Down and Dropping Fast
Written: Mar 14 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Account set-up: |
 |
|
| Web page loading time: |
 |
|
| Quality of customer support: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Personal Account Manager
Cons: Unknowledgeable staff and account managers, poor tech support, new price points too high.
The Bottom Line: Terrible. Horrible. Unknowledgeable. Avoid.
|
|
|
| razedvector's Full Review: Interland |
My experience with Interland dates back to 1999. Up until now, I was a customer of theirs. And at times, a happy customer. For the most part, my service was somewhat reliable, and I was only paying 20 dollars per month for an NT server, which at the time I subscribed was a fantastic deal with a dedicated IP address. Others were offering better prices, but with shared-IP addresses and unreliable services.
Even setting up was a problem for the start, as the account manager placed me on a server which did not have database services enabled. I was moved over quickly, so I did not think about it much.
After several months with Interland, I decided to opt for their Listserv option. So I called up my “personal account manager” and ordered the service. What troubled me is that he tried to sell me a dedicated server for my site, despite the fact that I used very little bandwidth and space, and obviously had no need for a dedicated server system. I later learned what it took to be an account manager. (More Below)
So he processed the ListServ order. The ListServ service did not work at all when first installed. After entering 5 tickets in their online trouble ticket system, I called and was on hold for 3 hours. The tech support person told me they only had one Listserv server at the time, despite the fact that I was told that it was “high-availability”. So after contacting the manager at tech support, a manger in sales, the only way I was able to reach any resolution in installation was to send a letter, a very lengthy letter which included copies of all my tickets, to the company registered mail. The vice president of sales took up my complaint, and worked with tech support to try to resolve the problem. The system started working, however, it was working very slow. Unreliable. It improved over time, but later declined.
6 months later I cancelled the ListServ service with Interland, but retained my hosting account. I decided to go with a service like ListBot which was free. I sent e-mail after e-mail to sales, and contacted billing. The assured me the service was cancelled. Then they charged me for the service. After seven billing tickets filed in the “online response system,” I was finally issued a refund. Three months later, when the service would have come up for renewal, they charged me again for the service. I then contacted them again, both sales and billing, and again they assured me that the service would be cancelled as soon as possible. I did get a refund again for the service back to my card.
I then, recently, received an invoice for ListServ service for renewal. They never learn, I suppose.
Meanwhile, while the whole ListServ incident is happening, the server is becoming extremely unstable and unreliable. I’ve been on the same server for one and a half years, and it has never been upgraded. They do not take care of their existing equipment. Microsoft NT servers are very temperamental, and they did not acknowledge this.
The server lost DNS service at one point, causing many domains in their service, not just on that one server, to lose domain resolution. You could reach the machine by IP address, but not by domain name. Not much good in today’s Internet. Then the server constantly locked up my Access database for no reason at all, and I had to call tech support.
One thing about scripting on their servers. They use a function in ASP (Active Server Pages) to cache the scripting commands issued. While this supposedly allows for more reliability, it is a horrible atmosphere for development, and makes full development near-impossible. When asked, they informed me that to cache ASP was a requirement of Microsoft, and impossible to turn off. This is not true. One rep said he would turn ASP Cache off on the machine I was on, but that was never completed either.
The mail servers were constantly unreliable and slow. At times, it could take 30 minutes on broadband to download 5 e-mail messages on the server, despite they are plain text.
Interland Account Managers – Unexperienced, Unknowing, Unaware. This may be an unfair generalization, however I have had three different account managers, and this was the case in all circumstances. First, they were, again, always trying to sell me a dedicated server, despite that I don’t need a dedicated server and only need shared access. They had no clue about the technology. I asked for a CNAME record alias to be added to the DNS record, and they had no clue what a CNAME was, or even how DNS zone files worked. All three of them had to have me explain to them terminology of the Internet. At one point I mentioned CSS, and they did not know what this was, despite the fact they are managers of accounts of web hosting customers, and CSS is a widely used standard now. (Custom Style Sheets, by the way). They also had no knowledge of where in the building the actual servers were. I had one tell me, “let me go figure out where the servers are, and I’ll go find a tech rep and call you back.”
This was all fine, except for what he discovered, as well as I, is that tech support has no access to servers. If something goes wrong, they have to view it from their terminals. What this means is that if something crashes, Level 3 tech support might need to handle it. And most of Level 3 does not work on weekends, or an evening, resulting in downtimes if no one is available to restart your server.
Another thing Interland did was to roll out a new mail system, one that stripped your domain name and routed your mail through a special server which ensured that mail records had their name in the headers. It was touted as “high availability mail service” which was supposed to improve on the previous iMail service. But not all of their customers were moved over to the new system. Worse yet, but touting their new mail system, and their new “advanced monitoring system” which is designed to keep abusers off shared servers, which I assume is basically a couple people watching server loads, which should have been in there in the first place, they decided this was justification to raise their, at this time, borderline prices even higher.
The server prices jumped up 8 dollars, from $19.95 to $27.95. This was after lowering the amount of bandwidth, POP e-mail boxes, and space you are allotted. This was an unjustified cost-to-services increase, and was the final thing that resulted in my decision to move. I had been looking around prior to this, but the price jump announcement caused me to act quickly.
Where I ended up was what you might not even consider a competitor of Interland. It is a small web hosting firm, where I am getting more space, more bandwidth, more reliability, and better service for a slightly lower price. In the end, this small firm was very personable and nice, and assisted me in setting up my services. Sometimes the smaller companies are the best ones to go with. They do it for the love of the net, not for the “corporate betterment of the stockholders.” Sure, everyone wants to make a living. But you have to respect your customers, and the smaller firms do just that.
The main problem with Interland is that it has become to big and bloated of a company in order to be agile in the ever-competitive Internet and Web Hosting business. Everyone from the little guy to Yahoo! is a web host these days, and you must excel in customer service and value in order to succeed. In every accountable effort, Interland has failed. Shop around, and make sure you check all opinion sites, even do a search for your possible host in Google Groups (formerly DejaNews) before making the jump. Make sure they have a guarantee, avoid places with extremely high setup fees (Interland is $40 setup but it was waived since I transferred a site in instead of going in new). Companies will make their money back with you as a longtime customer instead of needing high upfront costs. Be careful, choose wisely, just don’t choose Interland.
Recommended:
No
Monthly fees (US$): 27.95 (was 19.95 previously)
Platform used: Windows NT
Hosted on Secure Server: No
Database used: Other ODBC database
Main focus of Web site: Publishing/Content
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
razedvector
|
|
Member: Benj Hoppe
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Reviews written: 14
Trusted by: 2 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.