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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    37

    Site5, does support even exist?

    I had lots of problems with hosting companies in the past and finally decided to look into this forums to investigate user reviews.
    Site5 has mostly positive feedback, that is why I decided to try it.
    I've seen bad services before but never seen such an unwillingness to sell services.
    I ordered shared hosting about 70hours ago now.
    But had some problems with e-mail that I used in registering form.
    It went down after I made order, because Aplus.net was very fast about cancelling accounts. I hoped I'll have time for DNSs to change back on old hosting and e-mail will work fine.
    But alas what Aplus.net are great at, they can cancel your account just in seconds after you request money back. (No matter I asked them not to hurry with it at least couple days)

    Anyway this is another story. I contacted Site5 from other working e-mail describing situation. No response at all.
    My e-mail went back to work already. I made another 2 requests If they can give me my account info. All I got were auto replies.
    In couple days I was asked about my domain name and credit card number used for ordering, and again no response after I gave that info.

    I really understand lots of companies could have problems sometimes, but what is the point of lying that they usually respond in 30mins or so?
    If they are that slow at selling, what should I expect when technical problems arise?

    I understand it is not their fault my e-mail (I used for ordering) could have been down and missed the important info. But I requested help from other working e-mail describing situation 3 times already.
    And again what is the point of that "Live chat" button? If It never works.

    I was ordering hosting in other place also Hostcreations.com and didn't complete the order for some reason. And! I got e-mail from them asking If I had any problems finishing the order.

    and in case of Site5, order came through, I see the money was taken from card, and still I cant get ANY help from them in 70 hours after the order.
    I'm really confused

    P.S. I see people usually asking what is reviewer hosting. I'm trying to get a reliable hosting for my 3drt.com.
    I'm temporary back at Hostony.com now.
    Last edited by 3drt; 10-02-2005 at 01:10 PM.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Northern Europe.
    Posts
    2,573
    I am not sure what happened to you... it looks like the e-mail address you used when placing the order with Site5 stopped working.

    I guess this could complicate things, since you would get account info in response right after signing up. However, they should respond to your explanation... Have you tried calling them using their toll-free number?
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  3. #3
    3drt:

    I'm sorry to hear about the communication issues that you've experienced thus far. If you have sent a ticket into support, it has been replied to. At the moment we have ~9 tickets between all of our technical support queues. And all of our responses today have been less than 30 minutes.

    Please be aware that our sales & billing departments are only available from 09:00 - 17:00 ET on the weekends. 08:00 - 20:00 ET during the week. LiveChat is available during the week during the business hours I've mentioned above. LiveChat is limited on the weekends.

    Regardless, I'd like to get to the bottom of your support issues. Please email me directly with your ticket numbers and I'll be more than happy to look into things for you. As I mentioned above, our response times are less than 30 minutes at this point for technical issues.
    Todd Mitchell
    General Manager
    ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc. / theplanet.com

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Zagreb, Croatia, Europe
    Posts
    64
    30 minutes? It use to be 15! All this forum talking is bad...

    It took them six hours to open my account although this was on Monday and my debit card wasn't even valid in US!

    Luckily first month was free thanks to Firefox. But somebody did forget to send me my.Site5 login which I realized few days after I actually read e-mails and started to setup accounts - I got login info after about 1 minute.

    Anyway two most important pages at Site5 are:
    http://www.site5.com/gettoknow/contact.php
    http://forums.site5.com/ (someone is always there)

    Although real test of support will be after I move my main site there and crash there server few times.
    Last edited by Ivan Bajlo; 10-02-2005 at 03:16 PM.
    Vojska.net - wargaming, military history
    World of photography - everything about photography

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    37
    Originally posted by site5
    Please email me directly with your ticket numbers and I'll be more than happy to look into things for you.[/B]
    I'm sorry to mail you directly at where?
    I did sent 1 more update to sales@
    1 hour ago with ticket number, still silence
    yesterday I sent same to support@, sales@ no response

    as for the issue with my failed e-mail when registering.
    I btw got the auto response
    "We just received your new web hosting order at Site5.com--thank you! We will process this order shortly and send your welcome email"
    My domain (e-mail) was up for like 8 hours more but I got nothing.
    after that I was trying to reach you from other e-mail.
    Anyway I understand this is sure not your fault and is rather uncommon case, but to resolve it I need at least to get any responses from you guys
    weird that I got attention on forums alot faster.

