Virtual Web Hosting With Ventures Online
Written: Jul 30 '02 (Updated Jul 31 '02)
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Pros: price, service, support
Cons: crowded virtual servers at times
The Bottom Line: Out of all the web hosts I have tried, Ventures Online gives me the best value for my dollar.
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| amykhar's Full Review: Ventures Online |
I have been a customer of Ventures Online web hosting for a little over a year. Currently, I host 3 sites with them, and will be adding two new accounts within the next couple of months. Although I have had a few issues with crowded virtual servers, I am genuinely pleased with this company. The price is reasonable, the customer service is outstanding, and there are relatively few technical problems.
Virtual Hosting Plans
Currently, Ventures Online offers 6 virtual hosting plans. All plans offer unlimited email aliases, CGI-BIN, PHP, and the ability to park up to 10 domains on the main account. The plans start at $7.95 a month, and go up to $64.95.
For $7.95, you can get 20MB of storage space, but no MySQL access. If you need a MySQL database, the least expensive plan ($9.95 a month) offers 2 databases. Currently I have two accounts on the V200 plan. This plan gives me 200MB of space, 50 Pop3 email accounts, 4 MySQL databases, and 10000MB of bandwidth each month. I also have a V500 account, which increases my space to 500MB and bandwidth to 20000MB. This account offers 250 Pop3 email accounts and 10 MySQL databases, and I only pay $24.95 a month.
Recently, Ventures Online added a new hosting plan called the V650. With this plan, larger clients are placed on a server that hosts only a few other clients. It is meant to be a transitional account for clients who are too large for typical shared hosting plans, but are not yet big enough for a dedicated server. Currently, I find combining 3 smaller accounts to be more cost effective than this plan, which costs $64.95.
There are no setup fees for virtual hosting accounts, and accounts are activated within minutes of completing the order form. In addition, Ventures Online has a reseller program available for their larger virtual accounts.
Customer Service
Ventures Online truly distinguishes themselves with their customer support. There is a help desk system and support forums. From my experience, help desk tickets are responded to within 15-30 minutes. Peer support on the forums is often an invaluable aid for routine "How do I?" questions. In addition to the help desk and support forums, there is an off-network network status site available that keeps customers apprised of network outages.
What I like best about customer service is that they are obviously real people that use common sense when dealing with their customers. For example, shortly after I had to ban a man from my Vbulletin forum, he complained to Ventures Online and claimed that we were sending spam. The VO help staff recognized the “spam” as thread update emails that the man had signed up for before being banned, and took no action against us. Instead, they apprised me of the situation, and we had a bit of a chuckle over it.
Time and time again, customer service and technical support staff have gone out of their way to help me when I had issues. I have used other web hosts in the past, and based on my experience, friendly and courteous support is not the norm in the industry.
A Few Issues Now and Again
Life is not perfect on Ventures Online. Recently, we have had some issues with high server loads. This has made my sites run slower than usual, and can be extremely annoying. In order to resolve this issue, VO is moving some heavier users off of our server. In addition, they are carefully monitoring our server to ensure that errant CGI scripts do not consume too many resources.
A few months ago, VO moved to their own data center. Since that time, I have experienced a few network outages. Before, when VO used Verio as their data center, there were seldom any outages. I hope, with time, the number of outages will decrease as the staff becomes more experienced at running their own data center.
My Final Recommendations
I highly recommend Ventures Online for anyone who needs a web host that offers PHP and MySQL. It is an especially good host if you run a Vbulletin forum. VO’s own support forum uses Vbulletin, and the tech support staff are very familiar with the Vbulletin software. The support staff is knowledgeable, prices are reasonable, and these people go above and beyond the call of duty to help their customers. I have found many less expensive web hosts, but I have never found one that offers the same quality of service and support.
Recommended:
Yes
Monthly fees (US$): $7.95-$64.95
Platform used: Linux
Hosted on Secure Server: Yes
Database used: MSQL
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Epinions.com ID:
amykhar
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Member: Amy
Location: USA
Reviews written: 320
Trusted by: 480 members
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