April 22, 2009 at 01:06Something about Valuehost, Nickhost and Site5
I used to host on valuehost. With the project "Russian streets". Valuehost annoyed me that after there was a month before the deadline for paying for a domain or hosting, reminders went every day. And even if I paid on the same day and sent them a scan of the receipt with soap, reminders still fell another week and a half. I called them, wrote, but they assured me that they couldn’t turn it off, that until the payment went through, reminders would still go. It ended with the fact that I simply forgot to make the next payment for the domain. I don’t know what happened to them. Maybe something broke, or maybe they heeded my pleas so radically that they decided not to send me any reminders. So the project "Russian streets" ceased to exist. Like my collaboration with Valuehost.
Memories however about valuehost remained normal. The operational (within 20 minutes) support answers were especially pleased if I left the question through the form on the site, and round-the-clock support on the phone.
But, when we in the family were going to start a couple of domains and buy hosting for them, for some reason (I don’t remember why) we chose the center (RU-CENTER, www.nic.ru ).
Well what to say? As a registrar, there are no complaints against the rucenter. But as for the hoster - one continuous complaint.
Home - sites are constantly unavailable. Even the contract says that the site may not be accessible through the fault of the hoster for up to two hours a month. It's a lot. But we thought that it was they who insured in case of emergency, that in normal mode everything would be in order. Hell no. Sites lay much longer than two hours a month. They disappeared for two hours a week, three or more. When this happened for the first time, we were amazed to find out that the telephone support of the center runs only on weekdays, from 10 to 19 hours. That is, imagine, on Friday 19.01, you find out that the database of your site is not available, and support will answer you only on Monday morning. Beauty. You hope that the admins will do something there (does someone follow the servers there?), But the site is unavailable in an hour or in four, and an answering machine answers you on the phone, offering to call during business hours. You write a letter of support, wait a few more hours, get tired and go to bed. The site is working on Sunday, and support on Wednesday responds to your request: “Currently everything works, there are no problems. Write whether the problem persists. "
Sites were unavailable unacceptably often. When this happened during working hours, we called or wrote in support and received an explanation: “A DDoS attack is being conducted on another site of tariff 201 . Therefore, there are problems in the operation of all tariff 201 sites. ”
In the end, I was tired of it and I wrote a thorough letter in which I tried to explain that further work in this mode is unacceptable, and asked if they can guarantee that the transition to a more expensive tariff (301) will solve this problem? Because if not, I will have to look for another hosting. They didn’t answer me. That is, in general. I waited several days and repeated the question, supplementing it with a request: “If you cannot answer my question, please find someone who can.” They did not answer me again. Then I wrote another big letter with the history of the problem and the same question: “Your employees, they say, constantly focus on the fact that problems with DDoS attacks are observed on sites of tariff 201, does this mean that if I switch to tariff 301 will the problems stop? ” I sent this letter to all the addresses that I found on the site of the center.
After waiting a few more days, I called support, told the whole story and asked me to answer anyway. An employee on the other side of the phone said, "I see your letter." “And what do you say?” I asked. "They will answer you." "When?" "Soon". And they did not answer.
After that, “DDoS attacks” and the inaccessibility of the base, and the situation when the host’s support claims that “everything works, these are the problems with your provider,” and trays through various services from all over the world, including mine an apartment connected through a corbine indicates that the site is unavailable. And what, moreover, all my sites are inaccessible and in general all sites that I know about that they are hosted on a nikhost. It also happened that the site seemed to be available, and friends from St. Petersburg reported that they did not see it. Friends from Germany said that customers of the largest German provider Alice could not see my sites at all.
