Many of you have told me you never want to pay for things you don't need. We've responded by unbundling our control panels and other complimentary software from our server offerings.

What exactly does this mean?

First, it means that you will never have to pay for anything you might not need.

Second, it means that you will have more choice and flexibility to customize the configuration that best meets your needs right from our web site.

As a result, there will be rare occasions, when your highly customized configuration might require additional time before it is available. For example, we expect that most custom configurations for Ready To Go Servers™ will be available instantly. Occasionally, a highly customized configuration will be available within hours of order.

We promise to continue looking for ways to improve your hosting experience with us. Questions and suggestions for additional improvements are always welcome, and I encourage you to make them known here.

the ready to go server pages offered a lot more information. how about keeping those as well as allowing custom orders?

This is great. I really like it but I dont see anyway to select different amounts of bandwidth. Is this going to be an option?

Hello,

More flexibility may be... But more expensive sure. $1 setup is now at $25 and monthly fee also go up.

I'm not sure that is a good thing for all customers, and in any case not for me. Who will live will see.

AGREED! I REALLY miss being able to see the server config info, such as there was one server, a Dell, that had SATA-300 drives and I was going to order it, but now I don't know which one it is.

i hate it... the $1 setup fee and instant activation are (were) ev1's biggest attraction, now they just messed everything up. i was going to move all my boxes to a private rack, but now i'm glad i didnt.

Guess my first post got "Censored"

How about posting some SLA's pertaining to service and support, you know the basics?

A very large downside has come to my attention after this has been done, i have been streaming the dedicated server list into my website. So now that the model has changed there is hardly anything on my list, so i can not provide prices and solutions to customers. i need to manually work it out and go through. The idea is good, in some instances, but its also a bad move. I think it would be a wiser decision to keep both options for users. Im sure their are other people like me that stream the RSS feed into their website, and this will prevent potentional customers from seeing an instant price and giving their business to the companies.

Just my 2 cents

Stuart

Yeah, except when you ask to have your bandwidth reduced from 3000GB to 1000GB, and you're told that it's not possible because some servers have to be configured with a certain amount of bandwidth. That's not particularly "customized".

I ordered a customized server on a Thursday, and it was all configured and ready to go within 36 hours. Unfortunately, the sales department never followed through on the ticket, so the server just sat there. I had an IP address and login info, but couldn't use the server because sales hadn't released things like the cPanel license. I emailed the head of sales, I added to my custom order support ticket, I contacted live help, and everyone said, "sales will get to it tomorrow". Well, it's now a week later, and not a peep from sales. I really, really miss the old days of Rackshack when the service here was efficient and reliable. Now it's not just the occasional person making an error here or there, it seems to be entire departments dropping the ball.

I cancelled my custom server order, btw, and and will be cancelling my two other existing servers and moving them to a new company by Saturday. I've been a customer here for over three years, but it's time for a change.

Mudpuppy,

Even if you do cancel your account, could you please PM me your account number so that I can look into this issue? This should not happen.

(and thank you taking the time to make us aware!)

im going with a private rack so i get better treatment

... not that i'm unhappy currently.

What about lower amounts of bandwidth lowering the cost on servers? Some of us dont need 2000gb of bandwidth and 500gb will do just fine if the price can be compensated.

Your Dual Opterons are so over-priced and under spec'd its untrue. $400 for a dual opteron with only 2gb of ram and no RAID harddrives? whats the point in that! Really the dual dualcore opteron should come with raid and 4GB of ram and still be under $400/month easily.

We just finished moving 70 servers away from EV1 due to the fact that we wanted higher spec opterons, and the low spec ones EV1 offer would have cost us $28,000 a month in total... Im sure we're not the only ones with thoughts like this.

EV1 is not a "premium" provider no matter what spin your new marketing people put on it. Services and pricing need to reflect this otherwise sizable chunks of your market share might be falling elsewhere.

... Then again what do I know, im just an ex-customer.

I have mentioned this idea before, if you can select a server configuration, then choose the IP count, bandwidth amount etc..
Basically Server Ala Carte
As long as the server is a standard BOM, (no special hardware tweaks) then Ev1 can do this. Question is, WILL they do this?

