I don't see many bad reviews on olm.net around here, but I'd say this one is going to lean toward the negative. My overall opinion that olm.net isn't the worst, but it is certainly a mediocre host.

I signed up with olm.net almost a year ago when I came across one of their promotional deals on CNet. I wasn't aware WHT existed then.

During this past year, I have been through so much downtime it is unbelievable. Now I know I may work weird hours than some, but my server for olm.net was almost down daily and probably still is for about an hour to two hours between 4am - 6am ET. This happened so frequently that I even stopped harrassing tech support about it.

olm.net's tech support is incredibly fast. They answer you reeeaaal fast. But most of the time, the answer is "I don't know why that happened, sorry".

Actual real daytime downtime others may care about, happened only about 5 times during the year. But these were big downtimes. Each lasted for the better part of the day. And no, my server was never moved anywhere.

The rub was that the servers were always pingable, you could ping them all day long, but they wouldn't be serving on port 80,110,21, or any of the other important ports. In fact I Nmapped it a couple of times, and there were all sorts of other weird ports open and the server didn't look anything at all like at normal operating times, but all of the serving ports were off. This happened all the time. I swear like 4 or 5 days out of the week, for months. I don't even care to check anymore.

They may gaurantee 99.9% uptime, but they don't deliver. Of course, everyone knows gaurantees mean nothing until you are willing to sue over it.

One of the support blunders though, was when I needed a cron job installed. This took them over a week to accomplish and they had to call me several times. AND THEY STILL DIDN'T GET IT RIGHT!! I figured out what they were doing wrong and eventually emailed them all the instructions they needed to do it right. When they called me, they said they had never installed cron jobs before. Wow. seriously. wow.

My biggest problem with olm.net, however, hasn't been the many hours of downtime nor the lackluster support. Downtime just upsets my users and me, since we can't access our email or recieve it from whomever is sending it. My biggest problem is their outdated PHP version. PHP 4.0.6.... good gracious.

Olm.net runs ensim servers.... poorly. They just buy them stock, and only upgrade the applications on the server when Ensim corporate puts out a patch. But Ensim hasn't upgraded PHP since 4.0.6!!!
:angry: THAT IS NUTS!! :angry:
PHP is at 4.2.3 and at RC1 for 4.3.0 development.

But it was PHP 4.1.0 that was the huge milestone. It introduced Superglobals most famously, and deprecated a bunch of code and coding style. I program PHP very heavily for my work, and am not about to retrofit my programs to work on an outdated PHP.

This has caused me great pain, as I just never even use my website for testing or showcasing. Olm.net has killed most of my reasons for even having a hosted site. :bawling:

On top of all this, half the time I use my site it runs slow as molasses. Sometimes it is very quick, but very seldom.

And the Ensim control panel is always, ALWAYS, dirt slow. You have to wait forever just to bring up a page to put in an alias or new user. It is very very sad.

This leads me to believe they pack out their servers to the breaking point. I think my particular server has about 700 sites on it. This is a guess based on my perusal through the virtual server using the names guessed by their standardized account naming scheme. I found about 700 on the same machine. :eek:

Well that's all I have to say about that.
So there you have it. All there is that is fit to print about olm.net.
Hope this helps those looking for a host out there and considering olm.net.

Im so sorry to hear about that. It hurts me to read about such people even making a profit off something like that. You know, you may not have heard much negative (and neither have I) but I just spoke with someone else having a similiar problem. THey didnt last a year.. but wow. I thought it was just one person.

it's probably a bit belated. But you have great patience =). I will murder them in a month.

Good luck at your next host.

but...but....

They have cool TV commercials!!

do they really?

I guess they only run those commercials up north.

I'm in Texas.

I've seen OLM commercials on Tech TV all the time. No where else though.

OLM are one of the 'old guards'. By the sound of it they may need to re-tool their business a little to match the newer, more nimble webhosts out there.

They're big, so I'd say they're just suffering under the weight of their success. A large percent of their customer base possibly doesn't even know what PHP is (beside some weird drug kids take), so 4.0.6 wouldn't mean much to them.

700 accounts is a mighty large number though and is always going to cause problems.

