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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
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    397

    Arvixe Disappointment

    Earlier this week I purchased the business pro shared hosting with private tomcat server from Arvixe.com (about $45.00/month). They throw in a free domain with purchase, so I registered binkyenterprises.com for fun (useful for domain verification).

    A couple days went by and I still didn't receive the info for the private tomcat server. I submitted a ticket and a little later the tomcat directory appeared in my home folder and I got an email with the information from a tech.

    However, it was not working properly. Furthermore it looked like it had just been copied from another user's account (There were folders for rentvia.com and famozno.com in the tomcat dir). This concerned me for a variety of reasons. I sent back a response that it wasn't working promptly asking it to get looked at, but hours went by with no response. I tried fixing it myself, spending a few hours of my own time, even trying to upload a fresh copy of tomcat, but without access to the apache tomcat plugin I don't think I would have had any luck even if I continued.

    Anyways, almost 24 hours later that ticket is still not replied to. This was disappointing especially seeing as I was paying a premium for business grade hosting.

    Its worth noting that I talked to a very nice person Jessica on sales chat who was sympathetic to the situation, and immediately refunded me (including the domain I registered which was nice) as per their 60-day moneyback.

    My feeling is that Arvixe is probably a decent host company themselves, but are probably subcontracting a lot of their support to contractors in India (based on the names in the tickets), which can be hit or miss, and a lot of them may have no idea how to work with Tomcat since it is a niche market. Regardless, it was still troubling for a company offering it with business grade hosting on the front of their site.

  2. #2
    On a positive note, at least you got your money back as per their refund guarantee and they didn't make any fuss out of deducting the domain costs from the initial payment. Best of luck finding your next hosting provider.
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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    397
    Yes I agree, and I think they are probably fine for personal/small sites.

    I just posted this because I would hate for a company to host something mission critical on one of the business accounts then be up the creak if something goes wrong. I was fortunate enough to notice this before anything was really implemented.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2010
    Location
    Modesto California
    Posts
    6,858
    Hmm.. im not to familier with Arvixe, I believe the reviews I usually see about them are pretty mixed. I am curious to hear the providers side of the story if there is one? Seems like someone might have been sleeping on the job.

    In any-case, I will give them points for refunding your money without any hassles (most hosts will make you jump through hoops).
    Looking for an awesome VPS Offer? CLICK HERE

    "Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do." – Bruce Lee

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Aug 2009
    Location
    New Delhi
    Posts
    643
    @OP:
    Do not accuse Indian or any specific race here.
    There are many Indians who are more intelligent than many Americans.
    It is just that you were treated badly. It can happen to anybody and by any company, irrespective of race.
    As far as Arvixe is concerned, I have experience in dealing with them, and if you keep a little patience, you will find them more caring than any other host.
    I have upgraded my hosting account with them from Monthly to Yearly a short while ago.
    Last edited by qtriangle; 03-18-2011 at 06:41 PM.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jul 2005
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    3,784
    Quote Originally Posted by qtriangle View Post
    @OP:
    Do not accuse Indian or any specific race here.
    There are many Indians who are more intelligent than many Americans.
    It is just that you were treated badly. It can happen to anybody and by any company, irrespective of race.
    As far as Arvixe is concerned, I have experience in dealing with them, and if you keep a little patience, you will find them more caring than any other host.
    I have upgraded my hosting account with them from Monthly to Yearly a short while ago.
    I've had better support from third world countries then US techs as of lately.

  7. #7
    I've read through your review of our services. I want to start out by saying that even know we are a rather large provider, that we understand that it has been our customer service that has gotten us to where we are today. Every customer is valued, and any customer who has concerns about any of the services we are provided are passed immediately to our QA team (quality assurance) and their issue or recommendations to improve our service is reviewed.


    Quote Originally Posted by BostonGuru View Post
    Earlier this week I purchased the business pro shared hosting with private tomcat server from Arvixe.com (about $45.00/month). They throw in a free domain with purchase, so I registered binkyenterprises.com for fun (useful for domain verification).

