I’ve changed web hosts and have spent most of today moving my sites from the old host to the new. Since you’re seeing this post, you’re at the new host—welcome!
Early Sunday morning, stats went down for all my sites. For those of you who are webmasters, that meant no requests were being recorded, the error log wasn’t updating, etc. Awstats didn’t show anything past January 10th at around 5 am. Latest Visitors always told me there weren’t any. I was suddenly flying blind.
I submitted a support ticket and received an unsatisfactory response. I persisted (politely) and was told twice that the problem was fixed when it clearly wasn’t. I was then told that the host would look into it “in the morning.” I gave them the entire next day, and when there was no update and the problem wasn’t fixed, I asked for an update.
Exact query from me: Any update for this problem yet?
Exact response from them: Nope, we’ll be first to tell you when it’s sorted.
That’s when I decided to leave. The stats had already been down for almost two days. At the very least, they should have given me some idea of what they were doing about it and/or when the problem might be fixed.
I’m a software person. I know problems can be difficult to track down. I don’t expect all problems to be resolved within five minutes of reporting them. I would have been okay if they’d responded with, “We haven’t figured out the problem but we’re looking into it,” or “We’re swamped—we’ll get to it first thing tomorrow.” Anything. Just don’t blow me off.
Access to stats is important. If I was conducting any type of eCommerce on my sites, or any promotional or paid click campaigns related to the sites, I would have been furious because the ability to see how people are reaching the sites (the referrers) would have been critical. Even though I’m not, the ability to monitor site activity is still very important. I’ve had to ban IPs for bad behaviour that would have burned tons of bandwidth if I hadn’t put an end to it. Webmasters must be able to see activity on a site to responsibly and effectively manage it. Without the ability to see site activity, I was basically helpless.
I went with the former web host because it had good reviews, especially around customer support, which is important to me. You don’t need a responsive host when everything is working; you need one when something isn’t. Since the host promised exceptional customer support, its hosting packages were pricier than most. And yes, whenever I opened a ticket, they always responded promptly. However, that response was usually terse and along the lines of, “We’re looking into it.” I never found the support to be all that great after that. So why was I paying for exceptional support that didn’t exist?
When I was looking for a new web host, I also searched for the old one, to see if anyone else had been having problems. The answer seems to be yes. When I signed on with the old host almost two years ago, there were maybe one or two complaints about them. In the past six months or so, the dissatisfaction level seems to have risen. I don’t want to explicitly name the host, since that will likely result in the owner coming to this blog. However, I will link to another person’s experience with the same host using the generic words go here. Check it out. That’s just one example.
If you’re looking for a web host and want to hear my full story, or you’re just curious, contact me through email and I’ll dish privately. I had no quibbles with the uptime or performance of my sites at the former host. If they’d lived up to their support promises, I would have happily stayed with them. Oh well.
The old sites are still active since it can take 24-48 hours for nameserver changes to propagate across the net. I’ll pull the plug on them on Friday. And, oh yeah, as of now, after almost three days, the stats still aren’t working and there hasn’t been a peep out of support since the communication I included earlier in the post.
I’m hoping to have a better experience with the new host. This host has virtually no complaints against it that I can find, but I’ll reserve judgement and see how my experience goes. They were extremely helpful in moving my sites and the support so far has been polite and competent. But as I’ve now learned, the quality of hosting (and support) can deteriorate over time. So I’ll see how it goes.
Since this blog, Rymellan Fiction, Online Lesbian Fiction, and Norn Publishing have all been moved, please let me know if you see any weird behaviour like pages not found, email not working, etc. I think everything’s okay, but it’s possible that something broke during the move.
All right, back to business…
