Been here a little over a year, finally have had it! Board needed to be watched constantly. Lost search engine position because of so much down time. If your about to join this place all I can say is they answer support tickets fast. Time to move on, thought they'd get their act together but never did. Live support dream on. I have other sites with other companies that never have down time. I was pressed to get Host for vbulletin and they were recommended well you win some and lost some. don't pay in advance cause they won't refund you past 30 days even thou you have a 10 months left on the deal.
thanks & aloha,
Mike

been here little over a year, have over 50 support tickets. Paid in full for a year but I'm late to get any refund so I'll stay here till my money runs out and tell the truth about how bad a place this is.

Go and request server move. My experience is high stability and fast support, maybe it's something with a misbehaving script on your server...

I've had almost zero downtime except for short periods of time here and there that I caused myself by tinkering - and even that was fixed promptly by support.

I can't speak to your claims about refunds since I've never had occasion to request a refund.

You don't indicate whether you were using VPS, a dedicated server, or shared hosting. I assume your forum software was vBulletin since you posted in this thread but I also wonder how up to date the vBulletin was, what add-ons were installed, whether you followed vBulletin instructions for optimizing the installation, etc., etc. You also don't indicate what the downtime was about, e.g., MySQL errors or other reasons?

There are a lot of reasons for downtime and most of them have less to do with your hosting and more to do with the scripts you are running and how they are configured. I find it odd that your experience is so different from that of most using ASO hosting.

My mother used to say, "A poor worker blames his tools"...

And you felt the need to post this more than once? Identical posts cut and pasted? How odd...

Did a server move after it was going down daily. Was all right for about 3 weeks than same problem. When they do a server move they have no idea how to do it your site goes off line because they don't leave the old one on or do a redirect. I moved yes out of here but keeping my server time I paid a year in advance. If I turn it off you get no refund, read small print! Got another 10 months left and I will use it to promote the bad features of asmallorange, just watch me!

Got 10 months left paid in full no refund possible and you think I'm the jerk?

i dont see anyone saying you are a "jerk."

how long were you with ASO before you decided to pay in full?

I'll post a list of my support tickets for the pass year on 2 different machines, same site but did a crappy move to another crappy machine. Maybe because my site actually gets traffic not like your one page coupon site.

little over 2 years paid in full twice, found a stand alone server for $44 month, yes they're deals out there just look!

site not APPEARiNG
MWP-362551 B.J. Strange Closed Emergency Technical Support
transfer my existing account
CQT-846541 TheYoStore Closed Medium Technical Support
SSH access
TNN-158078 Max B. Closed High Technical Support
SERVER KELVIN NOT RESPONDING
COO-221415 Jeff N. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Theyo.com
RUS-687796 Jeff N. Closed Medium Technical Support
Something is Wrong!
CQH-528700 Mack J. Jenkins, II Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin down
LGE-218348 Nick F. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin down
IMN-453788 Ben S. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin down again
YRH-441457 Scott Edwards Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin Down!
OVS-597954 TheYoStore Closed Emergency Technical Support
Page 1 of 5 1 2 3 4 5 >