    A couple days went by and I still didn't receive the info for the private tomcat server. I submitted a ticket and a little later the tomcat directory appeared in my home folder and I got an email with the information from a tech.
    I wanted to start out with that the hosting service that you signup for is usually provisioned instantly through our system (unless further fraud verification is required). That being said, the TomCat instance is not provisioned automatically, rather by hand.

    Arvixe is here to provide solutions not offered by our competition. You have to ask yourself, how many provide public and private tomcat on a shared hosting plan at a affordable price? Not many from our research.

    Although we do apologize about any delays in getting your TomCat setup, as you mentioned, after submitting the ticket, this did get the Tomcat install expedited and completed. We also have a 24/7 toll free number that is manned 24/7 by our in house technical support. (non out sourced, although I personally do not see a problem with out sourcing if it is done correctly). If an issue is urgent, it is mentioned multiple times throughout our website, in your hosting account information email, to give us a call or chat with us and we can push any issue through for you.



    Quote Originally Posted by BostonGuru View Post
    However, it was not working properly. Furthermore it looked like it had just been copied from another user's account (There were folders for rentvia.com and famozno.com in the tomcat dir). This concerned me for a variety of reasons. I sent back a response that it wasn't working promptly asking it to get looked at, but hours went by with no response. I tried fixing it myself, spending a few hours of my own time, even trying to upload a fresh copy of tomcat, but without access to the apache tomcat plugin I don't think I would have had any luck even if I continued.
    This does however worry me. Not because anything we doing is insecure. We setup this way for a specific reason. So you can run PHP alongside of your tomcat instance. With most providers, you are going to have to pick between JSP or PHP. Not here. Nothing is being copied from any other users folder. We have a script that we execute that was developed in house that preforms the setup. I've seen the code, and once again, I cannot stress this enough, nothing is being copied over from any other of our customers directory. Much research has been done into the way we setup Tomcat, and we have hundreds upon hundreds of individuals who are thrilled to be able to have Tomcat setups that work on such an affordable platform.

    You did mention that the Tomcat instance "did not work properly". Tomcat/JSP is much more complicated then your standard PHP Wordpress blog based website. What was your issue? When we provide you your tomcat instance, we provide proof that it is working, we provide you a link to a working JSP page that confirms that .jsp files are being processed by Tomcat and are processed as JSP. This is verified by staff before we send out your Tomcat details. If there are any errors such as 500, etc. those are tended to before sending out any details to the customer. Perhaps it wasn't "working to your satisfaction", but I can assure you all of our products work, and are put through countless of hours of testing before ever being deployed live.

    Quote Originally Posted by BostonGuru View Post
    Anyways, almost 24 hours later that ticket is still not replied to. This was disappointing especially seeing as I was paying a premium for business grade hosting.
    I have to stress this again. Tomcat is a complicated instance. Research had to be done to determine for any issues that you may have been facing. If you ever need to expedite an issue, our 24/7 in house technical support available via phone, live chat, ticket/email. How many providers of our size can still claim (and it be true) to offer all in house technical support, available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. (I can testify, as I had to work in the early morning hours of Christmas day). If you felt like you was being ignored, I assure you that you was not.

    Quote Originally Posted by BostonGuru View Post
    Its worth noting that I talked to a very nice person Jessica on sales chat who was sympathetic to the situation, and immediately refunded me (including the domain I registered which was nice) as per their 60-day moneyback.
    Our policy is clear cut. If your are not happy with our services, we will provide you a full refund of any payment(s) made to Arvixe within the 60 calendar days since your service was started.

    Quote Originally Posted by BostonGuru View Post
    My feeling is that Arvixe is probably a decent host company themselves, but are probably subcontracting a lot of their support to contractors in India (based on the names in the tickets), which can be hit or miss, and a lot of them may have no idea how to work with Tomcat since it is a niche market. Regardless, it was still troubling for a company offering it with business grade hosting on the front of their site.
    We pride ourself at being good at what we do. Constantly innovating, bringing new features to the table for our customers across completely separate markets including Linux and Windows. We offer our customers choices, from private tomcat, to public, dedicated IP's, cold fusion, and much more.

