I'm Finally Reviewing Tch!

[DarqFlare]

Alrighty! I've decided it's time for me to post a formal review of TCH! YAY! I'll use a format similar to shakes' review...

 

Pros

- Excellent support. The support here at TCH is absolutely wonderful. The people here are very quick and responsive, and they'll get to a help ticket extremely fast. I remember when I started up my first account here, I had a help ticket rather quickly. I put it in and didn't check my email for about 4 hours and it was already there. I thought to myself "Was that an autoresponse?" It wasn't. I thought it was a fluke until about my 3rd or 4th help ticket that was addressed in under 30 minutes.

- This goes with the first item, somewhat. The staff and service here is awesome. They are extremely nice. They go out of their way (For the most part) for you. Explanations almost always follow anything they change on TCH, whether it be a plan change or just upgrading to a new CPanel.

- The community is great. I like to think of myself as a part of the great community here. Everybody is so nice and helpful, much like the actual TCH support. TCH has helped to breed a great community of webmasters that help each other (And in turn, end up helping ease the support load of the staff... Which is a really good way to do business). The mere fact these Family Forums exist say miles about TCH.

- Good hosting plans. Pretty much! I mean, I was skeptical when my friend signed up for an account here, but he said everything worked fine, so I signed up, weary of poor service. Everything exceeded my expecations. the servers are very, VERY well kept. They run great, and the staff addresses issues in a very timely manner. Even the older servers are kept up to par with newer ones, and that's rare. I had an associate on my previous host with me, and he was on one of their older models. Not only was that model having problems, they didn't refund any of his money when it had continued problems, and they also refused to move him onto a newer server. He had to get a different hosting company (Perhaps I should mention TCH to him).

 

Cons

- Sometimes things are taken away. This is really rare, but in my opinion, if you offer a service to the customer, it should never be revoked in the future. If you don't want the customer to have a service, never introduce it in the first place. This somehwat revolves around the shell access that was removed. I wasn't using it myself, but I think it's generally not a good idea to have something available to the customer then revoke it at a later date. It's even worse if the customer was dependant upon whatever was taken away.

- Add-on domains not available. Yes, this is also relevant to another review (shakes). I would love to buy the company domain name for myself, but I won't because I don't want to spend more money per month for a new hosting service for it. It's not important enough. So I have it set to a subdomain of my flagship website. I'm just a little ticked because I would like to have the domain hooked up to one of my existing accounts. It's not like it would be high-traffic. Someone mentioned reseller accounts - that costs more money, and as I said before, it's not worth it to me.

- DoS deletion. I disagree with this. A member of the TCH community was subjected to a DoS attack recently, and was given a "second chance" at keeping the account here. I strongly disagree with how TCH handled this. Granted, it's in the Terms of Service that a DoS is grounds to delete a hosted account. But that's crap (Excuse my language). He cannot help the fact someone else brought down the server through his website. He was not responsible for it. If my website was subject to a DoS attack, I'd be sorely displeased if I was removed for it. I understand these are shared servers, but the consumers cannot help it. Not only that, we do not have the server-level access to help prevent a DoS attack from happening to our websites! So it comes down to this... 1) We have limited power over our hosting accounts, therefore we cannot do anything to avert a DoS. 2) Theoretically, a DoS occurs from our website. 3) Our website is removed from TCH because it brought others down. - I don't agree with this process. The TCH staff does such a great job monitoring things, they should simply identify a DoS and block the IP its coming from, rather than holding the innocent customer responsible.

 

All-in-all, Rock Sign. Yes, there are some cons, but for the most part, they're exceptions to the rule. Some things will happen from time to time, but overall, the pros far outweigh the cons here.

 

I'd suggest switching to TCH as soon as possible, everybody! The longer you wait, the more time you're on a bad host!

[Head Guru]

Thanks for your honest review. I normally do not comment on client reviews but would like to take a moment to give my views on a couple of points.

 

From your pros -

 

Support - We really pride ourselves on the support we offer to our clients. In fact, in most cases support issues are turned around in under 1 hour. In some cases it is longer and in many cases its

 

Community - Nothing like this forum community. It really is nice to have so many people that care about our family.

 

3. Servers - Yes we really treat our servers as you say. Upgrades are done as needed and users are kept happy. We dont forget about you once you sign up.

 

From your cons -

 

Sometimes things are take away - Yes your are correct. When a product or service becomes non-profitable, becomes a security risk, decreases server reliablity or in general degrades service; then it is removed. The only two things we have ever taken away are a webstats package (we offered three versions and reduced it to one and even asked users to help us pick what version to keep) and shell access.

 

Shell Access. There was a incident that occured on a server. A user with shell access compromised the server and ended up causing major problems with the server. I ended up pulling the server from service and moving the clients to a new server. I could have ignored the issue and simply formatted the drives and resinstalled everything but thought the most responsible thing was to take corrective action. The only "users" that lost shell access are the ones on that server.

 

Add-on domains - If you do a search in the forums you will see this has been explained. I will take another stab at it. I dont offer add on domains for one simple reason. Server Stabilty. It is really that simple. I know that if TCH controls the number of domains per server that we can better control the stability of the server. There are certain account to server ratios that we use when bringing a server up to production levels. If we allowed users to add domains to their accounts than we would not be able to control the loads as well as we do now.

