Vidahost 'world-class disappointment'?

[Mico Dabs]

Righto.
Well I signed up for domain registration AND hosting.
Got my stuff sorted, it's been nearly 20 years since I used FTP etc and it didn't take long after making some basic schoolboy errors to get the URL working.
I went for cloud hosting and not long after setting up (same day) a VERY friendly, patient and chatty Ana called just to say Hi and if she could help with anything, she stressed not just for that particular day but at ANY time in the future.
She sent me a follow-up email and explained I could reply in the future to it and would usually get HER but if she was unable to respond a colleague would get on it soon as they could.

Seems they are keen to catch new customers very early on as that may be where a lot of issues/criticisms may come from, the sooner they can help out the earlier problems are nipped in the bud.
I can also see why there are criticisms of certain areas; basically, Vidahost seem to step outside their SLA in order to go the extra bit to help customers, however when they can't resolve a customer-caused issue the customer then blames Vidahost.
Other companies have been there and done that, and eventually they realise that SLA's are there for a reason and they step back inside the parameters in order to prevent further criticism.
Having worked recently for a rather 'virginal' company (clue there) we often stepped outside SLA's and on one occasion I even ended up rebuilding the entire software platform on a 1998 desktop just to get a customer back online (probably 5-6 hours of work).
The darn thing collapsed that evening, and the abuse I got was something really aggressive, not one single word of thanks despite going to great lengths to explain We were not obliged to repair customer's own equipment and that what I was doing had no guarantees etc, that it was only being done as an individual 'favour' as other technicians would flatly refuse to do so and tell the customer to have the desktop repaired professionally or buy a newer system.
Anyway, after that particular farce, I was far less inclined to step outside SLA, unfortunately several other customers were not afforded the same level of 'kindness' and so the company reputation suffered.
Dammed if you do, and dammed if you don't.

And that's were we are with Vidahost; a host that is hell-bent on being the best as close to 100% of the time they can be.
Sometimes their extra efforts work and customers are chuffed to bits, sometimes they don't and customers are upset.
Sometimes Vidahost will stick to SLA to protect themselves and the customer thinks they don't care.

Anyway; at least Vidahost ADMIT they have made mistakes or could've been better from what I can gather from the majority of posts I have read.

Over time I will now get to see first hand what they are like in the long haul.

So far.....10 out of 10 thanks to Ana.

 

[VengefulOwl]

Interesting read!

I've been with Vidahost for over 5 years, and up until perhaps 2 years ago I would always be recommending them. I've been tracking issues on the server I am on for a long time and after getting nowhere with them (mainly mysql "too many connections") I just let it be (and coded around it, using a retry loop :O ). More recently pingdom has been detecting downtime serveral times a day for around a week, to which vidahosts response was (after me pointing it out) that they would move me to another server. Worrying for other customers on the server who perhaps are unaware.

I'm on the verge of finally leaving them, something I've considered a few times before. Recent issues have lead me to move sites to other servers and even right now issues with a migration are stretching my patience and I'm a few more support tickets away from telling them to close my account.

I have hosting accounts with many different hosts, surprisingly some of the cheapest I'm with provide the best service and remind me of what Vidahost were once like.

 

[Dominic Taylor]

Interesting read!

I've been with Vidahost for over 5 years, and up until perhaps 2 years ago I would always be recommending them. I've been tracking issues on the server I am on for a long time and after getting nowhere with them (mainly mysql "too many connections") I just let it be (and coded around it, using a retry loop :O ). More recently pingdom has been detecting downtime serveral times a day for around a week, to which vidahosts response was (after me pointing it out) that they would move me to another server. Worrying for other customers on the server who perhaps are unaware.

I'm on the verge of finally leaving them, something I've considered a few times before. Recent issues have lead me to move sites to other servers and even right now issues with a migration are stretching my patience and I'm a few more support tickets away from telling them to close my account.

I have hosting accounts with many different hosts, surprisingly some of the cheapest I'm with provide the best service and remind me of what Vidahost were once like.

