Dot Block negative review #18489 by BornSupercharged (ciamos@g...)
Dot Block got a negative review on
21 Corporate Drive Suite 203
Clifton Park , NY 12065 US
☎ Phone (866) 923-4550
📧 support@d...BornSupercharged ( ciamos@g... )
Avoid like the plague! Worst host EVER!
For over a year I was with dotBlock, and it seemed at least once every 2 weeks the server would go down and not come back up. Sometimes if I logged into their account management area, I could reboot the server. Other times, that didn’t work and I had to file a ticket.
Here is my experience with dotBlock, and why I believe you should…
AVOID dotBlock like the PLAGUE!
December 24th, 2010
- $10 late fee improperly imposed on my account. Ticket #933545 opened and a refund was given.
January 3rd, 2011
- My IP is blacklisted from accessing cp.dotblock.com. I could no longer manage my account, they unblocked my IP after submitting ticket #194120.
January 4th, 2011
- My server is down and I’m unable to bring it back up. Ticket #962443 is opened, problem is fixed.
January 27th, 2011
- I notice they’re offering “double memory”, would have been nice to find out I was paying the same price as others but only getting half the memory. Ticket #901370 created, and my memory was doubled for free.
March 2nd, 2011
- I submit ticket #375648:
Both of my dotblock servers have gone offline twice in the past week. Today is the second time. I run MySQL with InnoDB so when they offline without being properly shutdown, it messes up the database and it takes me hours to get it all working again.
Why does this keep happening? If it’s something that will be an ongoing issue, I’ll need to find another host because I can’t afford for my clients to keep losing data and having their sites go down.
Their response surprises me because it’s my understanding this is CLOUD VPS, and that it’s all fully redundant. This is their response:
The physical server [your site] was hosted on suffered a hardware issue and was automatically failed over to another node in our datacenter. Your other virtual machine [another of your sites] is on the same node so it was affected at the same time your database server was down. Although this is not a common occurrence, we can migrate your [other site] virtual machine to a different node so that all of your virtual machines aren’t on the same physical server. Please note that this will require downtime of about 15-20 minutes. If you would like to proceed, please let us know and we will get started asap. Thank you. -David
March 14th, 2011
- I reopen ticket #375648 because both servers went down again. Their response:
I wanted to inform you that we have been closely monitoring all Virtual Machines on this node. While there were no hardware failures I do see that all VM’s are now pulling from the original node following modifications to the previous node to improve performance and stability. While the failover process or the reverse process is typically very quick it may have resulted in a brief period of interruption or the restart of services for some users which was not anticipated. I haven’t seen any further recent problems and there have also been a few minor changes which should help improve performance moving forward. I apologize for any inconveniences you may have experienced with your account in the past and I fully expect that you will experience the most reliable services moving forward. If you need any further assistance at all please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you. -Sean
During the next couple of months, one of my clients that had a dedicated server with them gets fed up and tells me to cancel his dotBlock server. That is done on 6/6/11 through ticket 303790
July 12th, 2011
- My server goes offline AGAIN, I submit ticket #172030. Response:
There was an unfortunate hiccup on the network and the server had an intermittent outage. There is a 99.5% uptime guarantee on the dotblock accounts and this was within that user experience. The server is back online. Sorry for the outage. We will track this for further traffic patterns and if there is another occurrence we would honor the terms which you signed up under in your initial sign-up.
Thanks for choosing Dotblock,
Michael Lavery
August 8th, 2011
- My card shows two charges from dotBlock. Ticket is submitted and they said one would be refunded.
September 22nd, 2011
- I downgrade to just 1 block and 1 ip, because the service has been so crappy I didn’t feel like I needed to be paying over a hundred dollars a month anymore.
Over the next couple months, the server randomly goes down. My clients get very frustrated because they rely on their email for their businesses.
December 8th, 2011
- The server is down again, I get a call from a client at about 8:30am asking why they couldn’t check their email. Ticket #846570 is opened. Response:
The physical mahcine hosting your VPS was down at 8 a.m. this morning. We have rebooted it and your machine should be back online.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Michael Lavery
So again they’re referring to my cloud vps as a server, as if it’s not really a cloud but a simple shared box. Talk about FALSE ADVERTISING!
