SERVINT has CLOSED their discussion forums!

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Posted by view3dtv, 02-06-2016, 10:35 PM
usually a bad sign....
Posted by net, 02-06-2016, 10:38 PM
We can only speculate. Maybe ask them for the reason if you are a client.
Posted by MattF, 02-07-2016, 12:14 AM
A lot of discussion forums don't get enough traffic to warrant existence, for many different community engagement methods make sense - e.g. twitter @cares accounts etc.. and faceache profiles, some choose to aggegrate with something more central like uservoice.com too. Discussion forums are very often a poor fit especially when low traffic.
Posted by DeltaAnime, 02-07-2016, 12:23 AM
That has always been my take on it for hosts. I just can't see a discussion board just for your board getting enough traffic to justify maintaining it. Still, what's the fear? That they're mid sellout? Francisco
Posted by HostPuma, 02-07-2016, 07:04 AM
If the forum is not active then I don't see a big deal closing it, better than keeping it and wasting staff time cleaning up spam. Clients in general can always get help from the company blog, knowledge base, live chat or ticket support.
Posted by TheOpenHost, 02-07-2016, 12:46 PM
As long as your host is still providing support directly to you, I wouldn't be concerned about them closing their public forums. What matters is support, not the precisely method of getting it.
Posted by mainpipe, 02-07-2016, 10:49 PM
Servint's forum hasn't been very active for the last couple of years. The forum was only open to clients and I don't think it took too much time to maintain. Personally, I blame Servint for its death. Lately the forum was like a ghost town. Servint rarely, if ever, responded to posts. I'm disappointed that the customer forum is gone... but more disappointed that it was silently removed without notice. Servint management (often the owner) and staff used to be very active and helped foster a great community. Things seemed to die down once the owner moved to California and took more of a back seat to being actively involved. New sales & marketing people were brought in and the other lead exec (Christian) seemed to be focusing more on Internet Policy vs. Servint. Recently, Christian left Servint and is working full-time on the policy matters... something that he appeared to be doing anyway. At least that was my impression. What made Servint special has been long gone. About 2 years ago they did a massive upgrade enabling their SolidFire SSD offering. I thought it would be a game changer. I'm not sure how it is working out for them. I guess the business has changed for many hosts. Now Digital Ocean, AWS, Vultr, Linode, etc. are the darlings. Of course, those lower priced offerings don't include server support/mgmt... but they have great communities & knowledge bases. While Servint has been basically absent from WHT, the other 2 big VPS players (Knownhost & Wiredtree) seem to be active here. Last edited by mainpipe; 02-07-2016 at 10:52 PM.
Posted by oldgrunt, 02-07-2016, 11:43 PM
I would like to comment here on this subject, but I just can't bring myself to. I do think something is going on there, but Sevvint has been good to me to go negative now. IF there is a problem, I'm sure they will rise to the occasion. Compared to the service I have had over the last twenty + years, a bad day there beats a good day with a lot of the providers I have used. Got an issue with another provider now, but I'm not one to fly off the handle. They know the issue, but assume I don't. Their mistake. If they don't live up to their obligations, I'll just go elsewhere. It bothers me to see people trash providers, unless they clearly document what they say here. Some 80% of the grips I see here could be solved better by doing some research before turning the flamethrower on high. Just my rant for today, "it don't mean nothing".
Posted by webspacecreations, 02-08-2016, 04:24 PM
oldgrunt, I can sympathize with you and have been a stalwart fan of ServInt as well. However, at this stage, I think it's actually unethical to stay silent. I will be moving the remainder of my ServInt accounts to WiredTree as their offerings are similar and tech support is more along the lines of what I really appreciated about (the old) ServInt. Tech support at ServInt has been going downhill for some time. I could attribute it to incompetence, but considering some of the same techs are still there, I think that it's likely a combination of hiring the wrong people and the existing people getting burned out or losing motivation. Calling ServInt's offerings "managed" at this point is really misleading. After a server migration that I knew would go wrong did go wrong, I discovered today that ServInt no longer offers a toll-free tech support line. This used to be the only way to resolve some issues (certainly it was the quickest) and now all tech support inquiries are directed to the portal. Most disturbingly, even sales calls are going to voicemail today. This really doesn't bode well and continuing to turn a blind eye to the facts is a serious liability if your business still relies on ServInt. I rarely post here and certainly don't post on trivial matters, but in this case, other customers deserve to know (if they haven't already figured it out) about the systemic problems at ServInt. :-(
Posted by TotalChoice - Bill, 02-08-2016, 06:11 PM
Forums in general just do not draw the traffic they used to, they have been replaced with Social Media. Even TCH forums have lost traffic but I would never close them, to much value in 212K posts to just walk away from. ServINT is a good company, I am sure its just something management decided to do.
Posted by SenseiSteve, 02-08-2016, 06:30 PM
It's just so incredibly hard to build and sustain a corporate forum. I'm simply not surprised that another one bites the dust, but what surprised me is that they didn't make an announcement.
Posted by DBH Web, 02-09-2016, 05:38 PM
Yes communication with your clients and keeping them informed on current events and issues is the key to great client relations, so just an email to tell their clients that the forum will be closed from xx/xx/2016 due to xxxxxxx would have been nice, however we don't know the full story so we should give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that all is well.
