bandwidth, though!
My 2 cents.
Thanks James

vid,

It is their attitude above everything else that causes them to lose customers. I was there from Feb '99 to Sept '00. The first 6-8 months, I was extremely pleased with them. But the problems began to appear as their growth rate grew very rapidly. They did not keep up, nor have they increased support personnel. A company with in excess of 25,000 (prolly much higher now) virtual accounts plus dedicated customers, <b>MUST</b> have 24 hour phone support available with personnel available to handle most any type of problem. As it was when I left, their support ticket system and billing procedures had these problems:

no supervision of support tickets

- tickets were usually read each morning - sometimes more often
- if the person who reads a certain ticket and does immediately know how to fix the problem, it goes to the bottom of the list - regardless of how serious the problem is
- they had multiple power outages due to poor backup power supply planning and implementation (should have been corrected the very first time - or before)
- many 'reaper' warning of cgi scripts taking too much system resources (these were scripts mostly supplied by them) - if this was such a big problem, remove the scripts from their control panel!
billing is a nightmare

- many accounts charged two three and four times for
the same term
- many accounts given an NSF on the credit card attempt, only to find out the very first charge was successful.
- no statement available to tell what charges were for what account (very bad for resellers) later they said they would charge $5.00 for this information - per account

As stated above, they have good quality and reliable equipment, and a decent value for the dollar. Their problem comes from their management style - they need qualified customer service reps, and experienced high management personnel - not techies who started the company in a basement. They do not have the management experience or training required to run a company that size the way it needs to be run.

Yes, their attitude and the eagerness to maximize profit margin will no doubt scare customers like us away!

They would try every means to suspend an account that they dislike but is still within their specified terms of service, one reason we got is they blamed us for being dishonest, which is in fact an outragous insult!!!

and if you go to their forum, you would find similar cases in which they mistreat their clients!

Let's work together against such thieving company.

Originally posted by easenet
Let's work together against such thieving company. [/B]

Yes, this is the only thing that we can do. I tried one final time to contact CT but to no avail. I will now be taking my case to the BBB and the State Attorney General's Office of Missouri and I encourage everyone who has been shortchanged by CT to do the same.

Together, we can accomplish a lot. Lets show CommuniTech that we mean business.

purewwfrage:

You are right! If they did not respect us, we would like to show them how to do it.

You have every support from us and all other victims of Communitech.net who are watching what's happening here.......

Originally posted by pink64
If they don't upgrade to php4 I leave their services on next expiration date!

bye

they don't upgrade cgi too. that's why i switched my host. i cancelled my account at communitech but where the hell is email confirm me that my account is cancelled????????? :angry: :kaioken:

Ok well I finally got my things together and just lodged a complaint with the BBB (http://www.bbb.org) , and will be filing one with the Attorney General of Missouri (http://ago.state.mo.us) tommorow. If anyone else has been mis-treated or wronged by CommuniTech, please do the same so we can get something done! :cool:

Also, thanks to everyone who helped me with this problem for all of your support!

When I gave CT notification of my moving of all my accounts at CT, their attitude changed completely. They would send regular emails to me offering co-location, dedicated server deals. and even offered to make an international call from missouri to Sydney where i am to discuss the matter!!

when will the day come when CT will offer that same courtesy for tech support.?? i guess NEVER

One problem after another, and the inside of Communitech.net is revealing.

We are looking forward to a result in favor of the customers.

I just wanted to add something;

I avoided using CGI scripts as much as possible, and used a VBulletin like this. I did everything so that the amount of queries and usage were at a minimum. It was also a small board at the time (around 1-10 users on at once).

Still, they disabled the board's scripts, and a day or so after being emailed the rude response was that "Bulletin boards can be very intense programs..and when you put mySQL, PHP and a bulletin board on a shared server it usually oesnt work out. This script really needs to be turn off. This is the latest new I have from out developer."

So CGI and Mysql/PHP both aren't 'safe' at CT. No matter how small your board is.

The same thing recently happened to a friend of mine who was on CT, her vbulletin, before it was "unveiled to the public" was simply disabled. She also had like 5 registered users!

I'm now happily free from CT, with another host. The friend is also moving at her next expiration date.

I've also had a friend who went through a billing nightmare with CT in the past.

1. They said her credit card was invalid and it was PLATINUM

2. She had to make long distance calls to CT, which in turn costed more than a month's worth of hosting.

3. One of the people needed to be working there went home early for the weekend and her account wasn't restored until after.

purewwfrage:

Any news from BBB?

