We are on 1and1 managed servers... good when there's no problems, but bad when something does goes wrong as support is bad.
I get the feeling a number of people here are on 1and1 - whenever there's a problem related to Sellerdeck & 1and1 (eg. that email server problem...) I seem to find a post here.
However, we did have a major problem today (one of our servers was down, for at least 6 hours) due to either a hardware problem, or the upgrade in the OS (to accomodate the TLS 1.2)
I was told today that whenever a ticket is generated on their system, it gets put to the bottom of the queue... so try not to chase them up - everytime they say they will send a message to their 3rd line support, it is advancing your ticket t the bottom of the queue...
I was surprised that my support calls were all to UK, but they could not really do anything for me as the server is in Germany... and Germany has a tight hold on access/security - even the UK support is fed up with having to submit an internal ticket when they know what to do to solve something...
Server is up now, but I am now seriously looking to find another company as a backup option... or I might even load up install Linux in VM and play around with it.
I will consider any hosts that are mentioned in this post.
The question about using third party hosting is a good one.
The upside is that it can be extremely cheap, but on downside is that provider is unlikely to be familiar the Sellerdeck. This means that they can be unaware of impact the changes they make to the service will have on your website. You then have to manage the hosting yourselves, which requires some expertise.
From Sellerdeck's perspective it is much harder to support the system. One particular ticket I saw last year was caused by the provider deploying some kind of "checker" on the DNS. The end result was that it broke the filtering; it took some time to figure out what was going on.
You won't be surprised to hear that we recommend customers use Sellerdeck hosting, or hosting provided by a Sellerdeck partner. It may cost more, but the end result is that you will at least have a managed service, designed to meet your needs. Plus, in Sellerdeck's case a single point of contact for all support issues,
I hope this helps.
Regards
Phil Rothwell
Managing Director
Sellerdeck Limited
Host-it.co.uk provide SellerDeck specific hosting. See https://www.host-it.co.uk/hosting/pa...ic_hosting.asp (where they still refer to it as Actinic). I've transferred a couple of sites from 1&1 to them and they are running well there. They also had quick and well informed technical support when I contacted them with a very technical question.
I was hoping to compare the cost of Host-it and SellerDeck hosting but the new SD website's Hosting page doesn't show any plans or prices at all!
When someone offers hosting it may be worth checking whether they actually run a data-centre or are just a reseller of someone else's hosting.
Try putting their own website address into one of the many "who hosts this" type tools and it's likely that someone bigger (like Heart Internet or UKFastnet) pops up.
I would consider all options
- I have found Sellerdeck hosting has always been a tad bit expensive and the features limited...
Even the upcoming Sellerdeck 360 @ £250 per month =
Cover for us is about £84 per month, so for SD360 = £166 per month
At that price, we can have 3 dedicated managed servers at 1and1 with all sorts of unlimited traffic etc...
For this future backup Sellerdeck sites, I am preferring a UK based host (1and1's ticketing from UK support to Germany support is just too slow to deal with)
Agreed. Where a domain name is registered is not a reliable indicator of where a site is being served from so it's worth knowing who actually serves the pages is and where the data centre is.
People who know the command line can also useTraceroute to see where a site is being hosted from.
For example people signing up to oneandone.co.uk may not realise that their site will be hosted in Germany and German law interferes with the prompt sending of emails by a German based server.
Perhaps the best way to find out is to simply ask if someone is a reseller or actually owns a data-centre.
We use Heart Internet and 123-REG for domain name registration.
We use Heart Internet, 20i and Safenames for various hosting services from shared hosting to VPSs. All their data centres are in the UK.
We offer a managed service as we find many clients don't want to learn about web hosting - they just want to concentrate on their business and leave all the techy stuff to us. We have some clients with in-house technical expertise and they have access to their own VPS.
Elysium:Online - Official Accredited SellerDeck Partner SellerDeck Design, Build, Hosting & Promotion Based in rural Northants
I have hosted SellerDeck websites for about 15 years. High-quality UK servers that are reliable. I know all the clients on the servers and they are not shared with unknown companies.
Jenny
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