Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : Reasons to stay away from Alabanza

[scottlaw]

If you are thinking about starting a hosting company STAY AWAY FROM ALABANZA!

Although they provide you with free support, the old saying of you get what you pay for is true in this case.

Here is the most recent screw-up by Alabanza... I was told the DSM would be upgraded late at night as to minimize downtime. Well guess what, they performed the upgrade in the middle of the day when most customers are signing up for accounts. Besides having the DSM down for 30 minutes, they lost my SSL certificate for the DSM and did not setup the DSM to use SSL. So now the only way customers can signup for accounts is via a insecure area. I cannot even talk to a technician about this problem, the only department who will talk to me over their "support" line is a receptionist!

Then this also happened... This morning, way before the DSM upgrade was even started, the DSM stopped setting up domains on the server. I called about this and emailed and was told the problem was due to the DSM upgrade. BS! The upgrade was not even performed yet!

Support tickets are staying open for weeks now without being resolved... I even had one stay open for a month! And it was a simple question about their backup procedure.

Bottom line, stay away from Alabanza. Even if you have the technical experience to fix these problems you cannot because of the placement of the software of their servers... You cannot even access it.

Go with a real company such as VDI. At least with them all the software is located on your server so you can fix it if they become incompetent like Alabanza has become.

OK... my rant is over about this, I just wish someone had warned me about these problems with Alabanza before I signed up so I could of chose a competent hosting company.

Scott

[webfors]

That's the first bad thing I have heard about Alabanza.

BTW, how many servers do you have with different companies?

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"I AM!"

[This message has been edited by tabernack (edited 07-25-2000).]

[Annette]

Yeah, me too.

Seriously, though, the DSM upgrade today was quite a pain, as it not only took down our ordering, but the control panels of various accounts. Distinctly unpleasant, but ours was out about 20 mins or so and then back up just fine. Our certs all made it through, too - and we haven't had any problems with support functions. So....I guess everyone's mileage varies, as usual.

Cheers.

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Annette
Hosting Matters, Inc.
http://www.hostmatters.com

[MikeA]

Well, my DSM was out for several hours yesterday, but hey, that's life. No big deal. It was fixed this morning.

As for open requests, I've never had the problems you say, all of mine get closed in a day or less.

BTW, VDI is not without it's faults. Burstnet is hosted with them, so don't think that they are blessed. While Burstnet and myself had a slight falling out, I don't think that they are all to blame for the problems that have hit them (they just needed to address them better, in my opinion). Although, Daniel tells me that VDI is installing better connections to the network, so their big problems will soon be fixed.


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Mike Astin
WebAuthorities
http://www.webauthorities.com

[scottlaw]

tabernack,

We have 3 servers with 3 different companies... We just wish we could find one company that is honest, provides the support needed with dedicated servers, at a decent price. So far the best dedicated company has been Catalog.com. Unfortunately, their Linux systems and support are not what we want. Next on the list is Rackspace. We will be setting up a new server there soon and will let everyone know about them.

Scott

[scottlaw]

Believe me, I wish I had your luck with Alabanza... Unfortunately I haven't. BTW, 7 hours later they finally added my site correctly to the httpd.conf secure config file on the DSM server. This should of taken a whole 5 minutes. So for today I couldn't sell a package for the majority of the day. The only problem left is they lost my certificate and key. The problem with adding domains still exists also... I would not be so pissed off if I screwed it up but when the "professional" hosting company screws it up and then does not fix it, that is what pisses me off.

I would of never gone with VDI until now.. I see their new lines are in and the connect appears great. They learned their lesson about only having one line so I am not worried about that being repeated. That is the only complaint I have herd about VDI.

Scott

[Taxibear]

About VDI,

I have heard that they don't keep techs around 24/7. So if you need a hard reboot you might to wait.

That's what I have heard.

T-bear

[DanielP]

Hello

You're correct about the fact that techs aren't staffed 24/7. However, all VDI customers are supplied with pagers to contact any VDI tech after hours. One VDI customer paged them @ 2AM and Bill the owner responded to that page and spoke with the person while he was driving to the NOC to reboot/fix the server.

Also, I've had the nice experience to have a 4am problem with my server and had a tech there in about 7-12 mins of my page working on my server. If the box goes down they will/do get to it quickly once you alert them of the problem.

Also I believe the 24/7 staffing problem is slowly starting to fade away as they are getting more people.



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Sincerely~
Daniel Pearson
UltraSpeed USA
http://www.ultraspeedusa.com
AIM: UltraSpeedUSA
ICQ: 7021831
Email: dpearson@ultraspeedusa.com
Phone: 1-205-785-1872

[Jag]

What happened with VDI in the past?
Did they have only one connection and it failed a lot or what?

[Mike]

What is a DSM? Sorry, I'm not familiar with Alabanza terms..

[Martie]

Hi Mike
DSM= Domain System Manager
While Im here, Ive been very satisfied with my server from Alabanza. They've been very prompt with support at all levels for me.

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HostCaters--We Cater Hosting
www.hostcaters.com

[Mike]

Thanks..

[Chicken]

Originally posted by jaguar:
What happened with VDI in the past?
Did they have only one connection and it failed a lot or what?

That about sums it up. They are MUCH better now though from what I have read and been told.

[DanielP]

Yah that does, basically.

As far as I can tell we haven't had any line problems for several months now, only a few glitches from dropping quest and switching the router (downtime only during the switching/dropping)

Basically to make a long story short.

Quest buys PSI-Net a while back
Quest starts sutting down PSInet backbones
without telling customers
VDI was with PSInet

Quest told VDI to switch to Quest backbone and downtime would go away.

40 hours downtime later and the switch was made.

Quest had many many problems causing downtime.

VDI got smart and Ordered lines from Level3.net and MCI WorldCom

Level3 got installed

Quest got dropped

Everyone got happy and MCI is on its way .






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Sincerely~
Daniel Pearson
UltraSpeed USA
http://www.ultraspeedusa.com
AIM: UltraSpeedUSA
ICQ: 7021831
Email: dpearson@ultraspeedusa.com
Phone: 1-205-785-1872

[Jag]

Oh i see, So how is the CP with VDI there at ultraspeed? Im looking for something like they have with the 25 servers and 8mbps of your own. Any good points and bad would be helpful. Also DanielP, do you something setup
to see the ole CP in action. If so can you email me with the url and info , you should already have my address. Thanks