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  1. #1

    Exclamation Valuable Host Experience

    This is just an FYI for those who may come across and/or are trying to decide whether to choose Valuable Host as their web host.

    Don't!

    The reason why prices are so low is because they are never up. They can go 2 or 3 days of total downtime without any sort of notification and if there is one, it is some lame email with some unprofessional excuse. it seems that each and everytime there is some personal crisis which is stopping the admin/owners from fixing whatever problem and getting things back up and running.

    And also, the customer support is alsos unprofessional. Very snarky and unhelpful. If you want to feel really bad, read an email from them because they see customer's as being a pain to be avoided.

    Valuablehost is run more like a hobby business and they don't seem to understand (or care) that some people can't afford the downtime. Heck, the downtime even affects their business when a new client is trying to access their site which is typically down.

    Bottom line, when you start seeing these crazy deals for $5/month hosting, you've got to be very cautious.

    Check out www.netcraft.com to determine a webhosts uptime. They provide a chart, # of consective days up and even other sites that they host.

    You will be alarmed at what you find and should help make your decisions much easier.

    Thanks.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Magnolia, DE, USA
    Posts
    41

    I respect your comments

    ghawk, This will be my only post on this matter as I respect your right to voice your opinion, but I also have to provide some feedback to the causes of the problems.

    I will not lie, ValuableHost has encountered some hard times. Every hosting company encounters these times. I do not want to go in to detail in regards to these problems here.

    I will address some of your claims so that everyone here can make their minds up for themselves.

    "They can go 2 or 3 days of total downtime without any sort of notification and if there is one, it is some lame email with some unprofessional excuse."
    We have never had an instance where we have gone 2 or 3 days down without notifying our customers. Our email notifications are honest and directly to the point. If we have a DoS attack against a server and we post an email notice saying that, I do not consider that an unprofessional excuse, I consider that, nothing but the facts.

    "the customer support is alsos unprofessional" , Very snarky and unhelpful. If you want to feel really bad, read an email from them because they see customer's as being a pain to be avoided."
    <removed: He's not asking about your support in general, he's posting about his experiences>

    "Valuablehost is run more like a hobby business and they don't seem to understand (or care) that some people can't afford the downtime. Heck, the downtime even affects their business when a new client is trying to access their site which is typically down."
    Critcism is appreciated but if VH was really run like a hobby business don't you think we would have more posts on WHT stating that we have poor service. We will be receiving an email report from Internetseer in reference to our downtime, I will be happy to post it here. We are not hiding anything, we are very, very honest hard working people.

    I will not lie, we have had our share of downtime, but we always provide notifcation of it, full explanation as to why it occured, and we constantly make improvements to limit those problems in the future.

    John Oliver
    VP - Support Operations
    Senior LInux Systems Administrator
    ValuableHost
    Last edited by Chicken; 10-08-2002 at 10:16 PM.

  3. #3
    Again, visit our forums at the above address and be your own judge as to how we handle customer relations, support, and notifications.

    err what gives man if i click the link u entered in your post i get nothing
    if i got to your site and click on forums they work just fine?

    hell i thought your forums were dead

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Location
    Philadelphia
    Posts
    2,278

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Oct 2001
    Location
    Toronto Canada
    Posts
    347
    A member on my forum had nothing but problems with Valuable Host

    His forum was down almost every secon day.
    For a great new forum please click on my weblink.
    ALLWAYS LOOKING FOR MEMBERS
    VISIT ME AT
    http://www.jmdsforum.com

  6. #6
    lol ok so i'm a ***** but hell he can't even spell his own sites name

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Dover, DE
    Posts
    274
    Yeah, we should change our name to something we could spell.

    Look everyone knows me here in one fashion or another. We try hard to make everyone happy, but in the end there will be those that are unhappy. It sucks but that is life.

    All I can say is slapper sucks. We just kept getting slapped, not infected by we were on the popular list for about 36 hours. ugh.

    Hey JMD, did you just post to get your forums out? I did a search for us on your forums, and darn, not one mention of us. Thanks for the trashing and no backing it up. Nice way to promote your "forums"
    New Streamlined Sig---
    me, myself and I

  8. #8
    Again, visit our forums at the above address and be your own judge as to how we handle customer relations, support, and notifications. I can even post the most recent email that I sent out in relation to a server problem we are having for review of whether it was useful or not.
    Ok i did exactly that, here is a reply from a technical support member of yours regarding somebody complaining about downtime:

    Mr. Rooney to be completley honest, anyone that would trust their BUSINESS to a company that offers valuable, READ CHEAP, hosting, and makes no claims to provide business level hosting, well to put it quite bluntly, deserves whatever they get.

    Here is the thread forum thread

    Who you trying to kid?

