(This post was written during the weekend, well before Digiweb’s CEO sent me a very long email rebuking me for the way I commented about the attitude of one of his employees and telling me how I should report about Digiweb in future. I hope this is not misconstrued as retribution for that bully-like email.)
This really needs someone sadder than me to chronicle all of this because it would make a great damned story. You could even make a TV movie of it with Fair City actors. The hosting providers in Ireland are an interesting bunch. They’re so catty and childish with each other and the bitchfights and electronic slaps make it almost better than some Sky One drama. Hosters wives or something.
So the latest bitchathon once again surrounded Hosting365, the undisputed heavyweight of hosting in Ireland and of course the company that gets most attention because of their size. Their chillers went offline the other day and they went all Scottie like, when the data centre couldnae take it anymore and they had to eject the warp core or something. It’s all chronicled here. Update: The 200+ comments on that post have now been deleted.
Digiweb, a mounting competitor with a great track record in broadband has now registereda few perhaps just one domain name which take a few digs at Hosting365. They’ve registered Hosting364.com EDIT: 12.25pm While former Hosting365 employees have registered Hosting365Refugee.com. Hosting364.com goes to an online excuse generator (In need of copy writer) while Hosting365Refugee.com goes to a Swedish chef parody thingymabob. I’m sure Hosting365Refugee will soon turn into the Alumni Association type thing that such a domain suggests. Right? 🙂
Hosting365 themselves snapped up Hosting365Sucks.com. Best to be safe I suppose. This is an interesting move by Digiweb though. To me it says to Hosting365 and others who are watching that they will resort to any means necessary to take some of their business but doing something like this also means you are asking for yourself to be open to scrutiny. This too is good. It almost forces transparency for themselves. Transparency is good. Hosting in Ireland is cut-throat and they are firecly competing with each other while looking overseas other providers are offering much better value services than here in Ireland. The cost of power and broadband here is hurting them a good bit. Shame they can’t pool together and lobby the government on these issues instead of stabbing each other with broken bottles of Buckfast.
Still, get the popcorn and watch them have at each other. Midly entertaining.
Haha, love the comments.
Call the customers servers ‘non-critical’ then try and frantically backtrack. Then Michele is in there stirring, customers going mad, getting madder, yer man picking and choosing who to reply to.
Fantastic.
You should publish the Digiweb letter so that we can all learn exactly how we should refer to them.
Their CEO used the clever tactic of marking it private and confidential, thus I shall respect that protocol even though it is my view that it’s a spineless way of attacking me and other people in it. It won’t however stop me from writing a summary of said letter. Stay tuned.
I just bought hosting363.com which is naturally for sale to the highest bidder.
Serious stuff, comments being deleted too!
Loosing one HVAC unit shouldn’t have been an issue, fairly basic practise to ensure you have N+1 and N+2 if its really critical.
If, and I’m reading between the lines here, the HVAC unit that failed took out the supply to all HVAC units someone needs there arse kicked. It raises questions about dual path power, the fuseboard, etc etc.
If it was my datacentre I’d be getting a third party in to do a root cause analysis and be preparing the budget for some serious expenditure.
Bit childish of Digiweb, particularly in that industry where more honest people would admit there but for the Grace of God go I.
John
I’m amazed at the price differences for hosting here.
I mean, it’s truly insane. I use the American hoster Bluehost and the differences are 10 or 20 times in terms of storage space, bandwidth etc.
Yep, use Bluehost too and so much more offered for same or less money.
http://www.hosting366.com taken by hosting365 too, clever too seeing as it’s a leap year.
Some things never change with Irish Hosters.
Pricing is one , this is the other
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=130251
In politically troubled times, do you want your hosting company under U.S. ISP rules? Passing through DHS filters? Ok!
Comments now gone from the post???
Re the U.S. ISP rules, you should have a look at our data retention rules in Ireland. And EU hosting is still miles cheaper than Ireland.
