Comments on: Getting Screwed by Your Hosting Company

By: Are you looking for your next web hosting? « Webdigity - Thoughts on SEO and Web development

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:52:19 +0000

[...] Posted by webdigity on June 25th, 2007 Looking for a web hosting partner is usually a very hard task. This is because there are so many web hosting companies out there, and in most cases you are not able to know how good a company is before you use their services. An example of the problems that may occur is the recent downtime of the online marketing blog which was down for about 18 hours when their hosting provider decided to stop serving them… [...]

By: VISI - A Web Hosting Company That Rocks » Online Marketing Blog

VISI - A Web Hosting Company That Rocks » Online Marketing Blog — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:41:43 +0000

[...] Readers of Online Marketing Blog for the past few months might remember our hosting trials and tribulations with a good but unprepared host and then the less than desirable activities of Pair Networks. We moved to a dedicated server with Minneapolis web site hosting company VISI for hosting OMB and since it’s been over a month I thought I’d give an update. We currently use VISI for the hosting or our public relations firm web site, email and a dedicated server for Online Marketing Blog along with an array of support. [...]

By: Beguinners Guide to SEO

Beguinners Guide to SEO — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 21:54:34 +0000

“Now we have other hosting companies offering to host our blog for free. On a dedicated server. With support.”

Lee is that because of you being a well known marketer? I will like to get that deal too…

Seriously thanks posting this information, that is how we learn how to deal with different issues on the Internet.

By: Mehrl Martin

Mehrl Martin — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:54:23 +0000

You might want to check out a hosting company named Rack Space. We use them.

Mehrl

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 08:29:15 +0000

I hear you Bill, but this hasn’t all panned out 100% yet. First, the current host just informed me that they’ve moved our blog to a dedicated server with no change in the monthly fee – temporarily. They didn’t ask, they just moved it.

Actually they asked if we wanted to upgrade to a $200 – $300 per month option. This is a big jump from what we’re paying now so I had to think about it.

Then they said they were moving us. They didn’t ask. They just moved the site. Luckily, there was no interruption in service or functionality of the site.

After the move, the site responds very quickly both on the front and admin side. There is no doubt performance has improved dramatically. However, I am not sure if that all has to do with the change in servers.

Thomas implemented the hotlink protection so other sites can no longer use our images. This was the source of our traffic woes.

Now we have other hosting companies offering to host our blog for free. On a dedicated server. With support.

Kinda makes you go hmmmm.

By: Bill Rice

Bill Rice — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:36:59 +0000

Lee, I agree with Andy, as a public service you should name the hosting service so that others do not run into the same problems as you have had to deal with.

Bill Rice
President
Web Marketing Association
http://www.webaward.org

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:18:59 +0000

Hi Michael, yes it’s a bit odd but I guess there were quite a few people using our RSS images.

When we decide how we’re going to proceed, I’ll certainly publish it.

By: Michael Visser

Michael Visser — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:49:47 +0000

That’s funny Lee, my site has been having uptime/performance issues lately too; you’re not with HostUltra are you… I think I inadvertently killed the shared environment supporting my site while corrupting my own database while uploading multiple images from SER last night. Day 2 is up.

I think that’s pretty ridiculous that you need to move to a dedicated server; performance demand can’t be that straining is it? Let us all know who you move to anyway, be interesting to know.

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 19:14:38 +0000

Interestingly enough, since making this blog post, the speed of our site load time has reached a slow crawl….

By: Thomas McMahon

Thomas McMahon — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:39:09 +0000

Andy – Good point. I guess that’s more than one issue.

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:10:27 +0000

Hey Tamar, That is a good idea, but I’ve decided we’re going for a dedicated server.

This blog has become pretty important to our overall marketing and I don’t want to mess around with shared hosting any longer.

Now the question is whether we stay with the current host or move to someone local that can support our needs.

By: Tamar Weinberg

Tamar Weinberg — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 16:53:24 +0000

Why not get a VPS? That way, you’re “enclosed” within your the confines of your virtual private server and you won’t impact other users on the server. It’s the next best thing to dedicated hosting.

By: Andy Beal

Andy Beal — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 16:52:53 +0000

Thomas – I would normally agree, but the site was down all day, they took 12 hours to respond to Lee and they actually went in and changed the htaccess file without permission. I’d want to know which hosting company to avoid.

By: Untwisted Vortex - Living in a Different Land » Blog Drive-Bys for 2007-03-29

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 16:52:37 +0000

[...] Lee at Online Marketing Blog wrote about the not-so-friendly actions of their hosting company. [...]

By: Thomas McMahon

Thomas McMahon — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 16:31:53 +0000

Andy – I think naming names after one issue is not the way to go. Yes it wasn’t good, but the first steps would be informing the host of how unhappy one is and seeing if things get better. No company or service should be doomed un-reliable after one incident in my mind. That’s just my opinion though.

By: Andy Beal

Andy Beal — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:50:01 +0000

I switched to a dedicated server and have been much happier. It certainly sucks what they did and you’d be doing a public service by warning other bloggers to stay away from the host (by naming them).

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:42:42 +0000

Hi Nick, we’re at different hosts. I picked the same host that Matt Cutts from Google uses.

I’m all for paying more for hosting, in fact, I might even entertain a tradeout with the right hosting company.

By: Nick O'Neill

Nick O'Neill — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:37:31 +0000

I had the same thing happen at my host company. They renamed my .htaccess file, in turn disabling the majority of features on my site. This was done without any notification. Maybe we all have the same hosting provider? I guess I won’t name names either, but once you start getting significant traffic, it’s time to upgrade to higher tier hosting companies.

It’s a shame that these hosting companies get away with milking money from low traffic sites and punish those that become popular.

By: Thomas McMahon

Thomas McMahon — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:22:48 +0000

I went though the same thing recently with my host for the same reason. What I ended up doing was creating a 200×200 red button with an update message on it and then redirected some buttons that were hosted on my site to it. The idea was to force the users to update. The button got bigger almost every day and now it’s about 1500×1500. The sites that haven’t updated their buttons are having big design issues.

I understand the issue and concern from the hosting standpoint, but the company above closed things down before contacting us about the issue and I think that’s wrong. My host gave me some help and guidance and I think we are better now.