I have to say, they haven't reached the truly abysmal level of support displayed by my previous web host, and as always, YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY.
But since being seduced by the glowing rendition of features and support I'd GUARANTEED receive from these folks, as expressed by one of their sales people 5 months ago, I've had several interesting experiences with them.......

I signed up because I wanted/needed a Windows host because I sometimes have to do creation in Visual Studio and SQL Server or VWD, and other times in PHP/javascript and so on.... My most recent application has been php. Performance has been an ongoing problem, with performance periodically being SO bad a simple menu page would take upward of 60 seconds (yes, SIXTY) to display.
A largely static web page that loads a single 300x500 pixel image (about 200K) would frequently take UPWARDS OF 3 MINUTES TO DISPLAY.....

Naturally, we'd speak. The wait time for support was sometimes not too bad, and they haven't beaten their longest wait of 92 MINUTES (yes, Virginia, NINETY-TWO MINUTES), but it periodically exceeds 20 minutes to get someone who instead of fixing the problem does the same thing I could have done online - create a trouble ticket.........

I've gotten responses like:
"We had a disk in a RAID array crash, and performance will be really poor on that server until it rebuilds." "How, long will that take?" "AT LEAST ANOTHER 72 HOURS."
Now I don't know what little brown boxes they're running, but when I crash a 1TB drive in one of my RAID arrays, the rebuild on a FULL drive takes approximately 10 hours...... NOT 72.
And it doesn't explain why the thing ran like dog feces PRIOR to the "crash".

When that didn't work, they decided the problem was "WELL, php just doesn't run very well on Windows Servers." "Then why did your sales person tell me I'd get GREAT PERFORMANCE NO MATTER WHAT SUPPORTED PRODUCT I USED?" "I have no idea."

Oh......

To, "We have some users on that server that are causing performance problems with bad or malicious code." "OK, FIX IT."
"We've fixed it but they come back." "Then it ISN'T FIXED."

To, "We'll move you to a Unix server." "It does me no good to move my account to a server that can't support many of the products in which I do development. AND, if I wanted to stay with Unix, I could have remained with the GOOD company I had PRIOR to the last one, which answered their phones, actually ran fine, and ONLY COST $25/YEAR. They didn't do Windows hosting, which is why I'm here." "Oh."

SO, the latest was "we'll move you to one of our older servers that doesn't have as much load on it..."

OK, I'm not sure how dumping me on some beat-up POS is going to make my applications run faster, but OK.... So, I copy EVERYTHING down from the old server, and up to the new one......

AND GET NO EMAIL..................

And call in.... And get told "OK, it's fixed"...... It wasn't.

And called BACK in. And got told "OK, it's fixed." This, when the support person sent an email from MY account TO MY account.....

It WASN'T.

And called BACK in. And got a guy that "created a trouble ticket"... "How long until it's actually FIXED?" "Soon."
And, INDEED, I got a reply to the ticket - approximately 2 hours later they posted a reply on the ticket - I DIDN'T get an email, just the reply to the trouble ticket......

"This issue has been resolved by our administrators."

IT'S NOT FIXED. Still not receiving email.......

Called in again...... I was number "2" in the queue, so the hold time was 29 minutes - yes TWENTY NINE MINUTES... Finally got the same support person, who is "updating the trouble ticket to show it's not fixed"......

I have no idea what the genius that "resolved" the problem did, how he tested it, and what verification he (or she) got that the PROBLEM WAS ACTUALLY FIXED, but at this point it's been THIRTY-THREE HOURS SINCE THE EMAIL HAS WORKED..........

And it appears they have NO IDEA where all the email that's come in during that period has gone..............

They MAY BE "the smarted people I know" as I've been told by the support people, but so far these guys haven't exactly covered themselves in glory......................

Anybody know of a GOOD Windows Hosting company, that actually answers the phone, has support people that actually FIX the problems, and has servers that perform decently? OBVIOUSLY, NOT the crap that's on the review sites 'cause I've now tried two of the "top rated" hosts, and both have been less than stellar......

Anyhow, it's now 1 a.m., and I'll see if there's any working email in the morning.

Thats wild, I hope you do not pay much a month.

You should look in the shared offer forums for other windows hosting, I think you could find a better company to be with and possibly cheaper also.

You developing in ASPX?

I have used IX personally and I though they we're fine.. this was a few years back mind you.
As VPS guys has suggested.. why not checkout the offers forum.
If you do php & aspx then why not get a cloud based vps that you can scale and easily change OS?

Pretty typical story, I can relate to some pretty similar experiences. Atleast your getting responses, before it would take 24 hours or longer for each response...I recall loosing a DB once on a pretty non important board, and I asked for a simple restore of the backup from the previous day, the support ticket took more than 48 hours and when they finally restored it, it was from the day when the issue happened...So of course the backup was useless now :)

Have to love it!

LEMME PROVIDE AN UPDATE....................................

