My Review of Surpass Hosting....

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Posted by vegasblaze, 01-17-2005, 12:41 AM
Hello... I will write a fair review of Surpass Hosting/Hostdime. I was on their reseller program for about 4 months. A total of 6 months combined for being within the Hostdime Environment. Let me begin first by saying I was with Hostdime for about 2 months. Their customer support was awful -- so I left them and switched over to Surpass Hosting. So this review will be about Surpass and the Datacenter they host at (DimeNoc), which is owned by Hostdime. This is for reseller accounts -- not dedicated. On the upside: 1) Friendly staff 2) Great customer support 3) Great community 4) Great costs 5) Allows adult hosting 6) They will do anything to please you. On the downside: 1) Their uptime is terrible (around 85% for me) 2) Their equipment is bad (apache, mysql, ftp always fails) 3) Their communication is bad on the forums 4) Many canned first responses in emails 5) Security is bad 6) Server Status page is inaccurate Overview: Upon first signing up with them, they were very cool. Friendly as can be, very helpful and informative. They created a forum and recommended all users subscribe to it -- that they would use this forum to keep us informed. Yet they NEVER post in this forum. As an example, on New Years Eve, ALL SITES were down for about 4-6 hours minimum. Yet they never posted the problem, what happened, etc. in that forum. I believe a tech support guy did make a post somewhere else in the forum, but unless you knew where the post was, you would not know it existed. They should have posted in the fourm where they told us to subscribe too. Come one, 6 hours of downtime is a BIG DEAL!! I mean, what if you were out partying and your site was down for 6 hours -- you would not know, therefore, you would not claim your refund for the month -- which you SHOULD be entitled too! I found that to be VERY WRONG. The next day, my site was still down -- that's 12 hours of downtime! I had requested a move to another server because I am loyal and knew they were having problems. So they gladly switched me over in about 2 days. Upon making the switch, my site has gone up-n-down all the time. It is just not consistent. Every email I send, I get the same "canned" response of "we're investigating the issue, we thank you for your patience." After a while, you decide not to send in a support ticket, because the same problems keep occurring... apache fails, mysql fails, etc. Their server status page displays what servers are supposedly down -- but this completely inaccurate. There have been plenty of times where servers are down yet do not display on that status page. So the users often go to the community (surmunity.com) and chat amongst each other to see what the problem is. You can learn a lot about a hosting company by viewing their forums too. Security is a big problem at Surpass. My site was already hacked once and they get so many DDOS attacks on their reseller servers, that it's almost a joke. It seems every other day there is a problem with a severe DDOS attack -- which stalls all the resellers on the server and their sites go down or become very sluggish. The community (surmunity.com) is the backbone to surpass and is the best forum community i have ever seen. Many users are very active in there and help each other out with problems. Bar none, the best support community I have seen. Their staff busts their butts in doing whatever they have to do to keep you happy. They give refunds, lower rates, whatever you want. Top notch customer support definitely! Their biggest problem is their datacenter (Hostdime-DimeNoc) -- this is not good at all! You will hear many people say "My site has not had any downtime since I've hosted with them." But what you must ask these same people is "Yes, but how often do you REALLY access your site?" Most people that host anywhere are not serious webmasters where they are required to access, upload and update their sites 18 hours day. These people have no clue of how often their sites are up or down UNLESS somebody says to them, "Hey, I could not access your site." Using a free service like siteuptime.com is not proof enough either -- because the free service only accesses your site every 30 minutes. Unless you pay for the upgrade plan on siteuptime, the free services are not reliable stats. I access and work on my web site during twilight hours and my site at best has been up for 92% in any given month. Last month was the worst -- at only 85%!!! DNS issues seem to be a common problem at surpass too. I don't know they are having problems with this, but there are many times where my site had dns issues and could not be accessed for around 20 minutes. Of course, this is not really considered "downtime" according to most hosting companies, but in my opinion, if a person cannot access your site period, then it's DOWN! Final Analysis: I don't recommend them -- as I believe you can find a better host with less customer support that has better uptime. Don't get me wrong, customer support is important -- but what good is it if all you are doing is contacting them about your site being down? Uptime should not be below 98% in my opinion. I give them 3 out of 5 stars... mainly because of their support and community. If you have a high traffic web site, then definitely Surpass is NOT for you. I do not believe in the saying "You get what you pay for." There are plenty of good companies out there with competitive costs... but I do believe in "We get what we deserve!" I stayed with Surpass because I liked the community and they were friendly -- I am loyal. But my loyalty went against my own better judgment and I got what I deserved as a result. I don't blame Surpass for anything, as they did their best -- I blame myself for not leaving sooner. I hope this review was helpful. -- BlaZe -- Last edited by vegasblaze; 01-17-2005 at 12:48 AM.
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-17-2005, 06:16 AM
This was a great review, indeed. You obviously try hard to stay away from those just out to bash a host, and provide all of the angles for people to consider. Unfortunately, this review is all too true. It describes almost perfectly my past experiences with their companies. The community was the only thing keeping me around (server and network uptime had already proven to be sketchy at best), and when that started to go downhill (with massive amounts of thread deletions regarding anything slightly negative toward the company or a dislike in services) I felt it best to leave. Invest the extra money into a company with better facilities that is better able to cope with the large number of clients they have. (Mostly) nice staff and cheap costs do not always equal the best option. You will not find a more unbiased and helpful review of HostDime/Surpass than what vegasblaze has written. Take it all to heart when considering signing up.
Posted by miracle, 01-17-2005, 06:21 AM
I think your review is very true. they DO have the best custom support I've met. but their datacenter is not good, as I can see in some photos of their datacenter, most computers are PC, not real server spec. and their network is not good enough, can't handle ddos attack, and uptime is not good. I hope they can improve their network, and computer spec. I heard they'll add Level 3 carrier soon. I hope it can help.
Posted by vegasblaze, 01-17-2005, 06:33 AM
Miakeru -- I actually think I remember seeing you post on Surmunity. :-) Yah, sorry to hear you left them too... but at least you got out early. I hope your newer host is much better for you. I tried to post in the forums on surmunity to say goodbye and why I was leaving, but they deleted it. Ahhhh well, who can blame them, right? Can't expect them to allow people to tell the truth about their negative experiences -- it's bad for business. (Ha!) I'll tell ya right now -- if it weren't for Surmunity, Surpass would not stay afloat. Their community makes all the good sense out of surapss -- and they know this too. -- BlaZe --
Posted by NeoGen, 01-17-2005, 12:14 PM
vegasblaze: Are you sure their uptime was 85% during your 4 months of stay That means your sites were down for total of 18 DAYS!
Posted by vegasblaze, 01-17-2005, 12:52 PM
No, my site was up for 85% last month, not the entire 4 months. The best percentage it has ever held was 92% over the last 4 months. I have site monitoring done every 3 minutes and there were MANY times my site would be down for nearly 6 hours at a time. And no I am not joking. -- BlaZe --
Posted by ldcdc, 01-17-2005, 01:23 PM
vegasblaze, that review was a very good read. Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed report! You've done a very good job!
