Dark Hedgehog here, I am a customer at Hostony, probably one of the best web-hosts I found in all my web-host glory days.

Though the features are farther than good, there are a few concerns I have, or lot of them.

I find it odd 24/7 support is guranteed when there is an offline image on the front index page of Hostony everytime I go there, most of the time.

When I request help, it usually takes a week, and I have already posted on two things.
The forum and support tickets. Odd the forums get better responses, I just find support tickets only good for "personal" information, rather than a staff telling a customer to ask it in a ticket with a pointless "so how is this done?"
Really nerves me when it can be answered RIGHT away. Even I would answer it, isn't THAT customer care rather than taking a mile hike just to see the grand-canyon because you are only 6 inches away from it from a high cliff?

Lying, as I know it, exists in Hostony.
Even if a staff tells me "i am sorry for the inconvienience."
Its like I am hearing the same quote used everywhere from a movie, very boring and un-helpful, doesn't give a hint to anything but an excuse to say they made a boo-boo and don't want to look bad.
The lying also exists in 99.9% uptime. My site is indeed up a LOT, but, most of the time, I get a horridly slow time of seeing my site up, when it takes around 4 minutes to load a single page that has a few words. And it stay's like that for hours on end rather than a guranteed 99.9% uptime.
If the staff say "we never said its guranteed" its most likely a lie. If you have a big sign painted red that say's "$10 free!" you are going to want it. And when they say you have to do work for it, that's basically an attached string which represents a technical lie.
When I see guranteed support, I see no customers complaining about it being down all the time.
Don't believe me? Take a look at the general forums yourself, that may help, just look at their "guranteed 99.9% uptime." Seems guranteed, doesn't it?

I oddly find support rests in the forums rather than support tickets.
When I ask staff a simple question, such as how something works, my site activation again or something, I get "this is for whatever, you should take it there"
Isn't that their job in the first place? Unless they have no access to it, I can understand, but, its very rude and down right non-satisfaction.

I have encounted the infamous "connection timed out" countless times, and I swear, I get that more than I draw

Sure, Hostony is going to send out staff to defend everything and give you pointless things like "we do our best to provide satisfaction, you just probably don't know what you are talking about."
Its obvious there's no proof and their opinion counts you out? Whatever happened to common courtesy?

There's one little thing I do NOT like that they do.
They force you to say why you liked their service in order to cancel your account.
Why they do this, it raises my suspicion about my own privacy and opinons.
One thing is, not for sure if they do or not, if they do take out your "negative" responses, what's the point of even doing this thing?

Their support, uptime, customer satisfaction, strings and a few other things are gradually suffering like a nail in your eye.
My patience is getting weary and my frustration is raising.

I, myself, have been already looking at other web-hosts, but, I may stay if they decide to clean up their act, if not, I guess I may have to leave soon.

Who wants to spend a full week getting a question answered?

Just a common misconception here and a minor correction. Hostony is a 99% uptime guarantee.. not 99.9%.. Big difference.

Jason

Tiny difference oO;

3.65 days of dowtime per year (99%) (87.6hrs)
Less than 9 hours downtime per year (99.9%) (8.76hrs)

Big Difference.

Minor inconvience @ 8 hrs of downtime, wont ###### for too long...
Really pissed off and wanting to move by the 3rd day...

Always remember... You do get what you pay for, there are no free lunches... Cheap hosting is.. well.. Cheap hosting.. If you want enterprise level hosting/support, pay for it..

Yes its gets frustrating when something goes down/wrong and support is lagging. Ever thought that maybe they are FIXING the problem, thus its taking longer for them to respond? Think about it. 50+ Instant messages popping up about ServerXX is down, fix it! all while having 2 SSH screens open, one tracing the problem, the other trying to sighup the httpd server w/o luck because its zombied off, trying to get the server to reboot, but all the open sockets are keeping it from going down, 50+more windows popping up yelling...

Just because they offer Instant messaging and trouble tickets DOES NOT mean you get "instant support". Lets say they had a ph# you could call.. You call it, take a few min to weed through the automated system, then get through to a live person a Level(1) tech. That person will go through and give you the normal off the card bullshits about try this, check that, etc... all the while you problem is not being looked at. Then after you exhaust his "knowledge" (a que card) you get put on to a 2nd level who will actually open your account, and try and see if the problem can be produced on his end.. yep it can, he'll try some common things, resetting passwords etc, but if it requires actually touching a server, he'll have to forward on a troubleticket, and you should have a response within a few hours.

Don't belive me? When was the last time you called your DSL/Cable provider for help? how about the phone company, or your Cell phone and need support? That is how "live" techsupport is handled.

But with hostony, you get to talk directly to someone who can touch/reboot/fix the server right then. Sometimes it may take 20min to get through, well, thats better than sitting on a phone for 30min only to get a trouble ticket submitted for you.

/rant

Jason

And sometimes it's super fast. Hostony always comes through and fixes the problems eventually. For me, every time I've asked for help I've gotten it very fast. I guess I just ask at the right times or something. Live support is what helped me with my domain name problem recently and for me it was a matter of just a few minutes wait. They asked me to hold a moment and while I waited they solved the problem. For the price and the level of service I don't think you can ask for a better host. I'm sure like Jason says about cheap hosting there that if you are running a big company and need something better that you probably have to be prepared to pay more for what you need. But the $10 (approx) that I spend here every month is totally worth every penny. I've used other places. I've had a site up since 1997 and have migrated many times to different hosts. This by far has been the best. (I could tell you the worst.... But that's not nice... They may be better now.) Anyway, just thought I'd say that.

