A Brief History

DigitalSpace.net was one of the first hosting providers I used. Their rates used to be reasonable, just $3/mo, or $36/yr, for starter sites. It used to be a smaller company with live chat support and they were pretty helpful, especially when I was still sort of starting out…

I learned quickly that DigitalSpace.net’s plans were very limited, but it seemed to be the norm at the time, and it was hard to beat the price. When I say limited, I mean one database, eight sub-domains, no cPanel, no SSH access, no add-on domains, $50 to restore from backup, etc. Unfortunately, I can’t reference the old plans, so that’s what they currently offer… or don’t offer.

Eventually, one of my sites got too big for any of their smaller plans and they wanted me to pay around $100/mo, but I would be running that site at a loss. Fortunately, I found ASmallOrange, which offers VPS plans at very reasonable prices (and shared hosting plans starting at $25/yr). While not the perfect, managed, solution, it suited my needs and I was able to transfer the site over without too much hassle and minimal downtime.

Where Things Went From Bad to Worse

DigitalSpace.net got bought out by Jumpline in 2007 – their logo now states “digitalspace a Jumpline company” – and everything went to hell. Their support is atrocious, their plans are extremely limited, and they’ve raised the rates to the absurd! Needless to say, I had already moved most of my sites elsewhere, but still had two of my sites, and two of someone else’s sites hosted there.

As for the prices, I recently got an invoice for $95.40/yr for each starter account, which used to be $36/yr. Apparently, they provide more space, but starter sites typically don’t need that. They could have just offered a different, intermediate, plan, but it looks like they just needed an excuse to raise the rates. Perhaps it was because people, like me, have left en masse. They claim to have hired more support staff, but based on the time it took for them to reply to my support tickets, I doubt that is true. If so, they hired some incredibly lazy and/or incompetent people.

The Most Recent Head Ache

Because of the recent price hike, even though they offered to discount them to keep me, I’d had enough. I just finished transferring the last four sites away from DigitalSpace, but they weren’t the least bit helpful. Apparently, I no longer had shell access and was not allowed to tar the sites for backup or removal purposes. Eventually, they did this for me. Then, I found that I no longer had access to phpMyAdmin, so I couldn’t export the databases. That also meant that I’d be unable to repair them if something went wrong. That issue eventually got resolved.

Their support system doesn’t allow for email replies, so you’re required to log in and jump through several hoops to reopen the ticket and reply (it’s automatically closed after each of their replies). A response can take a day or two, even though they claim to offer 24/7 tech support. ASmallOrange allows for email replies and issues are resolved, or responses provided, typically within ten minutes. ASO also has a support forum as well as a FAQ and wiki with many solutions to commonly asked questions.

Problems With DigitalSpace.net:

• 24/7 Support did not provide responses after hours
• Phone support is only available M-F during business hours
• Support tickets take around a day or longer to get a response
• Responses from tech support were vague, or incorrect
• They took one site offline without warning for sending out a newsletter
• They set arbitrary limits on email sending and bandwidth use
• Forced to use Plesk instead of cPanel
• They more than doubled rates ($36/yr for starter plan to $95.40/yr)
• Only one database included in Starter or Basic plans
• No Shell access with Starter or Basic plans
• Limited to 8 sub-domains with Starter Plan and 16 with Basic plan
• Could not get SSH to work with Advanced plan
• They charge $50 to restore from a backup

Emails from DigitalSpace.net Support:

Issue: Can’t tar files via SSH
Reply from Geoff Storbeck (Tue Jun-30-2009 02:34):
Unfortunately you will not be able to use ‘tar’ on a shared hosting account. You may want to look into our VDS hosting for more shell-enabled commands.
Note: This would require me to upgrade my hosting just to transfer a site away.

Issue: asked them to backup sites for me
Reply from Geoff Storbeck (Tue Jun-30-2009 21:44):
This has been completed.
Note: It was not.

Issue: phpMyAdmin not installed or configured
Reply from Tim Robison (Wed Jul-01-2009 17:17):
I was just able to add a new user to the database and make it the default. Any of your domains that are doing this, just create a new user for the dbwebadmin.
Note: Users existed already – why the need to create more?

Issue: they only backed up one site
Reply from Geoff Storbeck (Wed Jul-01-2009 23:06):
This has been completed.
Note: Finally!

