Review from existing customer

[Valorum]

I've provided most of this before, but i figured it's worth reposting for new customers looking for feedback from existing customers.

I've been HostPC for a little over a year and a half now i think. I fled from a few other hosts that at first seemed like a great deal, but after a while they'd end up getting worse and worse with the quality of their hosting and their customer support. This seems to be a recurring theme in this industry. It got pretty bad and i had to move on. Moving your hosting and email is a big pain in the butt obviously.

I decided to go with HostPC based on how they handled their datacenter getting hit with hurricanes before i joined them. I read all the threads they posted up about it, how they tried to keep their customers up to date about what was going on and all the things they did to try to manage the situation as best they could. That dedication was what made me choose to go with HostPC. While we have had a few issues with our service, they have been rare. When HostPC started offering EAS, i tried it, and ran into some issues, and got frustrated. Joe actually called me personally and offered a solution. While i decided to not use EAS any longer for our own email, i did appreciate the effort and offer from Joe. It's those little things that make the difference.

Service has been reliable with only infrequent hickups that are typically addressed quickly. I hardly ever visit the forums or support sites, simply because there's no need to. I simply don't think about my hosting, because it simply works. So that's a good thing :)

So my experience with HostPC has been positive. If you're looking for a hosting solution that's not expensive and has a good focus on quality and customers, i think HostPC deserves a chance.

[JimRobinton]

Dear User Group,

Although there are many things to like about HOSTPC, there is one area I would like to see improved. COMMUNICATIONS with all of us. By that I mean that there is a difference between "poling" and "interrupts". The forums must be poled (or trolled if you like) to see if anything important is going on. We don't use poling in computers for important timely event driven mechanisms because you spend alot of compute cycles looking to see if something has happened just so you don't miss that one event when something does happen.

Over the years I know they work very hard to improve the situation for all of us, but it is my opinion they get all wrapped up in data center moves and server upgrades and forget one simple thing. SEND US EMAILS when important things are happening, don't make us spend our people cycles checking the forums just to find time and again nothing is happening, then when you are not looking "wham".

Is there anyone out there that doesn't know what will happen to their analog TV on Feb 17, 2009 ?? In my market they have saturated us with mailings, and TV commercials.

I don't mean to be the little old man who complains when his TV
stops working, but clearly there was some sort of plan in place to move servers that I didn't get a notice about until the day the server was moved....so clearly they had my EMAIL ADDRESS.

The improvement I am looking for is NOTICE and TIME to migrate and test on the new server. I shouldn't be testing on the new server while the websites are down. I am looking for the opportunity to be proactive instead of "REACATIVE". I might even volunteer to be an early adopter and help get the the kinks out, maybe because my software is not so cookie cutter and does some different things.

This is about the 3rd or 4th time now I have gotten what I call "blind sided" on the day of the move or after when the websites go down and I get phone calls from the people who use the websites. The first email I got about my server move was the day after New Years day at 11:xx am, while I am away. Sarcasticly speaking I don't know how they know my schedule that well :) , but every time it creates an emergency I have to deal with, I am away and don't have access to my development environment to fix it. This is not a reflection on just HOSTPC but on me with my web users. I hate (and try to avoid using) the pass the buck mechanism "oh look what the server company did again", its not good business for anyone.

This time the sites went down (determined by some middle of the night debugging), because the new server is configured differently and the php GLOBAL variable "$DOCUMENT_ROOT" which I use in "Include statements" is not as available as it was on the previous server. I won't know until tomorrow perhaps, if this is the only problem.

JOE -- I still feel I can recommend HOSTPC to many poeple, but I feel that before I could recommend your business to a larger customer or if I am lucky enough to grow my business this year my, I hope your reply on here to all the users includes at least some reconition that this does occur (and not a defense) but rather some commitment / plan to mitigate these circumstances. This is not a complaint, it is an opportunity to improve.

Thanks
/Jim

[admin]

Thanks for the feedback. While we have NORMALLY been sending emails, some people still claim they're not being received. This can happen for several reasons - the most common of which is the "bulk" email being sent to spam folders at the receiving end. With this last move, many people that came into live chat said "I never got the email" - I asked them to check their Gmail spam folder - bam, there it was. I'm not going to say we've been 100% perfect, but with this last move, I personally sent the emails before and immediately after the moves. Seems some got them, some didn't.

The EASIEST way - use your mail program to setup an RSS feed. Every mail program, outlook, thunderbird, opera, they all do it, very easily. A direct link to JUST the "Server Status" forum, where things like this will be discussed is:

http://www.hostpc.com/community/external.php?f=22&?type=RSS2

For the "HostPC Happenings" forum, the RSS feed is at: http://www.hostpc.com/community/external.php?f=12&?type=RSS2

We will continue to try and improve communications - but please help us. Be sure HostPC is whitelisted with your mail provider - and that our messages from *@*.hostpc.com and *@support.yareo.net are delivered properly. RSS feeds are just another option.

[taylor]

Thanks Jim for thoughtfully expressing some of my concerns as well. Unfortunately, I don't Joe addressed one of my fundamental concerns (which you raised quite well). That concern has to do with the timing of the notifications. A few 24 hours notice that sites are going to be migrated is not enough. Especially when it is at a time when many people are traveling. I already expressed my concerns about this in the most recent migration thread, so I won't belabor it here.

Another difficulty I had with this latest migration is that HostPC appeared to be setting themselves up for multiple nightmares. Moving that many servers all at once (especially given the number of aborted migration attempts in recent weeks/months of individual servers) seemed quite risky.

Since I've found Joe to have a consistent track record of making sound decisions, I can only conclude that there were some unfortunate extenuating circumstances. I'm quite interested in reading Joe's promised explanatory post of why the move was necessary. I had been quite pleased with the servers and network performance in FL, so I imagine there must have been other things going on behind the scenes that were cause for concern for Joe and his staff.

I continue to have faith in HostPC and plan to continue to recommend them; however, this most recent migration has caused me to temper my enthusiasm somewhat.

I personally spent around 6 hours trying to prepare for the move and then minimize my downtime; however, I still ended up with multiple hours of downtime. Evidently I was a special case. For some reason my account on www504 didn't migrate correctly to www534. Joe helped me get it moved to www534 but then decided that www504 users would be moved to www520 instead. Again my site didn't restore correctly, so I had to get special intervention from James to help get my site back up and running. I ended up having to change my DNS settings (hardwiring didn't work for me because they moved me to a different server than the rest of the www504). As a result, my email only started to get back to normal this afternoon (due to DNS propagation delays).

I'm sure this experience was much more difficult for Joe and his staff, and I felt guilty for pestering Joe in live chat because I knew he was running on fumes, but I also didn't want my website users left holding the bag for something that wasn't there fault.

[Howie999]

Thanks for the tip about the RSS feed, Joe - I plan to use that so I'm not taken by surprise about moves, etc. as well.

I've tried Dreamhost, I've tried Site5, I've tried Lunarpages, and consistently find HostPC to be the best. Communications from HostPC may not be what you'd like, but I have found that the communication level from Joe and staff is far and away much more professional and helpful than others (don't get me started about the ramblings and condescending attitude at Dreamhost!).

The recent moves, etc. caught me with my pants down, and I attribute that to the fact that I never have to worry about HostPC's service, so I rarely check forums, server status, etc. When things are going well, it's natural to take things for granted. Don't tell the GF that, though. :rolleyes:

HostPC may not be 100% perfect, but it gets an "A" with a score in the high 90s.

Thanks, Joe and all the HostPC staff.