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Vizaweb - Gone Dark with No Explanation
guardyourpants.blogspot.com — Vizaweb (the webhost once touted by Leo Laporte) has gone dark with no warning or explanation to their customers. It's been over 48 hours and domains are now failing to resolve. No one has access to their data, email, etc. Vizaweb support doesn't answer the phone, and they obviously don't have email. This is a blog about the problem.
nicktripp- 317 diggs
- digg it
- spectech, on 10/12/2007, -20/+3i am sick of this... GODADDY here I come. No more Vizaweb for me, and I want my money BACK !!
- noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -13/+6ugh don't go with godaddy.
my best experience so far has been with ASO (aka a small orange). - evilpig, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14ASOs prices are ridiculous...
- thespace, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I've been in the this biz forever, go with MediaTemple or Dreamhost, Media Temple is a little more expensive but you get what you pay for and they both have about the same features
- phool, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4Please do not use dreamhost. I had several users of mine on there and they are awful in my eyes. Bad support, uptime the last year was gross. I have a client with over 15 pages of support tickets opened in the last year.
I have run my own web hosting server (real deal not at home with a broadband connection) and have tried dozens of hosting providers out and by far the best out there for me is 1and1, great prices, great uptime, call support and they ANSWER! No complaints. I have about 10 sites hosted with them.
Im sure there are people out there that had no issues with dreamhost, this is my personal experience, take it for what it is. - timdorr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+24(note: I'm the owner of ASO. No, seriously.)
"ASOs prices are ridiculous..."
Sorry that we don't oversell enough for you. I'm getting kind of sick of the pissing matches between hosts trying to offer TB's of transfer and GBs of space for a few bucks a month. That's not a sustainable business model, especially in the hosting world, as it easily leads to overloaded servers and tons of support problems. Look at Site5 as an example as to what can go wrong.
Also, I'd steer clear of (mt) for now. They just released their new grid server product, and while it's got some potential, it's definitely had it's fair share of problems these past few weeks. I'd give them a month or two before considering things again. It's got the potential to be a great product, so I hope they work out the kinks. - JEmerson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I should first mention that I run a small webhosting company, so there is some conflict of interest. But, that said, my advice is to stay as far away from godaddy as possible. They've entered into some business deals recently that, in my opinion, they weren't prepared to handle. The end result is that there's been a fairly large number of people coming away from them with pretty bad experiences.
- LucianSolaris, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1i've been with http://www.jonnyhosting.com (used to be Endeavour) on his unlimited plan and it's freakin' great. This guy understands geek's needs and doesn't screw or doublecross you!
- Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I've been using Dreamhost for 5 years now my sites, and I've never experienced more than an hour or two of downtime. I recommend them wholeheartedly.
- noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@evilpig and anyone else who dugg me down earlier:
you get what you pay for. i've been burned by a lot of different hosts, including ones people reccomended me to, and ASO is the first hosting service that i've had absolutely no problems on. they've even been incredibly prompt with responses on service requests (including the one i put in at 1AM, it was done in 5 minutes).
when i'm trying to host a professional service, i don't want the database to go down. i don't want downtime. i'm willing to pay a few extra bucks a month to ensure customers are happy.
@timdorr
kudos to you, sir, and keep up the good work. wish people would've dugg up my earlier comment instead of dugg it down. :( - JSchwage, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1One word. Site5.
- noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -13/+6ugh don't go with godaddy.
- george@CASE, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I should have gotten out earlier. Stupid of me to buy hosting AND domain from the same company, too. I only keep a personal blog there so it is not of any particularly high value, but I would still like to get my 1) domain back, 2) and my SQL database.
My latest backup was may 13 2006. This will teach me to back up more often.
I've been googling around for a while and it looks like theplanet.com is where vizaweb buys the hosting space. For the domain names, I believe they resell from publicdomainregistry.com.
How do we get about resolving this?- rezlo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I went with Vizaweb after reading a recommendation from Leo Laporte's site about 2 years ago. I had the worst time trying to get anyone from Vizaweb to respond to emails, support tickets, phone calls. I ended up opening an account with Emaxhosting.com, copying all my data, and bringing up a new site in case the Vizaweb data were to vanish. It took about 6 weeks to get them to transfer the domain name I purchased through them. I learned my lesson the hard way. Emaxhosting has been great, no complaints at all.
- aliengoods, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'm backing up my remote servers right now.
- peciv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I too used to use VizaWeb but the horrible support finally took its toll and I moved all of my clients to Host Gator on a reseller account. After some early problems with dns/network issues everything runs perfectly now.
