I am looking for a dedicated server, and about a month ago, I chose Burst.net. Now I am having second thoughts. Today O found their website was down, and this was not the first time but I also noticed Web Hosting Talk was down as well so it may not be Burst.net. Also, on this board, I have seen many bad things about them. It seems as if most of the problems are with billing, and not with the actual service. I do not know what to do now..Go with burst, or find someone else? Any advice?

Yeah, the whole VDI network was having problems earlier today. BurstNET is actually moving to their own NOC within the next week or so (though it could be longer), so you might want to consider if that's good or bad.

The main problem BurstNET has/had is that they grew too fast. Everyone was recommending them at one point; they grey; then they got bogged down with clients and support became slow, and billing got screwed up. They've slowly been getting better.

You may want to do some searches for BurstNET on the forums. It seems as if whenever a customer poses a problem to them on these boards (even though it should be taken care of via email or Burst's support methods) they tend to make it look like the customers fault... I don't care how well you run your business, mistakes will happen as they happen to us all regardless of if we like to admit it or not. They need to realize that it's ok to say yea we made a mistake here and this is what we are doing to correct it. IMHO, honesty... regardless of the situation will pay off in the future (unless you are honestly a scam like some hosts I have seen come and go, then honesty is bad... very bad!)

Regards,

Mike

Hm... I think Sean from Burst Net have said/acknowledged that sometimes they made mistakes. Actually he has said this several times.... So, don't give people wrong impression before you are sure about what you are saying... :)

cheers,
:beer:

I have watched sean (burstnet) make the customer look like it's all his fault many times before.

I have talked with some BurstNet sales rep, they did not know what they were talking about, at all.

I *personally* would never in a million years choose BurstNET

Thank you all for your input! I agree, that they have made several mistakes and they seem to blame it on their client. But, on this board, it seems that people only post if there is something wrong. I mean, do a search and find how many posts are opened to say something positive about a hosting company. Is there any truth to that?

I recommend them!

Thank you,

Rajiv Mehta

<<Admin edit : post deleted for breaching forum guidelines (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/index.php?action=forum-rules).>>

[Edited by BC on 04-13-2001 at 03:37 AM]

Look, you have been around for a bit and you should know the rules (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/index.php?action=forum-rules) about advertising in the non-advertising forum.

Hello
Just a brief comment about Burst.net.
Their support is good when you have a problem, but they are not good at advising you of future down time.

I have four servers at VDI with 4 different companies.
The only one who warned me about the new switch going in today was Venturesonline.com.

I am not a VO groupie by any means (I have taken on server capacity with another company since I got my server at VO) but it was nice to get the e-mail so I could forewarn my more difficult customers.

Gordon

Originally posted by GordonH
I have four servers at VDI with 4 different companies.
The only one who warned me about the new switch going in today was Venturesonline.com.


Same thing happened with interserver.net. They did not tell me any thing about the VDI's scheduled down time. I knew that only because I read it in WHT and because I am in VO's mailling list (ironically, I am no longer their customer).

Anyway... this problem is not BurstNet's exclusively...

cheers,
:beer:

so you were a customer before? well, if the emails bother you, just reply back to him :)

Please keep in mind that we always do not get proper notification from our provider, in time to notify our clients. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't.

In last night's case, my boss got a message at 12:22AM via ICQ that VDI was changing their switch, and would be down for one hour around 2AM. That was not enough time for us to even come close to notifying clients.

Regards,
Sean R.
BurstNET

BurstNET- I do not think that should be allowed to happen..change providers if that is the case. I am looking for a host that will be able to keep my website up and not have it down from time to time. Also, if burst needs to take down the network to do some work, that should be done early in the morning and not during the day when people are trying to access our sites.
Once you move to your new NOC, what do you see will change about uptime? Do you guarantee a certain amount of uptime? It is pretty sad when burst.net is down!

:sickface:

everyone:
We are doing just that, we are changing providers...actually we are cutting out all providers and taking it fully in our hands, with the opening of our new data center. However, these things don't happen overnight. It can take up to 120 days for the telco to run a DS3 loop. The server that houses burst.net was not down...it has 64 days uptime since last reboot actually...it was VDI that was down, including VDI's own website. Night time for you is the middle of the business day for other clients, there is no optimal time to do upgrades. Yes, unlike most hosts, BurstNET has an SLA (Service Level Agreement, which we enabled as of April 1st 2001.

