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Donhost - very poor service

Posted by kirbister, 02-03-2008, 05:55 PM
I've been a reseller account customer with Donhost for many years. In the early days the manner of the eponymous Mr Conlon was abrupt to say the least, and accounts were deleted or suspended at the drop of a hat - usually without warning. They had a simple control panel and enviable uptime. Then they reduced the bandwidth from 50GB to 20GB and charged a hefty overage rate. The thought of shifting 250 accounts always made me stay. Anyway, I had a client's account suspended yesterday with no warning or explanation - it's been on the site for years with no trouble, being about local archeology, so hardly in the front line of breaking their Ts & Cs. Client was most upset and I lodged a support ticket. Over 24 hours later, no word or reply to my ticket, despite a polite further request. So I ring the contact number to be told they don't know why it was suspended and a technician will look at it probably tomorrow - 2 days after it was taken down with no notice. Apparently there was no one authorised to bring it back on the premises - so much for 24-hour support. I know web hosting's getting more competitive, but offering such shoddy and unsupported service really angered me. I'm not likely to switch my accounts in the near future but Donhost have become much more unreliable and slow to respond in recent months. And this just adds insult to injury - avoid them like the plague is my recommendation...
Posted by mindadapanda, 02-03-2008, 06:40 PM
well have you tried looking around and asking hosts if they can help you migrate and move your sites. I am pretty sure that is a very viable solution. Because as competition gets rough the technology increases to keep up with demand.
Posted by steven99, 02-03-2008, 07:14 PM
Moving so many accounts is hard, but if you're so unhappy with them, you may want to look at another host and start doing new accounts there as well as slowly moving the existing accounts over. I rarely say such things, but if they can't bring an account up until someone "higher up" comes in the next day, then their business model needs help.
Posted by astutiumRob, 02-03-2008, 08:06 PM
If you're not getting the level of service you need, then voting with your feet is often the only option. Migrating 250 accounts is a small job compared to trying to build your business again if it all goes t!tsup.com You are aware DonHost was puchased a year ago ?
Posted by neil@ukwebhosting, 02-03-2008, 08:17 PM
I can only speak from a previous reliable well respected Hosting business owner (who sold to a ***) that Donhost were bad. So yes, start moving!
Posted by Shaw Networks, 02-04-2008, 11:09 PM
Ugh, that sounds like a nightmare, any luck finding a new host?
Posted by kirbister, 02-09-2008, 06:32 AM
I have started looking... Eventually spoke to someone in authority who said the suspension was because of excessive bandwidth consumed by the site. Fair enough, it did consume 80GB in December. But this is February! January was about 3GB by comparison and all other months were much lower than 3GB. Donhost also never gave warning by email which I find unforgivable - by all means suspend a site but do have the decency to tell us first! This experience has made me vow never to rely on Donhost...
Posted by MillenniumHosting, 02-09-2008, 11:19 AM
Looks like they need to help themselves as well as their business model in this scenario. Honestly, I would always contact the client before a suspension is to be made and give them a reasonable amount of time to reply. If I was in your shoes, I wouldn't have put up with it, instead, I would do whatever it took to get the accounts migrated to a more reliable and supporting host. If you're a reseller you need all the support that you can get from a fellow business individual.
Posted by ldcdc, 02-09-2008, 09:07 PM
Strange. On their site I see: http://www.donhost.co.uk/products/resellerpro.html
Posted by MillenniumHosting, 02-10-2008, 03:04 AM
That is strange, so much for unmetered.
Posted by Johnny Cache, 02-13-2008, 06:45 AM
It's been a few days since the last post, but I feel inclined to share my experience with Donhost. It's been a couple of years since this happened, but I purchased a reseller account through them, within 24 hours of successful propagation, my site was up about 10 hours before something fell over and I couldn't connect to it for the majority of the evening. The next day another user was sucking up most of the CPU. It took another three hours to fix that. The following evening my website was timing out again, so I gave up and canceled service. I can't deal with downtime less than a day after setup. My response was simply; "This has been refunded, thanks for wasting our time." I honestly don't know how they've managed to stick around as long as they have. That remark alone enabled me to classify DonHost as my worst hosting experience by far, in the eight years I've been doing this. Another thing I got to thinking about...with DH's proprietary control panel, (it is, right?) will it be that much more difficult to migrate websites to a new provider that runs, say, cPanel or Plesk? Last edited by Johnny Cache; 02-13-2008 at 06:51 AM. Reason: spelling. it's late. :-P
Posted by ldcdc, 02-13-2008, 07:40 AM
Since the only way to do the move would be manual, it could potentially be time consuming. It depends on how many sites, email accounts etc you have and thus have to recreate and move.
Posted by astutiumRob, 02-13-2008, 08:47 AM
With many of the large providers, they "stick around" based on massive ad campaigns, and being "cheap" which means most customers will put up with cr@p service.
Posted by Johnny Cache, 02-13-2008, 10:01 AM
That's actually kind of sad that DonHost takes such little pride in their quality of service. If indeed the company wanted to focus more on dedicated servers as opposed to resellers, I would probably just stop accepting new reseller clients, and retain the ones I had on the current equipment, rather than providing shoddy service until the customer eventually gives up and looks elsewhere. Actions like that will result in this very thing; telling the world to avoid this company. If you ask me, this is just pathetic business practice. Does anyone from DH ever come to WHT? Or are they the ones in this thread with 1 total post count (that happen to be in favor of them?)
Posted by Johnny Cache, 02-13-2008, 10:04 AM
I'm referring to the following thread: ] http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...hlight=Donhost What worried me most about this person's response was that they're a _web host_ that doesn't seem to mind if FTP isn't functioning, admits the company's got issues, but STILL suggests that we "don't skimp out on our hosting." Anybody else find the fodder in this? Last edited by Johnny Cache; 02-13-2008 at 10:08 AM.
Posted by nevsie, 06-13-2008, 07:43 AM
So far what i have read is not far wrong... i have used them for a while and since i joined (when they were better back in early 2000) there has been a steady decline in service, support, and quality. What is even better is that the support seem to become more arrogant, rude, and careless. All odd considering that ihave not really seen an update in their product offering in 5 years - yes still the same control panel... My latest adventure with them this week has been a messed up mail server - problems lasting 4 days and unresolved. On top of that one of their reseller servers went down with a raid error. This basically resulted in them needing to rebuild server and re-install, etc. So far this has taken 2 and half days of down time, with no web sites up, no emails arriving, and customers being ignored and no updated. What is best is the staff are still working a 8-5 (no they are not 24 hours), and they do not stay late to fix problems, they can wait till the next morning!!! I am in the same situation as above with the slow and painful process of moving 100 accounts or so... It just needs to be done... Anyway, all hosts have issues, even dedi boxes might go down. It is how well the host deals with it thats important. Donhost suck, and i would not advise reseller or dedicated boxes with them (nor the partnered webfusion, even if they are fractionally better with support.