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GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

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Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#21

Post by yogo »

driverdan wrote: post #10
wonderyak wrote: post #3

My least horrible experiences have all been with DreamHost as well. Our company did reseller hosting for about 5 years and went through all of the acquisition stuff Marco mentions. We had to exit SoftLayer because they were horrible, only to be brought right back. Hosting is a horrible business. To be good at it and have marketplace success you need to deliver over the top support; which is just unsustainable at scal…

DH's shared hosting is bad, possibly horrible. Their shared servers go down frequently. Often they didn't even seem to know the server I'm on was down until I sent a support request. I keep my account for testing and sites I don't really care much about.

There is a very simple rule of thumb when it comes to hosting. If your site/business matters then never put it on shared hosting. It's always bad, overselling is what makes it possible to have those low prices. In terms of the noisy neighbor problem shared hosting is a ghetto.

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#22

Post by damon_c »

wonderyak wrote: post #3

My least horrible experiences have all been with DreamHost as well. Our company did reseller hosting for about 5 years and went through all of the acquisition stuff Marco mentions. We had to exit SoftLayer because they were horrible, only to be brought right back. Hosting is a horrible business. To be good at it and have marketplace success you need to deliver over the top support; which is just unsustainable at scal…

I signed up with DreamHost a couple of years ago and they sent me my password in plaintext in the confirmation email.

Am I wrong to have walked away immediately?

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#23

Post by thenomad »

cylinder wrote: post #6

Hosting is like commercial airlines. Everyone wants excellent service, but they shop on price, and expect it to be low. Those who can actually spend a lot, do it themselves anyways (private jets). This could be the beginning of a consolidation phase in the hosting industry just like what took place with airlines.

If you don't shop on price, there are some excellent hosts out there.

But you do have to be willing to pay $20 or maybe even $99 for your completely business-critical, complex infrastructure, rather than merely $2.99 pm.

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#24

Post by cleversoap »

arkitaip wrote: post #15
lelandbatey wrote: post #4

Web hosting customers are nomads. If your host hasn’t been ruined yet, just wait. This line right here is absolutely sage wisdom. Here are some of the companies I've bought services from, as well as what I remember happening to them: ClubUptime Closed in a disastrous closure due to basically being conned. DirectSpace Still around, haven't changed much VolumeDrive Very sketchy, I don't really know how they're still in…

Very true. I'm currently happy using Webfaction but I just know it's a matter of time before I have to look for a new hosting company.

I've been with them for quite a while and one thing I've noticed they do differently is that they will upgrade your service periodically while not changing the price. For example, I've gone from 128MB to 512MB of usable memory for my vhost without paying anything but my $9.99 a month. There are other anecdotes (awesome control panel, good support, etc...) that make me think it's unfair to group them with other hosting providers that never do anything but the bare minimum.

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#25

Post by iwasakabukiman »

cylinder wrote: post #6

Hosting is like commercial airlines. Everyone wants excellent service, but they shop on price, and expect it to be low. Those who can actually spend a lot, do it themselves anyways (private jets). This could be the beginning of a consolidation phase in the hosting industry just like what took place with airlines.

The only difference being that once those markets are consolidated to a few key players, they become very different.

You can't just start an airline overnight. It requires massive capital upfront. A hosting company simply requires a server.

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#26

Post by Steveism »

coderdude wrote: post #13

I've been a Media Temple customer since 2007 and a GoDaddy customer since 2004 [edit: I say 2004 but I don't think that's possible. I must have switched to them sometime after 2006 but I can't recall who my previous registrar was.]. I like both companies just fine though apparently not everyone has been as lucky. I don't know if GD is going to be a good home for mt since GD specializes in cheaper hosting. But... GoDa…

As a supplement to your comment, the Philanthropy section of their Wikipedia page is around 285 words. The Controversies section of their Wikipedia page is around 1542 words. Of course links to edit the page and footnote links make these numbers slightly off. Linking to the Controversies section seems rather appropriate considering the disproportionate nature of the two sections.

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#28

Post by opendomain »

My worst experience was with Joyent. I paid a few thousand for web hosting for life that helped get them off the ground. But when I called in one day to get support they kept cutting me off. I was very patient and tried several different avenues but they would not help me. Finally I lost my temper and used the "F" word in their forums so they killed my account completely. I even was able to talk to the founder, and I've got to give him kudos for being a great boss protecting his team - but he would not listen to my side of the story and I Lost all my data and never received any refund. They do NOT know customer service.

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#29

Post by larrys »

"But it’s also highly commoditized: hosts can’t differentiate their products very much, there’s effectively no barrier to entry, switching at any time is fairly cheap and easy, and most customers buy primarily on price."

I don't agree at all that for many website hosting customers the process is "easy".

A typical web hosting customer is not tech saavy they either have it being handled by their "tech guy" or they can't even remember how their files got onto the server in the first place with their static site and sometimes they don't even know who is hosting their site [1].

[1] Source: We're a registrar and we get the calls and emails of confused customers who have no clue where they are hosted. They don't even know enough to look at the whois and see the dns to give them a hint. Actually you'd be suprised how many times someone will access our whois and think we are their registrar.

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