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Posted by Lakjin, 09-04-2016, 05:03 AM I joined SingleHop roughly 18 months ago. I value our data / service too much to go with a budget host. While I am not a fool and will not pay a higher price for the same product between two equally qualified companies, I also know the shortcomings of a budget host -- we are more than happy to pay a higher price for a quality host vs a budget host. SingleHop is one such quality host. Here is my review of their service, in case anyone is thinking about them. Hardware: Excellent. Never had a problem with their hardware. Top quality. Network: Excellent. Never had a problem with their network, and they regularly perform network maintenance to ensure everything is working as intended. They provide advance notice of such maintenance and I can't recall our server ever being down due to network issues. Support: Average. I had an unmanaged server from SingleHop. Aside from initial setup, I didn't ask them for much assistance outside of things that were would out of my hand, like a server that was down and I couldn't reboot it. They have a remote reboot button in their control panel, but sometimes I need a hard reset. Their support is always quick with their initial ticket response. However, that initial ticket response is always akin to "we have read your ticket and are working on it". After that initial response, followup responses or solving the problem can take a while. Sometimes, it was very quick. Other times, it could literally be hours. For example, it took them almost 2 hours (!) to reboot my server once. Further, their level 1 support are stereotypical level 1 support -- hit or miss in terms of usefulness. Their higher up support, though, is excellent. Price: Average. SingleHop is not a budget host. However, their prices on CPU, RAM, and uplink are more than reasonable. For example, I was able to upgrade from 64GB RAM to 96GB RAM for $32 extra per month; an upgrade from 100 Mbps uplink to 1 gigabit is only $20 per month. On the flip side, their price for hard drives and backup storage is absolutely ridiculous. For example, they want $40 per 120GB SSD. Everything combined together, the total cost of my server was fair for the most part -- not too high but not too low either. However, due to their excessive costs on drives and backup storage, I had reached a point where the server was becoming unreasonably expensive because of our growing database. If you are like me and have a growing database, SingleHop can get insanely expensive as you will have increasing demands for drives / backup storage. It should be mentioned, though, if you purchase their SingleHop ShieldPlus ($30/month), you can get unlimited wildcard domain SSL certificates. Depending on how many certificates you need, $30 a month may be a steal. Billing: Very, very poor. I don't know if SingleHop is too large to care about the little guy (and I mean little guy relatively speaking -- we were spending over $500 per month with them, not budget prices) or if the billing manager responsible for my account was too busy or just didn't give a ****, but their billing is extremely poor. Firstly, their invoices provide little to no details about server configuration / features I've purchased aside from the "extras" that I upgrade to. This is a problem because it makes it very hard to see what I'm paying for. For example, I thought I had a 1 gigabit uplink with them. However, I could not confirm because the invoice they send me monthly had no details on it. Eventually, I found that my server indeed had a 1 gigabit uplink listed in Leap3 (their hosting control panel). After I checked the connection speed via SSH, I noticed that while I was supposed to have 1 gigabit uplink and the network card on my server supported 1 gigabit, the server was configured to use 100 Mbps only. Their support corrected the problem pretty easily, but then started charging me an extra $20 for the "upgrade". WTF? Sure $20 per month to upgrade from 100 Mbps to 1 gigabit is fairly cheap; however, even $20 is too much when I was supposed to have it from the start. When I complained, they responded a day or two later with an apology and that they would "take care of it". Yet, they never did. Secondly, the person managing my account never, ever followed up with upgrade requests or inquiries. There were a few upgrades I made during my time there and a few upgrades I inquired about. He would always respond quickly to my initial request, but never followed up. If I wanted an upgrade, I had to bug him with multiple emails to actually do it. It was almost as if I was begging him to take my money. o_O For example, I inquired about replicating my R1soft data to a secondary server. He responded he would look into this for me. Never got back to me. I followed up with him. He apologies and said would get back to me. Never got back to me. I eventually just dropped the issue. Same thing when I inquired about upgrading my drives to RAID 10. Another example. I was fairly happy with SingleHop, but the price was ballooning due to the reasons mentioned in the price section above. So I shopped around for another top quality host but with more reasonable prices. I got multiple quotes. Before deciding on a new host, I wanted to see if SingleHop would be willing to price match to keep me as a customer. The price / features from the new hosts were not drastically different than what I was paying to SingleHop -- really only two differences, larger SSDs and more backup space, with a price similar to what I was paying currently; it was something majority of hosts would gladly match for a customer who has been with them for over a year. Indeed, my billing manager responded in the affirmative that we could probably reach an agreement and that he would followup with me tomorrow. He never followed up... So I signed up with another host. Overall: Good. SingleHop is a good host. They offer excellent quality hardware / network and depending on your needs, you may get a competitive price from them. Just be careful -- they may not value your business.
Posted by JSCL, 09-04-2016, 05:41 AM It's always a real shame to read that a provider has lost a customer because of the wider experience. I think it can often happen with some providers where if you just need it as-is, with little hassle, they can be great. But the wider experience of needing help from an account manager or other departments also affects opinions. SingleHop was growing at a pretty fast rate, so I wonder if they're still experiencing some pains of that growth? Who did you end up moving to in the end?
Posted by SingleHop-TJ, 09-04-2016, 11:47 AM Hi Lakjin- Thanks for the candid review. Although I'm glad to hear of the positive aspects of your experience, I'm certainly disappointed to hear how things concluded for you. As the guy in charge of our account management team, and ultimately the overall customer experience, I want to use this as a learning opportunity for the folks involved. Would you mind dropping me a note at twaldorf@singlehop.com? I'd like to get a bit more detail so I can make sure others do not run into the same challenges as you have. And if there's a chance for me to re-earn your business some point, I'll do my best to do so. Again, thanks for the review and candid comments. Learning from experiences like this is how we continually improve as a company.
