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Thread: I don't want a budget host
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03-29-2011, 07:21 AM #1Junior Guru Wannabe
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I don't want a budget host
I have a few sites I'm looking to host. Nothing particularly onerous. No massive disk space or bandwidth requirements. Just the usual stuff in any VPS account should suffice.
But I do want one with top class service and tech support that's responsive, smart and customer service oriented. Such service would be expensive to provide and I'm happy to contribute towards it via higher hosting fees. But such a host does not seem to exist... or am I looking in the wrong places?
In the last couple of weeks I've tried hostgator and servint and I'm distinctly unimpressed with both. I appreciate that many here have had good experiences with those two (I've done a bit of research). But the type of support they offer seems to me a tad at the cheapo end of the market.
servint: not intuitive, log in and you get irrelevant rubbish on the first page and their "kickstart" program is hidden away in a location that they don't provide in the welcome email. When you do find it, it's nothing but a series of pre-prepared texts. That's fine. But each time you reply the support assistant takes 10 minutes to get back. Bear in mind that all he's doing is copy and pasting. Ten minutes to reply with the next in a series of standard texts is ridiculous. At two different times on two different days he was "unusually busy". That's not good enough. I dread to think what would happen if I ran into a tech problem.
hostgator: I spoke with seven techies over the course of two weeks. Only one came across as both competent and efficient. Two terminated the calls when they screwed up. How rude is that? And none was able to solve a simple problem with Frontpage extensions. Most didn't know the first thing about the topic and the conversation read more like a training course conducted by me. I gave them a second chance after the hostgator owner, Brent, contacted me by PM and very kindly added $x to my account as a goodwill gesture. But that was obviously a mistake on my part.
So, any suggestions? Or does tech support not get any better than the above two whatever the price the customer is willing to pay?
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03-29-2011, 07:56 AM #2Junior Guru
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I recommend you try deckerservices.com. I use them and I consider it a top class web host.
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03-29-2011, 07:59 AM #3New Member
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I would definitely recomment onesmallorange host, They have 99% uptime and they're support is one of the fastest I have seen. Not to mention their pricing is fair.
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03-29-2011, 08:00 AM #4Junior Guru Wannabe
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I'm looking at CrocWeb at the minute. They started in 2009 and their brand looks superb. I have paid $28 or so for a year with the coupon code "halfcrocweb" and it saves me a hell of a lot of money throughout the year.
I will let you know how I get on but sales were very helpful and their hosting looks great.
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03-29-2011, 08:06 AM #5Junior Guru
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Isn't CrocWeb a reseller of iweb?
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03-29-2011, 08:07 AM #6
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03-29-2011, 08:19 AM #7
We currently lease iWeb's dedicated servers and are soon expanding to colocation.
Thank you for the recommendation.
I believe he is referring to www.asmallorange.comCrocWeb Cloud - High Availability Cloud Website Hosting
> NVMe Storage, LSCache, Redis, Global CDN, Unlimited SSL
> Triple Data Replication, Automated Server Failover
> Bad Bots, Malware, DDoS Protection
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03-29-2011, 10:50 AM #8Junior Guru Wannabe
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03-29-2011, 10:54 AM #9
We are planning to colocate our own hardware within the next few months. Also a VPS service may be launched during this time.
CrocWeb Cloud - High Availability Cloud Website Hosting
> NVMe Storage, LSCache, Redis, Global CDN, Unlimited SSL
> Triple Data Replication, Automated Server Failover
> Bad Bots, Malware, DDoS Protection
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03-29-2011, 12:37 PM #10Web Hosting Master
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I'm happy at MDDHosting, a smaller provider than the ones you've tried. I find that the full-time, small hosting companies are usually more responsive.
One note about FrontPage; while most hosts still support it, it is past its official EOL from Microsoft, and you can expect your extensions to "break" at some point in the future. No one will be able to help you at that point. While I have a couple of customers still using FrontPage, I have urged them to start transitioning now rather than be down when a random update of Apache, PHP or MySQL breaks it.