In general, I was desperate to achieve anything from the Nikhost and began to look after a new hoster. But while the sites lay with them, they were inaccessible every now and then. It annoyed my wife, with whom we lead our projects together. Now she began to correspond with the support of the Nikhost. In the process of correspondence I learned a lot. For example, if a site is unavailable due to a DDoS attack or due to hardware problems, this does not mean that it is unavailable due to the fault of the hoster. In addition, different employees in letters and telephone conversations often simply contradicted each other, which led to unpleasant thoughts about their conscientiousness. Having received a completely unacceptable feedback from support several times, Alexandra repeated my admission and wrote to several addresses found on the site — not to support. I don’t know why, but they answered her - the PR officer was worried, that support with its stupid actions creates a bad image for the company and tried to help. At least he promised to conduct an internal audit and sort it out. Asked for details. I will give most of the letter we wrote in response to his request, because it just describes some problems (I will omit the names of employees and ticket and contract numbers):
Good afternoon.
Unfortunately, the employees answering by phone are not presented, therefore I cannot tell you their surnames. But everything related to correspondence, I have saved.
Ticket ...:
Letter: "Please explain the reasons for the inaccessibility of the database of my sites located on your sites, February 11, 2009, from about 15-50 to 16-28."
Answer from ...: “At the time indicated by you, there were technical malfunctions in the database server serving your hosting. The issues are currently resolved. We apologize for any inconvenience caused".
This answer did not explain to me the reasons for the breakdowns. In the framework of the same correspondence, my second contact was recorded (after 2 weeks) regarding problems with the same database server.
In one of the conversations with a support service employee (on another issue, which will be discussed below), I was informed that there were problems with a specific north of the database, and that, if I wish, I can write a statement and transfer my site to another database server. I did this today, March 19, because in the morning from 8 to 8-45 in the morning the database was again unavailable (ticket ...). But the situation, when the server is out of order, and the client (me) is invited to write statements in order to get a server that is working properly, seems to me wild. Moreover, they did not immediately tell me about the problem, in the first two letters they assured that everything was in order.
Visitors very often complain about the inaccessibility of my sites. When there were a lot of complaints (and after 2 database crashes recorded by me personally), I decided to urgently deal with the problem. The support service regularly reminded me that under the contract, sites may be unavailable due to the fault of the hoster for up to 2 hours per month. But I had suspicions that they were inaccessible longer. To understand and find the true reason for the inaccessibility of my sites (I admit the probability that it’s not nick-ru's fault as a hoster - there are many other factors), I called the support team, where they told me that I can write an application for a report about the amount of time that the sites of my site were unavailable due to the fault of the hoster.
Ticket ...:
Letter: “By this letter I declare my desire to receive a report on the amount of time that the sites of my site (...) were unavailable due to the fault of the hoster.”
Answer from ..., March 11, 2009: “Today at 15:50 there could be problems with access to sites hosted on a shared hosting server. The problems were fixed by our specialists by 16:19 Moscow time. Currently, all services are working correctly. We apologize for any inconvenience caused".
It is hard to believe that the support staff member read and understood my letter - there is not a word about the application. I wrote another letter (as part of the same correspondence), and then, deciding that my explanations about the application for some reason were not understood by the support service, I called. I came across a polite employee who listened to me (he also advised to transfer sites to another database server). In 23 minutes of conversation I managed to convince him that I really needed a report. He promised that a report would be sent to me.
A few days later I received a letter (the same ticket):
“Date Unavailability date
01/14/2009 16:40 - 16:43
01/19/2009 15:22 - 15:35
02/25/2009 20:29 - 20:31
03/11/2009 16 05 - 16:19
I don’t know where this data came from. They are wrong. There are not even those periods of inaccessibility of sites about which I wrote to the support team earlier, and the period that the employee of the company informed me about it (the fragment is given above) is reduced by 15 minutes. Not to mention the fact that I may not know about some periods of inaccessibility, because I do not check my sites every hour. This “report” very much shook my already weak confidence that I could get a decent quality hosting service.
As part of the same ticket, we exchanged a few more letters with the support service, but I did not receive an explanation for sending me the wrong data or the report itself.
