Rob
Nuke Newbie
Posts:3
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| 25 Oct 2008 5:39 PM |
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I have been with PowerDNN for about a year now, and was very happy with them when I first signed up. However, recently (in the last 2 months or so) things have gone downhill with them in terms of reliability. I don't know why. I am paying $105 a month for the service so it's not like I'm on the cheapie plan.
Let me give some examples. But let me preface by saying this: their support is top-notch; they always respond quickly and politely and usually fix the problem right away. HOWEVER, the frequency of problems is unacceptable.
Just in the last two weeks, two of my own sites (including email) have gone down because of DNS problems on their servers. I never did get an explanation from them on why it happened. I tried browsing to my site to make some changes and got the "address not found" error.
Just in the last 2 days, my email has been stopped (no errors sending and receiving, but no mail is transferred so it took me a day to figure out I wasn't receiving any mail) because of server problems on their end. Nor could I log into my PowerDNN control panel (kept saying the control panel was down for system maintenance). I haven't received an explanation for that either. The problem first happened yesterday, to which I sent an urgent tech support request to them and they rebooted the server and all the sudden I got all my mail. Guess what happened today? Exact same problem, and exact same explanation - nothing.
These issues are affecting my own sites as well as my customer's sites. I am starting to look very bad in the eyes of my customers, after having promised them that PowerDNN is fast and reliable. Every time something goes wrong I have to explain to my customers what happened and apologize. I can only do that for so long before the customer moves elsewhere.
Tech support has offered me free month's worth of service for my trouble, to which I stated I'm not looking for any freebies, I just want the service to be reliable. *Some* downtime is to be expected, but every week? And with little or no explanation, or gameplan to not let it happen again? Unacceptable.
I hate to say this, but if you are looking to move to PowerDNN I would consider what I have said above, and do not make the switch. Look elsewhere.
-Rob-
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David Snow
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Nuke Master
Posts:144
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| 25 Oct 2008 8:38 PM |
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I too have been having PowerDNN reliability and support issues over the same period. At first they acknowledged that the changing or file/directory permissions and the hogging of the CPU was a problem caused by an upgraded of their "control panel" software. Now when it happens their solution is to limit your CPU usage to 20% and suggest that the cause of the problem is your and likely log files. I use Lee's suggestions for self managing of log files and they never have been a problem in the past with similar usage. If this doesn't get better very soon I will be considering switching.
/DaveS |
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Mr. MobileNow
Nuke Active Member
Posts:25
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| 26 Oct 2008 12:20 AM |
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Hi Rob and Dave,
I am very sorry about the troubles that we've been having lately. The past two months haven't been fun for us either. Two of our vendors released buggy software "upgrades", DotNetNuke 4.9 has been having scheduler issues, and Microsoft's recent security patches along with .NET 3.5 SP1 have been keeping us extremely busy and not in the way that we want.
On the bright side though, we have just recently expanded our staff by 30%, and, although the new guys are still green at DotNetNuke, I have never had more confidence in the technical abilities of our team. We're also setting up all new servers with SmarterMail Pro which is greatly improving our systems performance and reliability. We've also implemented a much more stringent patch Q/A process to help us ensure that when our vendors release patches, it doesn't break things for our customers. We've also just finished development on our Control Suite 2.0 DotNetNuke Management application. We are also currently running a private beta on PowerMenu, a highly customizable menu navigation system for DotNetNuke. We also just finished our "Network 2.0" design which is going to be bringing 10gig ethernet to our infrastructure.
Again, I am extremely sorry for the recent problems we've had. It hasn't been fun, but we're working hard to improve our processes and always deliver the best service to our customers.
If you have any ongoing issues, I would really like to work with you to investigate the issue more fully and find a permanent resolution. My direct cell phone number is 402-650-6072 and my email address is Tony.Valenti@PowerDNN.com . Please feel free to give me a call at any time.
I hope to see you at OpenForce this year!
-Tony V |
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-Tony Valenti
DotNetNuke DNN Hosting |
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kemper burt
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Posts:10
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| 26 Oct 2008 12:58 AM |
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 Ok Tony I know I have'nt called you back. Sometimes I need to take a while to talk to people after I have had a major set back due to anothers problems. As I reported in my last few posts the problems with PowerDnn was causing my largest client 5 site (locations) with a social media sites for each location all under Conservatoryseniorliving.com with child sites running DNN.
In the last post I said they may leave. WELL THEY DID !!!. I pay $ 450 dollars a month from my own pocket to have a dedicated server with your service and Im very dissapointed.
