Everything is fine until a problem happens ...

[Frank Hagan]

... and then everything's great.

Dathorn is very good about letting people say what they want about their service, in open forums. And occasionally people blast them for suspending their accounts "suddenly" and "without warning" when a problem happens.

I have always appreciated the zeal with which Dathorn protects its shared servers, as it means uninterrupted up time (over 99% over the last three years) and stable performance for my sites. But then, until this morning, I never had been on the receiving side of having a problem.

This morning I had a cgi script go beserk. It suddenly got into a loop, running continuously, and started using up system resources. Big time. The account was suspended quickly, with an email that it was suspended for resource usage, "which can't be tolerated in a shared environment."

Andrew's message was to the point, but not "terse" like people sometimes complain about. It was appropriate. I was causing a problem on the shared server, and just like a driver that loses control of his car and wanders from lane to lane on the freeway, I needed to be stopped.

I submitted a trouble ticket, apologizing, and asking that he restore the account, with permission for him to delete the offending script. The account was restored within minutes, with a response to take care of the offending script. The script started going crazy again. As soon as I logged on and deleted the CRON job calling it, and then all the files, the process stopped. I verified it was stopped, and monitored the account using SSH and the "top" command for 10 minutes just to make sure. I know its gone, but I've gone back in to make sure periodically since the problem.

To make a long story short, whatever "communication problems" people have complained about have obviously been solved. There really is no other choice than to suspend the account. Dathorn COULD wipe the account clean, but they didn't ... they allowed me time to go in and fix it, and I was able to save all my other content.

So, my apologies to all of my "neighbors" on my server and again to Dathorn. And my thanks go to Dathorn for handling a potentially disasterous situation in an appropriate, professional manner.

[ZYV]

Eh, I wanted to drop few lines in this forum a while ago, but you know this sort of things.. you always find some time to blame them when you get into the troubles, but if you are satisfied, you can't find a minute for months just to say a quick "thank you guys!".

Well.. I recently had my first "big problem" at Dathorn after having managed my partners account for a year or so. Actually I consider myself as an advanced webmaster, so I just didn't need any support with the hosting before, because the server itself was functionning fine. The problem that I ran into was rather weird, acutally WHM got cranky after the termination of one of the domains on the account and I couldn't list accounts, while everthing else was working fine.

I opened a ticket and it was answered within 10 minutes! Wow! Altough, as the problem wasn't solved, I posted a clarification and the requested account details. I've got the reply within 15 minutes and this time verything really went back to normal.

I was assisted by Josh, so thank you Josh, you were quick and helpful.

[blakekr]

I have to agree with the gist of what you write. I've had an account suspended (I since moved it to a better supported CSM that isn't so open to hacking) and that's gotten me worried, the chance of getting one of my domains banned from Dathorn after some hacking attempt.

But guess what? I just ended up moving ALL my sites off my other host onto Dathorn, because the other guys aren't nearly as serious about keeping things running fast. And as a result, I was unable to migrate my sites over there to a database platform -- their overburdened servers just couldn't do it. (Not to mention the people that just got fed up with the sluggish response time and left.) I ended up using a program called PageSleuth to test their throughput compared to Dathorn's, and once I did, I was horrified ... with them. I moved my stuff over a few days later.

I found my clickthroughs and income were about 150% of their former numbers afterward because of Dathorn's speed. The only way they can achieve that is to be really clear about their policies and act accordingly. I'm at the point where I need that from a host.

[Pedja]

Andrew's message was to the point, but not "terse" like people sometimes complain about.

Complaints about suspending policy stopped long time ago.

After some discussions here, Dathorns behavior in such cases improved a lot. Support stuff is now more open to the understanding that problem may be human error and may be easily fixed, and they do provide additional information to find out exact cause of the problem.

You may relay on Dathorn that every offending account will be shut down, but admin will have enough resources to locate and fix the problem.

[Grunfeld]

Complaints about suspending policy stopped long time ago.

After some discussions here, Dathorns behavior in such cases improved a lot. Support stuff is now more open to the understanding that problem may be human error and may be easily fixed, and they do provide additional information to find out exact cause of the problem.

You may relay on Dathorn that every offending account will be shut down, but admin will have enough resources to locate and fix the problem.

I would say that is more than fair to all parties involved....... should keep MOST people happy. To keep all happy is darn near impossible but Dathorn comes pretty darn close, I am sure there will people that will argue that point to death as some have tried in the past and leave all in a huff to yet another hoat..... I say good bye and good riddens......

[bromide]

i believe dathorn should submit a trouble ticket if and when they suspend your account. i understand why they need to suspend accounts in most cases, but i run my main email through them and don't know if they are sending me an email about the problem. it would be nice to have them notify us through the trouble ticket system to let us know what went wrong, why, and what we need to do to fix it.

[-Oz-]

i'm with frank, i've had the same exact thing happen and andrew let me go and delete the file and the account was restored.

[cgcullen]

i'm with frank, i've had the same exact thing happen and andrew let me go and delete the file and the account was restored.

ditto!

As a matter of fact, I did it twice. I definitely understood Andrew's position and that he had every right to shut my account down for good. But, when I explained my mistake and how I had messed up, Andrew was really quick to restore my account. I have always had FAST service from Andrew and his staff. I can't say enough good about Dathorn!

Cindy

[ergo]

well its not good if a host shuts your account for good. but sunspension to give time to fix problems is the right thing to do in my opinion.

[dis5085]

I have had problems with getting suspended with no idea what was going on either and having clients tell you their website is down isn't a healthy for your business at all. I usually end of having to fork out a credit on the account. The last 2 times I was suspened was because of phishing. These websites were pretty big that got hacked and I couldn't get any help from Andrew and the team to the extact where abouts of the files took forever to find them without the stats pages working.

[AndrewT]

I have had problems with getting suspended with no idea what was going on either and having clients tell you their website is down isn't a healthy for your business at all. I usually end of having to fork out a credit on the account. The last 2 times I was suspened was because of phishing. These websites were pretty big that got hacked and I couldn't get any help from Andrew and the team to the extact where abouts of the files took forever to find them without the stats pages working.

You are sent an e-mail regarding the suspension, so you should be well aware of your clients website being down before they would have to contact you. We also give you the phishing URL. The only thing that we can't always tell you is what script(s) were exploited to accomplish this. The bottom line is that you must keep your scripts up-to-date at all times. Phishing is an extremely serious problem. Essentially your domains can allow someone to take advantage of others to obtain personal information, etc.

[dis5085]

Andrew,

I have never seen any emails regarding suspension before its done and any emails with urls included in it. Can you please explain a little more about this and tell me where the emails are going.

Garland

[AndrewT]

They are always sent to the contact e-mail address that you have in your customer control panel. This has been the policy for quite some time. The only exception to this is if you had a related trouble ticket open at the same time then the issue is addressed in the ticket.

[dis5085]

Let me see if I am reading this correctly you are sending the email to the main reseller account set up by dathorn, and not to the individual contact for each domain under our reseller accounts.

Am I correct in assuming this? or am I wrong?

[andeelym]

I too have my share of suspension problems. After the most recent one, i realised that Dathorn, is not for high traffic portals where MySQL calls are high due to forums and such.

I was hoping that the VPS idea was the pefect solution to this limitation but it was scrapped and dedicated servers might be out of my budget.

I love the uptime and the fast response time, but my requirements have forced to me look elsewhere. Dathorn is a good environment for sites to start, but not to grow, which is something that all portal developers hope to see.

No offense, but just my 2 cents.