That sounds somewhat abnormal - I think I know who you are as I remember the loop but could you PM me your ticket ID and I'll take a look?

 

[VengefulOwl]

Hi Dom, VIR-875-43363 is the ticket ID, Darren has replied in the last few minutes but thanks for taking the time to reply.

 

[F1SEO]

I've been with them since ThermalOne server - almost the very start.

And I went to see them at their Slough Headquarters when they first moved. Met with Seb and he showed me around their facilities, and it was completely covered in security: secure compound, security guards, a biometric scanner, and another biometric scanner. Only then could you get near the server cages.

Of late I've had awesome support. Tickets always answered quickly and getting things done efficiently. I must admit I have no idea who the names are anymore but it doesn't seem to matter because the results are the same as if it was Seb or Dominic taking care of it.

I've had dealings with other hosts, it was always pretty much a nightmare. One for example, you couldn't contact after 5pm unless you paid extra for 'out of hours' support. Another put me in a phone queue for 45 minutes. Another didn't answer a ticket for 2 days. Another had their hosting off for 8 hours and never bothered to inform anyone and then denied it.

With Vida I think I've had a message this year to that hosting had an issue for a small amount of time. I didn't notice it. Anyway they wrote and said how they were installing new things to overcome it and not happen again.

So for me, they are awesome .. always looking to put things into place to make their hosting run nice. And the way they take security I found to be very impressive.

 

[Dominic Taylor]

Hi Dom, VIR-875-43363 is the ticket ID, Darren has replied in the last few minutes but thanks for taking the time to reply.

Thanks, I wasn't aware you were still having issues after your other ticket with me over a year ago so if you have any more problems whatsoever please let me know. We're here to help at any time and I feel useless if I find out someone's had a problem but I haven't fixed it!

The loop solution is neat and I've used it myself (our domain checker uses a similar hack for when the .com registry lookups timeout ), but, you shouldn't ever have any kind of problem that I/we can't figure out. Wherever or whatever the issue is we'll tell you the cause and the fix.

You're right that you had a couple of issues with the move and I apologise for that - I personally wouldn't have moved you, I would have monitored your sites with you to work out the problem, but the reason Darren suggested doing so is because it's usually painless to use the cPanel account migration tool, and we do like to take the opportunity to move people from older hardware when possible - it's a win-win as you get faster CPUs, etc.

It looks like he's manually fixed the slight mess cPanel made with your domains now. Ironically, although the old and new servers run identical cPanel versions, the fact that the account is so old is probably the reason it had difficulty assembling the pieces...it must have had some missing data in the files that cPanel uses for user data storage as a result of past changes.

As I say, any more problems - let me/us know right away - and we will get you sorted.

 

[Mico Dabs]

" surprisingly some of the cheapest I'm with provide the best service and remind me of what Vidahost were once like"

And that right there is the issue ALL providers (domain, media, mobile etc) face.
When you serve a minority group of end-users, it is relatively easy to provide a prompt service as the load on your network is light. The more successful you are, the more customers you attract; then the load on your net increases, so you up the hardware and the system becomes more complicated, so when a fault occurs, it is harder to track down and repair time increases, and a lot more people are affected, so you get more bad press than the smaller providers.

You MUST bear this in mind when 'criticising' a provider; Vida are big, and so therefore their faults may be big, the fix-time may be bigger than other providers, and the number of affected and disgruntled customers will also be bigger.

 

[Dominic Taylor]

You MUST bear this in mind when 'criticising' a provider; Vida are big, and so therefore their faults may be big, the fix-time may be bigger than other providers, and the number of affected and disgruntled customers will also be bigger.

I'm not sure I agree - in the past when it was "just me" I would have to be on the phone to someone explaining why X on one of my 5 servers was broken, whilst simultaneously trying to fix X and support the 4/5 working clients. Or, I'd have to call up the datacentre provider and have them send someone to physically replace what was broken. Or, drive to the DC to find the power off. That was always fun

These days, I or my team fix X whilst group Y help our customers. And, if necessary, I can walk downstairs to replace a part. We can cope with most of what the internet throws our way in a typical week and everyone here is a hard-working individual. A lot run their own websites too and have worked for, or with, most UK providers. But, all that matters (and should matter) to our client is that their query gets fixed. Any kind of persistent problem is obviously frustrating, and it's rare I can't fix something.

