Web hosting woes
Oh what a weekend I've had. Let me just say that ASPnix sucks as a web host! They were the latest hoster that I've been with, 3 and counting. These guys were good when I first signed up with them last year and came with tons of recommendations from the Community Server forums. It turns out the reason they were so good is because of one guy and that guy left many months ago -- to work for Telligent no less, the makers of Community Server. What happened next was a customer service disaster. Not only was that one guy the best thing about the place but since he left there was apparently only ONE guy left! One guy left to handle the customer service needs of their entire customer base. Well, I think there was a sys admin too.
So April of this year their servers started having downtime issues. The only way you would know is by going to your site and seeing nothing. So when you submit a trouble ticket some many hours later you get a reply back saying nothing is wrong, and when you check your site to prove them wrong your site is up again. Yonkers! The fuckers are playing dumb! If that wasn't creepy enough, as the server issues became more frequent people couldn't stand just waiting for their trouble tickets to be answered so we all started posting on the forums. People bitching left and right, conspiracy theories running rampant, it was great. Until the servers came back up, and then, the forum threads are missing. Gone, phizt, into thin air. So not only were they denying their servers were even down when they replied to your tickets now they're deleting forum threads that are critical of the company.
That's when I lost it and decided I shouldn't stay with them. It's one thing to have server issues, sure, it happens to everyone, but to pull the stunts they were pulling on a repeated basis just showed they had little respect for their customers. My one year wasn't up until June so I stayed, grudgingly, until then. And since I'm rather lazy I actually stayed until just now, hahaha. While I was in this month-to-month billing limbo I got to observe even further sinking of their customer support. One, their forums have been temporarily down since July. Why? Ya got me, some supposed server upgrade. Two, they absolutely do not respond to any emails anymore. I've asked for backups of the database I'm using to host this blog and forums and they have not responded at all. (This led to further database woes which I'll save for another post.) I don't know if they're just tired of hearing from me but that's just ridiculous. They could at least just put the backups in my directory and not answer my emails... Third, their phones are down! Can you believe this!? They don't answer email and you can't even call them. So basically you just can't contact them anymore if anything goes wrong. Time to go.
I'm currently with JodoHost. They seem okay, they've been around for 5 years which is nice. The emails I've sent in my trial period have been answered by different people, which given the one-man show at ASPnix, is rather reassuring. They actually offer unlimited domains for only $6.95/month! Wow, couldn't believe that, most places give you only one for such a low price. I'm going to check out ReliableSite next though because they're even cheaper, offer more capacities, and have an a la carte system of paying for features: you only need 5 domain aliases, 10 cents please. They've only been around a year so I'm a bit leery. You know, you get what you pay for, if you're getting a lot for a little I'm learning something usually goes bad sooner rather than later.