Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : Myriad Networks feedback

[thorman55]

After reading good things about Myriad Networks and PowerVPS on here, I decided to explore both of them.

PowerVPS appears to have great hardware and great connections to the internet as they are in a world class data center. They had a hard time getting my email at first, due to an issue they quickly corrected. They spent time on the phone and were very helpful. They answer emails fast.

Myriad Networks has got great hardware as well and happens to be in the SAME data center. But unlike PowerVPS, Myriad is single homed. That is a drawback. If their connection goes out, all there servers are down.

I do want to point out Myriad has lightening fast response times on their shared accounts to my browser. VERY fast. I liked this a lot. They do that by having their DNS's in 2 different facilities (St Louis and VA) and with a hardware intrusion blocking system to keep the servers free from DOS attacks. I wanted to see if a VPS (or VDS as they call them) responded as fast as the shared accounts, as I have read some shared accounts respond faster.

So, I sent Myriad an email asking some questions about their VDS's. No reply. So I followed up with a call the next day. I got a girl who said there was no sales department, and nobody available that I could talk to. Not very friendly either. She said "Hang tight and you should get a reply to your email in a few more hours." I waited several hours. No reply. So I put my phone number in their "call back" feature.

Tom Petersen (TomP on this board) called me back in about 5 mins. I thought that was great. After talking to him a bit, he said he recalled my email and it was totally his fault for not replying. He said he would reply within 15, and he did. Very good.

His reply created some more questions for me. So I sent a reply asking those. I asked if he could give me some domain names of some current VDS accounts he had so I could see them perform to see if they were as fast as the shared accounts. He replied and said we could do it on the phone, as he did not want to give out customer URL's in email. OK.

I sent him and email on Saturday asking when on Monday was good for him to have a call and check them out. Told him to just call me on Monday when he was free. He replied late in the day on Monday and said he was moving all day and would be good to do it on Tuesday. Tuesday came and went, nothing. I sent another email Wed and asked if he was available then.

He replied on Wed and got fussy and said moving was a pain, he was not set up yet, did not have internet connectivity still, was out of VDS's and more were on order, but could offer me a Value VDS until more hardware came in. blah blah blah, etc.. I replied and said "Sorry, thought you were going to be done and available yesterday. I can just start with a value VDS and just test my own stuff instead of seeing an existing one. That will probably work best."

He replied quickly and told me he would have a value VDS set up for me the next day (Thursday). Thursday came and went. No word. I sent him an email LATE Thursday night asking if he had a chance to set it up that day. Expected to get a reply on Friday telling me he had it ready.

He replied Friday AM and told me I was annoying him and he did not want my business!

So he promised to show me VDS's running, and then promised to set up my own VDS, and because I sent him emails a good 24 hours after he was supposed to do these things and just checking in, he told me I was annoying him and he did not want my business.

It is too bad, because they have lightning fast response times. But HORRIBLE customer skills. If you don't have any questions, I would suggest going with them. If you need something done or have a question. Tom P is support, sales, trouble shooting, and everything else, plus cranky....

He needs to learn how to keep his promise to potential customers and probably existing customers, and not snap at them when they check to see if he has followed through on his own promise.

I am going to give PowerVPS a shot. I wish they had the response times Myriad does. Don't get me wrong, they are speedy, but Myriad was almost instant. (At least from my browser)

2 cents deposited.

[minsight]

PowerVPS went to great lengths to ensure that I was happy the one time I used their support. I recommend them wholeheartedly.

[tpetersen]

Hi,

I will conceed this past week hasn't been ideal in terms of presales support.  I fully expect to be back at 100% by Monday. 

I'm sorry your experience wasn't a postive one but not every customer is a good fit for us and vice versa.  I'm quite confident this is the case with every company.  PowerVPS is an excellent company and I'm sure you will be happy with the service and support you receive.

While I do assist with support as needed I am not the only support engineer, not by a long shot.  Honestly I couldn't manage everything alone.  I do employ customer centric engineers of which most of my customers are on a first name basis with.  At this time I do handle presales and billing exclusively though. 

Feedback good, bad or otherwise is always appreciated. I am somewhat suspect of your motives, as your post states facts you couldn't possibly know about (the number of support engineers I employ, for example) and your need to email me a copy of the link to this thread. 

I'm sorry things didn't work out.  If anyone has any questions, comments or concerns please do not hesistate to contact me directly.  

For the record, the name of the company is "Myriad Network"

[thorman55]

What is there to be suspect of Tom? I wanted to open an account with your company. You answered my questions, and it was a good fit.

A good fit until you made me promises to show me other VDS's running so I could see if they were as snappy as the shared hosting. And you never followed through on that. Then it started to get a little suspect.

Then I said, let's go ahead and set up a Value VDS as that seems to be easiest at this point and you said you would do it the next day. After my inquiry at the end of the next day, you told me I was annoying you.

What kind of customer service is THAT? I was annoying because I checked on something you said you were going to have done?

Then it became not so good of a fit.

I posted this here to let others know about what happened to me and to see if you would even try to make it right with me....

