I've got a dedicated server with Surpass. I've got dozens of sites and most all of them use xoops.

They are very responsive anytime I need anything. The support community of other people using their systems are also very good.

I recently signed up with surpass (April 1st) and so far so good. The surminty.com is awesome and will answer pretty much any question very quickly. Although I'm new to surpass (and to xoops), both are highly recommended by me. For anyone that wants the best price and best performance, I would say surpass is your answer.

I just signed up with Surpass after trying out 3 other hosts this past week alone.

The last host, I had for about 2 months, and there were too many issues that just took waaayy too long to deal with. My email stopped working and after a month they still couldn't fix it. Adios!!

Getting started with Surpass was quite easy. I chose the OC10 reseller package.

No matter what host I've signed up with over the past 5 years or so, there has always been at least a couple of glitches in the begining. No different with Surpass. But support dealt with them in a timely and efficient maner, and all has been going smoothly since.

They do have a lot of useful information on the site for their clients. And I've found many answers already in the forums, so I didn't even have to post the questions. Just like at xoops!!

No complaints from here so far.

When I first started with surpass I was using a shared server and found it was frequently overloaded, but have since moved to a reseller package on a differnt server and havn't had 1 single problem yet (fingers crossed ) plus it seems a lot faster in general.

This company is a sham. Packages start out with great pricing, but if its too good to be true, it usually is. Our newspaper web site was hosted with them for over a year with usual down periods known by other Surpass Customers. They suspended our site with a nasty message for all of our readers to view. It gave the impression that we had not paid our bills! We were current with a perfect billing history on record with our bank. After multiple emails (over 20) they finally responded saying our site used to many resources and that if we wanted to continue as a customer, we would have to upgrade from $25.00 per month to $90.00 per month. That would have been easier to handle had they given us some prior notice. THEY DIDN'T and it cost us weeks of downtime and was embarassing to have our readers presented with a "This Site Suspended" page. We have switched to another company and will make it known that simply, Surpass Hosting Sucks. They run half operational servers, and when there is a problem, such as with MySQL resources, they blame you with nasty screw you type emails.

I also have a community newspaper hosted with this hosting company. This is scary. I have a couple of questions.

1. Were you using an XOOPS site. If so what module was generating the high usage.
2. How much traffic were you generating. ie. visitors per month.

Thanks for the information.

The only time I had a site suspended with Surpass is when my MovableType install went awry. This is why they say that MT sites are not allowed.

Bytheway, if the newspaper site that was suspended was not powered by XOOPS, I'm considering removing the post, or at least adding that note to it, as this is not a hosting bashing/praising forum, it's for experiences with XOOPS hosting.

Herko

i suspect it wasn't a XOOPS site with him being a new member and his 1st post was just bad mouthing a hosting company..

Quote:

As an introduction to the issue, some websites do not stay the same size forever. Some have communuties that grow larger or evolving content that attracts more visitors. Sometimes you can't stay on the same plan, that is why there is a wide selection of plans.

Our interest is keeping everyone on a server content with their services. If we allow a busy site to stay on a server and never move it, then that means the server is going to run slow at times and have other problems, for example- mail service can begin to have issues, email being the most important service on a server besides http of course.

Our suspended page is the default cPanel suspended page which states "Contact billing/support" meaning contact either department. It is not intended to be a "nasty" message, we did not write it. However, due to people looking at only the "billing" part, we do understand we should put a customized page on each server and that has been in the works.

Quote:

It is much appreciated that you were always current with your bill but that was not the issue. Your site was always one of the top sites on the server, it was always monitored. Over time we have moved 4 sites from this server as they grew and those sites were the cause of downtimes on occasion.

Honestly we do not really enjoy having to tell someone they need to upgrade, because not everyone will have the funds available to pay for their own server (not all sites collect payments or donations). We try to give sites a fair chance and see if the issues are only temporary, such as promotions or ads causing temporary traffic boosts. However, your site needed to be moved as quickly as possible. We could not have other sites on the server going down and random services timing out. Of course your site needed to operate at a peak level as well, considering the demand for its content. So considering the past history of your site and the continual growth, to us this was clearly the right decision to begin discussion on moving your site.

Hours after we made this decision the server was running slowly again. (This is May 23rd.) Your site crashed the server and had to be disabled at that moment. It could not stay online. Before we could prepare the logs for you, you did send about 20 emails, one being at 02:48 PM. At 03:13 PM you were replied to and your site was unsuspended (which means the site was suspended for a few hours, not weeks as you said here in your post) and you were told by that technician the following:

"Your account was suspended for MySQL resource abuse. The database being used was islandg_pmac1.

I have unsuspended your account for the time being, please ensure that your MySQL usage is at a normal level.

Please note should your account use the amount of resources, it will be suspended again."

At that time the second admin did contact you and inform you about the situation, here is the timestamp of that email.

Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 4:05 PM

We did not receive a response to that email even though you had just been in contact with us less than an hour before?

Later in the night, the site was again causing the server to crash. We emailed you a final warning that we needed to begin the move.

Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 7:33 PM
Subject: Re: islandgazette.net will be suspended
> Since you have failed to respond the site is being suspended

You still did not reply, but we did not suspend it. We waited for your response and monitored the server and tried to keep things running normally. We understand it is a website for what appears to be a prominent newspaper, although any site we host has its own perfect right to be online.

It seems to me that your organization needed an OK from a manager, and you were buying time, which is completely understandable. The next morning (May 24th), we received a reply from someone that a message was uploaded that stated the site would be unavailable due to an upgrade.

Since the 24th, we have waited for any reply regarding the finalization, all the while this database was still being accessed and the server was suffering.

On Sunday, still no reply, but the usage was getting too massive and we could not wait any longer.

islandgazette.net
islandg
root
Sun May 29 16:22:31 2005
MySQL resource abuse; DB: islandg_pmac1 (second time, same database)

It was suspended (for the second time) Sun May 29 16:22:31.

Still no emails back from anyone at your organization. The last time anyone talked to us was May 24th. Now it was the 29th and we simply could not keep up with the monitoring any longer.

In a nutshell, first your site was suspended for a few hours (May 23rd), and then there was not any more communication from your side finalizing the move. On May 29th, it had to be suspended again. Instead of getting the issue resolved, we instead get multiple emails sent to our billing department (May 30) requesting immediate cancellation.

We also get this post.

I check the XOOPS forum from time to time, and was shocked to see this post here, and investigated the situation.

I am not sure if the site was XOOPS based... I am trying to determine that but your site is currently timing out at your other provider, or actually it is a DNS issue.



I have went to your site, up and available on our server in IP form, but can't tell due to the message posted of course.

http://dior.surpasshosting.com/~islandg/

I searched the server for XOOPS installs, and strangely, there doesn't seem to be any for your account.

Quote:

As I said before, you seem to be a prominent newspaper in your area, I can't really imagine the owner using such unprofessional language on a public web forum.

We were communicating well with *someone* from your organization, but I am not really sure what happened with that. To me this seems like a case of bad communication and mistruths between multiple people at your organization.

gazhead, I am not sure if you are that person that was cooperating with us (which seemed to be the owner), or an associate that is missing some details.

At any rate, the DNS seems to have already been changed so good luck with your new hosting company, we wish you well.

very fair reply, thanks Kayla!

herko