So I do not host my sites that I run ppc campaigns on… why? well because I spend a lot of money on the ppc engines and that can really cause you problems if your site is down.
Well… 2 days ago I upgraded my account from a small business account to a professional account. Nothing changed. I got a email that said my changes would be made within the next 24 hours or so…
Then today I looked at what I have spent on ppc and then what I brought in… wow I am totally having the worst day of my life. 27,000 clicks and hardly any impressions… wtf is going on.
I check my sites and they are ALL DOWN. Evidently when you UPGRADE your account at a2hosting they delete your access. Ohh ya they also disabled my ssh access to in the UPGRADE.
So now I have had a support ticket for over 5 hours. and I have tried to call there phone number for the last 5 hours too… 734-864-1413 You try it and if you get ahold of someone and get them to call me today I will send you 350$ PAYPAL no joke. (just call me on 3 way or something or make sure they give me your name when they call).
Also if you need more numbers or contact info there site is a2hosting.com
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2416 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
I get put on hold then it hangs up
Man that sucks…just in case you are looking for a host I have 5+ dedicated servers at liquid web and you will get a live person on the phone within 2 rings 24/7. They also have shared accts if that is what you are interested in for this project. Good luck!
Thanks-
I actually have a full rack at theplanet.com but I just wanted to do my ppc stuff at a shared facility that I thought would be rock solid… bad mistake
Tell me about it. It makes me want to hulk out and punch through my wall
all our representatives are currently busy.
Please stay on the line and your call with be answered the next available representative.
I’m sorry no one is available to take your call at the moment.
the best is rackspace.com, the best and you pay for it…
i also vote for liquidweb and hostgator, both of those are good too, hostgator is based out of the planet.
Hey Shoemoney,
I think I may have found the company owner’s home phone number but I’d rather not post it in a public page. E-mail me and I will forward the info to you. His mailbox picked up but you will probably get a better turn around if you leave him a message
Hey, what is your phone number, I think I got someone?
ARGH. Same thing. I will keep trying once an hour though.
Yay I win! I got through to them and confrenced in shoemoney!
man, I had something similar happen last year.. Sorry to hear that.. Nice blog! No site should ever go down with todays tech.. You should start a donation website for your losses….
Thank you! & check your paypal
NOOOO, I was through with them too but I didnt have Shoe’s phone number!!! Oh well, good game =\
Emergency support sucks!
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was such thing as a ‘good host’?
Ben Arwin
to me
More options 12:05 am (8 minutes ago)
I’ve responded to his ticket via this system. He claims that he’s restored the content on his site. I’ve re-enabled SSH for him but have taken no further action since I assume he’s up and running again.
We’re looking into what may have gone wrong … certainly our upgrade process does not delete content so something else is at play here.
Thanks.
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Ticket Details
Ticket ID: UMC-518347
Email I got from the various tickets i submitted.
Totally bs, even for a small guy being offline 24 hours can cost far more in lost revenue than a month of hosting fees. This is a good reason why to spread things out accross multiple hosts so even if you do see some downtime the impact to your revenues is limited.
I second the “smart move” mobilizing your readers. After many webhosts my vote is for ThePlanet, good service and support. Best uptime for my machines at sucky places like CiHost: 60 days. Current uptime with ThePlanet: 250 days
LMAO i love this post – get us to sort it eh?
OK i have some issues with my latest gas bill…. hmm shall i post british gas’s number here too ?
i feel sorry for your lost..
Excellent advice and made me feel better. Just started on the revenue model after maxing out earnings in the blogging world for the time being. You can only write so much every day without being superman or Darren…
Went with HostGator and am very pleased with them for the revenue model following Grey and Shoes advice.
But I hate finding hosts and have learned saving money is the stupidest way to host a site. That should be the least of ones concerns if you are looking at a revenue model.
This is why I am my own web host. Even then I remotely host the dns and can switch a site from one server to another instantly just by logging into the dns and making a change. The changes propagate instantly and the site is up again in no time. I even do practice runs to make sure it works as needed in an emergency.
Oh..that sucks….happened to me once…..
The $350 reminds me of a Drew Carrey Episode. Basically one person gets offered an odd amount of money by a corporate executive. Let’s say $350. The poor person accepts the money but asks “Why $350?”. The executive’s response is “We spent millions on market research to figure out what is the smallest amount of money a poor person would consider a lot.”
Don’t get me wrong, if I would have known about this I would have participated.
Personally I would have probably just paid for the phone records of the CEO or manager and then gone from there.
1) So how do you find out which hosting services suck before you pay and sign up?
2) How do you spend 27,000 in clicks and check your site in the meantime? I was as mad as heck just 100 ppcs on a site that wasn’t working.
I’ve had similar issues in the past. Iswitched over to Total Choice Hosting and the’ve been incredible. Live help that responds quickly, great cpanel with lots of extras and a forum for their customers. Take a look at it to see how others feel.
We’ve had similar experiences with lost revenue. The best thing to do is get site monitoring for any of your sites. I use the Watchmouse site monitoring widget for Mac OS X which is free. Your computer is doing the monitoring, but you can use their paid services to get a more covered monitoring.
Adrian
thebeststuffintheworld.com
I’ve also had other problems with A2. We had an account with many sites, and they said our sites were causing load problems, and that we could move to one of their dedicated servers or to another host. We asked them could they help us find where was the load problem was. They wouldn’t help us. We did a whole bunch of things to optimise the sites, because it takes a lot of work to move sites. We communicated everything we did, and we begged for help. They suspended out account out of the blue, and we lost money.
We moved to another host, and we haven’t had any problems since. All I can say is avoid A2 hosting.
Service is so poor at most hosting companies. They all want to grow fast in terms of clients, but never spend the money on upgrading service. I recently moved to a dedicated server. After 2 weeks of smooth running, the damn thing keeps stopping MySQL and Plesk at least twice a day. Tech support is useless. (“We just give you the box. The rest is up to you.”) You can’t run a business like this. Imagine if you had a store and someone shut the street down for a few hours everyday!
I’d like to add a more recent update to this thread. A2 still sucks big time. Numerous outages per day and many of the servers have their email blocked from numerous spammers.
But it is super cheap
I am so sick of changing servers, I’ve been to expensive ones and cheap ones. A2 came with the highest recommendations but they have been a total pain for the last year and I just don’t know where to move to. So many of the testimonials on the web are paid shills.
Aaargh!!!!