Liquidweb EQUALS Reliable Web Hosting.

The first thing you’ll notice about signing up with Liquidweb is their attention to your satisfaction. Promptly after ordering my dedicated server, a Liquidweb representative called me to confirm my order – call me racist, but it was nice to speak to someone I could actually understand.

I received email notifications at every step, and the dedicated server was set up within 12 hours. If you’re looking for a shared hosting solution, the setup would be instantaneous.

At this point I was entirely satisfied by Liquidweb’s services. They could have stolen my entire wallet and I’d still have been happy.

But to my surprise, the next day, I received an email from my dedicated account manager. He just wanted to make sure that the server was working as I expected, and that I’m happy with the services so far. He also assured me that, should I ever have a problem, I could contact him directly.

Funnily enough, that night I had a question. I emailed in, and didn’t expect a reply to arrive until the next morning. Less than ten minutes later, an email was dropped into my box from a support engineer at Liquidweb, he told me that my account manager was out of the office at the moment and would be back in the morning – but that he could help me with my problem.

Liquidweb offers “heroic support” with all of their packages – and this makes it worth every penny.

The ping rate from where I am is also under 25ms, pages load ridiculously quick, and the server backs its data up every night without interrupting the services the server provides.

So for dedicated or shared hosting, I definitely recommend Liquidweb.

Reading through the web I can’t find a definitive answer. So instead, I’m resorting to a logical argument.

Would it make sense for Google to reward sites with faster servers?

My answer is Yes. Here’s why:

• Google has hundreds of thousands of pages in any given search, and it has many people searching. Showing pages that are slow to respond and therefore likely running on a slow / badly optimised server would probably result in overloading of that particular server and a bad experience for Google’s customers.

• Although clicks from the natural search don’t have monetary value in the small picture, on a larger scale they do. Searching Google and feeling re-assured that the results are actually viewable is just one reason Google is king.

It simply wouldn’t make sense for Google to ignore such a simple but effective evaluation.

Your thoughts?

Allow me to put forth a theory:

You have your very own website at yourwebsite.com. Your site is becoming more popular by the day and you decide to look for a better hosting deal. You notice that servers in the Netherlands are cheap, so you pay your first month’s rent and move your website on over. A couple months down the line, you notice you aren’t getting as many hits from Google search.

Conclusion: Google thinks your site is for the Netherlands.

No way, you say? Well, it’s true! Google has to try to work out what country your domain resides in. Generic names such as .com and .net don’t necessarily reside in the US, and so Google takes a look at the IP address of the server hosting the domain. In this case, the Netherlands server suggest to Google that this is a Netherlands site regardless of the .com address.

A solution to this is to buy the appropriate domain in the first place, for example if you have a UK business make sure you buy a .co.uk domain name. If you have a generic domain name, Google provides webmaster tools that allows you to verify site ownership and then target traffic to the correct country.

This blog, in its few months of life, hasn’t received any hits from Google.com. Fingers crossed, the winds are changing direction.

Picking a host for your website is probably one of the most important things you’ll ever do. And fate forbid that host goes down, you’ll need all the support you can get. Actually, all you really need is somebody that is willing to investigate the issue in a timely manner, and timely is the category that Leaseweb’s technical support fits least in to.

Yesterday (Monday, 25th July ’08) the server stopped responding. I know I paid my bill because I have a receipt, so surely they haven’t cut it off?! Panic set in, there were people trying to access the server, I have two business clients relying on that server – one for the website, okay so that isn’t too bad, and the other for email! Lucky for me it’s the end of the working day, except – oh no, Leaseweb’s technical support is closed. They’re not in my time zone either, of course they can’t be blamed for that, it was my choice to rent a server outside of my country after all.

I power cycled the server, but still after five minutes of waiting my ka-billions of pings received no word from the server. At this stage just about every scenario is running through my head – the kind of scenarios where you imagine all of your work being swallowed by quick sand. I actually almost had a panic attack, and promptly (and I hasten to add unfairly) bit my wife’s head off. I didn’t realise that the stress of a server going down could cause me to feel this way. And now, I’m in their hands.

I email Support to tell them my server is inaccessible… I wait, and wait… and I wait some more. But no reply, not for Steve. The one waiting. The one literally peeing his pants because he needs that server to come back online. And finally, more than four hours later, I receive a reply! Quote:

Could you send us the login credentials to check this?

What? Are you kidding me? I thought they’d have this stuff logged! They sent me the password in the first place! And hold on, if they need the login credentials, the server must be up and running right? Well, I emailed them the password to the root account (which they defined originally anyway) and sat patiently on a reply. At this point you’d think they’d prioritise your ticket given your server is entirely inaccessible and they should ultimately be liable for issues that are their fault. But even after sitting up half the night, a reply seemed as likely to arrive as the real life postman delivering mail at three in the morning.

I decided to try to sleep – luckily, a kind gentleman at webhostingtalk.com offered some hosting services to me for free. I only really needed the mail server, and that was a relief. I couldn’t thank him enough.

I awoke at gone 9AM, to find an email I had just recently received. Looks like the server had been online since approximately 8.45AM. Good timing on my part, bad response time on theirs. But the response time is nothing in comparison to the response.

Dear costumer,

 

After replacing the UTP cable your server is back online.

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions.

 

 

Kind regards,

 

*** ***** ******

LeaseWeb – Hardware Support

You have got to be kidding me. I can forgive the bad spelling and grammar, but that isn’t the issue here. We all know there will be language barriers when we’re working with people in another country. But to report that the server’s network cable was the cause of all this trouble – and to rub it in I had to wait more than 24 hours for the network cable to be replaced? The server, hosted in a datacenter, had a faulty network cable? Now, that is a hard one to swallow. I’ve never had to replace a network cable unless it has been interfered with, and unless Leaseweb have their network cables trailing to the floors of the datacenter I just don’t see how they could possibly be damaged. But more troubling to me is the fact that the server obviously wasn’t running during the time I couldn’t access it because my main site’s scheduled task didn’t log its work. Any other time where the server has remained live but inaccessible to the net I have had proof that this task has continued processing. I’m not suggesting Leaseweb are liars, but wait, actually, I am. But not officially, I don’t want to be sued, I just feel it’s a bit conspicuous.

There are definitely unanswered questions that, to be honest with you, I just cannot be bothered to ask because I have no faith in their support system or honesty. The first issue I had with this server was a disk crash, to which they did not apologise or offer me a refund, or any other kind of compensation. Their motto was “shit happens” – not in those words, but you catch the drift. I feel as though I had SUCKER written across my forehead.

A big downside to this is that I’m scared to use services in other countries now, I’ve almost become prejudist because of this experience. I’m sure that not all Dutch hosting services are like this, but I was hestitant to go outside of the UK in the first place, you can only imagine how I feel now.

I cannot recommend Leaseweb for a mission critical application. If your server going down equals loss of business (which presumably it would if you’re willing to fork out the money for a dedicated server in the first place), I recommend against renting a server with them with all my heart. I will be looking for a new host as of now, and this time I’m going to get one in my own country – I feel as though I have more leverage being that to sue them I don’t have to cross the border.

If you’re going to be looking for a host, check out www.webhostingtalk.com to get the low down on all the providers.

Has anybody else had an experience, good or bad? Let me and any other readers know by leaving a comment.

UPDATE: I am no longer a Leaseweb customer – after another crash, I decided it was time to vacate their data centre. I am now a member of Liquidweb, a US hosting company with a good reputation, and their service has been amazing. I can’t recommend them enough; stay tuned for a review.