Over the last few days TUG.n has been down. However, I’ve been experiencing problems with email for months, and I never even knew it. I’ve had everyone from clients to my mother telling me that I did not get their emails. My main personal email address is currently cdevroe(at)theubergeeks.net and has been for 5+ years. It turns out that my ChanceCube email is also outta whack, though the site is up. To top it all off, my phone number seems to not be “callable” from Japan!!
Currently I use Assurance Hosting as my registrar. But I’m switching away from it because even though I’ve setup all of my domains to “auto-renew”, they have never, ever done so. I’m using Dreamhost for many of my sites (not this site, I use Sonnex for this site and I’ve never had any trouble). And I’m using my local cable company for phone (voip) and Internet service.
At the moment, all of these services suck. I’ve put up with them for far too long and I’m going to attempt to move all of them over the next few weeks. Any suggestions? I want an easy transfer of all of my domains (registrar), my email addresses, my sites, files, databases, the entire thing. I do not want to put up with this much downtime ever again.
For those of you trying to reach me at the moment: email me at cdevroe@chancecube.com which now completely uses Google’s hosted email service and I’m checking it through the web interface since it fails to relay anything via POP properly. This is costing me a great deal of money, so I’d like my next switch to be to something very reliable.
I’ll even sign up under someone’s affiliate account if they can direct me towards something good.
[tags]outage, email, registrar, domains, dreamhost, sonnex, hosting, internet service, voip, telephone[/tags]
[slug]outage-april07[/slug]
(mt) man. Of course, you might not want to with all the talk about the crappy (gs) issues they hadâ€â€I have a (dv) server and haven’t had much trouble *crossing fingers*.
I totally feel your pain on the ISP though. Who else offers it in this area because I’d switch too. They’ve been pissing me off ever since I got back from Austin (though I don’t have the VoIP phone so I’d imagine you’re doubley pissed).
For registrars I switched to GoDaddy a little while ago. So far things are looking good.
I’ve been with a lot of different hosting providers over the last 5 or 6 years and the only one that I’ve been happy with is A Small Orange. I was with (mt) for about a year and was loving it, until they introduced their (gs) platform.
The great thing about ASO is their level of customer service. I’ve never had a support ticket go unanswered for more than an hour. Often times, when I submit a ticket (more often to have a Ruby gem installed rather than an actual support issue), I hear back from someone in 10 or 15 minutes. Not to mention that Tim (the owner of ASO) makes sure to follow up with customers if there is any outstanding issues, or anything they’re not completely happy with (case in point here with a Rails problem I was having).
If I could warrant the cost, I’d definitely go with a (dv) server from (mt) just so I could have more control over my hosting environment, but for a shared host, you can’t really go wrong with ASO.
For a registrar, I’m definitely with Mike on GoDaddy. I’ve never had any issues with them and transferring your domains over from your current registrar should be very easy.
Mike: Yeah. Obviously (mt) and I have a good relationship and I wouldn’t mind switching everything over to them if for no other reason than because I have contacts within the company. How do you find their administrative panels on the servers you are on now?
I am going to look into the ISP thing soon, probably when I get back from San Fran. I too have been having the same troubles. I’ll let you know what I end up going with – if nothing else I am going to call them and give them an ear full.
“Back in the day” I heard nothing but horrible things about GoDaddy partially because they were flipped so fast I think. But over the last year or so I’ve heard nothing but good things. What is the consensus?
Oh, and if I do with with (mt), I’ll use your link.
They use Plesk 8 now for their admin panels so it was a bit to get used to for me but from the little experience I’ve had with Dreamhost it’s many times better in my humble opinion.
You could probably find a demo of Plesk at the SWSoft website somewhere if you want to play around with it.
I’ve been threatening to call Adams for the past 3 days and I keep telling myself that I’ll do it tomorrow. Alas, here we both are, still complaining and myself not doing anything about it.
I use an excellent VPS-only host, which I’ll be happy to pass on if you’re interested, but the real good news I have is regarding email.
I searched everywhere for reliable IMAP service that I didn’t have to futz with. GMail, as you know, is not the solution because it’s not IMAP. If it’s not IMAP, it’s not email, IMNSHO.
What email service you’re looking for is Webmail.us. Their reliability has been infallible. Their service has been extraordinary. And for what they offer, they are shockingly also the cheapest email host I could find. Use your own client with IMAP or their webmail client, which has some very cool additional features. Their server supports IMAP over SSL. They are very supportive of using just MX records to point at their services because they focus their services entirely on email.
Undoubtedly, Webmail.us is one of the best finds I’ve had on the web.
GoDaddy also gets my vote for registrar, but I learned my lesson and now host all of my DNS records away from my registrar and my host. I use DNSMadeEasy.com for that service, which lets me do all sorts of crazy things with my DNS records very easily.
I’d recommend (mt) also. I use the (gs) and it’s great for the price. I switched from dreamhost before because that was terrible.
I’m also moving all my registrations to (mt) so that everything is in one place.
Jeff, Owen, Julian: Thanks for your suggestions as well. I’m looking forward to doing research on all of these suggestions.
I’ve recently switched a site (one that couldn’t afford the kind of downtime DreamHost is famous for) to Pair, and they’ve been pretty good. You don’t get much control, and the software is all kinda old, but I’m assured that’s all part of what makes them rock-solid.
I have many domains registered with GoDaddy and have always had stellar service — plus their prices are hard to beat. Everything auto-renews like clockwork, and I even get a call from them every once in a while just to “make sure things are okay.”
I’ve also used ASO as the host for my main site for a couple years and have had great uptime. I had a couple issues related to incorrect billing that weren’t cool, but ASO fixed it and gave me a credit. And, as Jeff noted is common, Tim himself followed up with me as well.