On 23 March 2005, Oasis Fanatic, my other web site, was suspended from Lunar Pages, our web host for using too much server resources.

This was a shock for me because I didn’t receive any warning about it even though Lunar Pages said they told me 7 days earlier.

Lunar Pages did not want to restore my site till I upgrade my account from its current $7.00+ per month plan to $20.00+ per month plan.

I simply did not wish to pay more money when my account used only 9GB of 40 GB bandwidth. Well, I found out that it is possible that my account will get suspended because I use too much server resources while staying within the bandwidth limits of 40GB per month.

So I looked for another web host and found Globat. I signed up, uploaded all my files and did everything necessary and found out they had a server error. So my web site couldn’t work on 24 March 2005! I could have waited another day for them to resolve the issue but I was way too pissed to continue. Terrible support… I called all the way from Singapore to reach a voicemail after holding for over 5 minutes. Closing the account is also a pain in the butt. I had to call in to confirm and initially the close account form didn’t work too!

Therefore I requested for a refund of my Globat fees and signed up web hosting at Host Gator on 25 March 2005. Its a good friday…. Oasis Fanatic is up after 2 days of web hosting hell!

Then on 25 March 2005… VincentRich.com got suspended!

Last month VincentRich.com was suspended because of late payments. I signed up for Host Gator and it seems like the PayPal payment did not automatically charge my credit card for my second month’s fees (February 2005). Therefore I created another PayPal subscription payment on 25 February 2005 to let PayPal charge me on the 25th day of each month. Phew! I thought my problems were over!

Damn! I was wrong!

Host Gator did not update my monthly fees to be charged on 25th day of each month. My payment day is still the 10th day of each month. Therefore I have exceeded my payment for over 2 weeks and I got suspended! Now I just got over 2 days of web hosting hell and I thought I could get a good night’s rest… I woke up this morning and I was back in hell again!

I changed my payment method to direct credit card charges. No more PayPal. Host Gator seems to have some issues with PayPal and I do not wish for something like this to happen again. Other than this payment issue, everything’s great with Host Gator.

What I Learnt From This Web Hosting Hell!

1. Your Monthly Bandwidth Don’t Mean Nothing!

I thought I was using too of my monthly 40 GB bandwidth limit with my Oasis Fanatic web site. The truth is I have used only 9 GB out of 40 GB bandwidth in March 2005! Lunar Pages wasn’t concerned about the bandwidth but the server resources I was using.

Here is a copy of their email to me on 24 March 2005:

Hello,

Please be advised that all tickets are answered in the order they are received and when you reply to your ticket before we respond, it pushes it back to the bottom of the queue and delays being responded to.

8 days ago we moved your account to quantz and emailed you this message to vincent@oasisfanatic.com

"Your account is utilizing excessive resources, causing a significant
degradation of services on the server. This is a shared environment and we can not allow one user to utilize the majority of the resources on a server as it affects all users adversely. Because of this, you have been
temporarily moved to the Quantz server. Please note that as a load balancing measure we have moved you from Laffan to Lyra a few months back. Now your usage stats is not suited for shuttle plan. A detail of the problem is shown below:

User Domain %CPU %MEM Mysql Processes
oasisf2 oasisfanatic.com 3.58 3.46 0.9
Top Process %CPU 35.0 /usr/bin/php
Top Process %CPU 33.0 /usr/bin/php
Top Process %CPU 26.0 /usr/bin/php

We moved you to Quantz first to solve the issue of the degraded service on Lyra and second as a courtesy in order to prevent any downtime on your site to allow you time to rectify the situation. Currently, your site is not
suitable for a shared hosting environment.

Quantz is not a production server and is not guaranteed to run in the same
manner as your old server nor will it support all functions you may have.
This is a transitional server only and is not intended to be a permanent
placement. Please make a decision on how you would like to proceed within
seven (7) days. After seven (7) days, your account will be suspended if no other arrangements are made.

You have the following options:

1.You may upgrade your package to the Enterprise Plan. The Enterprise Plan is a larger package designed for current customers who have outgrown our published shared hosting packages. For more information on the features and pricing, please see http://helpdesk.lunarpages.com/faq.php?do=article&articleid=202. If you opt for this plan, you should still reduce the usage.

2.You may look for a dedicated server or other hosting solution. Please
remember that propagation takes up to seventy two (72) hours so if you decide on changing hosts you should allow enough time for propagation.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. We value you as a customer
and want to work with you toward a solution that is mutually beneficial.
Please let us know as quickly as possible how you would like to proceed.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask us, we will be happy
to answer them. We are committed to making your hosting experiences pleasant and fulfilling.

Best Regards,"

We have received no response so today your account was suspended and another email was sent to notify you. You likely did not receive it since the contact address on file is on the domain which was suspended.

Best regards.

