posted on June 10, 2001 08:48:44 PM
Hi! For those of you looking for a web host, please be very careful and do your research before you go with the least expensive package. I have had the unfortunate experience of dealing with a company (whom I won't name, although I'd like
to) whose servers are down quite frequently. This morning their servers were down starting
at 8:00 A.M. and weren't restored until this
evening at 9:00 P.M. In the meantime, I had
40 auctions end with no pictures showing up. Customer service is almost impossible to reach and when you can reach them, they are unapologetic for the inconvenience they're causing their customers. Their $9.99 per month package has definitely not been worth the price.
I have a question for other members, what's the best way to spread the word about this company, so that others won't be disappointed? Is there a place to broadcast negative experiences like this for the benefit of others? They require payment for
a full year to obtain their best rate and I have a feeling alot of people are getting stung by this "too good to be true opportunity". This is an example of a company who doesn't hesitate to overload it's servers regardless of how it affects service. Any suggestions on how to deal with them and how to warn others?
posted on June 10, 2001 09:10:18 PM
Pat, that sounds wonderful. I will definitely look into their services. The
web hosting site I had the negative experience with is ICOM at www.icom.com. The problems I encountered include:
1. Servers frequently down due to being
overloaded with new customers. A customer
service rep told me they've had a rush
of new customers and haven't updated their
server space. Down time occurs on average
twice a week for several hours to a full
day.
2. Customer service and tech support leave
you on hold for 30 minutes at a time and
they don't have an 800 number.
3. FTP was unavailable for a day several days
ago, so you couldn't upload files. This is
not the first time that has happened.
4. A general lack of concern of apologies for
the above problems.
Hope this will help someone avoid future
problems.
posted on June 10, 2001 09:12:12 PM
I've just got to chime in here...you're paying $9.99 per month for web hosting, and you're actually complaining? Not to be crass or anything...but:
1) You get what you pay for. I wouldn't expect 100% uptime from a company that charges that little for hosting...it's likely a mom & pop shop...and if it's a larger company that's offering prices that low, they're putting you on painfully crowded lower-end servers that nobody really cares about. From the downtime you described, I'd put money on "mom and pop", but I've been wrong before....but even the "low rent district" servers in a larger, true hosting company wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) be down that long.
2) You yourself say it's a "too good to be true opportunity"...and well, as we all know, if it looks too good, then it probably isn't what it appears.
3) Simple mathematics and economics show you why those $9.99 per month plans just don't work:
- typical hosting companies pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 to $12 per gigabyte of bandwidth (traffic going out from a given server to the person viewing the site/graphic/file, etc.). For the sake of simplicity, we'll keep it set at $10, since you're paying $9.99, and that's close enough for government work
- Let's say that you have a graphic that's 50k in size attached to one of your auctions.
- Let's say your auction gets viewed 100 times.
- Now let's do that math...50k times 100 viewings is 5000k or 5 megabytes of traffic.
- Now let's assume you run an average of 20 auctions per month, each with a 50k graphic, each getting an average 100 views.
- Guess what? There's a full gigabyte of traffic going out from the server hosting your website to the world at large through eBay.
- You're paying $9.99 per month...they're paying $10 per gigabyte...they just lost money on you this month.
...and, realistically speaking, if they're a smaller shop as I'm assuming, they're not doing enough business to get that $10 per gigabyte rate...they're paying more, which means they're losing more money on you every month.
...so, who cares if that server that's overcrowded and slow is down all day? All it's doing is bleeding money from the bottom line anyways...right?
Granted, that's not the attitude that you, the customer, want to see or hear...but it's Reality 101.
4) This is why you never go with a hosting company that offers "unlimited" ANYTHING or charges ridiculously low rates - if they're not covering their costs, they're going to go out of business...and NOBODY can support "unlimited" anything. Not email, not web traffic, not ANYTHING. It just doesn't work.
5) Many hosting companies, particularly those offering those cheapie deals, have explicit mentions in their terms of service that you are not allowed to use your web space as a repository for external image hosting. Make sure you double-check that before you complain too loudly...or else you could find yourself not just out of luck, but out of the money, and with no recourse whatsoever since you would have violated their terms of service and they would be (technically speaking) justified in cancelling your account.
6) Yes, I'm jaded I actually wound up starting my own web hosting and design company roughly 3 years ago because of all of the headaches and hassles that I dealt with from people offering "unlimited this" and "unlimited that" and real cheap rates...but when faced with a site like just one of the ones I own and operate, they couldn't handle it. They couldn't support it under their terms of service, and they were losing money hand over fist...