Today, March 19, 2009, after all my sites were unavailable again for at least 45 minutes (again, ticket ...), I had to call support several times. In the end, I was fortunate enough to get to - as it seemed - a good support staff member. The employee politely and in detail explained to me the reason for the inaccessibility of the sites, and at the same time I asked him about the possibility of receiving reports. The employee assured me that this should not be difficult, that he would take my application for the report (written on March 11, 2009, a ticket ...) to himself and send me this report.
It remains a mystery to me why other employees could not carefully read my letters, listen to my questions and just send me this long-suffering report. I don’t really want to play roulette every time I contact the support team: will I be lucky to get a good specialist or not (in my experience, in most cases), and I’ll have to spend a lot of time and effort on letters and calls.
An employee of the PR department politely and promptly responded to this letter, thanked and promised to conduct an internal investigation. Stopped after this fall sites? Not. We did not receive any clear explanation of the reasons for their regular unavailability.
Soon we, meticulously comparing the conditions offered by Masterhost, McHost and Valuehost, decided onAmerican hosting provider Site5.com . We bought the hostPro tariff from him and soon transferred one site to them. In the process of transfer a couple of questions arose. They wrote to support - they received the answer almost instantly. True, in English, but here - what can you do - they Americans do not know Russian. Another site so far remained with the nikhost. For the sake of interest, I entered both sites into the basicstate.com system , which checks the availability of resources registered in it every 15 minutes. Here are her reports for those few days during which one of our projects answered already from site5, and the second from the center: That is, out of five days the site that was on the Nikhost was normally available for only two days. One day - not a single answer at all. Well, you see, in general.
Sites on Site5.com so far, pah-pah, work without problems.
To summarize. I don’t even wish to host the nick.ru. For the sake of justice, I repeat, however, that as a registrar I have no complaints against them.
Memories however about valuehost remained normal. The operational (within 20 minutes) support answers were especially pleased if I left the question through the form on the site, and round-the-clock support on the phone.
But, when we in the family were going to start a couple of domains and buy hosting for them, for some reason (I don’t remember why) we chose the center (RU-CENTER, www.nic.ru ).
Well what to say? As a registrar, there are no complaints against the rucenter. But as for the hoster - one continuous complaint.
Home - sites are constantly unavailable. Even the contract says that the site may not be accessible through the fault of the hoster for up to two hours a month. It's a lot. But we thought that it was they who insured in case of emergency, that in normal mode everything would be in order. Hell no. Sites lay much longer than two hours a month. They disappeared for two hours a week, three or more. When this happened for the first time, we were amazed to find out that the telephone support of the center runs only on weekdays, from 10 to 19 hours. That is, imagine, on Friday 19.01, you find out that the database of your site is not available, and support will answer you only on Monday morning. Beauty. You hope that the admins will do something there (does someone follow the servers there?), But the site is unavailable in an hour or in four, and an answering machine answers you on the phone, offering to call during business hours. You write a letter of support, wait a few more hours, get tired and go to bed. The site is working on Sunday, and support on Wednesday responds to your request: “Currently everything works, there are no problems. Write whether the problem persists. "
Sites were unavailable unacceptably often. When this happened during working hours, we called or wrote in support and received an explanation: “A DDoS attack is being conducted on another site of tariff 201 . Therefore, there are problems in the operation of all tariff 201 sites. ”
In the end, I was tired of it and I wrote a thorough letter in which I tried to explain that further work in this mode is unacceptable, and asked if they can guarantee that the transition to a more expensive tariff (301) will solve this problem? Because if not, I will have to look for another hosting. They didn’t answer me. That is, in general. I waited several days and repeated the question, supplementing it with a request: “If you cannot answer my question, please find someone who can.” They did not answer me again. Then I wrote another big letter with the history of the problem and the same question: “Your employees, they say, constantly focus on the fact that problems with DDoS attacks are observed on sites of tariff 201, does this mean that if I switch to tariff 301 will the problems stop? ” I sent this letter to all the addresses that I found on the site of the center.