I guess its a case of not wanting to do it.

Overselling the bandwidth is where the money is made in the dedicated server market, that or management.

By having to reduce prices and giving people *just enough* they lose the opportunity to oversell on the bandwidth. By bumping prices and saying *oh but you get 2000gb* people will buy and still not use half of that.

Over the years prices have not gone down, but bandwidth allocations have gone up... I think its time to come back down to reality and offer some lower bandwidth, lower priced solutions.

Hands up who uses 2000GB on all thier servers?

Matt:

We're looking at our data center options. Out of curiosity, what datacenter did you all move to?

TIA.

I agree with Starpoint
We should be able to select:
- Bandwidth (metered and unmetered)
- RAM
- Number of harddrives

Since we are going to pay the setup fees anyway, I think it's not a big deal!

And please note that most of us are tech geeks, we like to know the models of the hardware we are selecting!
(see alienware for example)

And why there are Celeron servers but not Pentium D servers?
There were a good cheap way to go dual!
And the extra 400GB drive was a very good backup solution!

Actually the idea I posted I do not know how long ago was this:

Base server configuration + extra RAM/HD or special setups.
IP count over the given 8
Bandwidth package of your choice
Metered or unmetered
Control panel of your choice.


Also as a nice bonus, have 3 installs of the _nix os
FULL - has all the best packages - good for novices
Basic - has the most common packages - you can add more - good for intermediate users
Minimal - You start with a CLI and add what you want, we're talking you better be a GURU.

reason for the 3 is this, the smarter you are, the less you should pay for the "OS"

I know Ev1 might now like setting up a billing matrix like this but here are the pros and cons

Pros:
Users can pick and choose whats best for them and pay a fair price for it.
Users are not paying for extra BS that may or may not cause them issues later.

Cons:
Users are not paying EV1servers extra for things they do not need or want.
Users get EXACTLY what THEY want or NEED, not what EV1 THINKS they want or need.
Ev1 will have to maintain a few more install images.

Point is, if you are not willing to take care of your customers, someone else will.

I agree with Matt, I have servers that come with 2/3000gb bandwidth and dont utilize even 500gb per month. I would be glad to see my server prices go down (and profits go up!) being able to choose smaller bandwidth package.

Btw I like the server configuring system that SoftLayer has, it gives you good amount of options.

Uh, could you now take a look at your PMs and get me the refund I'm requesting? I ordered a new server from you on November 1st, was charged a prorated fee of $143 for it on November 3rd, but you didn't even have it online and ready for use until November 9th. I attempted to just cancel the order prior to the 9th and was ignored. I asked for a refund of the $143 (especially because we were charged for six days of use when you didn't even have a server for us) and haven't received it. Posting on the boards seems to be the only way to get your attention.

I did cancel both my other servers and moved to a managed hosting company (luckily I made copies of all our billing statements before I did that, because now I have no access to my RS account at all). I'd just like my refund so I can go merrily on my way.

I just spent over 30 minutes trying to configure a server that would show as being instantly available -- just as a matter of curiosity.

I never got even one.

Tried all sorts of combinations, from hardware way beyond what I want, to Celerons, with Windows, or RedHat, Control Panels or none -- nothing, nada, zip. Nothing is available now.

Excellent, Doug. Thanks!

Instant activation servers are light right now... we're working on that. However, the DC staff is working hard to deploy custom ordered servers as quickly as possible.

whats the delay on them? I just ordered a XEON 3060..

Just the provisioning process. The DC staff is probably working on that for you now if you do not already have your server.

Get this....

I love dual xeons 2.4's with scsi drives, That are cheap and handle okay. So I tried to order one last weekend. Out of stock (these were never out of stock before the new crew). On monday I get an email saying it will be 3-5 days and I could get a single dual core xeon for about the same price. As I was in a pinch I said lets do that. Chris M. Said it would be picked up at the DC in a few hours and then finished a few hours later. 36 hours go by and then I get an email that this server is not in stock was not and would be 3-5 more days. So I said forget that I can't wait I'll go to another provider. Last night looking in servercommand and there they were both dual xeons 2.4s and 3.2s ready to go.