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Dover, DE
    Posts
    274
    I am glad you posted the link, I don't want that taken out of context. Because you will see where we offer complete compensation for the outages from a DoS attack! How many hosts offer that? I stand by my comments. Truth hurts some people. Others like the honestly.
    New Streamlined Sig---
    me, myself and I

  10. #10
    Im not talking about compensation, im talking about the complete rudeness directed at that customer. It does not matter how much he pays for an account, if you offer a service you should provide it in a kind and professional matter and thats that.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Dover, DE
    Posts
    274
    I will let others be the judge of that, it is an open forum as is here. I stand by what I said. I don't think it was rude as much as it was honest. If it appears rude, then I apologize, it was not meant as such. I am sorry for being honest to my clients and not pretending I am something I am not. There are far too many companies out there that do that. This place is full of them.
    New Streamlined Sig---
    me, myself and I

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Magnolia, DE, USA
    Posts
    41
    Originally posted by Dichead
    lol ok so i'm a ***** but hell he can't even spell his own sites name
    LOL, I deserve that one, I should have read over that post a fourth time.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    New York
    Posts
    1,384
    Originally posted by ghawk
    Bottom line, when you start seeing these crazy deals for $5/month hosting, you've got to be very cautious.
    Actually, in regard to ValuableHost.com, I don't find them to be all that cheap compared to other hosts.

  14. #14
    'deserves whatever he gets' how can you in all honesty say that to a customer? if you can't face the fact that the customer is always right id find another business.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Dover, DE
    Posts
    274
    The customer is always right within reason. We are a very successful company with great growth and very little churn. I have been in this industry since 1996, even longer as a geek. Once you have more than one server come talk to me. Your perspective will change. You have to give all that you can. But there will be a customer that you just can not make happy. It will always happen no matter the hoops you jump through. You have to resign yourself to losing a few customers every once in a while. I know you are really trying to provide some perspective and make yourself look good. I completely and utterly understand your position and totally respect it. Just don't go throwing stones where others have fallen.

    And thanks to those that have e-mailed me and even signed up as a result of this thread it is appreciated.
    New Streamlined Sig---
    me, myself and I

  16. #16
    Once you have more than one server come talk to me
    Erm excuse me? you claiming you know peoples affairs now as well?

    Trying to make myself look good? i dont think so.. im replying to a post you made that was a 100 % untrue.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Dover, DE
    Posts
    274
    You read what you want in to my posts. You are trying to use my posts against me. I am just trying to be nice about it all. I am attacking no one. I am just relying on what you have on your website http://www.ukhs.com/netstatus/
    New Streamlined Sig---
    me, myself and I

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    New York
    Posts
    1,384
    Originally posted by smartbackups
    And thanks to those that have e-mailed me and even signed up as a result of this thread it is appreciated.
    Now that's results! Hmmm.

  19. #19
    Yes that is the netstatus of our hosting machine, we also run game servers, anyway i aint arguing lol ive proved my point.

  20. #20

    Valuable Host Experience

    You guys seems to be spending more time on the Webhosting Talk forums instead of running your business.

    The reponse customers have received on the VH forums were rude, unprofessional and very condescending. Possibly due to lack of sleep and stress.

    Plus, the company attitude that you get what you pay for pretty much tells existing and potential customers that your service is inferior and not all that good. It sure doesn't sound like a company that is proud to offer top-notch and reliable service.

    Reminding people that you offer valuable, professional and cheap hosting is nice but remember less talk, more action!

    You guys definitely are working hard trying to keep the ship afloat. Maybe you are in over your heads? Maybe you need more help? I'm sure if you increased your prices a bit you can afford to to hire additional help or get yourselves placed on a better upstream provider.

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Magnolia, DE, USA
    Posts
    41

    Re: Valuable Host Experience

    Originally posted by ghawk
    You guys seems to be spending more time on the Webhosting Talk forums instead of running your business.

    The reponse customers have received on the VH forums were rude, unprofessional and very condescending. Possibly due to lack of sleep and stress.

    Plus, the company attitude that you get what you pay for pretty much tells existing and potential customers that your service is inferior and not all that good. It sure doesn't sound like a company that is proud to offer top-notch and reliable service.

    Reminding people that you offer valuable, professional and cheap hosting is nice but remember less talk, more action!

    You guys definitely are working hard trying to keep the ship afloat. Maybe you are in over your heads? Maybe you need more help? I'm sure if you increased your prices a bit you can afford to to hire additional help or get yourselves placed on a better upstream provider.
    I agree with you 100%. Yesterday was a very frustrating day. I hit my breaking point due to a lot of back to back downtime that was totally unrelated to each other. It was just very dump and BAD luck that it all happened so close to each other. I do appologize for any ignorant comments made. As far as spending more time at our place and not on WHT, all I can say there is look at how many posts I have here and look at how many posts I have on our forums. I may have 30 here, I have close to 600 there. I do not come to WHT unless it is to ask a question or defend our company. (do a search of my username) Plain and simple. I do not jump in to other hosts business or join any lynch mobs that form against a host.