    btw all my e-mails are up and working 2days already now. DNS already fully updated after 3 days.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    37
    3hours passed since last request to sales@
    what am I doing wrong?
    it was 3rd request.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Posts
    319
    Originally posted by 3drt
    3hours passed since last request to sales@
    what am I doing wrong?
    it was 3rd request.
    I think site 5 said they are open only for 8 hours sat/sun each on sales.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    EU - east side
    Posts
    21,920
    I'm sorry to mail you directly at where?
    His email address should be on this page: http://www.site5.com/about/management.php

    I believe it used to be in his signature here, but he must have edited it out.

  9. #9
    Well, I am using Site5 and I would say their tech support is quite okay. The only time i faced slow responses is when Site5 was facing some problems with their servers a few weeks back.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    37
    Originally posted by GIGANET
    I think site 5 said they are open only for 8 hours sat/sun each on sales.
    I really can't understand this in terms of online sales.
    I run my own on-line business over 5 years now. Never I could afford to leave my customers unanswered on weekends or in more than 1 day.
    I did contact sales@ support@ tmitchell@ shared@ in last 3 days
    no answer.
    They could be a very nice hosting provider but what they obviously showed, they are not really interested in selling their services. Well I was charged money from card already so it is considered support already, not sales.
    In any way I didn't have intentions to bash any company here. Just tried to explain my case in all details, because company was chosen based on forum feedback.
    This is the only reason I'm posting here.

  11. #11
    Originally posted by 3drt
    I really can't understand this in terms of online sales.
    I run my own on-line business over 5 years now. Never I could afford to leave my customers unanswered on weekends or in more than 1 day.
    I did contact sales@ support@ tmitchell@ shared@ in last 3 days
    no answer.
    They could be a very nice hosting provider but what they obviously showed, they are not really interested in selling their services. Well I was charged money from card already so it is considered support already, not sales.
    In any way I didn't have intentions to bash any company here. Just tried to explain my case in all details, because company was chosen based on forum feedback.
    This is the only reason I'm posting here.
    Hello,

    I never received your email. Please send me a Private Message in the Site5 forums & I'll be more than happy to help you. Site5 is a very responsive & progressive company; however it is very difficult to assist anyone if we do not receive their emails.
    Todd Mitchell
    General Manager
    ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc. / theplanet.com

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    37
    Originally posted by site5
    Hello,

    I never received your email. Please send me a Private Message in the Site5 forums & I'll be more than happy to help you. Site5 is a very responsive & progressive company; however it is very difficult to assist anyone if we do not receive their emails.
    1) I don't see private message button near your name for some reason. Other people have it.
    2) I sent you another mail to your personal adress I found at http://www.site5.com/about/management.php
    3) I guess maybe there could be something with your spam filter?
    Though Site5 responded couple days ago requesting my domain name and card number. So they were receiving something.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    37
    finally got account info.
    Guess problem was not in e-mails not reaching company.
    I'm happy I finally got account setup even in 4 days.
    P.S. anyway sorry guys for any inconvenience caused by my order and time it taken me to wait activation.

    P.P.S. I'll be back in a month to review my experience with hosting.

    Thanks webhostingtalk.com for a great and helpful resource.
    Last edited by 3drt; 10-03-2005 at 02:26 PM.

  14. #14
    I'm quite fed up of bad support over the years. The only problem with net companies, is that you can't go down there and give them a good talking to.

    Support is always an issue everywhere on the net.

    Try and find companies with fast response, test them.

    For example: send them an email to ask something (eg. sales question), and see how long they take to reply.

    Often, sites with live chat are very good, and it shows they are often there to help you as quickly as they can, just make sure, when you click on livechat, it doesn't say they are 'offline'.
    Zach Woodham
    Instant Hosting Network
    http://www.instanthosting.net

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    EU - east side
    Posts
    21,920
    1) I don't see private message button near your name for some reason. Other people have it.
    He meant a PM over at Site5's forums, not here.