There's lots of things that can and do go wrong and always will be, so I don't think it means providers or customers should make excuses or find reasons to accept problems.

We're also not really that big compared to the top 4 UK hosting companies - you can always get someone by name here if you want to, and the theory is you always will be able to. We just host a lot of UKBF members because I've posted here for a while and always tried to help anyone who's needed something that I know a little about (Which is not a lot, but does include hosting!)

 

[ecoleman]

I must admit, I'm getting fed up with TSO Dominic.
Last month my server was down for 8 odd hours because apparently the OS became corrupt. This morning my site has been down since 5:21. I had to report the failure at 7:21 when I was awoken to a barrage of emails from Pingdom. It's now 09:39 and I'm still waiting for a resolution. I've been promised calls back to tell me whats happening, but it doesn't happen. I have to keep calling you.

I've just been told that a disk has failed on the server, which happens, but where is your redundancy, your RAID systems. Why haven't they kicked in.

So far in the past 30 days, my site has been down for around 12 hours due to your hardware / software and not even an apology from TSO for the fact that I'm out of pocket by a couple of thousand pounds.

Unfortunately, I think this is the last straw, I will be looking at alternative hosts and will start moving our hosting next week.

You can have the best customer service in the world, but you clearly don't have reliable hardware in place and no redundancy in the case of failures.

 

[KM-Tiger]

I've just been told that a disk has failed on the server, which happens, but where is your redundancy, your RAID systems.

A single disc failure (or even two if it's RAID6) shouldn't bring a system down, it should just carry on working.

It's rare, but I have seen discs fail in a catastrophic way that brings everything down. If they are battling with one of those, I wish them luck.

 

[stuartmasson]

I have signed up to this forum for the sole purpose of acknowledging the excellent support and service I have received over the last two years from Vidahost. They say that one negative review can do more damage than ten positive ones, so I'm just adding my positive review to try and balance out some of the negativity. Whilst accepting that no business is ever perfect, and not trying to discount other people's problems raised here, my experience has been nothing but positive at every turn.

I transferred my hosting to Vodahost from another provider after months of frustration, and the difference was profound. My website not only performed much better, but the technical support exceeded my expectations and has maintained that level since.

Every time I have had a problem or query and raised a support ticket, I have received a response within a few minutes. Last week, I had a technical query which I clearly marked as 'Low Priority', yet got a fully-formed response (not just an acknowledgment) in less than three minutes. Follow-up questions were again answered fully within about ten minutes, despite them clearly not being urgent problems (and marked as such). This is typical of the support I have always received, day and night, and I plan to remain a customer for a long time to come. Thank you.

 

[ecoleman]

Stuart, I have been with TSO Host for a few years now (TSO Host and Vidahost are one in the same) and I agree the service has been superb and they have always been very willing to help. I have also recommended them to many businesses and friends over the years.

The issue I have is the lack of redundancy in their systems.
When you are running a business, no matter how big or small a days outage can and does have a huge knock on effect. It means that my customers can not get onto my site and thus I loose sales (on the particular day my server sent down it was month end and I lost approx. £2k in sales), I pay for CPC advertising which although I have paid for the click, that click goes nowhere so this costs me money, GoogleBot are unable to verify my product listings and thus disapproves them as they think the page no longer exists (this can take days to be re-crawled and reinstated). I was told that the OS had become corrupt and that they had to copy all my data to another server. This took the best part of a day to copy +/- 25Gb of data. They must have been using a RS-232 cable or something.

This this Saturday (just gone) I woke up to a barrage of emails coming from Pingdom. My site had been up and down for two hours since 5:21am I awoke to the emails at 7:21am so for two hours my site had been up and down and nobody picked up on it. I emailed them immediately and it was only 2-3 hours after that the site eventually came back online.
This was apparently down to a disk failure.

