# Which companies need reviews?



## MannDude (Jan 12, 2014)

I was approached with an idea by a community member and I thought it was a great! In short, I'll be funding 3 - 6 months worth of service from several companies so that he can write detailed and unbiased reviews. I thought this would be a great opportunity to have some of the lesser known hosts that contribute positively here to have a detailed, honest and thorough review written about their service.

So, any particular companies here you'd like to see be reviewed? Why?


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## SkylarM (Jan 12, 2014)

I will gladly take your mo.....I mean review.


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## drmike (Jan 12, 2014)

Maybe balance it out with an established name that is not covered much, a new company < 18 months old and some company offering something totally different.

Important to come up with standardized testing script of sorts and some scheduler for it.  Run, wait, repeat


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## fizzyjoe908 (Jan 12, 2014)

I don't want to seem needy, but SRSNode could use something like this.


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## MannDude (Jan 12, 2014)

SkylarM said:


> I will gladly take your mo.....I mean review.


Haha. Crissic is an up-and-comer, I can tell. I've heard good things. Have never used the service and unsure if reviews are published here or not (unsure without searching). Certainly will consider it.



drmike said:


> Maybe balance it out with an established name that is not covered much, a new company < 18 months old and some company offering something totally different.
> 
> Important to come up with standardized testing script of sorts and some scheduler for it.  Run, wait, repeat


Absolutely.

Personally, I have services with a handful of providers here. When I see someone contributing positively or doing something different, I want to check them out. Namely those with custom panels I like to sample or anyone here who has expressed having a fair share of knowledge. I don't write reviews, however, because I feel like people would consider my words to be biased. Some of the companies I enjoy are advertisers here, for example, so I can not imagine a positive review coming from me being worth anything to the average reader because of that. =/

Ideally I'd like to have some lesser known companies reviewed, including those offering unique services or out of unique locations, as well as those who have custom panels and whatnot. Unsure how it will all be tested yet, ideally the company wouldn't know who it is signing up to do the review so no special treatment can be made. I suspect things like uptime and general benchmarking metrics would be recorded and logged, benchmarks can probably be ran automatically on a schedule and logged over the course of time so results can be compared to previous testings over the course of 1, 3, and 6 months. Random communication can be started via ticket every so often to test response times, competence, etc.

We'll see.


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## XFS_Duke (Jan 12, 2014)

Could do a review on my company.


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## MannDude (Jan 12, 2014)

fizzyjoe908 said:


> I don't want to seem needy, but SRSNode could use something like this.





XFS_Duke said:


> Could do a review on my company.


Will all certainly be considered.


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## shovenose (Jan 12, 2014)

I don't think we have any (real) reviews by (real) customers (yet). There's one person who was going to write on but I don't think they ever did...


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## telephone (Jan 12, 2014)

My List (I've used 1/2 of them):


Online.net (€10 - €15 server)
RansomIT
anyNode
My Custom Hosting
Crissic Solutions
Fliphost
drServer (any of his subsidiaries)
Loose Foot Computing (LFCVPS)

In regards to the actual review, I dislike reviews that are solely based upon benchmarks that are run a few times throughout the lifespan of the VPS.

When I look for reviews I only read those that document the support, or those who've used their VPS for practical uses. (A ServerBear benchmark of a new node from 6 months ago means very little to me).

For example:


Someone who actually used multiple GB's of RAM from a high RAM VPS
MySQL queries sped up by 0.15 seconds when I switched from ____ to ____
I contacted support at 3 AM and received a response within 30 minutes
I've received emails one week prior to any maintenance, and email alerts when emergency failures occurred
Latency to Antarctica decreased with the addition of Penguin-Express to the BGP

In saying that, please ensure that whomever tests/reviews the VPS's doesn't leave them to idle or only uses 1/8th of the available resources.


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## texteditor (Jan 12, 2014)

sonwebhost


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## SkylarM (Jan 12, 2014)

telephone said:


> Latency to Antarctica decreased with the addition of Penguin-Express to the BGP


Damn you ruined our surprise new feature!


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## NodeBytes (Jan 12, 2014)

Sounds like a cool idea. I'd be up for helping out as well. I'm actually in the process of writing up a couple reviews myself.


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## Coastercraze (Jan 12, 2014)

I would love to get a review done, but it'd be best to wait until I get settled into the 'burgh.


