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UK Donhost - Still failing and gettig worse...

Posted by nevsie, 07-02-2008, 04:50 PM
As much as this is a bitch and a moan from a customer that was once happy with this companies service... They are truly getting worse... Originally a server (a reseller service server) went down, and it took 4-6 days to get back the various services. Sites were down for much of that time, email was non existent from virtually all that time... After finally getting the new site back online, and mail beginning to arrive. All the mail that was supposed to have arrived in the downtime was meant to have been qued and delivered... But in fact has disappeared. After 4 hours of trying to explain this on the phone across a further 2 days something finally clicked in their heads and surprise surprise they found the mail and delivered it. Not that good considering the total delay in emails was near to 8 days. Support in this case was truly terrible. Support is only available 9-5 and never on weekends. Tickets would take upwards of 5 days to get a response (if you did in fact geta response). After resolving the above problem, i was kindly given a few extra months hosting for the problems i had experienced and begged to give them another chance as this is a one off... Not being so sure i have started to transfer domains and sites away... I am willing to give up the money spent (i paid for a year in advance - 6 months left plus the extra free moneths given) as i just want someone or somehting more reliable. It now appears that i am no longer able to control the DNS, etc of the domains within my account... Making it especially hard to transfer these domains away... Once again i place a ticket, 4 and half days later i get a reply saying they will do it manually. What about allowing me control of my domains!!! Oh we'll do it manually once we have let the ticket sit for a few days... great support guys... All in all... once great... getting worse by the second on a service that has not updated in many years. My advice is to steer clear, well clear...
Posted by Dan_EZPZ, 07-02-2008, 05:14 PM
Hmmm - Their site gives the impression that they're a fairly large company. But the fact that they only do 9-5 support and only on weekdays makes it sound like its run in someones spare time! 4 and a half days for a ticket response is terrible!
Posted by nevsie, 07-02-2008, 05:19 PM
it is a fairly big company... or at least a good successful company that was one of the many bought out by pipex and started to suck. I believe they are also partnered with webfusion, and on multiple occasions i have called donhost support to be redirected to webfusion and told there is nothing they can do unless you have a dedicated box. Their main site has just had a complete rehaul when pipex realised the web hosting side of things was not working as well as planned and rebranded to GX Networks... So don;t be confused GX Networks is pipex still! But painting over rust, dressing up mutton as lamb, is not goig to solve any problems, but probably allow them to keep over selling based on hamster driven servers in the background. Hence i feel it important that others do not fall into these guys and get stung for money!
Posted by WirralNet Matt, 07-02-2008, 05:24 PM
They are a big big company... but the problem is, they are part of Pipex, and this means you will be seen as a number and not a person. They really should have 24/7 ticket support, even if it is outsourced, for a company that is as big as Pipex/GX Networks, you would expect that to be standard!!!
Posted by nevsie, 07-02-2008, 05:28 PM
i apologise, they are certainly no where near large, i.e. the 1and1's of this world. However, i would not class them as a small company either! The sheer fact they built their own datacentre shows they are no one man band working from a basement!!! I would settle on SME (small to medium)... But exactly right... 24/7 outsourced off shore would be a o brainer in my eyes... but not in theirs. Apperantly this is not the case for dedicated boxes they manage... But to be honest i could not risk upgrading to one of these with them! And the costs they run at for low spec dedicated is illogical!
Posted by djorgensen, 07-02-2008, 05:42 PM
I ordered a server there many year ago. I recall only to be told after payment was made that the box wasnt available due to demand and that they couldnt tell me when the box would be available. I spoke to a few front line people and when complained a LOT they put me through to the MD, which caught me by suprise as I also thought they were larger than what it appears they really are. The MD was rude, abrupt and diffucilt. I got a refund after making my point very clearly that the website didnt say it was out of stock, and that he was claiming say day setup. They might be part of pipex now, but when I contacted them they had only only just been bought by them. Pipex might be a load of all rubbish but I suspect Donhost was from the outset too
Posted by CyberHostPro, 07-02-2008, 05:45 PM
Hi small/medium or large. they should still provide 24 hour support in hosting. Hosting is one of them businesses that require around the clock support!
