JWatson
11-19-2002, 01:14 PM
I was directed to this website in my search for a new host. I thought I would share my experience with everyone since there doesn't seem to be anything current about them.
www.*************
While I am not a reseller per say, I do find it most cost effective for me to have a reseller host since I have several websites that I run. Plus it gives me the ability to offer to friends an extremely cheap alternate to "free" hosts (geocities, etc). I generally don't make any money from it, but it's nice to be able to offer a small service to the community I am a part of.
I originally discovered Whizhost in May of this year. A friend of mine and I split the cost of a reseller account at $99 a year, which is a decent enough price. To simplify things, I paid my friend and he actually purchased the plan. So technically it is his hosting.
For the about the first 3 weeks everything was fine. The uptime was 100% (that I noticed, based on my activity only), and the site was delivered fast and reliably. However, after that there were little things that would happen. My site (and in fact every website hosted with Whizhost and the Whizhost site itself) would be unavailable for up to about 2 minutes. I'd wait a minute or two and everything would be fine after that. This started to happen on a daily basis at random, it appeared. I asked my friend (the "owner" of the plan we purchased) to send an email asking about this. Since his site was 95% personal, he didn't feel the need to ask. Technically mine was personal only as well, but I started to receive questions on my forums in my site from my members. My site was beginning to become popular with my particular hobby which already had a large community involvement (Gaming site, basically).
This went on for about a month. Then one day, my site (and all Whizhost) went down for about 15 hours. I was not very happy about this at all, and was debating finding a new host and just cutting my losses ($50 for almost 3 months). My friend still did not email asking about this downtime, as he was "happy to have any kind of host at all."
I started looking around for hosts, but during this time there was no downtime at all! It appeared to me that Whizhost either moved NOCs, upgraded servers, or something. It even appeared that my site was loading faster than previously. Something had changed, but I didn't know what. I asked my friend if they had sent out a notice or anything, but there was nothing he told me. I decided to leave it be for the time being.
About mid October I decided on purchasing my own plan since I didn't want to be dependant on my friend's plan. I needed to be able to contact them directly if problems arose. Combined with other things going on, I decided to purchase the plan through Whizhost since I didn't really have time to look for another. Three days after I purchased the plan, we started getting downtimes again. One and two minutes like previously. This lasted for about a week, and then it happened again. Down for four hours, back up for two hours, then down again for 8 hours. A few days would go by, and it would be down again for an hour here and an hour there. Of course I emailed them asking about the downtime. I waited a week and no reply. I emailed them again, but again after two weeks now, I've yet to receive a reply. In the mean time, however, the downtime has stopped again. I'm currently in the process of attempting to get a refund, since I am still in the window of the "60-Day No Quibble Money Back Guarantee."
I expect some downtime with host. It happens. There are just too many variables that cannot be controlled. Anything from a corrupt Hard Drive to a construction site cutting a major Fiber backbone. I understand these things. However, one thing I do expect is at least acknowledgement of the fact. But to not even reply to this (copied from the email I sent):
"While I would understand that it may not be standard policy to email customers regarding unexpected downtime, I am, in this case requesting a reason why it was down, if known."
I wouldn't say do not host with Whizhost, however, the experience I had was not 100% satisfactory. Basically, if they had only acknowledged their emails, I would have most likely stayed a customer. I hope this helps anyone out there who is looking for to find a new host.
-JWatson
www.*************
While I am not a reseller per say, I do find it most cost effective for me to have a reseller host since I have several websites that I run. Plus it gives me the ability to offer to friends an extremely cheap alternate to "free" hosts (geocities, etc). I generally don't make any money from it, but it's nice to be able to offer a small service to the community I am a part of.
I originally discovered Whizhost in May of this year. A friend of mine and I split the cost of a reseller account at $99 a year, which is a decent enough price. To simplify things, I paid my friend and he actually purchased the plan. So technically it is his hosting.
For the about the first 3 weeks everything was fine. The uptime was 100% (that I noticed, based on my activity only), and the site was delivered fast and reliably. However, after that there were little things that would happen. My site (and in fact every website hosted with Whizhost and the Whizhost site itself) would be unavailable for up to about 2 minutes. I'd wait a minute or two and everything would be fine after that. This started to happen on a daily basis at random, it appeared. I asked my friend (the "owner" of the plan we purchased) to send an email asking about this. Since his site was 95% personal, he didn't feel the need to ask. Technically mine was personal only as well, but I started to receive questions on my forums in my site from my members. My site was beginning to become popular with my particular hobby which already had a large community involvement (Gaming site, basically).
This went on for about a month. Then one day, my site (and all Whizhost) went down for about 15 hours. I was not very happy about this at all, and was debating finding a new host and just cutting my losses ($50 for almost 3 months). My friend still did not email asking about this downtime, as he was "happy to have any kind of host at all."
I started looking around for hosts, but during this time there was no downtime at all! It appeared to me that Whizhost either moved NOCs, upgraded servers, or something. It even appeared that my site was loading faster than previously. Something had changed, but I didn't know what. I asked my friend if they had sent out a notice or anything, but there was nothing he told me. I decided to leave it be for the time being.
About mid October I decided on purchasing my own plan since I didn't want to be dependant on my friend's plan. I needed to be able to contact them directly if problems arose. Combined with other things going on, I decided to purchase the plan through Whizhost since I didn't really have time to look for another. Three days after I purchased the plan, we started getting downtimes again. One and two minutes like previously. This lasted for about a week, and then it happened again. Down for four hours, back up for two hours, then down again for 8 hours. A few days would go by, and it would be down again for an hour here and an hour there. Of course I emailed them asking about the downtime. I waited a week and no reply. I emailed them again, but again after two weeks now, I've yet to receive a reply. In the mean time, however, the downtime has stopped again. I'm currently in the process of attempting to get a refund, since I am still in the window of the "60-Day No Quibble Money Back Guarantee."
I expect some downtime with host. It happens. There are just too many variables that cannot be controlled. Anything from a corrupt Hard Drive to a construction site cutting a major Fiber backbone. I understand these things. However, one thing I do expect is at least acknowledgement of the fact. But to not even reply to this (copied from the email I sent):
"While I would understand that it may not be standard policy to email customers regarding unexpected downtime, I am, in this case requesting a reason why it was down, if known."
I wouldn't say do not host with Whizhost, however, the experience I had was not 100% satisfactory. Basically, if they had only acknowledged their emails, I would have most likely stayed a customer. I hope this helps anyone out there who is looking for to find a new host.
-JWatson