...and, this is the most important part...I understand that SO MUCH BETTER these days. The clients that we have (around 300 these days) understand and respect where we're coming from. We're by no means "a big player" in the industry...but we've got a decent little server farm, rates that are realistic and accommodating, and I make certain that our support folks pay attention to the clients needs...like I said, I started this company because of the B.S. I dealt with...and I won't be responsible for someone else going through those headaches. I'm actually quite proud of the fact that the first five clients that ever signed up for our services are still with us today
Anyways...enough ranting. The moral of this story is that you need to re-evaluate your hosting selection. If someone offered you what they claimed was a 5 carat diamond, but they were willing to sell it to you for $10 ...would you buy it? Particularly, would you buy it sight-unseen?
Probably not, I'm guessing.
If your images being live and accessible to you 24/7 is that important an issue to you, then find a hosting company that's willing to help you do so. There are any number of hosting companies out there (feel free to start here:
...and some will be helpful, and some will suck. Just do your homework beforehand, and please...most importantly...keep your expectations reasonable. Don't expect to get world-class hosting service for the price of a good six pack of beer. You'd be better off buying the beer
- dave
- who, amazingly enough, not ONCE plugged his own hosting company's name.
posted on June 10, 2001 09:23:20 PM
Doing some quick research (since you gave up a name [g])...
ICOM is controlled behind the scenes by INTERLIANT:
Registrant:
Internet Communications (ICOM6-DOM)
7775 Sunset Blvd. # 102
Los Angeles, CA 90046
US
Domain Name: ICOM.COM
Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
Account, Role (BN139) [email protected]
Interliant, Inc.
8619 Westwood Center Dr. suite 100
Vienna, VA 22182
US
703 762 1797 703 761 8672
Technical Contact:
Hostmaster, Icom (TG560) [email protected]
Interliant, Inc.
8619 Westwood Center Dr. suite 100
Vienna, VA 22182
US
703 762 1797 703 761 8672
...so, problem #1: The company "ICOM" is based in Los Angeles...but the people controlling their servers are in Vienna, VA. Not a good sign
...problem #2: Going to http://www.Interliant.com/ results in a page that fails to load, because it's trying to make requests to "media.interliant.com" to load images, and it's failing. Giving up and hitting STOP to keep the page from continuing to load shows lots of pretty broken graphic placeholders. If the people controlling ICOM's servers can't even keep their OWN servers up and running properly...
posted on June 10, 2001 09:32:37 PM
Dave, your words are well taken and much appreciated. In most cases, you really to get what you pay for. I will be spending more time researching web hosting companies before I sign up in the future. Thanks for
the URL and the advice.
posted on June 10, 2001 09:49:18 PM
Actually, Dave, I wish you would
include the name of your company. You
seem to have some integrity which is
something many of these internet
companies seem to lack. I'd rather
work with a smaller operation willing
to provide some level of customer
service than these larger, faceless
companies who have yet to learn the
fundamentals of how to treat a
customer.
posted on June 10, 2001 10:02:40 PM
I've been using www.fatcow.com for the past few months [along with numerous other AW users], and haven't had a lick of problems. Their CS is #1, and they charge $99.00 per year. Ya!
posted on June 10, 2001 10:11:25 PM
I have been with ValueWeb for years, and have had no mentionable problems. No joke! They have several attractive packages to choose from. My highest kudos...
posted on June 11, 2001 01:50:35 AM
I used Icom for more than a year. They had problems here and there. Most have been resolve within 4 hours. Couple of times, overnight. For $99/year, they have been worthwhile. If they go down, I simply add pictures hosted on another site.
Their customer service has been lacking. Response can be slow. But, all in all, I cannot really complain.
By the way, before you trust someone else's math and how great they understand the hosting business, do the math yourself. Let see, 20 auctions/month at 5 megs of traffic each, about 100 megs, not 1 gig.
I personally perfer fatcow. They have been excellent for $99/year. They also defies someone's logic that they cannot make money at $9.99 if you have more than 1 gig of traffic. Fatcow promises 5 gig of monthly traffic before adding on extra charges. Something does not make sense here. I perfer to trust the businesses I had success with and that they know what they are doing.
[ edited by commentary on Jun 11, 2001 01:51 AM ]
posted on June 11, 2001 05:47:19 AM
[[They also defies someone's logic that they cannot make money at $9.99 if you have more than 1 gig of traffic. Fatcow promises 5 gig of monthly traffic before adding on extra charges.]]
