Reality Check

[admin]

We are not pulling out of H-Sphere we are only adding other options to our CP offering thats all.

From more talks with Psoft we are being told they should have ever thing stable with in a month. We will be doing some huge upgrades to our servers to help with in this time..

Right now our CP server runs on 2GB of ram we are upgrading this to 4GB of ram. The mail server has 1 or 2GB can't remember but its also getting anther GB added.

As for the web servers most have been stable here as of late besides a few little bumps but they have become a lot more stable.

Hello,
I think that it needs to be made clear that we are not dumping Hsphere for cpanel, plesk, or ensim. We have used all of these and none of them are the magical solution to everyones problems. Cpanel until very very recently had major bugs and problems fixing them, Plesk was extremely stable but had no features. Ensim is a little bit of both worlds. We are thinking of offering these things again to give our customers the choice of what they feel will best meet their needs. We are working with Hsphere and I personally feel that these problems will be solved soon.

Someone asked if the majority of problems are with windows and I guess the shorter answer would be yes. But again most people are installing their customers on windows so its having more problems. I have a unix machine that has given me nightmares and I can say that without psoft most of the problems would not be solved. They are working with us, not against us and that is why we are not abandoning them just yet. Is there a point when you just move on... yes there is...have we reached it like we did when we used to use plesk and cpanel and ensim... No.

As far as addressing the Private emails and deleted posts and such that was mentioned above.. I don't know what to say. I have seen maybe 3 posts removed from this board and I agreed with admin that they should be removed I have even removed some of admin's post when I felt he was perhaps "venting" just a little too much. Everyone gets upset and frustrated and sometimes that does not have a place in a support forum.

I know that Matrix will get this sorted out. Yes we need to work on keeping you informed before the fact not after.. thank you for bringing that to our attention. We will try to improve on that.

Keep letting us know what's on your minds and we will keep letting you know what's on ours.

[mresell]

Originally posted by vonbrocklin
I realize that pulling the plug on H-Sphere could have BAD effects, and this is why I asked. If I do decide to stick around here, I want to make sure that Matrix is committed to working things out as opposed to being on the brink of bailing on PSoft and moving everything to another control panel.

Good Point... This is how people get trampled someone sees smoke and someone yells fire!

[Garreg]

Why don’t we all look at this another way –
We all appreciate there have been / are problems – there’s not much we can do about except as pointed out – leave. Matrix aren’t the only ones with a vested interest in this, as long as we’re here paying our monthly fees - then so have we. So why don’t we turn our efforts into to making this work – for all of us?

From what I’ve read on this forum so far, this has to be the best community of web host / resellers that I have come across, the suggestion, feedback and help with each others problems is excellent – if nothing else we’ve certainly carved out our own little community here. So, if Matrix are agreeable, I suggest we all pool our knowledge and focus on getting on with making this a better place to be.

Why not add a couple additional threads in the Matrix customer’s only area – i.e.

Bugs, errors / issues – if and when you come across a problem – post it here to warn others and let the Matrix team address them, advising us of the action being taken and the solution when one is known.

Workarounds – if you know of a remedy or have found a ‘fix’ to something, then lets pool our knowledge.

That’s only a couple of ‘off the top of my head’ ideas I’m sure others can do better.

The bottom line – I’ve tried Cpanel, Ensim, Plesk, and Hosting Controller – the lot…… I really like H-Sphere, it has potential – just as Matrix does…… let's not write them off yet!

I agree with Garreg. I am fairly new to this and have about 30 customers now. I found Matrix a month ago and in that time have moved all of my customers over. I plunged headlong into it and there were some issues but overall I have been very happy with support both from Matrix and from the other resellers here. My next project will be to get some FAQs written for my customers about HSphere and ESPECIALLY setting up ODBC as that seems to be a very common issue with my customers. I would be happy to be able to contribute what I come up with to these boards. I'm planning to stick around... don't want to move my customers again. So I'm obviously very interested in seeing Matrix succeed and would be happy to help in any way I can.

[vonbrocklin]

I do not want to leave either. But it simply makes me too nervous to depend on PSoft to keep things stable right now. Like Garreg, this is how I make my living . . . it is how I support my family. My clients are not $10.95/mo, anonymous companies that I can take or leave. They are often large, professional clients that I have spent YEARS cultivating and nurturing. They depend on ME to make sure their sites stay up, and to them, PSoft is as utterly meaningless to their business as a McDonald's fast food franchise. My clients would go *apeshit* if I tried to explain that an online ticketing system was down for three days because PSoft was messing up ASP.NET, or that their membership system no longer worked because PHP had been downgraded. And then they would leave for greener pastures, and I would be struggling to feed my family.

Bottom line: the reason I outsource hosing in the first place is for stability and peace of mind. Right now, I do not feel I am getting that from PSoft. The original point of this thread was to make sure that I am not alone in my doubts, and I am clearly not. That said, I do believe in Matrix and I will probably keep my account here, perhaps to start moving over my smaller clients one at a time to see how things go. I will also continue to be active on these forums and on the PSoft site until it gets to the point where I feel like I am banging my head against a wall.

[mresell]

Also, I know this was mentioned before, but I don't think I have seen it done yet.

How about a list of top hsphere issues and status. This would include bugs and improvement issues. I know admin has a list somewhere even if it is in his head

Also the reseller FAQ needs more stuff. How can we contribute to this?(I know this was discussed also.)

[admin]

This is the kind of stuff i like to hear from you guys..

I am with you guys all the way. I have also used all the CP's out there. They have there problems and down falls. H-Sphere with all its little problems its had has been a pain in my butt to say the least but I see this as a really good cp.

