Possibly looking a new host after 3 years...

[HPJunky]

I have been with F5 Hosting for over 3 years and until recently was VERY happy. I am trying to give the new owners the benefit of the doubt. But with outages lasting 12 hours or even more at a time I don't know how much longer I can stay with them...

Here is what I would need from a host.

• My forum has almost 5,000 members, a photo gallery, ect.. We usually use around 70-90gig of bandwidth per month.
• I would need a host who can move my VB Community for me. I am not ashamed to admit I am an idiot when it comes to alot of the technichal aspects of administrating a message board.
• Reliable Service!!!!!

Any suggestions would be appreciated!!!!

[steven s]

70-90Gb is a lot, in my opinion. Do you have a budget what you are looking to spend?
Just be careful of the sites that offer unlimited bandwidth.

[thenicevoice]

I am/was in the EXACT predictment. I tried to give F5 the benefit of the doubt. I was patient. I refrained from getting emotional and irate. I calmly waited for things to get better. . . but they only got worse. My site was down for 3 straight days. I submitted support tickets that went unanswered. I've lost tons of money.

My forum is similiar to yours . . . .using nearly 80 gigs of BW per month.

I found Joey from Real Web Host.Com . . .he is the epitome of professionalism. I swear, if I weren't married already, I'd marry him. Minutes after sending an e-mail, he called right back. He calmed my fears . . .and is in the midst of moving my site right now.

You need to call him. You WON'T be disappointed.

EDITED TO ADD:

I too am NOT a techie. Not AT ALL! I have a photogallery as well. I have about 4,000 members, 615,000 posts . . .

Our situations are very, very similiar.

I did the research and initially, I was going to go with A Small Orange . . .but they are sold out.

Next up was RealWebHost. I came across about 100 reviews about this host via this forum and a review site called WebhostingJury.Com. All were positive!!!

I'm damn near emotional typing this because I really, REALLY didn't want to move the site but I feel comforted now that I have found a BETTER alternate. Joey is awesome. He knows that I'm not a techie and has done EVERYTHING for me. He is wonderful.

[pierguy]

I came home to over 800 error messages in my inbox tonight from the trouble F5 is having. I'm done.

What plan did you go with on Real Web Host? I'm thinking their Semi-plus plan might work for me.

[steven s]

I found Joey from Real Web Host.Com . . .he is the epitome of professionalism.

I think he's a bot.
I always get treated like I'm their only customer.
It's nice being able to pick up the phone and speak to him.

What plan did you go with on Real Web Host? I'm thinking their Semi-plus plan might work for me.

I have two reseller accounts.
My car website is on the RS account.
I also host a few other personal websites on that one.
I'm using almost all the bandwidth allotted.
My RS1 account is for my car club chapter. I want to keep that seperate from my personal stuff.
I think I'm starting my 2nd year with them.

mySQL goes down a couple times a month but for only a short period.

Edit:f you have cpanel of F5, request the same username. You can have them bring your entire site over. Having the same username makes it completely seamless. Just don't forget to close your old site.

[Ohiosweetheart]

I have a reseller account at Hostww.net
I use it for all of my own sites, have 2 vb forums and 3 sites on it. I've found their servers to be fast and reliable, the customer service is outstanding.... 24/7 telephone/email/ticket/IM support. Even when the problem is on my side, they bust their butts to help me get it fixed.
I am celebrating my 1 yr anniversary with them this coming saturday, and can honestly say, I've never been with a better host. (they're my 4th)

[ShackMaster]

<rant on>

I don't know how you guys did it with RWH... I like Joey and he always seemed to be sharp... but that is the slowest mess I've ever experienced. GoDaddy was better and more reliable. I went with Joey because of reviews here and elsewhere. Maybe for the most part they are good, but with me and being on two of their servers and niether being reliable and fast... no way. I guess I was just jinxed. I complained and it just didn't do any good. I ain't got time for it.

OSH... I like Philip too, but it hasn't been much better. I have a reseller account too. The speed is better, but the downtime has been just as bad as RWH. I'm supposed to be on a new server... supposedly all the slow speeds and down time was over after the substantial downtime of the move. Speed has improved, but we've been down three times since the move and that's been in the last 10 days or so. Once for 50 minutes tonight. I've been wanting to move my other sites there and save some money from my GoDaddy hosting, but gee... GoDaddy seems to never be down. Just not that great with tech support on forums.

I'm just not sure why it's that difficult to find a quality host that you can rely on uptime and speed with. Beats all I've ever seen.