It's now 5pm here in cloudy Minnesota. And I STILL HAVE NO EMAIL....

BUT, at 3 am (this morning), I got an answer from "Lucy" that states, "Please keep patience during the next 24-72 hours for DNS propagation. During this period of time you may check your old mail server - part of your e-mails are there."

This answer DIFFERS TOTALLY from the answer I received at 11:30 pm yesterday stating that the problem was fixed.... So, the first question is, WHICH of the support people is lying?

BUT, I called again, and GOT A DIFFERENT SUPPORT PERSON. Who decided to echo the company line and tell me "it's not our fault, it's DNS propogation." Which ALSO differs totally from the answer I got EARLIER last evening when I was told CATEGORICALLY that if I go to "whatsmydns.net" and check the mx records, ONCE ALL THE DNS SITES ARE "GREEN" it's propogated and ready to go....... NOW, "Rich" is telling me, "NO, THAT WAS AN INACCURATE ANSWER." Once again, might SOMEONE be telling a bit of a whopper?

AND, I asked "Being the utterly ignorant customer, I need precise idiot-proof instructions on EXACTLY HOW TO CHECK MY EMAIL on the old server." And was told "Well, you CAN'T."
So, once again, there seems to be a bit of a miscommunication 'cause I'm being told to check the old server AND being told I CAN'T CHECK THE OLD SERVER." When queried he indicated that perhaps the answer to check the old servers may have been "poorly thought out".......

Oh......

OH, and since you asked, I'M PAYING A PREMIUM TO GET THIS KIND OF RUNAROUND...

I'm thinking on Tuesday it may be time to see if I can get up the food chain to someone that lives in a room with a door and go through this experience..... Then look into finding a company that may experience FEWER of these "miscommunications".

LEMME PROVIDE AN UPDATE....................................

It's now 5pm here in cloudy Minnesota. And I STILL HAVE NO EMAIL....

BUT, at 3 am (this morning), I got an answer from "Lucy" that states, "Please keep patience during the next 24-72 hours for DNS propagation. During this period of time you may check your old mail server - part of your e-mails are there."

This answer DIFFERS TOTALLY from the answer I received at 11:30 pm yesterday stating that the problem was fixed.... So, the first question is, WHICH of the support people is lying?

BUT, I called again, and GOT A DIFFERENT SUPPORT PERSON. Who decided to echo the company line and tell me "it's not our fault, it's DNS propogation." Which ALSO differs totally from the answer I got EARLIER last evening when I was told CATEGORICALLY that if I go to "whatsmydns.net" and check the mx records, ONCE ALL THE DNS SITES ARE "GREEN" it's propogated and ready to go....... NOW, "Rich" is telling me, "NO, THAT WAS AN INACCURATE ANSWER." Once again, might SOMEONE be telling a bit of a whopper?

AND, I asked "Being the utterly ignorant customer, I need precise idiot-proof instructions on EXACTLY HOW TO CHECK MY EMAIL on the old server." And was told "Well, you CAN'T."
So, once again, there seems to be a bit of a miscommunication 'cause I'm being told to check the old server AND being told I CAN'T CHECK THE OLD SERVER." When queried he indicated that perhaps the answer to check the old servers may have been "poorly thought out".......

Oh......

OH, and since you asked, I'M PAYING A PREMIUM TO GET THIS KIND OF RUNAROUND...

I'm thinking on Tuesday it may be time to see if I can get up the food chain to someone that lives in a room with a door and go through this experience..... Then look into finding a company that may experience FEWER of these "miscommunications".

That would be the best course of action, unfortunately :)

My most recent application has been php. Performance has been an ongoing problem, with performance periodically being SO bad a simple menu page would take upward of 60 seconds (yes, SIXTY) to display.
A largely static web page that loads a single 300x500 pixel image (about 200K) would frequently take UPWARDS OF 3 MINUTES TO DISPLAY.....
The loading time as described is not acceptable by any standard.
With all the troubles and uncertainty, i think you should keep a backup of your site so you can move quickly when service is not improved.

EVERYTHING on my site, including all the applications, backup of all the data in each of the databases is ALWAYS on my local system.

OH, I forgot the other good news...............

SOMEWHERE AROUND EIGHT (8) weeks ago I was told (when I climbed the food chain to complain about the lousy performance) that "we've got a set of GREAT NEW equivalent of blade servers sitting here. They'll be going in in the next two weeks and we'll be MOVING YOUR ACCOUNT TO ONE OF THESE NEW SERVERS."...... Yes, they got a BUNCH of <couldn't tell me the mfr> servers in, and they're blinding fast and magically delicious...........

TWO weeks ago, I was told "we've got a set of GREAT NEW equivalent of blade servers sitting here. They'll be going in in the next two weeks and we'll be MOVING YOUR ACCOUNT TO ONE OF THESE NEW SERVERS."...... (You may notice some similarity in the statements)

When I inquired as to what happened to the WHOLE SET OF GREAT NEW servers they got EIGHT WEEKS AGO, I was told, "Oh, well that would be the ones, but they're JUST ABOUT TO START INSTALLING THEM NOW." Oh........