December 9th, 2011
- The server is down again, I can no longer log in, when I tried to connect with Putty it warned me that the key is different. My root password is not working anymore either. And when I try to access my website in the browser, I get a default cPanel placeholder. Response:
I am sorry you are unable to login and that the site is down. We do not have the new root password either. The password we have on file is no longer valid. Have you changed it recently? Because if you have not changed it then this could represent a possible privilege escalation on your VPS. The server is online and responding to ping and I can get an SSH login prompt. But without the root password we cannot assess the website being unresponsive or the possible privilege escalation. The only way to reset the root password is to reboot and reset the password via the command line. Please let us know if you want us to reset the root password.
Thanks,
Michael Lavery
I tell them nothing changed on my end, it came back up on the 8th and then its down again today (the 9th).
Their response:
We were able to login after resetting the password. Only to find out that no websites were installed and the Cpanel seemed like a fresh install. We are not certain at this point how this happened. And we hope that you may have a backup of your files. I know you were worried about this and we did everything we could to ensure that your databases and websites were OK, but there isn’t anything on the server. We haven’t given up hope yet and there will be another systems administrator looking at the issue.
If you could answer a couple questions it would help our investigation :
Was there anything else unusual yesterday beyond the server going down due to the machine being down? What time did you become aware today that your site was down again? Had you tried to reboot it or anything else in the control panel?
Sorry that this happened and we want to recover everything we can if possible.
Michael Lavery
I asked for a refund, let them know that EVERYTHING was gone and my clients didnt have backups of their site. I was totally screwed because I put all my eggs in “the cloud” assuming their 99.99% uptime guarantee was true. I should have known by this point that their service was total shit.
The response I get confirms that THEY messed up, THEY wiped my server and I lost EVERYTHING, and my clients lost EVERYTHING as well:
I understand completely; although it makes me very sad to see you leave. It looks like the cause was a very obscure bug in a script we use for installations, however if you are absolutely sure you want to leave I can give you a full refund of your most recent payment of 34.95 (that is minus the 14.95 for cPanel) and cancel your account.
-Maxwell
After all of that, they don’t even offer to give me a FULL refund. Minus some cPanel fee, seriously ? You cost me TIME and MONEY, as well as headache and getting bitched out by clients. I again pushed for a full refund and they agreed. I will see if I get it or not.
So please, stay the hell away from dotBlock unless you want constant troubles and server outages.
For over a year I was with dotBlock, and it seemed at least once every 2 weeks the server would go down and not come back up. Sometimes if I logged into their account management area, I could reboot the server. Other times, that didn’t work and I had to file a ticket.
Here is my experience with dotBlock, and why I believe you should…
AVOID dotBlock like the PLAGUE!
December 24th, 2010
- $10 late fee improperly imposed on my account. Ticket #933545 opened and a refund was given.
January 3rd, 2011
- My IP is blacklisted from accessing cp.dotblock.com. I could no longer manage my account, they unblocked my IP after submitting ticket #194120.
January 4th, 2011
- My server is down and I’m unable to bring it back up. Ticket #962443 is opened, problem is fixed.
January 27th, 2011
- I notice they’re offering “double memory”, would have been nice to find out I was paying the same price as others but only getting half the memory. Ticket #901370 created, and my memory was doubled for free.
March 2nd, 2011
- I submit ticket #375648:
Both of my dotblock servers have gone offline twice in the past week. Today is the second time. I run MySQL with InnoDB so when they offline without being properly shutdown, it messes up the database and it takes me hours to get it all working again.
Why does this keep happening? If it’s something that will be an ongoing issue, I’ll need to find another host because I can’t afford for my clients to keep losing data and having their sites go down.
