Hi all
On several occasions I have recommended Site5 when people have asked for a good host for small to medium Moodle sites.
Unfortunately, due to various issues, I can no longer recommend them at this time - I am in fact still with them but do not want others to sign-up based on any previous recommendation I may have made in these forums.
As always, you need to do your own research and if you feel Site5 is for you, then great.
Regards
Harry
Thanks for the information Harry.
In fact, I think this highlights the need for an independent Moodle hosting directory where people can get information about what companies out there specialize in Moodle hosting and services along with some form of rating/feedback system.
I have been thinking about this for a few weeks now and am in the process of putting something together. More to come later....if anyone would like to help get this going, drop me a line.
Steve
Hi Steve
I think that would be very handy for a lot of people, particularly those new to Moodle and the web in general.
In my case, I just needed someplace to host Moodle for a 12 month pilot with a view to eventually hosting internally (I work for a fairly large semi-governmet organisation with all the hassles that brings with thinking outside the square i.e. using open source scripts - so I decided to go around the politics for a while!). My 12 months is up in August and not sure what I'll be doing yet - have yet to have the "debate" with our IT department
Thinking back to last August when I first had the requirement to set up an LMS/CMS within a couple of weeks (at which point I happily stumbled over Moodle) a database of hosting companies with independant comments from people hosting Moodle sites on them would have helped a lot in my search for a cheap but reliable host. Although I am sure using a Moodle Partner offers a lot of benefits, I doubt I would have found one that could compete with the cost for my 12 month pilot (approx $250 Australian including the cost of a domain name).
Unfortunately, I have no experience other than with my current host (and it is not a Moodle specialist by any means) therefore, I have little to offer your proposed directory but I wish you well with it.
regards
Harry
I think that would be very handy for a lot of people, particularly those new to Moodle and the web in general.
In my case, I just needed someplace to host Moodle for a 12 month pilot with a view to eventually hosting internally (I work for a fairly large semi-governmet organisation with all the hassles that brings with thinking outside the square i.e. using open source scripts - so I decided to go around the politics for a while!). My 12 months is up in August and not sure what I'll be doing yet - have yet to have the "debate" with our IT department
Thinking back to last August when I first had the requirement to set up an LMS/CMS within a couple of weeks (at which point I happily stumbled over Moodle) a database of hosting companies with independant comments from people hosting Moodle sites on them would have helped a lot in my search for a cheap but reliable host. Although I am sure using a Moodle Partner offers a lot of benefits, I doubt I would have found one that could compete with the cost for my 12 month pilot (approx $250 Australian including the cost of a domain name).
Unfortunately, I have no experience other than with my current host (and it is not a Moodle specialist by any means) therefore, I have little to offer your proposed directory but I wish you well with it.
regards
Harry
Hi Harry and Steve,
I think Steve is right on the money. My situation was similar to Harry's. I work for a sizable private company with a rather fixed IT structure (as is often the case
). Open-source applications were viewed with a skeptical eye. We went through a few vendors looking for a low-cost hosting solution while we piloted Moodle....with the plan to move onto our own internally hosted server. With the large variety of low cost hosts out there, a good hosting resource list would be very beneficial to fellow (and future) Moodlers. Although I've not had the opportunity to use one, I've also heard good things about the Moodle Partners. IMO it would be a good opportunity to provide feedback on their services as well.
Regards,
Skip
I think Steve is right on the money. My situation was similar to Harry's. I work for a sizable private company with a rather fixed IT structure (as is often the case
). Open-source applications were viewed with a skeptical eye. We went through a few vendors looking for a low-cost hosting solution while we piloted Moodle....with the plan to move onto our own internally hosted server. With the large variety of low cost hosts out there, a good hosting resource list would be very beneficial to fellow (and future) Moodlers. Although I've not had the opportunity to use one, I've also heard good things about the Moodle Partners. IMO it would be a good opportunity to provide feedback on their services as well.
Regards,
Skip
I've got 15 sites hosted with Site5 (running several different open source packages including Moodle, Drupal and Joomla) and they've been great. Their admin tools are some of the best around, their servers are quick, and their tech support is fantastic (and none of them are in India!)
What was the issue that made you reconsider?
What was the issue that made you reconsider?
Hi Chuck
How long have you been with them?
Since the growth spurt about 10 months ago there outstanding support (which is one of the main reasons I signed up) has fallen dramatically:
My post was not to tell people to avoid them, rather to withdraw my recommendation; as at this time as I would not be comfortable with someone signing up with them based on my earlier glowing recommendations.