Posted by markjut, 01-17-2005, 04:23 PM
Good review! 85% is terrible
Posted by datacenterdirectory, 01-17-2005, 04:26 PM
Yes very good review. I hope enough people read this thread so they don't have to go through that bad uptime experience.
Posted by mp3sattack, 01-17-2005, 08:45 PM
i've had a dedicated with them for many months and the only downtime i remember was with the hurricane in the area. And just taking a look around surmunity, here's couple of dedicated reviews from other surpass users (i will see if i can find some about resellers)
Posted by HD Fanatic, 01-18-2005, 12:20 AM
That's a great review that touches many things. I have to agree with many things that you've mentioned. I had a shared hosting account with them for over one year. Their network really needs to be upgraded, many interminnent downtimes resulting from dns issues and the like. Their servers get ddos a lot, don't know how they keep constantly going down. Other hosting companies can withstand these kidn of attacks, for example sagonet.net withstood a 900Mbit ddoss, it's amazing. Even though support is fast, their responses are often short, they don't answer alll your questions. Many times, it gets forward to an admin which takes at least a few hours for a reply. There were times when I had to wait over 24 hours for a reply. They need more admins to work 24/7 there. I can't forget the 5 hour downtimes on new year's eve. They never offered compensation to the customers. No announcements, subscribing to the email list is uselsss. There have been only 1 or 2 emails from them about server announcements since I signed up. What good is it if they don't let the customers know what's happening. Their servers seem very fragile, there were a few times when their server crashed and everyone lost their data. Apparently, someone had deleted the backups by mistake. Also, there were many times that I have to tell support the have forgotten to do something. It seems evident that there are many incompetent folks working there. There are a fwe good points though. Fast and friendly support, cheap costs, great community. But their network, uptime, and connections needs to be improved. To sum it up, if you have a website that needs be up all the time, don't sign up with them. If you can afford some downtime, then it probably works for you, their costs can't be beat. The uptime is terrible, there's issues left and right. They always tell you that they are working on this and that when there's a problem but dont provide details on what's being done to rectify the ongoing problems. If Surpass can upgrade their datacenter, improve ddos prevention with better systems and failover capabilities, they will be much better off. Surpass gets a 3/5 in my books because of their forums, it's very active, otherwise, it would be just a 2/5. Last edited by HD Fanatic; 01-18-2005 at 12:31 AM.
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-18-2005, 05:55 AM
That's fantastic, but after being a fairly prominent member of the community for quite some time, posts like the one you just made hold no value in my eyes whatsoever. Surpass Hosting and HostDime staff had contacted me on a few occasions asking me to post in defense of their company, especially when a thread like this one cropped up. It's easy to find good reviews on Surmunity due, in major part, to the fact that all bad ones are deleted on the spot. This eliminates the need to weed through any posts that could possibly shine a negative light on their operation.
Posted by vegasblaze, 01-18-2005, 06:57 AM
Yes, this is true -- Surpass deletes any kind of negative post on their fourms that deals with their services. Oh, and by the way --- mp3sattack stated that the only downtime he had experienced was back in August during the hurricanes -- this only proves to me that he was not aware of the downtime on New Years Eve, which was (on average) a minimum of 5 hours for most people. The dedicated servers were up first no doubt -- but not before 4 hours of downtime. Every server on Surpass was down that night -- including dedicated servers. And that is a FACT! Regardless, as I have heard from plenty of people on Surpass who have a dedicated server that they are very happy with their uptime. But again, as I stated in my review - this is a review about their RESELLER PLAN, not their dedicated plans. I have no idea what the uptimes are for their dedicated plans, but my impression was led to believe they are much better and a lot more consistent. My review was extremely fair and honest -- I am only giving My Personal Opinion from my own experience, and I do hope it helps people reach their own conclusions subjectively. People need to know the truth about both good things and bad things -- not just one or the other. I like Surpass and their staff -- very cool people and they even gave me an award for being a good surmunity poster for Christmas (a $35 Amazon.com gift certificate.) But again, they have problems with uptime on reseller accounts. Like it or lump it, it's the truth and it was time to say goodbye. -- BlaZe -- Last edited by vegasblaze; 01-18-2005 at 07:02 AM.
Posted by Companyideas, 01-18-2005, 02:29 PM
That's another one scratched from my shortlist of hosts, thanks for the review very well written if I may say so. With this review and ZoneServ going bye bye this is making my decision easier by the day. Thanks again David
Posted by markjut, 01-18-2005, 03:41 PM
Ouch, good review - thanks
Posted by privatesale, 01-18-2005, 06:25 PM
good to know about them.
Posted by mp3sattack, 01-18-2005, 06:45 PM
and i said which is not the same, oki? and by the way, now that you repeated that, and now that i REMEMBER i had a warning email (from another service i use) that the site was down that day (for whatever amount of time), so i may have a bad memory but i'm not a liar. Just as general comment, the slowest days of traffic in my site during the year are exactly december 25th and january 1st., and that has been since it has existed and gone through different hostings. ...whatever, go with the companies that are praised all around WHT but when you fall for them, the support is null and they charge for every single finger you move (and yes, i've gone through that).
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-18-2005, 08:46 PM
Are you instead suggesting that people sign up with companies that get poor reviews on these forums? Great advice.. the worth of your opinions just lost even more value. There actually ARE some good hosting companies out there, and they do receive good reviews here. I am happiliy hosted at MidPhase (again) and had no inhibitions with pre-paying a year of service with them. I had a previous experience with their services that has yet to be beat by any other company. I find it quite interesting that when others posted other downtime descriptions of Surpass, you immediately jump into uber-defensive mode and single out comments where you state that the only ones you can "remember" are what you posted before. Gee, it sure is easy to forget about particular periods of downtime when bribed by your host, isn't it? Put your pom-poms away.
Posted by vegasblaze, 01-18-2005, 10:40 PM
I never said you were a liar mp3sattack. I said that by you saying what you did, it only proved to me that you were not aware of the downtime on New Years Eve -- like I am sure MANY didn't know about it either. Regardless, it doesn't matter -- if you're happy where you are, then I'm glad for you. I really do wish I were happy with them, because I really liked them. It's kind of like having a relationship... they are nice, you spend quality time together, you share a few laughs, a few tears and you get comfortable. The only problem is -- they cheat on you all the time! There is only so much a person can take before they realize "WTF is wrong with me?!! I'm outta here?!!" (Ha!) -- BlaZe --
Posted by catfished, 01-19-2005, 01:09 AM
Well said!!
