Virtualization and Cloud Computing

This weekend I planned to set up two OpenX servers to serve some rotating images to the forums. First, I signed up with SliceHost. Working outside of the US, SliceHost naturally required some additional information. They emailed me with 15 minutes of signing up asking for more information to confirm.

Being an impatient sort of person in the digital age, I wanted to get this up and running during the holiday weekend and found the SliceHost Chat Room. I was able to chat with a great guy who privately emailed me a series of questions while we were chatting about some technical details. Within a few minutes, I was set up and ready to go.

After logging my new slice with SliceHost, I was able to configure Apache2, PHP, MySQL and OpenX within a hour and was serving images from SliceHost within two hours.

The next day, I decided to try the same thing with Linode after reading an article that raved about Linode performance.

I immediate got two emails telling me I had been invoiced and my credit card had been billed, for example:

However, I then got no activation information and no follow up email.

I sent an email to Linode billing and another to the main support email. Two hours later, I never received any email responses back from either of my queries. Nothing in the spam box, anyway, I already had two billing related emails.

For SliceHost, I got all my support work completed and a new OpenX server up and running withing two hours on a holiday after Thanksgiving, a Sunday. With Linode, two hours passed on a business Monday and no email response. Radio silence. I thought the Linode office was hit by an attack or an earthquake.

Also, I tried to login to the Linode Forums to ask about my account, but that was not possible because my account was not activated! Isn't this story very interesting?!

Then, I decided to call Linode. That was a mistake.

Instead of a very helpful chat experience like with with the great guys at SliceHost, I got a support guy who sounded like a robot reading a support script. I tried to explain to him my experience Sunday with SliceHost, and how within two hours I had an OpenX server up and running, but with Linode, two hours later I can't even get an email back on the activation!

The support guy at Linode basically told me he did not want to listen to my experience at SliceHost. I said "fine" because I am going to write a review and email the link to their support team and billing to let them know how terrible their support is.

In a nutshell, I don't care if there are a stack of performance reviews that say Linode serves stardust at the speed of light. Their customer support is terrible. I just want my money back!

On the other hand, the support at SliceHost is amazing! If you have any issues, billing or technical questions, you can chat with them and they are really helpful. They do email too! :-)

I recommend SliceHost, obviously.

As for Linode, I can't even login to cancel my account and get my money back within the 7 day period! I guess I'll have to beg them to refund my money and talk to another support robot or they will bill my credit card every month.

VPS Mini Review... Over and Out !

---------- Post updated at 21:46 ---------- Previous update was at 20:23 ----------

Followup:

After posting this review I received a long distance phone call from one of the Linode system developers who activated my account, 4 and 1/2 hours after the initial sign up. He kindly and sincerely apologized for the bad service I experienced and asked me to try their VPS service.

Just call your bank and have them reverse the credit card transactions. They usually only require proof that you have attempted to contact the company, and an email will usually cover that. Plus, by reversing this fee, the company is usually charged for a credit card reversal, you can call that getting even.

On the note of SliceHost... I've had a single 512 Slice with them for several months now (6-8?), and love them. Everything you've stated I have also found to be true. Their service is great, customer service is helpful and they are extremely transparent about everything they do.

Frantkly , I do worry about the credibility of folks who only have one post in the forums and that post is a glowing review of a company.

On the other hand, my experience with the customer service at Slicehost has been so favorable, it is easy to see how others might post in reply to my mini-review.

A long time ago there was this debate between Cisco and Wellfleet (later acquired by Bay Networks, as I recall). Wellfleets routers featured a faster performing backplane but had to be rebooted to change the configuration. Cisco routers, on the other hand, was a bit slower on the backplane, but you could change the configuration without rebooting the machine.

At the time, I explained to a USAF General in charge of communications that during the heat of battle, you don't want to have to reboot your router to add a filtering rule or change some other configuration.

That was around 1994. The USAF followed my advice (which they paid good money for !) and dropped Wellfleet in favor of Cisco and the rest is history. Few people know that one of Cisco's biggest and most influential customers, the USAF, got their foot in the door based on my work building network control centers and getting rid of the Wellfleets in favor of Cisco.

The theme of my short walk back in time above is to point out that speed, backplane performance, etc. are all great; but they are not the most important features to consider in most circumstances. Customer service is also very important as well.

In the digital age, I expect my VPS to be provisioned within 30 minutes, even with a fraud flag based on a primitive rule and I expect emails to be answered within that same time frame as well. A company should have employees with email on the mobiles answering queries, chatting, and more.

Wire speed is not enough. Linode needs to learn this lesson, I think.

Customer service "speed" is more important than "wire speed" for more people.

I got a tweet from SliceHost acknowledging this post, read it and felt obliged to sign up and comment. In fact, I originally posted only about the credit card charge reversal and went back and edited the post because I felt obliged to back up your story on SH's service. However, it's very understandable to not hold my post credible being a first time poster.

Anyway, your last post about the Cisco vs Wellfleet is pretty awesome. It's amazing how big a difference one customer can make on an entire company and goes back to your original argument on how important things other than having the biggest and best machines/speed are important too.

Hi PHLAK,

I was able to confirm you are a Slicehost customer.

Thanks so much for stopping by!