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  1. #1

    Reliablesite.net - 2 week report

    I bought a new hosting account from reliablesite.net for my asp.net site and wanted to post my 2 week experience so far. Not much time has passed so these are just my early experiences.

    The good - moving my database and my web app was a snap. I really love being able to use SSMS to manage my SQL server database, it made moving the entire database not so painful at all and was done quickly.

    My website was a bit of a problem since they do not support one-click publishing via Visual Studio for asp.net websites, which required a migration of the probject to a "website" vs web application type probject and of course a few changes had to be made and a few glitches turned up. However that was something I was considering doing anyways, so that's not really a negative for me, but if your website is a web app and you use one-click, beware.

    So really in a very short time I had the entire database transferred and the site up and running. Then it was just a matter of waiting for DNS to propagate and I was back in business. Everything just worked great, I was pleasantly surprised. Thankfully the control panel was exactly the same (but an older version, apparently, with less options) as my old web host.

    The site is super responsive and the SQL server is on a different machine than the web hosts, which is really great. Unlike my old host, I'm not getting weird random timeouts on database queries all the time. Everything just works.

    Regarding support - the one thing I really did like about my old web host was that they had live chat support. I can't tell you how great it is to get someone to reply in a timely manner or at least a quick status report, and it's absolutely a disaster if your website goes down and you can't get a response for many many hours. Having live chat, with all it's warts, is somthing I definitely miss from my old host.

    Reliablesite.net has no such thing. If your site goes down (or is shut down) completely, which mine has done twice now, all you can do is open a support request and hope that someone reads it soon.

    Both of my down time disasters were basically my fault, I guess you could say. The first instance was that it turns out that I didn't set up my database correctly and my SQL log file grew too large and stopped database writes completely. I am not a SQL wiz and had no idea what caused this, and it was not a problem on my old web host.

    I filed a support ticket and waited anxiously wondering what in the heck was going on. Customers were complaining that the site was down.

    After much frantic research, I figured out how to fix the problem on my own. It took them 5 hours to get back to me to basically do the same thing that I already did. I did send them a few updates along the way telling them that I finally fixed it myself. 5 hours is not a big problem for a shared, cheap account, but when someone's website/database just suddenly goes completely down, I sure wish I could at least get some kind of response that someone is looking into it asap. If it takes 5 hours after that, fine. Just being in the dark for hours and not knowing when someone is going to get around to it was killing me.

    The problem was that the SQL recovery model setting was set to full instead of simple, and if log backups aren't made, the log doesn't get purged and just keeps growing forever. Looks like the default for a database there is full recovery model, and I wonder if this bites everyone else in the same way that creates a new database there, I don't know. It sure bit me.

    Problem two was that I set up an automatic nightly database backup operation vai the control panel and in short time exceeded my allowed disk space useage. Here's the problem - I got exactly zero warning before they suspended my account. I got one email that said you may exceed your allocation soon and another email immediately following that that said you HAVE exceeded your allocation and you are now suspended.

    After discovering the problem from a customer (ugh!) I jumped on my PC, opened a support request and got an immediate reply, which was great, that they had already notified me 10 hours ago via email about the problem. I was away from my PC/phone all day so I was unaware. Yep there it was, the warning email followed by the shutdown notice in my inbox. I quickly deleted some old backups and freed up some space and told them the problem is resolved and please unsuspend my account asap. This time it took over an hour for them to reply and unsuspend my account.

    Now in both these cases you can say it was my fault. Yes I should know how to properly configure my database, yes I should have kept an eye on my disk space useage. I'm chalking this up to a learning experience and I won't make those mistakes again!

    However I really think it's very very bad practice to give a customer zero warning time before the hammer comes down and forcefuly shuts down their website if they go over their disk space/bandwidth/whatever. By the time they notified me, I was already 240M over, which is about two nightly backups. I could have corrected the problem in 5 min and avoided a big problem with many many customers if I had gotten a 24 hour warning that it was getting close or had gone over. Maybe that's not possible with whatever web hosting admin software system they are using, I don't know.

    So maybe this is an unreasonable expectation and common practice is to shut down customers as soon as they noitify them that they are over the limit, but it just seems like a great way to upset customers, like I was at the time. Cripes I really could have used *some* advance warning.

    The good news is that things are running well and I will definitely examine my disk space needs and upgrade if necessary to avoid this. And look at my database backup strategy and make sure that doesn't go past my allocated space. Doesn't look like I can get an automated space/bandwidth report sent to me once in a while, that would be nice...

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    Phoenix, AZ, United State
    Posts
    1,525
    Thank you for the lengthy review of your hosting experience.

    You are certainly more educated in hosting than a lot of shared hosting customers, so I think you are at an advantage because of that.

    It can be very frustrating to have a web site suspended, especially if you don't know it's about to happen. I think everyone can sympathize with that; however, it isn't too common to find a host who will give you advanced warning of a disk usage suspension. For the most part, the process is entirely automated. Maybe that is an issue of changing how the software suspends people, but a host needs to draw the line at some point.

    After reading the entire situation, I think you should be relatively happy with the results. Treat is at as a learning situation, as you said.

    Thank you again for taking the time to write this. Community rules will require you to report your domain to a moderator though.
    drew@slicie.com - Vertical Scaling Servers
    30 Minute Backups - Pay for what you use

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    East Coast // NYC
    Posts
    1,698
    Thanks for the great words....a few points

    1. We don't offer live chat, but we do have a phone number 866-WEB-0001.

    2. There are warnings, but there is a cut off, once you exceed the limits too far (you went 25% over), the system will shut off the account to prevent other customers from being effected from potential resource abuse.

    Please let me know if you have any questions, I can be directly reached at sales@reliablesite.net.

  4. #4
    Ah ok thank you much, I searched for that phone number and had no luck finding it.

    The mail I got says my account was suspended because I was only 10% over my disk space limit. Or is it 20%? Not sure how I got to 24% over if my account was suspended at 10% over.

    Since I have a relatively small space limit (1G) all it takes is one database backup (done nightly) and I'm over the 10% limit. I wish there was some way of automaticaly recycling the backup files... I either need to remember to delete my old backups to keep space useage down or turn off backups... or some kind of warning ahead of time. Since you suspend accounts that are only 10% over, that's just one automatic nightly database backup too many and I'm toast. I totally understand you need to stop abusers (and I appreciate that having been a victim of bad web apps on other hosts) but this really bit me in the butt and I'm not abusing anything on purpose.

    Maybe there's a way to warn at 90% instead of when you are at 110% or worse, 120%+, and your account is already suspended, that could avoid a lot of pain.

  5. #5
    I must be blind. Your phone number is right there on your support page. Don't know how it missed it. Glad to see that's an option though!

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Shah Alam, Malaysia
    Posts
    240
    Great to know you are having a good experience with them.
    Pulse Media Hosting Is One Year Old! - Reseller Promo NOW ON!
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  7. #7
    Thank you for the review

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    Trivandrum, Kerala, India
    Posts
    222
    866-WEB-0001 will be useful for USA based customers. What about customers from other countries like India. I am not a customer of your company but just want to know.
    Anand N
    Author: Community Server Quickly

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Dec 2002
    Location
    The Shadows
    Posts
    2,925
    Verified hosting at reliable
    Dan Sheppard ~ Freelance whatever

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Posts
    3,816
    Quote Originally Posted by web_host_guy_007 View Post
    866-WEB-0001 will be useful for USA based customers. What about customers from other countries like India. I am not a customer of your company but just want to know.
    Doesn't skype etc give free calls to any tollfree numbers?

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