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  1. #1

    5 Month Servage.net Review

    Hi, i'm fairly new to WHT and this is my first post so thought i'd better post something worthwhile

    Back in May i signed up for 6 months with servage. I was previously with GoDaddy's Economy Plan for a year but felt that i could do better, as my site started to get busier with them i noticed downtime and mysql servers being down more and more, and there Control Panel lacks many important features.

    So i started looking around for more hosts. I looked around quite a lot on many review sites before i signed up with GoDaddy, i was looking at Dot5Hosting, BlueHost but decided to go with GoDaddy. So when i came to be looking again i looked back at these sites. That was when i discovered WHT and so found a lot of honest reviews about Dot5Hosting and BlueHost and that they both had problems.

    Now i'm not saying that i can't expect excellent support and uptime for $4.99 a month but i was still looking for what looked to be the best. Then i found a post about servage on here, i went to their site and saw about how they could almost guarantee 100% uptime using clustered servers, that and the high disk space and bandwidth made it a definate possiblity. So i started looking into reviews about them. I knew that it was obvious that they were overselling, but I knew that I wouldnt be using anywhere near the limits.

    I looked for reviews around the internet, this confused me a lot as their were some very good and some very bad and i wasn't sure which to beleive. Then when i did another search on WHT i saw that someone else had noticed this and the owner? of servage had replied saying that you would not get a host as big as them without having some bad reviews accross the web, which made a lot of sense. So i finally decided to risk it and sign up for 6 month's with them. Also i'll say here that because they charge a setup fee if you signup for less than 6 month's its virtually the same in price if you sign up for the 3 month plan or 6 month.

    Anyway, getting back on track, i signed up and was very impressed with the setup times. My account was ready within 10 minutes of signing up (on a saturday) aswell and my newly registered domain was propagating. The control panel at first is a bit confusing, i remember spending half an hour how to add a subdomain, i then looked in the help and found you had to add a "virtual host" just like you do to addon domains.

    But i got used to the cpanel (which was still 10x better than GoDaddy's).

    Throughout the 5 month's i have been with them, i have never experienced any down time whatsoever and neither have the users on my site. The support is also very good, i have only had to send off one support ticket that was about CPU usuage, which was responded to in no more than 2 hours. It would however be nice to have a live chat feature.

    Upload speeds were also a lot faster than GoDaddy with me being able to upload at 50KB/S (which is the maximum by my ISP). Download speeds were also good with me being able to get abour 420KB/S which is higher than most websites i download from.
    I also noticed a few weeks ago about the speed, i used a script to download a file from rapidshare, who are a file hosting company that claim to have a 45GB/S connection to their users. The 150MB file was downloaded within about 20 seconds ( i can't remember the excact speed ).

    Another thing i noticed was that i could have 10 ftp connections per ftp user which was very nice for uploading lots of files.

    The only not so good things i can think about them is that the ftp address is ftp.servage.net not ftp.yoursite.com and also that their Control pannel can be a bit confusing at times. They also dont charge you for bandwidth overages (if anybody could possibly go over the limit) which is another nice thing.

    Also their referal system is very good, for every customer you refer, you will get 2 months free hosting and 5GB extra space and 50GB extra bandwidth.

    So in conclusion i can say that i have been very impressed with servage. I know that there are a lot bad reviews about servage but from what i have experienced i can honestly say i have been very impressed with them. Although I havnt been running a very resource heavy website the bandwidth, file storage and everything else has been fine. Ill certainly be renewing for another 6 months.

    My site and the domain that is managed by them is www.ehco-net.com it is a small arcade site, feel free to visit there

    Also, if anyone would like to test the speed then i have uploaded an empty 22MB file which can be located at http://www.ehco-net.com/SpeedTest.rar

    << removed >>
    Last edited by the_pm; 09-15-2006 at 07:17 PM.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    New York City
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    7,406
    Hi,

    Thanks for writing such a long and thorough review for us on Servage, definitely come back and update us again on their services in another half year or so. Glad things are working out for you and Servage

    Cheers

    (PS: Your test file doesnt work)
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  3. #3
    The test file is fixed now

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Australia
    Posts
    11
    Hi OneEcho...

    Thx for the nice review. I've been considering this host for a while for a backup solution and after half of a dozen of emails exchanged, I'm probably going to sign up soon. I read the TOS and Dispute Policy and it's all good to me...

    *** note... to those who consider servage, one trick is that they inforce a daily bandwidth limit ...
    Customers are able to use 37 Gb daily totaling 1110 Gb in a normal 30 day month. A 28 day month provides 1036 Gb transfer and a 31 day month will allow a total of 1147 Gb transfer.
    So anyway, since I intend to upload tons of data, my question to you is in regards of bandwidth... I tried your test file from Sydney, Australia (~30-70Kb/s) and Montreal, Canada (100-150Kb/s) because of the huge instability (speed keeps going up and down and up and... ) I was wondering what could you say about uploads...? At best, would you mind me trying out with and FTP account on your account? I'd be pretty pissed off signing in and not being able to upload 5 GBs in a decent time frame...!

    Cheers for any help!