–
If you have any more questions, or if we can be of further assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Regards,
Katrina Kane
Senior Remote Support Representative (RSRlll)
support@lunarpages.com
Phone: 1-877-LUNARPAGES (Toll-free)
Phone: 1-714-521-8150 (International)

What I feel about this whole thing is simply this… BULLSHIT! I have used Lunar Pages for almost 9 months without any problems. Suddenly I have used too much resources and you didn’t even have the decency to tell me what is causing the surge in resources? I find it very rude to literally "force" to upgrade my plan. I was having none of this nonsense so I looked for Globat instead. Another big mistake on my part!

2. Don’t Fall For The Low Fees Hype Like I Did!

I signed up for Globat after searching around and reading positive reviews. They have a promotion at $4.95 per month but you must pay 1 year up front plus $19.95 setup fee. So its $79.35 per year… slightly less than Lunar Pages. Its the setup fees that takes up a big chunk of the fees so don’t be fooled by the $4.95 per month fees. Furthermore, they allow you to use your CJ.com account to sign up for your account. The affiliate commission is $65.00 and that means I will send only $14.35 per year for this web host! As people say, you get what you pay for!

One thing I found interesting is that the people who say so and so web host is great are usually the affiliates themselves. If someone wants to sell you something, would they say all the bad things about them? No way! They might tell you some of the flaws but not all…. these affiliate reviewers might never have used these web hosts! There are so many of them… How do you use all of them?

I didn’t know about Globat not supporting CRON JOBs. Its a feature to schedule your scripts to run at certain intervals. Great for backups, newsletter, autoresponders on your web site. You need them to run at certain intervals so that they will be automated right? Well, Globat does not have any CRON JOB support! It is something that I expect every web host to have but I found out they don’t have it once I was in their control panel!

By that time I had uploaded over 100MB of my files to their web host and I realized their server was down! I kept getting an error… Even their support site at support.globat.com was down! Lucky for me, there is a 30 day guarantee. I submitted my request 1 day after signing up!

3. The Risk Of 1 Year Contracts….

Most web hosts want you to pay 1 year upfront to "lock in" your fees at their low advertised rates. This is just a marketing gimmick. It binds you to them and if you want to quit using their service, you might risk losing all your unused fees if they do not have a money back guarantee on unused fees! They promise you 30 days money back guarantee no more no less!

My Lunar Pages account has 3 months worth of unused fees left in it. I do not have high hopes of them giving me my money back! They don’t even want to restore my site till I upgrade my plan to a more expensive one that will triple my fees!

Is There A Web Hosting Heaven On Earth?

So far I have used 5 web hosts for Oasis Fanatic. And 3 web hosts for Vincent Rich. Now both my sites are on Host Gator. Host Gator isn’t the cheapest web host out there but I like their service even though I got suspended twice in 2 months! They were very quick in responding to my suspension. In fact, I got a response within 1o minutes!

I pay them once a month at $9.95 without any contracts at all. I can quit anytime without losing any unused prepaid fees. I hope this is my last web host. I find it very troublesome to change a web host. And I lost 3 day’s worth of advertising revenue from Oasis Fanatic and 1 day’s worth of affiliate sales from Clickbank.

Some must read tips about the hosting industry, and how to avoid being taken for a ride!

This is from Host Gator’s web site… You can read the full article at their web site. You will find a lot of practical advice on how to choose a web host…

This one sounds a lot like what I have experienced!

2. Scam Plans

If it sounds too good too be true it usually is! All hosts have the same basic limitations when it comes to server resources and specs. There is no magic server that has a never ending supply of ram and cpu. If a host ever claims to give unlimited space or bandwidth DO NOT JOIN THEM. The thing to remember is that the average web site uses about 50 Megs space and less then 1 gig bandwidth a month. So what hosting companies do is they lie! They make up scam plans with tons of space and 50 gigs bandwidth for around $8 bucks a month. It’s a numbers game…. Only one or two of every 100 people that signup on the plan are going to use the 50 gigs bandwidth. So what do they do? They usually terminate the sites that use it saying "your site is using too many resources." They aren’t lying about the resource usage it’s the truth! Most people don’t realize that bandwidth and space used have nothing to do with the server resources being used. Resource usage has to do with the amount of cpu and ram a site uses. If a site uses their 50 gigs bandwidth they aren’t kicked for using their bandwidth they are kicked for using up most of the servers cpu and ram. Another thing to remember is that the cheaper the plan is, and the more space / bandwidth included the more sites per server the host will have to pack in to make their money back. So going by the above numbers which we would say is pretty accurate from our numbers… If a company hosted 200 accounts per server and 2% of the server used the 50 gigs bandwidth that would equal 200 gigs bandwidth a month used on the server. Guess what If they don’t kick those sites using it those 4 sites are going to be using more resources then all 196 sites on the server combined. So think about it would a hosting company boot 4 people paying $8 bucks a month in order to double the amount of sites they can hold on the server? You bet they would! We only put a few 100 accounts per shared hosting server, our pricing and packages don’t force us to jam sites on to a server in order to be profitable. If you think most hosts put less then 200 accounts per server your living in a fantasy land. Most hosts put 1000’s of accounts per server. Making it all that much more important to kick the 2% or so that use what their plan comes with.

Well now you know the truth about bandwidth and server resources….. Better luck next time in your web host hunt!

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