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lol.
You mean servers in restaurants, like at Mr. Robot?
Driving wasn't a requirement. It was a perk to help him get settled. If he said no, he would have been given rides. It was purely trying to look after him, but instead it cost the company money and nearly injured me and himself.
Yeah, you make a good point here.
Hey there guys,
I hope all is well with you guys over here - sorry for not being too active lately. As most of you know, I recently had a baby (almost 11 months old already, time flies as we usually say in Portugal), so this means I have less time than I used to. I still focus on providing solid and affordable services to my clients, here's what I have to say about this review to sum it up.
Most clients signup for our Full Server Management plan when they need us to fix issues in their servers immediately. This means that most order a service that involves, basically, maintenance tasks but use it for emergency support - they usually cancel right after we fix their issues. Even though it's only 25€/month, we don't/didn't care about it and have been fine even if we spend 6 hours sorting a server.
This has to stop and this review helped us making a decision. It's a monthly maintenance plan - this is the core of our management services. However, customers consistently abuse it - instead of opening an emergency ticket with us, which is available to order from our website as follows...
"Emergency Support 24/7"
https://myw.pt/devops
50€/hour
This sends us an SMS at any given time. We log in to our NOC to fix the issue(s) and bill per hour.
The @OP in question had a very basic issue. He's skilled enough to write a bad review about us but he's unable to create a missing "A Record" in Cloudflare that would bring his website online. He was pissed off because I couldn't do much to add to what Jonesolutions had done and took too long to refund - Jonesolutions covered it pretty well, I wouldn't lie to him and change the SSH port to make it look like I had done something through security vs obscurity (Does it protect your server? - hey, it doesn't, a simple nmap portscan can find it).
The timeline follows...
"Hey
Alright. We can have a look tomorrow. It's 4:29AM, right now we can only handle emergencies from our NOC clients.
Happy to check it tomorrow if you list the issues, how to reproduce it, and the login details necessary to fix it mate.
"
I'd say this is an "ok reply", considering that he didn't order an emergency support service, which we bill at 50€/hour, right?
"Glad you sorted it!
No, let us know what sort of hardening you need and or server optimization
"
"Hey,
It looks like they've done everything, we can optimise it or, if you'd like, we can simply refund as we didn't do anything yet
"
As written in the beginning of my reply here, we had to make a decision. I guess people can't have nice things. In order to defend ourselves from such customers, we've increased the price for NEW clients (existing clients have no increase at all) for our Full Server Management plan from 25€/month to 75€/month. It surely won't help us with sales but it'll help us to be healthy and mentally stable.
@OP,
I did hide your replies here so I believe we're fine (GDPR ftw?), please understand we need to state the facts and defend our company from public bashing - after all, we're here to grow and such reviews aren't completely transparent of what we've done. We're not perfect but we have been doing our best.
I wish you the best in your future endeavors.
To the rest of the members here - let's clarify. We prioritize the NOC and Management clients. Webhosting clients have 24/7 support if there's an issue with the server that involves downtime directly.
Monthly paying customers have faster support.
Lifetime clients can't expect us to reply fast. There are priorities. We're improving that to Lifetime clients too, here's an example so we all understand it...
1 ticket for cPanel migrations - this can be done by the client through the restore feature in DirectAdmin even as a reseller, it just needs to be renamed to cpmove-CPANELLOGIN.tar.gz and use the restore function;
1 ticket for SSH access - most resellers only need to ask us for this once, we then grant the access for the reseller to provide SSH access for subaccounts;
1 ticket for quota usage - login via SSH, try to see what's going on first, please;
1 for duplicate billing - been waiting for 3 days, sent on Friday, will get to it tomorrow;
1 ticket regarding client area issues - no worries, the reseller account is working just fine, it's just an issue with the member area which we'd need to check, but, no worries, the service is online and working properly;
1 ticket for Jetbackup issues - damn, we've literally reported major bugs to Jetbackup, even from my NOC clients that too use Jetbackup;
10+... General questions/basic issue tickets which I'll address this coming week, pretty sure that most can be sorted by the client;
... A bunch of sales ticket which I'll reply to in the coming week as well.