If you had a bad week, I am sorry, but don't take it out on potential customers. Show people here that you make mistakes and fix them. And learn from them. I know what bad weeks can be like. I never take it out on a customer, and I try to correct my mistakes when I make them.

[sliqua]

Hello, I've been a customer at Myriad Network for roughly 6-7 months now and have experienced nothing but the best hosting experience of my entire life. Here is my comments about what you were saying, I’ve been out to Equinix and seen him work first hand as I will soon have 2 VDS’ and multiple co-lo machines hosted on his network.

Myriad Networks has got great hardware as well and happens to be in the SAME data center. But unlike PowerVPS, Myriad is single homed. That is a drawback. If their connection goes out, all there servers are down.

First of all, Myriad is hosted on Beyond the Network, this is not single homed by any means. BTN does _not_ go down, ever! And BTN is peered with just about every major ISP on the internet, name an ISP and you can just about guarantee it's within one hop of their network. I have sent you a copy of a trace route to Google via private message.

I do want to point out Myriad has lightening fast response times on their shared accounts to my browser. VERY fast. I liked this a lot. They do that by having their DNS's in 2 different facilities (St Louis and VA) and with a hardware intrusion blocking system to keep the servers free from DOS attacks. I wanted to see if a VPS (or VDS as they call them) responded as fast as the shared accounts, as I have read some shared accounts respond faster.

All of the servers / vds’ hosted by Myriad run just as fast as their main web server. Their connection is better than any I’ve experienced, downloading from a sourceforge mirror using wget I’ve managed to nail up to 300-400mbit/sec getting a 20mb file at a decent hour of the day. If you want an example, feel free to visit any of our websites, I just sent a private message to you about them because this forum does not allow me to post the web addresses. All of our clients have seen a noticeable difference in loading speed and response time. Even before Myriad installed their new TopLayer, their servers never went down because their network engineers are incredible and know what they’re doing. If someone gets attacked, they can get a null route laid within 60 seconds (this being their last resort, however).

He replied on Wed and got fussy and said moving was a pain, he was not set up yet, did not have internet connectivity still, was out of VDS's and more were on order, but could offer me a Value VDS until more hardware came in. blah blah blah, etc.. I replied and said "Sorry, thought you were going to be done and available yesterday. I can just start with a value VDS and just test my own stuff instead of seeing an existing one. That will probably work best."

This is not Thomas usually, the typical response time from Thomas and the other Myriad Staff has been under one hour, mostly though, I get a response within 2 minutes. Also the reason they run out of available hardware as frequently as they do is they do not put as many clients on one server as possible, as is the case with most other providers. What was explained to me by Thomas over lunch a few months ago, Myriad only puts a limited amount of people on each server, until the server load hits around 10% or something, after that, they order a new machine. This gives the clients on the servers enough room to expand upon without causing the server to overload thus giving clients the best performance possible.

It is too bad, because they have lightning fast response times. But HORRIBLE customer skills. If you don't have any questions, I would suggest going with them. If you need something done or have a question. Tom P is support, sales, trouble shooting, and everything else, plus cranky....

This is not the case at all, give their 1-800 number a call, I guarantee you will not have Thomas directly picking up the phone! Thomas takes a personal approach with every customer to insure that all his customers get the best quality service on the market. In addition, he has a very skilled tech support staff that consists of people such as Adam and Russell which take care of customers extremely quickly and offer a great deal of suggestions.

He needs to learn how to keep his promise to potential customers and probably existing customers, and not snap at them when they check to see if he has followed through on his own promise.

Coming from a person that not only has my personal sites hosted by Thomas, but also sites for the business I’m working for. This puts a lot of faith in what he can provide. He has never snapped at me, any of my staff, or my employer. Thomas is the first person I turn to for excellent service and I will continue to not only use his hosting company, but to recommend his service to my friends and family.

I hope this gives everyone who reads this post some insight into what I’ve personally experienced with this company, because it is something most people don't get to see, Myriad Network's slogan truly is representative of the way they run their business, "the people behind the processors".

[thorman55]

Thank you for the post and PM's. I will look at your VDS response times to my browser. If anything lioke the shared hosting, it will be blazing. BTW, Tom told me on the phone they are single homed with BTN... But they do have great speed.

I agree with what you are saying about their performance. That is why I wanted to go with them... but unlike you, my experience was not very good with Tom.

I just wish Tom did not have a bad week and take it out on me.... as I wanted to be a customer. He admitted in the post above to having a bad week, and that is fine. I can forgive, but he said he did not want my business, so it is not really up to me at this point.

[sliqua]

for some reason it won't let me send you pms thorman55: please contact me on AIM user alexmcmillen or IRC at irc.oceanius.com nickname Alex

Thanks

[sliqua]

BTW, Tom told me on the phone they are single homed with BTN... But they do have great speed.


BTN peers with loads of isps, so it might be "single homed" to their network, but as their network is peered everywhere, it's not going down

[dkitchen]

Looks like BTN from here, credit to BTN though they do have a fantastic network. I love the lack of routers ...