Sean R.
BurstNET

When do you expect this to be done so I can sign up?

The date for the move is currently set for 4/23/2001.
This date is dependant on Verizon, and we will not know if the date is to be met until mid-next week. We are notifying clients of this shortly so that they have 7-10 days notice.
If this date is not met, we are going to re-schedule for the following weekend. If the date is not met, clients will be notified prior to next weekend of the new, revised move date.

BurstNET has received our ARIN IP allocation recently, and we will be switching over our all clients that are using VDI IP blocks to these new IPs starting Monday. On a side note, we have registered our IPs with ARIN under an anonymous DBA of BurstNET, so that our resellers and dedicated server clients can have additional anonimity all the way to the top of the IP block ownership.

root@kremlin [~]# whois 66.96.192.0@arin.net
[arin.net]
Network Operations Center Inc. (NETBLK-HOSTNOC)
P.O. Box 400
Bloomsburg, PA 17815-0400
US

Netname: HOSTNOC
Netblock: 66.96.192.0 - 66.96.223.255



On another note, BurstNET has made the decision to utilize Cable & Wireless for our 2nd DS3, for redundancy and added capacity needs. This DS3 is expected to be installed in June 2001.

Sean R.
BurstNET

Well...I am stuck once again..what to do, what to do... Any advice?
BurstNET- I find your services over-priced for the quality of service as well as the up-time. I am looking for a small RELIABLE server. Until you can prove that this change will improve your uptime, I am not willing to sign up. From the time I started searching, I have always kept burst.net in my mind but your up-time in unacceptable for the price of $150 per a month. Also, it is one thing if burst.net had the best reviews, but you don't and I feel that I am taking a major risk putting my company into your hands.

I don't know what to tell you, other than $150/mo isn't all that much for a dedicated server (as I think other hosts will agree).

Chicken- I agree, but for the quality of service burst.net gives, $150 is. Burst.net is unreliable, and half of the time I try to access their site, I cannot get to it! If this was not the case, then I would happily pay $150. Do you see what I mean?

i smell a tro11.

teck -- I'm pretty new here, but why do you smell a troll? I can't figure out who you are suggesting is the troll?

everyone:
You may want to check your net connection then, because our the burst.net site is almost never down unless VDI is down. The machine it is on has been up for 65 days without even a reboot, and if you have not been able to get to our site it is purely a VDI issue.

root@secure [/]# w
11:16pm up 65 days, 2:23, 2 users, load average: 0.06, 0.07, 0.02
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT


Sean R.
BurstNET

Also, I would like to see some basis for your claim about our reliability. It seems from the statements that you have made, and the way you present you comments, that you have never been a client. How can you judge the service we provide without ever actually utilizing such?

Sean R.
BurstNET

One more thing :-)
You state that we are over-priced...
???
Show me another company selling Cpanel based servers for $99.95 to start...
Even if you can find another one, they are loosing money, and are just doing it as a "loss leader" (a form of advertising to bring a client in, hoping that it will lead to a larger sale, or additional business).

Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Sean R.
BurstNET

When burst.net is down, as well as the other sites you host, I know for a fact your network is down. Now sure, it may not be your fault that VDI is down, but that is you should look into taking care of and I know you are in the mist of doing something about it. But from what I have seen from your website being up and down, and from your reviews on this board, it is not only mean. If you want me to still plan to getting a dedicated server with you, I suggest you try your best and not try to make it look as if there is a problem with my provider and burst.net has nothing to do with it.

where does it say on your website that dedicated servers start from $99?

Our main page:
http://www.burst.net/main.shtml
...has a news item about it.

Our dedicated servers page:
http://www.burst.net/servers/
...has the specs and details about such.

<<MOD EDIT: Snipping the ad part of the program>>

Sean R.
BurstNET

Well, the truth is that BurstNET doesn't have anything to do with it. BurstNET, nor any other host at VDI, can control the network problems VDI has been having. Are we denying responsibility, NO...BurstNET actually instituted an SLA (service level agreement) to guarantee server/network performance recently. The fact that these network problems are occuring is beyond our control, and not our fault...BUT it is our responsibility. BurstNET is taking the proper courses of action to deal with the situation at hand, and we feel we are doing a fine job considering the situation. We only have our client's best interests in mind.

