BlueVM VPS Review(BLUE1 $1/mo VPS Special) - Loving these guys!

Wira_Soenaryo

Update : have just tried using US VPN, it's also producing the same error from Los Angeles (Cloudfare) to Feathur..

putaoren

This has been happening for serveral hours now.

BlueVM

We are aware of this and are working on mitigating the inbound DDOS. Thank you for your patience...

@putaoren, Wira_Soenaryo, MorningIris

MorningIris

Feathur is working but vps is gone from the list, but working, so confusing...

putaoren

@MorningIris said:
Feathur is working but vps is gone from the list, but working, so confusing...

>
Mine is still there,everything is OK.

MorningIris

fixed, all godd.

Netxons

Could not connect to the specified database. Refer to the CPHP manual for instructions.

MorningIris

Tx vps is gone again..

MorningIris

fixed.

jake

Pretty good offer you got going on there @BlueVM, especially for Zurich!

Loving the oodles of bandwidth that you are offering. How much are additional IPs in Zurich?

BlueVM

@jake => $1 /Mo or $10 /Yr.

jake

@BlueVM said:
jake => $1 /Mo or $10 /Yr.

Thanks would love to add Zurich to my DNS server cluster. Ordering in a few.

Wira_Soenaryo

@BlueVM : Currently I'm in Buffalo, is that posible to move my VPS to LA?

Thanks..

BlueVM

@Wira_Soenaryo - Yes, submit a ticket.

Davidx

@BlueVM said:
Wira_Soenaryo - Yes, submit a ticket.

Is Feathur in LA yet?

user123

Dammit, I'm starting to hate them :P. I already bought the $1/month BLUE1 special and now I see the awesome deals they posted on LEB. I already have too many idling VPS.

BlueVM

@David_P - On some nodes yes and any new/sale nodes. Waiting on our vlan to be expanded to do the rest.

Wira_Soenaryo

@BlueVM said:
Wira_Soenaryo - Yes, submit a ticket.

Nice... will do...
Thanks..

BluBoy

Any KVM in Zurich?

BlueVM

@BluBoy - At the moment no... we have a node there, I'm trying to finish Feathur's KVM module before we set it up.

KenY

Buyer Beware: BlueVM is by far the worst VPS I've used. My reasons why:

1. One of the worst uptimes I've used. You get what you pay for?
2. Their 'fixes' never last. They've moved me to another node, but reliability is still a huge issue. It's an even bigger issue when my VPS doesn't 'boot back up' when they fix their issues.
3. I have a freshly rebuilded VPS, but they claim it's something I did. I've rebuilt several times. Never did anything except change my own password.
4. When you need support, not only is it slow (that I don't mind), they give you a run around.
5. They rarely honour their own SLA unless you fight for it (and again, slow support response...)
6. You can't get a refund.

I've given up fighting with them. I'd rather just let them keep their $15.

BlueVM seems to think just because I'm a $15 customer, it doesn't matter if I get 20% uptime. Other VPS providers I've used for the same price provide superior support and uptime for the same price.

Just warning people out there before they make the same mistake I do.

thehray

@KenY never faced such problem. 2Vps and had reseller hosting too. Which provider gives better service at this price. Pl tell me .

jvnadr

@KenY I have 3 vps's with them and not having much problems. Once banned from mistake from them and they quickly resolve the problem and gave me free months for my service. Their uptime is almost perfect, although in one of the boxes I have slow speeds to Europe that I live (but, again, something you can expect from very cheap US boxes due to distance). And their support is very good, also, I have my tickets answered in couple of hours mostly.
Thumbs up for them!

thehray

@KenY never faced such problem. 2Vps and had reseller hosting too. Which provider gives better service at this price. Pl tell me .

Darwin

I have 2 vps with them 2gb and 128mb and I am very satisfied with BlueVM services.

Only problem I had was a disk space shrinking/ and bad io in the 2gb node (probably someone was abusing that node), which they resolved in an acceptable time.

Magiobiwan

@KenY Mind PMing me a ticket number? It's unfortunate that you've had these issues.

