Webbstre

Customer
My Experiences With Sparknode (retitled)

Hey all! It's that time of the year when I get annoyed with my host and start looking at alternatives. Long story short: I'm at Dreamhost, and I feel like they've gone downhill in recent history, and that combined with my slow decline in traffic means my dedicated server is now pretty much overkill and more than I need to be paying ATM. I've thought about leaving them in the past, but between my personal ignorance at how much server resources I needed and the huge difference between VPS services and the cheap dedicated I'm using now meant I always ended up staying.

I was looking at Hivelocity for a while, but the managed services are more expensive than what my sites can currently afford and I didn't have the time/experience to learn how to completely manage a server myself. Apparently in the past year Hivelocity created Sparknode, which has decent looking VPS and Cloud VMS services. DBTech swears by Hivelocity, so I started doing some research on Sparknode to see if it was as good as I'd heard Hivelocity is. Here's how that turned out:

1- There are almost no reviews or threads online about Sparknode from people using the service. I found exactly three people who even mentioned using them - one who complained of downtime, one who didn't say much at all, and one who was vaguely positive. Most of the posts online about them are just people who work there basically advertising.

2- One of the people who talked about Sparknode said that for the Cloud VMS service it advertises that you get an entire core, but you only get 10% of a core for each one you order. This lead to a huge conversation about a good ratio between RAM and CPU percentages, which just came out with me having the impression that Sparknode's Cloud VMS service isn't so good for the CPU-side of things.

3- Last year they had a 35% off for life sale on VPS and Cloud VMS sign-ups for Cyber Monday. This basically would mean I could get a pretty decent setup on the Cloud VMS and have it be much cheaper than my current dedicated, and any time I need more resources it shouldn't be too hard to upgrade and keep it at a price I can handle.

4- I saw it mentioned on these boards that if you work with Cosmic when you sign up they'll help you get vbulletin and all of your DB-Tech modifications installed and set up on the server for free, which would be awesome to make sure I'm getting the most out of my hardware.

5- I compiled a few questions about the service to ask a sales representative about. Unfortunately as they don't have a support forum or similar service for e-mail (at least that was easily visible), the live chat was my only option. I got in, and started with this:
I've got several questions and I'm completely new to the idea of Cloud VMS.
I've been using a dedicated server on another service for a little over a year now, but lately the traffic has been dying down and I'm looking to move to a cheaper alternative
but I'd like to know how the Cloud VMS service compares with a dedicated server to start with Like, what are the differences.

After several long minutes of silence the sales person responded with a sentence about there not being any admins on the floor, and then to send all details via e-mail. It didn't make any sense, especially since the first responsibility of a sales person for a company like that should be on how and why someone should switch to their service. I'm pretty confident the person was talking to someone else at the same time and started responding to someone else in my box, AFTER making me wait a long time for any response at all. I got pretty pissed off at this and just quit the sales chat.


So.... that's my input so far: Outstanding recommendations from around here, lackluster to non-existent reviews via google, and a bad experience with a live sales person. I'm hoping some people here can give me some personal experience stories with Sparknode so I can get a better idea on whether or not it's worth waiting for Cyber Monday for another sale that I don't even know is coming or not. 35% off for life is pretty sweet, no matter how you look at it, but that only helps if the site is usable and stays online.
 
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Just a little update: After tweeting a complaint I got a manager to look at what happened in the sales chat, and they said that for some reason I was sent to a technician instead of a sales person, and then had my questions handed over to a manager to be answered... then after two e-mails I never got another response back :/ Also no one said anything here, so that's more disappointing. Perhaps Cosmic or Fillip H. can tell me about their experience with the company? The price for the VPS and Cloud VMS is really good compared to my current host, though I'm still not sure if it is as good as it appears... I've used VPS companies in the past who didn't deliver the dedicated resources promised and were barely better than shared hosting.

Also, is there still a bonus if you go through the DBTech team's person at Hivelocity that I'd get help setting the new server up? On my current host I'm having hell trying to get memcached working with php 5.3, even though it's flawless with 5.2... and any time I use their xcache option I have problems.

Still aiming for Cyber Monday to see what various hosts are offering ;)
 
I have been with Hivelocity myself for about a year now, and I have to say I am more than pleased. As for their VPS servers I am not sure if it is the same people that handle the dedicated side, but if it is, they go above and beyond any other server support I have seen. Was any of the people you talked to named Drew Adams?
 
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I don't know, I just know everyone has @hivelocity.net e-mail addresses. Either way I'm going to give them a shot at the end of the month... I'm paying too much for a dedicated server I don't entirely need anymore.
 
I would ask to speak to Drew Adams then, he is the sales manager I deal with, and has taken very good care of me.
 
Maybe it is a different team then for the VPS server.

The same group of technicians who answer the phone and work on dedicated server trouble tickets are the same techs who work on SparkNode trouble tickets. That being said, we do have a separate SparkNode team of techs who head up our SparkNode product and ensure our cloud is always performing at a high level. This team maintains the cloud as a whole, while our ever-present level 2 tech team typically works on issues customer's may have on a VM or VPS.

All SparkNode technicians are on-site at the Hivelocity data center.
 
I gotta say, I'm getting some pretty lousy service trying to get my questions answered. The first contact I make with anyone at this company is speedy, and then when I finally do get in contact with them and send off some questions and information about my website, I just never hear back. Like, I want to try the hosting services, but between making it hard to contact anyone and not having real detailed information on the website I get the impression they don't want new customers. :/
 
Just to update the thread, I'm trying out Sparknode now, thanks to the 20% off for Cyber Monday this year. Honestly once I get all my sites switched over I'm going to cancel at my old host, because the dedicated I was using was just too much. So far the tech support is much better than the sales support. If I like the service I'll stay, and if not I'll move on to something else later.
 
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