fyi - my experience with Dreamhost - Re: [SGVLUG] recommend a hosting provider

[Jason Riker]

Matti,

I think Christ Smith had the right idea when he suggested the UML Coop.

Jason

---- matti <mathew_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote: 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> 1st - thanks for the great feedback!!!
> 
> 
> Dreamhost...
> 
> here's my experiences with them...
> 
> 1st) Customer Service/billing issues:
> 
> got a wholesale deal on hosting, and did a few referrals/clients,
> and reportedly with each referral/client I could charge that
> client the whole sale price +, anything above the wholesale
> would be a credit towards my service charges.
> 
> OK. seemed like a good deal.
> 
> Tried to make a deal so that the clients basically would
> cover my hosting costs and give me a little bit extra
> to cover some time to help them setup their accounts.
> (i.e. less than the full retail pricing they were
> charging.)
> 
> Seemed to work fine, UNTIL after 1yr, when they then
> automagikally started charging me full retail for my
> service (to get the wholesale price I would have to
> abandon that account and the associated clients
> and buy a new account .. )
> 
> I then discovered, and felt suckered, that the credits
> I had gathered now did not cover my costs.
> 
> Felt I should just have referred the clients to someone
> else, since I was feeling like I got caught in a
> "bait and switch"/misrepresentation/fraud especially
> considering my experiences with DH as lacking some
> basic functionality/features I expected. (see below)
> 
> * The part I didn't like about this was NOT knowing
> * it was going to happen ahead of time, before I
> * spent the time getting the clients onto dreamhost.
> (if it is a first year only deal, then MAKE it obvious!)
> 
> NO WHERE did I see this written up.
> 
> 
> 
> NOW, the technical thing I didn't like...
> (they may have fixed this by now.. I don't know)
> 
> 2) For a hosting account on a shared system 
> 
> IF someone already had "info at theirdomainname.com"
> on THAT system, I could not setup "info at mydomainname.com"
> 
> THAT was very irritating to me, so much so that for that
> reason ALONE I would recommend clients to use a different
> hosting provider IF they were going to pay FULL RETAIL 
> pricing.. thus I got rather pissed when I discovered that
> after setting up clients on DH, they got nailed for
> FULL price one year later... and were not getting as
> good functionality/features as I would have expected.
> (none of the accounts was I attempting anything 
> complicated so i don't know how DH compares with others
> in those areas... )
> 
> best
> matti
> 
> 
> 
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