Normally Hostdime.com would not find its way on this blog.  I have yet to find it on any of the review sites that I have monitored.  Yet they are guilty of offering so called unlimited space hosting accounts. I could of coarse read their terms of service and find some way out offering you space that goes beyond their profit margin. But hostdime.com’s unlimited space accounts are not the reason for this post.

So if Hostdime.com is not having so-called review sites push their product why would I have a post on them?  Sure I could go into a long rant about the flaws of unlimited hosting.  This is the first time an outsider is responsible for most of the content on a post in this case a friend of mine that has been trying to get me to sign up with hostdime.com for the last few months has had a change of heart.  I had held off on signing up because his few months with the company was not enough to inspire me choose them. At the time he was referring me to hostdime.com I was having my own problems with mediatemple.net.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2872

He decided to write a review on hostdime.com and he did not want to give a flawed review industry anything that would help them. I have yet to post reviews by other people because they all lack any detail and are not willing to answer any more questions.  My friend assures me that he will answer questions and he sent me 3 pages worth of content.  By questions I am referring to either those by me or those that are working at hostdime.com. Hostdime.com like any other host has a right to respond to any post that I write about their company. He of coarse reserves the right to remain anonymous.  I have in the past offered this to people that wanted me to take on their host, but they wanted me to do all of the leg work, which is pointless as I don’t have their experiences to write a review for them.

It’s up to hostdime.com to either take this feedback and improve their services, or outright ignore it and continue on like Burst.net.  Sure Burst.net has lasted more than a decade, but I honestly can say I would not want to run a company that has so much angst against it.

A hostdime.com review

Why am I submitting this post for your blog? Because right now, I have nothing better to do.. all of my HostDime VPS’s are down… All of my friend who I referred to HostDime are b*tching and complaining because all of THEIR virtual private servers are down, too…

So I have nothing better to do while I wait for HostDime to fix the problem… While I wait for the goodwill I created with my clients to erode because of HostDime’s negligence… While I wait for any trust I built with my clients over the course of years to evaporate… While I watch my sites and my business unravel…. While my friends email me with remarks like, “I thought you said HostDime was good…??”

Yeah, it’s hell right now and the bottomline is: HostDime sucks. Oh yes, indeed. HostDime sucks BIG TIME.

Let me explain…

I opened a HostDime VPS account 6 months ago… and I was amazed at the speed of the server. But my amazement was short lived….

At first the speed was breathtaking. It was almost like having my own server. SO I bought another HostDime VPS… and another… and another… all over the course of 2 months. I had 4 VPS’s to host approximately 50 sites total. Yes, a bit exorbitant, I agree… but I believe in safety in numbers. I like to diversify my investment.

At first, I was happy the speed was great. It was amazing. But I was worried…. It looked like all of my VPS’ were on the same node. Cause for alarm? Not by judging the glorious reviews on Webhosting Talk. They all spoke of HostDime’s proactive support and performance…

Well, I know people tend to exaggerate. To be honest, I didn’t find their support that “proactive”. On weekends, I was lucky if I could find a HostDime technician who would answer my chat within 10 minutes. Often times, when I initiated a chat request, I would have to wait 10-15 minutes for an “available operator” to pick up…

Well, I’m a forgiving person by nature. I mean, my troubles weren’t major. I could wait 10 or 15 minutes for an answer to a non-critical question, so all in all I was happy…

So, immediately began referring my friends and clients to HostDime. After all, why keep a good thing to myself, right??

WRONG.

In fact, it seemed like the more people I referred to HostDime who bought their VPS, the slower and slower my own Virtual Private Servers became.

After referring 5 clients to HostDime, I immediately noticed something wrong: They were all placed on the same node as my other 4 HostDime VPS accounts …

WARNING, WILL ROBINSON! WARNING!!

Then, within days, it all went bust… All of my VPS accounts… and all of my client’s VPS accounts.

The tragedy began with intermittent uptime. I would go to one of my sites and it would fail to load. I would hit refresh a few times… and then… finally, after a few server errors, they would come back up.

Then my clients began emailing me. “Hey… my VPS is down…  what’s up?”  or “I thought you said HostDime was good. For the third time this week, all of my sites are offline…”

Well, what could I do?  I wasn’t operating HostDime. I just recommened them. I wasn’t working their chat system for them, I was just trying to help my clients by referring them to what I thought was a good host.