I am going to ask Psoft if they would mind ether joining this forum to help fix the problems with the reseller problems in there CP. As we have already pushed there CP places no other hosting company has even came close to. This seems to really suck as we end up being the ones to find most of the bugs.

I fell this control panel is very good right now but has a lot of room to grow and needs some time to fill out and get its little bugs worked out like any software, ( Wait i sound like i am talking about Microsoft, they still can't get it right.. LoL ) but I think the team at Psoft is doing a good job in some places they really need to work on a lot of the reseller side and get this CP very very stable.

I hope the ones that stay will be with us for a long time, I know there will be bumps and bugs in the night but that is why Vortech is where it is today after 3 years I keep at it till i get right and it is the best I can make it or better.

[BCS]

shucks ... feel a big group hug coming on

Think it's pretty much a given, that those of us who have posted here are more than willing hang with the program, but with some caution. Sure this was mentioned here (or in another thread) , but if Vortech is PSoft's largest client, would hope Vortech's feedback to them would have some weight (fingers crossed) and
we can get the stability issues resolved.

I'm still a bit lost as to why PSoft would actually provide an end product that was not tested a bit more before release (maybe former employees of MicroSoft?). Probably just me, but how it displays the signup screens gives the impression of things being added as "last-minute" or a "rush-job" ... cutting corners. Know these are minor issues compared to stability ... just thinking out loud and wondering if other programming shortcuts are now coming back to haunt them.

Now crossing my toes that they get these major problems resolved. Nice to hear that they are willing to work weekends to get things straightened out. Weekends ... I remember those ... days off ... wow, those were the days. (oops ... sorry, hit my sarcasm button by mistake )

[somereseller]

I'm in the same situation as vonbrocklin. I'm providing web solutions and rely on Matrix to provide good hosting on which I have total control (Hsphere).

This is the reason I was pissed sometimes ("bad server management" thread comes to mind), because such problems as a downgrade should not happen and not take 3 days to get fixed. If Matrix relies on Psoft for updates, they probably have some kind of SLA that could be passed on to us.
What are we supposed to tell our customers? We're in charge of our customers' hosting and when something goes wrong we have to give answers. For over a month and a half unix sendmail was broken, many times a day customers with which I was working on new projects would see their browser freeze because of this. Just great for confidence : "Will my site also freeze when it's released?". My last answer to one of them was:"If it's not solved by the techs by the end of the week, I'll move you somewhere else". Simple as that. I cannot afford to lose customers one by one because of unreliability. Somewhere else could be another Matrix server if there is one that has no problem, I'd rather stay here than open a new account elsewhere, but I need a stable environnement that handles modern websites.

Back in April, I asked my old host about their ETA for Hsphere for resellers. He told me that the system was far from ready. I moved here because I thought that I could handle small software glitches for the price I was asked for and because Psoft had a nice future features list with dates close enough (we were supposed to have VDS by now...). I guess I should have listened to him. Hsphere is still not ready for resellers.

If it was only about small cp bugs, I wouldn't care too much because most of my customers don't use it too much, I set things up for them, but I need features, high availability, uniformity and a knowledgable tech support.

Matrix did improve its knowledge of Hsphere (, of unix ) and the hosting environnement got better.
I'm still here because I got answers and feel this situation can be resolved, but some issues need to be taken care of quicker, it may mean to hire more techs and pass on some of the cost to us, it would still be cheaper than having a dedicated + a "paid on ticket solved" tech support.

The problem with shared hosting is always tech support. One day or another, things get out of hand. Matrix is really doing a good job at listening and answering pretty quickly, better than most hosts, but I don't know for how long, given all the recent issues that took a long time to solve.

And why do we have to be Psoft's beta testers? I know they test their releases a lot prior to installing them, but why does Vortech has a policy of installing Psoft's beta right away and wait when it's about other software? Psoft did destroy more things that any normally installed software. Even the old, unsupported and supposedly unstable IMAP was better that the new one they had installed later on (working fine now).

I would not mind having a beta server on which we could all get one account to debug things, but risk our live environnement every month or so is something I'm not too comfortable with.

Liv

[mresell]

I'd like the updates to slow as well... Think admin already stated that this is the plan. I AM NOT trying to rag on Matrix, but I have other host that i work w/ that have been using hsphere since it just about first came out. I have to say there were some adjustments, but they do not have downtime and they do not get all these so called upgrades...during peak hrs. I am sure they don't have the reseller volume like Matrix does, however. Tho I am sure resellers can push the limits on many levels, I am also sure they make the money too. Psoft seems to be having a "can't see the forest episode" Just a thought.

[hohios]

Ok buddies, this is the fact...
Matrix is cheap for us <- Matrix is the bigger customer list for Psoft <- Psoft develops a product for end users <- End users are we!
So we are the knowlegbase of Psoft, the real tool for developing, testing, debugging.
But we have requests, so let's create a list of what we would like and not, for H-Sphere -- the product --
That's a point of view!

[BCS]

http://www.matrixwebhosting.net/foru...=&threadid=426
Providing this link for those of you who have been following The "Reality Check" thread.

I'll start with that I do not know all the facts relating to ramjet's ticket.

Concern I'm having is that there are several posts from the Matrix staff here to not report specific problems on the forum. Unfortunately I've noticed (as well as others) that on a number of occasions, a trouble ticket will not be addressed until the issue is posted in the forum ... (hello Catch-22).

Don't know if the reason tickets end up in a black hole is a result of CP problems or simply support overlooking them. Excuse the honesty, but the actual reason is not relevant since the resellers have no control over the system.

Question to be asked: What steps is Matrix management taking to improve the support system so that resellers can actually depend on it to run their business?

On the other side of the coin ... if Matrix feels that the support system is just fine and will remain status quo, please say so. Then resellers can be fully aware of what to expect.