    We are training two additional people. They are coming along nicely. On a normal daily operation, without any troubles, VH operates flawlessly. We handle support, we handle all of our server updates, we plan for the future, and we spend a lot of time helping our customers out. But we have a lot of customers that are paying 2.99/month from the previous owner and that has definetely cut our budget tight. Combine that with a rough market, well we had to go and get part time jobs. When a problem occurs, the lynch mobs start forming. Most of the time, we are able to fix it quickly, in rare cirumstances we can not, mostly because it is out of our hands. There isn't a host out there that has not had that bad feeling of a server going down at a remote data center and no way to access it, and have to wait until the data center staff get it up.

    As far as our upstream provdider, We are located at Webreseller.net, they are awesome. They have been more than willing to work with us to take care of all the problems we have faced. Some of which were not our fault and some that were just normal support. Overall, they were great!

    I have answered all I can here at WHT about this issue. I will be on our forums, email, live chat, and ticket system to answer any more VH related issues that require our attention and support.

  22. #22
    Join Date
    Jan 2001
    Location
    Kihei, HI
    Posts
    576
    Originally posted by smartbackups
    The customer is always right within reason. We are a very successful company with great growth and very little churn. I have been in this industry since 1996, even longer as a geek. Once you have more than one server come talk to me. Your perspective will change. You have to give all that you can. But there will be a customer that you just can not make happy. It will always happen no matter the hoops you jump through. You have to resign yourself to losing a few customers every once in a while. I know you are really trying to provide some perspective and make yourself look good. I completely and utterly understand your position and totally respect it. Just don't go throwing stones where others have fallen.

    And thanks to those that have e-mailed me and even signed up as a result of this thread it is appreciated.
    VH,

    I agree 100% with what your saying. In fact, it really reminded me of a recent experience. We had a customer sign up and from day one they did nothing but scream at us constantly about "this doesn't work, that doesn't work". But - everything did work. We verified it, sent screenshots full instructions, the whole nine yards.

    In the end, we did everything we could. But this particular customer just couldn't figure out how to FTP files to the server. (!)

    So, in their own particular rude and obnoxious way, they berated us, and me personally, and cancelled their account.

    We genuinely delivered on our services, worked like dogs on support, but it still wasn't good enough. I'm never happy to lose a customer, but it happens.

    The best thing to do is move on and keep on doing the best you can. It sounds like that is exactly what your doing. Sometimes it can be frustrating, even infuriating, but I think your doing the right thing. Move on and try your best with the next customer, and the next. Chances are you please most of them.

    You can't please everyone you know. :-)

    Take care,

    Brian
    Last edited by bteeter; 10-09-2002 at 03:50 PM.
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  23. #23
    Join Date
    Jun 2001
    Location
    Kalamazoo
    Posts
    33,412
    Well, I hope you get things straightened out there. I've had an account for about a year. I haven't used it in a couple of months. I won't be renewing. Best wishes for your future.
    There is no best host. There is only the host that's best for you.

  24. #24
    Looking at the thread [in context] the "support guy" was certainly out of line. But I see a hosting company making an effort. That says customer care to some degree. Much more than I've had with a different host I'm transferring out of [read into that what you will].

    Dragging up the issue here seems more than a little...premature.

  25. #25
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Posts
    417
    My take on ValuableHost...

    I had signed up back when they first started, with the previous owners. With the PREVIOUS owners support tickets went unanswered for weeks, and servers were down often. I requested a refund of my $25 after about a month and went to VO.

    When Rik took over I signed up about a month after. I have monitors on my accounts at VH and VO. I must say ValuableHost goes down quite often. I only use the $20.00 yearly account to park domains and to play with a feature here and there, but I could never use them for serious hosting, and I dont.

    ValuableHost has been bluntly honest with their policy, you get what you pay for. They dont offer 24/7 support, and they have no uptime guarantee. They dont assist via formal support with CGI / script related questions, and can only afford to be so cheap because they dont hire support people. Both Rik and Ollie said they took up jobs with the local firehouse to earn some extra money. ValuableHost is made of good people, they are. These people are honest, and dont beat around the bush. You pay $5 a month, and thats what you get.

    I too read the message boards and must admit I was shocked by Ollie. Ollie has always come off to be a professional, and he is one, and admittingly isnt an adult. I really give him props for acting so mature up until now. I understand that for Ollie to go off something really had to be wrong that was out of their control, as expressed on the forums.

    Rik, Ollie, and the folks at ValuableHost are good people. I will be renewing my account. I could give their company a solid C, average. If you're looking for great support, uptime, and features, you're not going to find it for $5.00 a month, and VH is realistic about that. Would I recommend them? No. Are they good enough that I will keep my domains with them, yes.

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