cvos Posted February 10, 2009 Report Share Posted February 10, 2009 i have a reseller account at a company and the service has really deteriorated. I would love to find a reliable host that is not going to be sold. how many tech people monitor the servers and what is the backup system? also how is smtp email handled - we have heard some hosts have email deliverability problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted February 10, 2009 Report Share Posted February 10, 2009 i have a reseller account at a company and the service has really deteriorated. I would love to find a reliable host that is not going to be sold. how many tech people monitor the servers and what is the backup system? also how is smtp email handled - we have heard some hosts have email deliverability problems.We're a smaller company (we don't try to hide this) and we generally have one person monitoring the servers and one person handling support tickets at any given time. We only have three servers at this point in time. We run cPanel and we currently use the cPanel backup system on a weekly and daily basis. We don't charge to restore backups (unlike some other providers). We are actually working on moving all servers to R1Soft CDP Backup systems however we are still working on the details and hope to have this launched within the next two to three months if all goes well. On the backup note, we do allow you to create Full Backups whenever you wish and we recommend (no matter what provider you are with) that you always have a recent backup on-hand. SMTP is handled using Exim on the server that your account would be on, we do have mailing limits in place in order to prevent IP blacklisting and other negative side-effects from outgoing spam. You can view our mailing policy at http://www.mddhosting.com/mailpolicy.php. Generally a host will have email deliverability issues when they don't have email limits or they don't monitor and take care of any blacklist status issues that may arise. If you have any more questions feel free to ask! Thank you, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvos Posted February 10, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2009 thanks, there is nothing wrong with small companies. they often offer the best service. when did you start your business? i see the http://www.exim.org/ site, is this different than standard email smtp? can we use our own nameservers like ns1.mysite.com we assume everything is fine, but what if something were to happen to you (god forbid) what would happen to the servers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted February 10, 2009 Report Share Posted February 10, 2009 thanks, there is nothing wrong with small companies. they often offer the best service. when did you start your business?Late 2007. i see the http://www.exim.org/ site, is this different than standard email smtp?Exim is just the name of the program that handles SMTP, likely you've used it thousands of times without ever knowing it was called Exim. can we use our own nameservers like ns1.mysite.comYes. we assume everything is fine, but what if something were to happen to you (god forbid) what would happen to the servers?MDDHosting, LLC is it's own entity with a disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan. Should I (god forbit) pass away MDDHosting will continue to exist and function and grow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvos Posted February 10, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2009 so far you have better response time than most large hosting companies - i have seen a disturbing trend of companies REMOVING forums and phone numbers. +2 what is your policy with secure sites and SSL certificates? is there a cost for extra IP's? can we send you certs to install? have any of your servers ever been hit by digg.com or other traffic spike? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 so far you have better response time than most large hosting companies - i have seen a disturbing trend of companies REMOVING forums and phone numbers. +2I man the forums mostly by myself for now so that others can spend time doing things like answering support tickets The forums are primarily for client-to-client support however we're a relatively small company and only a small portion of a company's clients will ever use a company forum so there are not too many clients on the forums yet. We do offer phone support however it is not 24/7 but our support ticket support is 24/7 with very good response times, averaging around 9 minutes I believe currently. What is your policy with secure sites and SSL certificates? is there a cost for extra IP's? can we send you certs to install?If you send us an SSL that was correctly generated and doesn't need any special care during installation we can install it for you with no problem, ordinarily there is a $30 charge but we often times will waive this as long as there are no major issues (such as an incorrect private key, missing a CA bundle, etc...) Dedicated IPs are $2/month and if you order an SSL Certificate through us directly we will install it free and give you a free Dedicated IP as long as you use us as your SSL Certificate provider. have any of your servers ever been hit by digg.com or other traffic spike?Generaly we will create a static version of the site until the traffic spike subsides and should it be necessary we can move any site being hit hard by traffic temporarily to another server. Generally we do our best to keep our clients' sites online even through large traffic spikes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvos Posted February 11, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 so far mdd is very impressive. thanks for the info, i hope it helps others out as well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 so far mdd is very impressive. thanks for the info, i hope it helps others out as wellNo problem, if you do have any further questions just post back or contact sales directly! