Innohosting review

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Posted by myotis, 02-27-2012, 05:39 AM
I feel like it's time for a NEW Innohosting review. I had plenty of experience with this host dating back from 2007 when I acquired a Professional Reseller account with them. As a web designer I also had the opportunity to deal with many other Innohosting accounts on different servers (many of them created to my recommendation). I used to recommend this host on WHT and all over the net. Not anymore! The first thing i have in mind now, when thinking of Innohosting is "long time ago in a far away galaxy" phrase. Starting with 2011 things are getting very nasty with this host. I managed to stay with them the last year just because of the "nice past" we had together. I will try to simply expose some FACTS: - Last year on 08-10-2011 server1.verygoodserver.com went down due to a severely corrupted file system. Until now nothing special, this kind of things happens in this industry. - As told in the forum I was waiting for the migration on a new server. Because my account was still missing after they told us in the forum the migration was complete, I opened a support ticket. - On 08-14-2011 comes the bad news: "I'm afraid to mention that our daily backup cycle was underway when the hard drive started to fail. This caused a handful of backups to be incorrectly generated and could not be restored. It appears your reseller domain was one of the corrupted backups. I have gone ahead an recreated your reseller domain so all of your other domains could resolve. If you have a backup, please upload it to the server so we can restore it for you." - My clients accounts where gone. In the next days with the help of Innohosting I manage to restore most of the accounts (not all). It was a very frustrating operation both for me and for my clients resulting more of 7 days of downtime for some website. I must recognize they had the good will to help us restore our accounts but this was simply happening because they don't had a backup - no matter how old. I also must state that the new server settings where different from the first which also gave us a lot of problems with some PHP websites and added more to the downtime of some websites. The story passed away. I was still with Innohosting like a bride with her bad husband ... sincerely hopping for a better future. Reading more carefully their forum. I must say Innohosting is not sending any email on a server failure to his resellers. All the information you get is the one posted on their forum. If you are not used reading the forum you can easily get in big problems. I also must state that reading the forum last year become trouble for my peace of mind. You can see all over the place problems with servers, client posts about downtimes more than 8 hours, servers not responding or responding slow, problems resolved today with nice logical explanation on what's happened... and the next day the same server is... down creating another explanation. You simply start thinking something is going very bad here and you are served a lot of **it from the staff. I must also say Rameen is doing a very polite job answering the questions. I still think this is the number one reason people are staying here despite downtimes Well after the last year nightmare of being moved to server2 on february 2012 i received the news that server2 is moved on another server and also the fact i must modify my private nameservers IP's. In the first place I was pretty committed to do that. I changed the nameservers ip's and that's the moment funny things started again to happens with innohosting. First my account was a US hosted account (i chosed US because i was hosting US clients there). The server i was moved on was suddenly appear it's an UK server when doing tracert and geoip. Well UK is nice despite the fact this is not what i'm paying for... I said to myself. I love the accent Home directory on the last server was "home2", the new one was "home" (i really don't understand why innohosting is not able to provide a STANDARD server setup with all his servers). Imagine yourself changing like 50 sites directories paths, sites that was not smart enough to get the path from __FILE__ for example. And this was not all. PHP settings where also different. Any migrations on innohosting usualy means changes in server setup. Problems, problems, problems. Days lost checking websites just because of different server setup This was the moment i gave up. I moved all my accounts to another server i have with another company. I also must state server performance in the last years shows me a degradation on all accounts i manage as a web designer. Slow uploads and high pings are usual with Innohosting US servers. I can not give you numbers, this is just my everyday feeling from 2011-2012. And now that i have plenty of time I decided to let other people know my opinion. I sincerely believe Innohosting is not a company to be with. Not anymore. There are plenty of better companies outhere to be with.
Posted by wolvyreen, 02-27-2012, 07:36 AM
Sorry to hear all your problems you experienced. I personally believe that the feeling you get in your stomach when things are not going like they should is one of the worst feelings you can experience. Especially when you have multiple clients wanting an explanation and calling every 5 min. I had the same problems with my previous host and also stayed with them just because I was loyal but there comes a time when you have to make a decision. I think you gave them plenty of opportunity. I fear my current provider is going down the same route as I have never heard of so many raid failures in 1 month from 1 host before. I am keeping a close eye these days. You are absolutely correct, a server set-up should be standardised and NO settings should change unless it improves things. Not ruin things. It was a good thing you had your own backups! But 7 days is waaay too long for them to restore your accounts. And on top of that all the settings you had to fix.... Man...I hope your clients were understanding enough.
