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Identifying and Avoiding Dishonest Hosting Providers?
An anonymous reader asks: "Recently I have had the (dis)pleasure of dealing with the buyout and resulting problems problems of Managed.com by WebHostPlus, Alphared (aka Orangefiber) being dishonest about backup facilities (no power backups and not multi-homed), and CalPop overselling bandwidth. What can we do to protect us from these companies, they all seem to be have web sites and be real companies, but we seem to get scammed by them. The dishonest ones look a lot like the honest ones. We can't afford the attorney's fees or to build a data-center, and that is why we pay the monthly fee to host a server, but the companies do not have what they claim to, nor do they care about the customers. We contacted two attorneys in the United States and they said that the companies didn't have any assets worth going after. What does Slashdot think of these problems and what can we do to avoid them?"
Two ways:
1. Hack a server or two and have a poke around the network yourself to see what they have.
2. Assume the worst when talking to them. If you say with full and complete confidence that you know they're lying, they'll admit it (if they are).
ResidntGeek
Somewhere in there, you will have a credit analyst. Make friends with this person. They will have access to Dun & Bradstreet reports, paydex scores, and a host of other information about the hosting provider. They are the best people in most companies to research other companies -- because that's what they do for a living.
In a smaller company, it might make the most sense to speak to the department head/CFO, because you don't want their normal sales analysis, but rather a dependability analysis (similar, uses many of the same things, but not automated).
If you have questions, ask for CPA certified financials -- or at least a letter of attestation from a CPA firm that says they own/lease the multiple facilities, lines, etc. and that the company and pricipals are financially sound.
You'll want to be able to apply legal pressure if possible and you won't want some weird law in another country to trip you up. As an example, the company I work for is not based in the USA and has worked on some oil exploration data orininally gathered by the USSR in Iran. Obviously getting that back to the clients via an ftp site in Texas (one of the best economic options) would be a bad idea in case some loonie decided it was in his nations intrest to show it to a lot of people - most likely eventually including competitors of our client because spooks would need an expert opinion. Other countries have other laws designed to stop money laundering or have some effect on terrorism (or use that as an excuse) which could have unexpected consequences and hit you will collatoral damage - as well as the obvious theives which are hard to get if they are in another country.
First of all, don't go with 'flashy' hosts that try to woo you with their whiz-bang web design unless it's one of the big, well-known hosts. By this, I mean look at their website design. Does it look like a template? The sort that involve stock art pictures of people. If so, stay away.
You know.. I actually never thought of that but it's totally true. My web host's site had no CSS when I joined and the tables were all borked so bad I had to call them. $60/year for a gig of space and 3 gigs of bandwidth and my sites are the fastest I've visited (no links to avoid being labeled a whore). Since I know the guy, I'll leave the name of my host out of it.
I will, however, mention bargainname.com. Their website is almost 1997 vintage (it works but it's barely even HTML 4), but I've bought ~20 domains from them at $8/year (likely higher now) with no strings attached. I've even transfered to another domain provider for free (when a different hosting service forced me to). I'm not affiliated with bargainname in any way. They're owned by "dotster".. whoever that is..
Btw, bargainname may have sold my mailing address (how would I know), but apart from *possibly* that, I've never even shopped for another domain reseller since I've found them.
Latewire
We are a small ISP/hosting/consulting firm and just because we're small doesn't mean we can't/don't offer quite a few of "extras" like generator power multi-homed and plentiful backup space. Just because a company is small doesn't mean they can't provide. But at the same time you can't take their word for it either. Find out where their facilities are and ask for a tour. Sometimes a tour might not be possible due to security restrictions on facilities, but that doesn't make it any less likely that they can't provide. For example we are in a building that's shared by about 30 other companies. While I could allow you access to our areas, I couldn't get you into the rest.
Doing your homework is always best. The internet is a wonderful tool and when used properly the answers to all your questions are out there. I say this often, and it holds true in just about everything. Cost is always a concern noone wants to spend more than they have to, but if someone is selling you an entire cabinet for $400/mth power included, I would question where they are making their money. That's not to say that you should willingly pay $2000 for a single cabinet, but cost and quality are usually related to each other.
Referrals are probably one of the best ways to go. Because we are small and are forced to compete with the big guys we have to cut corners. While I refuse to cut corners where it matters, I have to shave on the "extras" that aren't necessary for operations. For example, instead of spending $100k on advertising a year, we buy equipment. Instead of buying $2k desks and $8k conference tables, we buy....equipment. I think you get the idea. Since we spend very little money on advertising our growth comes specifically from word of mouth. There are plenty of good providers out there just like us that operate the same way.
That used to be the case.
The world has gotten to be too litiguous for this. 5 years ago people would not have had any doubts before posting that a company sucks.
Nowdays people will think 10 times before doing that. For example, if I have some shitty experience with a company I usually post the exact description of a problem I run into with all relevant details including a mail trail where applicable. No emotions. No expletives. I have noticed that I am not the only one doing this lately. Noone wants to get sued after all.
If you search for "Company Name" + sucks you are likely to limit your set of results to posts by kids who do not think about having to deal with the fallout from their actions. In many cases they do not know what to do, how to do it, have not bothered to read the product description and do not know what they have bought.
I usually use "Company Name" + problem for searches like this. It gives better results lately.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Dreamhost are actually very forward about their CPU situation:
o ut-overselling/ A Q
http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-ab
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/CPU_Minutes_F
I hope that helps. Ive been using Dreamhost for several moderately high bandwidth sites over the past year and I have no complaints at all, infact I enjoy their 'professionally unprofessional' stance (re the newsletter).