<rant off>

[express]

I love how clients leave and then come back and try to blast someone. I can not understand it, we have alot of very happy clients that run vbulletin on our servers and have never complained. I guess that means we are doing something right.
Seems that you can never make everyone happy. We try our best to do this but you can not please everyone.
In this case we did everything we could to help this client. After we moved him to the second server we never heard a word out of him until he left. Not one email or ticket that I can remember about speed.
The first server he was one and also the second server we moved him to we did not have any complaints execpt from this client. Makes you wonder. Now after he told us how good godaddy was now he complains about them.
Ever think the hosting company may not be the issue here?
You talk about slow speeds yet I can not remember any trace routes you sent us about the issue. Wonder why?
Good luck in your hosting search maybe you will find someone that will give you great service and a free 2500.00 server for nothing that would be great.
You would probably complain about that also.

Joey

[steven s]

<rant on>I don't know how you guys did it with RWH... I like Joey and he always seemed to be sharp... but that is the slowest mess I've ever experienced. GoDaddy was better and more reliable. I went with Joey because of reviews here and elsewhere. Maybe for the most part they are good, but with me and being on two of their servers and niether being reliable and fast... no way. I guess I was just jinxed. I complained and it just didn't do any good. I ain't got time for it.<rant off>

I've had such good success lately. I don't even remember the bad hosts I've had anymore. Oh yea, www.tophostingsolutions.com. Support was poor, site was going down all the time and it was always my fault. Then I found www.glyphdot.com. An exellent company. Superb customer service. Only downside was my website was getting busy and I needed more bandwidth. I really hated to go. It was refreshing to find a company where the owner would call to be sure everything was working. I still get emails from him asking how the sites are going? Then forward to realwebhost.com. I chose them based on recommendations here. Been with them a few years supporting a few different sites. There have been a couple server issues. Hardware does goes bad. But clients are kept abreast of the issues and problems quickly resolved. And those issues are so infrequent. vB goes down once in awhile too. It's just a fact of life. I don't have time for issues either and problems are often fixed without me even knowing there was a problem. I thought one host was as bad as the other until I found www.glyphdot.com and www.realwebhost.com. Bottom line, I am happy with rwh, both service and support.

Good luck with Go Daddy but I have a feeling you will be looking for another host. I don't understand how a company can offer 250Gb of bandwidth for $4.00/month.

So HP Junky, have you found a new host?

[MadJack]

I found Joey from Real Web Host.Com . . .he is the epitome of professionalism. I swear, if I weren't married already, I'd marry him. Minutes after sending an e-mail, he called right back. He calmed my fears . . .and is in the midst of moving my site right now.

You need to call him. You WON'T be disappointed.

listen to this post. joey saved me after my forum got on the large side and hostway would not help with any vbulletin problems because "it's not our program and we're not responsible".

i'm no tech guy either and any time i ever have a problem, i send joey an email and get response and action within minutes.

i don't know what i'd do without joey. he's my 5th host in 9 years and i've been with him for over 2 years now and no plans of going anywhere else again.

service it top notch 10* with realwebhost.net

[ShackMaster]

I love how clients leave and then come back and try to blast someone. I can not understand it, we have alot of very happy clients that run vbulletin on our servers and have never complained. I guess that means we are doing something right.

I can't apologize, I'm just the customer sharing my experiences. Take it or leave, but there's one thing for sure and two things for certain, there's no stretching the truth to what I said. If you read my post you will see that I stated the reason I went to you was because of your reviews here.... so yes, I think folks can figure out that you are obviously doing things right.

In this case we did everything we could to help this client. After we moved him to the second server we never heard a word out of him until he left. Not one email or ticket that I can remember about speed.

After what I went through and the numerous times I had sent tickets in on the previous server, to only be moved to another server that was no better, why bother.

The first server he was one and also the second server we moved him to we did not have any complaints execpt from this client. Makes you wonder. Now after he told us how good godaddy was now he complains about them.

Hey, if folks don't mind being down every singel night for 5-6 nights in a row... maybe some folks aren't as concerned, but really find it hard to believe no one, not anyone complained when you advised me that it was a problem with the server itself.

Btw: there is absolutely nowhere in my post above that I complain about GoDaddy. Not sure what you are reading.

Ever think the hosting company may not be the issue here?

That's right, lay it off on the customer... it's the customers fault.

You force me to clarify: I was on the Joanne server. This server had major issues that caused it to go down everynight for 5-6 nights in a row, including 10+ hours one night. This was not the only time it was down though. My members complained they could not get on more than on one occasion. My private area is loaded with complaints from my staff about how slow it was. I reported these problems when reporting downtime... I called you Joey and told you on the phone the problems we were experiencing. You then finally told me you would put me on a server where there were less than 10 clients... Sally. You stated I would have no problems there since there were so few clients. For a few days things were fine. Then I get an email notice from your forum stating:

Tonight at 11:59 pm EST we will move all accounts that use the following name servers to the Sally server from Janet.

ns.rwhservers.com and ns1.rwhservers.com these are nameservers managed by Real Web Host so nothing will be needed on your part.