Greg Moore

I left OLM over a year ago. When I started service and uptime were very good and solid. As they started to grow the problems began. OLM started to replace and update servers, but this only seemed to cause more headaches. Also it seemed support was staffed by new people all the time. akashik is right, most of the customers wouldn't notice.

olm is spending money like crazy. I see there advertising. but if you have any past knowledge about them they are just a shop like everyone else but they don't have the guys in the back that can kick some real butt.

OLM? Not surprised. Been there .. done that, don't want to do it again.

Interesting thread - wish it had been here a month ago.

After 3 years of having our main site hosted with Verio, we decided to move (we though Verio's support was starting to get a bit slow and unresponsive, and we wanted more control than a Verio VPS offered).

After speaking to lots of people, and doing a few searches on here to avoid any known bad hosts, we settled on OLM.

I should have known something was wrong when it took 2 days for our account to be setup, but we ploughed on anyway. Went ahead, uploaded our site the OLM box, all looked OK so we re-delegated to them.

Well, from day 1 there were problems. This was a VPS account, and the server had load averages of over 1 a LOT of the time, and everything was very sluggish.

Not only that, but we had some issues getting our PerlDesk to work properly. We use the mail piping facility in PerlDesk, as it's a great way for clients to get in touch.

We submitted a support request to OLM asking how we should configure email piping. After a few hours we got a reply, not a very helpful one, but we kept at it. Each support request we would submit would take hours (like 5 or 10) to be replied to, and most of the time we would have to re-explian the entire situation over again, even though this was all on the same ticket.

After 4 days with no email (pretty bad position for a hosting company) we finally bit the bullet and negotiated with another hosting supplier for space elsewhere.

We put in a request for a refund (as we were well within our 30 day period). Well, after a week we had heard nothing, so we added to the refund ticket asking them to hurry it up.

Here's the detail;

11/15/02 07:47:24 AM
==========
Response: Hello,
Your account appears to be cancelled and the Billing department will process your refund. I am not sure of the length of time before you receive your refund but I wouldn't expect it to be very long. I will forward your request to the Billing department so that they can inform you of the length of time it will take for you to receive your refund.
Regards,
Ryzard - Sales

And then I sent this on the 24th;

Question: And how long do we have to wait for a refund?

Or do I have to start publically complaining about your amazing lack of service to get any action?

I have emailed as you requested and have had no reply and no refund. You guys are the absolute worst.

Now it's the 29th, still no refund, nothing.

My advice to anyone reading this - avoid these people like the plague. They are the most useless hosting company I have ever dealt with.

aaaa...webarama,
chargeback worked for me. I didn't want to do email ping-pong game with them beyond the 30 days. I felt it was a stall tactic.

I don't think they have the ability to impliment stall tactics, I think it's just pure incompetence. They are absolutely useless.

Chargeback may be my only way I think.

1.A large percent of their customer base possibly doesn't even know what PHP is (beside some weird drug kids take), so 4.0.6 wouldn't mean much to them.

Greg Moore [/B][/QUOTE]



MMMMMM PCP:] lets stop talking about bad hosting and talk about good drugs more:]]]]

but ya... something i noticed over years... as company grows service drops... i just don't understand how company can keep on growing... i mean are all people goats... "look a lot of people joined them... maybe i should too..."

PS drugs are bad... mkay... You shoulden't do drugs mkay (except THC... THC is good for your lungs and short term memory... and tobacco kills cancer cells.)

Just so you know ... ensim is on PHP 4.2.2 ... they just haven't upgraded thier ensim in awhile.

<edit>

UPDATE: My refund has come through. It hit my bank on 28/11/2002. No need for a chargeback now. To OLM's credit, they refunded my entire fee (including setup which they normally do not do).

maybe they read WHT :D

Just add info about Ensim's versions of services..
All ServerXchange clients can download these upgraded services to their ServerXchange box (basically the control center for all Ensim accounts like VPS, Dedicated, etc..) Once you have the update on ServerXchange, its a 5 click process to start upgrading services. We usually schedule a time with customers who want an upgrade since the VPS has to reboot.. Point is that updated services are available..

Take care,
Dennis

Originally posted by silversurfer
you have great patience =)
^^ I second that ;) ^^

ReveX

Originally posted by silversurfer
maybe they read WHT :D

I would say they do;

I see that you made some recent posts to the newsgroups..........Please let us know if you have any questions as your posts concerned me.