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ASPnix or Brinkster
- Thread starter Corvax
- Start date
My only recent experience with Brinkster is logging into their control panel as one of my customers moved from them to me.
I didn't like their control panel at all.
For some reason in the file manager you could not do much more than just upload to it. Although there were download options, they were all greyed out.
I didn't like their control panel at all.
For some reason in the file manager you could not do much more than just upload to it. Although there were download options, they were all greyed out.
legendaryfox
New Member
I used brinkster a loooong time ago...they were okay as a free host, but the stuff we see on this forum is definately a lot better. I think I ran out of bandwidth pretty quickly on brinkster. Support wise, they weren't really quick about that.
jsneeringer
New Member
Brinkster and ASPnix
I did a trial with Brinkster, and ran it to a problem that made me switch. I don't remember what it was, and it might not apply to you. They seemed pretty good, but I wasn't there a long time. They do have sales of some kind every couple of months.
I have had some good experiences with this ASPnix, and it took me a long time to decide to leave them, but I am making the move and hope to have all my sites moved in a day or two.
The biggest problem is lots of down time. One server with an important application has been down about twice a day for 10-15 days. About 5 days ago, they said they would replace it, but the problems continued for 4-5 more days. I think it's fixed now, but I've already started moving to a new provider. They seldom notice it’s down unless I tell them. When I submit a ticket, it's usually back up within 30-60 minutes, but if I'm asleep and don't notice, it usually stays down all night.
Today, I'm trying to get a database backup, so I can move to another provider. I did not tell them why I want it, but my ticket has been sitting there (while my site is down) for about 16 hours. About 15 hours ago, I got a response asking for more information, which I answered within 5 minutes, but have heard nothing since, until a couple of minutes ago while I was writing this review. He promises to have it in a few minutes, and threw in that they are never closed. They sure looked closed to me.
They seem to have only two people, Rick during the day and Roma the rest of the time. I think Rick took vacation, and Roma had to sleep sometime. To be fair, I should note that today is the Friday after thanksgiving. Roma was there at about 10 pm last night (Thanksgiving), and apparently woke up around 2 pm. I chose this time for my maintenance because I thought it would minimize disruption for my users.
Next, one of my customers is dissatisfied with the response time. It's not awful, but he's afraid that prospects attracted by a search engine will go elsewhere rather than wait. I have identified two other providers that seem to have better response times. ASPnix ignored my request to move this application to another server. (Once they gave a non-responsive answer, and the second time they literally did not respond at all.)
They often do not address the question and seldom give you all the information you need, but that’s the norm in ticket-based support. They can be quite careless about following instructions, which can be critical to maintaining the integrity of a database. You are dependent on them to backup and restore SQL database, and if they do it wrong you can lose data. My users have never told me I actually lost data, so probably nobody was on during the time interval for which the data was lost, but the potential was there because ASPnix didn't follow instructions. Rick is rather impulsive, and you can usually only communicate by submitting a ticket.
Also, they once withdrew a feature (SQL full-text searching) without notice, causing my site to stop working until I discovered it.
Finally, the Helm system is a bit awkward in that everything is domain oriented. If you have several domains, you must have a separate FTP account and SQL server account for each.
In summary, they are probably OK if you need ASP.NET (especially 2.0) or SQL Server (especially 2005), and can tolerate some support problems and down time. Otherwise, I would not go with them.
I did a trial with Brinkster, and ran it to a problem that made me switch. I don't remember what it was, and it might not apply to you. They seemed pretty good, but I wasn't there a long time. They do have sales of some kind every couple of months.
I have had some good experiences with this ASPnix, and it took me a long time to decide to leave them, but I am making the move and hope to have all my sites moved in a day or two.
The biggest problem is lots of down time. One server with an important application has been down about twice a day for 10-15 days. About 5 days ago, they said they would replace it, but the problems continued for 4-5 more days. I think it's fixed now, but I've already started moving to a new provider. They seldom notice it’s down unless I tell them. When I submit a ticket, it's usually back up within 30-60 minutes, but if I'm asleep and don't notice, it usually stays down all night.
Today, I'm trying to get a database backup, so I can move to another provider. I did not tell them why I want it, but my ticket has been sitting there (while my site is down) for about 16 hours. About 15 hours ago, I got a response asking for more information, which I answered within 5 minutes, but have heard nothing since, until a couple of minutes ago while I was writing this review. He promises to have it in a few minutes, and threw in that they are never closed. They sure looked closed to me.
They seem to have only two people, Rick during the day and Roma the rest of the time. I think Rick took vacation, and Roma had to sleep sometime. To be fair, I should note that today is the Friday after thanksgiving. Roma was there at about 10 pm last night (Thanksgiving), and apparently woke up around 2 pm. I chose this time for my maintenance because I thought it would minimize disruption for my users.
Next, one of my customers is dissatisfied with the response time. It's not awful, but he's afraid that prospects attracted by a search engine will go elsewhere rather than wait. I have identified two other providers that seem to have better response times. ASPnix ignored my request to move this application to another server. (Once they gave a non-responsive answer, and the second time they literally did not respond at all.)
They often do not address the question and seldom give you all the information you need, but that’s the norm in ticket-based support. They can be quite careless about following instructions, which can be critical to maintaining the integrity of a database. You are dependent on them to backup and restore SQL database, and if they do it wrong you can lose data. My users have never told me I actually lost data, so probably nobody was on during the time interval for which the data was lost, but the potential was there because ASPnix didn't follow instructions. Rick is rather impulsive, and you can usually only communicate by submitting a ticket.
Also, they once withdrew a feature (SQL full-text searching) without notice, causing my site to stop working until I discovered it.
Finally, the Helm system is a bit awkward in that everything is domain oriented. If you have several domains, you must have a separate FTP account and SQL server account for each.
In summary, they are probably OK if you need ASP.NET (especially 2.0) or SQL Server (especially 2005), and can tolerate some support problems and down time. Otherwise, I would not go with them.