    We have thousands upon thousands of satisfied customers spanning across the entire globe. We would like another chance to show you what we are capable of. We would like to invite you back with a 2 month credit of service for the smart package that you had previously with us. Hosting you at a loss for 2 months seems worth it to us given the frustration you had experienced previously. If you have any issues with your account, I'd advise to not hesitate to contact our technical support team. Even if you was to experience another issue with your Tomcat instance and you was unable to get it resolved with a technician over the phone, I assured you that a ticket would be opened and marked for a senior staff member or a member of our management team. To take us up on this offer, I believe you have a ticket open with our QA department if I am not mistaken, simply respond back to it and link this thread and the credit will be applied to your account without hesitation.

    At any point that you have a service active with Arvixe and you are unhappy with the level of support you have received, we invite customers to call or email our quality assurance department. If we're failing to provide you with the service you deserve as a paying customer, we want to know, to avoid reviews such as this, where I'm not entirely sure the picture was painted clearly (that we was copying another users tomcat directory to your home folder which is simply not the case, etc)

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by qtriangle View Post
    @OP:
    Do not accuse Indian or any specific race here.
    There are many Indians who are more intelligent than many Americans.
    It is just that you were treated badly. It can happen to anybody and by any company, irrespective of race.
    As far as Arvixe is concerned, I have experience in dealing with them, and if you keep a little patience, you will find them more caring than any other host.
    I have upgraded my hosting account with them from Monthly to Yearly a short while ago.
    We thank you for the kind words about our service.

    Some tickets may be answered in as little as 30 seconds, and some may require a bit more research to determine the issue and get back to you regarding, like what happened in this thread.

    Regardless, as mentioned previously, we offer 3 ways of contact of our technical support. We always recommend submitting a ticket in order to create a paper trail of your issue. Phone support and live chat can be used by any customer (included in all plans, free of charge) in order to expedite a serious issue, or to get an easy ticket resolved quickly.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by FernGullyGraphics View Post
    Hmm.. im not to familier with Arvixe, I believe the reviews I usually see about them are pretty mixed. I am curious to hear the providers side of the story if there is one? Seems like someone might have been sleeping on the job.

    In any-case, I will give them points for refunding your money without any hassles (most hosts will make you jump through hoops).
    I undertand that every company wants to be the first to post in a non positive review thread in order to get their signature out there, but I do urge you to be a bit more constructive in your posts. Perhaps asking the OP to clarify what didn't work about their tomcat instance? Offering suggestions on how to resolve the issue?

    Where are you seeing these "mixed reviews" about our service. With a company our size, maintaing a 100% perfect review score would be impossible.

    But a quick look at

    http://web-hosting-top.com/web-hosti...ype/add-review

    http://www.webhostingstuff.com/compa...Solutions.html

    Is going to reveal not a "mixed bag", but a majority of satisfied customers. Taking into account that it is harder to get a happy customer to congratulates you on a job well done then it is to get an upset customer to post a not so positive review of your service, and I believe we are doing pretty good for ourself.

    Perhaps one could say it isn't very fair that you seem to ask your satisfied customers to review your hosting. Of course that is going to turn into a positive review (as seen at webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=964797)

    Or perhaps when you was (and admitted to) "domain squatting" in thread webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=999804

    This isn't to mention that I was only able to find 1-2 reviews of your service through the entire Internet, as seen on http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-h...cs.com-reviews

    A quick look at http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-h...xe.com-reviews indicates 88 reviews, mostly positive, and given our size, I believe this is something for us to be proud of, as unlike most large providers, we do not sacrifice quality. This indicates a track record of excellence dating back to 2003 when we was formed.

    Based on the above, one subjectively could conclude that your hosting is a mixed bag as well and as such, should be taken into account before choosing to pursue hosting with you. An interesting way to look at this, and not a pleasant feeling when the shoe is on the other foot.
    Last edited by arvixeryan; 03-18-2011 at 10:32 PM.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by BostonGuru View Post
    Yes I agree, and I think they are probably fine for personal/small sites.

