Does Your Webhost Suck? Or Is It Full of Awesomeness?

[MJ DeMarco]

This is a Public Service Announcement.
[START]

Some of you might have noticed yesterday that the forum was down for 1 hour.



At the time, I was experimenting with a data export and whatever I did, screwed up the database. Mind you, I did NOTHING to change software configuration. While I was working, my application hung. When I revisited the forum I got this "Database error" message.

I restarted Apache. I restarted MySql. Review logs. Reboot. Check the database... it's still there. Everything looked normal and exactly the way it was before I started messing around with a data export.

After spending 20 minutes looking for a fix, and not finding one, I posted a support ticket at my webhost, LiquidWeb.

Within MINUTES, they had a guy looking into it.

Ten minutes later, the problem was resolved.

This is the DIFFERENCE between a ROCK STAR webhosting company full of awesomeness and one that sucks: Instead of reading my support ticket and saying "Oh, we don't support that" OR "Oh, we don't troubleshoot 3rd party software" they didn't flinch: They investigated and found the issue immediately.

This is one of many instances when LiquidWeb has bailed me out on a technical issue that I could not figure out.

Each time, they helped WITHOUT grievance, complaint or issue.

I bring this up because in the past, I've dealt with webhosting companies who suck. Yes, they plain suck in all ways you can possibly suck. Upon encountering support issues, I experienced this:

1) They don't respond to support requests timely (literally takes hours, to days to respond ... LW does in minutes, yes, literally minutes! Can you imagine??)

2) When they do respond, they fight you on your issue trying desperately not to help, and instead, deploy standard "policy" excuses...

• "We don't support that" (sends a link to mysql documentation)
• "We don't support 3rd party software" (sends a link to the vbulletin troubleshooting page)
• "This isn't a server issue, please contact the software provider" (sends a link to vbulletin)
• "Please contact your administrator to resolve." (if I had a f*cking admin, would I be contacting you a-holes?)

And the company who did this to me in the past? They're now out of business. How righteous.

For anyone needing reliable hosting and you ARE NOT the most technical, Liquid Web is awesome. They are more expensive than your regular host but IMO, it's worth every penny. Regular is regular for a reason.

This is a Public Service Announcement.
[END]

 

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[jon.a]

Priceless.

 

[LightHouse]

Rackspace and softlayer are the same in regards to CS. In fact softlayer is amazing in this regard, they are more of a server infrastructure company then your common webhost though. I deal with another fastlaners liquidweb server, they have been fairly response to me in the past as well.

People always mention about their cheap hosts... well, you get what you pay for, you are probably loosing more money then you are making with issues, downtime and slowness of your 10/mo host.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Rackspace and softlayer are the same in regards to CS. In fact softlayer is amazing in this regard, they are more of a server infrastructure company then your common webhost though. I deal with another fastlaners liquidweb server, they have been fairly response to me in the past as well.

I used Rackspace to serve up Limos.com for 10 years -- they are very good too.

 

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[LightHouse]

I used Rackspace to serve up Limos.com for 10 years -- they are very good too.

Yeah i could see that, they are tied in deep with the start-up scene. I became a softlayer partner a year ago, the head of that dept told me their top partner is a dude that hangs out in bars in SV chatting up start up guys and hooking them up with softlayer since they pay lifetime. So funny, but at the same time, the retention is so high because they are amazing with everything they do.

Other thing thats great about liquidweb, is their DNS system, its pretty easy to use and pretty robust if you dont like handling DNS on the server itself.

Did they tell you what the issue was that they fixed? (not that it matters)

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Did they tell you what the issue was that they fixed?

For some reason, a DB user was dropped hence it became inaccessible. I don't know how that happened as I certainly didn't drop or add any users.

 

[Ikke]

I currently use Asmallorange. The customer service is good. They were always quick to respond with the live chat. Site does load a bit slow but that probably has more to do with the small package I have.

 

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[BitSlow]

looks like I will use LiquidWeb for my database
Thanks

 

[BitSlow]

uh their are not cheap. Well customer service is costly department $14.95/month min for Heroic Support®

 

[Determined2012]

If this forum had an open chat forum (that users could choose to participate in or not) sectioned in the INSIDERS part of the forum this would be the HOLY GRAIL of ALL forums currently running on the internet.

**Would probably bring in a TON of new INSIDERS subscriptions as well...esp. if golden thread and high speed contributors used the chat function...

Nothing formal about the chat room needed- users could just hang in there if they wanted and chat with whomever chatted back with them, and ask whatever business related questions they wanted.

It has some cons too- that I have already thought of, but won't post, as I only want to highlight the pros- because I really think a chat room would take this forum to a new level. Being able to message is cool--- but being able to chat instantaneously with anyone online and in the chat room would be BEYOND EPIC.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Just to update further awesomeness...

It appears that forum traffic has outgrown the server resources. (I'm aiming for 1,000,000 page views/month!!) As a result, the forum is crashing once, sometimes twice per day. When I inquired to the issues over at LW, they confirmed that it appeared to be a resource issue and offered to upgrade the server and double the unit's RAM. When I inquired to additionally monthly cost ... they said it would be free of charge due to my long standing patronage.

Nice to see SUCS (Sudden [and Superior] Unexpected Customer Service) in play.

As a result, the update of this thread will yield more clients for their company.

Cost to them for these new customers? (Aside from the RAM upgrade)

Zero.

 

[smartmoney]

I use LiquidWeb for hosting as well. If it had not been for this forum and seeing them recommended here, I would not have known about them.
Tangible example of SUCS leading to more business.

 

[LightHouse]

Due to this thread coming up at a good time, i am going to be moving to LW in the next few days. I had considered it before because of their support but was going to try another provider. After dealing with LW support the other day for a client and this thread coming back up, i realized the 10-20 more a month is actually well worth it based on the response time and intelligence of their techs. That extra money will actually buy me more time in the future and account for far less headaches.

 

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