We must see some result!

We need more inputs from CT victims!!!
Guys, come on vent your unhappy dealings with this aweful company

This is my story, it is long. I am not saying CT is 100% at fault but they are a horrible company and they are very lame about their practices.

In the 16 months that I was hosted by CT my files were lost twice. The first time they said that the backups were unrecoverable. The second time it took them about 72 hours to restore all backups. Although, I had backups of my own so the only thing that affected me was the down time. They said that the server used RAID5…how could the files be lost TWICE?? There was something going on there that they would not tell us…

Starting in December of 2000 my UBB kept getting chmodded to 000 so it could not be used…which is lame.

In jan of 2000 I started a site that was relatively new with a small amount of traffic. In February of 2001 my account got shut down for too much CPU. I gave them a call and they were pretty nice about turning my account back on.

In April of 2001 my account got shut down yet again for too much CPU. Yet again they were fairly nice but somewhat reluctant to turn on my account.

Finally in may of 2001 my account got shut down and they would not turn it back on.

First of all, by the time my account was shutdown I was getting about 2500 unique impressions a day and pulling about 50GB per month. (I was getting was getting more than what I should have gotten for 22.95/month). They should have given me better options instead of shutting down my account without notice. Each time my account was shut down I didn’t receive ANY notice. Usually my account was shutdown THEN I received an email 20 minutes later with the reason. In April I started to set everything up for my own hosting practice. I leased out my own line and I was about 4 days away from having a working server setup for me to transfer my site. I received another dreaded e-mail that said my account had been suspended yet again. (At this point my account was using about 345MB out of the 350MB of allotted disk space.) I called them up and the guy at the other end opened up FTP and telnet, he said that he was the only person there and couldn’t open my whole account, just those so I could get my files. (Which I think was BS…but that is besides the point. I tar’ed my whole site and got all the files off there. The next morning I called them up to talk to someone else. They told me at that point my account was DELETED because I was using too much disk space….yes, because I had to make the backup and the backup file brought me over the 350MB. At this point I didn’t care so I just asked her if they could forward all requests to my new server. All they have to do is point their DNS record to a different IP. She said this was not possible because my account was deleted.

For some reason it seems that I lucked out more than the others here. But CT still screwed me over and was very unprofessional about how they handle too much traffic. I understand that my account shouldn’t have been on a shared host at the end of my time. When I was talking on the phone they kept saying “Oh, you are going to move to dedicated sever with us correct?” Of course not! This topic was brought up every time I was talking to a rep. When I said “no” they became very rude and unhelpful.

This is a very shady company that I would not touch with a ten-foot poll. I have also contacted the BBB and the Missouri attorney general. CT is lame, stay away from them even if you have to pay more money.

These guy's are amazing,

I left them almost eight months ago after being fraudulently billed for bandwidth charges that I had never received a bill for and/or proof of bandwidth. They would just charge my card when they felt like it.

Here they are still trying to charge my damn
card. :angry:



"Thank you for attempting to resolve your billing issue
referenced below.

Unfortunately, we were unable to secure funds from your
credit card using the information you provided.

Below are the details of our attempt to secure funds"


Amazing!! Off to call my attorney...

I was just wondering if anybody had anything new to say about these guys? Been a while since I have heard anything and maybe these guys have got their act together now or something.

Hmmm,

Seem like these days everybody has a liar (lawyer) stash away in one of their pockets

:D

Dear purewwfrage and all victims of Communitech.net:

Let's work harder to get some results done against Communitech - a thieving company, never let go of them.


please report your progress.

thanks!

I have read the thread on Communitech and I too join the list of disgruntled webmasters. Not only did I dislike the BS they were telling me every time my site went down or everytime my server was switched but they even tried to charge my account after I cancelled. I am currently fight with them to reverse a charge.

I would NEVER RECOMMEND Communitech to anyone.

I just wanted to pipe up and say that I've had an account with Communitech for just over 2 years without any complaints. Billing and tech support questions have been handled quickly and professionally, and they offer a wide array of features for the price (of course, if you don't need those features, then they are a bit pricy).

They are about a year behind the curve on adding new versions of languages (and have dropped python support, but you can install it yourself), but they do get there --PHP4 as a module is going to be out soon as CGI it has been available for some time.

They also have a fairly extensive "members only" forum system. They are not moderated with a heavy hand, and all of their customers (at least those interested) can read these and other complaints. But we also get to read the other side of the stories as well, and I for one --and I'm not alone judging by the small percentage of their clients who jump ship-- have usually not been upset when the final solution is for a customer to take his/her business to another host.