- xst4t1kx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The hostgator billing department is completely incompetent. Having to deal with those morons has made for the worst hosting experience I have seen in over 6 years. I chose HG based on mostly positive reviews and everything was fine until I had to deal with the idiots in billing. If you aren't already stuck with them then look elsewhere or you -will- eventually get screwed.
- Lostcosmos, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Earlier story here:
http://digg.com/tech_news/What_do_I_do_when_my_hosting_vanishes_Please_Digg_Help_Vizaweb_Story#c3773141- nicktripp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Everyone please digg that story, too. I only posted this one because that story wasn't showing up in digg searches for Vizaweb, which I see now is because someone buried that story and I wasn't including buried stories in my search. Anyway, this is not about who can get a story to the front page, but about bringing attention to a situation that desperately needs it. Digg both.
- Lostcosmos, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Yes Digg both. I did not call this a dupe because the other was buried and we need attention on this. This would be a freaking awesome opportunity for GoDaddy to come to our rescue by acquiring all Vizaweb customers.
- timber_tract, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ditto. I just want to get the domain name back that I paid for. Access to the server to download stuff would be great too. They could have at least given us a week's warning.
- Lostcosmos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I had moved my email over to Google email's hosting service but I can send but not receive email. Shouldn't I still be able to get email if the mx record was changed to google?
- nicktripp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How did you get access to your dns records? I can't get to any of mine thanks to VW being down.
- eddieroger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Vizaweb must be hosting your DNS info, and it sounds like that's down. Enjoy the time off from email...
- YupRules, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6It's back up it's back up!!!!!!
- Lostcosmos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6For the sake of history, Vizaweb was down from approximately 12pm EST on 11/8 to 10am 11/10.
- Liv2bWild, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was able to download a total backup and my e-mails.
Which host is everybody switching to?- ericnmu, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1site5
- LucianSolaris, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1go with www.jonnyhosting.com . I love it and the guy that owns it is so helpful!
- seuaniu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I've been happy with dreamhost for about the last 8 months. Its all personal stuff at this point, so the database prob i had wasn't a huge deal - just affected my webmail. They really went out of the way to get me back up, and it took about a day.
No referral link, cause I'm not trying to whore them out here. If you really want a referral link, and I'd sure as hell appreciate it, get me at my digg username at gmail.com
I usually recommend that people with admin skills colocate their own server if their business depends on it. - ryanlive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I use and am very happy with Blue Host and Linksky.
- peciv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I use Host Gator...
Stay far away from iPowerWeb... I had a dedicated server from them and their automatic billing system kept turning the server off even through I paid for a year and this was in the first month. - xst4t1kx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1hostgator was the worst hosting experience i have seen in over 6 years and I now turn people away from them at every opportunity.
- nicktripp, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1@Live2bWild
I'm going with a VPS from Prohosters. - KrypticOne, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0I'm going through Imhosted.com. I have had them for quite awhile now and have never had any downtime at all.
- thespace, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5let me recommend MediaTemple.net, especially those worried about the digg effect, their new grid server hosting is "digg effect proof".
- MalDON, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I can't say anything bad about MT.
- thespace, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3their quality and response time is the craziest I've ever seen
- eddieroger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I switched to them a few weeks ago, and so far so good. They have an amazing wiki, great plans, and the grid server product seems to be fantastic. The rails containers are great, and I get shell access. Some of the username naming conventions are funky, but its worthwhile.
- aftk2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'd agree about mediatemple. A couple years ago I worked with a client who had a site hosted through mediatemple.net, and I wasn't impressed. Didn't seem terribly full-featured, seemed a bit expensive for what you got, etc... They were hyped but didn't seem to deliver much. However they've done a complete 180 (at least, they seem to have for me): the grid server is still occasionally buggy, but they seem to be working on it around the clock; I really like their control panel, their offering of rails and PHP5, and their flexibility.
It's also very, very affordable if you're going to be hosting a number of domains- no, it's not bargain basement hosting, but it's cheaper than liquidweb.com's shared stuff (once I started tacking domains on to liquidweb.)
- CarpetFilter, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0I used ImHosted for about three years. The uptime was decent, but the customer support had a lot of room for improvement.
I switched to ICDsoft and have been extremely happy with their customer service. They answer e-mails in about 15-30 minutes, and the support people seem to know their stuff. The one time the guy couldn't answer my question, he forwarded the e-mail to a system admin who got back to me in an hour.