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## MannDude (Jan 12, 2014)

NodeBytes said:


> Sounds like a cool idea. I'd be up for helping out as well. I'm actually in the process of writing up a couple reviews myself.


Great! Looking forward to them. Reviews are great content that help visitors out tremendously. Good for vpsBoard for search results, good for forum members and general visitors to get an idea how a host may perform, and good for the provider who get a chance to comment and touch base on the review (whether it be a good or bad review).


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## blergh (Jan 12, 2014)

I would have no problem with donating funds (free plans will just be biased) to pay for a few months of service from different providers if there are good reviews written about them. I was discussing this with Joepie earlier today and my impression of most of this is that while there are plenty of sites for comparing plans/providers there is a huge gap/black hole in non-biased, legitimate and good reviews. There is far too many shitty blogs covered in ads that are just doing unixbench + dd and then write up some quick review based off of 3 days of usage off a free, non-standard superplan that is nowhere near real-world price/performance.

Have someone test it in a real-world situation and do something useful for once, like in the good old days when people didn't just buy stuff for the sake of it only to have it sit idle 90% of the time.


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## hellogoodbye (Jan 12, 2014)

I'm not sure if it's my place to chime in here since I'm new (been lurking for the past couple of weeks but never had anything constructive to say), but if I may suggest also doing reviews for one or two of the more "controversial" providers too?

I would absolutely love to see reviews of new providers or lesser known providers who look promising since, being new to the web hosting world, all the providers look the same and it's hard to tell all the different plans/offers apart, but on the flipside I'd also like to see some unbiased reviews of providers who get some (or a lot of) bad reviews and find out how much of that is substantiated. Negative reviews tend to be written in the heat of the moment by invested customers when something big happens, so it would be really nice to see some unbiased reviews from people whose businesses/livelihoods/etc. are not on the line.

I have zero background in computers and sorely lack the experience that would be required to write proper reviews, but I wouldn't mind chipping in funds for a couple months' worth of hosting for this either.


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## MannDude (Jan 12, 2014)

No need to chip in funds, that's what the ads are for, to fund projects like this.

It may be worthwhile to get a few people on board who are interested and capable of writing some detailed reviews and who could use (and would use)the services as well. So they get a free VPS for 3-6 months, they use it for whatever they _need_ a VPS in return for reviewing it thoroughly. Something for me to mull over.


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## wlanboy (Jan 12, 2014)

shovenose said:


> I don't think we have any (real) reviews by (real) customers (yet). There's one person who was going to write on but I don't think they ever did...


Mind adding some additional words?

Do you use pluralis majestatis or do you say that vpsboard does not have any real reviews?



telephone said:


> In regards to the actual review, I dislike reviews that are solely based upon benchmarks that are run a few times throughout the lifespan of the VPS.
> When I look for reviews I only read those that document the support, or those who've used their VPS for practical uses.
> 
> In saying that, please ensure that whomever tests/reviews the VPS's doesn't leave them to idle or only uses 1/8th of the available resources.


Second that.

It should be about daily usage.

Main reason why I write down for what purpose I am using the vps.

(Remote desktop vs MongoDB cluster node)



blergh said:


> Have someone test it in a real-world situation and do something useful for once, like in the good old days when people didn't just buy stuff for the sake of it only to have it sit idle 90% of the time.


Yup - won't help anybody if someone wrote: "I did not do anything with the vps in the last 6 months but I did not have any problem with it during these months"


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## AMDbuilder (Jan 12, 2014)

I'd love to have someone review our services.


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## MannDude (Jan 12, 2014)

wlanboy said:


> Mind adding some additional words?
> 
> Do you use pluralis majestatis or do you say that vpsboard does not have any real reviews?


Pretty sure he meant that ShoveNose didn't have any reviews here, I believe.

EDIT: Comically enough I got this PM earlier today from someone I won't name (though feel free to out yourself if you wish)



> I really like this forum, but the reviews are all too "nice and shiny".
> 
> 
> I don't think I have seen one negative review.


There are a couple negative reviews here, but overall most providers here are quite competent and capable, which results in a relatively solid service throughout. Or at least I'd like to think so, anyway.


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## wlanboy (Jan 13, 2014)

> I really like this forum, but the reviews are all too "nice and shiny".
> 
> 
> I don't think I have seen one negative review.


