Finally I shifted AbhinavSonkar.com to her third web host. Actually, it should have been second but a bad experience with web hosting company called Fused Network forced me to look for a third one. Read on for details.
Why I changed my Web Host?
Since the birth of this blog, I had been hosting on FutureQuest. I think it is an excellent web hosting company and would recommend FutureQuest to anyone who is looking for hosting a new website. Though a bit pricey, the best thing about this host is it provides you a dedicated IP address so you are not on a shared server. Yes, starting at $9.95, you get a dedicated IP address for the lifetime of your blog at no extra cost!
Then why did I leave them? Firstly, they have a very high cost to features ratio. They told me it was necessary to maintain high reliability and no doubt, they were very reliable. Only a single downtime in the eight months that I was with them. But the bandwidth limit of 5GB became a hindrance to the blog’s growth and penalties were being levied. In the last month, the projected bandwidth usage was to such a level that I would have had to pay more than monthly hosting charges as over-bandwidth fee! The other plans offered by them were too costly for me.
Secondly, some features were missing in their package. They didn’t provide subdomains with any of their package. No raw logs analyzer. Their control panel reminded me of my dad’s MS-DOS based system. Considering all these factors and to avoid the heavy over-bandwidth fee, I decided to look for a new web host. I signed up with Fused Network.
Why Fused Network Web Hosting sucks
I only stayed with Fused Network for a week. It turned out to be a bad choice but I guess, you got to have such experiences too!
The signing up was normal though the email carrying account setup details took a long time to come. The email was very short and the inadequacy of all the details made me realize how exhaustive FutureQuest was with its account details. Let me give an example. The email said that SFTP was available for use but when I tried to login, it failed. I created a ticket to address the issue. I had all my interactions with a guy called David McKendrick. He told me he had to request SSH access beforehand to use SFTP. If that was the case, then they should have mentioned it previously in the email itself.
The features provided by Fused Network were fine and the server worked fine for the few days that I was with them though it is too short a time to pass any judgement. But I rate Support very highly in my book and that is where they suffered. What stoked the fire was another query that I put forward to them regarding redirecting a subdomain which involved wordpress software. Mr. David used a very interesting phrase, “…asking that question to us is like asking your landlord to do your laundry for you…”. Wow! An interesting thing to say to your new customer! From there, one thing let to another and they fired me by giving 24 hours before the account would cease to exist. How convenient of them as a web hosting company, knowing that a website requires more than that time to settle with a new hosting company.
They returned me my money immediately and I quickly signed up with another hosting company which I had considered while shifting originally. And I am glad I did. Searching for a good web host takes time and in such crisis you have to have some idea beforehand to avoid downtime. I signed up with Doreo Web Hosting and had all my queries solved the way I expected.
Few Tips for changing web hosts from my twin experience!
I would like to include a small guide to changing web hosts so that you do not have to face any downtime during the process. Its not very difficult if you know what exactly needs to be done. I will try to highlight it as lucidly as possible.
Firstly, you need to find a good web host. Now there are way too many resources and web hosting companies. To have some basic idea, I would suggest you to read this article: How to Choose a Web Host. You will get to know all the features that needs to be considered while making a decision. Searching for a good web host can be a pain. I used this reference list to look for established web hosts. It made my job much easier. Hopefully it will help you in coming to a decision quickly as well.
- Make sure you have all the backup of your website files on your local hard disk. You should have a backup irrespective of whether you want to change web hosts or not.
- Sign up with your new web hosts and wait for your account to be setup. Upload all your files via FTP or any other way you prefer.
- Ensure that your website is looking perfect with the new web host. Only when you are completely satisfied should you change your nameservers.
- The effect of changing nameservers take some time to propagate through the internet. You might be able to see your new website with your domain name but a visitor from some other country (different DNS) might still be seeing the old website (the website on the old host). So don’t rush to delete the old website yet. No need to inform your previous web host about your plans at this point.
- After about a week you can be sure that everyone is seeing your website on the new host. Now’s the time to cancel your account with the previous web host. If you can time your web hosts changing schedule, you can avoid paying both the web host. Though you will have to pay twice for the common month.
- This way you can ensure minimal downtime for your website.
- If you use wordpress blogging software and use WP-stats plugin as well, then remember to reinstall the plugin for tracking to continue.
- Lastly, make sure you have chosen 2-3 web hosts so that if an unexpected occurrence occurs, you are ready for it!
I think that should help you a little bit if you ever decide to change your web host. For a detailed explanation, you can read this: Changing Web Hosts - Tips on Moving Your Website.
If you enjoyed the post, you can check out the complete song-chord list. If you are a professional musician or a good guitarist and want to share your skills with everybody else, you can join the blog as a Regular Contributor.
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Having a dedicated IP doesn’t necessarily mean you are not on a shared server. A single server hosting multiple sites can have many IPs pointing to it.
Anyway, I found your blog by reverse IPing 66.185.16.37. I have some of my sites hosted here and I wanted to check out what other sites are hosted on the Whitestar server. I recently shifted to Doreo Hosting and the experience has been great so far.
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[...] we’re not alone — here’s another post that says Fused Network SUCKS and their unprofessional [...]
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I’ve held off for awhile in responding to this post — it’s rare that I do so on third party sites but I did want to clear up any confusion. I’d first like to mention that I am completely satisfied hearing that you’re content with another provider — there’s a great host out there for everyone and the more decent providers, the better.
As for your experience with Fused, I can say that we still don’t offer any sort of software customization & installation. Although we often install software on behalf of users — we can’t go through and modify / tweak your mod_rewrite entries as you had requested — that’s something that (and as I stated before) is on par with asking your landlord to do your laundry or dishes, it truly is. Although we allocate the space and resources to you, you’re paying for the space, infrastructure and our time ensuring that the systems are online and flawless.
We’re not paid for software development and don’t offer it as a service. I’ll wholeheartedly agree with you on our welcome emails being lacking — they tend to state the obvious (e.g. ftp access, control panel information) and the rest can be found in our knowledgebases. Even those are in dire need of more thoroughness but all improves in time.
At any rate, again, I’m very glad to hear you found a host you’re satisfied with and I hope they continue to do you justice.
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