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Hostnine Review
| Posted by old_expat, 06-23-2007, 03:47 AM |
| About a week ago, after a great deal of searching and reading WHT, I decided to get a reseller account for some of my sites. After a fairly involved online chat with a sales person, I decided to sign up.
One of the (2) primary pre-signup issues I had was a requirement for SWISH E on the server.
For some reason, a lot of the hosting companies don't want to use SWISH E (a very good site search tool configurable in PERL) because it needs to be installed at root to be most efficient. SWISH E is extremely stable, fast to index a site, fast to show site searches and routinely installed on shared servers by some of more mature and premium hosting companies.
So I confirmed this with Hostnine sales. The sales person agreed that "they would try to install it" and if they could not, I would be able to get my money back. Their stated policy is within 45 days "for any reason".
Since they had a 50% off deal going, I signed up for 1 year and paid with PayPal.
I moved 2 of my sites over (actually they support tech moved them for me since it was about a 100 mb transfer). I had a couple of issues that were resolved quickly, then 1 that caused a problem. In short, the tech support guy was great and I was feeling all warm and fuzzy about my decision.
The problem I had - One test site site1.com automatically redirected to my active site1.com while site2.com worked just fine in the test directory. The tech wasn't sure why.
The signup, moving sites, testing sites, took pretty much all afternoon.
So then I asked about when SWISH E would be installed. (I use it for site search on most of my sites) The tech had no idea what I was talking about, so I reference the chat log with sales.
Then along comes an email from the O.M. that informed me there was no way they would install SWISH E on their server.
My response was, "You told me you would .. but if you won't, then cancel and refund my money."
I was directed to go through billing support, so I did so .. jumping through all their hoops immediately.
Next I get an email from the Support Manager saying to the effect, "We will not install this software on a shared server."
"Okay, I've alreay cancelled", I said.
Then things got very quiet. Over the ensuing week I sent no less than 4 requests for the PayPal charges to be reversed. I got a few oblique comments that never told me when the refund would be made, and actually seemed like red herring stalls.
A more strongly worded email finally got results.
I understand that people make mistakes in judgement and agree to things they can't / won't deliver. And although I don't agree, I can understand wanting to hang onto money for as long as possible.
But what irritated me most .. in none of the emails telling me they would not install the software ..
.. no one apologized for the inconvenience and wasting my entire afternoon.
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| Posted by Frimon86, 06-23-2007, 06:12 AM |
| Sorry to hear about this, hope you have a better experience on your next host.
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| Posted by Ben_G, 06-23-2007, 07:35 AM |
| I apologize for the issues you had and not being able to use that software with your account as it's meant for a dedicated environment and I did apologize several times in your billing tickets about the issues and we even found a way to make it work on their website which you refused. I'm sorry you feel contacting a billing department is jumping through hoops but we do have more than one customer and we try to streamline things as much as possible to not only make it easier for our staff, but for our customers.
Once again I'm sorry things did not work out for us and we wish you the best with your new host.
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| Posted by old_expat, 06-23-2007, 08:42 AM |
| Interesting spin you put on these issues.
"not being able to" = "we won't try even although we said we would"
And the software works just fine on shared servers. I used it for years before I got my VPS. Pair Networks uses SWISH E on some of their shared servers. Actually, if you had investigated, you might have found that one of the strengths of the software is the ability to serve every account on a given server .. much like PHP, mySQL, PERL, et.al.
I remember 1 or 2 times when someone 'apologized' for the refund delay .. but no one apologized for the "we have changed our mind and are not going to do what we agreed to do" fiasco. Your about-face wasted my entire afternoon.
I 'refused' because your 'find' came 5 days after I had cancelled .. and had lost all confidence in Hostnine. You left that part out as well.
I had already requested a cancellation and the O.M. (you, I'm guessing) told me I had to submit a ticket to billing.
But apparently not streamlined enough refund in less than 1 week? It's PayPal .. takes all of 5 minutes.
And finally, if you wish to again insinuate that my comments here are dishonest, I will be more than happy to post the appropriate emails .. including the chat log with your sales person.
