Which companies need reviews?

[MannDude]

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?

 

[SkylarM]

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

 

[drmike]

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

 

[fizzyjoe908]

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

 

[MannDude]

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.

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.

 

[XFS_Duke]

Could do a review on my company.

 

[MannDude]

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

Could do a review on my company.

Will all certainly be considered.

 

[shovenose]

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...

 

[telephone]

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:

1. Someone who actually used multiple GB's of RAM from a high RAM VPS
2. MySQL queries sped up by 0.15 seconds when I switched from ____ to ____
3. I contacted support at 3 AM and received a response within 30 minutes
4. I've received emails one week prior to any maintenance, and email alerts when emergency failures occurred
5. 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.

 

[texteditor]

sonwebhost

 

[SkylarM]

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

Damn you ruined our surprise new feature!

 

[NodeBytes]

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.

 

[Coastercraze]

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

 

[MannDude]

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).

 

[blergh]

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.

 

[hellogoodbye]

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.

 

[MannDude]

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.

 

[wlanboy]

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?

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)

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"

 

[AMDbuilder]

I'd love to have someone review our services.

 

[MannDude]

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.