Has anyone noticed that HMS support has been horrible lately? I have been a customer since 2001 and their support has always been incredible. I have noticed in the past 3-4 months, multiple times it has taken multiple days to get a simple issue resolved (i.e. setting permissions on a folder or getting a custom tag installed or to get a cfc mapping).

If it did not directly effect my deadlines in getting sites complete, It really would not bother me too much.

I do not want to put down HMS at all, I love them. I was just wondering if anyone else experienced these issues lately. Also it seems that the techs that used to answer the phone where able to help you right then and there and a lot of them even knew ColdFusion. Now it almost always has to go to someone else and they get back to you whenever. It really holds up development sometimes.

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I do not want to offend anybody,
Frank

I haven't noticed this at all lately... still the same excellent service when I inquire about something.

Me To. Called a few times this week, and support picked up on first ring, and problem was solved in about 30 minutes there after.

It's funny, just today I came in to the office (on a Saturday) to finish a project for Monday morning. I get in at 8:00 am and when I try to connect to the project via Dreamweaver, I can not connect. The server response is timing out but I am able to connect to the website in a browser no problem. So I call support and the guy himself is having problems connecting to the server (no problem). He said that he was going to restart the service and if that did not work he would have someone look into to it and email me at the address on file.

I have things to do around town so I figure when support emails me, I will get it on my blackberry and I will go back into work.

I actually forgot something at the office so I went back in around 2.5 hours later and just checked to see if I can connect, and it worked. No email from support telling me the ticket was resolved or anything. It is now 1 hour after I checked it and still nothing. This would have been an enormous waste of a Saturday if I had not checked at that time. Maybe it is my fault for not checking in every once and a while but I am very used to support emailing me (they have never missed a followup email or ticket creation emails ever).

Nobody else is experiencing this??

I too have noticed the HMS support hasn't been as prompt as it used to. However the reasons I have called in have been more and more complicated with time ( not your standard permissions issue, or recycle the App pool issue ). It took 4 days to setup a VPS because of configuration issues, some of these were on their end. Not valiadating that the VPS was working before emailing me to tell me it was up. Some were just me learning IIS 6.0 for the first time. If you find yourself calling in alot because of issues with a Shared Hosting account. It might be time to upgrade to a VPS. HMS packs about 250 - 300 sites per server, where the VPS are 16 per server. I kind of wonder about the turnover at HMS in Support mainly because Certain Techs that were great, I never seem to reach anymore. I remember back when support would jump right on my issue. But now it seems they rather just submit a ticket to get it done later. I know its hard to have everyone know everything, but I rarely reach a support tech that can help me one on one, without submitting a ticket of which someone else trys to resolve only to be lost in translation. I would rather have the person addressing the ticket to call me to discuss my issue, than to try to go over the notes on the ticket, not understand the issue or assume something its not. I lost 4 days of productivity because of ticket issues like this.

I know this seems harse, but I am still appreciative. I have already dealed with the Hairless monkeys at 1and1 hosting, Godaddy, and others. Other hosts you sit on hold for 30 minutes, and they take days to even look at your ticket rather than HMS that gets someone on it within hours at the most. I still wouldn't host my sites anywhere else.

exactly!

I've noticed it, and spent over 2 hours today on simple, simple, simple things with support, and they still cannot fix the PHP problems that have begun on their end!

I'm so aggravated -- I truly hope this will not continue -- otherwise I'm finished with HMS!!

Just keep in mind if your issues are with a shared hosting account, and your site does alot of traffic you might think about getting your own VPS. That way you have more control over things. I have to admit that when I first started hosting with HMS 4 years ago, they had service down to an art. I could call in, get a person to answer the phone on the first ring. Have them address my issue immediately, and it was solved. Lately it seems they are putting peons on the phones and trying to run a layered support system similar to 1and1 hosting. Where they have several layers of support and the layer that answers the phones don't really have that much technical knowledge.

whitesites,
I have a VPS but for this specific site I needed it to be on a shared server because I needed more disc space.

I have noticed that recently it has been better and they follow up with a survey now after a ticket has been resolved. Maybe they realized that people where unhappy.

yeah I got one of the little surveys too.
But I have found that alot of the time they say, "yeah we will take care of it, and create a ticket", then I get no ticket confirmation, and it never gets fixed. There are quite a few guys in support who seem to tell us what we want to hear just to get us off the phones. Its as if they are playing counter Strike with their clan, and just want to get back to their game. If HMS wants to do things right they need to make sure the guy that answers the phone can solve most all problems. The layered support just causes mis communications between the customer and the guy who actually atempts to solve my issue. I already dealed with that BS with godaddy and 1and1. I am getting ready to colocate a server and if things don't improve the server will be hosted at my local datacenter in texas, instead of HMS.

Honestly, I'm glad that at least I'm not alone out here! Here is the thing, though: I'm a reseller, and cannot possibly justify selling VPS to my clients -- they can barely afford the shared solutions!

Also, my profit margin has gone way down since they eliminated the starter packages -- that was where all my income is -- now there is not much reason for me to continue with HMS, really! I'm a reseller for One World Hosting, and they seem to be much more competitive, and support is better!

Thanks for the advice, but VPS is just not for me (There is like a $20 difference per month, I think!)

I thought about the whole reseller thing and figured it wasn't worth the time. Just have your clients setup their own hosting accounts, email you the login info, and give you the referral credit which equals 1 free month of hosting. else if you want to start profiting from hosting get your own box off ebay and colocate it. for $1100 I got a duel 2.8 xeon with 2 Gigs ram, 2 x 146 SCSI 10k drives, Backup network and power supplies. after I get a legit copy of windows on it, and stats server/ mail server I will be ready to rock.

While I understand the concerns you all are making, I assure you we at HMS are dedicated to offering the best technical support around.

You may have noticed some new voices on our phones. But we also have some of the most technically knowledgeable people around. Plans have recently been implemented to allow these more experienced technicians to handle a higher volume of phone calls, therefore it is now more likely that you'll get someone who can resolve your issue on the phone.

HostMySite.com puts a great deal of effort into actively training management and it's support staff members, and we are all working to better ourselves in what we do daily. You can be sure that everyone working at HostMySite loves what they do, and it means everything to us to be able find a solution to your most difficult inquiries.

As you have stated you've received our customer surveys and I encourage you to leave feedback anytime you get the opportunity. I have personally been assigned to ensure customer satisfaction when we receive a survey from an unhappy customer on multiple occasions.

To make a long story short, we are 110% dedicated to your satisfaction. If you find that for any reason you are unsatisfied with the service you are receiving, you can call us 24x7 to speak with a technician who truly cares about your issue and will work to see that it is resolved.

Digispire,

If you were to purchase a single VPS and migrate four of your shared customers onto the VPS would that not negate the cost of the VPS alltogether?

3 .Net plans are the same price as the base VPS, and the server could easily handle that number of sites.

Just a suggestion

You could run many more than 4 sites on a base windows VPS. But just don't plan on running your mail server and stats server and database on this VPS. 256 Megs of ram isn't enough. IF you are plannin on trying to run all that get at least a 512 Meg VPS. or get a shared linux plan to run these parts of your website. Also keep in mind you could always install stats locally, and retrieve your logs VIA FTP, I have done this and it was easy to setup. base windows VPS is only good if you want to run the Web Server. keep your other servers off the VPS.