    Seb.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    East Coast // NYC
    Posts
    1,698
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryders
    Hi OneEcho...

    Thx for the nice review. I've been considering this host for a while for a backup solution and after half of a dozen of emails exchanged, I'm probably going to sign up soon. I read the TOS and Dispute Policy and it's all good to me...

    *** note... to those who consider servage, one trick is that they inforce a daily bandwidth limit ...


    So anyway, since I intend to upload tons of data, my question to you is in regards of bandwidth... I tried your test file from Sydney, Australia (~30-70Kb/s) and Montreal, Canada (100-150Kb/s) because of the huge instability (speed keeps going up and down and up and... ) I was wondering what could you say about uploads...? At best, would you mind me trying out with and FTP account on your account? I'd be pretty pissed off signing in and not being able to upload 5 GBs in a decent time frame...!

    Cheers for any help!

    Seb.
    Glad to see a good review on servage. Regarding speeds, a good provider (not highly oversold, higher quality bandwidth) should be able to provide 100kb - 200kb to the other side of the world, this varies depending on network traffic.

    In terms of upload, you'll probably be limited by your upload speeds, many cable providers are limited at 64 - 256kb/sec and DSL at 32 - 128kb/sec.

    EDIT: It appears their servers are in Germany. In hamburg I think (based on the tracert).

  6. #6
    Sounds like a very smooth and comfy ride for you so far. Glad you're enjoying your new service provider. Good luck with your new journey, please keep us updated every few months!

    EDIT: It appears their servers are in Germany. In hamburg I think (based on the tracert).
    Well it appears to be that the server OneEcho's site hosted is in Germany, but I was under the impression that Servage had their servers hosted in a US data center
    Last edited by SkyNetHosting; 09-13-2006 at 11:06 AM.
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  7. #7
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    3,587
    I used to host my site at servage as well, they're quite allright indeed.
    You can actually have ftp.yoursite.com instead of ftp.servage.net. It's stated in the help section how to do that.

  8. #8
    Well it appears to be that the server OneEcho's site hosted is in Germany, but I was under the impression that Servage had their servers hosted in a US data center
    Hmm, i know that their offices are located in germany but i wasnt actually sure about the servers.

    So anyway, since I intend to upload tons of data, my question to you is in regards of bandwidth... I tried your test file from Sydney, Australia (~30-70Kb/s) and Montreal, Canada (100-150Kb/s) because of the huge instability (speed keeps going up and down and up and... ) I was wondering what could you say about uploads...? At best, would you mind me trying out with and FTP account on your account? I'd be pretty pissed off signing in and not being able to upload 5 GBs in a decent time frame...!

    Cheers for any help!
    Of Course i'll setup an account and PM you the details.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    862
    At the end of the term, if you tell them you want to cancel,
    they may offer the renewal for half the normal price, making them even more attractive.
    (They did that for me, but I switched my backup host to DreamHost.)

    Their strength is clustered and powerful server setup and huge bandwidth/diskspace, very easy domain setup, simple but usable control panel.

    Weakness is lack of logs, bad security situation, and slow initial FTP connection.
    (Back when I was using them. THey might have improved things since then.)

    I still conider them as a one of the good budget hosting solution (unless you care a lot about the security of your file or visitors).
    I may use them again for my backup host.

  10. #10
    Looks they have only one plan... and have any setup fee for one month registration.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    East Coast // NYC
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    Quote Originally Posted by extras
    At the end of the term, if you tell them you want to cancel,
    they may offer the renewal for half the normal price, making them even more attractive.
    (They did that for me, but I switched my backup host to DreamHost.)

    Their strength is clustered and powerful server setup and huge bandwidth/diskspace, very easy domain setup, simple but usable control panel.

    Weakness is lack of logs, bad security situation, and slow initial FTP connection.
    (Back when I was using them. THey might have improved things since then.)

    I still conider them as a one of the good budget hosting solution (unless you care a lot about the security of your file or visitors).
    I may use them again for my backup host.
    Once again, this truly shows you get what you pay for.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    49
    did my message deleted?
    i was asking one of member for the cupon he was refering to

    is it aganist the rules

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Canada
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    862
    Quote Originally Posted by MrRadic
    Once again, this truly shows you get what you pay for.
    Yep. They offer whole a lot for the price.
    And for some people, the kind of weaknesses are not very important.

    By combining a few of these cheap hosts and by using Dynamic DNS,
    you can create super redundant high performance setup at very low price.

    Also, some of them offer HUGE discount on the first sign up.
    So, it makes sense to switch hosts, time to time, and try out different one.
    (This way, you get used to "migration" and it frees you from the fear of switching, too )

    I've tried Lunarpage, PowWeb, Servage, DreamHost, and a few other minor hosts.
    So far, I like DreamHost despite their current situation.

    Servage wasn't bad.

    PowWeb was pretty good in the past, but I wouldn't recommend to my friends, currently.
    (I still use them, mainly for sub-sites and backup, and it's usable for specific purposes, IMO.)