Posted by CountryEd, 02-11-2016, 01:29 PM
I agree with others that have been long time members of the ServInt family. Up until yesterday, I was with ServInt for over twelve years. I also agree that things have changed in the last two years. Support has changed and now I found out that the forums were closed without any notice that I recall. The forums were a good way for the family to discuss issues openly as only customers were allowed in. And example of the lack of support... I opened a ticket asking is OwnCloud was allowed and could be installed, the NOC repsonse was yes, if you want us to install please send instructions. Interesting response. Well as others have said, ServInt has changed they are no longer the same as they were. Some old timers can remember when the owner Reed stood over and reported out as the fiber optic cable that was cut was being repaired. Life changes... Now I am with WiredTree.
Posted by kpmedia, 02-12-2016, 05:48 AM
ServInt has never been very communicative. And they're a bit xenophobic to non-customers. I saw changes in attitude (for the worse) around 2013-2014 myself. That all said, forums are never a good idea for hosts. They attract spam, and simply act as support -- and most conversations end with "submit a ticket". Hosts have no idea what to do with a forum.
Posted by TotalChoice - Bill, 02-12-2016, 05:58 AM
Forums are an excellent way to deliver ideas, promote products and allow your customers to interact with each other. Forums are not for every host but to say host's have no idea what to do with a forum is just not accurate.
Posted by oldgrunt, 02-12-2016, 11:08 AM
Well they are the only provider That I ever had send me a card after I had a severe illness. The only product I had/have with them is the cheapest VPS they have, or darn close to it. They recently spent a week working with me on an issue until we resolved it. Admittedly the communications back and forth were a big part of the problem, but they didn't quit.(I am betting that they are having nightmares about that one, I am, but I learned a lot in the end.)
Posted by DBH Web, 02-12-2016, 06:12 PM
I agree with TotalChoice - Bill we had a forum on our first hosting business for six years and it was a great way to find out what our customers thought, needed and wanted (Market Research) of course there were s few support questions but that was good too because we had a Customer Support forum where customers helped each other thus decreasing the load on our support team, they were monitored and if incorrect help was given one of our staff would step in and help correct the fault. Forums also add a personal touch to your business by giving you a place to converse with your clients on subjects that don't necessarily concern hosting, giving your company a more human face.
Posted by Nnyan, 02-13-2016, 03:23 PM
Forums like anything else are as good as what you put into it. There are soft benefits that you as a company get from taking the time, effort and resources to build a community out of them. This strikes me as being neglected to the point that you can justify closing them. I for one think it's a great opportunity for hosts, but one that takes involvement.
Posted by oldgrunt, 02-13-2016, 03:50 PM
Well they are the only provider That I ever had send me a card after I had a severe illness. The only product I had/have with them is the cheapest VPS they have, or darn close to it. They recently spent a week working with me on an issue until we resolved it. Admittedly the communications back and forth were a big part of the problem, but they didn't quit.(I am betting that they are having nightmares about that one, I am, but I learned a lot in the end.)
Posted by Kevin2001, 02-15-2016, 04:22 PM
Apparently some exciting news is coming from Servint, according to the new email I got from them today. https://www.servint.net/university/a...eid=f05d891824 I'll have to say that I've had nothing but positive experience with Servint since January 2005. But support seems to be a bit of an issue, seems like they exported support to another country? They don't seem as plugged in , and give a lot of generic answers to stuff they should be able to answer on the spot.
Posted by sleddog, 02-16-2016, 01:33 AM
For those who don't know, Servint's forums were private / customer-only, with logins created by Servint staff. So spam/maintenance wasn't an issue. I expect their user base has changed over time, with many of the self-help crowd who liked to hang out in the forums moving on to other, less expensive options. The VPS world has changed a lot since the Servint forums heyday in the mid-2000s.
Posted by kpmedia, 02-16-2016, 02:20 AM
EuroVPS and Stablehost sent me cards in the past. It's just another reason they're excellent hosts, too!
Posted by Lynx, 03-20-2016, 02:03 PM
Maybe I need to get sick. But I don't think they'd notice. I am sorry to see Servint forums closed too! It could still have much use. I suspect one of the reasons they have been closed is due to complaints - and I expect there would be many complaints after their roll-out of "managed services". What it seems is you will need to pay for help now. In the old days, they'd upgrade you to a new OS. It will cost you now, it seems (either a one-time-fee or you sign up for one of their managed services). I am still running a couple monitoring scripts written by one of the old members - have been logging loads for years. I am really sad to see the forums closed. I think if they were used right, NOC could have sent people to pertinent threads to solve simpler problems.
Posted by DewlanceHosting, 03-21-2016, 01:41 AM
I also close my forum not because of complaint, etc but because of spamming and google punish my site for this. My all site keywords was going down day by day then I look at forum and remove all external links and then my site SEO health recovered after a month. If they close their forum then maybe because of same reason or for some other reason like they can't monitor it or don't have a extra time for forum.
Posted by san-deep, 05-05-2016, 05:04 PM
I dont agree to many comments above, who said closing forums was good idea for numerous reasons like SPAM/SEO etc.. 1. Any forum behind username/password access (unless like WHT which is opened to guests/members. {private forums on WHT (like servint forums where), which requires a paid or customer access, and are not available to anyone, this includes guests/bots/unsubscribed members etc.} I had been on WHT privates often which where never accessible at anyone without subscriptions including guests or any search engine bots. 2. A notice would have been good if forums where to be taken down.. (as a fair practice) There had been many useful topics we got replied for (TECHNICALLY only) and will be very helpful to revert to them (or atleast would have saved those) 3. I will also agree with Servint decision, making a forum adds competitors who try and also succeed in luring age old customers hampering business.. Not sure about actual reasons.. but thats my comment as thought of making some comments to dashboard.. Happend to check "servint forums down/closed" query on google and landed here.. Best..