PHP Code:

H:\>tracert myriadnetwork.com

Tracing route to myriadnetwork.com [209.8.31.171]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  gw3-fe0.noc.uk.razorblue.com [82.163.169.81]
  2     3 ms     2 ms     2 ms  gw2-fe1.noc.uk.razorblue.com [82.163.169.99]
  3    15 ms    15 ms    15 ms  ac2-if0.lon.uk.razorblue.com [213.130.147.48]
  4    18 ms    18 ms    18 ms  213.130.138.110
  5    19 ms    19 ms    19 ms  cr02.ldn01.pccwbtn.net [195.66.224.167]
  6   121 ms   121 ms   121 ms  web.myriadnetwork.com [209.8.31.171]

Trace complete. 


[sliqua]

In case you're curious, this is a traceroute to webhostingtalk from within the Myriad Network off one of my VDS accounts

root@spark root # traceroute webhostingtalk.com
traceroute to webhostingtalk.com (69.20.37.114), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 10.30.30.15 (10.30.30.15) 0.149 ms 0.162 ms 0.127 ms
2 pos1-0.cr03.ash01.pccwbtn.net (63.216.0.57) 17.681 ms 0.742 ms 12.665 ms
3 washdc5lcx1-pos4-3-peer.wcg.net (64.200.89.97) 36.095 ms 30.816 ms 84.233 ms
4 hrndva1wcx2-pos0-0.wcg.net (64.200.89.1) 38.193 ms 23.043 ms 28.822 ms
5 hrndva1wcx4-pos9-0-oc48.wcg.net (64.200.89.150) 25.707 ms 24.014 ms 45.174 ms
6 hrndva1wcx1-rackspace-gige.wcg.net (64.200.88.50) 4.689 ms 5.585 ms 1.499 ms
7 * vlan903.core3.iad1.rackspace.com (69.20.1.40) 1.501 ms 1.420 ms
8 aggr104a.iad1.rackspace.com (69.20.3.19) 1.640 ms 1.735 ms 1.840 ms
9 * * *

[pztup]

From PowerVPS/Defender

$ traceroute www.webhostingtalk.com
traceroute to www.webhostingtalk.com (69.20.37.114), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 eqash12.defenderhosting.com (204.157.0.74) 0.101 ms 0.107 ms 0.036 ms
2 blue1.ash.dvlabs.com (69.31.4.129) 1.675 ms 3.278 ms 0.648 ms
3 ge2-10.as.eqxashva.aleron.net (205.198.14.245) 2.060 ms 3.315 ms 3.087 ms
4 williams.iad01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.11.70) 3.702 ms 3.240 ms 2.810 ms
5 hrndva1wcx2-pos0-0.wcg.net (64.200.89.1) 3.770 ms 7.376 ms 2.449 ms
6 hrndva1wcx4-pos9-0-oc48.wcg.net (64.200.89.150) 3.065 ms 2.611 ms 3.243 ms
7 hrndva1wcx1-rackspace-gige.wcg.net (64.200.88.50) 3.371 ms 2.781 ms 3.769 ms
8 vlan903.core3.iad1.rackspace.com (69.20.1.40) 3.189 ms 2.625 ms 4.180 ms
9 aggr104a.iad1.rackspace.com (69.20.3.19) 2.697 ms 3.037 ms 2.917 ms
10 * * *

[sliqua]

4 williams.iad01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.11.70) 3.702 ms 3.240 ms 2.810 ms

ouch cogent bandwidth is horrible

[pztup]

Originally posted by sliqua
ouch cogent bandwidth is horrible

Cogent bw isnt horrible!

Yet my ping times are still lower then yours

[TomK]

Originally posted by RazorBlue - Dan
Looks like BTN from here, credit to BTN though they do have a fantastic network. I love the lack of routers ...

PHP Code:

H:\>tracert myriadnetwork.com

Tracing route to myriadnetwork.com [209.8.31.171]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  gw3-fe0.noc.uk.razorblue.com [82.163.169.81]
  2     3 ms     2 ms     2 ms  gw2-fe1.noc.uk.razorblue.com [82.163.169.99]
  3    15 ms    15 ms    15 ms  ac2-if0.lon.uk.razorblue.com [213.130.147.48]
  4    18 ms    18 ms    18 ms  213.130.138.110
  5    19 ms    19 ms    19 ms  cr02.ldn01.pccwbtn.net [195.66.224.167]
  6   121 ms   121 ms   121 ms  web.myriadnetwork.com [209.8.31.171]

Trace complete. 


BTN does run an awesome network, we've got a couple GE to them in Ash.

Lack of 'routers' is MPLS tunnels, smoke and mirrors, but it works.

Tom

[thorman55]

OK, after posting a not so great experience here, I have had a chance to communicate directly with Tom Petersen again. He apologized to me for having a bad week and his actions.

Since then, the service and support from Tom and the rest of the team has been fantastic. He really works around the clock.

I completely understand bad weeks and I have let it pass as water under the bridge.

If anything changes, I will post an update, but right now, I give Myriad Network 2 thumbs up. Super fast response times, and great support.