We're doing our best here. I know it's easier to find a "bad review" than a "good review", that's the way it is and we're fine with it, but we're definitely not trying to cheat our customers.
@MikePT I posted the entire screenshot of the entire conversation in this thread.
I wasn't mad that you requested to complete the ticket the next day.... I was upset that the next day came and went without follow up. Is it too much to ask for deadlines to be met or at least a follow up stating "hey I ran into some issues today I promise I'll have it done first thing tomorrow."
You still haven't addressed why you asked me what server hardening I needed. As a "professional" service wouldn't you have a list of things to complete for server hardening? If I was more clueless than what I am and responded to that ask with "Idk I heard an ssl makes things secured." would that have been an acceptable measure to implement while leaving my ssh port at 22?
Using me as a scape goat to raise your prices to 75 euro a month is pretty lame in my opinion. I had JoneSolution for 6 months and raised two tickets to support. So yeah I am the type of customer to get a problem resolved and bail.
I think the real reason you're raising prices is because you don't have time. I mean you said it yourself. Based on your response you couldn't process a refund for a week because you had 20+ tickets, a newborn, and you're a 1 man team. Lack of time is also why you never attempted to ssh into my server which explains a lot here.
I feel sorry for the lifetime customers you have that were told the cost of these services would be subsidized by server management. You have effectively priced yourself out of the LET market. I hope they're smart enough to store their backups on separate media.
I signed back up for JoneSolution and got my old rate back. They were super happy to help me out. They knew I was a good customer that didn't have many needs. I only need piece of mind when something goes wrong.
This should have been transparently communicated BEFORE PURCHASE in the LIFETIME OFFER threads you've created on forums, so I would expect a LATE REPLY. Glad you noted here now. I'll now always caution people buying lifetime plans from you (MyW.pt) in such threads.
As such until the support service is improved, there seems no point in hosting client's sites as a reseller on Myw.pt hosting as I can't wait 3 or 4 days to get the reply for server related tech-tickets from MyW and then pass it on my client. This hosting as of now as good of only staging sites.
Uff the bashing... @caniac22 i don't understand why you keep going, there were some misunderstandings on both parts, but @MikePT in the end was respectful, replied back and gave you a full refund on the service, no questions asked, if this situation made him reconsider his pricing, that's his business...
and @JasonM chill, that reaction is totally understandable if in the future you have a issue, server problems and things deteriorate with MyW, but as of now, as far as i can tell he is providing you with a good service, and as far as i can tell this is lowend so there are always compromises and as far as i can tell @MikePT comprise is in the support and not on the quality of the hosting, remember that Buyvm dropped from the shared hosting biz just because of the overhead on support, as long as MyW keep the servers running smooth, i dont see a issue with delayed support... again this is lowend...
also as a sidenote lifetime hosting should be seen as discounted hosting, the longer the service runs smoothly the bigger your savings, if MyW in like 6 years asks for more money to upgrade the servers or to move to a better quality server, that's a pretty good lifetime deal in my mind, better than disappearing with your money or website...
This is why, I prefer direct message/chat with my client rather than using ticket. You can prevent misunderstanding and communicate better.
That's reasonable complaint since Mike said he would look at it in the day.
You're wrong, here, mostly because you don't have the experience to know what you don't know. Generally, someone asking specifically for server hardening will provide a threat assessment so they have better idea of necessary precautions. Otherwise, it's standard operating procedure to take best practice security measures. But what those are differs from a game server, a commercial website, a message board, former employees, malware, enemies, previous attacks, etc. Hell, leaving SSH on port 22 and putting in IP whitelist only to the NOC would be better for software compatibility than changing ports and not IP filtering. Then you'll ticket for being security hardened out of your server.