-Bonnie

I hate being rebellious X_X

Good point guys.

I've been hosting my sites with Hosting Matters for three years and found they REALLY do have rapid response and honest answers to support issues. Pricing is higher than hostony and space/bandwidth are realistic (how many 3 GB plans can you support on a single server) but still very reasonable for most professional web sites.

I came here to find out what people felt about support because a client has an account here for his future site that was set-up by someone else and I'm concerned about "cheap" hosting plans.

Larry

$6/mo for 45mb and 4.5gb of traffic.. that is NOT realistic.. that is personal webspace.... For $11/mo you get 325mb and 19gb of traffic... WOW!

Their pricing is higher for less services, not Apples to Apples, more like Apples to Raisins...

Whew... Geez... I'll say! I'll keep my 1300-3000mb website, thanks. I may only use 1-3gb of bandwidth a month, but at least I know I COULD use more if I needed to.

MY two cents worth...

When I first started using Hostony, the website was up and down and up and down for the first month. Then like magic, everything has been fairly smooth for closing in on two years. And I've had several accounts, different servers. For a web presence with lots of space, bandwidth, and package extras, it probably is the best deal on the web, PERIOD.

And then there's support. Perhaps I've just been lucky, but I do hear from support within a fairly short time, usually within an hour. And often, the problem has been corrected promptly.

Recently I had a new VPS account, which meant moving a lot of things. This is the third time (good business means upgrading), and it was also the WORST time. I had 11 accounts, 10 of them up and running for two days after the move (though several were missing things, complete files, BBS setups, etc), but the main account wasn't showing up. I must have spent three hours researching and typing support tickets, trying to explain the logic that if 10 works and 1 doesn't, something is wrong. I was told it was set up right, told it was propagation issues. FINALLY I got through to someone, and like a light switch going off, the server magically worked. And yes, during this time I started looking for another host, because this is my business, my income, my food, gas, beer, pizza, and stay-out-of-the-poor-house website.

And that problem could have been corrected two days earlier. But they didn't take me seriously, didn't investigate. And they didn't acknowledge their goof, either, passing up the chance to become, like the rest of us, human.

The BIGGEST problem, and I've gotten on my soapbox more than once with Sergey, is a lack of full communication, or perhaps to be more precise, a DIALOG with support. Questions aren't answered, jokes ignored, anger not addressed. Perhaps it's the language or culture issues. Bottom line, we're paying for a reliable website, and not pen-pals.

I usually keep my web host secret from most people, because I find Hostony to be my competitive edge. But if someone asked, and I wanted to make a good recommendation, sure, I'd give them Hostony's address, but of course, with caveats, to be prepared for some bumps in the road, and specific technical things.

Granted, I may just be one of the lucky ones, and if so, I'm grateful for that. But I've used other websites too, one that had consistently been rated one of the best, and I had my website go down for five days, with no compensation, no explanation, no apology. And this was a host that spoke excellent English, being he was born and raised in Arizona.

Dialogues are hard to come by; we're all busy. But I think if anything could improve Hostony, it would be understanding the climate of communication, and a sincere acknowledgement of what the customer goes through.

That "sorry for the inconvenience" sometimes feels like they whipped a rubber stamp out of the drawer and slapped it across your forehead.

Okay, maybe that was a little more than 2 cents worth.

Its the heat here, sometimes we have to let the servers swim in the pool too

89f today, and its "winter"

Jason

I agree, though, about that lack of communication. On the other hand, that maybe my problem. X_x

My first host almost made me lose faith on all online businesses. I didn't want to trust anyone. Then I ran into hostony, and kept admiring their prices. Yeap... I remember back in the day, 9.95 for...what was it? 300 megs? and 15 gig bandwidth? Now, same price, more space and bandwidth. Despite all the problems I've been through in hostony, they're the only ones that didn't ignore my questions.



Funny, same thing happend to me. Only problems I get is when I believe it's rebooting and the database going hay-wire saying "too many connections". But it gets fixed quick.

There's another site I saw with more space and bandwidth at a lesser price... but.. I can't leave hostony... In fact, I plan to make another site with hostony pretty soon.

EDIT: And stop being rebellious Dark! XD

I'd have to agree with what the others are saying. Hostony does have it's issues but all in all they are reliable and usually quick to reply and resolve my issues. I started with one site and have since added another acct and 3 more sites. I was burnt so badly with previous providers before I found hostony I was ready to call it quits and do something different, I am so glad now that I did'nt.

An observation about the inexpensive (cheap) hosting providers as mentioned above. When I signed on with hostony my bandwidth was around 1-3g per month. I'm now pushing 15g per mo. on the same site. so when you look at different places, make sure you take into account future growth.

Now since I'm usually only on here when one of my sites are down, I'll go see if it's up yet.

If you want cheap hosting, then you got it. You want everything for free. GO PAY FOR IT. I have been happy here with the price VS performance.

Excuse me guys but the topic is going to flame so I have to close it.
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Topic is closed.