They are a reseller for savvis. I'm not sure if you can buy small hosting plans from Savvis directly, but if you can, look into that too. - fourzerofour, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Been with VizaWeb now for about 3 years time to switch.. sick of this crap, I'm looking into HostDime anyone had any experience with this?
- BuddyDoQ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've been with them over a year now, awesome host all around. Good tech support, I've only used it once, and it was a near immediate response. Their staff even helped me iron out a few display bugs on my site when I pimped it on their forums.
- coreyb, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Hey guys, this is NOT spam. I don't work for them, but I do send my clients to them and I host with them. Check out Verio for hosting. They don't care who you buy you name though, so you can point it where ever (good for control) They are owned by NTT who is the major fiber of the internet infrastructure... They do not go down, EVER. Full back ups, tape and raid. Low cost, Most plans are unlimited bandwidth.
http://verio.com
http://viaverio.com
My 2 cents.- thespace, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I had major problems with Verio, they nickel and dime you to death, switch to someone else man, you may be getting robbed, I'll take that 2 cents now
- MikeD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Why on earth would you guys bury this guy for suggesting Verio. One they are good. Two, the other companies that have been around for years and are a reliable as the sun coming up in the east every morning is Netnation.com and Hostway.com.
They are a little expensive. But, they also never go down. You need support? Call 24/7 and get a human that fixes the problem right now!
I think between them they host like 150,000 sites.
There might be a lot of really good smaller hosting services, but if you are looking for rock solid mission critical hosting services try any of the three.
- tornpage, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I've had dot5hosting.com for like two years and they give you insane amounts of disc space (100G) and bandwidth (750G), unlimited SQL/email, you can host 6 domains on the same account. I think up to 10 concurrent FTP sessions & Ruby/LAMP for like $6/mo.
They've only gone down once (MySQL servers) that I know of.
Sometimes their SQL servers seem sluggish, but if I were to switch I'd go with ASO. - dosle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0this vizaweb site looks like it used the same template as every other site hosting package company. that would steer me away outright.
- kgool, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I am sure they really use those Sun servers shown in the pic.
- kgool, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I am sure they really use those Sun servers shown in the pic.
- Bob042, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Funny how this only hits frontpage after the issue is resolved.
- Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well that's OK, nobody could desert them until they could get at their data/domains anyway. Now they'll go out of business and the scumbag that runs the company will start a "new" company priceritephoto.com-style.
- cnordholm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I host with Midphase. Their tech support is instant.
- aliengoods, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Quick hosting question. I'm looking for a hosting provider that basically gives you a VMware virtual machine. The reason I want VMware is I use it throughout the company so its easy for me to push a new image up to a provider.
Does anyone know of any such providers? I've found a few that cost > $500 per month. I don't want to go over $200, and preferably $100 being as my bandwidth and cpu needs aren't intensive.- siberian, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I went with Cari.net for hosting. For about $100 a month I get a dedicated Dual Core P4, 1GB RAM and 120GB of HD or so with the OS of my choice.
On this I run VMWare with 3 or 4 virtual machines.
its a fast network, insanely great support (someone always answers the phone and they fix things, even kicking spammers off the network) and best of all I have dedicated hardware to run my vm's on.
They've worked great for me, I have 3 servers with them now running 10 vmware instances between them.
- siberian, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I went with Cari.net for hosting. For about $100 a month I get a dedicated Dual Core P4, 1GB RAM and 120GB of HD or so with the OS of my choice.
- bonky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I was with vizaweb until they went down for 2 days on my server. Same story as everyone. No phone, no email response.
I'm with Go Daddy now, and they're pretty good. But overall, I really liked the cpanel interface. You can do the same crap with go daddy's, but it's not as good.
Now if godaddy got the cpanel interface... that would be pretty darn cool.- INeedAttention, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0GoDaddy does offer cPanel, at least on their virtual private server products, though I only have experience with Plesk since cPanel is garbage IMHO.
- kibmcz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Netfirms is also a good hosting company they have been around since 1998. My site is hosted with them and i have had no problems.
If you use the url below you get $10 for one full year of Netfirms Advantage Hosting!
http://netfirms.com/max
If you have a popular page... google adsense ads would cover the costs after the first year. - twitchster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Directnic all the way
http://www.directnic.com/
Katrina didn't even take them down
http://www.directnic.com/katrina.php
http://www.mgno.com/ - blaksaga, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1If all you are doing is blogging or something similar, try out
http://www.elixant.com/
I have no affiliation with them but have used them for a while now. They offer great deals, have great uptime, and the support there is terrific.