Posted by countrytyme, 01-19-2005, 06:35 PM
A very fair summation of 'Surpass'. I am in the process of moving my site. Downtime for New Year's Eve is definately not an exaggeration. I wasn't down for quite as long, but it hit hard. I procrastinated my first move, but not this time. In the past two weeks, my mail box is filled with this is down, this is up. It almost equals the spam. Their forum is great, one big happy family. Support is quick, but never really seems to address the problems fully. I don't need a band-aid, I need a full recovery of the problems. So now I am following in the footsteps of Maikeru and Vegasblaze.
Posted by Host1Nor, 01-19-2005, 06:37 PM
Hi. Wanted to drop by as i have been a client with surpass for almost 2 years straight now. I have gone through a lot. I was there when they were still co-locating in a DC in New Jersey, i was there for the move to Orlando and DimeNOC and i am still with surpass. First of all. Do not even think about accusing me for having wrong uptime-stats as i have extensive monitoring on my servers (From SiteUptime and home.) Now to the review. First when i started out i was on a small Shared account for a Snowboarding/Wakeboarding-site i made.. No problems at all then, very friendly and helpful staff even when i was at my most annoying with all stupid questions (This was after all my first hosting account ever with a real host. Not the free ones.) I stayed on that for a few months. Then a game i was running on a other server which i got space on from a friend grew way to big for it and i had to move. So because of my previous experience with surpass i decided to get a reseller-account with them as i had a couple more domains to add. That i did. Everything went pretty much flawlessly with some help from the staff on AIM. After a few more months when i was getting used to and experienced with WHM/cPanel (Used Linux for some years already so pretty used to that.) i decided to start a small hosting company for some clients i made websites for, friends and other contacts.. So i did. Client-base increased and blah-blah-blah. (Doesnt really matter yet) Suddenly the game i have written about grew way to big for reseller account so i had to go Semi-Dedicated. They were very helpful and helped with the transfer of domains and so on. But, as the game were free and based on donations. I didn't get enough donations to support the semi-dedicated after some months. So i had to downgrade. Still very helpful and downgraded for me and made sure everything was okay. (Game went down for ages.) So i stayed on a reseller-account and recoded some stuff in the game to ease the load on the server. Went well. (So far as good as NO downtime except from me myself crashing the server a few times with the game. hehe) Then we skip to the move to DimeNOC. Everything went pretty well except for a few small downtimes and misunderstandings. But nothing i didn't expect and they had informed me well ahead of the move. Everything is very good for a while. My company does still grow silently. Then the hurricanes came. A couple of downtimes that lasted for hours. But nothing i couldn't tolerate, i got good enough info at least. (Maybe the downtime shouldn't have been there. I can realise that. But i can see that a new DataCenter needs some time to get everything perfect. Then after a while with Tomsyer (Still hosting with surpass but having some intensive sites at a Cheapo dedicated at Tomsyer) the HDD on the Tomsyer server went nuts and i decided to go back to Surpass and get a Dedicated there. (P4).. Now i have 2 dedicated Servers there. Very satisfied with both uptime and Support. Some minor network issues now and then that lasts for 10 minutes max.. But except from that. Perfect. (Uptime for last 3 months on my first server: 99.7xx% Although i can see some issues that needs to be resolved. And i think most of them will be when Level 3 comes in place. (First Quarter 2005 is the official statement). I am VERY satisfied with Surpass. Both support and uptime. And they do not stop at anything to make their customers happy. I get a lot of good help from their staff. And the Surmunity is just perfect. Have gotten some good contact with people and gotten and gave away loads of tips, help and Fun. I would reccomend surpass. It's my best experience so far, and i have been with a few on the side while still keeping my main sites at surpass. Best Regards, Eivind
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-19-2005, 07:09 PM
And here comes the rest of the Surpass Cheer Squad. It's funny how prominent members of Surmunity are now heading over to this thread at near the same time. First it was mp3sattack, and now Ehaanaes. I wonder who will be next... My guess is that Surpass staff either posted a plea for help on their forums, or have been personally contacting members of their community (which, as I previously stated, had happened to me on a number of occasions. This isn't some assumption that I came up with myself, but instead is born from previous experience) asking for some much-needed help. I didn't even put myself through the torture of reading your full post, Ehaanaes, because I can pretty much guess what it is going to say. It's great that you like your host, I guess, but it is quite sad that they have to beg their clients to defend their company. Oh well.. desperate times call for desperate measures.
Posted by Dawzz, 01-20-2005, 12:01 AM
And here comes the rest of the Surpass Cheer Squad. It's funny how prominent members of Surmunity are now heading over to this thread at near the same time. First it was mp3sattack, and now Ehaanaes. I wonder who will be next... It's rather sad that this has turned into flaming people with a different opinion than yours. Yes I am a Hostdime customer and NO I have not been contacted to come here to post. I visit here daily, I only comment on threads that I feel that I can contribute information to. I am apparently one of the minority here on these boards that truely enjoy hosting with hostdime. My uptime has been great and the support excellent. When the server that I was Reselling on had problems they moved me without me even having to ask. As for others experiences I can't say, however as to MINE it has been a all around pleasant experience.
Posted by Host1Nor, 01-20-2005, 04:46 AM
Ok. This was just not called for Miakeru. 1. Okay, i am happy with my host and i say that now and then when i see threads like this and other POSITIVE threads because i feel they deserve the right to hear more than one voice. 2. Okay, i post a lot and i am well known at the surmunity. I like it there, so why not? 3. Why can't you just leave us alone as we have seen your point-of-view, and frankly i respect your view. Now i am just trying to give out mine. 4. This is my personal view, i do not ask anyone to think: Oooh. of course he is correct. People have different experiences and i understand that. So i posted my experience. 5 and LAST. i have NOT been asked to go here and post. I did not even know of the post before i was browsing around yesterday. Now i trust all parts involved in this discussion to just respect each others opinion and to stop the flaming. I do not appreciate being told i am a liar and that i am asked to post here. I post by my own free will and because i think they deserve it. Case closed!
Posted by mindnetcombr, 01-20-2005, 12:01 PM
I started in Hostdime (DimeNoc DataCenter) with a reseller plan, about 4 months. In this time I get several downtimes, and never get any refund. After this 4 months I get a dedicated server, Im in 2 months now, with dedicated. In new years day (31-dec) my dedicated goes off-line about 2-3 hours. And Hostdime not made any refund. I send a email do Hostdime and not resolve. Im using SiteUptime to check every 5 minutes the hostdime.com, and the results are poor... see http://www.siteuptime.com/prem_stati...&&UserId=13244 Just in Jan/2005 are 12 downtimes... the same system are monitoring hostgator, another company, better: http://www.siteuptime.com/prem_stati...&&UserId=13244 But hostdime not accept the siteuptime reports, because "siteuptime is not reliable"... Im tired of hostdime, and I started to search another company.