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvos Posted February 12, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2009 do you have a redundant system for DNS? what about a backup mailserver? Some hosts have a server in a different datacenter to handle the second nameserver and backup email service. is this available? do you a public page available that shows phpinfo() ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted February 13, 2009 Report Share Posted February 13, 2009 do you have a redundant system for DNS? what about a backup mailserver?We primarily run DNS off of the server that you are hosted on - we are looking into a clustered DNS setup however at this time it's not something that we offer. Moving to a clustered setup would not be difficult to do however we don't like the built in system that cPanel uses so we are exploring other options. Some hosts have a server in a different datacenter to handle the second nameserver and backup email service. is this available?Currently we only have our servers in the Dallas, Texas facility and there is no redundancy built directly into the mail system - only into the server, electricity, networking, and hardware. do you a public page available that shows phpinfo() ?Yes - http://www.mddhosting.com/support/serverstatus.php has a link to PHPInfo for our Reseller and Semi-Dedicated servers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvos Posted February 14, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2009 i think my last post went MIA. thanks for the straightforward answers. one could purchase secondary email/dns server could be through dnsmadeeasy as a supplemental service. could you support this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted February 14, 2009 Report Share Posted February 14, 2009 i think my last post went MIA. thanks for the straightforward answers. one could purchase secondary email/dns server could be through dnsmadeeasy as a supplemental service. could you support this?Yes secondary e-mail/DNS can be configured although with 99.99% uptime on average and 8 redundant networks I personally wouldn't see it as a necessity. If it is something you wanted to do then you would be welcome to set it up. As a reseller you would have access to your own DNS zones for your domain and the domains of your clients and we would be happy to help you set them up if you needed any assistance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvos Posted February 16, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2009 Have you ever had a server get on an email blacklist? if so how long has it taken to get this removed? What are your long term plans for this company - do you see it growing into a second godaddy or something similar? no wirries if you don't want to answer this publicly. thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted February 16, 2009 Report Share Posted February 16, 2009 Have you ever had a server get on an email blacklist? if so how long has it taken to get this removed?We impose a 200 email/hour limit on all accounts but will raise the limit on a per-account basis when provided with justification. We've had our fair share of spammers get on the server and try firing off 100~200,000 emails as fast as possible but all but the first 199 emails bounced (they never left the server) so generally we don't get on blacklists. The one time we were added to a blacklist we were removed within about an hour or so. We run RBL checks every day on our IP ranges and resolve any issues as quickly as possible. What are your long term plans for this company - do you see it growing into a second godaddy or something similar? no wirries if you don't want to answer this publicly. thanksI don't work a "day job" or do anything besides run MDDHosting and work for MDDHosting. I don't want the company to become as large as "GoDaddy" because at that scale it's hard to provide the high quality one-on-one type of customer service that we take pride in providing. I'm in this more to provide a high quality product at an affordable price with a high level of service and support because I want to be and not because I plan on getting rich by doing it. I have no problem answering your questions in a public forum as we have absolutely nothing to hide If you have more questions just let us know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvos Posted February 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 17, 2009 that's a good thing you don't want to become godaddy. They are the cattle farm of hosting compaNies. If you were to rate mdd what would you say is the greatest strength ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted February 17, 2009 Report Share Posted February 17, 2009 that's a good thing you don't want to become godaddy. They are the cattle farm of hosting compaNies. If you were to rate mdd what would you say is the greatest strength ? High uptime 100%~99.99%Fantastic support - average response time around 9~15 minutes Those are likely our two strongest points, besides being in a Tier1 datacenter with 8 redundant network connections including DDoS protection by TippingPoint and CiscoGuard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvos Posted February 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 17, 2009 uptime and support are the cores to a good hosting service. with 100% uptime, support would be near nil. How can you offer a free account on WHMCS this is a fairly high end SAAS platform. is this really something resellers can use indefinitely for free? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted February 17, 2009 Report Share Posted February 17, 2009 uptime and support are the cores to a good hosting service. with 100% uptime, support would be near nil. How can you offer a free account on WHMCS this is a fairly high end SAAS platform. is this really something resellers can use indefinitely for free?You can use a free WHMCS License as long as the license is used on an account on our servers, it's not "free for life" meaning that if you move elsewhere you get to keep it - WHMCS won't license us the software in that way. As long as you are our client and you use the software on our server you can use it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvos Posted February 18, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 18, 2009 Things change and companies come and go. Will you swear on the document most sacred to you that you will give fair warning before selling, merging or making any substantial changes to your hosting business? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted February 18, 2009 Report Share Posted February 18, 2009 Things change and companies come and go. Will you swear on the document most sacred to you that you will give fair warning before selling, merging or making any substantial changes to your hosting business?Honesty and total disclosure are always the best courses of action, I don't particularly have any sacred documents but should the event ever arise to where I would no longer be in control of the company I would certainly make my best effort to notify the clients. Being that hosting is what I do for a living I don't see myself leaving it anytime soon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvos Posted February 20, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2009 what are the provisions in case of total server failure? if a server happens to go bad how long would it take to replace it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted February 20, 2009 Report Share Posted February 20, 2009 what are the provisions in case of total server failure? if a server happens to go bad how long would it take to replace it?It would depend on the type of failure - if it were to for example catch on fire it could take 2~4 hours to get a new server online and operational again however if a drive just failed it could be as quick as 10~15 minutes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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