Hello everyone,

Anybody here with experience hosting Drupal sites with Cartika (http://www.cartikahosting.com/)?

If not, any recommendations for similar quality hosts?

Thank you

JIAM

Comments

ddorian’s picture

i havent but i cant find a price in their clustered hosting that looks like mollom
currently i use shared for webfaction.com if u wana put dorianhoxha at referral
and vps linode or slicehost
for deticated maybe theplanet?dont know
webfaction is hosted at the planet

seanray’s picture

hosting from Cartikahosting.com looks cool, as it's not a very populars hosting companies in the industry, it's hard to evaluate their service. In terms of their products, looks like softlayers is providing the same type of solution, which has gained very good reputation in the industry for their world-class data centers and service.

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Want to setup a Drupal site, find the Best Drupal Hosting for it now.

editorreview’s picture

As we write this review, Cartikahosting servers are having disk failures. You can go to their website to see the kind of disk server failures they have been having the past month.

Before my long review, here is a short summary. I do not recommend Cartikahosting.com because

1) SERVER have an intermittent problem. Often has downtime throughout the day but is brief

2) CONTROL PANEL often stalls and freezes

3) DISHONEST TECH SUPPORT. A few times when you claim the server is down Cartikahosting will try to blame your webpage codes and are not helpful. Andrew Rouchotas is really hard to work with and is quite arrogant. The reason I say this is because he will boast about his server uptime but at the same time, the server uptime has trouble.

4) DISHONEST COMPANY: Cartikahosting.com lied to us saying their company is in the USA while after research we found they are in Canada. Most likely a small home office with just Andrew and possibly one or two friends to help out. Okay you can now read my blog about Cartikahosting.com.

THE GOOD SIDE: Hshpere is my preferred control panel (as long as it doesn't freeze) The online support is online most of the time. Only three times did I have to wait more than an hour but I believe their servers were down and they probably had too many clients trying to contact them. Other than that, they answer fairly quickly. Also the first two months they were helpful in helping us set up the account.

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I would not write such a long review if I did not truly mean it. Of the 10 years I have been doing online business and websites and of the dozen web hosting server companies I have tried, Cartikahosting.com is really the worst one and I had the worst experience dealing with them (Andrew, he, and himself). I sincerely write this to warn others about Cartikahosting.com however, please make your own mind and choice.
I have tried Cartikahosting.com but found their services to be very poor. Here is the summary.
1. Server quality is average. Unfortunately the server often have down time throughout the day though very brief ranging from 30seconds to 2 minutes. In one hour, the down time may happen 3-5 times. We hope Cartikahosting fixes this problem. Other than the brief outtages, the server is okay. I do appreciate that Cartika has helped me reset and restart the server many times to clear out whatever was causing the server to crash.
2. Customer and technical support is poor. The customer support (which I believe is Andrew Rouchotas himself as well as tech support and billing - but he uses the names such as Jonathan, Nick or Ellen) really could be more friendly and helpful. When a problem happens, such as the control panel not working or the server being down, we were blamed that it was our web page coding. I am hosted on three other hosting companies using the same codes and do not have any problem at all.
3. Billing and prices is poor. When you sign up for an account, everything will seem good for the first 1-2 months. But afterward Cartika Hosting will claim you are violating their TOS (terms of service) whether it be how you are hosting your websites or the use of bandwidth or storage and they will ask you to upgrade and keep pushing you to upgrade. This way they can make more money. I do not agree with this tactic and believe it is not really ethical. After I followed their directions to upgrade I later found that there were some codes placed in my website folders which increased the bandwidth. I asked Cartikahosting.com who had placed these files and they responded that they think I had uploaded it by accident. Come on! Why would I upload a file which only purpose was to increases my bandwidth. The files in the folder appeared to be spamming codes which most likely was spamming my account increasing the bandwidth. Once we had asked Cartika who placed the files in our folder, they got nervous and asked us to close our account. With the quality of the server and customer support, I honestly believe the value of their services is maximum USD 10 per month. Cartikahosting.com belongs in the group of cheap web hosting though they are trying to promote themselves as something more larger. Rather than ask us to close our account shouldn't the hosting company try to solve the problem?
4. Control Panel often stalls. I have notified Cartikahosting to fix the control panel and they always reply to me that they are working on it. Up to now, the control panel still stalls. However, they have helped me reset the control panel many times which was helpful. I think the Hsphere control panel is very good. Probably this is the highlight of Cartika's services. I do like their control panel but just as long as it is working properly. I would have given a higher rating if the control panel didn't keep stalling and freezing up.
Overall, I have to give Cartikahosting.com two thumbs down. For the first two months everything was pretty good but thereafter everything really deteriorated and I didn't find Cartika to be helpful and a bit on the rude side in their email replies. For small websites Cartika might be okay. But if you wish for a long term partner and hosting to develop your business and expand, I really don't think Cartikahosting is capable of handling reliable and helpful services. In all fairness, maybe my experience was bad compared to others. If you want to give them a try, ask for a 2 month free trial period so that if there is any problem you can get a refund. I found them very helpful and nice in the beginning so maybe there is some hope for this webhosting company. They told me they are hosting thousand and thousands of other companies. Not sure if that is true but through my experience, I have a feeling Cartika is a home office with the owner and maybe a friend helping out on weekends.
My last suggestion is to do your research before signing up for any hosting companies. You can check websites such as webhosting.info/webhosts/reports/total_domains/cartikahosting.com to find out trends of the hosting company.
Look for a company that is easily available with helpful customer support. Look for a company that has a good reputation and a growing trend. Of course not all companies are perfect but at least they should be helpful and willing to help. I think that was one of my big problems with Cartikahosting that they were not as helpful and when a problem occurred, they would put the blame on the clients which is not solving the problem but just passing the buck. Look for a company that will not nickle and dime you for everything. Look for a company that will not try to keep pushing you to upgrade. Cartikahosting kept asking us to upgrade and if we did not they would say we were violating their TOS. Once we upgraded, they asked us to upgrade again.
Good luck and hope everyone finds a good web hosting company!