Ticket ID Last Replier Status Priority Department
Kelvin down
JGJ-850051 Joey O. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin DOWN
EWU-387019 Andrew Boring Closed Emergency Technical Support
Heavy hitting on Kelvin
BKB-452577 Jeff N. Closed Medium Technical Support
Kelvin DOWN
JAI-810723 Tim Dorr Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin Down
AVS-806490 B.J. Strange Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin Down
CMY-260188 Brent S. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin still down
IOB-941737 Nick F. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin Down
JGF-893467 Nick F. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin down
MPP-482280 Jeff N. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Theyo.com Kelvin is off
OPN-596755 Jeff N. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Page 2 of 5 < 1 2 3 4 5 >
Kelvin Down
YNO-874230 B.J. Strange Closed Medium Technical Support
Kelvin down
OSC-678230 Nick F. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin down
AKX-968448 Ben S. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Kelvin down
NAX-614015 R. Anthony Massey Closed Low Technical Support
can't get to Kelvin
ABW-417666 B.J. Strange Closed Emergency Technical Support
memory amp'd out?
AIM-359702 TheYoStore Closed Medium Technical Support
Theyo.com Karl no Cpanel?
PUI-104711 Andrew Boring Closed Medium Technical Support
Karl Down
ZIW-664287 TheYoStore Closed Emergency Technical Support
message board not showing
BHN-176086 TheYoStore Closed Emergency Technical Support
Karl down
NLQ-445437 Nate H. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Page 3 of 5 < 1 2 3 4 5 >
Ticket ID Last Replier Status Priority Department
Bandwidth exceeded site down
UOH-195475 R. Anthony Massey Closed Medium Technical Support
Karl down
FZA-320123 TheYoStore Closed Medium Technical Support
Karl down
ESA-667000 B.J. Strange Closed Emergency Technical Support
Karl down
CJT-420479 B.J. Strange Closed Emergency Technical Support
Karl down
MTM-897396 R. Anthony Massey Closed Emergency Technical Support
Karl down
RID-898579 Andrew Boring Closed Emergency Technical Support
Karl down
QQW-579725 Mike Boremi Closed Emergency Technical Support
Karl down
LOE-170602 Michael Attanasio Closed Medium Technical Support
Karl down
SZY-690002 Andrew Boring Closed Emergency Technical Support
Karl Theyo.com Datat base down
NYF-719031 R. Anthony Massey Closed Medium Technical Support
Page 4 of 5 < 1 2 3 4 5 >
TheYo.com not coming up
CUO-748755 R. Anthony Massey Closed Low Technical Support
Theyo on Karl partition FULL
MDL-934773 TheYoStore Closed Medium Technical Support
Theyo on Karl partition FULL
LII-471237 TheYoStore Closed Medium Level 2
Theyo on Karl partition FULL
LVS-966474 Eric F. Closed Emergency Technical Support
Karl partition full
XQC-517400 Eric F. Closed Emergency Technical Support
REFUND DUE CLOSING ACCOUNT
TQG-999316 TheYoStore Closed Emergency Billing
Page 5 of 5 < 1 2 3 4 5

I find your behavior here puzzling and rather suspect. I'm happy you've found a "deal" you think will suit you better but I believe if you'll look around the rest of us are quite happy with the deal we have at ASO.

I'm also puzzled by the fact that you paid for "little over 2 years paid in full twice" but are now saying you are dissatisfied. If you were unhappy, why on earth would you renew?

And what's your purpose in using the ASO support forums to continue to vent your displeasure? Live with it. Get over it. And move on.

Thanks for sharing but that really doesn't tell anyone anything. It doesn't even tell us whether the issues arose with scripts you were running or elsehwere on shared hosting.

And as I said in another thread, you've expressed your dissatisfaction and reportedly found hosting elsewhere that you're happy with. What is the point of continuing to post repeatedly about hown unhappy you are with ASO? Obviously, the rest of us are not unhappy. If we were, we'd move elsewhere and get on with our lives. I'd recommend that you do that now.

You might want to note the disclaimer on this forum indicating that it is NOT an official support forum for ASO.

All you're managing to do is annoy other paying customers and embarrass yourself publicly. Well done!

Yeah, but he might have a point.I've been here since 2004 and was very happy. These last 6-8 months have been very bad.take the last hour... the 'whole lot' has been down twice 10 minutes at a time


====== Please reply above this line ======
I'm not sure what you're referring to. If you're having a connectivity issue, we can do our best to resolve it, provided it's within our control.
--Anthony MasseyA Small Orange Tech Support

And that's the sort of reply I have to deal with.Admittedly, it's usually one of the two servers I have hosting on going down, but tonight It was everything ASO going bad.I don't really care if it is out of ASO hands because the rest of the internet is going along fine, If ASO can't maintain good networking to the rest of the world then what's the point, I don't need to resell web hosting and have a customer phoning to ask me why their email and website is down.It seems like pockets of trouble 2-3 times a month. (four or five ups and downs in a pocket)Anyway, I'm on the look out.Any sensible suggestions?

Am I not allowed to post twice in a row?

both posts merge into one?

Why am I upset, let me tell you I had faith that problems would be fixed. That never happen as you can see my site went down more than Paris Hilton and all I had was a vbulletin board getting 20gb of traffic a month. Truth is they can't handle any thing that actually gets traffic. I have 10 months left of service paid in full and they won't pro rate a refund nope your just out of luck guy. If I paid monthly there would be no problem. Why should I get screwed out of $160 because I paid ahead of time? Give a refund and I'll go away, but till than I'll post the facts here and on every hosting review site on the net that's a promise. Full stand alone server for $44 a month thanks for making me go look for a better deal maybe if your reading this you to can look around before this place cost you money for being down and your search placement suffers like mine did.

Let me defend my embarrassing moves!

