When webhosts go bad
Anyone out there having problems with Maxnet?
I ask because I recently took on support of a modest e-commerce site
hosted by them. My client is a wholesale business whose retail
customers sign-in and place orders. Products on the site are regularly
updated, and the whole thing's been ticking over happily for more than
six years. The site consumes a mere 70MB of disk space for which the
client is charged $60/month (plus GST).
The first problem surfaced at the end of November when my client noticed a hiccup in the order numbers coming through. Had some been missed? The obvious solution was to look at the database. Except we couldn't because the VPN connection was broken. That took 10 days to fix.
Then last week the site disappeared completely. For four days! (Do I need to stress that this is a wholesaler with retail customers and Christmas is just around the corner ...?)
There's an old joke about how the IT industry deals in computers, programs and support -- or, as it's known to aficianados: hardware, software and nowhere. Maxnet have certainly proved the latter. During the outage they variously told my client (by phone) that the site should be up "within the hour" and me (almost simulataneously via email) that "there is no ETR at this stage". They also emailed this suggestion: "If you have a copy, please feel free to upload the latest version of your website files to your webspace as that may resolve the issue" apparently unaware that their very own Network Status page was (and still is) advising that: "... users will not be able to use FTP or VPN services associated with that hosting service".
On Friday morning -- after four days of this -- I sent them an irate email demanding an explanation. Apparently their email's broken too. I've yet to receive a reply.
The site finally came back up Friday afternoon. Sort of. It's only been partially restored. You can tell because the homepage graphic is missing and my client can't make any updates. And they still have no FTP or VPN access.
The ultimate irony is that if you visit Maxnet's homepage you'll be greeted with this image:
They fail to mention that the errant computers appear to be their own!
The first problem surfaced at the end of November when my client noticed a hiccup in the order numbers coming through. Had some been missed? The obvious solution was to look at the database. Except we couldn't because the VPN connection was broken. That took 10 days to fix.
Then last week the site disappeared completely. For four days! (Do I need to stress that this is a wholesaler with retail customers and Christmas is just around the corner ...?)
There's an old joke about how the IT industry deals in computers, programs and support -- or, as it's known to aficianados: hardware, software and nowhere. Maxnet have certainly proved the latter. During the outage they variously told my client (by phone) that the site should be up "within the hour" and me (almost simulataneously via email) that "there is no ETR at this stage". They also emailed this suggestion: "If you have a copy, please feel free to upload the latest version of your website files to your webspace as that may resolve the issue" apparently unaware that their very own Network Status page was (and still is) advising that: "... users will not be able to use FTP or VPN services associated with that hosting service".
On Friday morning -- after four days of this -- I sent them an irate email demanding an explanation. Apparently their email's broken too. I've yet to receive a reply.
The site finally came back up Friday afternoon. Sort of. It's only been partially restored. You can tell because the homepage graphic is missing and my client can't make any updates. And they still have no FTP or VPN access.
The ultimate irony is that if you visit Maxnet's homepage you'll be greeted with this image:
They fail to mention that the errant computers appear to be their own!
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Comments
Very good comments by Adam and Chris.
I agree with both of you.
Looks like a really poor effort by this Maxnet outfit. If they were in the US, they would have had the pants sued off them by now.
Geoff, given the shocking service already given by Maxnet, I would recommend that you suggest to this client that they leave Maxnet and find someone else. Maxnet have had more than enough time to get it together, and they have utterly failed.
Drop them - end of story. They will only learn a lesson from getting bad P.R. and losing customers.
Posted by: Andy | January 9, 2011 10:34 PM
Unless its serving videos, huge galleries of images, or attracting millions of hits, any modest PC hardware will run as a server for one website. There's probably no need to buy a factory built server for a modest low-traffic website. Your old discarded 2Ghz pc with 1gb of ram and 40gb of hard drive will be fine.
There are two more important issues. Firstly, getting a static IP address from your ISP, as some are reluctant to provide this. Secondly, your upstream bandwidth has to be fast enough to support your server's needs as well as your own PC usage.
Posted by: Chris | December 30, 2010 1:00 PM
I don't know much about hosting websites but surely with such a modest business it would be cheaper and easier to run it on an old server from home. Trademe started out that way and you can certainly pick up a relatively powerful server off trademe for a few hundred dollars.
Posted by: adam skinner | December 21, 2010 2:17 AM
And for you next post Geoff, perhaps a story on how easy it is to setup Ubuntu server and host your own website from home.:)
Its not that hard actually. The biggest potential problem is the bandwidth available on your home broadband connection, should your website become very busy..
Posted by: chris | December 20, 2010 8:11 AM