ps- We have received a recent update about Cartika server problem from Cartika themself! See how they even blame their own datacenter. Get used to Cartikahosting blaming others including their own clients for their server issues.

This thread is located at:
cartikaforum.com/showthread.php?p=4954

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
Hello,

Our system monitoring software has detected pending disk failures on MSsql2. We will be replacing the disks, 1 at a time, tonight between 6 and 8 PM CT. There is no expected down time and this replacement should be transparent to all users.

We will update this thread when the work is complete.

Dan
CartikaHosting Forum
***************

cartikaforum.com/showthread.php?p=4956

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
Hello,

Our datacenter is currently experiencing networking problems, that is even affecting their own sites and servers. They are working on it and it should be resolved soon.

We'll post an update once this is resolved.
All the best,
CartikaHosting Forum
========================================================

ch-dan has just created a new thread titled - Scheduled Maintenance - Web15 & MSsql1 RAM Replacement Fri. July 17 10-10:30 PM CT - in the Cartika Network News forum of CartikaHosting Forum, which you have subscribed to.

This thread is located at:
cartikaforum.com/showthread.php?p=4978

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
Our system monitoring software has detected pending RAM failures in Web15 and MSsql1.
We will be replacing the suspect RAM tonight between 10 and 11 PM CDT.
We will start with Web15.
When Web15 is completed and operational we will proceed with MSsql1.

The actual downtime should not exceed 5 to 10 minutes for each server.

We will upgrade this thread as work progresses and when it's complete.

Thanks,
Dan
***************

cartika’s picture

Hello,

this customer is a massive spammer. And when suspended, resorted to blackmailing us for money. We donated the money to charity and are now trying to clean up these spam posts by this user. webhostingtalk and hostjury have removed such posts and threads, hopefully drupal will do the same. You can read our formal announcement and some of our customer comments here:

http://www.cartikaforum.com/showthread.php?t=1554

Everyone should do their part to stop people like this...

As you can see from their post above.. they are complaining about network announcements:

1) was a massive upstream DDOS that was mitigated in 3 mins
2) was our predictive failure analysis picking up failing drives. We replaced them on the fly, without a single second of downtime to customers

thanks in advance for taking the time to read this..