Posted by myotis, 02-27-2012, 08:37 AM
Just curious: What hosting company are you using wolvyreen?
Posted by myotis, 02-27-2012, 08:55 AM
As for the feeling yes it's bad and you name it right. I'm not furious. This post is not the result of one fresh mistake from Inno. It's something I build up in the last 2 years. I expect for example Rameen to answer my post, in order to protect his business, but nothing he will say will never make me feel like trying Innohosting again. And just to point out the truth: 7 days or more not because Innohosting response where this slow, but just because of the situation: contact client -> client searching for backup or contacting his web designer to ask for a backup -> me asking inno to search for a backup for that account and so on. At the end the client had the site down for 1 week or more. Last edited by myotis; 02-27-2012 at 08:59 AM.
Posted by lastminutehosting, 02-27-2012, 09:31 AM
I am so sorry you experienced a problem with your provider hopefully your new host is treating you well.
Posted by rwilki, 02-27-2012, 10:57 AM
I've had great luck with them for the most part. Unfortunately, I can't access my inno sites and I'm not hearing back from tech support. I'm not too happy right now.
Posted by daniel022, 02-27-2012, 11:13 AM
I contacted tech support via phone and they informed me that they were having some problems but could not give me an estimated time. The worst part is that they always tell you to check updates at their forum which is not working either. I am on a reseller hosting with them and really like their service, but unfortunately this past week has been hell for me. My server (26) was down for about 24 hours and had to deal with all my angry clients, giving them incentives to stay on board. And now this. It is going to be a looong day. I am also migrating all my client's email accounts to google apps in the near future so that at least their emails work whenever the server is down.
Posted by rwilki, 02-27-2012, 11:15 AM
daniel, google apps is a good idea. i think they say that server 47 is having problems too. it's being blamed on a ddos attack. i hope it's cleared up fast...
Posted by daniel022, 02-27-2012, 11:20 AM
Everything seems to be back up for me now, hope your sites are up too.
Posted by rwilki, 02-27-2012, 11:26 AM
yep. Seems great now. thanks for the update...
Posted by myotis, 02-27-2012, 11:49 AM
server26 is up and running from my location (RO) but server47 is still down. Hope this info helps.
Posted by rv_irl, 02-27-2012, 11:56 AM
I'm not sure what "facts" there are to expose and on some of them you've made pure guesswork Server 1 did have issues as did server 2. Servers 1 to 5 are very *very* old servers. Like any decent host, we decommission old hardware. That's what happened with servers 1 & 2. We take a pro-active approach to ensuring we keep keep things running smoothly. Likewise, we're not going to let EOL software run on the servers. This is the thing that bothers me most. You've steered off the purpose of your review and it's now about what else you can write to give this review the shock factor, the experience you've had are things typical in this industry. Hardware issues. So now it's about gossiping about a select number of threads you have seen on our forums, blown it out or proportion for the sake of it favouring your review, which co-incidentally is contradicting. Staff is not doing a good job, but then they are? If we were having anywhere near the level of downtime you've made out, a lot more people would be writing here. This is again speculation. That isn't true at all. A trace route will show the IP going to LA, USA. A GeoIP would incorrectly inform you because it's owned a by a UK organisation. So you must have read the trace route incorrectly because you're on a US server. I'm sorry you had issues with us, but I really think the events have been fluffed up for the purpose of the review. I agree, there were hardware issues, those issues were fixed as fast possible. You had been with us for about 5 years and experienced two hardware issues. Last edited by rv_irl; 02-27-2012 at 12:02 PM.
Posted by myotis, 02-27-2012, 12:21 PM
Let's say I agree with your comments. But the corrupted backup part? How do you explain that? And yes I know your TOS does not guarantee any backup. But any good company will provide at least an old one NOT CORRUPTED. Your staff explanation that the backup was corrupted because server1 failure just when the backup was running give me another "guesswork" and this guesswork sincerely give me creeps. I faced a lot of servers failures with other companies but they never failed to restore all my accounts like Innohosting did. After that I still continued to use innohosting. By the way if you knew server2 is outdated too why do you migrated me on server2 after server1 crash? Just to face another migration a few months later? As for people writing here - last year when I faced that big downtime I didn't write here a word. I rarely write on forums and only when something is getting me VERY hungry or very happy. By the way you have at least one server down and 2 clients talking here about that. Anyway I made my point and i don't want to start a fight with you so I will stop here. Last edited by myotis; 02-27-2012 at 12:35 PM.