So in summary, whilst service may be good, that doesn't help me when my business is shut down due to their hardware / software failures. The TSO (and Vidahost) website boast 99.9% up time and backups, fall overs, and all the other fancy jargon that goes with it, but it doesn't work.

I've lost maybe £2.5k in sales over the past 30 days and not even a free month hosting from TSO.

 

[Brum26]

I have just recently signed up with Vidahost and migrated my sites over from hostgator (who are absolutely awful!).

So far I have only had good experiences but I guess time will tell. My reason for moving was that every single month for the last 7 or 8 months my sites have gone down for several hours at a time. After trying to get through to hostgator live help for an hour I am then told that they simply have server issues.

I did a bit of research before deciding to move and found plenty of good reviews for vidahost, plus I also wanted a UK based host. Hopefully all will go well with them.

 

[David Trounce]

I am in Australia and I gotta say, I love Vidahost. I have all my accounts with them. They take my phone calls, reply to my support tickets and go out of their way to answer my dumb questions. maybe you just got a shoddy staff member.

 

[ricky776]

I've never hosted with vidahost or heard of them to be honest since this post

But they seem pretty cheap and good at what they do If you have a 1000 customers there's always going to be a few issues

I used to host with 1&1 and I didn't mind them as I rather speak to some one on the phone then send an email but I left to a uk supplier I now host with heart Internet for my server again good people and not many tell you different

But if i made my living via my website sales etc I would host with rackspace I always thought they was the best but it's not cheap

 

[Nuno]

But they seem pretty cheap and good at what they do If you have a 1000 customers there's always going to be a few issues

24,000 customers.
Just saying.

 

[ricky776]

Lol

 

[plymgary]

I must say Vidahost were brilliant when I first used them. I wouldn't say they're bad now, but there have been a lot more instances of server issues in the past few weeks. It wouldn't be so bad if there was an apology given to the customers, but - nothing.

I would still recommend them, just maybe not as highly as I once did.

 

[VengefulOwl]

I guess I should have learnt the lesson from the times before... Although I moved most of my projects away.

I still have a couple with them, one of which I have had ongoing issues with that their support staff are next to useless at understanding, let alone dealing with. They even closed the ticket without resolving the issue!

Nearly a month down the road with exactly the same issue (server /tmp disk space, not my own).

Beware.

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

I guess I should have learnt the lesson from the times before... Although I moved most of my projects away.

I still have a couple with them, one of which I have had ongoing issues with that their support staff are next to useless at understanding, let alone dealing with. They even closed the ticket without resolving the issue!

Nearly a month down the road with exactly the same issue (server /tmp disk space, not my own).

Beware.

Not monitoring disk partitions / preventing overfill is just sloppy system admin.

 

[VengefulOwl]

Not monitoring disk partitions / preventing overfill is just sloppy system admin.

Absolutely, they most recently suggested moving me to another server, to which I declined (I have had painful experiences of vidahost and cpanel migrations). A process on the server is filling their 4GB /tmp partition periodically and they cannot be bothered to find out what it is.

Last response included the line "Regrettably, due to the custom build of the website, we can't track exactly the reason behind the failed sessions."

When literally, the error message explicitly states the reason... "PHP Warning: Unknown: write failed: No space left on device (28) in Unknown on line 0"

Same error 28 for mysql too "MySQL Notice: 3: Error writing file "/tmp/MYxROolM" (Errcode: 28)"

 

[Tin]

They moved me from one server to a newer server and caused me 7 weeks of crap!

 

[webhostuk]

They moved me from one server to a newer server and caused me 7 weeks of crap!

Thats really Odd as its quit few times I have heard so many issues with vidahost. Are things changing at their end?

 

[Ian J]

I had several small websites hosted with Compila which was taken over by Vidahost a year or more ago and I haven't had any problems with them at all. Any queries that I have had have always been resolved quickly and courteously