Why am I upset, let me tell you I had faith that problems would be fixed. That never happen as you can see my site went down more than Paris Hilton and all I had was a vbulletin board getting 20gb of traffic a month. Truth is they can't handle any thing that actually gets traffic. I have 10 months left of service paid in full and they won't pro rate a refund nope your just out of luck guy. If I paid monthly there would be no problem. Why should I get screwed out of $160 because I paid ahead of time? Give a refund and I'll go away, but till than I'll post the facts here and on every hosting review site on the net that's a promise. Full stand alone server for $44 a month thanks for making me go look for a better deal maybe if your reading this you to can look around before this place cost you money for being down and your search placement suffers like mine did.

The first 3 or 4 months I was here were good. Then October went to hell in a handbasket. Problem after problem after problem. One problem I was having was due to the fact that ASO upgraded their GD Library (version on my server was higher than on other versions) and it was causing a problem with a function I was using. Tim Dorr was kind enough to find the cause of the problem. It was a quick fix. No fault of mine, but a pain in the ass nonetheless. I'll give them credit for their dilligence in solving this problem.

Fortunately, November has been MUCH better than October. I haven't had to send in a support ticket yet. *knock on wood*

ASO still has a nagging problem with timeouts. Every now and then I'll click a link on one of our sites to go to another page and it will sit there for a few seconds until a timeout is returned. The sites generally load fast. So if it is taking more than 5 seconds, I will hit "refresh" and almost always the page comes down quickly. Whether this is a data center problem or not, it is still annoying and should be looked into.

Also, I would like to see better performance monitoring by ASO. They should be aware of any server outage or problem before customers are. On every server, all systems from httpd to MySQL to PHP4, PHP5, Perl, and whatever else is on the server should be tested at least every two minutes. In October I had a problem with PHP5 going down and causing 500 errors. One time PHP5 was down for over 7 hours before it came back up. Better performance monitoring could eliminate such issues like this.

It wouldn't be difficult for a centralized performance monitor to access a PHP4, PHP5 file every minute or so on each of the servers.

As for downtime, I know that is frustrating. In October, for the first time one of our sites would have had over 20,000 visitors in a month and if it wasn't for the downtime, we would have made it!!! No joke, we missed it by a little over 100 visitors, according to Google Analytics.

Tamper: paying in advance for ANYTHING is risky. I never do it. One of the reasons I came to ASO is because they let you pay month-to-month. Granted, it would be nice to buy 3 or 4 months of hosting at a time, but I would not feel comfortable buying a full year. Some other hosting companies make you buy 2 years of hosting to get the low rate. I've even seen 3 years.

Good luck, Tamper.

You want database inconsistency? "No down time" server moves always create complication you wouldn't want to deal with. Not that I feel you would listen...

I've even seen website monitoring sites that offer huge discounts if you buy 100 years in advance - no kidding!



Somehow if the server was going down then I don't think it was your site. With 20GB of bandwidth then even one of the oldest boxes at work could probably handle it if it was a single server. What servers can't normally handle is badly written scripts, and they're not necessarily related to traffic. A bad script with next to no traffic can take down a server while a good script can be hit thousands of times a minute without problems.

Good luck with your $44 per month server. If it is a full server for that price then I suspect you'll need it, as you normally get either budget or support. You can't normally do good support on little money due to the fact you need to pay support people and pay server fees.

How very mature of you. Have fun with your mission.

Merged 3 topics and removed duplicate responses

thanks for the merge and all the other stuff.

Unfortunately, I've had to ban tamper. This is not what I would like to do, but he kept posting in topics not related to his issues and in the wrong areas of this forum. I don't mind if people want to complain here. That's why this forum is for the bad, as well as the good. But it's not for anyone to start posting all over the place trying to turn one single incident into something much bigger than it is.

Good work, Tim. By keeping these forums open to complaints and ensuring everyone gets their voice heard, you actually turn these complaints into more reasons to use ASO.

Many complaints can be used as suggestions for improvement. It doesn't matter what business you are in, getting better and better is always a good goal to strive for.

That's also one thing that really put me off towards the end at my old host - they locked away their support forums behind a "customers-only by request" forum and any negative reviews in their feedback section were generally either deleted or moved to the hidden forum.

Even if there are issues that people have had then it's good to see that at least ASO is open about them rather than pretending everything is perfect and that people then find it isn't as smooth as they thought.

Tim,

Tell me why Athena keeps going down. I'd love to know. I used to be a very happy customer who spoke highly of asmallorange to anyone who asked about good hosting. These days frankly I think you've either taken a tough decision to fit your quality of service to 'those who matter' and left the small fry to get the left overs or I'm not in the minority I assume I am in.

I think your service lately is Poor to be polite and Rubbish to be honest.