Unfortunatly I cannot find somewhere else to move my accounts right now because Im being buried by econmics. As Im sure everyone is.
I think it's great your hiring new people I had to let one go that managed my biggest account that I no longer have.
I was just billed again from PowerDNN and I have to say I cringed.
If it wasn't for the fact that I have two other sites there right now I would move my business. It's not easy looking for good hosting, from the posts that I read here seems it's difficult for everyone.
I have 4 sites on WH4L as well and yes it's slow sometimes and I bought into the Schedular service they have (like a keepalive) and it's helped.
These sites dont have the scope that the ones on PowerDnn have nor are my clients able to support you Great growth as I have.
And while Im blowing off steam I can't remember how many hundreds of dollars I have spent with your company to get services for problems that did not get fixed or go away.
If your having trouble believing anything Im writing here please feel free to contact your accounting dept. and look at my account.
Or the many payments for using your tech services for non issues, such as migrating and upgrades to DNN sites.
This is an open forum and Im hoping Lee dosent prevent this post from being seen. Everyone has a right to express.
Thank you
Kemper Burt
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Mr. MobileNow
Nuke Active Member
Posts:25
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| 26 Oct 2008 6:46 AM |
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| Hi Kemper,
I'll give you a call this afternoon. I really want to get a handle on your situation. As a customer on a dedicated server, you have been unaffected by the issues that I mentioned above.
I did take a look at your account and I do see that way back in july/june you purchased a couple of different consulting services from us, but other than that, the only other thing that stands out is that, at least since august when we upgraded our support system, your account has no support tickets on it.
Please also remember that PowerDNN is a hosting company but that DotNetNuke is a web development "platform". When a DotNetNuke website is crashing due to an old or faulty module, as a hosting provider, there's only so much we can do - recommend upgrading the core, recommend upgrading the module, and as a list resort, uninstall the module.
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-Tony Valenti
DotNetNuke DNN Hosting |
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Lee Sykes
DNN Creative Staff
Nuke Master V
Posts:5307
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andyb1979
Nuke Pro
Posts:63
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Lee Sykes
DNN Creative Staff
Nuke Master V
Posts:5307
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Rob
Nuke Newbie
Posts:3
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| 06 Nov 2008 7:32 PM |
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A quick update for everyone...Previously I commented how unhappy I was with PowerDNN and recent outages and other problems they have been having.
Shortly after I left my comment, I received an email from Tony, the owner, saying he would personally be looking into the problems I had and will let me know the outcome. He did look into the problem and offered some solutions and explanations and was genuinely concerned with my problems, and admitted PowerDNN has been having an unfortunate string of events of late.
So far all of the problems have been solved, and I know PowerDNN has taken steps to ensure the problems don't happen again.
Kudos to Tony and PowerDNN for acting swiftly and for taking a sincere interest. I told Tony on a voice phone call that it is for this reason (his personal involvement) that I stuck with PowerDNN. If it were another provider I highly doubt the response would have been as positive and I would have moved my business elsewhere.
I can't speak for what will happen in the future at PowerDNN as far as reliability, but for now I'm more than satisfied and wanted to update everyone as such.
-Rob-
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kemper burt
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Posts:10
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| 07 Nov 2008 1:38 AM |
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Hi everyone. I have been contacted by Tony at PowerDnn and feel that I in some areas was not fair or correct in all of my complaints.
Only one area that stuck was over a critical update issued by Microsoft that was a serious culpert on my dedicated server. One that I could not resolve and PowerDNN did (albiet not fast enough for my client).
Bad timing and SH!T Happens
Once Tony and I disscussed things he was very easy going and really listened to what I had to say. Listening is a quality I admire and which
I have the inability to express myself without sounding like an A&& for the most part.
So he listened and offered solutions. Better to be in the solution than part of the problem.
I need to point out that if it were not for PowerDNN I would not have been able to build the sites I have.
I am not someone who is intimatley familar with SQL,IIS and other various aspects of maintaing todays servers. I say todays because I no longer work as an IT manager or build call centers.
My days would have us all still working on Mainframes and little green screens. Ok so what if Im an Amazon developer anyone can be you just have to signup
I do push the limits of DNN in every way I can(sometimes not even knowing)
Thank you PowerDnn and thank you Tony for taking the time to put the "personal" back into customer service.
Thank you Lee for letting us work out our frustrations here.
I will be moving TWO new sites to PowerDnn This weekend no pain no gain.