Posted by rv_irl, 02-27-2012, 12:27 PM
You're still guessing. You were moved and the server decommissioned. It was an old old server from years ago. The server you were put on (you were migrated from server1/2 to server 57) had 3x sets of backups on 3 different servers. That's how bad of a web hosting company we are. That we perform 3x different sets of backups for our customers. At any one time, we have 3 copies of client files on 3 different servers ranging from daily, weekly in addition to multiple snapshots throughout the day using R1Soft. I understood pretty well what your point and what your intention here was. So, thank you for the review, I'm sorry it didn't work out. I wish you all the best with the future. Last edited by rv_irl; 02-27-2012 at 12:41 PM.
Posted by wolvyreen, 02-27-2012, 12:50 PM
I must be honest, I don't like the tone of InnoHosting(Rameen) here. DISCLAIMER! This is only my opinion from what I read on this page. He wasn't only referring to hardware issues. He also mentioned that when he was migrated, all the settings of the server were messed up. Account root paths incorrect, PHP settings causing sites not to work. etc. But wasn't it mentioned that you never had any backups when the server crashed???? You say you do backups but you never even had OLD backups.... GuessWork is when you say "I think..." or "Maybe...". I don't see guess work. I see him stating the facts from his point of view. This is simply not true. I have a hard time agreeing here. The thread was started today and so far there has been 2 other people that commented their server was down. That doesn't mean there isn't downtime. It simply means that maybe those people aren't reading this certain thread today. I'm sorry but this just sounds like you are sour. No offence but it really does!
Posted by HostXNow_Chris, 02-27-2012, 01:00 PM
If that is true, it doesn't sound so bad when you put it like that. Hardware failure can happen with any host at any time. Not taking sides here. Just my 2¢.
Posted by wolvyreen, 02-27-2012, 01:04 PM
Thats true, but the client didn't only refer to hardware issues. Also not taking sides.....just stating the facts of this thread.
Posted by rv_irl, 02-27-2012, 01:34 PM
55 months to precise. The client was moved from a server that was 5-6 years old, to one of our newer builds that is a vast improvement to when we were a very small company operating from a handful of servers. We use a standardised set up across all our new builds, since a couple of years ago. From time to time, we replace servers that are simply too old to prevent catastrophic failures and they always follow our standard build policy. In majority of cases, such upgrades involve zero downtime to customers. IP addresses, nameservers etc. are all migrated to the new build. The customer doesn't have to do anything and their site never misses a beat. Because this client was on such an old server, IP changes had to be made because he was on our old Mzima network and he was moved onto a premium mix of carriers (instead of being with a single carrier), set up had been improved in the new server and software was more up to date with a lot more features as well. Software that are no longer supported by vendors *have* to be removed because when vulnerabilities are found in that software, the vendor isn't going to release patches. The users issues were all pretty much related to a server move. Nothing was 'messed up'. He moved from old hardware onto a new set up and while every care is taken to accommodate such moves, there are going to be teething problems and support is always willing to help out and get the issue resolved. Saying he performed a trace route and it went to a UK server when it really didn't isn't something I'd call a fact. But he stated it as such. Saying high ping times are normal and stating it as fact is also not true. He is using a US based server while he's based in Romania. Ping time is relative to your location and is affected by so many things on both ends. If you need lower latency, you should get a server that is closer to you, i.e. one of our Europe based servers in the UK. Nor do I agree with gossiping about what other customers may or may not being experiencing. That's not opinion nor fact. For example, the user states server 26 is up in an update, but that's not true. There is no such thing as server 26 because that was decommissioned a while ago and moved onto a newer build. Now this is just my opinion, but it seems like the user had ran out of things to say and so had to resort to saying such things to add more impact to the 'review', to make it look worse than a couple of hardware issues in 55 months. All you have to do is look through our negative reviews regarding downtime and read the nature of them. Anything over an hour is a huge deal for our customers because they aren't used to having such downtime with us. Normally, things hum along just fine which is when there is an issue, it's a major thing. You have some hosts experience days and days of downtime but we do our best to ensure inevitable downtime is resolved fast. But some servers are going to experience issues regardless of the provider. We've been pro-active in replacing old hardware, pro-active in ensuring we keep things patched and up to date. If a client isn't happy with us, all they need to do is let us know. If you're having extended issues, let us know and we'll fix it - fast. Honestly, if this client had contacted me and let me know his issues, the outcome of this would have been the total opposite. We've been operating for almost 10 years now, and we couldn't have done so if we didn't care for our customers or always had downtime. It's the fact that we don't have regular issues, that we properly maintain our servers and provide prompt support that allows us to stay in business. It's of no benefit to us not to resolve issues. We don't have thousands of customers signing up per day, nor do we have a high customer turnover. We focus on building long lasting relationships with our customers, and it's evident that we did in this case as well. It's unfortunate that after almost 5 years the customer has decided to leave. Did he experience issues with us? Of course he did, non of that has been denied. Issues will happen that we simply cannot avoid and are inevitable. But those issues are rare and the quality of the hardware we're using ensures we have all our bases covered. Last edited by rv_irl; 02-27-2012 at 01:40 PM.