Posted by Dawzz, 01-20-2005, 01:19 PM
It is common knowledge that Hostdime had problems with the server that the main site is on during the first of the year. However, that problem had absolutely nothing to do with any other servers. If you want to prove downtime you should post a uptime report on YOUR server. Mine reports zero downtime for the month of January. Year Month Outages Uptime Downtime 2005 January 0 100.000% 0.000% Now this is only the 'free' option that is offered at siteuptime and I only started that account on december 31, however I find it hard to believe that I would have a "magic server" that stays up when everyone else's does not. With all this said, I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, I just feel that both sides of the story needs to be told. In other words "The good, The Bad, and The Ugly"
Posted by MansHosting, 01-20-2005, 01:28 PM
good review - thanks
Posted by mindnetcombr, 01-20-2005, 06:59 PM
In my last post about hostdime, I did a mistake, because my siteuptime profile are monotoring the hostdime.com website. I have others profiles too, monitoring my website and others companys just to compare. I believe in HostDime, Im in 6 months there, the support is great and fast, the staff are very friendly, when I move from reseller to dedicated, the total migration time (from order to receive the server with all my accounts) was less than 12 hours. 8-) Everybody know about the new years day trouble, but this kind of issue can occur with any datacenter. Hardware can fail. I write this, because in my last post Im very wrong, I cant say if a DataCenter like DimeNOC are bad based on SiteUptime service, or other monitoring service. My server stay in HostDime/DimeNOC, I hope and believe that network issues are ended.
Posted by gazaa, 01-21-2005, 01:10 AM
I am a client of surpass hosting. They seem like a company that expanded too quickly, and need a major upgrade on their equipment. I have a dedicated with them, Pentium 4 2.4 ghz, 512 mb ram, 80 gb . I remember back when I had a resellers with surpass, it was such a positive experience, great uptime, fast as hell, feature rich. Then I decided to get my dedicated. On day 1 things didn't look too hopefull, the server went down 10 times a day for about 3 days, whereafter I sent them an email and they fixed the configuration errors, the server was then fine. A couple of months later I notice that the network starts acting up again, my server now doesn't fail to go down at least once a day, I am in an impossible situation, I get 220 kb average max speed squeezed from my server, and bad uptime. The whole network including surpasses main site seems to freeze for 20 minutes then come back online, can happen as much as 4 times a day. I sent surpass an email commenting on this and they recomplied php for me. Now I don't see how this could help when the entire network was down, and I definately do not host their site. Moving on... Surpass are the best company for support, they will go out of their way, but running an internet company requires the equipment to cope with things, I expect a good line for my dedicated, do I get one with surpass? No, do I want to move? Yes. Moving servers is such a pain in the *** though, I had high expectations when I signed up with surpass dedicated services, and I was let down. I run a forum so I refresh my page a lot during the day, so I above anyone know what the uptime is like. It has come to a point where if surpass don't improve their network speeds and uptime (I get around 85 % uptime I'd say) that I am going to move to the planet, they say on their dedicated page Unfortunately they are not covering my needs, I need a reliable solution and quality bandwidth plan, when I talked to surpassdedicated over aim, the operater was uninterested in my network problem also. Basically surpass are awesome for support and newbies, small traffic sites also, but for my needs they don't cut it. I need 99.9 % guaranteed uptime, and I have been let down, if it wasn't for their great support I would have left in the first week. Great review by the way
Posted by HD Fanatic, 01-21-2005, 03:28 AM
Seems that many agree that their network and equipment needs to be upgraded badly. There's a few dns issues almost everyday that lasts a minute or two. They need larger pipes for sure and better DDOS protection. It seems to be a common occurence. Maybe their switchs/routers are overloaded? who knows...
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-21-2005, 05:39 AM
Add shared/reseller servers, and the entire network to that mix and you are correct.
Posted by HalimI, 01-21-2005, 12:28 PM
Thanks for a very thorough review and a "balanced" discussion of the subject, rather than just flat out bashing of the company. Unfortunately I can only agree to what's been posted, and I would like to focus on a pattern which I suspect HostDime/Surpass do on purpose. It seems like most new users are very happy after having seen their flashy web pages and "excellent" support on SurMunity. However, once problems start arising it appears like I was not the only one being abandonned. I am beginning to suspect their entire business-plan is to attract a very large number of 1st time web-host users who will sign up for a year regardless, and focus all their effort on this, rather than keeping existing customers. The less these new clients know, the less "trouble" they will cause when their hosts start going down and become unavailable. I was with Surpass for about a year, until very recently, and my experience is that they would *never* notify me of a server/network down unless I wrote them first. Also - during the many network outages they do not calculate downtime, as the server itself is actually up and running. However, that does me little good when nobody can get to it. After seeing excessive server loads, having my domain unavailable for days at a time, my company's legal department sent them a letter in certified mail asking for an accurate status of the problem. A colleague of mine simultanously posted a frustrated message on Surmunity, begging an administrator to look at the case, as I was being stonewalled on technical support (the usual "Thank you for your patience while we are investigating this problem"). The result of our lawyer's letter was that Surpass terminated my hosting and has threatned to terminate all hosts associated with my employer's company. Needless to say neither I nor them needed any more persuation to skip Surpass/HostDime and move on to more serious providers. I now pay a couple of more dollars per month, and enjoy the wonderful experience of 2 weeks pre-warning of scheduled outages, admins who answer requests in a timely fashion, and even post realistic response times. I concur that Surpass would probably not be around if it wasn't for SurMunity, AND the fact that they systematically cencor all posts about downtime, problems and such.
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-21-2005, 04:44 PM
If there were not so many "bottom-feeders" that seek out the lowest possibly web hosting costs, companies like HostDime and Surpass would simply not be around. They count on the inexperience of clients that assume the level of service that a premium provider like Pair offers is no different from what they will experience at a lower quality web host, such as HostDime/Surpass. Those consumers do not see the direct correlation between the amount of money you spend and the quality of service that you receive. It is the same principal for those car insurance agencies that charge extremely low costs for insurance. You are insured, true, but just hope that you do not get into an accident or you will be extremely screwed. With HostDime/Surpass, you are getting web hosting, but just hope that your site (and its uptime, speed, and performace) does not become something important to you and you should be okay.
Posted by HD Fanatic, 01-21-2005, 11:45 PM
Everything said is so true. They never warn us in advance of outages and such. They kept on emphasizing that customers should subscribe to their server announcements email but what good is it if they do not send out emails?? They don't like to give detailed explanations of problems and solutions. They should've given credit to the customers for the December downtimes, that was one of the worst months ever! I hope someone from Surpass is reading this topic, maybe they can get their act together some day.
Posted by HalimI, 01-22-2005, 10:15 PM
coconutboy, I hear you loud and clear, but based on my experience I do not believe it is in the benefit of Surpass Hosting to read or respond to this or other similar threads. Their business model is to live off the unexperienced users out there who either do not know what to reasonably expect from a hosting company, or simply does not have the technical knowledge to monitor their own domain. Unfortunately, it is this kind of company that give the entire business a bad name. It's actually quite sad, considering all the genuine hard-working hosting companies actually out there across the USA and rest of world in general....