If I should add information - just ask on the review post.

I am open to any suggestions.

Looking back to the last year I did write some - not so shiny things about providers:


SecureDragon -> Bandwith cap -> but they withdraw that.
BlueVM -> me leaving Buffalo through bandwith/routing issues
Torqhost -> cancel & refund -> read the story about their "service"
Tactical Florida -> slow HD -> was fixed
Tactical Los Angeles -> slow network -> Upgrade to 1 GB
Anynode -> Rebooting without notice -> but changed that.
Ramnode Seattle -> network problems -> Nicj fixed that and added Upstreams
Why are you not able to read about some of these things in the review?


Current situation is resolved.
I cannot say that the network in Seattle is crap.


I would be lying.


A reason why I am updating my reviews.

There is a thread (discussion) about it.
A reason why everyone should be using "tags".


Because IPBoard is giving you a list of related topic at the button of the page.


So no need (nasty time consuming work) to link each provider related thread to one review.


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## mikho (Jan 13, 2014)

Most important part when doing reviews, if you want them unbiased is that the provider doesn't know that this customer will post a review about the usage ofthat particular vps.


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## MannDude (Jan 13, 2014)

mikho said:


> Most important part when doing reviews, if you want them unbiased is that the provider doesn't know that this customer will post a review about the usage ofthat particular vps.


Exactly. So while I don't mind collecting a list of potential providers to review I do not want them to know that they're being reviewed. The order they may or may not receive may or may not just be a regular ol' customer that stumbled onto them from some random depth of the internet.

Since I may have a few people participate in this, I'll ask them to not indicate publicly on here or privately to anyone that they're reviewing this host or that host. I guess I'll just have to trust that they will use the money I send them to pay their hosting invoice and not transfer it out or keep it, too.


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## NodeBytes (Jan 13, 2014)

Have them send you a copy of the invoice after their purchase 

Also, I'd be interested in reviewing Crissic. I had a VM with them a while back but never got around to writing a review and I would like to.


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## MannDude (Jan 13, 2014)

NodeBytes said:


> Have them send you a copy of the invoice after their purchase
> 
> Also, I'd be interested in reviewing Crissic. I had a VM with them a while back but never got around to writing a review and I would like to.


That would be more ideal, assuming they had the needed funds to get started. Would be easier to just reimburse. Otherwise, you show me invoice for $XX.XX or whatever and I send it to you via PayPal, and then you show me 'Invoice Paid' and you have a free VPS to test for however many months.

I like this, this is a good idea. Good way to hook some people up with some VPSes, providers get a random sale, vpsBoard gets some more detailed and quality reviews. Win-win-win for us all.


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## peterw (Jan 13, 2014)

@MannDude and @hellogoodbye. Good idea! I want to know if some bad review hosts are really bad or if they were choosen by the wrong customers. Nobody will risk his own money to proof that they become good.

@blergh I don't like academic benchmarks. Real world usage is not possible for a test vps someone buys for 6 months. Maybe someone have a load balancer or cluster where he wants to add temporary nodes?

@wlanboy. Ignore shovehost, nothing good ever come out of his mouth or hands.

Someone should manage the reviews. I don't want to post a request because the provider then knows about a close review. I want to send a PM to a review manager which then decides what provider will be reviewed in what week. Time managment is needed because the results will be posted after some weeks or months. MannDude can then decide who he is giving money to.


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## MannDude (Jan 13, 2014)

peterw said:


> Someone should manage the reviews. I don't want to post a request because the provider then knows about a close review. I want to send a PM to a review manager which then decides what provider will be reviewed in what week. Time managment is needed because the results will be posted after some weeks or months. MannDude can then decide who he is giving money to.


I agree. I started the dialogue in the staff forum to discuss how best to proceed with this. Unsure if Martin and HalfEatenPie are around though right now.

