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OpenSourceHost: Experiencing Technical Difficulties
For the past year I've been a very happy customer of OpenSourceHost, and greatly appreciated their reliable hosting, installation of Drupal, and fast, efficient customer service.
In the past couple of weeks, though, that's all changed.
It seems OSH has "upgraded" their service, and for me this has meant a string of major problems leading to completely inaccessible sites. And in the past, where their technical support people fixed problems almost without exception in under an hour, now initial response time is lagging around 3 hours. (And that's initial response time, not problem solving time...)
They have added lots of memory to their accounts, but this does me no good when I get daily "page cannot be displayed" errors, some lasting for hours.
I haven't given up on them yet, but my patience is wearing very thin. I want to know whether anyone else on OpenSourceHost is also experiencing problems, or, on the contrary, if your OSH service is running well. Please let me know so I can figure out if I am the only one going through this now.
osh
Hey Femrich,
I've been using OSH for the last four years to host 3 different drupal sites. I'm working through similar upgrade problems but believe that most of them are behind us. Scott and crew at OSH have always provided great services and fast feedback/problem resolution.
Good luck, jim
ps I'm hoping they move on to php/mysql 5.x soon.
I've also had very good
I've also had very good experience with OSH, and I am hoping that this current problem is temporary. I've actually had a suggestion from them that the problem I am experiencing may be related to backups of the system. Because they have new servers, current backups are taking a long time (i.e. full backups). They have set backups to occur at off-peak times, but unfortunately for me (because I am located on the other side of the world) that means their off-peak is my full-on-peak, and apparently that creates problems on the site.
Anyhow, I will of course post the outcome here, which I hope will be a positive resolution to this problem...
Agreed
Yes OpenSourceHost.com been pretty good the past, and yes they are having serious issues now.
Good luck to Scott and crew in working the changes and I hope things are looking up especially regards with billing and auto renewal of payments through credit cards in the near future.
So far, so good
I said I would report back. It looks like the backup issue has settled down a bit at OSH. At least I haven't had any service disruptions since my original post in this thread about a week ago. That's good news. I hope this signals an end to the "bumps in the road" caused by the recent upgrade, and a return to OSH's characteristic high performance and service levels.
Still experiencing serious customer service problems
The problem with completely inaccessible sites at OSH seems to have been resolved, which is an improvement over the situation a couple of weeks ago. But since the "upgrade" to their system, their customer service has taken a real nose-dive. In the past, they resolved most support issues within an hour or two. Since the recent changes, though, 24 hours seems to be the minimum response time.
I made a support request 38 hours ago on an issue that makes one of my sites completely inaccessible, and still there's no sign of resolution. In the past, their excellent service team would have had it resolved long ago.
I'm guessing they've farmed out their support to a less-than-stellar third party, though other than the sudden change in service quality and the fact that the names of people responding to support requests are suddenly all changed, I don't have any specific evidence for that. Whatever the reason, it's causing me some serious hosting problems and makes OSH seem like a merely mediocre host.
I moved my account
Hey guys, For the last six weeks it seems my site has been down more than up so I switched to a vps at rimuhosting.com. Good luck to all of you and I hope one day those guys, open source host, resolve their problems.
Kind regards, jim
I'm curious what your
I'm curious what your difficulties were with OSH?
Most of the major difficulties I described above (the ones that made my sites inaccessible for long periods of time) seem to have been resolved. I don't like the new user interface they've introduced at all, which loads very slowly and seems designed to make it just a bit more difficult to post a service request. But I can live with it.
The one remaining big problem I am having (and this is a big problem) is that the level of support service at OSH has suddenly gone from excellent to poor. Response time is abysmal now. I haven't had an initial response to a support request come in less than 18 hours since the system renovation. And in the past excellent support, including fast response time, has been the best feature of their service for me.
I haven't given up on OSH yet. I'm hoping they'll get back to their old service. But given that it's been so long now, I'm keeping my eyes open for an alternative. Would like to hear how things go with your new host...
Is there a bigger problem?
I have also been with opensourcehost.com for a long time. When they upgraded their service, service went from "best of the best" to almost "worst of the worst". Response times have been poor, and even worse, my site has been down many times. However, they have had such outstanding service in the past that I was willing to wait it out until they resolved their issues.