Posted by NeoGen, 01-22-2005, 10:55 PM
Very Well said... This should be sticky somewhere or should be put as quote. Very much like the line "Their business model is to live off the unexperienced users out there who either do not know what to reasonably expect from a hosting company." BTW: I feel this is also applicable to number of other hosting companies as well, who looks for newbies as their soft target...
Posted by jwgeetar, 01-23-2005, 02:36 AM
oh brother! i don't think we're in Kansas anymore...... geeez, surpass was one of the two i had whittled my hosting choice's to. and yes, i am a noob hoster (i've always had a small time website though) and would be considered perfect fodder for surpass. no, the price wasen't the draw with all the extra stuff. knowing i would need some EXTRA form of support, naturally the surmunity was up my alley. i have studied a **** load of hosting companies to get to Surpass and Micfo, my two choice's. i've eliminated hostgator,lunar,powweb,Ipower,dreamhost,and a plethora of others. i don't know. i'm thinking i'm safer with 100% uptime in my lil ISP website world than to tackle all this heartache and possible downtime. if i had big money i'd go dedicated with EV1. but i don't! woah is me.... what do i do? ok, any review's about Micfo? they are my last option ...... questions: 1-who offer's warnings that server's will be down---ahead of time? 2-what is Level 3? Last edited by jwgeetar; 01-23-2005 at 02:39 AM.
Posted by TroyBoyM, 01-23-2005, 03:50 AM
Excellent discussion and for the most part I agree with what's been posted. I've had a site on a shared Surpass server for over a year now. Throughout that time, I've had issues with the servers going down, getting blacklisted, database issues and DNS problems. When it came time to renew, I made sure that everything was in order. Apparently it wasn't on their end and all the visitors on my site (a forum with 1000+ members) got a message that the account was suspended. I sent a support ticket which held for just over a day before the site was restored. I've had support tickets suddenly closed without a solution. I often get canned responses to my tickets that "they're looking into the problem," or "everything looks fine now," without an other explanation. I had problems with server load for over 2 weeks and when I became frustrated and asked if/when the problem would be solved or if I should start looking for a new host, I was told they would not tolerate such verbal abuse. Yes, if you're a noob with little traffic, it's a good place. However, it no longer fills my needs and the only reason I'm still there is out of laziness. No, I'm not going to identify my site after reading HalimI's post and yes, I found a link to this thread on Surmunity.
Posted by vegasblaze, 01-23-2005, 07:39 AM
LOL! In all honesty, I am willing to bet that nearly 75% of all hosting clients on the world wide web stay with their current host out of "laziness" or not wanting to deal with the hassle of moving. I would say the remaining 25% stay because of loyalty or a hope that things get better. This of course only applies to the people who are unhappy with their current hosting solution. Not really sure what the post says on Surmunity -- but I can guess that many people there are defending Surpass. But this again only proves "why" Surpass might still be considered a good hosting option for many. Surmunity kicks arse and I'll say it again, "It is the backbone to their company! Without Surmunity.com, Surpass would be dead." Throughout many bad experiences comes good lessons -- and while I believe Surpass needs to learn more about sustaining their client base by providing better services with uptime, many hosting companies can learn a thing or two from what they did with Surmunity. I wish all hosting companies had a community forum like Surpass does. -- BlaZe --
Posted by HalimI, 01-23-2005, 07:51 AM
I respectfully have to disagree with vegasblaze on Surmunity's "value". I certainly hope no companies adopt a public forum like Surmunity. Surmunity is probably one of the most clever marketing plots I have seen. Surpass rewards favorable posts and endorsements and systematically delete and cencor all posts questioning availability, response-times and server loads. Through this they create a false image of many happy clients, which they then use extensively in their marketing. This is one of the things that made me go for Surpass to begin with, and now I kick myself for not seeing the complete picture earlier. The next day you have a slow day at work, preferably after yet another of their many down-time periods, try watching Surmunity regularly and make a note of all the posts that systematically disappear. Surmunity is good for sharing best practices on how to run particular PHP programs etc, but for this kind of support you'd be far better off with forums such as this and other specialised forums not limited to only Surpass clients...
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-23-2005, 08:03 AM
Nobody has said it better, yet! I can definitely agree with the comment made based on the reward system. The more you post about and defend Surpass, the more likely you are to win prizes from them. The fact that they delete and censor posts questioning anything regarding their company should be a HUGE red flag to anyone considering them. Any host that is not confident enough to show negative reviews of their company on their own forums is not a host worth giving money to. It shows a major lack of self-respect and belief in the services they provide. When you really think about it, it makes you wonder what the reason for having to give gifts to their customers to get them to post good things about their company and/or defend it against the truth. I am much more than happy with my current host (MidPhase), and I do not participate in their forums, nor have I received (or wanted to receive) a prize from them. It is actually quite sad that a host's forum and gift giving practices are what people state as the only reason for them being in business.
Posted by vegasblaze, 01-23-2005, 08:12 AM
Yes, I agree -- it is a marketing gimmick as well. I would say that the majority of users who actually "use" surmunity for help (ie: php, programming, or other forms of help a webmaster might need) find it to be quite pleasant. My recommendation for having a community like surmunity is based on receiving help from other members who experience similar problems. Sure, you can go to other outside resources, but whenever I had a problem with programming, I always got a response within about 15 minutes from some other member who knew a solution. On other outside forums quite larger, your post can easily get lost and nobody responds. But on Surminity, I found tech support will "bump" your problem so it doesn't get lost if nobody responds -- or at least that was how it was for me. There were many times where Kayla (one of the system admins, also known as TEQ) even posted on my thread asking others to help find a solution. Kayla (or TEQ) is very cool at going out of her way to help you. She needs a raise! (Ha!) I was very active on there, as are many -- and people on that community (the users) are very friendly and like to help out. This is what my recommendation is based on. If all hosting companies applied this kind of forum BUT without the need to "re-edit" posts or delete them, then many people would be happy. Surmunity is far from perfect -- but it is a good community forum to pay attention too if you're thinking about starting one up for your own hosting company. Just my humble opinion.... -- BlaZe --
Posted by HalimI, 01-23-2005, 08:27 AM
This is very true, especially in the case of beginners. Nowadays I find more help going directly to the source, but it's taken me a year to get there. (ie. if I have a problem with SpamAssassin I go to their forum for help, problems with phpNuke solved at their forum etc).. As for the staff activity on the board, my experience is quite different from yours -probably as a direct result of me raising questions in their forums. I really want to commend on some of their forum users though, who clearly spend a lot of volunteer time on the board assisting other users, writing how-to guides to spam assassin and other systems and overall being very friendly. When it comes to the admins themselves, Surpass Hosting seem to of the opinion that they are doing me a favor for hosting me, and thus I owe them, and not the other way around.. I haven't actually reflected over this before it was brought up here, but since I moved away from Surpass Hosting to another more reliable host I haven't missed the Surmunity forum at all. Not only from frustration of the cencorship/marketing, but also because I haven't needed it as I get all the help I need in a timely fashion directly from the admins of my new host. Mynew host is even so pro-active that they emailed me AHEAD of time, writing they had seen me have problems with a PHP/mySQL setup, and wondered if I mind them fixing it before my site crashed. I've seen other fellow clients of my current host post similar threads as well. Imagine my surprise seeing their mail, after being used to Surpass Hosting for a year, and then receiving this attention.