Ugh. Was I ever wrong. The problems continued and I became intimate with their support team: Ashton, Christian, Sanjin, Jason…  I knew them well – because I was chatting with them every day, complaining about my VPS’s being offline… and reminding them that my own client’s ALSO were wondering why their own Virtual Private Servers were dead in the water.

Here’s what I learned about their support “methodology”. If you use their chat system, be prepared to for unpredictability.  They might answer right away. Or you might be waiting for for up to 30 minutes all-the-while being exposed to their self-aggrandizing messages such as, “Did you know we have our own data center in Orlando, Florida? Please continue to hold. The next available technician will be with you shortly.”

Now in retrospect, who in their right mind would host with a datacenter in Florida?  Hello? Hurricanes. Torrential rains. Seasonal power outtages. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

But I digress…

To make a long story short, right now I’m trying to LEAVE HostDime… but I can’t; I’m their hostage. While my sites are online  and I can access my Webhost Manager (WHM) via VPS, I have absolutely NO FTP access…. So I can’t move my sites off. Whenver I *can* access my sites via FTP, HostDime’s network is grudgingly slow. I  might be able to move two 12KB (yes, kilobytes… tiny, tiny files) files before HostDime’s network crashes.

Simultaneously while I am trying, furtively, to escape HostDime and move my sites away, I have all of those clients I referred to HostDime emailing me… Skyping me… calling me…  saying, in sum:  “Thanks a lot, Assh*le… We trusted you… You can forget about any future business from us”

So here I am…. Waiting… watching my income go down the drain, wondering if I will EVER be able get access to my data on my multiple HostDime VPS accounts… So far, no luck. I have over $15K in developed website inventories…  held hostage by HostDime…. Sites I can’t sell. Sites I can’t move because of HostDime’s stupidity… because of my stupidity for trusting them and their rave reviews on WebhostingTalk.com –

You can say I am bitter, yes. But the fact remains: If HostDime is as successful as they claim to be WHY did they, over the course of 5 months, put me and ALL of my clients onto the same node? It stands to reason that their VPS inventory is limited, that they have few Virtuozzo licenses…. And so they must cram as many VPS clients as they can onto a single server in order to break even. Why else would HostDime oversell a server? There’s not another reason for it?

One final note about HostDime support: It’s formulaic. Is your issue simple or do you just need a reboot? No problem a phone call or a chat is all it takes (if you don’t mind waiting for 10-15 minutes at times). Is your issue complicated? Does it require sophisticated technical expertise? Lo and behold: After chatting with “John” or “Mike” or “Jason” or “Ashston” they will say, “I have to open a ticket for you….” Then, you’re communicating with “Sajin” or “Sachin” or “Inder” or something like that —  outsourced, offshore support. In other words, it appears that HostDime can’t afford “expensive” US-based support for complicated,… If you have a serious problem, a ticket is created… then you wait for an outsourced provider to respond.

That’s where I am right now: My sites are offline. “Ashton” wasn’t able to help me on chat, so now I am waiting for “Sanjin” to respond via the ticket system. Same old story – except this time, that story is coming to an end – finally… just as soon as I can access my sites again and leave HostDime once and for all…

A few thoughts about the hostdime.com review

I have to say I am baffled by the placing of multiple accounts for the same person as well as those that had been referred by said person on the same node. It does not make any sense.  For that matter when I ran a hosting company we made it a practice to not place shared accounts by the same customer on the same server.  While many people were not happy with a practice of manual approval of all orders it did more than just prevent fraud, it allowed for changes such as making sure a customer’s new account was far from existing accounts, even when it came to vps and dedicated plans.

Why would I do that? Well a good example of why not is a customer of mine that had 10 accounts with us.  One of his accounts was on a server that was down for 6 hours.  If all of his accounts had been on that server it would have been very hard for him to justify staying with my previous company hence that old proverb of not putting all of your eggs in one basket. It makes no sense to put them on the same node unless the customer asks for it to be done.  In my experience customers never ask for this.  If anything they ask to be placed far away from existing node, just as I have never had customers ask for their account to be on the same set of IPs.

Hostdime.com questions:

• Why would all of these accounts be placed on the same node?
• Are the problems still going on with hostdime.com (realize its less than 12 hours since I was emailed this)?
• Is the reviewer still in progress of leaving hostdime.com?
• Exactly what parts of the world are the staff of hostdime.com located?
• Are different departments stationed at different parts of the world, or are their staff for each department located as these international facilities?

It’s been my experience that many times when someone says they are going to cancel their account, a person is simply letting off anger, perhaps hostdime may retain this customer.