Posted by nevsie, 07-02-2008, 05:54 PM
Okay... So now moving this forward... What would be the alternative for small web design businesses wanting to host their clients sites... Currently i use Heart a fair bit because their feature set is quite large. They are by no means perfect and minutes of down time occur weekly with occasionaly larger problems. But support currently is good, and they are virtually always working on problems before i get the chance to flag it with! But i ideally would like to run my own dedicated box... But i have found it to be ultra expensive if you look to get the full support of someone like rackspace. And although i am more than web and IT literate, i would by no means say i can manage and run a linux box. I would also expect setups with raided disks, and a good backup procedure... Hence why they start to get expensive... and then they are not proactical for the customers i would host on them! What would be alternatives / options in this case?
Posted by WirralNet Matt, 07-02-2008, 06:02 PM
If you are comfortable in Linux (or MS Server if you use that), then have you considered going for a premium VPS (low user:node ratio, RAID configs etc...)??
Posted by nevsie, 07-02-2008, 06:16 PM
i have considered a VPS, but always found them to be unevenly balanced... and if i were to consider moving across all sites on my resller 200 ish... then it will quickly become messy, especially with mail setups etc... And probably need to move to a dedicated box quickly after than anyway! Although to be honest most of these sites are tiny and use no traffic, so might as well leave them on a reseller for the load they require!
Posted by astutiumRob, 07-03-2008, 12:52 AM
It's not "number" related as much as resource related, it sounds like a better qualty reseller host is what you require. There is a reason 1&1, Fasthosts, Pipex/Webfusion/Donhost, Heart, Daily take up 90%+ of the ad-space in every magazine - they need a constant stream of new clients to counteract the huge attrition as people discover the service is cr@p.
Posted by MKHosting, 07-03-2008, 01:55 PM
Now that makes sense. Last time I looked 1&1 had a 6 page ad, and most of it was images and text with no pricing or other useful information!
Posted by WirralNet Matt, 07-03-2008, 02:02 PM
Lmao thats nothing I remember the days when they practically including mini-magazines with all major PC mag publications... literally like 30 pages long!! All advertising their products of course!!
Posted by spacehosting, 07-04-2008, 07:29 AM
Donhost are huge. I heard the guy that owns it is about 22 and he started it at about 17 and now has some cash so hes not going to care about his service.
Posted by DH-Kate, 07-04-2008, 07:58 AM
Hi I believe donhost are a fairly big company, On that note if they have anything to do with pipex then i can only see them going down hill, i believe pipex bought outt webfusion which for that matter also owns 123-reg.co.uk and have to say webfusion since been taken over haave fallen so badly. Kate
Posted by webadelic, 08-07-2008, 11:27 AM
I have had a reseller account with DH for many years (perhaps 5yrs) and for the first 3 years I couldn't recommend them enough. However, over the past couple of years their service has been going down hill, I am really concerned for my business as regular problems with their shared email systems cause major problems for my clients and a great deal of stress, embarrassment and damage to my businesses reputation as a result. We all rely on email, and as we all know, its hard to do business without email these days - donhost don't seem to care about the pain that having no email causes to my clients. And the number of support requests it generates (and that I have to deal with, meaning that everything else goes on-hold). The email server issue is continually causing problems and as a reseller I am tired of having to apologise to my clients for these problems that are nothing to do with my company and everything to do with donhost, it just makes my company look incompetent and I can't understand how donhost can let the load on the mail servers get so out of hand to the point that it falls over and a new server has to be added causing serious outage, duplicate emails, queues and delays. Why can't the load be monitored and additional capacity be provided before a critical situation arises... I can only assume that its cheaper for them to wait till it fails before taking action. I would change supplier overnight if I could, but in reality I have a large number of hosted accounts and as I have registered most of the domains that I manage through this system the prospect of unstitching each account and and transferring to a new supplier along with all the databases etc would be a tedious and time consuming job and one that currently I can't afford. On many occasions I have taken time to explain how concerned I am about the situation and the threat that it is causing to my business (I have lost 2 clients recently as a direct result of the email issues) and all I ever get in response is a message that is clearly copied and pasted to all in my situation. As another contributor mentions in this thread the website is pretty but full of half-truths, and the support is not 24/7, it is 9-5 mon-fri, and outside of this you might as well forget it as the staff aren't technical and sometimes (being webfusion) seem to have no involvement with Donhost. If anyone is looking to set-up a reseller account with donhost (I hope the situation changes but meanwhile) save yourself a lot of pain- look elsewhere!

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