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| Posted by ldcdc, 06-23-2007, 03:52 PM |
| From what I've noticed, apologies are rather hard to come by in this industry. I still suspect that the online medium is what causes much of the attitude change in people. The fact that there's no face you can relate and address to, makes everything more impersonal.
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| Posted by dynawebd, 06-23-2007, 08:50 PM |
| I agree. Good point. If you find a host with real "personalized" service, it is worth a whole lot.
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| Posted by old_expat, 06-24-2007, 02:00 AM |
| I think you are correct, but IMO, the problems run deeper.
Many industries in which entry into business is easy, suffer from a tech / tradesman 'attitude' and hosting seems to be one of them.
Before anyone's knee jerks too hard, stop and actually think about that.
Prevailing attitudes seems to be "If I know servers, I know the hosting business."
Service, aka tech support, is just one component of a hosting business relationship. How you treat a customer is more important. Too many hosting companies are run by technicians rather than business people .. which is also why so many fail.
I have had mostly negative experiences when trying to deal with hosting companies. Hosts would do well to train any support people a bit better. People skills add value .. and save negative reviews.
The best I have come across at handling difficult situations is Rob Yates at PowerVPS. Too bad he's been kicked upstairs.
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| Posted by masm50, 06-24-2007, 06:47 AM |
| I would just like to add to this thread that the H9 support staff have been nothing but polite and helpful in my recent dealings with them.
I have only just moved my reseller account over to them, but they were very helpful on the move and were polite in responding to my numerous questions.
-Tim
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| Posted by old_expat, 06-24-2007, 08:02 AM |
| I agree, which is why my OP had the comment:
"In short, the tech support guy was great and I was feeling all warm and fuzzy about my decision."
I do not, however, feel the same about Hostnine management.
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| Posted by rv_irl, 06-24-2007, 08:05 AM |
| I like the way the above has been structured to shift the blame onto the customer in order to discredit the review.
Especially here.. Making it sound so subtle as if nothing was wrong in the first place..Making it sound like every aspect of the review is completely the customers fault, with the apology added so as not to cause a flame war.
If you read the review thoroughly, it does seem that the user did indeed have to jump through hoops to get something done.
I'm going to reserve my end opinion on the matter as I really don't know the entire story. However H9 certainly didn't deny anything the user said, just cleverly worded the reply to reduce the impact of the review.. Or maybe it is just me.. Am I looking too much into things?
But at least H9 did give you the refund.. some hosts wouldn't even bother.. And at least they did respond to your emails.
Mistakes do happen, luckily this was just a minor thing.. hopefully H9 & the OP will take this as a learning experience...
Good luck to you both
Last edited by rv_irl; 06-24-2007 at 08:09 AM.
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| Posted by SeñorAmor, 06-25-2007, 06:43 PM |
| Here's my HostNine experience:
I'm looking for a new reseller plan. Two plans caught my eye: InnoHosting's Enterprise plan and Hostnine's Top plan. I went straight to the sources and told them flat out: "I am interested in both your Plan X and your competitor's Plan Y" and then gave them a link to their competitor's website. I then asked them to sell me on their service over their competitor's. Whoever gave me the best pitch would get my money.
I wish I had a transcript of the log I had with Rameen at Inno. He was polite, informative, and knowledgeable. He explained the pros of his services without detailing the cons of H9's. He even offered me a bargaining chip to sign up with Inno (Rameen, I'm gonna hold you to that too. ). Very professional; high praise from me.
Hostnine's version was much different. Allow me to paste the chatlog I had with "Dave":
(FYI - he didn't actually say the last line. It's auto generated when you close the window.)
2 guesses who gets my money (the first one doesn't count if you get it wrong ).
- Jay
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| Posted by NeilE, 06-25-2007, 07:38 PM |
| Hi Jay;
The sales guy did his job just fine. Honestly, you seemed to be enjoying "making him work" for it. He answered all of your questions (all of which required only your own common sense to answer) politely, but you turned it into an impossible situation and were a bit abrasive.