The Janet server has been having issues for quiet somntime with the hard drive and we feel it is time to move clients from this server.

Now all of the sudden I'm not on a server with less than 10 clients. It also appears that the Joanne server was not the only server that had been having issues for quiet some time.

It took a few days, but eventually we started experiencing slow speeds and started going down again. It was short downtimes granted, but aggravating. I had simply had enough.

So... bottom line, if you are having no problems, fine... I am happy for you, but I did and it was not an issue on my part. For you Joey, to try an make it appear like it was an issue on my part... wow, never realized you'd stoop so low.

[steven s]

Now all of the sudden I'm not on a server with less than 10 clients. It also appears that the Joanne server was not the only server that had been having issues for quiet some time.

I've been on Joanne for some time.
I think I would have remembered being down 5-6 nights in a row.
Anyway, I think we are all going off topic.

[FightSports]

RWH Is The BEST!

We have read some of the posts here and have to wonder just how many companies many of you have tried or looked in to.
Regardless, we researched A TON of host companies and had several web sites hosted by various ones.
The worst by far was Earthlink!
Of course, they do not brag about being a good host company, but still, everything else is a JOkE there!

After careful consideration of all the features, speed, availability, domain research help and of course, space for the money, we choose Joey at Real Web Host for ALL our sites and we will continue with them from here on out!
So if your looking for a company where a REAL PERSON actually answers their phone, go with RWH!!

Or, feel free to go with one of those companies who answer the phone in India or wherever and never get with it to fix your problems!

http://www.realwebhost.com

We are GREATLY APPRECIATIVE of their support of our sites over the years.
Sincerely
Steve Fossum
President ISF
International Sport Fighting


www.IKFKickboxing.com
www.ISCFMMA.com
www.TheISCF.com
www.GladiatorGear.com
www.RingsideGym.com
www.iscfmma.com/ISCFMMAMessageBoard/index.php
www.ikfkickboxing.com/wwwboard

Our new site

www.fightsportshalloffame.com

And other additional sites we are related to;

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[ShackMaster]

I've been on Joanne for some time.
I think I would have remembered being down 5-6 nights in a row.
Anyway, I think we are all going off topic.

It may have been that you were not on at the time of the downtime. It was around 12 midnight CST. I documented the downtime by posting in another forum at The Admin Zone... Link Here Here is the post:

I know Real Web Host is supposed to be pretty good... they seem to get high marks, but the last week or two has been terrible.

About two weeks ago I made a boo boo and deleted a forum (didn't realize I was deleting the child forums... real smart move on my part)... anyway, I asked my host if there was a way to restore just that forum from the backup. A few minutes later my site went down... came back up a few minutes later and I lost the last 20 hours of post, registered users, etc. They restored my entire forum. I probably could have done just as well without those threads and post in that one forum due to the area it was.

Last week they decided to move their servers and didn't bother to warn us. Okay, they posted it on their forum but I don't ever go there and didn't just happen to check it that night to know. My forum went down all night from about 12:30am to about 8:00am. I couldn't open a ticket, had no idea what was going on... their site was down too. Had no idea what was up.

Now... about 30 minutes ago my site went down again... still not up... they are down too. I have no idea what's going on. I guess I should check in at their forum every night to see if they are going to be down.

I opened a ticket earlier today to complain about how slow the site was. Not only mine but another forum on that same server. They tried to tell me it was something on my end, but my site and the other site on that server were both deathly slow. A few minutes later they got better. Then tonight they both started getting slower again. I was having no problems with surfing other forums or other Internet sites. Just as normal as always with other surfin'.

I asked them if I needed to upgrade my plan, pay more money, what? They replied that hopefully my ISP would get the problem cleared up soon. I give up.

I'm definitely lookin'. It's my only experience but it's my worst too... surely there is better... maybe I just gotta pay more than $12 per month.

EDIT: I'm back up now... ughhh.

They tried to blame it on my ISP... as noted above, although I was having no problems surfing other sites.

You will also note contrary to what Joey has stated in a previous post above, I documented that I had opened a ticket complaining about the slow speed.

I made a second post about being down the next night in that same forum.

Again, as stated earlier and to clarify the orginal posters concerns for possibly changing hosting company's and considering RWH. Take it for what you will, I had consistent problems and I have nothing to deceive anyone about and no reason to lie. This information is also documented at our forum from staff members comments about the slow speeds and downtime. I understand they have high marks and probably for most people will be okay... but they did not work for us.

[Basscat]

I am with www.realwebhost.net I thought that the grass was greener on the other side of the fence. Boy was I wrong. Joey is on msn every day, all day long. If ever I have a problem, he is a click a way. I have also contacted him by phone also.

www.realwebhost.net also has a vbulletin discussion forums. I have had vbulletin forum issues and Joey helped me out with them also.