Tl;dr you should have provided more details and/or had a conversation about this. If I was Mike, I would have flat out replied expressly telling you to provide additional details before starting anything.
@MikePT nobody expects changing SSH port to be the difference between protected and unprotected, it simply reduces the attack surface and makes the attacker work harder (e.g. portscan). It's 100% correct to say it reduces the frequency of attacks, the resources used and the spam noise in logs. Your argument makes you look lazy, not competent.
So being blamed for a 300% price increase because I am not a good client is reason to shut up and keep moving? Should I not defend my integrity?
Either you are a kid or you no nothing about trading. In buyer-seller trade there's no assumption. No LE, No premium. When as a buyer you can't assume the seller will provide delayed support for particular service/product. It's sellers' duty to inform prior to purchase if they have different policies for a particular sale/offer, etc. or it is not called a fair trade practice if seller discriminates between the same product/service purchased at sale OR regular cost and does not inform the buyer prior to the purchase is made. In such situation chargeback happen.
Also, support and quality of service (performance, etc) are two totally different but complimentary aspects of a business. IF either is not good then also I can mark such business/sellers/webhosts as "not good".
This explains so much.
I have always been fascinated by people that buy extremely cheap stuff and expect top service and quality, but if this is the way those people think then it suddenly makes sense.
So just to be clear, let me make an example.
I have a €9.99 lifetime webhosting deal with MikePT. I expect pretty much nothing from it, it is a €9.99 lifetime for crying out loud, although in all fairness I should point out that so far it has performed flawlessly.
In my mind it makes perfect sense that such a deal does not come with 24/7 instant emergency support. That's just so obvious it does not even need mentioning.
But in your mind, you expect full support on such a deal? Unless it is mentioned, you do not comprehend yourself that such a deal does not mean that Mike will drop whatever he is doing and cater to your needs for the rest of his life?
Well, I don't like to explain anything more to kids here.
You expecting nothing that's your mentality of expecting nothing for an amount spent.
You can't force everyone to accept your mentality of doing business.
I've got 100% chargeback success rate for sellers having such hidden-policies, or unfair trade practices.
this is similar to : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument
TBH this seems like a misunderstanding from both sides, op expected the same amount of optimisation/hardening from myw and gave an example of what jones did on his previous server, mike thinks its something that jones did on the current server, customer got angry cause there is no white glove optimisation/hardening and asked for refund instead of correcting that mistake and got labelled by mike as a abusive customer & mike pms cause of bad review to raise prices by a ton which nobody sane would buy when there is many other server management which are cheaper and handle tickets sub 15 to 20 mins.
You see, since he thinks he paid an amount, any amount, he should be able to extract the same amount of work as the most expensive option.
Thus, his argument is fallacious in the way that he expects that all amounts of money are equivalent and thus devalues hard work. This concept of a cheap option has lower efforts put into it, and an expensive option has more effort put into it, is alien to him. Apart from luxury items, the effort that goes into something is why something is "cheap" or "expensive".
Sure, please call us more names. Also, you're sure your name is Jason? Between your thread history where I see an interest in Indian world affairs, your word choices ("mentality", as opposed to "mindset", which is something I see often in Indian English), and your highly argumentative demeanor, I am sure you are from India.
It reminds me of some interactions I had with customers in that country, I always thought that my perception of Indians as devaluing the concept of hard work and being highly argumentative was perhaps just a stereotype, it gets reaffirmed 90% of the time I have an interaction with someone from that country, including your comment above.
I don't like injustice - and it's sad to see it come from misunderstanding.
In my experience, Mike does change the SSH port.
So, the way I understood his reply is that SSH port change is far from be all end all in terms of SSH security, and it would make no sense to do just that and charge for it.
Not that he doesn't do it (in addition to the other security measures and precautions).
For full disclosure - I'm using his reseller hosting and had asked for SSH to be enabled.
It isn't impossible for him to not do that with dedicated servers - but I find that highly improbable based on that experience.
