Upgrading my hosting account

It was years ago I’m with Galaxy Webhosting, and today, I make the decision to leave them behind and look for another web hosting. It is time to change a power steering rack for my car to run online. Though it’s not a reseller hosting that I used to all the while, but I’m still into cPanel operating so there shouldn’t be any problem about add on domains and etc.

Since 27/9/2008 morning, Galaxy Webhosting has been telling me that they’re testing their PHP5, and abandon all my websites that has PHP alone and death for the whole day. There isn’t any information about it until after 12 hours. All the support went offline. These are the tactics they have been using all the time to make sure nobody bug them when service is down. That, however, made me lose a great amount of earning on the internet.

If I still remember, this web hosting service was maintain by a guy from England, alone. By the way, with young age with not so much experience, I don’t think it’s gonna work for long term. How can support hide away when things messed up? I’ve never contact them if they give an early notice, I don’t like to contact support too, because I know how to handle all the stuff myself. I contact only when the service is down or something wrong with the service part, and I do research before contact. But they ended up playing hide and seek with me. Galaxy webhosting, I would not recommend anyone to use it now. Here are things that Galaxy Webhosting gonna con you:

1, Support
Don’t even tried to contact the support. Either MSN, support ticket or email, they don’t reply with an explanation. All they reply was they have a problem with the server, story end. And the thing about downtime is, when it happen, they’re gone. No way to find them, email not working as it’s using the domain (support@galaxy-webhosting.co.uk), MSN they will go down themselves without notice, don’t even think about support ticket.

2, Downtime
There is no guarantee about downtime. It happen very often, every month there are downtime happen, without any notice. If you don’t mind a few hour downtime is fine. But every few months it will down for 24 hours and more.

3, Mature mind
Who in the hell would have the right mind to TEST something on the main server? That is the purest stupidity I’ve ever seen in my life, this goes into my top 10 idiot list. Everytime there’s a test, sometimes, it’s upgrade. Nothing, there’s absolutely nothing that can help them to stay online when upgrading or whatsoever.

4, Speed
There is absolutely no speed about Galaxy Webhosting, although my ISP sucks enough, but when my connection is on the peak speed, the server is slow. Believe me! I’m with Lunarpages now, with the same connection, I get faster speed on Lunarpages compare with them.

5, Expertise
By having more than 24 hours just to try to install PHP, that is the only expertise I find from them. Anything they wanted to install or update would take ages. I don’t expect to install within an hour or two, but at least everything should speed up.

I for one, boycott Galaxy Webhosting. Yes, I’m bold all the keyword so people can search it out and they can find this entry about their stupidity. I’m off their server now.

Choosing a hosting

There’s always problem with finding a hosting. My friend who run a business offline and wanted to have an online e-commerce, he came to me and ask about hosting. I can’t really answer him though, because it’s subjective, but advice is able though. Me as one, who doesn’t really need support most of my time. Some downtime is fine, as long as it doesn’t affect my earning Anyway, the best way to look for one, these are my-list

1, Your needs
What do you need when you host your website. What is the requirement, large space? Large bandwidth? Also, take account that hosting company is also one of the factor for those, each hosting company don’t just simply host website, some have limited access on script and etc. At the end of the day, you need to plan what you want to do with your web.

2, Reliability and speed
Many hosting company offer you a 99.99% uptime, but it’s not accurate. Don’t think too much about this kinda uptime. However, in order to make sure about their uptime, your monitor is important, try to get some free uptime monitor on the web. Monitor them for a month and make decision, don’t rush. Speed is also a factor for a web. Visitors don’t have patience like you do. There’s a lot of site that offer free bandwidth or speed test on web as well, google them and you’ll get a tons of it. Use them as you use for monitoring the host company as well.

3, Technical support
Test them! This is what I did all the time. Keep asking them question before you buy the host, keep making them busy, and see what they react on you. Many hosting company, some even famous one, run by a bunch of friends only. So they do it for their own, they don’t do it to meet end month pay cheque. Ask them some dump question, and if their site are down, ask them for explanation, even if you’re not their customer.

I’ve been with this hosting company Galaxy Webhosting. It run by bunch of friend or maybe just one man. It’s fine for me so far, it’s been the 3rd or 4th years I’m hosting with him/them. But one thing I don’t have from the list though, technical support! Whenever there’s a downtime, he/they don’t give explanation, no email replied, no support ticket reply as well. That’s why I said, even if you’re not their customer, ask them if you see their site is down! If some perfectionist person hosting with the same hosting company as me, I’m sure acne treatments will be what he needed now. I’m even thinking I’m getting some blood pressure.