I just spent not more than 30 seconds looking at the InnoHosting Website, and have not looked at HostNine's at all, but your first question (regarding SSL).. well, your sales guy Dave deserves at least a little bit of credit. You asked why their SSL certificates were more expensive. He quite clearly told you that the reason was that HostNine offers GEOTRUST. You then stated that InnoHosting "claims to have the same". Right.. CLAIMS! Had you bothered to do just 10 seconds of research you would know that the SSL certificate that InnoHosting CLAIMS to be GeoTrust is NOT GeoTrust. It is RapidSSL (owned by same company) at $13.99. RapidSSL is useless in comparison to GeoTrust. Their GeoTrust price is $55.99, which is still a low-end price (but not the lowest).
Dave answered your question without bashing the competitor. InnoHost, on the other hand, intentionally misled you by stating that they are "issued by GeoTrust".. not a lie, but misleading.
Who would get MY money? Based on this, it would be HostNine. Ethical business practices and honesty go a long way in this industry! Shame you don't seem to know the difference.
Similar thing with ModernBill, etc. ModernBill IS the best whereas features are concerned. And it also speaks for itself. ModernBill is also very careful about who they allow to sell/provide product licenses. If you are not familiar with ModernBill, you should visit their website (as the rest of us would) to learn more about the features. The guy from HostNine is NOT a ModernBill sales person... they might provide it as a "bonus", but it is supported by MG/MB. Although, I suspect that Dave would have tried to answer any questions about MB had you actually asked one. But, of course, you just wanted to catch him bashing ClientExec, didn't you?
My Lord.. what did you want to know? Is Dave a mind-reader? Are you looking for a psychic host?
Really... this smacks of a set-up. You wanted to add something negative to this thread, so you contacted HostNine's sales department with the goal of making them look bad. You had no negative experiences of your own to discuss, so you set out to create one.. which does nobody in this thread (who may well have valid concerns) any favors. If anything, you've made HostNine look better.
If you actually want to "test" a potential host, do so by submitting a support ticket or two.
Last edited by NeilE; 06-25-2007 at 07:48 PM.
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| Posted by Nnyan, 06-25-2007, 08:05 PM |
| Interesting, I'm curious to see some feedback from someone at Inno.
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| Posted by SeñorAmor, 06-25-2007, 08:57 PM |
| Hi Neal,
Impossible situation? I asked him basic questions. It doesn't matter whether or not the info is on their website. I am prospective client, and he made no effort to seal the deal. I told him flat out what I was interested in and his response was to give me some cop-out answer and tell me to do the research myself. Hardly professional.
Fine. Then he could have answered that. He made no effort to answer my question.
Uh, no. There's a reason why H9 picked ModernBill. I wanted to know why. I am not familiar with either.
No, I said straight away that I wanted a salesman. I wanted him to pitch me his product. Extol the virtues of what they had for sale. Tell me why his product was better than his competitor's.
Instead, he gave me some bullcrap runaround and half-assed answers. If he didn't know the answer to a question, a better response would be to say so and that he'd get back to me. Telling me to look elsewhere is just lazy.
Funny, I was going to say just how much you sound like a HostNine plant.
I know nothing of either company. Based on posts on these forums I found two very good hosts. All I wanted was for each to sell me on their product. One did; one gave me the runaround.
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| Posted by rv_irl, 06-25-2007, 09:07 PM |
| RapidSSL is issued by GeoTrust. They are not useless at all, they perform the same encryption as a high end SSL certificate. The only thing it lacks is verifying authenticity of the certificate..
Our GeoTrust QuickSSL is still cheaper than the $69. Last time I checked with H9, they offer QuickSSL as well.
How is that misleading? They are issued by GeoTrust, you admitted it yourself. We offer a comparison of all certs on our GeoTrust page at our website. We give the RapidSSL which retails at $69 for free to the user anyway..
Have you looked at the chat log the user posted from H9?
Who decided they are best in the world?
Subtle bashing?
Who decided this? Have you taken some time to look at its recent reviews?
At what point were we unethical? We answered a few pre-sales questions which impressed the visitor.. Were you in the chat? Did you see what we had to say? You have 1 transcript and haven't seen ours - based on half the story you are casting your judgement.
The point here is that Jay was evaluating two totally different hosting companies with different niche's, utilising different models.
Before we even began answering Jay's question, I took the time to actually ask what his requirements were, what he wanted to get out of the reseller and what his intentions were - both present and future.