As much of a pain in the arse it will be to move hosting provider, the next loop of payment and I'm off. Unless someone is going to pull their finger out and give me a reason to stay that is.

Thanks for listening.

As has already been noted in this thread, the forums are not an avenue for talking to support staff - that's what the support centre is for.

As for your problems with Athena, what is it specifically you're having trouble with? As the uptime script for that server notes that it's been up 59 days with fairly low loads, so I assume it can't be anything too engrossing and must be something specific. Have you also tried requesting a server move if you're having specific problems as of late? It could be a bad script or high traffic on the server, both of which you generally have to be patient with as it can take time to identify the cause.

I sympathise with tamper as to what he had to say. But in all fairness he deserved the ban as im sure asmallorange would like to protect the best interests of their customers and new customers also.



Now thats being very decadent of him and deserved a ban,

I also never pay in lump just incase i loose my money or dont get its worth. Its safer to pay per month as it gives you the flexibility to move when you like

Ive been with aso for 2 and a half years or more i think. Yes they were awesome then but over time ive encountered depreciation in the services i was receiving, to give you an example.. severe loss i.e database loss which brought me to a point that i was quite frustrated and wanted to cry. But luckily there was a backup, but even then i did loose a good few days of data.

I have spoken of ASO highly also and have had a resellers account with 5 or more resellers on my account. I was promised a swift move even though i was quite unsure about the move and was quite reluctant. But ASO insisted that they had to move me and the reassureance i got was I quote "I have done this many times before" and it would not affect me in anyway.

But the worst did happen. I was paying "then" a month ago $25 per month and any additional bandwidth i required on top. Since the move my whole web directory was exposed to everybody for a short period which gave me a fright as there was a lot of people online at that time. Later i had discovered that my reseller packages were gone with the existing accounts sitting on "unlimited" and also my accounts were dishelved not knowing who was on what package (maybe i should have also kept a hard copy about this on my local computer). I had requested for some information so i can put them back to normal but that was not possible either. Servers were going down also and yes like kettle i was also receiving emails because of this huge downtime.

So i was forced to move my resellers and downgrade my account. I still have "some" faith in ASO hence i am still hosting just one of my main sites with them. Why? Because ASO was one of my first ever hosts and i dont want ASO to be one of the first hosts I leave either, so i am still contemplating, hanging in there on a shoe string still.

As for Live Support.. my goodness i use to love that and the Live Support was online almost all of the time (working hours ofcourse). But that was back in the days... now either the Live Support is offline showing an "Away" sign for hours on end or either offline or it is showing Online but when you click on it and go in there is nobody to attend your call.



This may be because you do not have a website that requires you to keep looking at it constantly or maybe you are not online enough to notice it, but i could be wrong thats just one reason. My field and the work i do requires the internet a lot hence i am always online most of the time so i notice these kind of things.

No. I'm online for several hours a day and running a forum, a blog, three directories, and some smaller sites from a VPS account.

I also have a monitoring system that since last December (when I first moved here) has been consistently reporting 100% uptime, an indication that the site has never been down long enough to be detected by their regularly scheduled visits.

Unfortunately, the update from Kayako that was supposed to fix everything just ended up breaking everything. Believe me, I know how much it sucks. I'm looking at some replacements, since the current version is just a mess.

My monitoring system regularly reports downtime, usually of very short duration such as might be attributed to network routing issues or congestion, however my periodic checks of the uptime stats for my server show that it has been down rather frequently of late (albeit never for very long) (uptime as I write this is just over 3 days).

I have a couple of low traffic personal sites so it's not a problem really but I can understand the concern of those with busy sites, especially those that are monetized.

Your on a VPS lucky you. Well im speaking on behalf of my own self and so many others who are either on a tiny, small, medium, large or super shared packages.



Well i am still backing asmallorange! I hope everything does work out eventually.

I spoke too soon. I got home this afternoon and found no connection noticed from the monitor, checked the uptime via ssh and it's showing that it's been up for 7 hours 26 minutes so maybe all those little downtimes notices were actual downtime and not networik glitches. If so ... (

I was just going to add on to the above post but apparently there is a time limit on editing.

I just got another notice that the server was down, I checked uptime and sure enough, uptime was 7 minutes. I just tried checking now (about 10 minutes later and I can't ssh in and in trying to reach my site I get "Database Unavailable".

I tried opening a ticket but it keeps telling me invalid username or password.

While I was trying to login, the server has come back on line. VERY frustrating!

After being unable to login, I tried having my password sent. The one I received was nothing like what it should have been. Needless to say I have changed it yet again. Getting somewhat annoyed. There have been no major problems but of late many smaller ones.