They're making it solely based on the law of averages.
For example, our "basic" domain plan includes 2 gigs of throughput per month, more than your typical home user's website is going to go through in a given 30 day period. In fact, many of our sites never ever come close to that 2 gig per month limitation...but then again, we also have people that push 2 gigs easily, or even exceed it.
If they have 100 clients on a given machine, and 10 of them use the 5 gigs allotted to them, but 90 that use less than a gig...well, it all balances out and they still show a profit. However...if those 100 sites ALL start getting pretty popular at the same time, I guarantee you'd see a change in rate structures
posted on June 11, 2001 05:48:52 AM
[[Actually, Dave, I wish you would include the name of your company]]
We're at http://www.novatech.net Feel free to have a look through our services...though we're a little pricier than it sounds like you're used to Feel free to drop me a note at [email protected] if you have any questions.
posted on June 11, 2001 06:08:10 AM
Lets not trash the name of all Discount webhost because of one lemon.
Someone recomended FatCow I dont use this host but the company Tucows is high reliable and has been around since 1994 $99 per year I dont use this hosting service but I know there suport is right on top of things every time I have ever wrote even on a weekend I have had replys in under an hour in some cases under 15 mins.
Fatcow is well Under the $9.99 a month and there is no setup fee.
I my self am useing whizhost great low cost service 50Mb for $36 yearly have very good up time I have no problem but its not recommended for anyone who need Support fast or around the clock this is a good cheap alternative for people who have worked with host that offer everything and know how to get there perl cgi and other things to work on there own. http://www.Dman-N-Company.com
I strongly agree about fatcow.com. We started with them for a true web host, a few months back and were so VERY satisfied that we have purchased a second web site from them. They are GREAT!
Their customer service is extremely fast, courteous and helpful.
We are actually considering a 3rd sight with them - fatcow.com is where it is at. We pay $99, which includes our site, domain name, shopping cart system, secure check out, etc.
Of course if you merely want a "holding site," they have that too. Check them out - they are great!
posted on June 11, 2001 06:57:14 AM
[[Lets not trash the name of all Discount webhost because of one lemon.]]
Oh, I'm by no means throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There are people that are quite content and happy with the discount hosts, and for what they're looking to do, their needs are perfectly well met and satisfied.
However, that being said...taking the longer view based on the various message threads on this board, there's a pretty easy comparison to be made between discount hosting that relies on the law of averages to balance out their lower-usage clients with the high-usage clients...and PayPal expecting to make a business out of the float between payment in and payment out Even tech support...even assuming you take a high-school kid, pay him $10 an hour...you still have to have one recurring "discount" client per hour per day (total of 240) each month just to afford the "kid". ...and while most tech support issues from a hosting standpoint can usually be resolved in a matter of moments, the first time the "kid" spends 2 hours in a given month working on a problem for a "discount" customer, you've lost money for the month.
Like I said though, there are any number of reasons that people would, and should, be happy with a lower priced hosting service...I mean, I've told people any number of times that they'd be better served by going with another hosting service than our own, because they either didn't need the environments we offer, didn't have enough requirements put together for the size and costs of our hosting charges, etc. I'd much rather make sure that people are going to be comfortable getting what they're paying for than worrying about people being cranky about us on message boards like these.
posted on June 11, 2001 11:37:20 PM
There are services out there that rate web hosts not that I have a URL handy.
At the sametime what you pay has absolutely no bearing on how good or bad a hosting service is nor do all the talk of Doo-Dad this or Doo-Dad that or T3 this that.
One company we host with costs $50 a month basically. They use Silicon Graphics servers running IRIX (not the most compatible beastie) Very little downtime and they use Multiple T1's.
At AIT, A BIG provider we pay about the same and the service is an ABSOLUTE DISASTER. In fact, hasnt worked right since day 1. If you want Telnet its like an act of god. For two months we have requested they terminate it and they keep charging. So now I have to file disputes and contact their state attorney generals offices. It hasnt worked right since day 1 and they are rated highly by various magazines... Could that be due to advertising they spend in said magazines?
In measuing Speed Their Linux/Apache Based PC's and T3's and such... Slower than the Silicon Graphics servers and T1. It all depends on laods and such, how many domains hosted per box, how much traffic is coming/going.
Saying at $9.95 you get what you get is incorrect. Our local dialup ISP who gives us all of 5 megabytes of space for $10 a month STILL outperforms AIT and it actually works!