Posted by vegasblaze, 01-23-2005, 08:32 AM
So you should give some props to your current host -- who are they HalimI? Every good hosting company needs all the recommendations they can get! -- BlaZe --
Posted by HalimI, 01-23-2005, 08:48 AM
Among the hosts I recommend are ServInt and GoDaddy. With ServInt you pay a bit more, but for a revenue-generating web-site I find it's worth it. With GoDaddy, my experience is that you get what you pay for. I'm not thrilled with their control interface or webmail, but it's stable and just continues to work. I also have excellent experiences with LunarPages, even though I see from public forums and "hate-pages" that some at least are quite upset with them. I've never had any problems whatsoever though, and find that they notice network downs ahead of time, answer support questions and are friendly on the phone. Bear in mind though that I don't run any special scripts there, just plain old .html...
Posted by jwgeetar, 01-23-2005, 04:22 PM
ok, since you guys have ruined my dreams of going with surpass, i want a solid host that emails me of downtime and potential problems. come on, i get midphase and servInt so far. come on---feed the monster....
Posted by jwgeetar, 01-23-2005, 11:23 PM
chicken no comers....! when it's tuff the tuff go away--eh? this is a sad bizness.....
Posted by TroyBoyM, 01-23-2005, 11:29 PM
Funny thing, 4 posts in the thread on surmunity were deleted without explanation. Did somebody mention censorship?
Posted by NeoGen, 01-24-2005, 12:27 AM
Its tough, but you have to help yourself to some extent... Search WHT for your requirements.... or start a new thread...but have your expectations and requirements clear...
Posted by jwgeetar, 01-24-2005, 12:40 AM
thanks Neo.... kinda scary going out on my own. but the fact remains for me, i am learning something new. just don't wanna start learning it a coupla months behind....thus the reason to cut to the chase.
Posted by Michael Black, 01-24-2005, 01:19 AM
I am not posting now. It is not worth it as you will just say I was made to do this by them. Last edited by Michael Black; 01-24-2005 at 01:32 AM.
Posted by Cats-Computing, 01-24-2005, 05:09 AM
In depth review, well written.
Posted by evilelmo, 01-24-2005, 10:42 AM
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Surpasshosting is run by unethical people. Censorship and hiding their numerous problems is more important to them than solving problems. Their outright lies to customers are reaching new lows now. Was this one of the deleted posts? ... This is a direct quote from Surmunity forums, http://www.surmunity.com/showthread.php?p=95020 , Subject: Getting worried... Last edited by evilelmo; 01-24-2005 at 10:45 AM.
Posted by evilelmo, 01-24-2005, 11:07 AM
At Surpasshosting, we do not cencor posts about downtime, problems and such." http://doctorgrooveband.com/iraqi-minister.jpg
Posted by TroyBoyM, 01-24-2005, 02:18 PM
Not sure since the entire thread is now gone.
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-24-2005, 07:02 PM
HAHAHA! Oh man.. I literally laughed out loud at that one.
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-24-2005, 07:06 PM
That's especially interesting considering I have had a number of my own posts (posted months ago) deleted because they shined some not-so-good light on the company and the way things are run. I wish I had the logs of conversations, but teq has repeatedly expressed how scared of WHT Surpass is, and how they are allowed to delete any posts they wish within Surmunity since it is their own forum. Sure, it's their forum, but this one is ours and we can share the truth to an even broader and mostly unbiased audience. Hopefully this entire thread will aide in steering newcomers to the industry away from hosts like Surpass, that rely on the inexperience and naivity of clients looking for the lowest price web hosting possible. The saying "you get what you pay for" is so painfully true in this case, I hope everyone takes it to heart.
Posted by Cats-Computing, 01-24-2005, 10:52 PM
That topic is gone?
Posted by catfished, 01-24-2005, 11:20 PM
If it says anything at all negative about Surpass it's deleted almost immediately. That's the way they play the game, at least that's the way they did it for the year that I was with them and from what I'm reading here, they haven't changed a bit.
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-25-2005, 01:21 AM
Ahh, I thought I recognized you from somewhere.
Posted by HalimI, 01-25-2005, 04:22 AM
How stupid do Emmanuel and Kayla from Surpass Hosting think their clients and general public are? On one hand they actively deny any such allegations of cencorship and deletion of any posts whatsoever, and then immediately afterwards they set out to delete or "re-arrange" all potential hazardous threads from their forum. And if they're in a particularly scared mood, they remove the site of the offending hoster because they are "actively sabotaging the provider" and hence operates against the terms... Especially the latter part is either borderline fraud or outright fraud (ie. charge for a service, make up funny excuse, terminate service after received payment without offering refund). Does anyone here with more legal experience than me know if any of the false promises and general business conduct of Surpass Hosting / HostDime constitute grounds for legal action?
Posted by TroyBoyM, 01-25-2005, 05:28 AM
Yes it's gone, but I got some screen captures of deleted/edited posts before the whole thing went bye-bye. HalimI, if that were the route you were going to take (which isn't far off) the Florida Attorney General's office would be your best contact.
Posted by HalimI, 01-25-2005, 05:41 AM
If they're not too big, would you mind posting a careful selection of the posts cencored by Surpass Hosting here? Since my last post last year I cannot even access surmunity.com anymore, and it would be interesting to learn what they say about threads such as this one, and to which lengths they go to deny their existence or discredit the posters such as ourselves..
Posted by AF, 01-25-2005, 08:23 AM
5917 Characters to post a bad review. Impressive. If everyone would do this to post good reviews, I would be more happy. Unfortunately, it is rare to see good reviews. Not because there are not good hosts, but because when it is good people do not care about spreading the word. Only when it's bad Want them to take your advice? Write them an email explaining exactly what you explained here. I hate the intelligence of "they did not do what I asked, so now I will post a bad review at WHT and every other forum". If you want me to be frank, until now I only read good reviews about them. (Looks like they are actually HostDime, but with another name). Did you send them an email before bashing them here?