I've never had a reaper warning (a deamon that detects "excessive" CPU/memory usage) in spite of the fact that I use several instances of a script that they specifically warn has caused warnings in the past. But none of my sites use much bandwidth (about 2gig per month) and I only average 7k hits per day across all sites. My point is that if you are running small sites that communitech is --again, from my experience-- a good company to host with.

If you're pushing the limit of what they consider
"excessive" then you should probably just look elsewhere. I know that ticks some people off, and they evidently don't do a professional job of it, but from my standpoint as another of their customers, I view that as keeping the servers responsive for my sites.

By the way, they are listening to customer complaints, and have just implemented some new plans that are aimed at people who are using "too many" resources for their normal shared machines, but who do not need a dedicated server.

I don't doubt that people have had bad experiences with Communitech, but there are many who have not, and keep in mind that you are only hearing one side of some of these stories.

Lloyd Sommerer

I've just got to chime in here. I've been with CommuniTech.Net for about 2 years now and I've had no problems. I have several domains with them (cncgames.com, cncden.com, sector31.net and a few more) and none have been suspended once. I'm exceeding bandwidth bills every month (at least $150/month for EACH domain) and I just reached the web space limit with cncgames.com. Now, I pretty much know what I'm doing and have operated my sites without any technical support questions for the 2 years I've been here. I've had to contact them, I think, twice, since starting business with them in 1999. And every time I have a question or need something, I email the same guy. He responds within a couple hours. You can't get much worse than I have with the bandwidth and web space usuage. I exceed them all every month and get billed, every month.

The main reason I'm still with them, is the fact that I haven't found a better host, with good hardware and a good control panel to run my business. If you guys can help me with this, let me know, but you'd be hard pressed to do so.

And though you guys may have had some problems with their hosting, pay attention to their TOS and understand that they are trying to run a business. Just because 10, 15 or even 20 of you have had a problem, the other 2000 have not. And just like any other company, you live and learn. They stopped with the unlimited bandwidth because it was a problem. And since then, they do have bigger plans for the bandwidth and webspace consuming sites.

In the end, two years... no problems... exceeding limits... no downtime. If your a dedicated webmaster, you know that's pretty damn good.

i've been happy with http://communitech.net for the past 2 years until recently . i use a resold account. my tech support has been great and doing all his best to solve my latest problems

i think some servers has just too many users . i use a board script, ikonboard gold version and so does my friend (in another server) and he has no internal server errors on that script

even if i use a greymatter blog script, i get internal server errors now and then. how could that be resources excessive?

so i think some servers are just overloaded. they need to check it out more often.

Did you guys know that they now have live cameras?

Curtis

Hmmm, False Advertising it looks like :mad:


http://www.voogru.com/images/falsead.jpg
http://www.voogru.com/images/falsead2.jpg
http://www.voogru.com/images/falsead3.jpg

Actually, those are probably true. Seeing as they have hundreds of thousands of customers and only a select few haven't enjoyed their service.

I can say over 90% of people think I'm the bomb, yeah, whatever...

Lemme say this, I am soooo glad that I didn't sign up with them. I've been looking for a place to host multiple domains and point them to subdirectories (I'm currently trying GearHost.com now) TrueVirtual had communitech.net on the list of host that supported the script. So I visit their page and I went gaga over the fact that they have conference room @_@ Loverly bit of an expensive IRC client, hmmm (I'd kill for my own ConferenceRoom) anyway, so I called the sales to see if I could switch the server on ConferenceRoom from their server to the one that currently hosts my IRC chatroom. They were like "Sure" So then as an afterthought, I asked them if I could host multiple domains and point them to my subdirectories with a script, and they said no I had to *buy* more plans from them. I thanked them while mentally growling and hung up. Either they didn't know what they were talking about, they were false advertising, or they were trying to rip me off.

Either way it smelled like trout, so I backed out.

Now I'm glad I did.

relieved.
ochiba

All you would have had to do was pay a $25 setup fee for the domain pointer. Then, once the DNS was correct on the domain(s), put a simple code in your .htaccess file and they would have redirected to where you want. Viola. Any host can do that I'm sure. And I KNOW that CommuniTech.Net can, I've done it before.

You must have misunderstood what they were telling you. Plus, once you do sign up with them, you have access to some of the best support forums on this planet. If the administraters can't help you, another client can. Very helpful people there.