Posted by myotis, 02-27-2012, 01:40 PM
Rameen may I post: Ticket HHG-300152 (the original story). Ticket KEH-724914 (never resolved - i've just give up on restoring that database account). Is this against your TOS or WHT rules? I also want to post with websites and usernames moderated (replaced with stars). Is this OK?
Posted by wolvyreen, 02-27-2012, 01:44 PM
myotis - I don't think it matters whether it is against Innohosting's TOS but it might be against the WHT TOS. Not sure.
Posted by rv_irl, 02-27-2012, 01:46 PM
Thank you for letting me know the ticket ID's. I can see in HHG-300152 the site was successfully restored from backups and in ticket KEH-724914 a database was restored but you disputed the integrity of it. You're free to post, it's not against our ToS but not that it matters now anyway. If you want to submit ticket ID's for my attention for the purpose of feedback then PM'ing me here would be best, then I can at least go into much more detail.
Posted by myotis, 02-27-2012, 02:10 PM
Rameen ALL my account where never restored completely. After Ticket KEH-724914 i simply gave up on this subject. On original Ticket HHG-300152 some accounts where restored by Inno, some by me or my clients because they where simply missing and some account I was not aware that yet... where missing like the one in the later ticket. All this story as you can see from tickets date begin in 10 (server failure), continues on 14-22 (original ticket when i thought everything is ok at the end) and it is still going next month on KEH-724914 where i simply gave up on asking Innohosting to restore missing accounts.
Posted by rv_irl, 02-27-2012, 02:40 PM
I'm not denying that a server issue existed. There was a server issue which is why you were migrated. I'll definitely look into the tickets and see what went on with your account. From the top of my head, I don't recall other customers having this issue (data loss) as we restored all the accounts, but if you're saying you did, then I'll look obviously look into it.
Posted by starline, 03-02-2012, 09:47 PM
1 Even though I'm not a inno customer, I always appreciated the way they run their business and honest clarifications for reviews here. But, the reply's in this thread from Rameen seems to be more of a kind of offensive. It seems he is just trying to prove his customer is always wrong, even though there seems to be valid stuff in op's posts.
Posted by CrocWeb, 03-03-2012, 01:44 AM
Atleast he said he will look into it further.
Posted by FiberFy, 03-03-2012, 10:16 AM
I don't agree and I would answer this issue in a very similar way. Come on, you guys are simply ignoring the fact that: 1 - Hardware issues DO HAPPEN 2 - InnoHosting is not responsible for your backups, otherwise you should look for a company that bills you 10x what they do to sign a contract stating their responsabilities for your OWN backups. <- But stills, they are kind enough to run some backups and believe me, as you should know, R1Soft Licenses and Servers are NOT cheap at all. (Not even going to mention BW too, etc) I've seen lots of companies emailing customers just like this "Sorry, but the HDD in the server you are on simply failed, you need to upload your backups" It's stated in their TOS that they are not responsible, and this is one of the cases that TOS indeed apply. You need to protect your business, and in this case, I see as a dignity matter too, I do not see Rameen being abusive in any way. , but stating facts that happen all the time.
Posted by wolvyreen, 03-03-2012, 10:36 AM
If this is the case, I'm making a note not to ever sign up with you. Cause seeing as though we are stating facts, if you can't see there was a tone or tood, then you need to read it carefully again. Noone is arguiing that the responsibility of backups falls on the client. I also don't see the client complaining that it was inno's fault about the hardware failure. most of the issues were AFTER the server was restored and some of the settings were causing problems. AND even though he provided all the backups for restoral, inno did not do it properly. I think you need to read the thread again
Posted by FiberFy, 03-03-2012, 10:39 AM
First than money, comes dignity, so I apologise but I wouldn't let a client blame me if I feel it is not right. I read the thread, thanks. Customers love to, sometimes, turn the situation/fault. I do not see a fault of cooperation here, do you?