Their response surprises me because it’s my understanding this is CLOUD VPS, and that it’s all fully redundant. This is their response:
The physical server [your site] was hosted on suffered a hardware issue and was automatically failed over to another node in our datacenter. Your other virtual machine [another of your sites] is on the same node so it was affected at the same time your database server was down. Although this is not a common occurrence, we can migrate your [other site] virtual machine to a different node so that all of your virtual machines aren’t on the same physical server. Please note that this will require downtime of about 15-20 minutes. If you would like to proceed, please let us know and we will get started asap. Thank you. -David
March 14th, 2011
- I reopen ticket #375648 because both servers went down again. Their response:
I wanted to inform you that we have been closely monitoring all Virtual Machines on this node. While there were no hardware failures I do see that all VM’s are now pulling from the original node following modifications to the previous node to improve performance and stability. While the failover process or the reverse process is typically very quick it may have resulted in a brief period of interruption or the restart of services for some users which was not anticipated. I haven’t seen any further recent problems and there have also been a few minor changes which should help improve performance moving forward. I apologize for any inconveniences you may have experienced with your account in the past and I fully expect that you will experience the most reliable services moving forward. If you need any further assistance at all please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you. -Sean
During the next couple of months, one of my clients that had a dedicated server with them gets fed up and tells me to cancel his dotBlock server. That is done on 6/6/11 through ticket 303790
July 12th, 2011
- My server goes offline AGAIN, I submit ticket #172030. Response:
There was an unfortunate hiccup on the network and the server had an intermittent outage. There is a 99.5% uptime guarantee on the dotblock accounts and this was within that user experience. The server is back online. Sorry for the outage. We will track this for further traffic patterns and if there is another occurrence we would honor the terms which you signed up under in your initial sign-up.
Thanks for choosing Dotblock,
Michael Lavery
August 8th, 2011
- My card shows two charges from dotBlock. Ticket is submitted and they said one would be refunded.
September 22nd, 2011
- I downgrade to just 1 block and 1 ip, because the service has been so crappy I didn’t feel like I needed to be paying over a hundred dollars a month anymore.
Over the next couple months, the server randomly goes down. My clients get very frustrated because they rely on their email for their businesses.
December 8th, 2011
- The server is down again, I get a call from a client at about 8:30am asking why they couldn’t check their email. Ticket #846570 is opened. Response:
The physical mahcine hosting your VPS was down at 8 a.m. this morning. We have rebooted it and your machine should be back online.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Michael Lavery
So again they’re referring to my cloud vps as a server, as if it’s not really a cloud but a simple shared box. Talk about FALSE ADVERTISING!
December 9th, 2011
- The server is down again, I can no longer log in, when I tried to connect with Putty it warned me that the key is different. My root password is not working anymore either. And when I try to access my website in the browser, I get a default cPanel placeholder. Response:
I am sorry you are unable to login and that the site is down. We do not have the new root password either. The password we have on file is no longer valid. Have you changed it recently? Because if you have not changed it then this could represent a possible privilege escalation on your VPS. The server is online and responding to ping and I can get an SSH login prompt. But without the root password we cannot assess the website being unresponsive or the possible privilege escalation. The only way to reset the root password is to reboot and reset the password via the command line. Please let us know if you want us to reset the root password.
Thanks,
Michael Lavery
I tell them nothing changed on my end, it came back up on the 8th and then its down again today (the 9th).
Their response:
We were able to login after resetting the password. Only to find out that no websites were installed and the Cpanel seemed like a fresh install. We are not certain at this point how this happened. And we hope that you may have a backup of your files. I know you were worried about this and we did everything we could to ensure that your databases and websites were OK, but there isn’t anything on the server. We haven’t given up hope yet and there will be another systems administrator looking at the issue.
If you could answer a couple questions it would help our investigation :
Was there anything else unusual yesterday beyond the server going down due to the machine being down? What time did you become aware today that your site was down again? Had you tried to reboot it or anything else in the control panel?
Sorry that this happened and we want to recover everything we can if possible.
Michael Lavery
I asked for a refund, let them know that EVERYTHING was gone and my clients didnt have backups of their site. I was totally screwed because I put all my eggs in “the cloud” assuming their 99.99% uptime guarantee was true. I should have known by this point that their service was total shit.
The response I get confirms that THEY messed up, THEY wiped my server and I lost EVERYTHING, and my clients lost EVERYTHING as well:
I understand completely; although it makes me very sad to see you leave. It looks like the cause was a very obscure bug in a script we use for installations, however if you are absolutely sure you want to leave I can give you a full refund of your most recent payment of 34.95 (that is minus the 14.95 for cPanel) and cancel your account.
-Maxwell
After all of that, they don’t even offer to give me a FULL refund. Minus some cPanel fee, seriously ? You cost me TIME and MONEY, as well as headache and getting bitched out by clients. I again pushed for a full refund and they agreed. I will see if I get it or not.
So please, stay the hell away from dotBlock unless you want constant troubles and server outages.
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