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hosting...

Discussion in 'Web Hosting' started by superpump, Feb 10, 2006.

  1. #1
    Anybody use hoster.ca for their hosting company, if soo. feedback from you would be nice...

    I'm on the verge of boycotting!
     
    superpump, Feb 10, 2006 IP
  2. mdvaldosta

    mdvaldosta Peon

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    #2
    If your not sure whether you're happy or not, then leave. Leave before you wish you left already.
     
    mdvaldosta, Feb 10, 2006 IP
  3. iowadawg

    iowadawg Prominent Member

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    #3
    If not happy for any reason with a host company, leave as soon as you can find another host!
    Try me at:
    See my sig!
     
    iowadawg, Feb 10, 2006 IP
  4. superpump

    superpump Peon

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    #4
    The damn server will go down for 3 4 hrs at a time. Come on, how often can you give the "oh we're upgrading" line??

    Its at the point now where I am losing revenue as a result, I'm cancelling, thanks for the advice.
     
    superpump, Feb 10, 2006 IP
  5. iowadawg

    iowadawg Prominent Member

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    #5
    And here I get pissed if my servers go down for a few minutes once every month or so...
    I would go ballistic over being down for hours!

    Check here:
    http://www.yourhosthere.com
     
    iowadawg, Feb 10, 2006 IP
  6. Mia

    Mia R.I.P. STEVE JOBS

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    #6
    One key peice of advice I can give you is do not put all your eggs in one basket. If you depend on your sites being up, host at multiple facilities or mirror your sites.
     
    Mia, Feb 10, 2006 IP
  7. TheException

    TheException Banned

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    #7
    That's a very good suggestion mia.
    Personally, I would have requested a refund after 3-4 hours of downtime. Most hosting companies provide some kind of uptime guarantee... If they don't, then I wouldn't use them, unless maybe they had some good uptime statistics from a third party.
     
    TheException, Feb 10, 2006 IP
  8. AWD1

    AWD1 Peon

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    #8
    mia's suggestion isn't bad, but the fact of the matter is that the expense isn't realistic for most small businesses.

    In lieu of that, an uptime guarantee on the part of the host coupled with frequent backups on the part of the customer usually does the trick.

    superpump: what are your plans for a new host? And does it absolutely have to be Canadian? If you've got a .ca domain, then you'll be fine for regional searches and you'll still be able to host it anywhere you like in the world...specifically the United States, where the service offerings are vastly superior and significantly less expensive than their Canadian counterparts.

    I've had to use 7 or 8 different Canadian webhosts and have had significant problems with all of them. In fact, I have had the same problem with all of them: they refuse to allow write permissions on the "database" subfolders I create by default, which is just peachy when I write a form-to-DB script in 2 hours on my server and then have to wait 24 or longer for the host to get their head out of their ass long enough to fix the error.

    By the way, I am Canadian and have been my whole life, so I don't possess any prior pro-US bias.

    Just something to think about.
     
    AWD1, Feb 11, 2006 IP
  9. TheException

    TheException Banned

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    #9
    AWD1:
    That post made me wish I stayed in the web hosting business... not quite enough to make me want to start up again, too much overhead to do it the way I would want to... It's sad to see that, as we do have what it takes up here, it's just not being applied where it counts.
     
    TheException, Feb 11, 2006 IP
  10. biggerboy

    biggerboy Peon

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    #10
    I would definatly change host if they are always so called "upgrading"
     
    biggerboy, Feb 11, 2006 IP
  11. Mia

    Mia R.I.P. STEVE JOBS

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    #11
    Perhaps, but if that is the case, then it is unrealistic to expect any host to live up to anything higher than 98.9% of uptime.

    True, but I would read the fine print on most of the uptime guarantees... Most times it does not account to much more than X days of credit per Y hours of down time. In many cases you could see a credit of $.015 after having lost an immeasurable amount of income. What I am saying is no up time guarantee is going to cover your loss of business. They might credit you services, but what good does that really do?

    :D :D :D

    I'd still look at getting two hosts and doing some type of round robin DNS or backing up from one to the other via rsync or something. What are your needs? Were you doing the dedicated server thing, or do you just need some basic hosting?
     
    Mia, Feb 13, 2006 IP
  12. AWD1

    AWD1 Peon

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    #12
    I'm sorry, but I don't understand the correlation between a small business not having it in their budget to pay two or more hosting plans and a host's uptime. Could you please elaborate on this? Thank you.
    Agreed. Some of the fine print in hosting TOSes is really slanted. But there's a difference between fine print and what a customer will actually receive, and you really learn about your hosting company in these situations.

    I did experience downtime once, due to a hard drive failure (which is to be expected...after all, they are machines), with my host, Sectorlink. They were only down two hours, but I got a full month's credit for each hosting customer on the site. The downtime itself was from 11:00 PM - 1:00 AM, so the "income" to be generated was minimal at best. So as far as I was concerned, it was a fair deal for my inconvenience.

    This was in 2003, and it's now 2006. I'm no longer using their shared hosting services, because I have a dedicated box with them that hasn't gone down once.

    Is it unrealistic to expect this to continue? I don't know. I know it won't last forever, but 2.5 years of 0 downtime rocks for any host at any level.
     
    AWD1, Feb 13, 2006 IP
  13. AWD1

    AWD1 Peon

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    #13
    God knows you couldn't do any worse than Magma, Blue Genesis, and Fibrehost.

    But I don't blame you...the market isn't there, although the competition is weak. I've thought about reselling Stateside shared hosting services over here, but there are too many people that are too smart for their own good.
     
    AWD1, Feb 13, 2006 IP
  14. Mia

    Mia R.I.P. STEVE JOBS

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    #14
    Sure. There is NO such thing as complete redundancy. You expect your host to be redundant and up all the time, but do not feel you should be redundant yourself. (not you specifically, I am generalizing).

    As a for instance, when we sell a wireless connection to the internet we suggest that the companies we sell broadband to get another connection, like DSL/Cable, etc. This way if our connection to them goes down, they have another connection to the internet. Of course no web host anticipates being down, nor do they want to, but shit breaks. Things go wrong. Even in the best of cases there are always going to be problems.

    That said, in order to achieve the highest possible up time, choose a redundant provider that uses redundant providers, and get redundant provider yourself.

    Like I said before, don't put all your eggs in one basket.

    And your first lesson should be looking at the price you are paying. If you get a bargain basement price, expect bargin basement service and uptimes. (no that is not true all the time) More often than not cheapy service and crappy service have a direct relationship.

    Sure, like I said, shit breaks. It's a fact of life. I'm not defending hosts that are crappy, I am simply saying that as a web host, it is impossible to guarantee 100% uptime. Yes, things do have to be upgraded, and sometimes there are issues. I will say this however. We have scheduled and unscheduled upgrades. We notify customers in advance of scheduled upgrades. The unscheduled ones are from hardware failures, or some other problem that may arrise that was not planned for. Since these types of things are to be expected, having a backup link/host comes in handy. Again, if your business depends on it, then having it is a must.

    That is great. We have customers that have been with us since 97 that have never had a problem, and others that had a problem in the first month. Again, things break. Ultimately how a host responds to a problem is the important thing. Communication as I have found is the key. Keeping them updated of a problem, letting them know ahead of time of maintenance, and other issues goes a long way to securing a good relationship and retaining their business.

    To expect 100% uptime is unrealistic. Doing all you can to insure you stay as close to that as possible, and have realistic fallover plans is realistic.

    Yes, 0 downtime is great! Sometimes it works that way. Go knock on wood... Just kidding.

    Take care.
     
    Mia, Feb 13, 2006 IP