Today, now, I have no site, no cpanel, no access whatsoever. All domains are down, and when you call their live service phone number, you are on hold for 15 minutes, and then get a "the number you have dialed is not in service". Hmmm...
So, I am wondering if anyone has heard anything? Is something going on with Opensourcehost that needs to be addressed? Anyone have any input on this at all?
Back up...
OK..I am back up and running, but no explanation what or why something was wrong...BUT....it took all day. From the initial email to the final "I am backup and running" period was 10 hours. Worse, still, is that there isn't any explanation beyond, "we had some technical difficulties". And, the phone number still doesn't work! At this point, I am really not happy, but it would make me sad to leave them because they have been SO good in the past.
It is now 3 months after their upgrade. Am I alone in this? Or is anyone else out there still experiencing difficulties?
Thanks...
I continue to be frustrated
I continue to be frustrated with OSH. The problem you describe sounds like something that happened to me just after the new year. My site was down (again) for a few days, as was the OSH customer service site (and no problems at all with any other site on the internet I tried to contact). When I was able to get to the customer service site, I posted a help message and, 24 hours later, got an unhelpful message saying, basically, the problem isn't with us. I replied again, referring to the ongoing problems I have been having with OSH since the upgrade, and got a slightly better response, still saying "it's not us" but suggesting I ask my ISP to do a "traceroute" to see if there is a computer between OSH and me that is causing the problem.
Perhaps this is possible--I'm on the other side of the world.
I also searched with google to find if anyone else was reporting this kind of problem, an located a message on the OSH site, which support had not bothered to mention, saying they had been having problems with an "upstream server" blocking access to OSH sites. This seems odd to me, as I understand internet technology should lead computers to look for another route to a computer if access is not available, but what do I know?
Since then, my site has been down briefly now and then but nothing major.
For myself, I am still toughing it out with OSH though no longer recommending them as a host. This is only because I have a complicated setup at OSH and do not now have the time to transfer, though I may do so in a few months when I get a break. The servers at OSH seem mostly to be working well, though at this point I do not ever expect them to rise above their current service standard, which I would rate as mediocre to poor (edit: in terms of response time, and average in terms of getting things done).
It's too bad. Until October 2007 they were an excellent host. But if you're looking for a new host now, I recommend looking elsewhere.
I am realizing the frustration
I have been happily setting up small biz clients drupal sites on open source host accounts for the past year (even though there is no affiliate program of any kind and I get nothing from the referral) solely because the hosting had been stable and the support was excellent. I have seen the same degrade of hosting quality over the past few months and am growing more and more concerned. Sites down over and over.. am calling them now actually because not only are my clients sites down but their own site is down! Had to go to google cached pages to get the support number.. ouch.
This is going to have to turn around very soon or it will be permanently on to better hosting somewhere else.
OpenSourceHost as we knew it is gone
We've been with OSH for almost 2 years, but the service has deteriorated to the point that we must move all our sites. Last night we were unable to reach sites for half an hour, and then again an hour later, no response. I filed tickets with screenshots of the cpanel service monitor, showing failed httpd and mysql, and astronomically high server loads. Their response -- the load is unavoidable due to backups and utilities. In other words, they're taking their own servers down for significant periods and couldn't care less about the fact that the internet is 24/7.
That's just the final straw in a multitude of service problems. Opensourcehost is now the last place you should go to host Drupal sites. Pass the word! We're taking sites to Liquid Web, more expensive, of course, but their service is excellent.
Update on sites
Just wanted to update on my own progress and recommedations! I left OSH in January after my very frustrated responses of "heavy server load, but it is fixed now", "do a tracert", "backup and utilities", and all the other excuses I received from their poor support team.
I am quite sad, as OSH was, until last fall, an excellent host. I went to AN Hosting on the suggestion of another member here, and found their service to be almost as bad. My site was down, and they actually shut it down once on me for some type of "you hit the site 21 times" excuse, which I never did really get any explaination for.
I moved to DrupalValueHosting, where I have been most impressed. The best thing I can say is this is the fastest my Drupal sites have loaded since I started using Drupal. No problems, and not a single downtime.
For my buck, Drupal Value Hosting has earned every dollar.
I've about reached the end
I've about reached the end of my tether with OSH, and let me tell you, I have a very long tether. But I'm so put off by DVH's persistent spamming of drupal.org that I'm not likely to try them. If I do find a good replacement host, I'll be sure to report back to the site...