Mellowhost crash nightmare: just lost all my databases, forums & blogs!!

Ah, good point

It had quite a long thing after that though

 

Yes you are right Mr
We has daily/weekly/monthly Remote Backups

 

Total Loss = $4,876.00

Thanks MellowHost!

 

You where making that much profit and you where with some slow cheap reseller?

 

I think all the figures these clients are giving with their $1,000's of lost income is false. Anyone who has sites like that are smart enough to get their own servers and manage it themselves.

Although I do not understand how this can happen with the server unless everything was being ran on 1 single server. The best solution is to use Raid configurations and using 1 server to do 1 thing such as email, another server to do database handling, and another server to do the web content delivering. It is beyond me why hosts put all their eggs in one basket. I know some will say they had it all "Clustered" out, but it's hard to believe...sorry..doesn't work that way.

 

I had my company's site hosted there. ONE customer will bring that in, in the life insurance business. LOL I'm not doing adsense buddy...
This is what it cost me to develop and market the site over the weekend. You cannot compare the sites I had there to any of the cheap sites most of the people have.

I learnt my lesson and now I have a dedicated server costing me ten times as much.

 

You will also have 10 times more security and peace of mind for that price.

 

Oh, I've been with this host for about a month maybe. Didn't even bother doing anything yet since I've been busy. Just realized now that all my sites are down, its not suprising since none of us paid that much.

 

Meh, i had a p2h site with them.
The incident itself didnt piss me off too much, these things happen, but their "Nightly Server and Offshore backups" seem to have been complete bullshit!
Apparently they have all files, just no databases or cpanel settings.

I also had 3 "cheap bandwidth" clients on their server. Lucky for me my TOS states that those plans arent guaranteed (I pretty much expected this with their pricing).

Most annoyingly, its their fault. They knew their was a hard disk problem. They took the server offline to replace it. Seem like all they did was partition out the bad bit. When i submitted a ticket asking if it had been replaced, they said "it should be fixed now"
3 days later, BOTH 250g GB drives failed and the offshore backups only backed up public_html? Sounds like complete BS to me

Then of course they had the nerve to bill me...

 

hum are good host

 

Ok guys... just updating this thread to let you guys know, I've done ALOT of research and found 3 super reliable hosts. All are MAJOR players, not ran by one individual, and if you search around you'll see that they are HUGE. Plus, they are at a budget, and much faster than hosts like HostGator and Dreamhost in both site uptime and support.

1. ASO (asmallorange.com) if you google around you'll see that they are really rated highly esp for bloggers. If you get say onto the frontpage of Digg, they ahve support systems that will ensure the site can support 1000s of people visiting
2. Media Temple - decent also
3. MidPhase

In the end I decided to swap over to ASO - A Small Orange (asmallorange.com).

I even got my WHOLE first month FREE on the small plan, using the code "SUMMERSPECIAL08" to get $5 off and since the small plan was only $5 it deducted it to ZERO!

To be honest this is sufficient for me right now. I also found a code for 15% off looking around, Code is "15PERCENTNOW". I just tried it and it also gives me 2 months off if I sign up for the year.

But so far I've been more than happy, and have had ZERO downtime since this whole fiasco. Bummer I've had to redo all the sites...

 

Well that is a sad loss for you, but if you ever need a reliable host..you know who to ask!

http://digitalhostingnetwork.com


Regards,

 

OMG didnt know about all this at all....Feel so lucky ,8-9 days back only i bought 2 more dreamhost servers and trasnferred my sites to them...

 

dreamhost servers are costly, isnt it?

 

dont think so...they provide great service at very reasonable rates...

 

Well, just don't put all the eggs in one basket.

 

Hello.

I've been reading these posts on the last few days and I've also had the misfortune of losing my client's sites hosted with mellowhost. Fortunately I had my own backups for public/html and my databases as well, at least for the majority of the sites I'm still managing.

I do sympathize for all the guys that lost their sites, specially if you didn't have a back up, I've been there and it is a horrible feeling. I sincerely hope that you get your sites up and running as soon as possible.

But regardless of what happened I will not change hosting provider, why?...well, first we all know that "shit happens" so if we all lost something then at the end of the line was our own fault for not having our own backups; Remember, even if any service tells you "we have you covered", always think selfishly and have a "plan B" in case of a crash, don't try to depend always on your host. Well, yes, they stated the offshore backups, but even if they tell you they have your information tucked away safely in a vault down at the pentagon, STILL MAKE YOUR OWN BACKUP, ALWAYS.

Flood,power outage,a weird solar flare,somebody in a bad mood,a cellphone too close to something,etc. any kind of unforeseen crisis can make you go from an excellent business making a good deal of money to an empty domain space.

Yes, Mellowhost had some issues but at least in my own experience the support has always been excellent,the server works very fast and it has a wide array of options that in other places charge you "an arm and a leg" for the same flexibility. Yes, I know, "Buy cheap, get cheap". But this hasn't been the case with Mellowhost, they have been the exception of the rule at least for me.

Murphy's law..."Everything that can fail...will fail". Minimize the risks, don't be lazy and expect the provider to do everything for you, if you want to make money we all have to sweat a little bit, not just punch a few keys and expect that everything won't fail; Do the "homework" backing things up, have a site on another server ready to "fly" just in case the main one fails.

For me at least, the support is what makes the difference, very prompt answers 99% of the time within the hour or less. Some people have complained about double billing, well, yes, I was one of those too, I got double billed twice. But why?...not because they are some "evil entity" that likes to charge money, but because one time when I got my invoice I decided to "add funds" to cover that month but I didn't know that I was actually subscribing again, so hence the double billing that has been solved since then and I am sure that has been the same or most of the same for those cases with other users. But come on!!...also 6 or 7 dollars are not going to put anybody out of business, send them an e-mail, open tickets, and they will surely listen, they did with me and I am not "special", just another guy like you trying to make a dollar with honest work.

If we want perfection we're not going to find it in any place, we all have our flaws, we try to make things as best as possible for our clients but sometimes we have to admit that as much as we try, not everything will go perfect and we have to know,accept and be prepared for those risks.

So maybe next time that disaster occurs we can be ready and prepared to have things up and ready in no time...whining feels good but doesn't do nothing productive at the end.

Within 2 days my sites were up and ready because I was ready....and I'm still with Mellowhost.

I still widely recommend them.

 

Don't spam your crap.

 

Things like this can happen to any host.
All hosts try to protect them but it happens.
Its better if you all also look from Mellow Host's point of view as well.

Thanks

 

I was with MH in Feb 08 - Tried the hosting business for a month - made $3 by working hard and selling hosting for ONE WHOLE Month!

Their services were great!
Great Support and Excellent Staff!

Really sad for the people who lost their data..
But trust me.. Mellow is the BEST and the CHEAPEST Host EVER!
For the people who lost $500..$1000..etc..
You'll should have bought a VPS for $30,That would have been better!
People spending hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars and hosting huge websites on Mellow Host? Think again.. The server would have crashed someday with the huge websites hosted!
Mellow has a uptime of 99.6%,I guess and its really good at as low as $2.5/month!

Cheer Up Guys!
Working from the scratch isn't a problem.. You just learn 2 new things.
#1 - Take Daily/Weekly Backups
#2 - Everyday is a new day!

I'm going to buy Mellow soon because I will have a few of my sites to host in the coming weeks..

ASO Hosting Review:http://forums.asmallorange.com/index.php?showtopic=11648
Think again before getting the first month "Free" lol

Cheers!