| Posted by pranalee, 09-09-2007, 05:03 AM | | Experience with Sharkspace (formerly SJR)
Signup: March 21, 2006
Experience with Hostnine
Signup: January 27, 2007
1. SETUP
Both of them are good. I like the fact that both Sharkspace and Hostnine verified my account because I have a Canadian credit cart but IP address of Bali. I think it's pretty standard these days.
2. STABILITY
Overall, I've had a VERY VERY good experience with Sharkspace. Server is very stable and the server load has always been very low from the DAY 1 - less than 1.0 most of the time. Over 1 year I can only count 2 reboots and a downtime when the server I'm hosted at got DDOS. Total downtime is very small. My clients are happy with the fact that it rarely goes down. If my clients are happy, I'm happy. Sharkspace used to enable overselling but they don't allow it anymore. Not sure why, because even when overselling was enabled the server load was always stable. There was an incident - when they disabled the overselling, I couldn't even modify the account bandwidth/space limit anymore and WHM was giving me errors. They fixed this one already. I give 9.98 for Sharkspace's stability.
On the other hand, server load at HostNine has been a roller coaster. The first 5 months with Hostnine were great. But as of June 2007, server load oftentimes went really high... it even went up to 76.01! This goes on and on for 2 months with them promising to fix it. 76.01 was the highest I've ever recorded. I've made some screenshot that you can see in this post. Once that happens, httpd failed, exim failed, spamd failed. My clients on this server keep calling me about downtime.
I believe that a server load spike once every month is okay ... but if it happens 3 - 5 days of the week it gets very irritating. I even got pissed and posted the issue in their forum. I guess I wasn't the only one. I filed more than 6 tickets about this issue and although they've been helpful and friendly, this has never been resolved. To be fair, they tried hard to fix the issue. I appreciate the effort. They said that the issue was their backup system is overloading the server. Also, Hostnine just announced in their forum that they have a new backup system that doesn't overload the server. I surely hope this backup system will fix the issue, but I've already canceled my account because all my customers requested be moved from this server. Damage has been done.
3. SUPPORT
Sharkspace don't have phone support, but they do answer their tickets in a timely manner. They even only charge $2 for account transfer. My bandwidth here in Bali really sucks (max 12 Kilobytes/sec) and it prices me a lot more money to do a home directory backup and restore it than to pay them to do it. The only incident was during the time when they upgrade their server from Cpanel 10 to CPanel 11 that all my accounts in the new server has non-private NS. I filed a support ticket, got fixed, and for some weird reasons the NS in the DNS Zone came back as Sharkspace's anonymous NS server again. Anyway I filed another support ticket and it was fixed. I had an argument with them on this one but I believe this is a minor glitch and I can tolerate.
Hostnine has phone support, which is great. I like the fact that I can talk to a real human being on the phone. Live chat sucks because they always tell to file a ticket support anyway. Support staff is always quick to look at this issue, but the downtime issue just became too irritating that there is no way I can stay in that server.
Also, HostNine didn't update their FAQ when they reduced the hourly limit of e-mails being sent from 500 to 300. They should've updated this FAQ quickly so people who use PHPList can change the limit in the config quickly.
4. FEATURES/PRICE
Hostnine is cheap (if you don't mind the downtimes) with their 50% first payment discount. They give 2 IP addresses with their reseller accounts too, whereas in Sharkspace they're considered as addons. Hostnine also has Sitebuilder, RVSkin, Radiance, free ModernBill license. None of them was necessary to me though - except the Radiance skin for CPanel, which I like.
HostNine recently have this new Reseller Central where you can set up servers in multiple locations. For some people, this can be a good thing especially when your client's customers are from particular geographical area. To me, it's not a big deal because I don't need it. With Sharkspace, I only have one STABLE, FAST running server with fast bandwidth, from Europe and Asia too. No complaints. On the server where I am hosted at, Hostnine uses FastServers but it's not really that "fast". FastServers was down this July for a few times and it's just a downer. That - coupled with the high server load, makes it an expensive nightmare to me.
Again - to be fair, I have not tried HostNine's Reseller Central. I think they have different servers. I've heard good things in progress and I think Hostnine will be a good host in time. I'm just currently very disappointed with the server load .... My last client hosted at Hostnine server requested that the account be moved and this just happened today. Nothing on Hostnine anymore, so no time to try anything.
5. CONCLUSION
Sharkspace is good. Not the cheapest one, but I recommend it. Hopefully it stays this way with the server load and speed. Believe me on this: server stability is king!
