Recommendations for Stable, Customer Oriented Hosts

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Posted by Lexy, 07-15-2003, 02:14 PM
Just what the title suggests. I've been with two companies now that have both been attrocious! One, the customer service was very lacking and the people who worked there were not knowledgeable in any way. Our downtime was significant and they were a nightmare to deal with. The second company is supposed to be one of the best out there. However, they have recently played around with the phpsuexec and other upgrades and everytime they touch *anything* something winds up breaking for my customers and I spend hours dealing with rude, nasty, customer support people who seem to have a god complex. If you don't have the same level of knowledge they do, they treat you as if you are not worth their time. I'm on the verge of losing customers because they can't seem to keep things working as they should and they are upgrading things that don't need upgrading! Especially when they are doing ugrades that have proven less than stable elsewhere. My tech person wants support like she received from F5Hosting - which she still laments that they don't sell in bulk, which we need. They gave tech support even when the client gave up and said it wasn't their responsibility to fix, on a 3rd party script that quit working unexpectedly. THAT is the kind of support we like, and we aren't asking to pay $5 a month for it! I'm looking into VenturesOnline and Dathorn right now and am wondering if anyone has any experience with these two? Or you have any other recommendations for companies that offer bulk plans that would be great! For us, customer service is vital as is stability. Any suggestions? Lexy Lexyweb Services, Inc
Posted by AussieHosts, 07-15-2003, 02:24 PM
Are you looking for any specific control panel? Gary
Posted by Lexy, 07-15-2003, 02:30 PM
Preferably WHM and Cpanel and mailman. They are simple to use and what all of my customers are used to. Some of which I would hate to have to help learn a new one! One of my hostees is blind and I would hate to change from that as that is what she is used to using.
Posted by AussieHosts, 07-15-2003, 02:36 PM
That's probably a good reason not to step up to Plesk then. Good luck in your search. Gary
Posted by ECPY, 07-15-2003, 03:12 PM
Lexy, I was with VO for about a year (2000-2001) and left because they didn't have bulk plans then. I liked their service, didn't have many problems and always had friendly and fast tech support. I'm not sure if that is still the case over there though. If you do a search on the forums you will find various opinions. I don't know much about Dathorn, they seem to have a large following here and their costs are really cheap for what they offer. I'm kinda sorta in a similar boat....I recently moved to a host that has been having a lot of issues with PHP. Right now its only messing up squirrelmail, but I havn't tested other scripts yet. I don't have the knowledge of php to understand all of what's going on. I also don't have the time or patience to learn all the techy things since I mainly just host my own sites and one or two non-profits I'm designing for. Though I do use some php to collect data from studies I run on the web. Sorry....long story short....I'm in a similar position and even considering moving back to my old host who is running a different version of php. So, If you come across someone good, please let me know.
Posted by Lexy, 07-15-2003, 03:14 PM
Ours seems to be just squirrelmail right _now_. But in the past it was every page we had that had php. It's been quite frustrating. And we are getting no help from our current host, even though it worked on second and then the next it was poof! We shall see what happens, but I'm not holding out much hope. We are in the same boat, we don't have the time to check into all the minute techy details, though, we know enough to get by. Quite a bit more than most, but still, obviously not up to expert level! LOL
Posted by Codename49, 07-15-2003, 06:17 PM
VO has been offering bulk reseller for several months now. Service is perfectly summed up in your post .
Posted by inteltechs, 07-15-2003, 06:53 PM
I wonder what kind php issues you guys are having with?
Posted by ECPY, 07-16-2003, 03:11 PM
Hi Inteltechs, Right now it just seems to be with squirrelmail, specifically, you can't delete any mail folders through squirrelmail. If I want to delete a folder I have to submit a help desk ticket. My biggest worry is when I begin hosting a site for a non-profit organization next month....if they get errors when deleting/organizing folders within their email accounts it can get messy and frustrating. I'm currently searching around for a good non-php webmail system. I'm also considering getting way from Cpanel...but havnen't come across anything promising yet, although, I do like the control panel Unitedhosting has. The other issues appear to have been resolved as I set up a few things and tested them yesterday and the few php scripts I use seemed to work fine and did what they were suppose to do.
Posted by Derrick, 07-16-2003, 03:46 PM
I have hosted with Dathorn. Andrew is a great guy. Enough of that kind of stuff as I am sure everyone knows that. As for support Andrew is pretty quick with most issues. May I recommend Srlhosting.com there is a review here at WHT. Rob is a great person that works hard for his customers. His costs are pretty good too.
Posted by mdrussell, 07-16-2003, 05:11 PM
Have you considered SplashHost? Often forgotten in WHT now, they are still a quality provider. I'm in contact with Alan regularly and I'm sure he could meet your requirements.
Posted by FlashBuddy, 07-16-2003, 05:30 PM
It is my understanding that suexec is becoming the norm ...for the sake of security. Splash HostSplash Host has enabled that and HTTPME did but had so many problems that they reverted. With that in mind I would reccomend the above two. I've got several accounts with Alan at Splash Host. He and his staff have been very prompt and helpful. Unfortunately I have had ongoing issues with speed over there... HTTPME support has been very prompt too. The speed has been fantastic! Wish all my accounts were as fast. HTTPME has an extremely active user forum where I regularly receive all kinds of help of surprising nature. Good Luck!
Posted by mdrussell, 07-16-2003, 05:33 PM
suexec and phpsuexec are two different things.
Posted by fshagan, 07-16-2003, 08:57 PM
I've been with Dathorn for a month now, and they have been great. Response to trouble tickets has been within just a few minutes, and the forums at forums.dathorn.com are open to prospective buyers. They also post the Alerta uptime links so you can monitor any of their servers (mine has had 100% uptime since I joined on 6/18, and 99.85 or something for the last three months).
Posted by Kane55686, 07-17-2003, 12:06 PM
www.dathorn.com
Posted by Alex West, 07-23-2003, 05:24 PM
I've been using www.hostitcheap.com for the past 2 months, so far I have been very satisfied.. They use cpanel and fantastico.. Haven't been down as of yet, I use an outside company to check my site for outages as well as a program on my cable modem.. no downtime reports yet.

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