    I just posted this because I would hate for a company to host something mission critical on one of the business accounts then be up the creak if something goes wrong. I was fortunate enough to notice this before anything was really implemented.
    My final few words on this mater.

    Our Business Class is seen as an upgrade to our personal class solution. The business class features everything that the personal class does, but includes increased speed and performance (this coming from being placed on a server with fewer people, as by paying us more, we are able to offer you better performance/reliability by placing fewer people per server.

    A comparison of the two is found here:

    http://www.arvixe.com/compare.php?fc...hoice=personal

    Business Class is still considered shared hosting non the less, and as such, it is up to you if you can risk your application being deployed in a shared environment. Maintaining 100% uptime and a perfect running setup isn't always even possible with a cloud / fail over solution, let alone a single shared cPanel server, but that isn't to say that our business class doesn't typically maintain on average 99.9%-100% uptime during any given calendar month.

    We're doing 3 times as much as most providers, 24/7 phone, live chat, and ticket/email. Most providers only offer email support. Given that, like I had mentioned previously, if at any time you feel like you are being forgotten about, or feel like the quality of service you are being provided is not up to the excellence that Arvixe provides, do not hesitate to get in contact with qa (a t) arvixe ( d o t ) .com, which is for you or any other Arvixe customer which could perhaps read this review. We go above and beyond (within reason) to satisfy each and every customer, and that is our stance on this situation.

    That isn't to say that something isn't coming out of this situation, and that is the fact that I'm going look into getting our Tomcat installs automatically installed upon signup to hopefully resolve one issue you mentioned, and that was the delay with the provisioning of addons. We've also within the past 24 hours brought on 2 new sales staff, and it is sales who typically does addon installs, which should speed up the process moving forward as well.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    397
    Quote Originally Posted by qtriangle View Post
    @OP:
    Do not accuse Indian or any specific race here.
    There are many Indians who are more intelligent than many Americans.
    It is just that you were treated badly. It can happen to anybody and by any company, irrespective of race.
    As far as Arvixe is concerned, I have experience in dealing with them, and if you keep a little patience, you will find them more caring than any other host.
    I have upgraded my hosting account with them from Monthly to Yearly a short while ago.
    I'm truly sorry if thats how you read my post, because thats definitely not what I intended. I said "I think support may be subcontracted to India" not "the support staff is Indian". While there is most likely correlation between these two statements, my comment was focused on location, not race. My point was that if support was being handled by an independent company halfway around the world, Arvixe does not have direct oversight of the support staff or know what they are doing at any given moment, and can't be responsible for any internal problems that might be going in the subcontracting company (short staffed etc).

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    397
    Hi Arvixeryan,thank you taking the time to respond to this thread.

    While I appreciate the offer for free hosting credit, I think you are right that if uptime is crucial, then shared hosting is probably not a good idea, so I've decided to opt for a more expensive cloud solution.

    Regarding support response time, I completely understand that Tomcat is complex to troubleshoot, and know that when trying to fix something, the simplest overlooked thing is always what hangs you. The problem I found was more that I had submitted a couple of posts to the thread asking if it had been looked at yet, and didn't get a response over an ~18 hour period, so there was no indication that anyone had read the ticket since the problem was first reported. Not calling or live chatting is my fault. Dealing with hosts in the past, either of those communications have usually ended with "go submit a support ticket", so it never really occurred to me that calling might be of use.

    Regarding copying files from other user directories, I was only speculating how folders named after other shared user account domains ended up in my tomcat folder. This may be something you want to look into.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Posts
    60
    Quote Originally Posted by HostStellar_Jansen View Post
    On a positive note, at least you got your money back as per their refund guarantee and they didn't make any fuss out of deducting the domain costs from the initial payment. Best of luck finding your next hosting provider.
    Yes, I think they atleast have got refund and its good to know even no cost have been deducted.

    btw the support thing is really mess with some providers, as some people never know itself that whats the real prob in their

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Aug 2009
    Location
    New Delhi
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    Or perhaps when you was (and admitted to) "domain squatting" in thread webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=999804
    It is really a funny instance

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