Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Square-Network/Pair

[Leighh^]

Coach is one of the best writers on WHT. He's very intelligent, uses words well, helpful, and just overall the best new user since last November. But his hosting service? What do you all think?
And Pair...how are they?

[Lesli]

I haven't used Coach's hosting service, and haven't used Pair either - but the only negative thing I have ever heard about Pair was that for people who wanted to use Movable Type ( www.movabletype.org ), a pretty popular blogging tool, they had to move off of Pair. Some module that MT needed wasn't installed on Pair's servers, and users who didn't feel comfortable uploading the modules to their account space eventually found other hosts. This was about a year ago - I don't know if the situation has changed since then. Other than that module problem, people seemed pleased with Pair's hosting. Do the usual searches, though.

And if you're not going to be running MT, then no problems.

[intellec]

Originally posted by Leighh^
Coach is one of the best writers on WHT. He's very intelligent, uses words well, helpful, and just overall the best new user since last November. But his hosting service? What do you all think?
And Pair...how are they?

Like I have said before, pair Networks is a solid company that has been in business for over 7 years (that is a long time from the looks of threads of crash & burn hosts); has a solid reputation; has a no-nonsense approach to the business with honesty. I have three different shared accounts (on separate servers) with them and I have not had any issues. I'm not a great cPanel fan so the proprietary control panel the pair uses suits me well.

[Martie]

Like Lesli, I havent used Coach's service but his professional attitude and sense of direction he uses within this forum has earned him *high* marks in my book! Im not sure if a search here will produce feedback on them or not..I know pair has feedback here. Keep in mind this is WHT, and, most generally "no news is good news"

[Host-Tec]

Have two shared with pair, at i think the oldest one is at three years. Like said above they are solid. If you are a developer they have a nice feature where you can host virtual domains for a dollar a month. When I had started out in web development I used to host clients that were not web savy on my shared account. Pair is a good company with good support. I recommend.

[BeDifferentSolutions]

Originally posted by Host-Tec
Pair is a good company with good support. I recommend.

I agree. For a company that large, they do a very good job. I certainly would like to yeild the same results when we get that big.

[sigma]

Originally posted by living_media
but the only negative thing I have ever heard about Pair was that for people who wanted to use Movable Type ( www.movabletype.org ), a pretty popular blogging tool, they had to move off of Pair. Some module that MT needed wasn't installed on Pair's servers, and users who didn't feel comfortable uploading the modules to their account space eventually found other hosts. This was about a year ago - I don't know if the situation has changed since then.

I know we've hosted quite a few Movable Type users in the past and some of them are still with us. As I recall, the issue wasn't with missing modules (we have thousands of Perl modules installed and tested), but with some of the MT functions running into our CGI resource limits. We were granting exceptions to MT users who contacted us, and I believe that those exceptions are now in place automatically (so any future MT users wouldn't have problems, usually).

I believe the MT site itself was given a promotional deal to host somewhere else. We do have happy MT users, as well as Blosxom and Geeklog (we provide setup procedures for both of these on our Support site).

Thanks,
Kevin

[Aussie Bob]

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
I agree. For a company that large, they do a very good job. I certainly would like to yeild the same results when we get that big.

Yes, I think I speak for a lot of hosts in that Pair is a company that we look up to and show a great deal of respect and admiration.

No offence to Square-Network.com, but you can hardly compare the 2 providers. Pair owns their own fully staffed facility, where square-network have servers with rackshack. [not that there's anything wrong with that].

[App-Jason]

I'd add my name to the list of hosts that recommend Pair. They have a very good reputation. I've never heard anything negative about them.

[digitok]

I'd definately recommend square-host, Coach is a really nice guy and I'm sure his hosting services is just as good.

[Lesli]

Hi Kevin / sigma,

Thanks for the feedback re: MT and Pair. I remember from the discussions in the MT support forum that there were MT users who were happy with Pair (and likely weren't trying to use all the MT functions), and others that had problems getting something in MT to work - something aside from the rebuilds. I know that lots of hosts (Pair included) had problems with the rebuilds timing out because it was so server-intensive, but this was something different.

Like I said to Leighh^, if s/he's not interested in using MT, then no worries. (And if s/he is...s/he can contact support and ask for Kevin )

[Coach]

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
Yes, I think I speak for a lot of hosts in that Pair is a company that we look up to and show a great deal of respect and admiration.

No offence to Square-Network.com, but you can hardly compare the 2 providers. Pair owns their own fully staffed facility, where square-network have servers with rackshack. [not that there's anything wrong with that].

Aussie Bob is correct is saying this. Comparing the two companies is really apples to oranges when it comes to the actual physical functioning of the companies and their business plans and focuses.

A company that owns it's own datacenter is generally one that is grossing most likely at least in the six digit range and one that has a large national and international presence. Pair has a large staff and from what I understand, that staff is excellent.

Square Network on the other hand has focused on being a local and regional service provider and we're definitely smaller staffed because of less of a customer base. We do have national and international clients, but my company's marketing efforts have always been local. However, in this area, having a datacenter is extremely cost prohibitive and even then, we're even more limited on what kind of connection we would be able to use as our backbone because all that is offered are T1 lines. Back n late 2001 I tried this, but a T1 line simply wasn't able to offer the speed that I felt comfortable with in providing a hosting service. Before I made the choice to start leasing as the RS datacenters, I looked into colo options within the area, but if I had gone that route our $20 plans would actually cost more like $200. That just goes to show how expensive getting a decent pipe his in this area. RS had a solid reputation and their network and speed was great, thus the decision was made to go with them. Try pricing dedicated servers, colocation, bandwidth providers and other similar services in the Lexington, KY region and you'll see why that decision was made.

Pair has an outstanding reputation and like Aussie Bob said, they're a role model for many in the hosting business. If you're not using our services, they would definitely be someone I could recommend based on reputation and length of time in service alone.

[FTPguy]

Square-Network vs. Pair. Clear, simple answer. Pair!

[Leighh^]

Oh...I didn't mean to compare the two in this post and ask which is better, I wanted some information on Coach's company and a little bit more from customers using Pair today.

[molex]

PAIR is better more expensive but then you get what you pay for