 | In mid November 2007,
Yahoo Small Business decided to
change the shared web server my site was hosted on. They provided
email notification in mid-November that they would be making changes over the
next two months (through January 2007). Prior to this their email
reliability had
rapidly declined, making my domain email
useless.
|
| Upon transferring my site via FTP to the new hosting server
in early December, Yahoo broke the site's FrontPage extensions, preventing me from
publishing
site changes. Though probably unrelated, Microsoft is moving away from
FrontPage server extensions and has already introduced a new web authoring
tool called Expression Web.
|
| Then, to address the issue, Yahoo technical support asked me to delete all of the
pages from my site via FTP and republish the site with FrontPage server
extensions loaded. Given the reckless way they had transferred the site
and their atrocious email performance over the past six months, I decided to change
web host providers. Fortunately I had a recent local backup copy of the site. I had
been with Yahoo for almost ten years.
|
| The first provider I tried was
Netfirms. Their technical support
team was consistently rude on four occasions and they lacked FrontPage
expertise. I was unable
to successfully publish my FrontPage site to their servers.
|
| Next I tried to publish my site to
FrontPages Web Hosting Network. While I successfully
published my site to their servers, they failed to enter my site IP address
on their namesevers- causing a condition known as "lame nameservers."
As a result, the site was totally unavailable for over 24 hours. While promising 24/7 email support, when the nameserver issue was brought to their
attention over the weekend with three high priority email service
requests- they failed to respond. On Monday, their tech support then
emailed back
that my site was working. This was correct, because over the weekend I
changed web host providers again (see below). Their company seemed
uninterested in keeping my account and clearly lacked a strong customer
service focus for their smaller business/personal accounts.
|
| I then more carefully selected a
web hosting provider- looking for a stable provider, with Windows server
and FrontPage expertise who offered true 24/7 phone support. I found this
in CrystalTech. Their technical
support was excellent. Site performance and reliability
is superb and tech support is knowledgeable and available by phone
24/7. After changing DNS name servers again, the site was available across
the Internet in less than 24 hours. On Monday, a CrystalTech customer
service representative called me to verify that the web site upload was
successful and that I was a happy customer.
Lesson Learned:
Yahoo Small
Business and Netfirms are both
large providers that treat their smaller customers like commodities. In the case of Yahoo, I believe they knowingly
broke my site to expedite a server transition (while still
technically in conformance with their terms of service agreement).
FrontPage Web Hosting
Network, perhaps more caring than Yahoo and Netfirms, is not highly customer
focused and did not deliver on their promise of 24/7 email support.
CrystalTech is an example of a
company that appears to care and this caring permeates their organization. They have
been in business for almost ten years and they should continue to prosper.
|
| My site is currently hosted at
HostMySite.com. Like
CrystalTech they offer excellent service and very competitive offerings. I
switched to them because of pricing/plan differences, however both
companies are superb and deserve equal consideration.
|
| One further note- there are many Internet web hosting
review sites. Most of them are run by companies that derive revenue when a
user clicks from their site to a web host provider site they have an
affiliate relationship with. It is very difficult to assess which
providers offer quality service and support using these sites since they
lack objectivity. However, one publication worth consulting is
Webhost Magazine and Buyers
Guide.
Note: There is no affiliate relationship between
earthrenewal.org and CrystalTech
or HostMySite.com. |
