Tag ix unlimited sucks

So yesterday morning I received yet another TOS (terms of service) violation email from my good buddies at IX Web Hosting.  Evidently the participants from the Turkey Trot hitting the GCR web site was too much traffic for my “unlimited” shared hosting plan to handle.  As is always the case when this happens, IX simply turns your site off until you contact them.

So I decide to go through their Romanian online chat tech support instead of dealing with their India based phone help desk.  After waiting close to 30 minutes I finally get someone on the other side and after another 20 minutes my site is finally turned back on after I promised to follow the guidelines the support person sent me via email.

Well I have had years and years of problems with IX including their insecure servers which allowed my sites to be hacked repeatedly, poor reliability and performance, highlighted by the SIX DAY outage when they had a SAN crash, and their brilliant decision to outsource their US based call center to India.  The only way you get to speak to an American now is if you want to buy something from them.  If you have a problem you get to deal with an Indian on the other side of the globe who you will be lucky to understand every third word out of their mouth.

So anyway I finally took some action and although it isn’t a total IX divorce it gets me out from under the threat of TOS bullshit.  I migrated the WordPress sites I use for Dufisthenics and the running club to GoDaddy yesterday.  The plan I bought includes up to 5 WordPress installations so I figured I may as well take advantage of it. I am planning to move the blog you are currently reading there as well once I work out a couple bugs.

The GoDaddy hosting I bought is tailored and optimized for WordPress so I shouldn’t have to deal with the normal shared hosting bullshit I have consumed from IX for so long.  Another barrier to me moving hosts was the hassle in doing so.  GoDaddy can make this process stupidly easy.  You provide them access to your current site and they can duplicate it on their hosting in less than an hour.  It’s awesome.

I am actually using a hybrid approach to this since I already have stuff like domain names, DNS and email bought and paid for on IX which works fine.  I would have to pay extra if I wanted to duplicate that service on GoDaddy.  So I am just leaving that stuff as is and just moving the WordPress installations which will basically eliminate the vast majority of my problems with IX.  It feels good to move away from the source of so many of my cyber-headaches.

After work I bought a small palm sander, another kitchen corner inspired purchase.  Cindy used it last night to do all sorts of smoothing and rounding of edges on the table top.  When she was done the counter top had a distressed look that was sort of cool but the plan is for Cindy to hit it with one more layer of stain before finishing it off with a glaze coat.

I had my hole bit attached to my drill last night to drill two holes, one in the inside of the corner cabinet to access the electrical outlet and a second one on the counter top to route the cords through.

This morning I started my Thursday morning unconventionally with prolonged, laugh out loud inciting videos.  The first was LA Beast swallowing 15 hot dogs without chewing them.

The second video was a hilarious scientific explanation of how to find a wife using careful formulas that utilize a crazy versus hot graph.  It is amazingly funny.

So this quick rant is about my good buddies at IX Web Hosting.  No, I have not taken the initiative to tackle the monster task of migrating all of my content/sites to some other host so in the end, shame on me. But let’s not let that get in the way of a good rant.

So I get one of those delightful TOS violation emails this morning from IX.  Every time I have received one of these, and there have been quite a few, it has to do with something on one of my sites consuming too many CPU cycles.  I was surprised but no less annoyed to see that my violation was of a different nature this time.  They said that I was consuming too much disk space.  Between all of my domains a total of 31 gigs of space was being utilized.

The email said, among other things, ” if you do not reduce the disk space used in your account to the requested levels within 7 days of this notice, your account will be suspended and content will be deleted soon after. If you receive another ticket for a disk space usage, we will have to take further action and may permanently suspend service to your account to prevent further disruption to other customers on the server.”

Well I felt two things after reading this email, surprise and anger.  I was surprised I would have 31 gig of data up there,  but even if I did, the plan I signed up for boasted that I had UNLIMITED disk space available to me.  I responded back very simply with “My hosting plan was sold with “unlimited storage space” why is this not being honored?”

In the meantime I did some digging around and found the source of bloat, a back up plug in I used for the Bar-barians web site which was dumping the back up files inside the server.  Deleting them immediately relinquished 24 gig of space but still, I was pissed off on principal alone.

IX has had so many blunders, missteps, and epic fails over the last 5-6 years I just have no patience for even the tiniest amount of bullshit when it comes from them.  So, when I received back my reply to my reply I was even more annoyed. “Please keep your account disc space usage below 30 GB in order to avoid same issue in future.
I understand your disappointed at this case but please note that by “unlimited” word we mean that we do not set a hard limit to how much space you can use. However, your account is still a shared hosting account, and you have to share resources with other customers on the server. While we normally allow customers to use as much as they need, we do have to take action when a customer’s usage becomes disruptive to others on the server.”

What the fck is that supposed to mean?  So “unlimited” means no hard limit is set, and you can have as much space as you need, as long as it isn’t too much. Have a nice day.

So I sent pack one more reply to “Prakash” who must be a member of that stellar India based help desk IX migrated to several months back.  ” I understand you are not based in the USA but UNLIMITED means unlimited, as in no limits, as in no hard limits. It seems that IX is not providing the services that it advertises.”

Of course this is just one of the many, many reasons I should drop IX webhosting.  I WILL do it, I just need to have a large block of time to make it all happen.