And you can telnet without hacing to fax this, fax that... Gads. We have requested Telnet no less that 8 TIMES at AIT. They say its for security sake... Well damned man... Of your that insecure that telnet takes an act of grace then WHAT are they doing? Eat donuts and coffee? Hiring engineers straight out of the Frosted Flakes box? I mean really!
They farmed all their secure servers out supposedly as well... Security again perhaps????
The BEST way to go at Web providers is call them and be honest. Tell them, hey, I have an AIT server and now I need hair transplants and have to take Valium to go to sleep! I would like to TRY your web hosting to make sure its reliable and does what I need. If they wont let you try before you buy, unto th next one. If a place is going to want your business they are going to understand and REACT to your bad experiences with other providers. If it all seems too good of a deal then it probably is. If your needing secure server then make sure its not just what they call secure disk space on the web server.
posted on June 12, 2001 07:47:45 AM
[[There are services out there that rate web hosts not that I have a URL handy.]]
The problem with most of those "services" is that, behind the scenes, the ratings you see are bought and paid for by the companies that advertise on the site you're trusting to be neutral.
The best rating service you can find is word-of-mouth from a friend that deals with someone.
[[At the sametime what you pay has absolutely no bearing on how good or bad a hosting service is nor do all the talk of Doo-Dad this or Doo-Dad that or T3 this that.]]
Very true. A high-end network doesn't do anyone any good if the servers are never alive, or aren't being supported properly!
[[Silicon Graphics servers running IRIX (not the most compatible beastie)]]
Yuck! THAT'S an understatement!
[[At AIT, A BIG provider we pay about the same and the service is an ABSOLUTE DISASTER]]
Join the club. The biggest project I've got running right now is dealing with IBM...more specifically, their "Global Hosting Environment"...and oh MAN, what a nightmare that is. I've become convinced that "world class" must be synonymous with "pain in the butt" somewhere... [chuckle]
[[It hasnt worked right since day 1 and they are rated highly by various magazines... Could that be due to advertising they spend in said magazines?]]
BINGO!!
[[Saying at $9.95 you get what you get is incorrect. Our local dialup ISP who gives us all of 5 megabytes of space for $10 a month STILL outperforms AIT and it actually works!]]
Well, to be candid, here's how I look at it:
- Even though I have my own servers, my own routers and lines, etc., I STILL maintain my dial-up account with Concentric (even though I haven't used it for close to a year now) because you never know when it's going to come in handy.
- The web space that they gave me with that when I opened the account years ago is still sitting there holding a fledgling personal website that hasn't been updated since January of '97 [shudder]
...but it's FINE for that. My own personal stuff that I don't really care about whether or not it's up and running 24/7...who cares if it's up or down?
BUT...would I ever put something "critical" there? "Critical" enough that if something went wrong I would start telling the whole world what losers they are?
No. No way, no how. If I did that, shame on me. It's not designed for that.
When you start talking about "guaranteed 99.9% or better uptime!" or "failover servers" or anything else that leads you to believe that you'll never have any problems...guess what? You're not talking about a $9.99 a month account.
[[They say its for security sake... Well damned man... If your that insecure that telnet takes an act of grace then WHAT are they doing? Eat donuts and coffee? Hiring engineers straight out of the Frosted Flakes box? I mean really!]]
Ummmm...Telnet IS A Bad Thing. More people have screwed up more server environments through Telnet than any other way known to mankind. We don't allow Telnet into our servers for anything less than a dedicated server - if you're on a shared box, sorry, you don't need it. There is absolutely nothing that you can do with Telnet that can't be handled through other methods or programs, and we don't have to compromise security for not just your domain, but all of the other domains on that machine. If you're on a dedicated machine and you screw something up...well, that's why dedicated hosting clients pay more for that service - the level of support requirements jump up, and therefore so do the rates.
[[If they wont let you try before you buy, unto th next one]]
Good luck There's no way that I'd let someone move into our environment under those circumstances...again [sigh]. What guarantees do I, as the hosting provider, have that this person isn't running something like a warez site, porn site, or something else that violates our standard terms of service? Suddenly, they go out and put the IP address that I gave them on a message board for warez users somewhere, and their bandwidth utilization goes through the ROOF...and I'm left holding the bag for those costs? Yes, this EXACT situation happened to us not just once but TWICE...and so we rapidly stopped being so humanitarian about it.
Granted, you as the client have requirements, needs, and expectations that should be reasonably met...but you have to recognize that the people on the other end of that data connection or phone line have them as well.