 

Dos Deletions - You are way off base on this one. Accounts that are subjected to a Denial of Service attack are subject to immediate termination. This is for a very very simple reason. Server Stabilty. Several things in your assumptions are incorrect.

 

You state:

 

"He cannot help the fact someone else brought down the server through his website" In most cases this is not the truth. Most sites that are subjected to attacks are attacked for very clear reasons. However, in some cases the attacks are without reason.

 

You state: "He was not responsible for it"

 

He is and was 100% responsible for anything that occurs to or on his site. Afterall its his site not ours.

 

You state: "I understand these are shared servers, but the consumers cannot help it"

 

What about the other sites on that server. Is it fair that while we attempt to null the effects of the issues with your site that every other domain on that server goes down? No it makes no sense at all.

 

You state: "Not only that, we do not have the server-level access to help prevent a DoS attack from happening to our websites! So it comes down to this... 1) We have limited power over our hosting accounts, therefore we cannot do anything to avert a DoS. 2) Theoretically, a DoS occurs from our website. 3) Our website is removed from TCH because it brought others down. - I don't agree with this process."

 

Server level access has nothing to do with stopping a attack. 1. You have full control over your site. 2. Attacks are against your site not from your site. 3. If your account is the subject of repeated abuse it will be terminated. The process is there to protect the community of users on your server.

 

You state: "The TCH staff does such a great job monitoring things, they should simply identify a DoS and block the IP its coming from, rather than holding the innocent customer responsible."

 

You have never been on the brunt end of a DDoS attack. If was as simple as blocking on IP at our borders then of course that would be no problem. A ddos attack is inbound from more than one IP address. Sometimes it can be several hundered or several thousand IP addresses. Furthermore certain inbound attacks can not be firewalled. In order to filter an attack, you must be able to seperate the good packets from the bad packets. The job of the good attacker is to make certain you can't do this.

 

The DOS policy is in place to protect our community of users. If one account has to be terminated to protect the family on the server, then that is the way it has to be. I am sorry but that is a fact of life at any host. We however are very public in letting people know about our policy.

 

Thanks for your review.

 

Bill

[DarqFlare]

Hmm... The webalizer everybody pretty much gave input on, and I didn't know that there have only been two things taken at this point. I guess that leaves the shell access... That's tricky too. Security and all, I understand... I figured there was an incident that caused it to be removed, but it still sucks it had to be removed at all.

 

Ah, ok... I guess I missed the explanation of domain control. I understand that stance, and respect it. Too bad it has to be that way though.

 

I didn't know a DDoS could ceom from multiple sources, so I guess that does make it tricky to defend against it. Maybe someday they'll add-in some DoS protection to server packages... In any case, I still don't like the account deletion from a DoS. I understand, and perhaps I should also mention again that I do respect the position that TCH has on it. I also feel that other users on the shared server should not have their websites fall because of a DoS on another website... I guess I'm just upset that there's really no other way to handle a website that gets hit by a DoS attack.

 

----

 

Let me add on to my review here. This is why TCH is great. I told everybody that they provide explanations, and here's HG himself giving insight to the Cons I provided!

 

I should probably point out that all of the Cons I listed were there for security reasons... I mean, they're there to protect us anyway, so I suppose they aren't all that bad... :hug:

[Deverill]

Here's something else for everyone to consider on the DoS issue. Please note, this is not an official TCH policy statement but rather just the comments of a user who'se been here awhile.

 

Just because TCH can delete an account for DoS attacks and just because they have temporarily disabled accounts to take care of attacks in the past does not mean that they do or ever will unceremoniously shut you down for being in the wrong place at the wrong time!

 

Not meant as an attack on anyone, but some of the recent posts on this topic by several people seem to assume that Head Guru will delete you if you have one little misstep.

 

I had a situation where my website had an email address posted that would forward incoming emails to a client's non-public address. He was on AOL and when the spams started rolling in he started clicking on Report-Spam and AOL complained to TCH and then TCH shut off my domain as per their policy of zero tolerance for spamming. I could say it was not my fault, but I set up the forwarder and ultimately I was sending spam to AOL so it was my fault.

 

I sent an IM to Rick and he told me why it was suspended and we batted back and forth some ideas and I realized that it was the mail forward. I changed my passwords (just in case) and got rid of the forward and he immediately turned my domain back on within minutes!

 

TCH does not want to be a mean big-brother that's waiting to smack us when we're doing something. In fact, I'd bet that they would be happiest if they never hear anything from or about us and it ran like clockwork. They do, however, have the right to run the business as they see fit and we have the choice to stay or go. All things considered, losing shell access to secure the server, and not allowing add-on domains for the stability of the server, and shutting down my neighbor's site when they are dDoS'd for the stability of my site on the server sounds like a Good Thing [tm].

 

I hope I don't sound like I'm confronting anyone as that is not my intent - I just wanted to take the opportunity to express my views on the issues which I think are being seen from only one perspective.