KenY

@Magiobiwan My account is going to expire with BlueVM, but I'll PM you the ticket numbers anyway.

@thehray

I'd rather not spam BlueVM's thread with an ad for a competitor. I've used three other VPS providers, and here are my experiences with each:

1. Paid the same as BlueVM, but setup my VPS within a few minutes on the right server location (BlueVM didn't), never had any issues (currently running 32d uptime) and both cpu responsiveness and throughput is superior. Currently out of stock, though. But I can PM you the name if you want. This is what I'm currently using.

2. $15/year plan, again, faster throughput and better uptime. Had a few occasional issues, but they fixed it quickly and professionally (at least in comparison). Tech support staff seems experienced and knows what they're doing. They're very popular around LowEndBox with a very similar name, you can probably guess which provider this is. Currently out of stock, but they refill stock pretty frequently (although they also sell out fairly quickly).

3. This provider had poor uptime, and seemed to have similar technical competence level to BlueVM. I paid within 10-20% the same amount I paid BlueVM. However, the management took care of this in a professional manner. Whenever they had an issue, even if it was for a few days, they'd issue me a month of credit. So I expected BlueVM to do the same, as their provided service was pretty horrible. When I had terrible uptime, and BlueVM didn't even credit me for the time it was actually down, I brought up my experience with this provider in hopes BlueVM would at least give me fair credit. BlueVM responded, "we are not this provider." To be fair to BlueVM however, they did give me a month credit.. after I brought it up. This provider was called Hostrail.

If I were someone else reading this, I'd want to know exactly what it was about BlueVM that was so bad, and not just personal grudges or biases against a provider.

KenY

So why was my experience with BlueVM so bad?

Let's start at the beginning.

1. When I ordered a VPS in Kansas, they gave me a node in California. Not a big deal in itself, but it's the way they handled it.

Maybe it was my mistake. I checked my e-mail.

From [email protected] (Order Configuration)

Product/Service: OpenVZ VPS - BLUE1 (64/128 MB)
Domain: simpleserver
Operating System: Ubuntu 12.04 (32 Bit)
Location: Kansas

I made a ticket.

Their response:
It does state that please open a ticket to be moved to the correct location, this is not a mistake.. it's simply the order system putting you there.

It does bother me that they wouldn't even admit they made a mistake.

1. I placed an order for Kansas, they put me on California.
2. Somewhere between the time I ordered and their response, they added a note on their order page (which I'm sure wasn't there before) to request to be moved to the correct node.
3. They now say they didn't make any mistakes, saying somehow I was supposed to know they added a note to the order page that I was supposed to create a request, when that note wasn't there when I ordered.

The least BlueVM could have done was admit they had trouble with automatic placement and added that note after my initial order.

I also requested credit for downtime on the California node. They gave me three days, but I remember them being down for longer. Of course, they'd not admit to it, and I had no proof of this. So I let it go. But I started to monitor my uptime on pingdom so I would have proof in the future.

My response:

Thanks. For the record, there was no such message when I placed my order, but I will not argue.

I made a mental note to myself about their technical competence (compared to other providers) and how their support staff chose to deal with it. But I was moving on.

I could live with this. I thought my troubles were over.

KenY

They moved me to a new node, and I told them preserving my data wasn't necessary to make it easier for them. BlueVM's Support staff is likely busy, why ask for something I don't need? I could easily rebuild my data.

The node came blank. So I tried to do a rebuild with ubuntu 10.04, 11.04, and 12.04 with their supplied images (all 32/64-bit variants). I tried every single ubuntu image they had (there was about 6). None of them worked. (In comparison, two other providers which I used, everything worked flawlessly. Already, I'm doubting BlueVM's competence. But hey, I can live with it.)

So I created a ticket asking for assistance, but didn't get a response. I'm definitely no guru, but I tried to fix the problem myself and found one of the network scripts was configured incorrectly. I could get Ubuntu 12.04 to work on my own.

I closed the ticket. I didn't want to add to anyone else's wait times, which, based on the lowendbox BlueVM complaints about no refunds at the time, was probably pretty high.