I'm busy enough as-is working a fulltime job, and this site is it's own fulltime job some days as well. While this sounds great on paper, properly implementing it will be more than just, "Here is a VPS, I hope you post a review in 3 months!" I'll have to keep track of who has what so we can determine when to remind them and when to expect the content. Also, there will be limitations in place so not just anyone can get a free VPS. The idea is a trusted member of the community with a real need for one will be able to obtain one or more pending their need and level of trustworthiness. They'll say, "Hey, I'd like a VPS on the east coast with 512MB RAM, 40GB storage, and like... 100GB BW." and I'll locate (or a 'review manager' if I offload this to someone else) a provider for them or give them a couple providers to choose from. That way they can't choose providers that they may be buddies with. "Hey man, MannDude said he's going to give me a free VPS to review so I'm going to choose you. Put me on that new node!" <-- That's not going to work.


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## peterw (Jan 13, 2014)

MannDude said:


> I agree. I started the dialogue in the staff forum to discuss how best to proceed with this. Unsure if Martin and HalfEatenPie are around though right now.
> 
> I'm busy enough as-is working a fulltime job, and this site is it's own fulltime job some days as well.
> 
> ...


Hard working man. You need some helping hands time to increase your staff and delegate work.

Totally agree with trusted members. A review is nothing if you do not trust the reviewer.


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## Boltersdriveer (Jan 13, 2014)

I was hoping to be reviewed here


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## vRozenSch00n (Jan 13, 2014)

Reviews from @wlanboy are reviews of a competent Linux user who can administer his own box and find a workaround should any problem arise, without having to open a support ticket when issues can be self handled. Up to my knowing he hasn't done any biased review as the reviews come with supporting data. 

I've also seen reviews, (not in this board obviously), from incompetent Linux users who judged a provider as a bad provider when they tried to install something in an unmanaged VPS but the installed application didn't  work because the user miss-configured the system, then the user start opening multiple tickets within 15 minutes, and an hour later the user made a review titled "<Company Name> is a scam stay away from <Company Name>"

My point is, a Linux/BSD/Windows savvy user might publish a better review than a Linux/BSD/Windows illiterate user, and I hope @MannDude keeps a high standard on who would be eligible to post a review.

I also hope @drmike continue to be a detective to get "deeper insight", so a provider might improve what their lack of, and end users know what they are expecting from a provider.

Edit: typo


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## peterw (Jan 13, 2014)

vRozenSch00n said:


> Reviews from @wlanboy are reviews of a competent Linux user who can administer his own box and find a workaround should any problem arise, without having to open a support ticket when issues can be self handled. Up to my knowing he hasn't done any biased review as the reviews come with supporting data.


Based on his guides he knows what he is doing. I like that he writes on reviews what is running on the server.

I like the layout of his reviews. All reviews should have the same structure. Hardware info, what the server is used for, support and ticket quality and the network.



vRozenSch00n said:


> My point is, a Linux/BSD/Windows savvy user might publish a better review than a Linux/BSD/Windows illiterate user, and I hope @MannDude keeps a high standard on who would be eligible to post a review.


I think that the reviews should be usable for non linux experts too. Some basic questions should be asked. Support should have friendly answers for simple questios.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Jan 13, 2014)

peterw said:


> Support should have friendly answers for simple questios.


To that end, my suggestion is that Curtis (and participant) not announce that they're doing a review until after the fact - that way the replies from the support department in question are unbiased and natural.


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## XLvps (Jan 13, 2014)

Count me in!


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## Awmusic12635 (Jan 13, 2014)

Sounds like a cool idea.

We are always of course up to being reviewed


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## k0nsl (Jan 13, 2014)

Well, I can recommend Dr.Server and so as to make more people aware of their (really good) service, why not put them on the list for reviews? I will be investing in more VPSes with them next month. But so far, not a single noticeable hiccup with regard to the service they provide.

I will do a review of it when more time has passed, so far only 25+ days. But it gives me a somewhat good feel about the service, even for such a limited time period 



MannDude said:


> I was approached with an idea by a community member and I thought it was a great! In short, I'll be funding 3 - 6 months worth of service from several companies so that he can write detailed and unbiased reviews. I thought this would be a great opportunity to have some of the lesser known hosts that contribute positively here to have a detailed, honest and thorough review written about their service.
> 
> So, any particular companies here you'd like to see be reviewed? Why?


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## Roger (Jan 13, 2014)

This is a great idea that should help us all providers improve what we might be failing to accomplish, without even noticing.


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## Tactical (Jan 13, 2014)

I think this is a really good idea! We all need feedback to know what we are doing good and what I suck at (Not that type of porn suck).