Related to the "usability" of the MyW reseller hosting:
Re-selling hosting that way is a risky endeavour, even with premium providers. You're not a hosting provider, not in charge of the server's administration, so many things are out of your hands.
I've had problems that couldn't be solved very quickly even with premium-priced providers (example).
Sure, it is comforting to know that someone will jump on a ticket right away, 24/7, but what if they can't fix the problem? It happens.
Is it less likely to happen with the premium-priced providers? I believe so.
Then again, I haven't had any problems (long downtimes etc) with the German MyW reseller hosting server (uptime stats).
The US server hosts just a highly questionable-quality WordPress website, and I can't confirm any uptime problems until I get down to fixing that experimental "jewel" of my custom coding.
Based on my experience over the years:
if you wish your clients to have good hosting, and sleep well at night, direct them directly to a good shared/reseller hosting provider. Don't step in-between.
Reseller hosting is great for development, and for websites that one does all the maintenance for (with, or without charging clients, that depends).
But reseller hosting can be a very bad idea if you "present" yourself as a hosting company, but in fact can't really touch the server - it's out of your hands.
We work in the industry where buyers and sellers meet from all the different regions of the world, with different cultures and understanding, so the clearer description of a product or service, I think, the better for all. Like you are getting a discounted item from, let's say Amazon, and have to guess, whether it comes with a warranty or not. When it's clearly stated in product description one can decide accordingly. When ambiguities are left, that's basically pre-programmed debate/dispute. That becomes a waste of time and money for seller, instead of giving that information to buyer before purchasing decision is made.
I do not expect nothing. I expect a reasonable service in regards to what I'm paying for.
A €9 euro lifetime hosting is pretty amazing in itself, so asking for anything more then a simple space to host your website is just naive. If I pay close to nothing, I expect close to nothing. As always, you get what you pay for.
Trying to humiliate me by calling me a kid when you are the naive one just makes you look stupid, so that one is on you.
Nobody should do business with someone who buys/negotiates in bad faith. You're just making up standards not agreed upon.
Mike didn't "PMS" at all... can't blame him. Worked in similar sysadmin environment. People would order regular service and create an emergency ticket. After their issue gets fixed... Boom chargeback/refund request.
The emergency issue was not setting an A record for the subdomain, that is something most host even if unmanaged will share for free with the customer, its not like the op demanded it to be fixed on the spot when ticket was made, he even waited for a whole day. The hardening + optimisation part, op should have checked before purchasing the service. If a total of 1 ticket with a bad review causes him to raise prices by 300%, what do you call it if not pms.
That's actually the problem.
OP did checked before purchasing because he wanted to get melons at peanuts price.
Mike did mention he was having multiple abuse from different customers or you can't bother to read? TL;DR
Yep that's correct. A very large portion of the orders are for emergency issues when they've ordered the standard full management plan which is not by any means contemplating such service that's offered separately.
Cheers!
Except the Seller and Buyer in this thread,
the following picture applies to everyone:
BTW, @MikePT has already resolved the ticket.
So there's no point in dragging this thread further.
I've already expressed my points as a Buyer towards Sellers in general. Though some people don't agree with it, I don't care about it.
Rest of you having ample free time can keep commenting on this thread.
Actually, it does not. If you post your opinion on a public forum, you have to expect it to be questioned. If OP did not want other people "to put their nose in his business" he would not have started this thread.
That's only really the case if you move it to a high port (say over 30000). If the port number is <1024 then it's going to be easily found and attacked.
Installing fail2ban, blocking people after 5 attempts, and using certificate auth (totally disable password auth in SSH config) has way more positive impact than changing the port.
Wrong. There is only 65535 TCP ports available. To scan every port is a peace of cake. Especially when there is tools like: https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/masscan which is very performant. Security via obscurity existed long time ago, before humans even spoken. Port change does not bring you harm, but to rely on it is dangerous. Move to wireguard. Go deep internal.
and all of this solved with ipv6
Just put it on a random ipv6 and it's secure.