The Joys of Working for a Web Host Company!
So yesterday I was speaking to one of the many wonderful co-workers here at Surpass and was sort of agitated with what I read about Surpass Hosting all over the net. I know we’re not perfect and not everyone can have the same views and or opinion, but it just erks me when people just flap their gums with false information. Although old news, I was browsing a site called hostingjury.com, on this website visitors are able to submit reviews of web hosting companies they have used and their experiences during their time there. Totally fine right? WRONG, so it seems. During some time ago two co-workers for Surpass (names will not be mentioned) submitted reviews with their views on the web hosting. I know in your mind your probably thinking, well in reality its not fair that they comment since they are employees. While you may be right, as an individual who also happens to be hosting “clients” of Surpass, don’t they also get a say in how their hosting experience has went? I guess not. After the owner of the site found out that TWO employees had he reviewed, he quickly disable viewing and submitting any more reviews for Surpass Hosting, accusing us that we could have paid people to write up false reviews to make us look good. What on earth? was all I could think. Why on God’s green Earth would someone do that? (don’t answer that)
Well the matter was taken care of and submitting and viewing client reviews was enabled, but I’m sure that the owner probably has a bad eye on us from then on. Oh well.
Another thing I’ve noticed is a lot of people blogging about how their servers are always down and how the “stupid staff” at Surpass are doing nothing to help them. People, remember you are not the only one who is hosted under Surpass. There are over 1,000 servers at the Data center and over 500,000 domains hosted. Its not that we’re thinking, oh since we have all of these clients what makes you so important? No, its just that when you’re trying to monitor all of those servers at the same time, things can get a little hectic and it can take a lot of time. It seems no one gets this, they just think that Surpass is made up of one little server box and that we have two or three people staring at it for a good hour, watching that a red light doesn’t blink on and off. (haha, I know that made no sense, but this is my ranting) Like I said before, we’re not perfect and most of the time, those who complain about their server going down are either on a shared server, meaning that 95% of the time, your neighbor on that server is causing the problem and in order for Surpass to fix it they need to first find out who the “disturber” is and find a solution to fix the problem, which obiviously isn’t going to take two seconds. It’s technology folks, you should know this!
Other then all of that, and I could keep going if I’d like to, working for Surpass Hosting has really opened my eyes and mind to what it really is like to run a growing company. The HostDime company (which is the parent to Surpass) was said to be in the top 50 of best web hosting companies in the world. How great is that? Not only that, but the staff here are amazing! Everyone here are so smart yet very down-to-earth. No one thinks themselves better then the other and we all work as a team, which in past my jobs, wasn’t the case. I love working here and I hope to stay working here for a good long time.
On another note, I’ve been working on a new site that Surpass Hosting will be opening called Beeginners! Web Hosting Help. The site is really cute and I love working on it. Basically it was supposed to be a “tutorial/guide” site for new or even old clients of Surpass that were still in the “beginner” level of creating a website and working with their web hosting space. Then we got the idea to make it an all out public tutorial/guide site and so Beeginners.com was born! So far we have a few tutorials/guides that regard Surpass Hosting, Cpanel 11, and security. Good stuff if you ask me, haha.
Hello, my name is Roxanne and I am an outgoing friendly type of gal who likes to see life in a different light then most people. I am an aspiring filmmaker and professional web designer with a passion for multimedia. I don't judge a book by its cover and live life to the fullest. Want to get to know me more? Don't hesitate to contact me. LIVE LOVE LAUGH!
Kayla | January 27th, 2008 at 10:13 am #
Woke up early today and checked out recent blogs, was surprised to see this. Lessons learned! We can only go forward from here and having passionate people like you on our team will ensure all of us a bright future. =)
Jamie | January 27th, 2008 at 12:01 pm #
I can understand the frustration with Surpass, though. I had awful experiences both times. I was hosted with Surpass shortly after they opened and eventually I moved on to another host. I only moved on because I found a new host with more space/bandwith for less than Surpass had it.
Well, I canceled my accounts (I had two shared accounts) and I was billed for each account for over a year. I was refunded EVENTUALLY but they didn’t refund me for the interest accrued which ended up being quite a bit. My main problem was that it took so long to get a resolution and they blamed it on the software (2checkout). I don’t care whose fault it was.. just correct the problem, refund me, and apologize. Instead it was drug out.
So I stayed away from Surpass until they had this special where they were doubling the Bronze reseller (or maybe any plan) but it was quite a lot of space/bandwith and in my budget. I switched. Things went smoothly for a bit but then any forum software I tried was getting errors. Surpass has something installed on the servers for security, which I appreciate, but the effect was making all of my forums not work.
I was told at one time that I should buy a dedicated server if I wanted to have forums. The forums I were running were small forums. There was no reason I should buy a dedicated server.
After many, many tickets and months of putting up with the forums stopping working and it taking forever to get a solution, they finally told me that I could turn the security measure off myself with .htaccess. Wow, that could have helped me when I fist started getting the problems.
I got fed up with being treated like a moron and just everything. I switched hosting companies in January of this year and I will NEVER recommend Surpass to anyone, ever.
With that said, all hosting companies have problems but I think something you can’t suck at is customer service. Your clients are what keeps the company afloat so if you treat them well, the clients will let other things slide.
Janet | January 29th, 2008 at 7:29 am #
Oohh you work at Surpass? When I read the first lines I was like Surpass as in the hosting company? And then I continued reading and indeed it is! I have a site hosted by Surpass as well, I got it under a promo they had and gosh it was good value. Haven’t had a big ordeal with the hosting or support so far which is awesome. A bit of downtime is expected since no hardware can be 100% up all the time. I guess customers just need to show a little more understanding. Afterall, even support people are only human. Not like they’re super humans just because they work at the web hosting company *sighs* People expect too much these days.
There’ll always be people complaining about hosting since everyone will have different experiences but I totally get what you mean. I’ve been working as a web developer at an ISP and gosh the comments I read on forums saying how the support people aren’t helpful etc are really getting to me since all day that I’m there, the support team is non-stop picking up phone call after phone call helping customers. Pity they don’t see that..
FredFredrickson | February 1st, 2008 at 12:59 pm #
Surpass has always been quick to help solve my problems. Even during the time that surpass switched between phpsuexec every other day. Trust me, permissioning things world writable really sucked every time a stupid script on the server got compromised (from somebody else’s account. My scripts are 100% secure!).
Anyway, If you notice, I did a bit of debating with the guys over at hosting jury, because technically their response was to the opposite extreme and didn’t make sense. They became the hosting judge. I feel that I was very logically sound, but arguing with them reminded me of an ex-girlfriend I once had…
Matt | February 2nd, 2008 at 12:34 am #
I am hosted at surpass hosting too. I used to be hosted with hasweb.com which is also located at Hostdime data center but I switch to surpass with the special and also because the plan i got now is a lot bigger than hasweb had to offer for more money.
Go surpass. No issues so far and questions always answered!