Posted by HalimI, 01-25-2005, 08:53 AM
Hi AF, I started suspecting faul play with Surpass Hosting late spring/early summer 2004. I then wrote them an email (support@surpasshosting.com) asking for an explaination of their frequent downtime, and what they were planning to do to avoid such outages in the future. To this I got the standard response that my email was forwarded to the admins. Then silence. After having our email unavailable for 3 days, I copied the admins (Eman & Kayla) on yet another polite email to support@surpasshosting.com. Then got the normal canned response from Kayla that they were investigating. Still no explaination or reassuring that this would not happen again. We then entered into a rollercoaster of network down, routing problems, obscene hostnames in the tracepath to our domain etc, and sent them a written letter to the address published in WHOIS (they do not have any about_us page). We never got a response to this letter. After dozens of more problems, client emails not reaching for 48+ hours,and receiving outright condescending emails from Kayla Fleming, our lawyer wrote them a letter late last year, which caused them to terminate our account with them as we were too troublesome. Please note that while our emails were polite, to the point, but agreeably frustrated, the same can not be said about the responses we got. I take the full responsibility and blame for our company's laziness in changing from Surpass Hosting. Like may others I initially believed this was what to expect, and later got apalled by the whole situation. I challenge AF to look at Surpass Hosting's Surmunity forum and watch the systematic cencorship of threads, their clever marketing ploys to attract unexperienced clients (such as myself) and continuous ignorance of internal problems and network downs. For 1+ month we've been with ServInt - it prices more and is so far great. Other domains I have recommended and reviewed favorably is LunarPages. However, the good things I have written (and will hopefully have reason to continue to write) about these pages would have no credibility if I did not also share my never-ending unfortunate experience with Surpass Hosting / HostDime.
Posted by tattoovampire, 01-25-2005, 12:44 PM
I'll chime in as well, since I was with Surpass for some months before moving to TCH. I believe they are earnest enough about fixing problems and try very hard to. But it reaches a point where just trying isn't enough. My sites were all monitored with siteuptime and easymonitor and without fail I would get several warnings daily about the sites being unavailable. I think my uptime averaged around 89% before I decided to leave. Now, about censorship on Surmunity: I participated in more than a few threads where posts (including some of mine) were deleted; said threads usually being a discussion of downtime or other unresolved issues. I'll play devil's advocate and say Surpass has the right to do what they want in the forums they own. BUT -- it's been insisted time and time again they only delete or edit threads that are a)redundant, b)discuss issues that have been resolved, c)promote another hosting company, or d)have turned into pissing contests. Having seen first-hand how they handle negative threads, I can say the previous statement is untrue. I have seen many threads deleted where the issue has not been resolved, was not addressed in another thread, did not promote another host, and had not turned into a shouting match. I would also like to bring up the server-side spam filtering they sprang on their clients with no warning. People began posting about huge drops in the volume of completely legit email they received... Many, MANY complaints. It was only then we were told they were testing some new anti-spam software. Well, whatever they were testing, it was sending way too much "good" mail to the great bit bucket in the sky. After dozens of howls of protest, they began removing the filtering from the servers, but not before huge volumes of legitimate email had been deleted by the over-zealous filtering system.
Posted by TroyBoyM, 01-26-2005, 03:24 PM
Let me see where I can host them anonymously..
Posted by TroyBoyM, 01-26-2005, 03:28 PM
These are the deleted posts before the whole thread vanished. http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...8/f553be6b.jpg http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...d/f553be68.jpg
Posted by AF, 01-26-2005, 04:27 PM
Very hard to read.
Posted by Justin, 01-26-2005, 06:40 PM
I believe perusing through the webhosting forums section for reviews on some decent hosts would make for some good monster bait. I would suggest also checking out the shared and reseller advertising section on here for some good ideas. There is alot of webhosts out there who come here routinely who would be glad to help you out with any questions and such. That said I wish you the best of luck finding the webhost who is right for you. -Justin
Posted by joshuayip, 01-28-2005, 01:31 AM
try host-tracker.com . Is new, but so far I find it reliable. Gives you HEAD tracking for more than one site. Probably charging in future. For now is still free
Posted by klick, 01-29-2005, 04:25 AM
Avoid Surpass Hosting at all prices. They are the same scammers who own Hostmatix.com They also own Farciert.com, so beware.
Posted by HalimI, 01-29-2005, 02:48 PM
Hi, I don't think HostMatix is the same as Surpass/Hostdime/Infinitum Technologies. HostMatix appears to be hosted with RackSpace and has no real information in the whois-database whatsoever: Administrative Contact: HostMatix.com Web Hosting Solutions HostMatix LLC (servers@hostmatix.com) +1.0000000000 Fax: +1.0000000000 Sheikh Zayed Road NYC, NY 10302 Sheikh Zayed Road is in Dubai, UAE, but apart from that it's impossible to tell where they're from... Traceroute leads to rackspace... However, the following companies are all run by Emmanuel Vivar & Co : Surpass Hosting HostDime HostCove RapidVPS Infinitum Technologies They are quite easy to recognize as they are all at the same address, traceroute to their hosts all lead to dimenoc, and they all have the same scam-like web-pages which boast their on-site Cisco CCIE's, own space etc, but says absolutely nothing about the company, ownership and organization (except it's started by a student while still in school, and now has years and years of superb experience) Looking them up in ARIN gives the same result..
Posted by HD Fanatic, 01-29-2005, 09:35 PM
No wonder they have the rank, "Surpass Fan". I was once active on their forums, they do censor, delete posts that's unfavorable to them. The support has been getting worst lately, many boast about their quick respones. Sure this is true when a regular support rep answers your email. It is quick, however,when they forward it to an admin, it takes a while to receive a response. Often times, a few days for an admin. Many new customers don't know about this before they sign up, 1st level support is quick, 3rd level support takes a long time. Their company seriously needs to hire more admins and workers. Seems like they can't handle the amount of customers now. Support was better before, now it's just going downhill. Not professional, canned responses and they never tell the customers what's being done to fix problems so they won't happen. I do agree that without surmunity, Surpass would be out of business by now. This topic oughtta be on the shared and dedicated server sections on webhostingtalk. Last edited by HD Fanatic; 01-29-2005 at 09:38 PM.
Posted by klick, 01-29-2005, 09:37 PM
Yes, they are. If you pay for Hostmatix through Paypal, the merchant is listed as Farciert and is billed to your credit card as FARCIERTCOM. The administrative and billing contact for Farciert.com in the WHOIS database is Surpass Hosting. HostDime has the only working phone number I was able to find so far for all of the companies and the brainiac who answered the phone said that even though Hostmatix was one of their companies, he wouldn't be able to help solve any of the problems associated with them. He also said he would be unable to provide the name or contact info for anyone higher up in the company because it would violate their right to privacy. I don't any more confirmation than that. If someone chooses to deal with any of their companies, you have no excuse when they rip you off. And be sure of it, they have proven they will do it.
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-30-2005, 08:40 AM
Interesting, indeed... and the fun continues.
Posted by Website Rob, 01-30-2005, 10:14 AM
Something else interesting is that a lot of people have had problems with Hosters that include false information in their WHOIS or have no way to contact them. That is totally against ICANN rules for WHOIS information. So it would make sense that anyone checking on a potential Hoster should do a WHOIS lookup beforehand to see what information is there. Possibly saving themselves a lot of future grief. Also, WHOIS on farciert.com Administrative Contact: HostMatix Host Matix (servers@hostmatix.com) +1.0000000 Fax: +1.00000000 0000 New York, NY 10200 US Code on farciert.com Index page. Rather obvious that; farciert.com / hostmatix.com / surpasshosting.com, are all connected and hopefully, people will now stop saying they are not.