John
Heya Damien,
Digiweb did not purchase http://www.hosting365refugee.com/ I did purchased it and host it on my own hosting account. As a former employee of Hosting365 and having been around during the first blackout I thought it would a be a giggle to send to some former colleagues who have also left since.
Danny
Fixed that! Look forward to the Alumni association that such a domain name suggests.
“In politically troubled times, do you want your hosting company under U.S. ISP rules? Passing through DHS filters? Ok!”
Yeah I’m particularly worried about Cheney and co clamping down on German techno records that sell a couple of thousand copies.
Yeah I’m particularly worried about Cheney and co clamping down on German techno records that sell a couple of thousand copies.
Zey have vays of making you funk.
Next time hosting365 goes down, let me know, I can stick a note in their front door as I work across the street from them. 😉 (being that their email won’t be working).
@Danny Briem – worth noting Danny that you are an employee of Digiweb, registered the domain with Digiweb and hosting it with Digiweb?
@Stephen Dogfooding is good, no?
Puts a slightly different gloss on the comment by Danny!
@Branedy: I’m with Ronan, couldn’t care less where my site is hosted as I doubt anything contentious will come out of my site. Besides, can you remember a time when we weren’t experiencing “politically troubled times”?
Aw! My friendly dig didn’t get mentioned! http://talideon.com/weblog/2008/02/cooling-problems.cfm
Yep I work for Digiweb which is something Damien is very much aware of however what I do in my freetime for myself has no relation to who I work for. In regards to the sheer bigotry I am seeing here towards the beautiful art of German techno is sickening. German techno is the soundship of the future and scooter is its captain 😉
Those pink trunks just scared the bejazus outa me!
Not interested in becoming involved in the bitching but though that it was funny that http://www.hostingthreesixfive was still available….
That should of course read: http://www.hostingthreesixfive.com
What I thought was interesting was that Digiweb took the opportunity of h365’s problems to email me (and probably others) overing their services. Very quick off the mark. But also kind of spammy.
@Paul – Definitely spammy Paul – they emailed all of our customers (albeit an old list, no doubt from when Mr. King left us). We’re assisting a few in lodging formal spam complaints. It’s good to know that when there are issues the industry rallies.
Just for fun I had to reg hosting386.com, let reader draw his/her conclusion as to what I mean.
There is no and I mean no love lost between me and h365 after the absolute dire support during one of their many outages one of my customers got. I even remember the posts on the support board thing then too…
However, and not lightly (don’t want to be seen to defend h365), I will say one thing, bad things happen in IT everyday. Sure you can plan for almost every eventuality, but there is always one that will get you. (You could also add that the web hosting market is saturated and as such margins are decreasing, therefore infrastructure investment decreases, however considering the role of h365 in this market I think its not such an important consideration given their alleged market share and claimed ability)
There is however one factor I consider very important when such a problem hits a company. That is how do the cope with such problems when they arise? Its obvious from what I have read thus far, that the lessons of past have yet to be learned by h365. Having experience of them before, I have no hesitation in telling people to go look elsewhere, and have done so for many years now with much success.
I now host all essential services (bar one I think which is with BK) in France where I get massive bandwidth, great power but most important of all the most excellent support. Even paying top dollar in .fr I am saving circa Eur 20K pa.
I do however use Blacknight for some stuff, and have no hesitation in recommending them. Good, honest guys and gals whom sort out a customer when there is a problem (As of posting date).
Thats all you want when things go wrong after all, someone to help put the pieces back together as soon as possible.
/me goes back to sleep
Hi AJ,
I’m sorry you feel you had a bad experience with us in the past – you can read exactly what happened here: http://hosting365status.com/2008/02/07/statement-from-stephen-mccarron/ which details exactly how fast we responded to the issue and how well we communicated. As you said yourself, bad things happen every day, and we’ve been encouraged by the praise and encouragement we’ve received from our current customers in this regard.
How come you deleted all the comments?
Hmmm, it ain’t just the comments that were deleted!