It is through great regret that I recommend that anybody thinking about renting a server from Leaseweb, should think again. The trouble I’ve had from the moment I said Go, has been unbelievable. And despite their very cheap prices, there is no value to be found here.

I joined Leasewebback in June this year, due to issues with my previous host – I was sharing a server with a friend, but it seemed I was paying the full bill every month. So for 80 EURO (approx. $120 USD) I ordered a dedicated server from Leaseweb.

Here’s the blunders:

1. I ordered my server on the 22nd of June, and assumed I’d be paying my bill on the 22nd of every month. No, this isn’t how it works! Once I paid, Leaseweb sent me another invoice for the remainder of June. My first payment was for July, and if I didn’t pay June’s payment my server would be shut off. This is a horrid way of doing things, and isn’t made clear when you sign up. The email is ridiculous, just reading the first line makes my blood boil:

Explanation:

As you might know LeaseWeb invoices per calender month.You have already paid one full month for your service which covers 7-2008. However the period remaining for the current month was not yet covered. This period is not known beforehand as it depends on availablity of the services as well as on the date your first payment was made.

2. Less than two weeks after my server was first installed, it crashed.And I’m not talking about any old crash, this crash took half the hard disk down with it; the main database was corrupt. Leaseweb were also indifferent to this catastrophe – I don’t remember an apology anywhere. Note:

Dear customer,

 

It seems that the server is having an kernel crash, so we would like to reinstall the server, if this is ok by you. Do you have a backup of the HD or do you want to copy the data after the new installation.

OK, so at least they have some idea as to what they’re doing, right? Wrong. I spent ages recovering my data, but they forgot to install PLESK! So I couldn’t set my website back up. When I say forgot, I can’t emphasise enough how ridiculous it is. Note:

Dear customer,

 

The server is newly installed, but we forgot to install plesk.

An engineer will install plesk asap and remove the old disk.

We also hope that this will never happen again, but we can’t control hardware failure, about the response time, we all working on giving fast and good service to our customers. 

We keep you updated about the status.

Obviously, Leaseweb has never heard of a checklist. Due to this blunder, I had to wait 3 days before I couldn’t even recreate the domain. THUS: Lots of angry customers.

3. Awfully slow service. Paying 80 EURO every month would suggest you’d receive decent service – but customer support isn’t even open over the weekend or during evening to morning hours! Worse than that, they’re in a different time zone, so you’ll have to wake up at the crack of dawn just to call them. Replies are few and far between, and often aren’t coherent with your original message.

4. No prioritised support even when they know my server is dead!I emailed them and told them, more than 12 hours later they emailed me back to tell me they’re looking into it. At this point, they should be working their butts off to get my server up and running again – but they’re not, so obviously they don’t prioritise problems by severity. Unfortunately, this speaks for itself, you simply cannot rely on Leaseweb.

5. Nobody offered any compensation despite my server crashing twice. It quite literally swallowed my entire website the second time round – it took me two weeks to get the site back up and running again. No compensation, not even an apology.

So as you can see, Leaseweb is far from desirable. I’m sorry to have to write this, but I really hope the warning is taken seriously by everybody. I have recently joined Liquidweb in the US – and my server, despite being statistically less powerful than the server I had at Leaseweb, seems ten times as fast. I’m very happy with the service I’ve received from Liquidweb – I’d definitely recommend you join them. Stay tuned for a review on their services; the grass really is greener on the other side!

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.