After waiting a few more days, I called support, told the whole story and asked me to answer anyway. An employee on the other side of the phone said, "I see your letter." “And what do you say?” I asked. "They will answer you." "When?" "Soon". And they did not answer.
After that, “DDoS attacks” and the inaccessibility of the base, and the situation when the host’s support claims that “everything works, these are the problems with your provider,” and trays through various services from all over the world, including mine an apartment connected through a corbine indicates that the site is unavailable. And what, moreover, all my sites are inaccessible and in general all sites that I know about that they are hosted on a nikhost. It also happened that the site seemed to be available, and friends from St. Petersburg reported that they did not see it. Friends from Germany said that customers of the largest German provider Alice could not see my sites at all.
In general, I was desperate to achieve anything from the Nikhost and began to look after a new hoster. But while the sites lay with them, they were inaccessible every now and then. It annoyed my wife, with whom we lead our projects together. Now she began to correspond with the support of the Nikhost. In the process of correspondence I learned a lot. For example, if a site is unavailable due to a DDoS attack or due to hardware problems, this does not mean that it is unavailable due to the fault of the hoster. In addition, different employees in letters and telephone conversations often simply contradicted each other, which led to unpleasant thoughts about their conscientiousness. Having received a completely unacceptable feedback from support several times, Alexandra repeated my admission and wrote to several addresses found on the site — not to support. I don’t know why, but they answered her - the PR officer was worried, that support with its stupid actions creates a bad image for the company and tried to help. At least he promised to conduct an internal audit and sort it out. Asked for details. I will give most of the letter we wrote in response to his request, because it just describes some problems (I will omit the names of employees and ticket and contract numbers):
Good afternoon.
Unfortunately, the employees answering by phone are not presented, therefore I cannot tell you their surnames. But everything related to correspondence, I have saved.
Ticket ...:
Letter: "Please explain the reasons for the inaccessibility of the database of my sites located on your sites, February 11, 2009, from about 15-50 to 16-28."
Answer from ...: “At the time indicated by you, there were technical malfunctions in the database server serving your hosting. The issues are currently resolved. We apologize for any inconvenience caused".
This answer did not explain to me the reasons for the breakdowns. In the framework of the same correspondence, my second contact was recorded (after 2 weeks) regarding problems with the same database server.
In one of the conversations with a support service employee (on another issue, which will be discussed below), I was informed that there were problems with a specific north of the database, and that, if I wish, I can write a statement and transfer my site to another database server. I did this today, March 19, because in the morning from 8 to 8-45 in the morning the database was again unavailable (ticket ...). But the situation, when the server is out of order, and the client (me) is invited to write statements in order to get a server that is working properly, seems to me wild. Moreover, they did not immediately tell me about the problem, in the first two letters they assured that everything was in order.
Visitors very often complain about the inaccessibility of my sites. When there were a lot of complaints (and after 2 database crashes recorded by me personally), I decided to urgently deal with the problem. The support service regularly reminded me that under the contract, sites may be unavailable due to the fault of the hoster for up to 2 hours per month. But I had suspicions that they were inaccessible longer. To understand and find the true reason for the inaccessibility of my sites (I admit the probability that it’s not nick-ru's fault as a hoster - there are many other factors), I called the support team, where they told me that I can write an application for a report about the amount of time that the sites of my site were unavailable due to the fault of the hoster.
Ticket ...:
Letter: “By this letter I declare my desire to receive a report on the amount of time that the sites of my site (...) were unavailable due to the fault of the hoster.”
Answer from ..., March 11, 2009: “Today at 15:50 there could be problems with access to sites hosted on a shared hosting server. The problems were fixed by our specialists by 16:19 Moscow time. Currently, all services are working correctly. We apologize for any inconvenience caused".