I believe if I had given more chance to Hostnine for a few more months probably things will be better. Damage has been done though, all my clients hosted on Hostnine server have complained. I've filed my cancellation and maybe next year when my client base gets bigger, I'll try HostNine again. Maybe if they fix whatever causing their high server load sooner, I wouldn't have upgraded my Sharkspace account and switched.
In the mean time, I'm sticking with Sharkspace because of the low server load.
Sharkspace all the way!
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| Posted by pranalee, 09-09-2007, 05:08 AM | | here are some screenshot of server load at Hostnine.
Attached Thumbnails
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| Posted by Ben_G, 09-09-2007, 07:09 AM | | pranalee,
I'm sorry about the issues on the comet server but I was monitoring the server last week as I advised you and was able to resolve the load spikes you were experiencing. I agree there was a load issue in the past but it was a sporadic issue due to a reseller who had cronjobs running while the backups and upcp (cPanel update) were running causing the load to spike.
Aside from that happening this server has a low load as do the rest of the servers. I also would like to add that we offered moving your account at no charge to a brand new server as we felt that would suit your needs since it was taking some time to monitor comet and pinpoint the exact issue. As we speak the server load is currently at: 0.35, 0.32, 0.35
Trust me, with the places we move people from we've seen servers running non-stop 24/7 with loads of 20-30 and it takes us hours to make backups for them. I can understand your frustration on this and am glad you were able to find an good alternative solution.
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| Posted by ldcdc, 09-09-2007, 12:11 PM | | I guess that the timing of this offer is quite important. If it comes to early, the customer still has hopes of the issue being solved soon, if it comes after a particular point, the damage is already done.
He mentioned that issues started in June. Some issues are not easy to pinpoint, but when it takes months for a resolution, one can't really fault the customer for moving on.
If that happens, I'm looking forward to read a more positive review.
In the mean time, good luck with Sharkspace, and thank you for this nicely written, detailed review.
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| Posted by pranalee, 09-09-2007, 12:40 PM | | Hello Hostnine,
This is just a review of my experience hosted at both Sharkspace and Hostnine. I am not using this forum to complain to or about Hostnine. As I have said, maybe if I have given more chance to Hostnine, things will probably be better. The downtime was frequent enough as my clients keeps calling me about it. Although I very much appreciate your courtesy, my clients have already requested be moved to other servers. My hands are tied.
Again, I'm just providing a review and have no intention to complain to you I am just providing my review based on my experience. Overall, tech support at Hostnine is good (I especially like the phone support).
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| Posted by Glostar, 09-09-2007, 01:40 PM | | Dear pranalee
I cannot agree with you I found who important disadvantage of Sharkspace
do not have overselling !!! (HostNine have)
Dedicated IP is for $2.5 ! (HostNine have with $1)
hosting provider's reseller plan without overselling is unusable and becomes two time more expense !
so comparing with Sharkspace HostNine is much better
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| Posted by Ben_G, 09-09-2007, 01:47 PM | | I'm agreeing as well. There is no reason for anyone to sustain issues such as those which is why I was happy to see they found a good host. As for overselling we base the price of IP's off of what we pay <<< removed >>>.
<<< removed >>>
The issues this individual saw were on our old one server setup and to this date I haven't seen a node within reseller central go over a load of 0.75 during peak hours. We're seeing more and more resellers migrate into this type of setup to avoid this very problem. As a matter of fact we had another user on comet noticing load issues and they moved over to the RC solution and noticed a major difference. That is the problem with loading a single server opposed to multiple servers. Over time as you saw the server can become overloaded since everything is running off of one location and there really isn't much room to improve server performance as far as the hardware goes when you're already running a dual core server with 4GB of RAM.
pranalee,
We appreciate your praises on our support and I apologize for the load issues on comet as we are working on resolving the load issues as described above and could not agree with you more on your decision. You chose a great company and I hope everything works out for the best for you and your company!!
Enjoy the rest of your weekend :-)
(this isn't a sales pitch just a response to the previous poster)
Last edited by SoftWareRevue; 09-09-2007 at 11:00 PM.
Reason: Removed extras
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| Posted by ScottJ, 09-27-2007, 04:18 PM | | That is actually incorrect. We offer overselling allowed reseller packages. You can see them at http://www.sharkspace.com/reseller-hosting-oa.html
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| Posted by ckhost, 09-27-2007, 05:14 PM | | Excellent, detailed review. Thanks very much, pranalee, this is a big help to those of us doing research on potential hosting companies.
Curtis
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| Posted by Nnyan, 09-27-2007, 06:19 PM | | Thanks for the nicely done review. My experience with Hostnine has been the opposite, but then I'm not on your server.