I spent a good 35 minutes discussing his needs with him and tailoring a solution for him. If you take that into contrast with the chat log he posted with H9, it hardly matches up to the extent we went.. That is simply because H9 has a different model that works for them. Nobody is right or wrong here.
Neil your mistake here is trying to judge by one side of the story without any real complete information. You are comparing two different companies with different models. You need to understand no right or wrong method of a sales pitch exists. It's all down to that individual hosting company.
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| Posted by NeilE, 06-25-2007, 09:36 PM |
| Many of them so basic that they were impossible to answer.
You provided a link to another co's plan, and asked him to tell you why HostNine is better. The professional approach would be to simply tell you what HostNine has to offer (which he tried to do), and to allow you to compare your compiled research and come to your own decision. You wanted him to do all of your research for you, which would have required that he point out another company's negatives (one way or another) - and that WOULD have been unprofessional of him to do.
(SSL issue) In a way he did, Sir - and he did it without bashing the competitor. He clearly stated that HostNine sells Geotrust, and he clearly asked you if the other host might be pushing a lower-end product (which they were).
I believe that he told you that MB has the best features, etc. Sounds like a darn good reason to me! The best, actually. Did you bother to ask him if MB provides any features that you specifically require (NO), or did you just expect that he would read your mind and know which ones you needed?
He tried to do this, sir. He told you about their support, data center, provided a link to a review, etc. and asked you what else you would like to know. You gave him ZERO to work with, other than a request that he make a company-to-company comparison, which could have easily put him in a sticky spot.
He didn't give half-assed answers, Sir, you asked half-assed questions (sorry). He wanted to discuss HostNine, and to answer any questions that you had about HostNine, and you wanted him to discuss InnoHosting. That's not how it works.
No, Sir... but as someone who is struggling to build his own company's reputation, I take great offense when people don't give others a fair shake. He tried to offer assistance (this is clear), and he tried to make his own company look good without risking the possibility of making another company look bad, and that's how it should be. And, for the record; I wouldn't do it either (nor would I conduct business with anyone who would).
He might not have been the best or most convincing sales person on the planet, but he did absolutely nothing wrong.
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| Posted by NeilE, 06-25-2007, 09:47 PM |
| Rameen -
Apologies; The RapidSSL/GeoTrust bit is misleading, and I would be turned off by it if I were looking for a host, but it was not my intention to judge your company as a whole.
Neil
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| Posted by rv_irl, 06-25-2007, 10:05 PM |
| I don't see it as misleading. We state it is a RapidSSL issued directly by GeoTrust which is the case here. The cert is not inferior in anyway. Encryption strength, authentication, how it works etc. are all the same as the most expensive SSL certificates. The only difference is the higher end GeoTrust SSL certs (which we still offer at discount rates) is that it requires you to submit some documents to verify yourself, and the site seal.
RapidSSL does not verify authentication because no documents need to be submitted.
Everything else is the same..
No problem - thanks for clearing it up
Cheers,
Rameen
Last edited by rv_irl; 06-25-2007 at 10:08 PM.
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| Posted by SeñorAmor, 06-25-2007, 10:35 PM |
| You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I dunno. Rameen toted his company's features without making a single mention of H9. Also, I didn't want Dave to do all the research. I simply asked him why I should use his product and not his competitor. It is a very common tactic when purchasing something (perhaps you have never purchased anything in your life?).
Yes. Why is it a better SSL cert then? This is the point I was trying to get across. Your SSL cost 5x more than another I'm looking at and your only justification is "because theirs is a low-end product"? That's laziness. Tell me WHY yours is better.
You're clearly not getting this so let me paraphrase in hopes it'll make it easier to understand:
Me: You use ModernBill. Your competitor uses something else. Why do you use ModernBill?
H9: Because it's the best.
Me: How so?
H9: It just is.
If that's acceptable to you, I have a LOT of things to sell you. I guarantee they're all "the best" of their kind.
Again, you can pitch your product without bashing your competition, and that's all I asked him to do. Here's what I was looking for (which Rameen figured out without any help whatsoever):
Me: Hi, why should I use your product over Company X's?
Them: Our product is 10x more efficient, lasts 3x as long, and has these added features: x, y, z. That's how we justify the extra $5 per month (or -- and with all that, we're still $1000 cheaper per year).