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03-29-2011, 01:18 PM #11Web Host Reviewer
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But I do want one with top class service and tech support that's responsive, smart and customer service oriented. Such service would be expensive to provide and I'm happy to contribute towards it via higher hosting fees. But such a host does not seem to exist... or am I looking in the wrong places?
Wise choice to seek a premium host, instead of the budget hosts.|| Need a good host?
|| See my Suggested Hosts List || Editorial: EIG/Site5/Arvixe/Hostgator Alternatives
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03-29-2011, 03:07 PM #12Web Hosting Master
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Mddhosting.com is a pretty good host and no extream space and bandwidth accounts.
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03-29-2011, 03:35 PM #13Newbie
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Unixy fills those requirements and more for me. Very easy to work with and seems very knowledgeable. I am sure there are others. I have only been on board for a short time here at WHT and mostly lurk.
Agtech
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03-29-2011, 04:27 PM #14Junior Guru Wannabe
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Thanks for all the replies.
While I have a couple of customers still using FrontPage, I have urged them to start transitioning now rather than be down when a random update of Apache, PHP or MySQL breaks it.
If a tech assistant doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to FP extensions (or anything else) not working he should get the hell out of the chat rather than bluffing his way. When it's immediately obvious he's out of his depth he shouldn't try to blag his way which just wastes my time and often makes him look like an idiot.
A quality service would not impose on my time any more than necessary. I'm in business, time is money. I don't want to spend 30 minutes on telephone hold any more than I want to spend a useless extra hour or two on tech chat because the operator is out of his league.
Thanks to everyone for their input, but may I ask how many times you've used your host's tech support facility before coming to the conclusion that it's good?
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03-29-2011, 04:49 PM #15Web Hosting Master
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Which are your real needs in space/bandwidth and budget? Maybe it can help us to guide you better.
█ Shared Web Hosting - Reseller Hosting - Semi-Dedicated Servers - SolusVM/XEN VPS
█ LiteSpeed Powered - R1Soft Continuous Data Protection - 24/7 Chat/Email/Helpdesk Support
█ Cpanel/WHM - Softaculous - R1soft Backup - Litespeed - Cloudlinux -Site Builder- SSH support - Account Migration
█ DowntownHost LLC - In Business since 2001- West/Center/East USA - Netherlands - Singapore
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03-29-2011, 05:06 PM #16Web Hosting Master
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Totally agree with you there. I just thought I'd mention the Frontpage issue, as I'm dealing with it myself.
I did a count of my support tickets the other day, and was at 25 with MDDHosting with three month's service. That's more than I care to admit, frankly, because they were for the most part not real issues with the server I'm on (makes me feel stupid!) I was transitioning from a shared reseller account to a VPS, and had some issues getting nameservers to work, FTP for my customers to work with passive connections, etc.
There were a couple of tickets for a promo that Mike extended to existing customers as well as new customers, and two added today for some billing issues that were quickly resolved. Anyway, the resolution in the majority of those tickets was under 30 minutes. I'm on the west coast, and even when I submitted some of them in the middle of the night (3 AM for MDD), they were answered promptly.
The longest one was tagged low priority by me; it was update to WHMCS that (I think) required WHMCS to provide the update and for it to be posted for download. I needed it for ResellerClub functionality. That one took 4 hours.
I'm happy enough that I just signed up for another 6 months.
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03-29-2011, 07:00 PM #17Web Hosting Master
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You can check out www.medialayer.com if you want amazing performance and no budget host + overselling. They're pretty darn solid from what I've experienced, and they seem to have only positive reviews here.
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03-30-2011, 12:52 AM #18Web Host Reviewer
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Over the course of 5 years, I'd say at least 50 tech support contacts.
|| Need a good host?
|| See my Suggested Hosts List || Editorial: EIG/Site5/Arvixe/Hostgator Alternatives
||
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03-30-2011, 02:17 AM #19Junior Guru Wannabe
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Have you checked RackSpace, they provide good support.