It is hard to believe that the support staff member read and understood my letter - there is not a word about the application. I wrote another letter (as part of the same correspondence), and then, deciding that my explanations about the application for some reason were not understood by the support service, I called. I came across a polite employee who listened to me (he also advised to transfer sites to another database server). In 23 minutes of conversation I managed to convince him that I really needed a report. He promised that a report would be sent to me.
A few days later I received a letter (the same ticket):
“Date Unavailability date
01/14/2009 16:40 - 16:43
01/19/2009 15:22 - 15:35
02/25/2009 20:29 - 20:31
03/11/2009 16 05 - 16:19
I don’t know where this data came from. They are wrong. There are not even those periods of inaccessibility of sites about which I wrote to the support team earlier, and the period that the employee of the company informed me about it (the fragment is given above) is reduced by 15 minutes. Not to mention the fact that I may not know about some periods of inaccessibility, because I do not check my sites every hour. This “report” very much shook my already weak confidence that I could get a decent quality hosting service.
As part of the same ticket, we exchanged a few more letters with the support service, but I did not receive an explanation for sending me the wrong data or the report itself.
Today, March 19, 2009, after all my sites were unavailable again for at least 45 minutes (again, ticket ...), I had to call support several times. In the end, I was fortunate enough to get to - as it seemed - a good support staff member. The employee politely and in detail explained to me the reason for the inaccessibility of the sites, and at the same time I asked him about the possibility of receiving reports. The employee assured me that this should not be difficult, that he would take my application for the report (written on March 11, 2009, a ticket ...) to himself and send me this report.
It remains a mystery to me why other employees could not carefully read my letters, listen to my questions and just send me this long-suffering report. I don’t really want to play roulette every time I contact the support team: will I be lucky to get a good specialist or not (in my experience, in most cases), and I’ll have to spend a lot of time and effort on letters and calls.
An employee of the PR department politely and promptly responded to this letter, thanked and promised to conduct an internal investigation. Stopped after this fall sites? Not. We did not receive any clear explanation of the reasons for their regular unavailability.
Soon we, meticulously comparing the conditions offered by Masterhost, McHost and Valuehost, decided onAmerican hosting provider Site5.com . We bought the hostPro tariff from him and soon transferred one site to them. In the process of transfer a couple of questions arose. They wrote to support - they received the answer almost instantly. True, in English, but here - what can you do - they Americans do not know Russian. Another site so far remained with the nikhost. For the sake of interest, I entered both sites into the basicstate.com system , which checks the availability of resources registered in it every 15 minutes. Here are her reports for those few days during which one of our projects answered already from site5, and the second from the center: That is, out of five days the site that was on the Nikhost was normally available for only two days. One day - not a single answer at all. Well, you see, in general.
hrenovina.net (site5)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
date uptime dns connect request ttfb ttlb
2009-04-16 100.00 0.068 0.129 0.129 0.626 1.029
2009-04-15 100.00 0.080 0.142 0.142 0.631 1.027
2009-04-14 100.00 0.102 0.165 0.165 0.713 1.144
2009-04-13 100.00 0.149 0.212 0.212 0.705 1.117
2009-04-12 100.00 0.123 0.183 0.183 0.654 1.049
yatsutko.net (hosting.nic.ru)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
date uptime dns connect request ttfb ttlb
2009-04-16 100.00 0.008 0.155 0.155 0.960 1.572
2009-04-15 100.00 0.008 0.194 0.194 0.843 1.327
2009-04-14 96.74 0.008 0.150 0.150 0.691 1.254
2009-04-13 55.43 0.014 0.091 0.091 0.492 0.719
2009-04-12 0.00 0.025 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000Sites on Site5.com so far, pah-pah, work without problems.
To summarize. I don’t even wish to host the nick.ru. For the sake of justice, I repeat, however, that as a registrar I have no complaints against them.