I just feel mislead and do not know how comfy I am keeping my business with ev1.

I'd love someone who knows what they are doing to make sure the ordered server on our account is not going to be billed out to us.

Mark

> (these were never out of stock before the new crew)

Dell and Intel hadn't made the hardware End of Life until just recently.

As for the rest of it... PM me with your account number and what you need done and I'll get things taken care of.

My 2 cents on this: Aaron is now doing what Mario used to do. Straighten out the DC's screw up. The crew at the DC mess up things, and Mario would have to get it fixed, Mario's gone, no Aaron is doing that. I applaud Aaron for doing it, but HE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO!!! The DC team should be smart enough to do things right the 1st time.

I'm just glad that I can help get things taken care of.

You say that now, but after a while you get tired of fixing other people's screw ups. At what point do you go postal is up to you.
I prefer to nip things in the bud per say. Confront the person that screwed up, tell them that the next time he will have to explain in writing to the end user why he failed to perform the task asked of him.

If that does not work, having their dead rotting head on a punji stick outside the DC tends to serve warning to other techs.

Heh, you've forgotten my neverending optimism

Yes, but I sell punji sticks

Where I work I train new agents, and my boss knows I am a hardass on n00bs

I have to agree, Aaron is the one to contact if things are not working out for you. However the staff should be able to make things right in the first hand without Aaron. Right now ev1 senior staff is excellent but they are too few and the first level techs who receive your tickets are slow and most of the time unable to do really anything. I mean no matter what your level, I as a customer should never hear a tech use these sentences: "I dont know", "not that I know of", "I cant help you with that" etc. when he really should be saying "I'll find out" or "I'll make sure this gets taken care of". These are the basics you learn in a business college in the first weeks. Also, if you dont know then you should understand to escalate the ticket to someone who does know and tell the client that the ticket is being forwarded to senior staff member.

I had a nasty network issue few weeks ago and really needed senior network engineer to help me sort it out... it was very difficult to get hold of them, but thanks to Aaron (and little @#!@#!@#!@#!@#!ing in livechat) I got ChrisP to contact me and he was really doing everything to help me out and was extremely dedicated to solve the issue (and did solve the issue!). I feel very safe to have my business with ev1 when I know there are such wonderful people as Aaron and Chris, but what worries me is that if I need to get senior help through normal channels (servercommand and livechat) i have to go through techs and it can take many hours in critical situations. Last time I had to actually wait around 4-5 hours before I got the right person to take care of the issue. If this would have been daytime it would have had serious consequenses on my business reputation, which of course is unacceptable.

Well I've waited NINE hours for cpanel to be added to a server we ordered at 9am today. No-one started work until i opened a ticket and we then waited four hours between being told the install was being started and being told that the imaging servers were down (I'm sceptical on this point).

CS Live chat were helpful but even they were left waiting by the DC.

Can't really say I'm that happy.

Well,

I'm still awaiting for my server to be setup from a order on Tuesday. I ordered a woodcrest server with raid support and just this morning the server was given over to me in shambles, the panel was all screwed up . I put a ticket in 8am this morning and its almost 10PM and I've been told by almost 3 techs over the phone that its being handled. I asked to have the server just restored and was told I have to pay for it????

First off the server was given to me screwed up. I've been on hold on some calls for almost 30mins and sometimes even being hung up on. I've been tossed like a hot potato through so many techs its not even funny. I'm now getting pretty upset at this but I'm going to wait like the level 1 tech promised me over the phone not long ago,,, that my server will be fixed tonight. If tomorrow nothing, EV1 might just loose another client.

I've been with EV1 since the Rackshack days and I was a very very happy client. I really hope EV1 can fix my issues becauuse I really hate to have to find another solution. They have a great network with great products, all they need to do is re-shape their support, becaues I have noticed this went really down the tubes.

Please PM me your account number or a related ticket number so I can get the correct people involved. We'll get you all fixed up.

Sorry for the hassle.