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by ashras99
    Looks they have only one plan... and have any setup fee for one month registration.
    We do not accept monthly payments at this time. Customers are however able to signup for quarterly, bi-yearly and yearly plans (two last options without any setup fee).
    Steffan,
    Servage.net | Affordable Clustered Hosting

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    Sweden
    Posts
    1,061
    Since I'm located in northern europe and Servage has been the best webhost for me (performance wise). Only a couple of support tickets and they've contacted me in a timely manner. I use a CMS system at my domain hosted there and it uses alot of sql queries per session and I haven't had any hitting-the-cpu-roof issues (yet). speed per session has seldom been an issue for my files. The lowest is ~300KB/s and max 3500KB/s (that is per file/session)
    Last edited by mrbister; 09-15-2006 at 05:16 PM.
    -Mr Bister

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Jun 2004
    Posts
    41
    Quote Originally Posted by mrbister
    I use a CMS system at my domain hosted there and it uses alot of sql queries per session and I haven't had any hitting-the-cpu-roof issues (yet).
    This is what concerns me the most about Servage. How am I supposed to know if a particular cms will work with them or not? How much is too many?

    Which cms are you using mrbister?

  17. #17
    Join Date
    May 2001
    Location
    Syn City
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    Servage is great. I am moving more and more sites I have to them. Although these are mostly mini-sites and small forums. Servage runs pretty normal setup so I don't see why any CMS wouldn't work. For the price you simply can't beat it. I have a dreamhost account too but I think dreamhost FTP stinks, their control panels sucks, and they have plenty of outages. Servage so far has been excellent and I been there longer than 6 months.

    The negatives are so few and petty they aren't worth mentioning. If you need cheap reliable hosting...you won't do better than servage for under $20...let alone under $10.

  18. #18
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    Vaaska> I use e107 and by default it uses alot of mysql queries (25-30 I think).
    -Mr Bister

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
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    Very good review
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  20. #20
    I've been with Servage for almost two years. I've been considering a switch for a while, but they're not bad enough for drastic action.

    The package isn't bad for the price, especially if you need adult hosting which is often overpriced. I've never come near my limits so can't comment on what happens then.

    I've submitted a few support tickets and had them delt with quickly without a fuss.

    I noticed my site often ran rather slowly in the past, but I think this has improved, apart from my gallery.

    I use Gallery2 software with a mySQL database (sorry, not quite sure how to phrase that). My gallery isn't large and I've used the optimisation settings, but sometimes when the rest of my site is fine it'll be slow and/or pages won't load the first time. Sometimes the gallery won't load at all.

    Some people claim great reliability from Servage, but it's not what I've noticed. I haven't kept a log or anything so I can't give details, but while I can go for months without being aware of problems, some months there'll be a few times where I'll notice it's down, or a client will call to say he can't access my site and had to find my number elsewhere, or someone will call saying it's back again after being inacessible for the last few hours. Since I don't access my site that often and most potential clients who can't get to it just won't call, I have to assume that this means it's down pretty often. This seems to be the main complaint made about the service, and since Servage doesn't appear to acknowledge that there's a problem, I don't expect any resolution.

    Statistics are pretty bad. The information is basic and incomplete. Many referral URLs that I'm aware of (I've installed a third party tracker) just don't show up. For a few months stats were down compleatly, now they're back but all queries are removed from referring urls, which I've found more annoying than not having any information, sometimes! Apparently better stats will appear soon.

    There was a communication issue which caused my site to go down twice. I didn't recieve any emails telling me my fees were due, untill the one saying my account had been suspended for non-payment. This rather upset me, obviously. After the second time it was investigated and found I was set not to receive notifications somewhere, so presumeably this is fixed.

    So overall, good value as far as allowences are concerned, and they don't put any arbitary limits on ftp accounts or mySQL databases, which is nice. Support is ok if you don't mind not having a phone number. Reliability is the major drawback, but then some people seem to have better experiences.

    The site they host for me is http://allgirltogaparty.co.uk. There's nothing shocking there, but it's there to advertise sexual services, so you might not want it in your logs at work.
    Last edited by Anika; 09-28-2006 at 12:19 PM.
    I'm the friendly face of depravity!

  21. #21
    Join Date
    May 2001
    Location
    Syn City
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    Yeah logs is a really poor issue with Servage but you can run Google Analytics (free) or other 3rd party stats. If you are having mysql problems..I suggest you make a new sql database on a seperate sql server...they have about 17-20 of them running. Some are with Mysql4 and some are Mysql5. I am sure the performance may depend on which mysql server you are on. Since you have had the account for a while an older server may be overloaded. If you create a brand new one...it will be on the latest servers which are more powerful. I had an issue once as well but I did this and it helped tremendously.

  22. #22
    Would creating a new DB automatically put me on a newer server, or is it just luck? I'll have to download the whole thing I think, which would take a while. I didn't create it that long ago though, six months perhaps.
    I'm the friendly face of depravity!

  23. #23
    Join Date
    May 2001
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    It should be automatic. Also you might be able to split up the database between servers as well if you know how.

    When you make the database it will give you connection information such as mysql17.servage.net (meaning you are on server 17). Also try creating a mysql5 as well as a mysql4. Experiment like I said and see which gives you best results.

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