My Review of WHB (budget and reseller)
I have been a WebHostingBuzz client for about a year now, and have had multiple accounts and experiences. As such, I have decided to write a review of the budget and reseller accounts hosted on the shared servers. People who know me will vouch that I am fair and honest, and will dish out the good and bad. Please keep in mind that these ratings are based off of ONE PERSON'S EXPERIENCES. Your mileage with WHB will vary. Fortunately for WHB, the bad is not nearly as consequential as the good.
Value
Rating: **** (4/5 stars)
Prices at WHB can't be beat. You get more than you pay for when compared to other services.
Reliability
Rating: **** (4/5 stars)
The hardware WHB uses is very solid. Rarely are there service interruptions. On average, the server(s) I'm on are rebooted once every 33 days. The issues with reliability come when using PHP or a database that is already overloaded when other users are abusing the system. These software issues (and potential fixes) are described in more detail to follow. For static content, reliability ratings are much higher. For dynamic content, you will encounter error 500 messages when other users are abusing the system, even on scripts as simple as <?php echo "test"; ?>, especially when an overloaded database is involved. If your sites are solid html files, you will barely (if ever) notice reliability issues.
For today, I noticed CPU queue usage went as high as 21.37, staying at 10.01 for a few minutes during peak internet usage, and averaging about 4 through the high-usage hours. For the powerful system, 10.01 is not great, but acceptable. 21.37 was too much, and is regularly seen every few days. Usually, it will drop back down in a minute or two and cause no service interruptions. 4 is average and good. During low usage times, the server load is usually between 0.97 and 2.5, which is great!
EDIT 1/15/09: Note that the pricing model for new clients has changed, and WHB has removed many of the abusive clients. As such, the reliability has been greatly improving. Moved from 2 to 3 stars!
EDIT 2/19/09: Two months of solid uptime- way to go! Moved from 3 to 4 stars!
Honesty/ethics
Rating: **** (4/5 stars)
WHB is an incredibly ethical and honest organization. They admit first and foremost that they are in business to make money (which is a good thing for longevity and financial security). When something goes wrong with a server, you can check right here on the forums to see EXACTLY what's going on (so add transparency to the list of positives), and maybe even get an ETA for when things will be right again. The only areas where WHB falls short on integrity are on its server uptime statistics. A server that gets rebooted and is down with a raid error can't possibly have 100% uptime, but is regularly reported as having such (see rs17 for month of November for example). This is more an issue with software than with WHB's people. Better reporting software would be key for WHB to improve in this area. When talking to a representative (ie, Matt or Svetlana), they will tell you what is really going on and what you need to hear in a kind, understanding manner. Again, the staff can't be beat at WHB.
Speed
Rating: *** (3/5 stars)
Even the simplest PHP scripts can take forever to begin execution. No matter what time of day, if suphp hasn't been run under your account for a while, it can take an average of 20 seconds to begin executing your site on WHB's servers. Once it does, though, your site is generally fast enough to navigate through and use.
EDIT 1/15/09: Now that the pricing model has changed, and WHB is monitoring abusive clients more, the speed has been improving. Is it as fast as their competitors? Not really. Faster competitors, however, limit the bandwidth and CPU usage in window. If you've used all your resources in a given amount of time, your account becomes temporarily disabled. WHB does not do that. If you have a small spike in traffic and resources, WHB handles it gracefully. WHB seems to have chosen not to do what some other competitors are doing which sacrifices a bit of speed for a bit of reliability. Moved from 1 to 3 stars, since the abusive users are now much more rare.
Technical Support
Rating: ***** (5/5 stars)
This is where WHB really shines! Support requests and issues are almost always dealt with timely and proficiently. Simple requests are handled usually within an hour or two. More complex issues can take as long as 48 hours. WHB staff is the kindest, most helpful staff of any web service I have used. I was not expecting this when I signed up, and I would feel bad if I didn't congratulate the support system for controlling their tempers, never assigning blame, and always offering positive solutions for the clients. Yes, they will always try and goad you toward a more expensive hosting option for more complex issues, but that is acceptable advertisement, and they don't require you to upgrade. They always work with you using the services you have purchased. Bravo!
Affiliate Program
Rating:(0/5 stars)
For inexplicable reasons, it seems that affiliate and financial issues will get a topic locked immediately. My experience with the affiliate program (using Commission Junction) has been only negative. On Nov 26, 2008, an email sent using CJ's email support system (regarding a reversed commission) to WHB was never answered. Ticket support was ignored until I made a plea here on the forums, which was locked after I received the standard "contact us through CJ" message. It's now been more than a month since originally contacting them through CJ, and I am no closer to finding out why my commission was reversed.
EDIT 2/5/09: My issues have been resolved
Features
Rating: **** (4/5 stars)
WHB is feature-packed! Anything you you need is provided. The only things other services may provide that the lower WHB services don't are things like ruby-on-rails. I know, ruby on rails is available for business, vps, and platinum resellers, but we're not reviewing those services yet! mod_mono would be a nice addition that would set WHB apart from any other service.
Conclusion
As you can see, WHB excels where it counts in becoming your value web host. They have earned a repeated customer who is satisfied with the value he is getting!
Where can WHB Improve?
Oh, I'm so glad I asked! There are two key areas where WHB falls short: software speed and the affiliate program. To avoid getting this topic locked, I will not discuss the affiliate program in detail- look at the locked threads under "support" to see that there have been issues since switching to CJ, and understand that mine have never been responded to adequately. We'll leave it at that, and the improvements for that program should be obvious.
On the software side of things, suphp is a beast. It slows down the servers (especially during peak usage and heavy database utilization), but is necessary to avoid hackers and security issues. The solution? Use fastcgi. Fastcgi supports implementing a wrapper script that can setuid() to the appropriate user. It's faster, and just as secure. It appears that WHB may be phasing this in, starting with the platinum reseller account. I would love to see this in all of WHB's servers. It is unacceptable for the simplest of scripts to receive 500 errors. While the errors are rare, the 20-second-wait-before-executing issues are commonplace. FastCGI will help that.
Overall
Rating: **** (4/5 stars)
WHB can't be beat for value or features, provides good reliability for its value, and provides below-average speed. If content, value, and support are what you need, you have found your web host! If speed is your concern, you need to look somewhere else (or at a business/vps solution from WHB). I believe WHB is working on it, but until they implement some better software solutions, their servers will remain overloaded when trying to process your request.
EDIT 2/19/09: I believe WHB has done enough to warrant moving them to 4/5 stars!
EDIT: I'm not familiar enough with fastcgi and suphp to recommend definitely switching, but something needs to be changed for the php execution speeds.
-Jon
Reply With Quote
