Today marks 1 week of hosting with WebHost4Life. Here is my week in review. (Update 6/6/2004: Read second week review here. Update 6/23/2004: Read WebHost4Life final review here. )
Last week I moved my blog from MaximumASP to WebHost4Life for two reasons. First, the blog gets enough hits and uses enough bandwidth now that I didn't want it affecting my other websites that generate revenue. Second, I wanted to test out WebHost4Life, since their prices are remarkably low.
I signed up with them on a Friday afternoon. I chose the $10/month option, because I wanted SQL Server. Since their policy is that account set-up can take up to 1 business day, I figured I would not have my account until Monday. To my joy and surprise, I received an email on Satuday saying my account was ready.
While setting up the blog on the new account I ran into 2 problems. First, I was using DTS to transfer the database to the new host and ran across a problem with not having enough privileges on the new SQL Server. Second, the control panel which has an option of setting up a subdirectory as an application, was indeed just not working. A little dismayed, I logged into my help desk account and opened up a ticket on each problem. Again, to my joy and surprise, the problems were solved in less than 5 minutes. Wow. I literally felt like I had my own technical support person on standby.
Everything was up and running perfectly on Saturday so I pointed my domain to the new DNS's at WebHost4Life, realizing it can take several days for the transfer to indeed be complete. Over the next 2 to 3 days I noticed very good response times and no SQL Server delays or outages. My sweet side was thinking I have possibly found a hidden jewel for only $10/month, but my crispy side was thinking it is too good to be true and eventually the monster will show its teeth.
After about 4 days I started seeing the usual traffic to the blog and also started to see performance delays, but nothing to complain about for $10/month.
However, Wednesday evening I started SharpReader and noticed an error came up for my blog feed. I went to the blog and a .Text error displayed, “Sql Server does not exist or access denied.” I tried a few things to kickstart the application, but none were successful. I logged into the help desk, reported the error, and in 5 minutes (again, wow!) it was fixed, albeit no reason given for the problem. I logged into .Text and noticed a 6 hour window with no referrals (i.e. traffic). Hmmm. Had the Blog really been down for 6 hours? Oh, well, not really a big deal, but I decided to monitor the blog a bit more to see if it is a problem.
Over the last 3 days, I have reported about 5 more similar problems, each one being associated with the database. At various times of the day, I receive a “Sql Server does not exist or access denied” error, “General Network Error”, or “System Timeout” error for 15 to 20 minutes or more a pop when .Text tries to access the database. Indeed, we have a problem, Houston!
As it stands now, WebHost4Life informed me they have a technician monitoring the database and application to determine the problem, making it seem to me that this problem is particular to me and not happening to everyone. That would seem odd, but I have no reason to distrust them. One technician did say in response to a problem I was having that the SQL Server had a [hardware] failure and wouldn't be up until another 15 minutes, so is it really just me?
Anyway, my opinion at this point is that it is still too early to judge WebHost4Life. I want to at least give them a try for a month and see if the database errors subside and stop happening on a daily basis several times a day. I will provide another update next weekend when I will be able to better judge their services. Let's keep in mind, however, we are only talking $10/month. What is an acceptable uptime for $10/month? I don't know...
Update: 6/6/2004 - Read Second Week Review