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  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Mountain View, CA
    Posts
    229

    Total Choice Hosting

    I've been hosting with total choice for a while, but recently, within the past 6 months, I've been noticing a LOT of downtime. How much downtime should one expect these days? Usually it's for a half hour or so, but I've actually missed emails and been unsubscribed from newsletters due to bounced messages.

    Is a handful of half hour downtimes reasonable per month, or are there better budget hosts out there?
    DreamLogic Cult Film and Music Reviews
    STOPware - Visitor Management solutoins

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2001
    Location
    West Michigan, USA
    Posts
    9,687
    Depends on how much you're paying and how much disk/bandwidth you're getting for that price.

    Personally, 1/2 hour downtime per month per server would be unacceptable.

    --Tina
    ||| 99.999% Uptime SLA!!!
    Plenty of space and bandwidth to fit your needs!
    www.AEIandYou.com - - (WP Friendly - Premium Reseller Hosting and Cheap Dedicated Servers)

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Posts
    5,178
    Quote Originally Posted by Hurga
    ...but I've actually missed emails and been unsubscribed from newsletters due to bounced messages.
    That sounds like a lot more than a 30 minute downtime. Most email servers will attempt to deliver you messages for up to 72 hours before bouncing. So unless they were having very serious issues (like your address disappearing from their servers) you shouldn't be auto-unsubscribed from any mailing lists or the like.
    If you have to operate your company behind the scenes or under a fake name, maybe it's time to leave the industry and start something fresh.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Mountain View, CA
    Posts
    229
    well, I'm paying roughly $4.00 a month. They give 20 gigs of transfer, but now that I am blocking hotlinking from myspace profiles we're well under that. What would you recommend?
    DreamLogic Cult Film and Music Reviews
    STOPware - Visitor Management solutoins

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Posts
    5,178
    The first thing you should do is contact your host. See if they're aware of these issues and plan to fix them. Especially find out if why those emails were bounced. That is particularly concerning.
    If you have to operate your company behind the scenes or under a fake name, maybe it's time to leave the industry and start something fresh.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Mountain View, CA
    Posts
    229
    well, I do contact them, and usually they don't respond. When they do, sometimes they admit a problem, sometimes they stay silent for a long time, say 15 minutes, and then once they restore the site they'll just tell me there are no problems.
    DreamLogic Cult Film and Music Reviews
    STOPware - Visitor Management solutoins

  7. #7
    Hi Hurga,
    To be perfectly honest with you, thats quite a lot of downtime. Like AH-Tina said, it really depends on what your paying them for hosting and how much bandwith and diskspace your getting. Maybe it's time for you to find a new host Good luck!
    Last edited by digitwebhost; 10-30-2006 at 03:11 PM.

  8. #8
    I am sorry to read that your having issues with your hosting service. I would be more than willing to take a look at your account in detail if you drop me a IM or email. I have included my contact information at the conclusion of this post.

    The server your account is hosted on has been a very reliable server,I will admit that email outages would be a little more difficult to track. However, with that said I am sure we can narrow down the issue for you and make you a happy TCH customer once again.

    Just drop me a line, I would be more than happy to help you out.

    Bill Kish
    General Manager
    TotalChoice Hosting

    AOL IM: tchgurubill
    Yahoo IM: tchgurubill

    email: bill [at] totalchoicehosting.com
    Bill Kish
    TotalChoice Hosting
    Hosting over 50,000 clients since 2000
    http://www.totalchoicehosting.com

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Earth
    Posts
    8,154
    Personally, 1/2 hour downtime per month per server would be unacceptable.
    Most web hosts offer 99.9% uptime guarantee, and that has to be acceptable.

  10. #10
    Personally, 1/2 hour downtime per month per server would be unacceptable.
    Most web hosts offer 99.9% uptime guarantee, and that has to be acceptable.
    To be exactly, 99.9% uptime guarantee means that the host is allowed to have 45 minutes of downtime per month, so 1/2 hour downtime per month should be acceptable. May be Tina was referring to something else?
    Last edited by SkyNetHosting; 10-31-2006 at 01:21 AM.
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  11. #11
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Mountain View, CA
    Posts
    229
    Quote Originally Posted by TotalChoice
    I am sorry to read that your having issues with your hosting service. I would be more than willing to take a look at your account in detail if you drop me a IM or email. I have included my contact information at the conclusion of this post.

    The server your account is hosted on has been a very reliable server,I will admit that email outages would be a little more difficult to track. However, with that said I am sure we can narrow down the issue for you and make you a happy TCH customer once again.

    Just drop me a line, I would be more than happy to help you out.

    Bill Kish
    General Manager
    TotalChoice Hosting

    AOL IM: tchgurubill
    Yahoo IM: tchgurubill

    email: bill [at] totalchoicehosting.com
    Hey Bill,

    Thanks. I'll get in touch with you today.
    DreamLogic Cult Film and Music Reviews
    STOPware - Visitor Management solutoins

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    New York USA
    Posts
    404
    I'm glad to see the host is working it with you. Good luck.

    Best Regards,

    Shaun

  13. #13
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Mountain View, CA
    Posts
    229
    my site's down again. Going on 15 minutes now. 10:12AM PST. See my sig. Can any of you guys see it?
    DreamLogic Cult Film and Music Reviews
    STOPware - Visitor Management solutoins

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    New York USA
    Posts
    404
    http://www.stopware.com/ works fine, a little slow, but works, however http://www.dreamlogic.net/ does NOT work, but it does PING, perhaps its a httpd over-load issue. I am very sorry you are experiencing so many issues with this host.