You will not in my opinon find a better DNN hosting service than PowerDNN. |
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Aggiedan97
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Nuke Pro
Posts:73
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| 06 Dec 2008 10:18 PM |
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Not sure if anyone is having similar issues, I have 2 shared dnn instances at PowerDNN and are unable to back them up and restore them to my localhost (laptop) with Vista and IIS7. I can restore them, but I get a redirect to the live site when I try to use http://localhost/mywebsitecom the browser will only resolve to http://mywebsite.com.
In this case, http://mywebsite.com is the actual portal name and 'localhost\mywebsitecom' is an alias.
I have also backed up a godaddy site with the same results on the vista machine. I don't have this issue with XP or Windows Server 2k3.
Does anyone have a suggestion with regards to vista or IIS7? I have tried to remove all the records from the 'PortalAlias' table except for the 'localhost\...' record and that doesn't seem to help.
Willing to try anything..
Dan |
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Mr. MobileNow
Nuke Active Member
Posts:25
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| 06 Dec 2008 10:28 PM |
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Hey Dan,
On your local machine try making your portal alias table have:
localhost/mywebsitecom (instead of localhost\mywebsitecom)
and then try removing the other portal aliases and I believe that will make it work for you.
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-Tony Valenti
DotNetNuke DNN Hosting |
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Aggiedan97
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Nuke Pro
Posts:73
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| 06 Dec 2008 11:06 PM |
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Once again - great work!
Thanks so much for your expert advice as this has resolved the issue. |
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Mr. MobileNow
Nuke Active Member
Posts:25
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| 06 Dec 2008 11:23 PM |
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No problem! Glad I could help.
I hope you have a great holiday season from everybody here at PowerDNN!
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-Tony Valenti
DotNetNuke DNN Hosting |
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grahamwright1
Nuke Newbie
Posts:1
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| 11 Dec 2008 2:08 PM |
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I attempted to use their Web Form to ask a question yesterday morning, but have not heard back from anyone. Looking at their web site, their Live Chat option indicates "Away" so I guess I'll have to call them and ask my questions the old-fashioned way :-)
One question the group may be able to help with - I see they have three datacenters, in the US, UK and Australia. Does anyone know if they offer a "deploy on all three" datacenters type option where we could redirect trafic from each region to the local datacenter?
Thanks,
Graham
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Mr. MobileNow
Nuke Active Member
Posts:25
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| 11 Dec 2008 2:18 PM |
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| Hey Graham,
Give me a call and we can talk about what we can do for you in regards to geographic load balancing. We do have customers who are doing that, but with all implementations of that size, they are extremely customized implementations. My number is 402-650-6072.
-Tony V. |
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-Tony Valenti
DotNetNuke DNN Hosting |
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David Snow
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Nuke Master
Posts:144
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| 11 Dec 2008 5:47 PM |
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Several times that I have had site issues/problems at PowerDNN they request that I send an email to support@powerdnn.com. Several months ago this gave me an idea. I setup Host-Tracker to SMS me and send mail to PowerDNN when it couldn't reach my site. This morning at 5AM my cell phone when off with such a SMS message. I got up and checked the site. It was down. I phoned PowerDNN's emergency number and got voicemail. I left a message and a return phone number.
I assumed that they were busy fixing some much more global problem than mine and that mine would be fixed as a result. I went back to bed.
When I got up I checked the site. It was still down. I called and the tech I got had not checked the email or the voice mail. Nothing had been done for several hours!
He restarted the IIS pool and the site came back online. I mentioned that they had had to do this several times since "their upgrades" a couple months ago. He said that he would have someone look into this. Nine hours later and still no call or email from PowerDNN. Recently they put in a new help system to "help" with such issues. While I haven't talked with Tony today, I have talked with him they last three times my site have been down. When I started with them 18 months ago they were much more responsive. I hope the get over their growing pains soon.
/Dave Snow |
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SydCam
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Nuker
Posts:14
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| 18 Dec 2008 4:14 PM |
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When we first signed with PowerDNN, we believed that they provided superior service. Maybe that was because we were coming from iHostASP.net. When we were new clients the service was very good. However for the past 4 to 5 months the service (both customer and technical) has gotten progressivly worse. We are paying a higher price for poor service. I have been told that the problem was with Paralells and the Plesk GUI. But the problems don't seem to be resolved. The technical issues are bad enough, but the sub-professional attitudes that we experience are completly unexceptable. It is very clear to us that we are the ones with the problem, PowerDNN abviously have so many happy customers that they don't have to worry about us! So, its us to us to resolve our problems...and we will! Once we implement the solution we will share it here for anyone else that may have a simular problem that they need to resolve.