If you can't sell me your product, then you probably shouldn't be one of the support personnel under the "Sales" section of your website.
Are you not seeing the theme here, Neil? I suggest you re-read this thread again because I'm 100% in the right here. You know how I know I am?
I just am.
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| Posted by Ben_G, 06-26-2007, 06:44 AM |
| I'm sorry you feel your chat with Dave was "not good enough" or did not meet your standards but I actually commend Dave for his responses. Every single one of our employees does their best day in and day out to serve our customers and potential customers such as yourself. What I've been asking myself as I've watched this thread grow on is if you really feel you didn't receive what you were looking for why didn't you call, or request a manager? Running to WHT and making a post about how we're so short on chat isn't going to help you get your answers, nor is it going to help you get the package you're looking for.
I was actually standing behind Dave when he was taking that chat in our office as he thought it was a and I quote "bit shady". Almost every question came at him in a very direct way rather than a normal "Do you offer billing software with your reseller plans?". Dave answered every question you had politely and you had all the information you would have needed to research Modernbill and our Packages. I would also like to add we would never bash another hosting company. Most of the H9 team has been in the industry for a few years now and I myself always attend the hosting related events so I'm very friendly with most of our competitors (Feel free to look at the pictures http://www.hostnine.com/workshop/ you'll see cPanel, Pingzine, Modernbill, Insider Hosting/HTTPME, Appliedi.net, MBLicenses.com, and more).
I'm not sure what else I can add to this except next time you have questions or feel you didn't get treated properly, if it affects you that much why not tell someone that matters? Why not tell a manager so if we're truly in the wrong it never happens again? There are so many different ways this could have been handled but of coarse it ends up on WHT and the competitors jump all over it. Then when someone who actually agrees with us they are a "h9 Plant"?
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| Posted by bfarrell, 08-12-2007, 02:05 AM |
| Hi Rameen, nice rebuttal.
NeilE has brought out an interesting point in sales, though I do not think he has realized it- no pun intended. Rameen spent a lot of time with his prospect and did a lot of fact finding on the potential clients needs. He then shared with the inquiry how his services would deliver just what the customer needed.
So when the second company is questioned, they are put into a defensive position. The sales person is not trained at fact finding and problem solving. Just replying. The standards were already set by Rameen.
In fairness to the second company, can be quite hard to quickly put it all together. But the customer did tell them right up front it was a sales contest. Should have just started asking a lot of questions about his needs and his concerns. Then present a solution back.
Anyway, I do business with Rameen. Very satisfied. I do not know anything about the other company, probably nice people. Just a bad sales event.
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| Posted by RSkeens, 08-12-2007, 10:31 AM |
| I'm sorry Jay but I have to agree with this. In my opinion it is up to the client to decide between hosts, not support to go around comparing companies on your behalf with pros and cons between them, etc. Yes they are salesmen (to a degree, online support is actually support), but not host market analysts.
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| Posted by jerett, 08-12-2007, 12:40 PM |
| My only beef with this is regardless if you feel it is shady, or you feel the customer is asking questions clearly stated on your site, your job as a customer service or sale representative is to continue addressing that customer in a professional manner and making them feel small for asking such questions is not living up to that professional image.
Now - directing them to another provider for asking questions was a move made that clearly reads "we don't have time to talk to you - just go to another host". If you begin to act like your a big host with lots of clients and you don't have time for questions and some of the smaller task associated with smaller clients because "you have too many other issues to deal with" then your in the wrong business and you need to focus on an elite bunch of clients. (wow that was one LONG sentence)
Frank made H9 rock when he was there. I am sad to say that the only excuse I hear when there are issues now with customer service at H9 - the normal response is - we are so large that we can't focus on the smaller issues so move on. I hope you guys begin to get things back on track.
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| Posted by masm50, 08-12-2007, 06:50 PM |
| I have had great help from the support staff at H9 - especially in the last month - even with the launch of their new "future" (which isn't the future but quite a nice feature all the same).
They were very helpful and patient with basic dns questions from me (which actually should have been aimed at godaddy), and even more recently with me moving one of my sites from one server to another with slightly different config in the UK today.
Just though I would throw in my 2p
Tim
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