They bill monthly rather than yearly, and if you use a code like "25off" it will save you 25%, forever...at least it worked for me. :) - speedfoot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i got an email back from support a few minutes ago:
We are very sorry about the outage over the last 2 days. In the next 24 hours an email will be coming detailing a credit to your account for the issues.
If you have any questions regarding this, please let us know.
Thanks,
Support Department
VizaWeb Inc.- chance1376, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Did we ever get a credit for the last outage? I think that email is in the comments here as well.
- Scatropolis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2My site's back, but I haven't gotten an email yet. I emailed them at around the 12 hour mark about the outage....I guess they're probably swamped with emails.
- george@CASE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My blog is back up, as well. Wasting no time to grab my SQL database and files.
- 0KonTroL0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2http://www.lunarpages.com
- rosshosman, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3Leo is a tool and some how makes all the fan boys giddy with love. It doesn't surpise me that something he reccomended tanked. Most of you in this thread keep talking about hosts that massively oversell which will at one point or another share the same fate as Vizaweb, you can not sell at a loss forever!
There is a reason companies like Pair have been around forever, they sell a quality product with reasonable resources at a good price.
- http://www.thehostguru.com- fac3less, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1All I've seen are complaints on WHT recently regarding pair.
It just proves that any provider can have issues: No matter the pricing structure.
- fac3less, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1All I've seen are complaints on WHT recently regarding pair.
- Porkgod, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I have had great luck with http://www.hostgator.com and highly recommend them.
- xst4t1kx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Then you received special treatment that they do not extend to everyone.
- beejay54, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Ahh theplanet strikes again. :-)
- sonofa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I used Visaweb a year ago. I paid for a year in advance and then they continued to bill me monthly. They wouldn't answer any of my emails or phone calls so I canceled my card. Then they canceled my Visaweb account. I got screwed by Visaweb once. I'm glad I got out when I did.
- grimreaper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I've been with hostned.com and bluehost.com for hosting. I dont have anything bad to say about either.
- george@CASE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1looks like it's down again. argh. I managed to get all my files. Now I just have to get my domain name.
- Lostcosmos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Email From Vizaweb:
Dear George,
As you may have noticed, the VizaWeb network experienced a total outage on Wednesday at 1:00p until Friday Morning 9:15a CST. While none of your data for your account was compromised or lost, you would not have been able to access your site during this time. Please accept our sincerest apologies for this inconvenience. Because this outage breeched our Service Level Agreement (SLA) we will be offering reimbursement to you. I have decided to combine this credit with the SLA reimbursement from the September outage. There are 3 options for you to receive your credit:
1. 2 months credit based on your plan and term issued directly to your account. For example, a pro plan paid annually with receive $5.95 x 2 months or $11.90. A corporate plan paid quarterly will receive $17.95 x 2 months or $35.90.
2. Same as number 1., but the credit would be issued directly to your credit card or PayPal account. NOTE: This option is only available if your last invoice was paid within the last 60 days.
3. Coupon code for 50% off your next order. This coupon code would be valid until the end of 2007.
To claim your credit, please reply to this email with your domain name and option chosen. For multiple domain names, please list them individually with the option chosen for each.
We are still investigating this outage and will have more details later. VizaWeb is committed to providing you with the best service and features for hosting your business and life with us.
Rick Mueller
President and CEO
VizaWeb Inc.
Generated by VizaWeb Inc - nicktripp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Once again, my site is down. Good thing I got that last backup before they went. I'm transferring out of there TODAY.
- dpicella, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I helped a friend get out this morning... if you are still not out FTP is off so here is what to do (check my comment at the bottom just today):
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/What_do_I_do_when_my_hosting_vanishes_Please_Digg_Help_Vizaweb_Story - zelaznog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Here we go again with VizaWeb. I went to check my site today and was shocked to find that my site has been reverted to it's October 2006 state. All the development work (adding new functionaliy and content) has now disappeared. Has anyone else experiencing this problem.
- smartnetadmin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Emaxhosting is the absolutely worst web hosting company on the face of the planet. Whatever you do in this life, do not host your website with emaxhosting. Truly, the worst. The earlier posting here was probably made by the owner. These people have no business administering / owning / managing anything remotely close to a computer nor a web hosting company. This is my true and honest opinion.
- smartnetadmin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Emaxhosting is the bsolutely worst web hosting company on the face of the planet. Whatever you do in this life, do not host your website with emaxhosting. Truly, the worst. The earlier posting was probably made by the owner. These people have no business administering / owning / managing anything remotely close to a computer nor a web hosting company. This is my true and honest opinion.
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