Posted by HalimI, 01-30-2005, 12:36 PM
So 2 of the many HostDime/Infinitum siblings use direct bogus registrar information, Hostmatix and Farciert. Who enforces these policies and what legitimate reasons could Surpass/HostDime/Infinitum have for not registering with correct information? Is there like a whois/registry monitoring unit somewhere that can perhaps shed some light on this? And why use both a Middle Eastern streetname and a New York address in the same fake registration?
Posted by HD Fanatic, 01-30-2005, 08:50 PM
Hmmm, interesting facts I never knew about this. Let's see what Surpass has to say abou this....
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-30-2005, 09:22 PM
I seriously doubt Kayla or Emmanuel would post here.. they normally ask members of Surmunity to do the dirty work of defending and representing their company. I guess it is good that they do not post personally, though, as there is nothing for them to 'explain' by telling us things will be fixed, per se. They would only be fighting against the increasingly large number of bad comments relating to their company and would indeed show their true, immature, colors. (You should see how incredibly defensive and frightened Kayla used to get on Surmunity when threads like this would appear here). Either way, posting here would not shine and good light on them or their company, and would serve only to solidfy all of our prior arguments.
Posted by klick, 01-31-2005, 05:22 AM
Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was the original address listed as headquarters for Hostmatix when it was owned by Micfo. The current thieving owners of Hostmatix simply removed UAE and added New York as the business city to prevent people from actually knowing they operate out of Orlando, Florida.
Posted by klick, 01-31-2005, 10:02 AM
The Better Business Bureau has an "unsatisfactory" record for Surpass Hosting and HostDime, "due to unanswered complaints." According to the BBB, "To have a "Satisfactory Record" with the Bureau, a company must be in business for at least 12 months, properly and promptly address matters referred to it by the Bureau, and be free from an unusual volume or pattern of complaints and law enforcement action involving its marketplace conduct. In addition, the Bureau must have a clear understanding of the company's business and no concerns about its industry." How surprising to see they failed those tests. ..."an unusual volume or pattern of complaints and law enforcement action involving its marketplace conduct". I bet that will be some interesting reading. Additionally, as I posted in another post directed to Mr. Amir Golestan, Emanuel Vivar registered Micfo International, LLC as a Florida Limited Liability Company on January 7, 2005. 3 weeks ago! Now, he's involved in all of these: Infinitum Technologies, Inc. Micfo International, LLC hostmatix.com (Hostmatix.com, Inc) surpasshosting.com (SurpassHosting.com, LLC) surpassdomains.com servercove.com rapidvps.com hostdime.com (Hostdime.com, Inc) hostdimedomains.com hostcove.com dizinc.com dimenoc.com
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-31-2005, 10:45 AM
It just keeps getting better!
Posted by catfished, 01-31-2005, 12:46 PM
and better and...........................
Posted by MrLlama, 01-31-2005, 03:54 PM
Although there may be other people that have had major problems with Surpass Hosting, I personally can say that in the 7 months that I have been with them, they have suited me fine. I am currently running an active forum with 2500+ posts per day and 1.7m pageviews per month using a reseller plan (OC10). Therefore I defenetly know what impact downtime can have. Fortunatly, on the server i'm on, ive had close to 0 downtime for approximatly 2 months - nothing that I have personally noticed or that traffic stats have shown. Support has been quick to respond, though I haven't tested them in months due to the fact that I haven't needed to contact them at all in relation to anything technical. I sent a few a couple of months back though, and they were all responded to within the hour. My tip is to try and get on one of their newer servers - a few months ago I bought another hosting package from them on a newer server and it was more stable than my old hosting package on one of their older servers. Finally, I'd just like to finish by saying that although there are a huge number of negative comments related to SH (reading this thread especially), they have been perfect for me, and I will continue using them in the future.
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-31-2005, 07:57 PM
That is not something I would really want to brag about.. two months is hardly anything, even if there actually was zero downtime for the whole period. Besides, one of the major complaints about Surpass is the network. The hardware is fairly poor too, but the network even more so. If the network goes down (which it happens to quite often, or get very overloaded at least) it is no matter what server you are on, all will be affected. I really do find it funny that so many people with such low post counts are praising Surpass like this. Kayla and the team have most likely posted a thread begging members to come and defend the company here, or they happen to have become really bored and are registering new accounts themselves. Who knows.
Posted by ghostbone, 01-31-2005, 08:09 PM
Miakeru my friend! How are things going? Surpass's networks are very stable from what I have seen and monitored... Also the way your negative attitude towards Surpasshosting LLC, is disgusting. They have in no way inflicted such insults that you are passing towards them! Feel free to browse Surmunity.com and have a look for a post like that. Surpass would NEVER beg (or even ask) their members to come here and post a defence in their name. If surpass want to defend themselves they'll come here and do so themselves. May everyone please take note that the disgruntled teen employed by Disney is making assumptions as per se. Thanks, GB.
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-31-2005, 08:37 PM
If you had read what I posted earlier, you would have noticed that I stated that I had been approached on numerous occasions by Kayla and Emmanuel asking me to post in defense of their company. No, I really am not making any assumptions. I am posting what I have experienced myself, not something I create off the top of my head. I really am not disgruntled about anything, you know. I just like to make my opinion on particular matters known, especially when it may prevent somebody from throwing away their money and finding a good web host. And what does it matter that I work at Disneyland? This is hardly a little-known fact.
Posted by catfished, 01-31-2005, 09:07 PM
I had a reseller account with Surpass for about 1 year but got out of there around July 2004. During my time with them I had Kayla and Emmanuel ask me to post positive things over here several times but I don't remember them posting such requests on their forums, they mentioned it in emails to me. I did however see a few posts on Surminity suggesting coming over here to defend Surpass but they were made by the "Surpass Cheerleaders" rah! rah! rah!
Posted by DreamHost-MikeS, 01-31-2005, 09:12 PM
I had always wondered if I were the only one. That is the only thing I have speculated on as I am no longer a member of their forums, nor do I wish to waste my time creating an account there. I would not be surprised if there were some sort of protected forum for the Surpass Cheerleaders, so Kayla and Emmanuel do not have to send out e-mails begging them to defend their own company. I think it is absolutely hilarious that they are not confident enough with themselves to do it personally. Oh, I am sure there were tons of those. People tend to fear the truth, you know.
Posted by Dawzz, 01-31-2005, 11:17 PM
No actually I don't fear the truth, while I accept that everyone posting here has valid facts, I believe that the negative posters just cannot understand that while they have (presumably valid) complaints there are others that truley enjoy thier experience with surpass/hostdime/etc/etc. I never say that you are wrong. I say that I have had a great experience myself.