Posted by wolvyreen, 03-03-2012, 11:40 AM
then you clearly haven't heard of the term "the customer is always right even if he isn't." It doesn't matter how right you think you are, if you want the clients money badly enough, you should run circles around them. If you don't, well...then we meet people like you who will argue with clients. Even though Rameen might have a lot of merit in his facts which I am not disputing, there is a professional way of handling things and having an attitude or tone in a public forum is not going to do very well for his own business. If he handled it better, I think that he could have proven that he was not at fault. BUT, when you come with an attitude or tone, people start questioning the facts a little deeper.Of course I do. so do other people in this thread. Are you saying we are ALL wrong? Last edited by wolvyreen; 03-03-2012 at 11:43 AM.
Posted by FiberFy, 03-03-2012, 12:07 PM
Would you give your arm and a leg for a client, when you tried your best to solve any pending issues? We're just pushing it too much. I do not see a bad attitude from Rameen, and as you said, he does have merit. I see a willingness to help his client. I see someone here who loves to argue, and trying to get an even bigger discussion. I suggest the OP to contact Rameen directly and be straight to the point, I love when people come here and reply not to calm down and understand both sides, but to try to increase the "angerness".
Posted by wolvyreen, 03-03-2012, 12:37 PM
Well, I don't think you are taking all the facts entirely in to consideration. That's only my opinion though. I still don't argue with clients. They pay me to ... how did you put it? ... and they pay me to always be Thats just the way I see good customer service.... I noticed in your signature you recommend inno. You do realise that looks a little buyist seeing as though you are advertising for them?
Posted by FiberFy, 03-03-2012, 01:19 PM
Business needs to be fair for both, don't see just the client side. There are companies dropping clients because they simply abuse from their staff and several other things. That's not what I'm talking about here. The main subject I'm talking about is the fact that Rameen did not give up from his client and is still willing to solve any pending issues, and that, believe me, should not be solved here, in WHT. Yes, I do recommend InnoHosting and several other companies I'm currently using. Is that forbidden per WHT rules? I don't care/bother if you see me like that. You've only posted 70+ messages, and you look quite new here, so don't make your assumptions based on my signature. I speak for the good and bad about every and any companies I ever used.
Posted by wolvyreen, 03-03-2012, 01:31 PM
lol, the amount of my posts has nothing to do with this. The fact that you looked up my number of posts is so lame!! lawl! You imply im not an experienced poster... If I had 500posts would it really make a difference? maybe 1000posts? which would suit you? Btw, we were never talking about ABUSIVE clients! that's a whole different ballgame. The OP was never abusive! You are only going on what Rameen says about this and you are defending him blindly. You were not part of the troubleshooting process or the communication between the OP and Rameen. So you can't make statements like that. I am going on the OP's and Rameen's tone & attitude. I don't defend the OP or Rameen. I'm only stating that bad tones and attitudes don't fare well in this business. You are the only one in this thread so far to state that Rameen did not have a bad tone. I only stated a fact of what I saw. You have been defending inno like a tiger wanting fresh meat and it just looks kinda suspicious when you advertise for them too. It's only an observation. and as I stated before MY OPINION no-one elses but I don't want to cause bad blood between you and me. so I won't respond to this debate after this post. peace
Posted by FiberFy, 03-03-2012, 01:53 PM
If I shouldn't judge you for your newly experience in WHT, and specially with my reputation/dignity, then please don't judge me for my signature. I use their services, I'm satisfied with it, I also use WHT and I do use the freedom of speech. It doesn't mean I'm working for InnoHosting. You clearly failed to understand my points and still, you're trying to make it an even bigger drama. You have the OP that did not post yet to Rameen's last reply and then you have Rameen here ready to help him and solve any pending issues. Let's keep it between them, and let them fix this instead of trying to make it look worse. I wish you the best luck, no hard feelings at all. Last edited by FiberFy; 03-03-2012 at 02:00 PM.
Posted by wolvyreen, 03-03-2012, 01:57 PM
I know i said i wouldnt respond but i just feel that i have to mention this:I didn't fail cause if i did, then others did too when they felt that rameen had a bad tone and attitude. I also wasn't judging you. I was only stating facts. if the roles were reversed you would think the same. but you have your opinion and I have mine I'm kewl with that but u can't judge me just cause I have had 70 posts.
Posted by FiberFy, 03-03-2012, 02:33 PM
The way you express yourself and given the fact that you did not resist to reply me, says everything. Let's keep this ontopic, it's enough. Have a nice weekend
Posted by wolvyreen, 03-03-2012, 02:50 PM
you like to coax people to respond to you ... you arent innocent!
Posted by anon-e-mouse, 03-04-2012, 12:05 AM
As the OP seems to have moved on, let's close this now derailed thread.