Sean R.
BurstNET

When you make this move to the new NOC, do you see any possible problems like the problem you are having at this time?

Not sure what problem you are referring to.
If you are referring to the VDI problem(s), once we move to our new NOC we will not have any connection to VDI whatsoever, so any VDI problem(s) is not a possibility at that point.

There is always a possibility of a problem of our own.
No data center is perfect. No matter how much proper planning is done, you cannot be 100% sure that a problem will not arise. Actually, in this industry, it is almost a certainty that a problem will arise. Our job is just to deal with it quickly and efficiently, and have the proper tech staff onboard to handle the situation. BurstNET has been operating our own temporary NOC in our sales/support office since December 2000, and we have had zero downtime, and not a single network problem. All I can say is that the move from VDI is a scheduled operation, that we have been planning for many months, and even if it does not go 100% smoothly...in the long run it is the best manuever we can make for the clients and our company.

If you have such concerns, you need to contact our System Administration staff at sysadmin@burst.net, and they will be able to technically address any specific concerns you have regarding the situation.

Sean R.
BurstNET

Originally posted by BurstNET
everyone:
You may want to check your net connection then, because our the burst.net site is almost never down unless VDI is down. The machine it is on has been up for 65 days without even a reboot, and if you have not been able to get to our site it is purely a VDI issue.

root@secure [/]# w
11:16pm up 65 days, 2:23, 2 users, load average: 0.06, 0.07, 0.02
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT


Sean R.
BurstNET


Well, actually, that's not solid evidence to show that your services weren't down, even if the actual system has been up. You could have problems with any number of services, server load issues or web server problems that can make it so people can't access the server via WWW, ftp or otherwise, that have nothing to do with the "uptime" of the system. You can't say that's solid evidence to say it's a VDI network issue, unless other servers on the same network (i.e., not Burst as well), also have connection problems or not response. Just making that point, is all, not to guess at the actual reasons, but I don't find that a good argument point in favor of Burst by itself. No need to elaborate, of course, just simply pointing that out... you ought to know better.

So you're making money on the $99 dedicated server unlike anyone else that offers it for the same money with Cpanel? How's that?

I guess if someone has to have cpanel then it may not be a bad price, but the specs on that server aren't much to look at. 64 ram and 10 gig of transfer.

Your same set up would cost me 285.45 a month and i'm paying 199.99 a month without cpanel. So basically it would cost me 85.45 more a month to add cpanel. Seems like to me a lot of people would give me cpanel for that much a month since its close to the regular 100 a month.

Dont advertise a 99$ server if it is really 150$/mth. All you are doing is discounting the first three months to $99.00.

If you want to advertise it say. Special first three months reduced to $99/mth or something as your "title"

I find this a sham for the money no deal here folks.

Tim: I wasn't out to provide any type of evidence about our site perfomance. I was giving a generalized statement that "Burst.net is unreliable, and half of the time I try to access their site, I cannot get to it" is way off base, to the point that it doesn't even need defending to rebut against it. Everyone knows about the VDI problems, it is public knowledge, and that alone tells us why burst.net cannot be accessed sometimes. The fact that the server is up for 65 days straight without even a reboot speaks for itself. According to the statement made, that means http would have had to be down 32-33 days out of 65...???? I don't buy it. Sorry, but we are not taking the rap for VDI problems this time around...we already went that route two years ago.
But you are right, server uptime has nothing to do with site accessiblity. We were not trying to prove site accessibility though, just trying to show how far off base that comment really was.

Matrix: We make money because we are an Authorized Distributor and Data Center for CPanel...meaning we get the best possible licensing prices. At this point we are the only distributor besides VDI that has our own data center. Anyone else selling Cpanel is buying it at high external licensing costs (including all distributors), or using it in the VDI or BurstNET data centers.
Due to the pricing we are getting, BurstNET is making money on our offer. "Your same set up would cost me 285.45 a month and i'm paying 199.99 a month without cpanel."....ok, so where does $99.95 ($149.95 after 3 months) even come close to $285.45?


