Finding A Good Webhost, Part 1
A good web host, like a good man or woman, is hard to find. If you have decided to pay for your own hosting, finding a good one requires tenacity, good luck and going through bad ones before you reach the promised land. It is easy to get lured in by the promise of low prices, only to find once you get your first surge of traffic that you are facing a much larger bill then you have imagined. Finding an honest review on line, in the five hundred million reviews out there, is difficult at best. Most reviewers have a financial incentive to write a positive review. Most negative reviews are written by someone pissed off over something, and a lot of times you can’t trust it because the problems may have been their causing. By luck, if you find reviews you trust, you can read mainly positive reviews of a reputable host only to read one or two negative reviews that make sense. I drove myself crazy for a month looking for a host. By sheer luck, I found Fused Network. This review will be in two parts. Part one is the story of how I got to Fused Network, part two a review of the service.
Originally I had signed up with 1and1. It wasn’t a bad decision. I found them easy to use. It wasn’t too difficult to get my sites up and running. Support was adequate, I could phone when I had a problem, sit on hold for twenty minutes and then get to talk to “Larry” from India. 90% of the time the help was good. The 10% was a real problem.
Occasionally I would get articles picked up by Slashdot. I would put in a call to 1and1 as a courtesy to let them know I was expecting heavy traffic. In April, I had one article that really took off. Multiple sites besides Slashdot carried it. I had a two hour warning before the initial burst, so I put in a phone call to warn 1and1. I was reassured that it would be handled. Five hours later my site was down. I could get no real answers from 1and1, the answers I did get conflicted. The bottom line was that the most successful thing I had written was offline for over 48 hours. I still had huge traffic from Coral Cache and the like, and when I went back up traffic was good for a few more days. I received an ominous email from 1and1 warning me I could pay to move to dedicated hosting or face severe charges for the next traffic surge. I took a job and just gave up on my sites. I couldn’t justify the additional expense, so I surrendered the readership I had slowly built. I figured the old adage was true, you get what you pay for, and I had paid for cheap hosting.
I decided in October to get back in the game. My contract with 1and1 was drawing to a close. I figured I’d switch web hosts and go for it again. Since my domains were registered through 1and1 I started to research how to cancel and retain ownership of the domains. It was then that the full price of my cheap hosting became apparent to me. I read over and over again about the nightmares people had canceling 1and1. People claimed to be charged, to have collection agencies after them for charges after they canceled and importantly, having their domains tied up. The sheer quantity of these complaints plus the uniformity of them gave them credence. I decided my best course of action was to keep a small package, not cancel, and move the important domains elsewhere. This worked. The downgrade and eventual domain transfers went smoothly, to 1and1’s credit. Unfortunately I’m being charged for something I had canceled, I still have to work that out.
I entered a two week hell of looking for a new host. The problem is that there are a lot of bad hosts out there with glowing reviews and a decent amount of good hosts with lukewarm reviews. I narrowed it down to Media Temple, ASmallOrange, Laughing Squid or Eleven2. A few emails with Eleven2 sealed the deal for me. I liked them so much that I prepaid for two years, getting a good deal.
I was excited and ready to go. I was nervous about transferring the sites, but reassured by Rodney, the owner, that their support was second to none and they would hold my hand through the process. The 24/7 support through AIM appealed to me, I figured it was a great way to get my hand held. I fired up a client, shot an instant message. Heard nothing. Hours went by, nothing. I filed a support ticket, it went unanswered. The next day, I sent a message saying I wanted to cancel my service. I got a nice response from Rodney that reassured me. I thought maybe I had overreacted and retracted my cancellation. I fired up the Instant Messenger later, and again got no response. Not once in 72 hours was I able to speak with anyone over IM. I don’t know if it was a bad weekend or not, or if it was an anomaly, but it was a complete customer service failure in my eyes and enough to make me cancel. The cancellation was pleasant enough, and I had no trouble receiving my funds, so I can give eleven2 credit there.
When the eleven2 problems started, I did deeper research into them. I read a few posts here and there on forums where people complained about them being inaccessible, which helped me in my decision to cancel. I started seeing posts about Fused Network. There weren’t many, but the ones I saw struck me in the overwhelming praise of their service. I started noticing David, from Fused, in these threads. He seemed genuine, the posters were very grateful to him. Based on this, I decided to sign up. It was a great decision.
That brings us to Part Two, I will post it tomorrow.