    EDIT:

    In firefox it shows,

    The connection was reset


    The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.




    * The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
    moments.

    * If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
    connection.

    * If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
    that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.


    Best Regards,

    Shaun

  15. #15
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Mountain View, CA
    Posts
    229
    Quote Originally Posted by JVS_Hosting
    http://www.stopware.com/ works fine, a little slow, but works, however http://www.dreamlogic.net/ does NOT work, but it does PING, perhaps its a httpd over-load issue. I am very sorry you are experiencing so many issues with this host.


    Best Regards,

    Shaun
    Yah, STOPware is my employer (site hosted elsewhere). The other one is my site. Well, I'll keep bugging them.
    DreamLogic Cult Film and Music Reviews
    STOPware - Visitor Management solutoins

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    New York USA
    Posts
    404
    Quote Originally Posted by Hurga
    Yah, STOPware is my employer (site hosted elsewhere). The other one is my site. Well, I'll keep bugging them.
    Have you paid in full for one year or something? Some sort of binding contract, early termination fee's ?

  17. #17
    My Name is Preston Kincaid. I am a consultant and webmaster for many companies, and I believe in reseller hosting.
    Believe me, I have been with TCH for 3.5 years, and while Bill Kish sounds sincere, and like he truly wants to make things right in these forums, let me tell you a bit about my recent experiences.
    I consult with 6 different companies, and one service we provide is resold hosting. With TCH I have had 4 reseller accounts and a bunch of in dependant hosting accounts. I used to be a die hard, dedicated TCH advocate, and I used think they were the best. 2006 things took a turn for the worst. The servers started going down -- ALOT. TCH started doing something that they never did before -- ignoring trouble tickets and techs giving canned responses that showed they clearly didn't even read the ticket at all. One ticket was left open and not responded to for 2 weeks. . . They tried blaming server issues on us, and only when we could provide proof it was on their end would they fix the problem. They recently also started suspending accounts for our clients for ridiculous reasons. Bill suspended one client's account because he claims a Flash .SWF file was taking 96% of his server resources. . . Many people say that is impossible. In light of the fact that the server crashed multiple times in the last 3 weeks, and that the site was restored from their backups, I'd say it was a corrupted restore that caused the issue, yet my client paid the price for being down and waiting for TCH to let them do business again.
    I have every trouble ticket I ever submitted saved. The lame responses, and the rude manner in which Bill started responded to one of his most dedicated advocates -- myself.
    Now it gets even better. We still have dozens of clients hosted with him, and it is me they call when things go awry, and TCH ONLY lets you submit trouble tickets for support -- no phone support, no Instant message support -- and don't listen when they say they have Instant Messenger support -- you can submit to every tech on Yahoo or MSN and your lucky if any respond. But today I go to submit a trouble ticket for a TCH client, and Bill banned my IP address and email address from the trouble ticket system. If he says it is because I did something wrong, I can provide EVERY trouble ticket from 2004 until now to show my demeanor and behavior was always within professional guidelines for etiquette.
    So here's the truth. TotalChoice Hosting has been unbelievably unreliable almost this entire year. They have had servers down repeatedly for days at a time, restored websites without even alerting us, and even lost and corrupted an entire E-commerce site that caused us to have to rebuild it. -- Yes, our bad for not having a backup of our own -- TCH used to be so reliable that we got spoiled I guess. Not anymore.
    Their level 1 techs are useless, their level 2 techs are great at escalating to level 3, and level 3 is so busy that they have told me 3 times in 2 weeks "I'm in the middle of a restore right now and I don't have time to help you". . . One other HUGE issue.. If you have multiple accounts with TCH, you will get invoices and receipts that have absolutely no reference to the domain in which they pertain. That means you will get notices you are being charged by TCH, they just don't tell you what for. They cant even help you if you ask for clarification -- we've done so many times in 3 years plus. We try to keep track as best we can, and guess at the billing by comparing the billing date to the signup date. Ridiculous. We've alerted them to this issue many times, and they never respond. Even more ridiculous. Michelle Barnhill is the billing person, and all she has ever done is said "we're working on it". 3.5 years and counting.
    Also, one thing you'll find online if you look, is a common complaint about TotalChoice Hosting is that Spam increases exponentially when you switch to TCH. It is true, and it is very noticeable. Every customer we've signed up this year complained about it. We've been off TCH for 3 weeks now, and weird, Spam is STILL filling our inbox on the TCH server if we login to webmail by IP address - yet our DNS has been pointed elsewhere for weeks. I alerted Bill Kish to this and he became very defensive, and said that Spammers have a way of doing that... I noted that if Spammers can get spam into an inbox that no longer has DNS pointed to it for weeks, yet that same client couldn't get email from other clients reliably, something is wrong.
    Last week, out of sheer necessity we switched to a new host, hostnine-dotcom. I can't believe how great this host is. They migrated the accounts for us, have unbelievable support -- including phone support, and our clients immediately noticed a decrease in Spam. The phone stopped ringing for support issues 24 hours after switching,and all seems peaceful now. TCH, again this week, lost another website for us on another crashed server and bad restore. We are now moving every account away -- and I recommend that you do the same. Stay away from TCH. Bill Kish doesn't care about you, and he'll prove that to you if you let him.

  18. #18
    I think if you keep digging Preston, you might be able to find every thread ever created on TCH.

    You go with your bad self....
    Bill Kish
    TotalChoice Hosting
    Hosting over 50,000 clients since 2000
    http://www.totalchoicehosting.com

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