BW: This is proper marketing and advertising.
This was already covered in a previous WHT thread.
Do a search on $99 BurstNET Dedicated Servers about 30-60 days ago..and you find a whole thread about this.


Sean R.
BurstNET

Due to the pricing we are getting, BurstNET is making money on our offer. "Your same set up would cost me 285.45 a month and i'm paying 199.99 a month without cpanel."....ok, so where does $99.95 ($149.95 after 3 months) even come close to $285.45?

What I meant was the server that I now have is 199.99 a month and configuring it at your place with the same specs would cost me 285.45 a month. So I would be paying 85.46 a month more if I wanted cpanel. Seems a little high to me just to add Cpanel especially since you are a Authorized Distributor and Data Center for CPanel.

Hello
I think you are being unecessarily harsh on Burstnet re the 99/149 thing.
It states quite clearly on all their ads that its $99 for the first few months only.
Thats a fair deal as the $149 is a low price anyway.

However I just noticed:
*Available to new signups only

Oops!
I was kind of thinking of getting one to put my domain registration site on, but I am already a customer.

Gordon

i'm sure sean/ed can make exceptions.

Originally posted by BurstNET
One more thing :-)
You state that we are over-priced...
???
Show me another company selling Cpanel based servers for $99.95 to start...



This is what I am talking about. If he would have posted the real deal I wouldnt have minded but he tried to reel them in to their site..

Besides I dont think 150$/mth is a good deal for a 400mhz, 64megs, and 10gigs a month. For 50$ more you can get about 128megs-256 and 20gig hard drive and at least 50 gigs of transfer..

But thats just my opinion :)

-BW

Originally posted by BurstNET
Tim: I wasn't out to provide any type of evidence about our site perfomance. I was giving a generalized statement that "Burst.net is unreliable, and half of the time I try to access their site, I cannot get to it" is way off base, to the point that it doesn't even need defending to rebut against it. Everyone knows about the VDI problems, it is public knowledge, and that alone tells us why burst.net cannot be accessed sometimes. The fact that the server is up for 65 days straight without even a reboot speaks for itself. According to the statement made, that means http would have had to be down 32-33 days out of 65...???? I don't buy it. Sorry, but we are not taking the rap for VDI problems this time around...we already went that route two years ago.
But you are right, server uptime has nothing to do with site accessiblity. We were not trying to prove site accessibility though, just trying to show how far off base that comment really was.

Sean R.
BurstNET

Right, but I just meant, that uptime didn't mean that the web server couldn't have been overloaded by some rouge process that might run at the times of day or night that user might have tried to access the site. Again, not saying that's the case, just that I've seen plenty of servers with high uptimes that have problems connecting quite often. No one was, well, I wasn't anyway, trying to say it had nothing to do with VDI's recent problems. We all know by now, how adamant and vocal you are about the VDI issue, no reason to go over that again... we all understand your meaning.

"Besides I dont think 150$/mth is a good deal for a 400mhz, 64megs, and 10gigs a month."

You are right, for those specs...$99.95/$149.95 a month is a lot...HOWEVER, BurstNET is not selling "400mhz, 64megs, and 10gigs a month"...we are selling "400mhz, 64megs, and 10gigs a month AND Cpanel/WHM". When CPanel/WebHostManager is included it becomes a steal...and you will not find it cheaper. If we did not include Cpanel/WHM...the server would be much less expensive. We have some new specials coming out May 1st as well, that are just going to blow the market away...stand by for news on that.


Sean R.
BurstNET

By much less do you mean $35 less?

Originally posted by BurstNET
"Besides I dont think 150$/mth is a good deal for a 400mhz, 64megs, and 10gigs a month."

You are right, for those specs...$99.95/$149.95 a month is a lot...HOWEVER, BurstNET is not selling "400mhz, 64megs, and 10gigs a month"...we are selling "400mhz, 64megs, and 10gigs a month AND Cpanel/WHM". When CPanel/WebHostManager is included it becomes a steal...and you will not find it cheaper. If we did not include Cpanel/WHM...the server would be much less expensive. We have some new specials coming out May 1st as well, that are just going to blow the market away...stand by for news on that.


