Fuck Axis Hosting

[Rogue 9]

http://www.axishosting.com/

Never use this hosting company. Ever.

Just saying the important part first. Now for the explanation:

Librium Arcana used Axis Hosting. They'd been through a couple different hosting providers, and Axis Hosting was the latest one until today.

The site was often down, sometimes for extended periods, which was bad enough. The last such time, whatever it is they do to the server to make it go down had accidentally destroyed a large chunk of the site's data; they restored from weekly backups that were more than a week old, and were missing entire tables, such as the message board's private message function. They had to restore from backups they had on their own machines, which were months out of date because they were paying Axis to do the backup work for them and expected them to do it.

But this isn't the worst part. No, that's this: Today, they suspended the account without warning.

Why? Because Dark Silver wrote a negative review of their performance. You may find it here. They apparently considered this enough of an affront to completely cut off the service of paying customers without warning, and so far without returning their data.

[DarkSilver]

Update:

We got the data off of Axishosting, recent as of the account suspension, as far as I'm aware.

It is rather...dickish to say the least. But since we were looking for a new host provider anyway and our contract terminated at the end of the month anyway......

Fuck'em.

I signed up for a new webhost tonight, the site should be back up within the next two days or so.....we'll see.

Pretty much anything else I have to say about Axis was in that review...

[DarkSilver]

Well, I finally saw the "conversation" they had with the other Admin of LA after they shut us down....

Conversation

Scottie Taylor


Posted On: 14 Apr 2008 08:55 PM
Out of curiosity, what is the site suspended for now? It was working earlier today, and is not suddenly not working. What has changed in the last 12 hours to cause this? I'd just like to know because this will be the third instance of my site being put offline in as many months due to some technical problem or other and it's getting a bit tiresome.


Tina Peters


Posted On: 14 Apr 2008 08:57 PM
Due to your scathing review at webhostingstuff.com, it would appear that our
services are no longer suited to your needs. We're going to give you a
download link so that you can grab your files and move to a new host.

--Tina

Tina Peters
AxisHOST.com
Serving the web since 1997


Joshua B

I hold their cocksuckers.

[Darth Wong]

Well come on, what did you expect, signing up with a web hosting company that was named after the Axis of Evil?

[DarkSilver]

Well, originally, the site was called Admhosting - great company, I had one downtime of about a hour in two years of hosting with them. Even had the owner's cell and ICQ numbers incase something happened to the site.

Then they sold out to Axis....and for the past year, ain't had nothing but trouble.

[Masami von Weizegger]

Yeah, I've heard real bad things about axishosting while looking for web hosts, myself. They're real petty bastards as this incident proves. They've done similar things to other sites in the past. You either sit and take it up the ass from them, or you get kicked out into the cold.

Better luck with your next host, whoever it may be.

[Dave]

I haven't had any trouble with Netfirms, for what it's worth.

[Netko]

Due to your scathing review at webhostingstuff.com, it would appear that our
services are no longer suited to your needs. We're going to give you a
download link so that you can grab your files and move to a new host.

How does that work exactly? So by signing up with them you also sign up to a gag order? Somehow, I don't think they would have a problem with a glowingly positive review...

If you were in a dickish mood I'd recommend going over the hosting agreement and check if they properly covered themselves for something like this, and if not, sue them for deliberate denial of service.

Oh, and BTW, the link in the OP doesn't work for me.

[Darth Wong]

FYI, the libarc forums and blogs should be back up now. This new host has thus far given a good impression: we got ssh about an hour after asking for it (how many days did it take the last assholes?), the server so far has been pretty snappy in responding to my commands, and their offer seems both good and realistic. Best of all, this company did come with a recommendation of one of our users, so I have high hopes. We'll see what happens.

...I keep forgetting I'm on a remote X connection and doing all kinds of silly things to cause lag. Anyway, finally got to the axis terms and conditions, after going through their horrible website (UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH!!11! If they didn't just inherit the site, I wouldn't have approved buying from them.), and got the relevant section:

VIII. Termination:
This Agreement may be terminated by either party, without cause, by giving the other party 30 days written notice. Notice must be faxed or, mailed. Axis will not accept termination's by electronic mail or over the telephone. Notwithstanding the above, Axis may terminate service under this Agreement at any time, without penalty, if the Customer fails to comply with the terms of this Agreement, including nonpayment. Axis reserves the right to charge a reinstatement fee.

It seems that they own Scott at least one month (and we should probably send them a written request by mail or fax just to be sure they don't try to send another bill!). But, before that in the terms they did say they specifically deny any liability for downtime beyond pro-rating the monthly charge for time lost.

EDIT: Wait a minute: "termination's"? Come on. Idiots.

It also says they can terminate with no warning at any time if they feel you have not complied with 100% of the terms of the agreement. Who knows what obscure clause they thought you were violating? There might be one about not bad-mouthing Axis.

In any case, I tried webhosts and eventually gave up on all of them. That's why this forum is self-hosted. Get a reliable ISP with a static IP address, and then just hook up your own linux server. We've had the occasional downtime due to power failures or ISP problems, but on balance I don't think it's any worse than a typical webhost, particularly given our CPU, RAM, and disk space requirements.

[DarkSilver]

It sucks hard for now...

but eventually I do intend to setup my own Linux box and host the site off it.

Just will take a good bit of time...hopefully the new host will be decent enough to last till that time.