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| Posted by pranalee, 10-23-2007, 12:41 PM | | Just want to update that Hostnine finally refunded me on October 23, 2007. So they did honor the agreement. Besides, I paid for a year in advance. They refunded my $40, so they've finally honored it. Hostnine seems to be upset because they tried to refund via Authorize.net and they said my card was rejecting it while my bank said that they would not decline a refund and that there's nothing wrong with my card.
Since I can't have Paypal because my country of residence isn't the same as what's in my credit card, I asked my partner to have her credit card set up for Paypal just for this (took about 2 weeks for verification). Anyways, finally got that Paypal account set up and Hostnine refunded it.
I hid the names in the following e-mails for privacy.
=====
From: ****NAME HIDDEN **** <******@hostnine.com>
Date: October 22, 2007 1:12:22 PM GMT+08:00
Subject: RE: [#YVB-293126]: #### Cancellation Request ####
Hi,
We attempted to credit $40 to your card, your card rejected it, I really don't care what your bank said, because I can see the logs, your card is rejecting it. So talk to your bank and get it straight, or consider your money gone. This is ridiculous, over $40.
Best Regards,
****NAME HIDDEN ****
HostNine.Com
=====
From: ****NAME HIDDEN **** <******@hostnine.com>
Date: October 22, 2007 1:18:27 PM GMT+08:00
Subject: RE: [#YVB-293126]: #### Cancellation Request ####
I’m sending this to ******** (hostnine staff), that I authorized it, so expect it by the end of the week. No more complaining now, please – This is foolish over $40.
******** (hostnine staff) send $40 to ********, please through Paypal
Best Regards,
****NAME HIDDEN ****
HostNine.Com
Last edited by pranalee; 10-23-2007 at 12:44 PM.
Reason: bolded some sentences that I don't think was very nice
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| Posted by idhosting, 10-26-2007, 02:07 AM | | I'm sorry, but if pranalee's posting is accurate that support staff person should be gone! I don't care if its $10 dollars the customer is squawking about or what difficulty they are having with their bank or card. You missed an opportunity to make an impression, to go above and beyond average customer service. Instead your credibility and professionalism take a hit when the curtain is pulled back on internal operations. Am I the only one that thinks it would have been cool to see a company say "We're sorry we're having trouble getting this refund sorted out perhaps if we just issued you a company check you could deposit it to your bank personally and we could bypass this technical issue." Options not blame, then pranalee might be posting how he/she's not even a client anymore but Wow! look what this company did for him/her.
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| Posted by ldcdc, 10-26-2007, 02:28 AM | | 40 may be measly change to a person, but to a not-so-fortunate individual, it may be a lot of money.
When dealing internationally, one also needs to keep in mind that the dollar (falling as it may be) is still worth a lot more in some countries than it does in the US once you take the purchasing power into account.
Last edited by ldcdc; 10-26-2007 at 02:32 AM.
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| Posted by pranalee, 10-26-2007, 04:08 AM | | To be fair, the other Hostnine staff did offer me a Paypal refund, but I couldn't have a Paypal due to the difference of residence than the one in my credit card. I asked their staff to try again and I believe they did, but they said "my card was rejecting it". I asked my bank about this and they said they'd never reject a refund. To date, I'm still not sure why direct refund via credit card didn't work, but that's a non-issue because they've sent it via Paypal to my partner on Oct 23.
What I was a bit shocked was the response as highlighted (edit)above(/edit) (and this is just this one individual - all other Hostnine staff are very polite).
As long as they refunded it, it's all good.
Anyway, taking a look at Hostnine forums, I believe they're still having many problems even with the new Reseller Central (downtime, mail lost, ddos attack, etc). I think I got out at the right time.
I wish good luck for Hostnine and I hope Hostnine will improve their quality of service (especially with server reliability) in the near future.
Last edited by pranalee; 10-26-2007 at 04:10 AM.
Reason: above
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| Posted by taneboy, 10-26-2007, 06:15 AM | | We have had a reseller account at Sharkspace for over 1 year now. We were with them when they were SJR and they kept the same price for original customers (the same plans are roughly double now).
We went to Sharkspace after our old hosts closed shop (Hellohost) and we are happy at Sharkspace.
Downtime has been minimal, servers are fast and they do answer tickets so all in all, we expect them to be around for a while as they are good hosts.
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| Posted by watercrazed, 10-27-2007, 02:31 PM | | I have seen similar attitude problems at Hostnine.
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| Posted by ldcdc, 10-27-2007, 03:57 PM | | Are/were you a customer of theirs?
Last edited by ldcdc; 10-27-2007 at 04:01 PM.
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| Posted by watercrazed, 10-29-2007, 01:58 PM | | Yes, 3 sites
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