Be Blessed!
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brettmonk
Nuke Newbie
Posts:4
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| 18 Dec 2008 4:37 PM |
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I met the guys from PowerDNN at Open Force08 a few months ago and purchased a dedicated server soon thereafter. I come from more of a design background than server admin so I'm in well over my head much of the time. The guys at PowerDnn have been very helpful and my uptime has been infinitely better than my old host, whom I will mention as soon as I've moved all my sites over to my new server.
I've got a technical question that I thought I'd post here because I'm guessing other people might come across it as well...
If I set up a domain in Plesk which has not had the DNS redirected yet, the Plesk instructions say you should be able to see that site from anywhere y typing the URL:
"[IP ADDRESS] /$sitepreview/yourdomain.com"
Doing that will show me the home page, but if I've loaded DNN (using PowerDNN's phenominal Install/Upgrade/Clone tool) I can't login or navigate the site because the site wants to access the proper URL's without the "$sitepreview" prefix.
What's the best way to gain full access to my newly created, no-DNS, DNN sites on my dedicated server from machines other than my server?
Thanks,
Brett Monk
www.openpageweb.com
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Mr. MobileNow
Nuke Active Member
Posts:25
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| 18 Dec 2008 4:53 PM |
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Hey Nat/Sydcam,
As a manager at PowerDNN, I take a keen interest in all customer service related issues. We've discussed your particular issues in a number of management meetings and the response times of our guys have always been more than acceptable with many tickets being responded to in less than 5 minutes and with only a few taking more than an hour.
I'm sorry if responses might have taken longer than you would have liked. We always do our absolute best to get tickets knocked out as fast as possible. At the end of the day, we build our success on our customer's success.
Hey Brett,
Depending on how your server's nameservers are set up, (If you're using custom name servers instead of bouncing off of our name servers) what you can do lots of times is add a "Temporary URL" (Domain Alias) to the domain. For example, let's say that OpenWebPage.com is your master domain and all of your sites use "NSA.OpenWebPage.com" and "NSB.OpenWebPage.com", then wehn you create a new domain, you can add a domain alias of MySite.com.OpenWebPage.com and that will propagate to the live internet. Make sure you also add the domain as a portal alias inside of DotNetNuke as well! If you need any help with the above or don't understand it, just open a ticket and we'll get to you as soon as possible. Please go easy with us tonight though. [Smile] We've got the company christmas party going on and we'll have people coming and going since we still have to be staffed all the time. I'm glad to hear we're doing a great job for you!
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-Tony Valenti
DotNetNuke DNN Hosting |
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Lee Sykes
DNN Creative Staff
Nuke Master V
Posts:5307
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Stephen Nill
Nuke Newbie
Posts:2
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| 09 Mar 2009 12:35 PM |
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I'm looking to move my DNN installation from my premises here to a hosting provider. I've read with interest the full thread. Based on the thread, I'm still a little unsure whether or not to keep PowerDNN on my list of possible providers. I notice that there hasn't been any further discussion here since the end of the year. Does that mean that everyone's completely satisfied with the services provided by PowerDNN?
Steve |
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Aggiedan97
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Nuke Pro
Posts:73
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| 09 Mar 2009 1:50 PM |
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True enough - everything seemed to die down after years end. I have been planning to comment and haven't had the time until now.
I have used a low-cost hosting provider that offers zero support, prior to making the transition to powerdnn. I started in June last year with a shared hosting plan and changed to a dedicated server plan in the last couple months. There are many words I could use to describe my experience and if I had to choose one, I would say - fantastic.
What few have described one of the most useful 'value-added' tools they offer. With dedicated plans, PowerDNN offers their own PowerDNN tool (control suite). This makes life amazingly simple. It saves tons of time and practically automates everything from upgrades, backup, restore, cloning sites, migrating, splitting child sites in to parent portals, optimization, and more.. This set of tools updates the web.config files, utilizes templates, creates the database files - it covers every aspect of administration.
Need more - what can I say. I am relatively new to Plesk and find it to be interesting to say the least. It is a great toolset and seems really robust once you get familiar with where everything is and how it works. In comparison to hosting providers (using that term loosely) such as GoDaddy.com - it is hands down a better control suite. GoDaddy keeps changing things around every time the design monkey's brain gets overheated in the desert, making it even more challenging to locate simplest item. Not to mention the irritation of being bombarded with advertisements and the like.