No meant no. I don't think I misunderstood that. As far as the options, as soon as they started stating that I would need to pay more money, I admit, I tuned them out and went into uh-huh/mmm, I see mode. So I'm sure it was possible, I just don't think the sales person was aware of this. Same problem with CQHost, I was able to point my domains to subdirectories with turned on wildcards and TrueVirtual, but the sales person told me nope nope and another no for good measure.

Anywhose, it doesn't matter because GearHost offers me unlimited multiple domains/subdomains/domain-emails without the use of TrueVirtual and all for free. ::wiggles her cheapskatin' booty all over this forum::

In my opinion the only thing that makes communitech look more attractive than other hosts is their conferenceroom (which is great for folks who run interactive web communities like me)


ochiba

bugger me it sounds like who I used to work 4

:angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:

Originally posted by dustin[s31]
All you would have had to do was pay a $25 setup fee for the domain pointer.

ALL you would have to do is pay $25? Doesn't that seem high to you? Maybe it's just me because I don't make money (yet) off of any of my sites but I am currently with a host that not only does that for FREE but allows me to do it myself. Oh' and the last host I was with, worked the same way. I've seen several hosts charge for this option and some are only charging $5 per pointer. That I can live with. But when you start adding pointers and get three in no time, you're talking much more money than you planned for.

This is just my opinion but I did consider CommuniTech once, even with all the bad rep. they received here. After checking on them again recently, I don't think they're a consideration anymore.

No matter what anyone says. They are the best and have the BEST hardware of any hosting company on the web. I've been with over 12 hosts, they rule over all. With no contest.

Just because you have to pay a bit more for a pointer? Maybe it's the $15,000 they spend on EACH of their servers? Whereas the other companies spend $5,000 (if that) on theirs.

Quality of hardware itself doesn't say much. What you need to look is both the quality of hardware AND the number of clients they put on each server. From what I've seen in this forum, communitech put a lot of customers into a single box, much higher than other hosting companies do. Personally I don't think a $15K machine is necessarily better. From my experience, I know that a hardware with higher price doesn't always come with better quality.

The things I could tell you about my 16 months at Communitech.net. The owner of the company turned off one of my dedicated servers that had 150 customer web sites because they found a negative post I made about them (it was a true and factual post) on the Cobalt List. Then, when I finally got out from under them, it took them 4 weeks to return my co-located server to me. Total head games. They are the absolute WORST company I have ever dealt with on the web.

Avoid Communitech.net like HERPES.

Originally posted by lsommerer
I just wanted to pipe up and say that I've had an account with Communitech for just over 2 years without any complaints. Billing and tech support questions have been handled quickly and professionally, and they offer a wide array of features for the price (of course, if you don't need those features, then they are a bit pricy).

They are about a year behind the curve on adding new versions of languages (and have dropped python support, but you can install it yourself), but they do get there --PHP4 as a module is going to be out soon as CGI it has been available for some time.

They also have a fairly extensive "members only" forum system. They are not moderated with a heavy hand, and all of their customers (at least those interested) can read these and other complaints. But we also get to read the other side of the stories as well, and I for one --and I'm not alone judging by the small percentage of their clients who jump ship-- have usually not been upset when the final solution is for a customer to take his/her business to another host.

I've never had a reaper warning (a deamon that detects "excessive" CPU/memory usage) in spite of the fact that I use several instances of a script that they specifically warn has caused warnings in the past. But none of my sites use much bandwidth (about 2gig per month) and I only average 7k hits per day across all sites. My point is that if you are running small sites that communitech is --again, from my experience-- a good company to host with.

If you're pushing the limit of what they consider
"excessive" then you should probably just look elsewhere. I know that ticks some people off, and they evidently don't do a professional job of it, but from my standpoint as another of their customers, I view that as keeping the servers responsive for my sites.

By the way, they are listening to customer complaints, and have just implemented some new plans that are aimed at people who are using "too many" resources for their normal shared machines, but who do not need a dedicated server.

I don't doubt that people have had bad experiences with Communitech, but there are many who have not, and keep in mind that you are only hearing one side of some of these stories.

Lloyd Sommerer
I dont believe it. You must work at Communitech.net.

Originally posted by priyadi
...From my experience, I know that a hardware with higher price doesn't always come with better quality.