This weekend, during a conversation with one of the 5 different support people I talked to (some more than once), I was told "Well, I don't see anything in here about you being moved to one of the NEW servers (I just got dumped on some old NT server), but if you REQUEST IT, we may be able to move your account once the NEW SERVERS ARE INSTALLED."...........

Oh...

Now, I understand everyone has different experiences, and MOST of the time (figure most as being somewhat more than 50% and less than 65), I can get email, run the web page, get to websites, and largely do things... BUT, is that a reasonable percentage for access? SO, if y'all have recommendations for US-based, US-staffed, US-supported, reasonably performing Windows hosts, that ACTUALLY ANSWER THE PHONE IN LESS THAN 20 MINUTES, have no or FEW "miscommunications", and don't figure "solving the problem" is creating a trouble ticket, I'd appreciate the pointer...

dude, i know i shouldn't be laughing, but your posts are freaking hilarious.

good luck finding a new host.

Don't feel bad. If it wasn't me, I'd be laughing too!

I don't know if all you folks are familiar with Bill Engvall, but if not he's (in my opinion) hilarious when he does his routine on "Here's your sign"...... I feel exactly the same way sometimes when having these conversations......

OH, and since you asked, I'M PAYING A PREMIUM TO GET THIS KIND OF RUNAROUND...

It's not much of a runaround.

DNS propagation is the first thing I thought of when I read your email wasn't working properly.

It happens -- every email server in the world doesn't know when your one account is moved on an instantaneous basis.

Now, if your zone files are incorrect, that's another story.

However, in working with DNS for several years, I've seen numerous cases where come free/commercial mail servers won't pick up on DNS changes in a timely manner (AKA Hotmail/Live) and can cause what appears to be an outage that lasts nearly a week.

You just need to be a bit more patient.

I don't think it's dns issue.
IXhosting suppport acknowledge problem is not fixed.

OBVIOUSLY, NOT the crap that's on the review sites 'cause I've now tried two of the "top rated" hosts, and both have been less than stellar......
They all pay money to be in top list of review sites.

Well, the email finally came back... AND, after approximately 10 DAYS I started getting ALL the email... People stopped complaining that they'd been sending me email for a week and not getting any response... I'm sure it was the dns propogation and not something someone finally fixed... Now, where IS that bridge I've got for sale?

BUT, the website still has intermittent bursts of ABYSMAL performance. I mean as in 2 to 3 MINUTES to get the front page up. And frequent hangs when displaying a detail image.

So, after waiting a couple weeks I called support to talk to my "hero" because they've now gone to having 1-on-1 support with a person you can GUARANTEED talk to who will fix your problem... Unfortunately, I've tried to reach mine repeatedly, trying morning, afternoon, and evening, and have yet to actually find him. Fortunately, I got a DIFFERENT person who was VERY helpful.

He looked at my website, declared that "you've coded some of this in PHP." "Yes." "Well, php doesn't run well unless we move you to a Linux server." "OK, but the ONLY reason I switched to you people is BECAUSE I frequently need to program on a Windows server. So, if you want to switch this to Linux, that's fine as long as I still have access to Windows servers."
"OH, we CAN'T do that unless you sign up for two accounts.".....

Now, as you can imagine, when I called in originally, and spoke to sales, I was told (get ready for it) "THERE'S NO PROBLEM. YOU CAN RUN ON A WINDOWS SERVER AND DEVELOP IN WHATEVER YOU NEED TO, AND IT WON'T BE A PROBLEM."

Yes, I'm stupid enough to step in the LARGE, STEAMING PILE OF EXCREMENT AND THINK IT SMELLED LIKE ROSES!

I won't relate the rest of the conversation, but the gist was that my support person suggested that if I don't like the way the website runs, I should carry my silly arse down the road to someone else.

SO, I'm clearly going to have to find a reliable, competent, host. And rather than looking at reviews, can folks here provide recommendations? 'cause the answer to my original question is apparently "YES, THEY'RE REALLY THIS WRETCHED."

Well, it appears ixHosting has thrown in the towel....... The "official" word is now "MOVE TO A LINUX SERVER" since in this PARTICULAR case I used some php.

"Moving your account to a new Windows server will not solve the problem. PHP will perform equally badly there."

SO, I'm now looking for a web provider that CAN get me good performance whether I'm using SQL Server or MySQL, Visual Basic or Visual Web Developer OR php. WITHOUT having to carry multiple accounts.

Recommendations?

Sounds pretty ugly, IX Hosting aye?
Thanks for informing us!

Good luck on you're new host!

Well, definitely not getting the job done. Unfortunately, I've got a client with users that are trying to run applications over there and they can't even get the login page to display at times... They are not happy...... and the one they're not happy with IS ME.......

So, STILL LOOKING FOR RECOMMENDATIONS.......