Sean R.
BurstNET

Of course, that's assuming that Cpanel/WHM didn't have a massive amount or problems making it a hassle to run. :-)

Again, Sean, why are you posting all the time with the word "hatred18" as the subject?

Yes I for one am tired of this whole cpanel is the best thing since sliced bread.

Yes it does seem to offer a lot, yes it might be better as far as offering more features, and yes it does appear to have problems.

But for goodness sake is it a 10,000 dollar product (in my opinion NO) that is what it would cost if you purchased monthly at around 200$ for 4 years. Yes I know some places offer it cheaper but that's besides my point..

No offence, but I don't see much corporate or for that matter structure behind this company. This structure is what makes companies succeed and offer better products. I know I would not pay that high of a fee unless I knew I would be able to call up and speak to an acct executive or live tech support if I had problems.

While I know they are not a large company and may not be able to offer this (hey I understand) I do think that they are charging to much without providing the above.. But I guess if people pay it hey that's not their fault that's just the market...

I really think the whole control panel market is going to start seeing some good competition forcing better and better prices and products in the coming months. Hopefully cpanel keeps up with the bunch and as a result offers an even better system. A good example is Ensim's product they just released, and even some of the new free ones . :)

But what does this have to do with this thread lol :)

I guess my main thing is why would some one want the hassle of dealing with a dedicated box if they were using under 10 gigs a month (this is in the realm of shared hosting :) )

-BW

Originally posted by BW
Yes I for one am tired of this whole cpanel is the best thing since sliced bread.

Yes it does seem to offer a lot, yes it might be better as far as offering more features, and yes it does appear to have problems.

But for goodness sake is it a 10,000 dollar product (in my opinion NO) that is what it would cost if you purchased monthly at around 200$ for 4 years. Yes I know some places offer it cheaper but that's besides my point..

I guess my main thing is why would some one want the hassle of dealing with a dedicated box if they were using under 10 gigs a month (this is in the realm of shared hosting :) )

-BW

I agree and I can tell you as a developer, that just way too much guess work went into that product. It does basic things and some of those things don't work properly, the more complex things, albeit not vert much so, don't seem to work at all, or are hit and miss. The other features to it are either some receipe out of the Net-tools section of The Perl Cookbook, or free scripts intregrated into the product, or just more guess work. To me, it's a mess. However, if it did function well, as it ought to, especially for that price, I think a more reasonable price, would be a one time fee of $200, not anywhere near that a month. Why can they get it? Because there's little choice otherwise right now. Will that fact change? Yes, it is now. There's other viable solutions now and over the next couple of months, there's a few different developers coding such products that do work well, and not on such a basic, guessed how it worked, threw it together and asked way too much for it type of thing either.

As for the 10 GIG's... and justifying a dedicated server, it's hard to say. Maybe someone makes a lot of money off that 10 GIG's a month, but runs some very server intensive CGI scripts or something? However, if that's the case, that 64 Megs RAM isn't going to serve much of a purpose. Of course, that might be a problem that can be avoided by simply using or coding better quality scripts. So, it's all relevant to the situation.

I don't think many experienced web host people will ever agree that 64 Megs or 10 GIG's is enough for us to consider working with or can think of a good reason, but it seems some people do. Some people just like calling it :their server: and knowing it's their's to play with, and maybe they don't use much bandwidth. I know of a lady that pays $300 a month to run a chat site that no one ever goes to, because she likes impressing herself. Well, so be it, but she definitely could do it on a shared server. Some people like blowing money or don't care, some people (I suppose) could have a reason to use a low end server... Personally, I wouldn't, but I'm not everyone.

I think a reasonable fee for a control panel would be a one time setup fee and tiered based on usage.

So basic cp incl 10 domains - 100$ then you could add domains at like 2$/domain one time fee in blocks of 10 or so cheaper if purchased more in bulk.

Then when updates are out you would pay a small fee for them..

But thats not really relevant to this thread just replying to your post about fee's :)


But what really gets me is how some host's are so cheap.. For instance for about 150$ more they could have provided a bigger hard drive, 128megs ram and a 600+ mhz processor. Devide that by 8mths and that is only about 17 more a month.... But thats neither here nore there lol as you would still need more bandwidth.

-BW