Posted by SingleHop-TJ, 09-04-2016, 11:52 AM Hey Jason- You're right there. We have been growing at a rapid rate for many years, but this is no excuse for the experience mentioned above. We hold our teams to a very high standard, and regularly see very positive reviews and high NPS scores. But it's experiences like Lakjin's that bring an added level of focus to the areas we can improve.
Posted by Lakjin, 09-04-2016, 02:43 PM I am with HiVelocity now. Steve was willing to price match LiquidWeb (in fact, do a little bit better) and wanted my business -- so he got it. It has only been a few days since I've been with HiVelocity, so a bit early to tell how they are, but so far so good.
Posted by Lakjin, 09-04-2016, 02:46 PM I don't want to get anyone in trouble. However, I'd love to be of help anyway I can to help improve your business. I'm not writing off SingleHop in the future although if I need more / stronger servers, I'm obviously going to give preference to the host I'm currently with, which unfortunately is not you guys at this time. Maybe we will consider SingleHop for our second server -- we are potentially looking to create a global footprint and load balance across multiple servers. HiVelocity doesn't have a presence outside Florida at this time, so... we will see.
Posted by hivelocitygm, 09-04-2016, 03:04 PM We recently completed the build out of a data center pod in Atlanta with capacity for 20 racks today and space for 45 more when needed. We also offer VMs in Los Angeles via our Sparknode brand.
Posted by Lakjin, 09-04-2016, 03:16 PM Damn, you are quick. I actually meant potentially getting a server outside of USA, in Europe or Asia. It is a big maybe, though, so nothing set in stone. It all depends on the complexity / costs of running multiple servers.
Posted by shirehobbit, 09-05-2016, 06:19 PM I had pretty much the same experience with singlehop, particularly their billing/account management. At the time, their management was changing almost on a monthly basis and the consecutive new people would refuse to honour promises made by their predecessor. Eventually I cancelled but a couple of months later got an email saying I still owed them server management fees but when I tried to log in to pay it, my account had already been deleted so that was the end of that. As JSCL mentioned, they were growing at a pretty fast rate at the time, probably too fast for their own good. ps. still waiting for the singlehop hoodie that I was promised, about 5 years ago.
Posted by eva2000, 09-05-2016, 06:38 PM thanks for the review.. Singlehop is on my short list of web hosts to eventually try but your notes about billing are revealing indeed and upgrade parts pricing is of concern too
Posted by SenseiSteve, 09-06-2016, 01:49 PM Thanks for the honest and well thought out review. It looks like SingleHop is taking this to heart, which is good and shows on some levels that they did indeed value your business. Good luck at Hivelocity and kudos to Steve and his team.
Posted by txf861, 09-07-2016, 08:34 AM I've been a long time singlehop customer before but left 2 years ago. Network is excellent and no complaint at all. Support is very good but all my servers didn't have built-in IPMI capabilities. Also their website pricing for dedicated servers remained unchanged for many years... That's based on my 2 years ago experience. Though it has changed a lot now.
Posted by Nnyan, 09-07-2016, 12:29 PM @Lakjin Thanks for one of the better reviews I've seen in a long time. You stayed professional and highlighted the positive and the negative, well done. Just my two cents in here, but with so many quality services out there I take a different view of hosts. I absolutely demand a solid Network/excellent hardware. That is a bare minimum and expected, you don't even get considered unless you meet those requirements. What allows a host to rise to the top is their support and customer service. A company that can't provide consistent customer service is not one I want to waste my time or money on. I don't care if I'm billing $5K or $50K. I'm your customer then treat me like you want my business. Growing pains only gets you some initial slack, after that if you can't handle the growth then DON'T. Anyway you landed at a good spot, Hivelocity (Ventures! : ) is a quality company (even though it's been years since I had a business interest in Florida).
Posted by 1webdesigners, 11-18-2016, 06:44 PM Absolutely worse hosting company in the world SingleHop Their idea of a manged server is to let the OS get 2 versions behind and paid SW like cPanel fall behind 4 versions then they bill you for new servers to upgrade and don't deliver them. Just search Twitter today for bad hosting company and you see all the news about the huge class action on SH SOL JR.
Posted by Tajobspro, 11-26-2016, 11:27 AM We are using three dedicated server from last more than 1.5 years or so and I am very happy with the quality of server. However at the same time I am extremely disappointed with the support team with their lack of expertise and lack of simple common sense. Look like KPI using which their performance is measured is only based on how prompt ticket is replied rather than how effective & comprehensive the reply is and if that solve the problem of customer? kind of approach.
Posted by HostWithLove_Cody, 11-26-2016, 04:50 PM Glad to hear I am not the only one who had experienced this with SingleHop's support. This is precisely the reason we cancelled our services with them 1-2 months back. For the price you would expect SingleHop's support would be decent (and my expectations aren't even high), sad to say even budget providers like Dacentec who we worked with briefly for an isolated project provide MUCH better support.
Posted by NortheBridge, 11-26-2016, 11:37 PM For some, like SingleHop, I think they suffer from the "Comcast problem." Like Comcast, they grew exponentially but at the same time this resulted in areas where they were rather lackluster performers for the price. We entertained SingleHop once but sometimes things just don't work out early on for one reason or another - that's not something we hold against them but the reality of doing business. However, they do seem to have grown too rapidly to be as good as they could be. Just food for thought. In either case, thank you @Lakjin for a professionally written review that seemed to provide an overall picture. Hopefully it will help others make an informed decision. It makes me feel like we "dodge a bullet" by opting to not go with SingleHop to help support primary services. However, they do seem to have an interesting platform nevertheless.
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