    Glad to hear you got the account info. Not so glad it took 4 days to get it though.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Houston, TX
    Posts
    397
    sorry to hear about everything, man. i think site5 is probably on the search for bigger trousers. it can't fit in their current pair. best of luck!
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  17. #17
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Waco, TX
    Posts
    389
    Well they just hired like 12 new employees (they're still going through a growth spurt )

    Here's a tip though- Whenever you email site5, if they're receiving your email, they send out a automatic notfication immediately after it reaches the mail server, so check for it. Most of my requests are still answered in 20 minutes (especially when the title includes the word "hacked", I had that happen recently, support responded in 5 minutes), except the affiliate dept., which is always a little swamped.

    Hope you have a better experience with them from this point on!

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    root
    Posts
    874
    do what i do, when you are debating over who to choose, stay up till 3 or 4 a.m. then send them a mail, to all of their departments. Just say something like"I am testing your responce time thanks." and if they have 3 departments, average them out and get an average responce time. Quickest wins even if they do cost more.
    Nick | BudgetVM
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  19. #19
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Northern Europe.
    Posts
    2,573
    Well, I would also consider the quality of the response... which will be hard to judge in a simple test like that...
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  20. #20
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Posts
    319
    Originally posted by bdwarr6
    do what i do, when you are debating over who to choose, stay up till 3 or 4 a.m. then send them a mail, to all of their departments. Just say something like"I am testing your responce time thanks." and if they have 3 departments, average them out and get an average responce time. Quickest wins even if they do cost more.
    I think this is a total waste of time for Site5. Technicians are busy resolving real issues and responding to real customer issues.

    Problem solving requires human resources. Sending a response to say "I am testing your..." is not a true reflection of support quality.

    I'm sure they respond based on priority and severity. If their server is out, I'm sure they will answer those tickets first rather than answering your test email.

    They wouldn't have 1 dedicated staff per 1 client.

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Zagreb, Croatia, Europe
    Posts
    64
    Originally posted by bdwarr6
    do what i do, when you are debating over who to choose, stay up till 3 or 4 a.m. then send them a mail, to all of their departments. Just say something like"I am testing your responce time thanks." and if they have 3 departments, average them out and get an average responce time. Quickest wins even if they do cost more.
    So if I ever go into hosting business all I need is create some sort of mail desk which sorts out all incoming e-mails and reply's to test e-mails in seconds?

    And once video chats become standard I would need few hot blonds with big ... cleavage for sales department.
    Vojska.net - wargaming, military history
    World of photography - everything about photography

  22. #22
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Houston, TX
    Posts
    397
    ha ha! you're company will shoot to the top of the industry that way!
    Eleven2 Web Hosting is helping the Red Cross
    Eleven2 Hosting - www.eleven2.com
    Help The Red Cross - www.redcross.org

  23. #23
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    37
    as promissed here is my resume on my experience:
    + technical side is pretty reliable, experienced low downtime just for some minutes in a month.
    + nice interface, very handy multisite controls
    - very weird support. I'd say a joke support. Sometimes tickets take hours to be answered, couple taken over 8 hours and one even over 24. But those were very easy. Sales support even worse. No response on weekends and very slow in general. 1st account taken about 4 days to setup.

    Anyway have high hopes that they plan to do something with support.

    Signed for a year of their new plan.
    and again it wasn't easy. They can't just upgrade your current account. Was to setup a new one from scratch.
    Um and today they charged me for that old test account also, that they were not able to upgrade Sure I requested to cancel account and charge back but don't expect it to be solved soon

    If you are veeery patient, than you'll be happy with their services
    Last edited by 3drt; 10-30-2005 at 05:03 PM.

  24. #24
    Hi guys,

    First post on the site. Hope it's not too negative.
    Further to site5 and despite the bad experiences a few people seem to have had I decided I'd give them a go and lucky me on that very day there was a 3 month free offer. But when filling out the sign-up form there was no where to enter the offer code. So I fired off a mail to sales to see what the story was expecting a fairly quick response as all I want to do is give them money. I had a little chuckle when a day later the sales guy effectively said ' This deal was for 1 day and since its taken me a day to reply its no longer valid but you've made a good choice choosing us '. Now I am probably being petty but I like to be 'sold' and given this slightly presumptuous take it or leave it attitude I decided to leave it which is a shame because the hosting looks great on paper.

    Which leaves me trying to find another host with the same capabilities that isn't going to put me through its growing pains. Whenever I find one that seems good there is a great long thread about how bad they are. If I don't get sorted soon my clients going to do the same.

    Cheers.

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