Andrew

cristtiah’s picture

wow thats a lot to complain about. I dont want to burst your bubble but I have been a Reseller with CartikaHosting for years but I dont remember them having downtimes. Their support is AAA+++ thats what you get for paying more. Even early mornings they have live chats and are very technical and responsive. I am not defending them because I know I am not getting anything from them (maybe few more disk space for cheap price haha) but no they are very professional. I salute this company! God Bless you.

adrupt’s picture

they been in business 2002, so i am guessing they must be doing something right. what kind of website are you looking for JIAM. is it a small site or you planning to host a website with lots of traffic. In the end it all depends on how much you are planning to spend on your web hosting. I personally use chime host (http://www.chimehost.com) and drupal works fine with them.

cheryled’s picture

I have to agree with any negative postings and complaints about Cartikahosting.com. They are just terrible. I used them for a short period of time but their servers have problems and the support from Cartikahosting are not helpful nor knowledgeable. Their price is expensive and the quality of their servers and service is not worth the price at all. I wouldn't use their servers even if they offered it for free. I noticed that I saw many other complaints about cartika hosting and the company spends a lot of their time trying to reply positive comments while they should be spending their time fixing their servers and offering customers valuable services. I think they bought cheap servers. My complaint is just my opinion but I have to warn others about this Cartikahosting company. Just NOT good.

CartikaReview’s picture

Would not recommend Cartikahosting.com. The company is poorly run, owe money to their clients by over charging them, and do not provide valuable services. Their servers may be okay for the first couple of months but will deteriorate thereafter with downtime and continual virus attacks. It would be a smart decision to do your homework and find a better hosting company. Cartika hosting should not charge clients for bandwidth and storage caused by malware and viruse attacks which are cause by poor security of Cartika servers.

1io01io00’s picture

Hello,
I should have read more reviews about Cartikahosting.com. I read some reviews on webhostingtalk.com which were all positive. Later I tried to write a negative review about Cartikahosting and webhostingtalk.com took the post down within minutes. So probably there is some relations there or they are the ones running that website. So also, don't trust webhostingtalk.com. You can try to write anything negative about Cartikahosting and you will the review taken down within minutes. It's kind of funny and really a joke.

Cartika hosting billing will charge you for bandwidth that you have not used and they cannot even prove it themselves. It really seems that cartika hosting co is run by one or two people as it's so difficult to get in touch with anyone, especially during crucial times. They will charge your account and if you don't pay they suspend your account without even notifying you. This is really wrong.

ebusinesstouch’s picture

Well the details provided by different users show it as a good host, but what am confused, most of hosting companies failed to provide quality technical and customer support except few top class hosting companies.

cbh’s picture

I've been using them for quite a few years now, find the tech support fast and responsive (typically within 5-10 minutes), and things run as they should (I resell).

This past year was the first year I saw any issues and they were both, IMHO, significant. Having said that, they took full responsibility for both, resolved them, and kept us in the loop. It was certainly a challenge, but it wasn't enough for me to want to jump ship - along with my hosting clients. I would be concerned if this was an ongoing trend, but after so many years of problem free service, I'm not poised to jump just yet.

Cheers
Chris

fredricka-1’s picture

I tried this company but do not have anything positive to say about them. Main complaint is Cartikahosting servers go down a lot and a lot of the times you cannot find any tech support to help. Not sure but it seems there is only one person at the company who does the billing, technical support and sales. A lot of the times I could not reach anyone when the server was down. The server was down a lot. I read some good reviews about Cartikahosting on cartikahostingreview.com before signing up but now I'm realizing that this is their own review website run by them. So I guess I was tricked. I think the hosting company is writing their own reviews. It's misleading to the public. I kind of feel scammed but I don't want to waste a lot of time trying to get a refund. In addition, when I tried to ask their "billing" about this, no one replied. They just ignore you once they get your money. I have to say I really regret trying them out. What ever happened to money back guaranteed? What a mistake.

coloreview’s picture

I have been working with Cartika for years. From the top down, they are a top notch organization with an exceptional track record or service, support and most importantly, professionalism.

Reading posts in this thread, you can tell who the real customers are and who the spammers are. I am surprised the moderators have not cleaned this up, and would be willing to wager that the same spammer posted every negative post here and that could be easily identified with a bit of investigation.

Anywho, simply cannot say enough about the team over at Cartika, and if people are swayed by some of the spammers allowed to infiltrate this site, just do a search for Cartika on reputable sites that filter and stay on top of such things. As Andrew from Cartika mentioned above, webhostingtalk.com and hostjury are examples of good resources to research hosting providers. They only allow legitimate and verified content.