This is my review for 3 providers that have quite some drama threads over here, now or in the past.
First of all, I would like to make clear that I don’t use any of those boxes for something time critical like active webhosting or dns, but for other uses like testing, production stage, some personal occasional vpn, occasional streaming and part of cluster of backup servers. So, some of them are from decent to very poor, with having in mind that those boxes are ridiculously cheap.
So, let’s start
CHICAGO VPS
I have generally good opinion for them, if I compare the service with their price offers. I have three yearly servers with them, one simple HDD, one SSD and one small box from azzavps that I used it as vpn for US before the acquisition of the company from CVPS. The SSD box is almost idle, I used from time to time only for occasionally tests, so, I cannot give it a review (although it seem stable and always online). The vpn box is there, at least when I use it (from time to time to watch US tv, no more than 6-7 times per month). The third box is a box I use for producing websites. Sometimes it is rock solid, extremely fast and with excellent speed connections to EU and my backup servers, some other times it is slow like a turtle (have to say that problems started mostly since February). I have opened 2-3 tickets I requested to check it and once to move me to another node. The responses were very quick (no more than one hour from time I opened the ticket) and they fixed the speed but that lasted every time no more than some weeks to a month. I think they overbook their servers, have from time to time big abusers there and they do not monitoring properly the stability and performance of the node. So, they check it only when they receive ticket or tickets for the performance, they fix it (most of the answers were that they kicked the abusers of the node) but that lasts till the next abuser start to crushing the node. Overall, the service is fair (for 30$ per year you get access to 4 vcores, 2TB of traffic, 2GB of memory and 50GB of HDD). When the box isn’t performing poor (I think this happens about once a month for 2-3 days) the bench of the box is good, too, over 1200 (in serverbear).
BLUE VM
This provider is one of my favorites. Not for their performance, not for their speed in support, but for giving a fair enough service for a long time now, for veeeeery low prices! I have 5 boxes with them. A small yearly KVM in Buffulo that I use for shoutcast and icecast streaming. I use it for several months, had maximum simultaneously listeners I counted the number of 72 without a problem and I only had an almost 2 day outage a month ago, no other downtimes (costs 25$ annually). I use another 2 servers, one in Atlanta and another in Switzerland as a part of a cluster of video streaming (rtmp) repeaters (a custom cdn system of video streaming for occasionally streams: live transmissions of certain events for a news portal I manage). The times I used them, were performing fine (I don’t monitor them when the streaming is not on-line, so I don’t know if there were any outages there). And another for one of my backup servers (the fifth, I still don’t use it). Service is generally good, speeds are generally good, but support is poor (very long delay for many of the tickets, some of the times not a real answer in a manner time window). But, on the other hand, when they response are helpful and professionals and having real (and not… virtual) staff that is active and helpful also here in LET. A problem that I have is that in their billing system, in most of cases, there is no ip or the specs of the server and in feathur, if you change the hostname, it will not be updated to billing area. So, if you have a lot of boxes, it is some time difficult to find witch box is witch. I will still buy services from them for low end boxes, but not for critical (web hosting or dns) jobs. For jobs like backup in a cluster of servers, vpn, websites in construction state etc. their service is more than good.
THE BELOVED (IN LET AND OTHER PLACES) GREEN VALUE HOST!
Jon had his times here, mostly of his behavior, frequently for issues probably due to overcrowded server – underpriced for profit – inexperienced staff – among with others. I have four vps’s with him, I bought them for two reasons: 1. so damn low prices I wanted to see myself how do they behave 2. the most love-to-hate provider, here. I use the first two server as a part of a cluster of video streaming (rtmp) repeaters (a custom cdn system of video streaming for occasionally streams: live transmissions of certain events for a news portal I manage). I used them since February for 8-9 times if I can recall correctly, all of them without problems (they were part of a 12 vps’s around the globe that mirrored our video streaming). The third, a very cheap box with ridiculously big HDD, would be used within a set of backup servers (4-5 backup servers for my main websites for minimizing risk of loosing data). I wouldn’t mind if some day the service disappeared, because I already had those backups the same time in other servers, too. And the final one, a small 9$ yearly 512 box, was used as a mail server in production state. I put it in production, because I had the curiosity to test a box from GVH to real life (of course, there were a couple of real time mirrors to this box, so, If anything happens, can change server in some seconds). I have to say, also, that all of the servers are monitored. Another funny thing is that they send an address for accessing solus vm (even in a today’s email for moving the server, the address was solusvm.securenetworkpanel.com) but they have changed in real life the address and I informed it from an answer to my support ticket (solusvm.secureserverpanel.com)! Both addresses belongs to Jon GVH, but the first was working till April and not any more… Last, but not least, in my Amsterdam vps, they changed ip without even inform me (I found the new ip in solus). Where is the new ip located? IP2Location.net says in Bahamas (!!!!!!!), IPligence says in Lichtenstein (!!!!) and MaxMind says in Sweeden (non says in Amsterdam, though)!
So, this is the review:
Till the fiasco with moving back to CC, reducing and changing ip’s and cutting locations, I actually didn’t have any real problems with GVH. Servers was acting fair, or maybe fast enough for their cost. But moving to new servers and reassigning the ip’s… Oh, my God, this was their biggest failure since they started, half of the servers cannot actually work well since then. I think, this fiasco lead Jon to start the drama here with “resigning”, multiple owners/representatives/CEO’s ghosts and, finally, banning. The supposed-to-be-a-backup-server (I didn’t actually used it) didn’t existed for many days after purchasing, the streaming boxes started to have a lot of downtime (they didn’t till a couple of weeks) and the total mess was with the email server. This last box couldn’t ping or connect at all to a third mirroring server (a very cheap server I purchased for testing). After several tickets and responds, while a lot of different names in their support system (with various roles!, I dunno if they are at least some of them, real persons) did different things, as if they had not read the previous response from me or the previous support guy and, after 5 days, and 3 requests for changing nodes, they moved me in a new node with different ip to solus panel and to the logs in solus! Either of them. Could not connect to anywhere and, of course, the box is only offline despite the reboot/boot/reinstall commands.
It’s actually funny to see how they handle things there. IMHO, their service was fair, compared to a lot of providers here, until the return to CC and reassign of ip’s. I think that this happened because they run out of money, they shrinked their node number and they putted 100’s of new clients to already overcrowded nodes, with lack of knowledge even do that properly.
One thing must say: They response to the tickets in 5-6 hours (time window that is good for the price), even if some times the responses can make you laugh or put you out of your mind!
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