[thelist] ReadyHosting

[Ken Kogler]

> Please, what is your experience with ReadyHosting?
> They have really good packages, too good actually.
> What is the catch?

I've had a heck of a rollercoaster ride with RH over the last 18 months or
so. I signed up with them back in October of 2000, and I've now got multiple
accounts through them.

On the whole, they're very good. Some things I like:

 - Cheap!
 - Friendly phone support (especially the ladies in the billing dept!)
 - 18 months of service, and only 2 major problems
 - Reseller plan is profitable
 - unlimited mail accounts
 - haven't received a "you're using too much bandwidth" email yet
 - recently added a whole lot more customer service people
 - they've got a nice stats program

I do have a few gripes, though:

 - If you need to call their tech support, you can expect to wait oh hold
for quite some time. I've had hold times longer than 90 minutes before (but
in the last few months, it's been more like 5 - 10 minutes).

 - Their e-mail based tech support system is terrible. I just want to call
them and talk to a real person... their business hours are rather
inconvenient, as I don't do any dev work on my personal sites until late at
night, and their phone staff goes home at 6:00 or 7:00pm.

 - They had someone hack their entire network earlier in the year (January?)
They lost entire sites AND THEIR BACKUPS. They told customers to "just
upload your most recent copy" and left it at that. They promised to take
steps to prevent this sort of data loss in the future, but it's still scary
as hell. I lost a whole site this way. It was database driven, and I didn't
have a recent backup of the database (content changes daily thanks to an
army of volunteers). I lost a good 3 weeks worth of content.

 - They're not very accommodating if you want them to install a new
component on their servers. I had a legitimate case against their upload
component, and I pointed them to a much better (and FREE) replacement, but
they flatly denied it, calling it a "security risk", and refusing to
elaborate.

 - They recommend using DSN connections, and when I had a DSN-less
connection stop working (too many people using that driver), I called them
and they told me that they don't support DSN-less connections, and I can fix
my problem by changing to a DSN. Grr. DSNs suck.

 - Their web-based mail frontend. They've got at least 3 if not 4 different
versions of it, and as most of my sites are on different servers, I've got
different interfaces to work with. It's not so bad for me, but when one
client calls me and has a question, I have to keep looking up with GUI
they're working with so I can walk them through it... that's damn annoying.

I could probably keep on going forever.

The point is, you get what you pay for. I'd recommend it for personal sites
and small businesses, but not much more than that. You'll always run into
some bad experiences with whatever web host you choose, so keep in mind that
no one's perfect.

If you want more info, e-mail me offlist (ken.kogler at curf.edu) and I'll be
glad to help.

-Ken Kogler