All up, I still think they are a very good option for a low cost start and when/if they bring back dedicated servers I will be sorely tempted to move back with them after ensuring they have gotten over the current growing pains.
regards
Harry
How long have you been with them?
Since the growth spurt about 10 months ago there outstanding support (which is one of the main reasons I signed up) has fallen dramatically:
- my support tickets which used to average around 20 minutes now average 3 hours plus
- I've had 2 sites suspended due to resource abuse (which I applaud them for, one was a runaway cron and one was a sql query stuck in a loop, on shared hosting I have no issue with this as I wouldn't like to affect or be affected by others on the server) - my issue with this is taking 12 hours to et back to me after the initial suspension and then averaging 5 hours between replies to basically tell me nothing - not good when you are sitting up for around 28 hours to get the site back online
- the censorship of the forums got ridiculous (pleased to note they have relaxed the censorship)
- they change things without notifying customers which may have a detrimental affect on the customers business, for example, the latest ticketing system fiasco - change from an integrated system to an external with yet another login (no doubt due to business requirements, and I'm sure it will be integrated eventually) without notification, all prior ticket history lost, they "think" they will be able to restore ticket history somehow at sometime in the future, the new system has a cap on the amount of tickets which is way below what is required and therefore fails (twice now), tickets submitted between the failures vanish into the ether and when the system is back up some open tickets are gone too
- lack of communication from management (fixing that issue along with less censorship)
- major server issues recently (again, they are working on the issue, more servers, load balancing etc.)
- too many servers getting hacked, allegedly not server issues, according to my research it was, according to another guy on the same server getting hit with the same attack (we both got hit multiple times after checking all permissions etc.) he eventually got told it was an issue with a php setting/vulnerability and they had disabled it (why I got told a couple of days prior the same old "not the server, must be your script" is beyond me)
- plans keep changing with no or little notice and the functions I signed up for are no longer available (existing customers on legacy plans keep everything they currently have) therefore, missing out on the extra storage space and bandwidth new customers now receive
My post was not to tell people to avoid them, rather to withdraw my recommendation; as at this time as I would not be comfortable with someone signing up with them based on my earlier glowing recommendations.
All up, I still think they are a very good option for a low cost start and when/if they bring back dedicated servers I will be sorely tempted to move back with them after ensuring they have gotten over the current growing pains.
regards
Harry
I have been with them since January. All-in-all, I am much happier with their system than the other hosts I have used. I prefer to do most things myself - and their infrastructure makes it much easier to do that than many other hosts. I still have a few sites at aplus.net that I haven't migrated yet because I haven't had time to rewrite some custom scripts I wrote. But I will eventually move everything over.
I had one server issue where it ran out of disk space, which brought my sites down. They had it fixed in a few hours and it has not happened again since. I haven't needed their forums more than a couple times, so I can't comment on the censorship issue.
I believe that the problem with any good host is that once word gets around (in forums such as this), the good reviews attract many new customers - and the hosts winds up experiencing growth pains due to rapid expansion. I've seen it happen to several hosts I have used. They all recovered - and Site5 will also.
The bottom line for me is that their feature set still blows away most of their competitors (at a great price, too). If I were to switch to another innovative provider, they would eventually experience the same issues and I'd be back where I started.
I had one server issue where it ran out of disk space, which brought my sites down. They had it fixed in a few hours and it has not happened again since. I haven't needed their forums more than a couple times, so I can't comment on the censorship issue.
I believe that the problem with any good host is that once word gets around (in forums such as this), the good reviews attract many new customers - and the hosts winds up experiencing growth pains due to rapid expansion. I've seen it happen to several hosts I have used. They all recovered - and Site5 will also.
The bottom line for me is that their feature set still blows away most of their competitors (at a great price, too). If I were to switch to another innovative provider, they would eventually experience the same issues and I'd be back where I started.
I have had websites with site5 for 2+ years and agree with the extreme degredation of their customer service. The response time on trouble tickets is now many hours - and if there is a followup question then it takes many more hours to get them to respond. When I first signed up I was amazed by the customer service and the time they took to trouble-shoot a problem. Now I get frustrated by support people who respond once (after some hours), then when it turns out their solution doesn't solve the problem, don't respond again because they've already "closed" the ticket.
I like their tech specs and have no problem with them when everything is working - it's the customer support that is the problem.
By current status of TOS, there can be max. of 15 concurrent users (this number was around 200 a few months ago). I wonder if it can at all be suitable for medium size moodle installation.