Chronicalling My Experience Here...

[Andan]

Well let me start off by saying that besides the usual downtimes experienced (server reboots, maintenance, etc...which don't count towards that 99.5% uptime), I'm pretty happy. Recently (just the few last days), site has been slow or down. Expected. There have been several major problems throughout the internet. Even my other community site hosted with another host experienced a major service interruption caused by one of the major backbones: AT&T.

Overall, the only other problem I have is the slow response of the "server" whenever I'm performing a task in the CPanel. Now I think that is more of a load balancing issue, server specifications, and importance of my account in relation to the price point. Now I haven't been here very long (a few weeks), so I can't comment if this issue has been ongoing in the "value" hosting accounts. It's just a lot more sluggish than I expected. *shrugs* Maybe I should have gone with a non-value hosting package :D I'll look into that more when needs for my small business expand.

In my mind, Cirtex is one of the best small hosting providers out there. Cirtex has my backing as a loyal customer and my two thumbs up on good service in the time I've been here. Of course, I will post more reviews through the time I'm here, to help myself rate our generous host.

[Cirtex Admin]

Hi Andrew

Thanks for your thorough review :) We'll definitely be doing more work on all servers and also balancing our each server as needed in the upcoming days-weeks and thanks again for your kind comments.

Cheers

[Andan]

Wow, nice thanks. It's not a major issue for me, but I get frustrated sometimes because I'm in a rush sometimes to get the website files uploaded and tested so I can get back to other work.

[Andan]

My first follow up review since my initial posting follows:

It's been about 4 months since I last reviewed my experience here. There have been a one or two times the Baby server has been down causing some about 48 hours worth of downtime for me. It's not an big issue atm.

The hosting has been good. The slow response of the server in responding to tasks I do in CPanel has improved. It is still slower than most of my past hosts, but it is not slow enough to warrant another gripe right now.

The only thing I have that is a concern is the frequent disconnects when I'm ftp'ing files to my website on Baby. I have adjusted several options and settings on my FTP client (FileZilla) to no avail. I now have to slowly upload one folder at a time to ensure that some files are skipped or the connection isn't dumped 3 minutes into the transfer. It is annoying on my end, since I don't want to sit there in front of my computer so I can upload 3 megs of files.

Other than the above annoyance, Cirtex has once again been a good host to date. For the price, the quality service, and the good uptime hosting, I plan on being with Cirtex for many more months to come.

[Cirtex Admin]

Hi Andan

Thanks for your kind words. Send me a private message and I will look into the ftp issue for ya :)

Cheers

[Andan]

Thank you, it has been sent. :)

[Andan]

Second Follow Up

Well, this will be my second follow up since the last one I made all the way back in March of last year. :eek:

Pricing
Hosting has definitely gotten more expensive than when I was first hosted here and of course I expected that due to the addition of VPS and Dedicated plans and a rapidly growing customer base.

Overall, I'm still actively comparison looking at various shared hosts that I feel are "good". Cirtex's pricing is still cheaper than some of them, but overall about $1 - $2 more than the ones I've looked at. To me, the support (and the existence of a 2+ person support team), the feature set, and my familiarlarity with the host exceeds the savings of $10 or so dollars at a more inexpensive host where you can't tell if it's a one-man show or a ten-man show.

Support
Again, this has not fluctuated too much over the last year or so. Tickets are still usually responded to within 12 hours of my writing. Sometimes they are bogged down due to a large DDoS attack or major hardware failure. Due to those severe circumstances, sometimes it might take 24 hours for a ticket response (due to large ticket volume).

My biggest complaint is that the Level 1 support personnel seem to lack a good understanding of English phrasing, in that sometimes I find myself rewording communiques so they are simpler. The second part to this complaint is the lack of resolution from the Level 1 techs. Some either do not seem to understand what my problem is or can't think outside of a scripted routine. Sometimes I wonder if I'm back on hold with Dell tech support (minus the long hold times).

Negativity
This is the second major concern I have. The issue is not completely the fault of Cirtex since some of the issues in negative replies and/or reviews are genuine or completely exaggerated. I just wish some of the more recent negative "reviews" I've read were posted in a more calm manner. ALL CAPS and lots of these, !!@@$@##%#, don't help and make it harder for me to understand.

The single largest factor I think that contributes to these negative reviews is that fact that many of them should have looked towards semi-dedicated or dedicated hosting, since most of their needs far exceed what the limited resourcing of shared hosting can provide.



Well that's all the time I have for this part of the follow up. I'll continue my follow up this weekend if possible since I do need to run to class. :)