Another day and another Hosting365 disaster. You can read the ongoing saga on their outages blog. No one can deny that Hosting365 are expensive. You pay above the odds for them but previously my rational for doing so was:

  1. They are local – so fast from within Ireland
  2. They are local – so tech support during MY business hours not American business hours
  3. Good customer care
  4. It’s nice to support Irish companies

However, there is only so long that you can put up with ever poorer customer support and a sub-standard service before you start loosing customers and your hair! I am now actively looking for a new hosting provider.

[tags]Web Hosting, Hosting365[/tags]

The Problems With Hosting365

The thing that has been infuriating me most has been the downward spiral in their customer service. At this stage I can’t remember the last time I actually got a response that was BOTH prompt AND helpful. They have also taken to closing calls before the issue is actually resolved which really pisses me off because then you have to start over again and you loose the history in the call. I’ve spoken to their sales manager who agreed that the service I was getting was not good enough and promised something would be done about it. I don’t know what, if anything, was tried to solve the problem but it’s not working!

Only last week my logs showed that a MAC address that was not physically on my server has taken one of my IP address. This may be a simple case of a miss-configuration but it could also be a symptom of a man-in-the-middle attack using something like ARP Poison Routing. In other words, a serious security concern. Needless to say I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I sent a copy of my logs to support and got back a bogus non-answer. So I sent another reply pointing out exactly why the previous answer was wrong and asking detailed questions about the MAC address that had taken my IP, and inquiring about what protections they have in place to detect ARP based attacks in general. I never got a reply because the call had been closed immediately after the bogus non-answer had been sent. I rang up and asked the call to be re-opened. The nice girl on the phone said she would but it’s been about a week now and still no reply to my questions.

Then there have been a series of fiascos with domain registrations and transfers. The problems have been going on for at least a year now (since a new system was introduced). I’ve raised it with high ranking people a few times now and they all agree it needs to be fixed and assure me a solution is being worked on but nothing changes. In the last two months I think almost every domain I’ve tried to transfer or register has had problems. In one case it took about a month to sort out a simple transfer. Again, calls were constantly closed before the problem was actually solved and I kept on having to start from square one with each new support person.

Then there is is the ridiculous bandwidth limits on their reseller packages. The bandwidth on all their regular shared hosting packages have steadily gone up over the years but the reseller packages have stayed the same. I have a limit of 45GB of total traffic per-month on my 75 control panel account, I mean, really, you get more on their Business shared hosting plan that costs less than €20 a month! If you need 50 for one control panel exactly how am I supposed to get by with 45 for 75 control panels?

Then, finally you have too many serious outages like today’s. Hosting365 claim to provide world class hosting. I’m sorry, but this is not world class. That’s two very serious incidents in less than a year now!

What I Want From a Hosting Company

Of course I want the basics, good packages with acceptable bandwidth at a fair price. But I also want more, I want access to real-time customer support. Ideally I’d like to be able to pick up the phone and dial an Irish number and get to talk to someone who is competent and helpful who can fix my problems. Failing that 24 hour instant messaging support would do too. If my hosting has to be outside Ireland it’s vital that I can get customer support during Irish business hours, not in the middle of the night to suit some other country’s office hours! Ideally I’d like to support an Irish company but I haven’t found any decent ones yet.

If anyone has direct experience of any hosting companies they would be happy to recommend that could meet my needs I’d love to hear from you!