I agree 100%. Just like anything else in life, things can go south, even if you paid top price for the hardware. Just because of that doesn't mean you will end up having a non-problem machine. Also, in my opinion and experience with several web hosting companies, the ones that had the best technical support are the ones you never had to contact. I could care less if they respond in an hour or two and have all problems resolved in the same time. If I have to contact them time and time again about problems, that is a problem. I've heard that Communitech has had problems with technical support in the past thus me mentioning it above.

I've been with them for over 2 years and I've had VERY few questions. It's not their fault that most people are too lazy to read their knowledge base, which, 99% of the questions answers are in there.

In addition, reliable hardware, DOES mean the most uptime and less failure. Plus, I've been there in person and they do not cram their servers with craploads of people. They limit the number of sites they put on servers. It depends on the sites' sizes on the number they put on each.

I KNOW this because I've been there. Not because of what I've heard.

Originally posted by cp1967

I dont believe it. You must work at Communitech.net.

No, I'm a teacher, and I do a little web work on the side. I'm just one of the people you don't hear from that often --people who had a good experience with a company. Generally (and I think especially on the internet) you only hear about a company if someone has had a bad experience.

Lloyd

Originally posted by markblair


I agree 100%. Just like anything else in life, things can go south, even if you paid top price for the hardware. Just because of that doesn't mean you will end up having a non-problem machine.

I have to add that if I had $15K to spend on servers, I would have bought about 5 to 15 servers instead of one huge server. This is a no brainer for web hosting business, the reasons are clear:

- it is more cost effective, usually you can fit more clients to a few smaller servers than one big server, at the same price

- with one single server, there is one single point of failure. If the huge box had trouble, all customers would have complained at the same time, creating a long customer support backlog, and hence, more unsatisfied customer. And if that's the only box you've got, then your company is already at risk. :(

- with a lot of small servers, it is easier to scale. if you get more clients, just add more boxes. With a huge server, usually you would think twice to buy another one :)

- with big servers, you waste money. If you expand with buying another huge server, most of resources of the new server will be unused, as it still has very few clients. On the other hand, by buying a small server, the excess money ($13K or so) could be still in your bank account, generating interest.

- if you are starting, it is easier to get a smaller server than a huge one. The cost of huge servers is far too expensive for startups

- cost of system administration is higher for a huge system, while this is arguable, it is generally true, a sysadmin will generally ask more if he is going to admin a large box.

- a large system is generally have less clients per cu.ft, hence it requires more datacenter space for the same number of clients.

- a larger system is not necessarily more reliable than small ones. I've seen hosts offering shared hosting in small servers, getting an availability of more than 99.9%.

The one thing you got to think about is who is running this company? The same people that started this back in St. Joseph, Missouri are the same people who run it now (I know i used to work there). Sys Admin charges are at a min. CT has there ups and downs, there is no question about that. I think they are a pretty good on the hosting side, but on the management/policy side I think they are very weak. If you notice most of these posts are about how CT overcharged me, deleted my account, suspended me, etc. Nobody has really mentioned downtime, latency, etc. I will not talk bad on CT, but I will admit they do have some serious problems.

Nearly TWO years passed since the start of the thread, and Communitech seems to get away.

Is there anything to be done to stop their evil doings? deleted your account, cheated your money..........


Help is needed!!!!

Please act!!!

Originally posted by please2it
Is there anything to be done to stop their evil doings?For starters, maybe you could file a complaint at the Kansas Better Business Bureau: http://www.kansascity.bbb.org/commonreport.html?compid=98100135

Not sure how effective that'd be though..

- What exactly was your experience with them?

Avoid Communitech.net like HERPES!!!!!:angry: :angry: :angry:

please2it you are hurting the cause of everybody who has a serious issue with communitech by flaming the topic with posts. With that being said...

I have been hosted with communitech for over 4 years. I run a teen site that is one of the most popular online (22,000 members: 100,000 posts to a forum: 75,000 private notes sent to members etc,etc). This is all run using PHP and MYSQL. I have developed all these scripts myself and have never run into the reaper or using too much resources. I have read all these posts by others, I'm sure your concerns are legitimate but for the 19.95/month I'm locked in at, with unlimited bandwith and no problems, they can't be beat. Just my 2 cents.

Price: communitech is over priced and participate in questionable accounting practices and over billing.

Product: Communitech claims business class webhosting, but server up time is not great. Emails are limited to 100 per hour so if you have an office with 10 people you can't send more than 10 emails. Email responders don't work correctly. Backups policy and procedures are haphazard and not available for email.

Support: Communitech's staff has very little knowledge of the product, inability for the team to resolve issues and no escalation or resolution to know bugs with their product.