While I haven't used other services specializing in DNN hosting, I can't see that I'll being venturing to find out as long as the service continues to exceed my expectations.
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Stephen Nill
Nuke Newbie
Posts:2
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| 09 Mar 2009 2:12 PM |
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That's quite an endorsement! I'm pleased to hear of your positive experience.
Steve
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SydCam
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Nuker
Posts:14
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| 09 Mar 2009 2:23 PM |
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Hi Steve,
The inconsistencies and service related issues that we were experiencing continued after my last posting and we changed provides very soon thereafter. The plan that I have now gives us more benefits/features for about the same (if not less) price. I say that because we added a VPS and we have up to 100 installations of DNN available to us. The tech support is not perfect but on a scale of 0 to 10 (10 being the best service we have experienced, they are a solid 8.5.
I'm sure that PowerDNN is great for the majority of their clients, but it didn't work well for us. In the initial thread someone responded saying that they thought they PowerDNN may have to make a special effort to keep us from leaving. They didn't. The pricing and service that DNN offered us is nowhere close to what we have with our new provider. If you want to compare check out www.Viux.com. Anyone that you work with will be great, we work mostly with J.T.. Ask for him. Tell him SydCam sent you.
Remain blessed!
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Mr. MobileNow
Nuke Active Member
Posts:25
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| 09 Mar 2009 4:25 PM |
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Hi aggiedan97,
Shoot me an email at Tony.Valenti@PowerDNN.com . I'd love to include you as a showcase/testimonial client on our new website push (currently scheduled for 5/1/2009). As you know, we definitely have some really sweet tools at our disposal, and the dedicated server version of the control suite only has about 1/2 the features that we offer.
By the way, keep your eyes and ears peeled for some really sweet products we have scheduled for DotNetNuke Professional. I can't tell you too much, but we're about to take big-boy DotNetNuke clustering to a whole new level including full system replication, synchronization and distribution.
I hope I didn't say too much. 
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-Tony Valenti
DotNetNuke DNN Hosting |
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Greg Pulskamp
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Nuke Newbie
Posts:8
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| 28 Apr 2009 11:55 PM |
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I have two websites hosted with PowerDNN and 3rd one is almost ready to go. I am not going any where for my website hosting. There is nothing better than PowerDNN.
Other hosting companies may have better price, but I can bet my 20 years experiece that, none of them has better customer service, Support, and Technical Engineers.
Both thumbs up for PowerDNN. |
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SydCam
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Nuker
Posts:14
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| 29 Apr 2009 7:04 AM |
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| I'm happy for you! To each his reach. I'm sure that the stars just didn't align themselves correctly for us. But we now not only have MUCH better prices, we have better products and support. Sure, we still experience problems from time to time, but it's how the problems get resolved that makes the difference. I would be willing to pay more money for better service, but we are blessed in that we get the the best of both worlds, BETTER PRODUCTS & SUPPORT FOR LESS MONEY!!! I may be crazy but after experiencing both, I'll stick with (and wholeheartedly endorse) VIUX.com |
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Mr. MobileNow
Nuke Active Member
Posts:25
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| 29 Apr 2009 7:49 AM |
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| Hi Sean,
Thank you very much for the kind reviews. We definitely work hard to deliver on our promise of being THE hosting provider for DotNetNuke.
@Sydcam - I'm very glad that ViUX is working out for you, however, I think that you would have had a much better experience with us had you gone with a plan comparable to what you now have with ViUX.
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-Tony Valenti
DotNetNuke DNN Hosting |
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SydCam
DNN Creative Magazine Subscriber
Nuker
Posts:14
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| 29 Apr 2009 2:31 PM |
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Hi Tony,
You I'm sure that you are correct as it relates to the technical side of things. I'm sure that VIUX doesn't have Seacret Squrrel Technology. It's probably the same as you provide. The tipping point came on the issue of customer service, not price. I would mind paying a little more for great customer service. The issues that we were experiencing with PDNN were (to us) very basic, follow-up/communication type issues. I won't go into details, I'm sure you guys have a record of it somewhere. Maybe that was the time when things were kind of crazy for you. The bottom line is the we fell through the cracks... but everything worked out for everyone. You guys are doing a stellar job for all of your current clients and we found what we needed at a major savings to our company that allow us to pass along the savings to our clients which in turn referred more business our way. So, all's well that ends well!
Remain blessed,
Nat Carter
SydCam Visions |
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