Web Hosting Pakistan. Affordable and Reliable Web Hosting Services by FMEOS.PK
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Pakistan web Hosting, Domain Registration and Web Designing Services.
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03-30-2011, 04:14 AM #20Junior Guru Wannabe
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http://www.asmallorange.com/ :good
I have a good experience with them. Go try it !
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03-30-2011, 06:08 AM #21Newbie
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I have looked at DreamHost in the past - but their business model seems to be to offer a year at an unbelievable price, offering an unbelievable amount of space and transfer, and then hope people stick about with them in the next year.
Thanks for the LunarPages recommendation. I'll bear them in mind, but would have to wonder whether their servers will be overloaded with them offering 35000 Megabytes Storage and 800 Gigabytes Data Transfer for $6.95 a month
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03-30-2011, 06:34 AM #22Junior Guru Wannabe
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Which are your real needs in space/bandwidth and budget? Maybe it can help us to guide you better.
What would constitute top notch, price no object service? In an ideal world that would be 24x7 immediate tech response (except in times of real datacentre emergencies when there may be a sudden flood of tech requests - this should not happen to the host more than once a year if that). The route to that response would be at the choice of the customer - chat, ticket or phone. The first person the customer speaks to would have the technical expertise and problem solving ability of the higher level admins at other hosts.
Such a service may not exist. However, I'd like to get as close to it as I can.
But, of course, it doesn't make sense to pay a large sum unless I can first convince myself that the host does offer a superior service (otherwise I end up wasting time to repeat what I've just experienced with the two hosts I've tried). Hence my research here - the best place for this kind of information.
Thanks to everyone who's taken the trouble to come back with the number of times they've tried their host's support. I will take some time over the next few days to do some research on the various host options suggested so far.Last edited by tryaxiom; 03-30-2011 at 06:41 AM.
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03-31-2011, 09:51 PM #23Newbie
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As far as I'm concerned, Dreamhost has been pretty good for my needs. I have a small VPS with them and I'm not using nearly all of it yet, so we'll see, but their prices are straightforward (it looked to me like carenstanley was saying that they have introductory pricing, which is usually not the case) and relatively low.
When I've had issues, I open a ticket and they're good about getting back to me, and the same tech stays on throughout the process and I can email back and forth to their real email address after the ticket is replied to. Add to that the fact that the guys seem to actually know and care what they're doing, and that equals a recommendation from me.
The only thing they don't offer is reseller hosting, which is no big deal for me at the moment, but down the road I'll have to decide whether to go somewhere else for that or to pay for a dedicated server and install all the important **** (cPanel, WHMCS, backup, whatever) myself. Considering how lazy I am....
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03-31-2011, 10:28 PM #24Web Hosting Master
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You may want to visit different hosts, some of them have in real time the average response time on their sites, and also, live chat.
About the uptime, you can ask them a third party uptime report that you can use to check, and of course, check this forum for reviews.█ Shared Web Hosting - Reseller Hosting - Semi-Dedicated Servers - SolusVM/XEN VPS
█ LiteSpeed Powered - R1Soft Continuous Data Protection - 24/7 Chat/Email/Helpdesk Support
█ Cpanel/WHM - Softaculous - R1soft Backup - Litespeed - Cloudlinux -Site Builder- SSH support - Account Migration
█ DowntownHost LLC - In Business since 2001- West/Center/East USA - Netherlands - Singapore
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04-01-2011, 11:28 AM #25Junior Guru Wannabe
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When I've had issues, I open a ticket and they're good about getting back to me
It seems to me a cut-price, lower efficiency, less customer friendly method of dealing with support. What can be done in a five minute phone conversation could take an hour via ticket replies even if the response is quick.
It appears I may be the only one who thinks that this tortured back and forth ticketing in the hosting business is like playing tennis on the ocean floor.
Jedito, thanks again. Yes, uptime can be checked. I'd be interested in any more information you have on checking hosts' average response times. I don't believe I've come across that anywhere.
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