Hosting Review: APlus.net vs. Liquid Web

There’s a wide variety of hosting services that handle dedicated servers (not shared or colo) - for my purposes I group them into two bunches low cost and high cost. The difference between the two is generally defined by the Service Level Agreement - how quickly they guarantee they’ll help you out and how much extra hand holding they’ll give you, more or less. For the most part and for most of the time the end user is not going to notice the difference between your APlus.net, Liquid Web (low cost) and your Rackspace (high cost) servers. Generally, as long as you go with a reasonable choice, bandwidth isn’t going to be a problem and as long as you spec’d your hardware right, everything will seem pretty much the same.

The difference comes in those few times where there’s trouble. Trouble can take several forms, too much traffic and your server’s getting bogged down, problems with the internet and routing and the one that I believe most reflects the quality of the ISP, your server going down. Linux servers run well for long periods of time but sometimes and for various reasons they go down, this is when you’re heart is racing and you’re breathlessly dialing the ISP to get them to help you out - they are after all your eyes and fingers at the server, once you can’t log in you are completely at their mercy. So it is these situations, to me, that define the value of the hosting provider.

I’ve used several recently for various clients, liquidweb.com, rackspace.com and aplus.net are the most recent ones. I haven’t had any server issues at rackspace yet, knock on wood, so can’t comment on their response, although I have had cause to contact them for many other reasons, sales, technical and administrative and have been very impressed with the speed and quality of the response. Unfortunately for me, I have recently had problems with two servers one on Liquid Web and one on APlus.net - problems such that the server was down and needed some love from the ISP and I believe the comparison of the two is enlightening.

Let’s join the fray at the point where it is established that I no longer have access to the server. At this point, there’s nothing more I can do and I have to call the ISP. This implies several things - the website running on this server is down and the clients are about to notice and are about to be extremely unhappy.

In the case when I am calling Liquid Web - I dial their 800 number. I get to a voicemail box and then you get to their tech support. I believe I may be speaking to an actual admin who can get things done for me or at least someone knowledgable with direct ties to the data center. In very short order, it’s established who I am, which server is in question, that the server is actually down, some information on file (like root password) is still valid and someone is sent over to reboot the machine. The person on the phone is smart, polite and shares my concern with getting my server back up as quickly as possible. It seems that they understand that as much as it is a problem for my business that the machine is down it is also their problem. The tech asks me to hold and moments later comes back and says the console was not responding so they’re pressing the power button and that’s that. Server is up momentarily.

This was, in as much as it could be, a great experience. Everything was reassuring from the beginning of the call and the problem was addressed and resolved about as quickly as it could be. Now let’s see what happens when I call APlus.net.

I get to a voicemail where I have to enter my customer number. Ok, entered, then I have to enter my zip code. Well, here’s a moment of confusion, since this is registered under my client’s name, do I need to actually find their zip code? Or will any do? Try mine since it’s easy enough, ok good, they took it (why did they need it in the first place? It wasn’t for identification, maybe for your location). Now, I wait to hear the directory to see where I need to go, tech support, great. Ok, it rings a couple times and someone picks up, “Can I have your customer number?”. Why did I enter this long number at the prompt? Oh well, whatever, I tell it to him. Type, type, type, “Thank you, can I help you?” I explain that the server is down and I need it rebooted. “Oh, you have a dedicated server, let me transfer you to the dedicated server department.”

Ugh, ok. He transfers me and I get back to an identical process as before, type in my customer number, type in my zipcode. Now I get to the support guy. He asks me for my customer number again. This is the fourth time I’ve given it, I’ve been on the phone now for several minutes and I am just getting to the point where I am explaining the problem to the person who can do something for me. I explain the problem. This person obviously does not share any of my concern, after what seems like a couple minutes of typing and no communication, he tells me that it will be 10-15 minutes.

Wait, it will be 10 to 15 minutes before someone gets to the console - I don’t need anything fancy right now, just need it rebooted is there any way to fast track it? He condescends to tell me something unintelligible. I ask for clarification, this is important, my site is down. In slow condescending words he tells me that 10 to 15 minutes is about the time it will take for someone to get to the server and push the powerbutton and for the machine to boot. Ok, I guess that’s life, I leave my phone number in case anything goes wrong and that’s it.

Wait, 20 minutes. Get back on the phone, go through the voicemail, then the shared server tech, then the voicemail then get back to a dedicated server tech. What’s happened, I called a while ago and it’s been close to 25 minutes (it’s been a couple minutes getting to the tech). Nothing on the line, it’s silent, wait, wait, did the line go dead? Hello? Still silent. Hello? Grudgingly and a little angrily the tech replies, “You’ll have to wait a moment, I’m checking into the situation” At this point I’m informed that the ISP is having some internal difficulties and no one has gotten to the machine. Internal difficulties? When will they get to the machine? He’s calling someone right now to get to it, it should be up in 5 minutes. Why couldn’t he have called someone before? What did he do before? Can I stay on the phone with him since it’s going to happen right now and that way if something goes wrong with booting up I can start solving the problem immediately? “Heh heh he, no.” Is there a direct line to dedicated server tech support? “No.” Great. Hang up.

Wait 10 minutes, server’s still down. Call back, voicemail, shared support, voicemail, dedicated support. Fortunately by this time, close to 45 minutes later while I’m on the phone, the server finally comes back up. It took APlus.net 45 minutes to get someone to the server and press the power button. Not only this, they had a ridiculous voicemail system that only slowed things down, each call requiring me to type in 4 separate numbers and speak to two separate techs. They showed no concern that my server was down. They didn’t budge one inch in reassuring me that this was being taken care of, which is understandable in this case, because for most of the time it was not being taken care of. They treated me rudely and spoke down to me. At no point in this process did they alert me about any delays on their end, forcing me to call through their convoluted system 3 times to find out what was happening.

This is clearly an anecdotal review. The server had been up flawlessly on APlus.net for quite some time. But like I said, it’s easy for servers to stay up, I could host the server in my dad’s closet and have a lot of great uptime. Liquid Web handled it with as much speed and professionalism as you could wish for. The tech who spoke with me asked questions and responded with understanding that clearly showed him to be a system administrator. But that’s just a bonus, obviously not every ISP can have their phones answered by SA’s, what was important was the way the call was handled and how quickly the problem was resolved. To a large extent, if APlus had been rude but solved my problem quickly I wouldn’t have minded nearly as much. It would have been bad, but if they had been in the least bit apologetic about how long it was taking, that would have been better, too. If they could have been a little proactive and given me an email or a call at the points where my server should have been up, according to them, telling me that they were still getting to it, it would have been better.

I would strongly suggest avoiding APlus.net. In the exact same price range you can go with Liquid Web and sleep with much more confidence that in a pinch your servers are in good hands.

Mar 1st, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: hosting · rant · review