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## FHN-Eric (Jan 13, 2014)

MannDude said:


> The idea is a trusted member of the community with a real need for one will be able to obtain one or more pending their need and level of trustworthiness. They'll say, "Hey, I'd like a VPS on the east coast with 512MB RAM, 40GB storage, and like... 100GB BW." and I'll locate (or a 'review manager' if I offload this to someone else) a provider for them or give them a couple providers to choose from. That way they can't choose providers that they may be buddies with. "Hey man, MannDude said he's going to give me a free VPS to review so I'm going to choose you. Put me on that new node!" <-- That's not going to work.


Or, you could program a system in php that has a form for ram, disk space, bandwidth, region, and what it would be used for. When the form is submitted, a ticket is created, and the status of the ticket is set to pending review. If the request is accepted, they would be given a list of hosts to choose from next time they login. The host they choose would be added to their profile, along with the plan information.


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## NodeWest-Dan (Jan 13, 2014)

If you decide to do shared hosting we'd be happy to have a review.


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## shovenose (Jan 13, 2014)

I think the main problem with having the hosting providers (or "users") submit a form is you'd get a bunch of spam. But still, if ShoveHost got reviewed rather than not even being given a chance, it would be much fairer than currently.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Jan 13, 2014)

... y'know, if you ran projects for more than a day before closing them, clients would have a fairer chance at giving them a try.


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## SkylarM (Jan 13, 2014)

shovenose said:


> I think the main problem with having the hosting providers (or "users") submit a form is you'd get a bunch of spam. But still, if ShoveHost got reviewed rather than not even being given a chance, it would be much fairer than currently.


First impressions are everything. Quite frankly you're first impressions leave a lot to be desired.


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## tonyg (Jan 13, 2014)

MannDude said:


> EDIT: Comically enough I got this PM earlier today from someone I won't name (though feel free to out yourself if you wish)
> 
> I really like this forum, but the reviews are all too "nice and shiny".
> 
> ...


That was my PM.


Trust me, I don't want to see the junk reviews posted in places like WHT transfer themselves here.

It was just an observation.


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## MannDude (Jan 13, 2014)

tonyg said:


> That was my PM.
> 
> 
> Trust me, I don't want to see the junk reviews posted in places like WHT transfer themselves here.
> ...


Neither do I 

I think what we're planning in this thread will be a good thing. The list of providers that will be reviewed won't be revealed, and will be a mix of providers who haven't had the best public image in the recent months, years as well as young, up and coming providers that appear to be doing good things, and sprinkle in a few other known providers too.

It'll be a random mix. Ideally all reviews submitted as a result of this will be of high quality, long, detailed and informative.


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## AuroraZero (Jan 14, 2014)

The main thing that gets me about most reviews is that people will use the service for a month then review it. That to me does not show how the host preforms at all. Anyone can pull a rabbit out of the hat for a short period of time, but for the long haul is what matters to me the most. If you can not be consistent and dependable over a long period of time then it does not matter what you do at the time of the review.

That is why most of the reviews I see I tend to disregard when they say "I have been with so and so for a month and this is my review". It is useless and has no basis for the host might do down the line when  the going gets tough.


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## GoodHosting (Jan 14, 2014)

I wouldn't be against a review on our new OpenNebula Line-up, or if anyone wants to try one for free for a while, we known it still has a few kinks to be worked out (such as how the "reboot" option requires an extra step "resume" after it cycles, or how you have to manually network a Windows guest.) but we believe the system to be production ready and are rolling out plans this week.


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## MCH-Phil (Jan 14, 2014)

As it's been echoed here already. I think this is a great idea! For everyone, hosts and users alike.

Not that I don't trust anyone here. For safety reasons I would not reimburse until review is delivered.


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## VPS Hosting (Jan 14, 2014)

Interested, PM me please thank you


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## BuyCPanel-Kevin (Jan 14, 2014)

We aren't a hosting company, but it might be nice to get reviewed ourselves!


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## Awmusic12635 (Jan 14, 2014)

BuyCPanel-Kevin said:


> We aren't a hosting company, but it might be nice to get reviewed ourselves!


From my experience support has been great +1


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## ndelaespada (Jan 14, 2014)

Owned-Networks could use some reviews!


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## MartinD (Jan 14, 2014)

VPS Hosting said:


> Interested, PM me please thank you


I think you've missed the point.


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