Issue: phpMyAdmin drops to file not found error
Reply from Frank Kuria (Sat Jul-04-2009 10:47):
The timing out is possibly due to the fact that phpMyAdmin has some file size limits so if you have large databases it may not be possible to backup using phpMyAdmin. You may want to try to use SSH enter the command
mysqldump toyotace3 > toyotace3.dmp
View the helpful link below for more details.
http://support.digitalspace.net/article/view/2004/Using_SSH_to_Import_and_Export_your_Data_and_Databases
Note: I already tried this and I couldn’t log into or use SSH

Issue: SSH not working, asked for better instructions
Reply from David Metcalf (Sun Jul-05-2009 16:30):
When exporting through phpmyadmin, check the box to save it as a file but do not enable any compression. This will allow for a successful export.
Note: He obviously didn’t read the thread to see that I’d tried this already.

Issue: already tried phpMyAdmin, asked them to export database for me
Reply from Geoff Storbeck (Mon Jul-06-2009 21:20):
I have created the dump file for you and placed it in your /private directory.
Note: Finally!

Issue: waiting for response to support ticket
Reply from Frank Kuria (Sat Jul-04-2009 10:49):
Please see response to your issue. If you still have problems, please let us know. Thanks.
Note: Gee, thanks.

I should point out that the dates and times in the support tickets above do not appear to be accurate. For example, I received the last two responses at the same time, but the dates are two days apart. Their system is flawed, which makes it difficult to show accountability. Fortunately, Gmail seems to thread the emails correctly.

As for the tech support representatives at DigitalSpace.net, I hope that  their future perspective employers Google their names and will find this post showing how inept they were in accomplishing a simple task. I’m sure a large part of the blame could be placed on DigitalSpace.net policies, but I’ve seen ASO handle similar requests within minutes. It took DigitalSpace.net nearly a week to allow me to transfer four sites, with eight databases away. That is just not acceptable.

I use and recommend ASmallOrange, which offers extremely affordable starter plans (Tiny Orange). For $25/yr you get a relatively small amount of space, but unlimited sub domains, databases, email addresses, add-on domains, etc. Their support is extremely fast and helpful and they also have a support forum, FAQ and wiki that answer many questions if you don’t want to wait 10-15 minutes for an emailed response to a support ticket.

A spreadsheet I created to work out my hosting restructuring shows me saving around $500/yr by using ASmallOrange over the other hosting co. and taking advantage of adding on domains to existing accounts, rather than creating separate accounts for each site.

It’s taken several days and I’m still waiting to be able to back up my databases at the old host in order to transfer the sites. Once I get the sites moved and I’m done with the old host, I’ll let you know who they are and why I’m glad to be done with them.

UPDATE: I got a reply back regarding backing up the databases; however, I found that it looks like they only backed up one of the four sites. So, I just reopened the support ticket and asked that they back up each of the four sites. What a freakin’ joke!

UPDATE: I finally got them to backup the rest of the sites and I’m in the process of moving two sites over. For one, I’ve gotten it unpacked, database imported and nameservers changed. I’m just waiting for the DNS to propagate before I get back to work on the second one.

UPDATE: Got the first two sites moved over and trying on the third, which has three databases. I have the site unpacked and one database imported. The second database isn’t making it, so I’m having ASO support look into that. The old host, I believe, is giving me problems and I can’t get phpMyAdmin to allow me to export the third database. What a pain!

UPDATE: It’s been almost a week and every day I think I’ll have the problem resolved. Unfortunately, they don’t offer phone support over the weekend, so I’ve had to wait to call until today. They claim to offer 24/7 tech support, but I have yet to receive a response after hours, and they typically take about a day or longer. I’ve now given all info over to the new host to see if they can log in and figure something out. I’ll also be calling today, but I’ve read from others that it can take about an hour to get through… great…

At this point, I can only think they’re being vague and nonresponsive on purpose. It’s gotten personal. I’ll be posting all support ticket responses with employee names and whatever personal info I can dig up. If they want to cost me money by keeping my site down, perhaps I can cost the company future business and their future employment for their inept staff. I’ll have to weigh the cost of satisfaction vs. the price of _____Sucks.com

UPDATE: Issue resolved. Site moved. Let the public flogging begin… soon.