Host Rocket – Support and Customer service that doesn’t care

May 25th, 2006

Probably one of the more frustrating hosts I’ve had to deal with , Host Rocket lost all of our client’s data… and not just the standard issue website data, the emails on the server, and their customized installation of DotProject… including all the data that’s in these services.

The irony here is that Host Rocket states ‘Power Backups’ on it’s Dedicated Host Plan; by that, they mean, they backup to the exact same drive just in a different folder.

So, you want external or tape backup? You had to request it from Host Rocket as an extra fee. You can imagine my surprise as our clients moved to them last year — of course, that’s the first time I’ve heard a host charge extra for backup service… as if anyone didn’t want it in the first place.

Now, after they lost all this client data, you’d think they’d be in a significant hurry to bring that server back up into prestine condition with record speeds? Not really. Here’s what we enjoyed:

• 3 days for the server to be rebuilt
• extra day for cpanel to be installed (the client digs it)
• Mail was back up on the 4th day, with apache rebuilt
• PHP and MySQL were compiled improperly, and a rebuild was necessary — though they specifically put on version 4 when we requested 5 for both, 2 days go by
• A call to support said they’d compile PHP 5.1.4… one day later without results, a call back denotes that this is not true, they will only compile 5.1.2 for me, and they said they would do it by the morning (even though we had 5.1.4 prior too)
• We wake up to find PHP is still at 4, root into the server, and compile it ourselves without troubles to 5.1.2 (5.1.4 was restricted)
• Day 8, we have a new build of apache, loaded with frontpage extensions and buggy with permissions — at the moment the server defaults to 0644 instead of atleast 0764 — as a result, our cache cannot be removed, and any content management updates don’t stick unless I manually remove those cache’s
• Day 9, Host Rocket asks that I chown -R to academys:nobody (though I’m accustomed to www) for all files to see if that cures the ills, of course not
• Day 10, the representative says I may need to look at my Ruby on Rails forums to see if there’s any information… trouble is, I’m not using Ruby on Rails, I’m just using PHP 5, MySQL 5 and XML!
• Day 11, they asked for the root password for the server because it’s not working — worked for me via ssh, ftp, and web login for safari, opera, and firefox
• Day 12, Suggest we change the unmask value for httpd, which we’ll go ahead and do later — but, as they said, they won’t do it for us!

And here we are, Academy Studios has a broken website because permissions won’t stick. All the files are loaded on a back end system — and even though Host Rocket worked perfectly fine before the crash, it doesn’t work now… and they don’t feel a need to help us.

While I’m unimpressed by their support, I’m more distraught by their level of appreciation for their services and customer consideration. Host Rocket can openly sell the standard pitch ‘we pride ourselves on our service and excellent customer support staff’; but cliche marketing salesmanship runs hollow when you don’t follow up with the sincerety that paying customers deserve.

If you’re in a bind and you need help for your online needs, Host Rocket won’t be there for you. If they lose all your data, don’t expect it to be returned to you. If you use them for multiple dedicated servers, expect the setups to be inconsistent.

Regardless, if you’re a paying customer in need of quality hosting for your sensitive email and website content, Host Rocket is not a secure solution.