They may not know how to setup their own images, or respond in a well-timed manner, but if it's a fairly easy fix and everything works, why complain?

But about a month later, I noticed my VPS was down for 25 days.

http://gyazo.com/35acde848ea7d8c42bee7908a3238841

Now I had proof. They can't just issue me 3 days again and get away with it, right?

Luckily, I wasn't using it for anything important yet. I requested credit for these 25 days.

Their response:

1. Ubuntu 12.04 is not compatible with our nodes yet, so that isn't considered as downtime.
2. We announced on twitter Kansas was going down for hardware upgrades which seem to be taking longer than expected.

**Summary: They completely ignored my request for credit. They stated 12.04 isn't compatible with their nodes yet, so it doesn't count.
**

But wait a minute..

1. I ordered a VPS with Ubuntu 12.04 as an option! Why offer the option if it's not compatible?!

2. It wasn't Ubuntu 12.04 causing the issue, because I fixed their little network script they didn't in their own images. My VPS was working perfectly fine for several days.

3. No other Ubuntu image worked!

Here was my response:

1. I doubt it was Ubuntu causing the issue as it as working fine for at least several days.

2. I was never notified not to use Ubuntu 12.04, there is no note anywhere to not use it.

3. I requested an image to be installed that worked in a prior support ticket, since certain ones did not work. No attempt was made to fulfill this request. I decided not to trouble support again, and choose an image that seemed stable.

4. The schedule maintenance expected was roughly 20 minutes of downtime, 5 days ago. It has been five days, this is nowhere near the 20 minutes expected. Promising approximately 20 minutes, but instead taking over 7200 minutes is a huge difference, and isn't professional at all.

5. It is still down.

Any other user would've complained already on several other forums being treated like this. I am trying to be respectful. I understand you're a new provider, issues are to be expected, and bad press should only be a last resort.

In contrast, another VPS provider, hostrail, offered me 2 months of credit for being down only 2 weeks.

Their response.. (continued)
http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/12558/bluevm-vps-review-blue1-1-mo-vps-special-loving-these-guys/p4

KenY

Hello, We are not a new provider, we're nearly 2 years old. And it isn't our fault because the DC can't fix something, we can only shout and demand to a certain extent. I can create another service in another location or on another Kansas node is you don't have or have backed up important data. We are not hostrail, and we haven't been down for 2 weeks. We can give you 1 month of extra service for this unfortunate incident. We have also found a fix for our templates, they require a networking file to be configured properly. If you require further support, please let us know.

So in the end, they gave me one month credit for 25 days of downtime. Seems fair, except for the fact I had to fight for it.

Again, let it go, move on. Life is too short to time spent arguing with VPS Providers with budget pricing.

I asked to be moved to a new node, and they gave me instructions on how to get Ubuntu 12.04's networking working. Yes, 12.04. The same distribution they said doesn't' work.

I realized their 'fix' was basically exactly what I did, but, I followed their exact instructions anyway.

I was hoping everything was working fine now that I was moved to a new node. Maybe it was a problem with that one node.

I even asked to confirm everything was fine.

That looks right, if it was saved it will work after shutdowns/reboots. If you rebuild it will have to be done again until we get the control panel to do this automatically. Have a good day!

Finally, my nightmare is over... right? I'm happy as long as it works...

http://i.imgur.com/MKz5Liy.png

That's my latest uptime report. Yes. 33% uptime. To be fair, I had to manually restart my VPS every time. After following their instructions.

I think I was going to bug them again, but really, what's the point?

BlueVM would most likely have told me "we were only down for a few hours."

Or blamed Ubuntu 12.04 for not booting back up by itself, which, they gave me instructions to use.

Maybe they'd move me to another node again. So I can have more downtime again. And repeat this endless loop of getting more service time on a service that simply doesn't work.

In the end, I decided it wasn't worth it and just moved on. Keep my money.

That is, until they sent me a bill to renew. I came on here to write a post a few above this one about my experience, just so someone else doesn't have to go through what I did, especially since BlueVM's policy is no refunds.

I wasn't even going to bother writing this post too, but when I saw responses, I felt it was only fair to the other users on here to set the record straight.