After hosting about 4 sites with Engine Hosting, I’m frustrated with them and ready to jump ship. I initially thought that they were the best choice for hosting an EE site since they were the sister company of Expression Engine and knew all the proper server configurations, etc. for the optimal EE setup. I’ve convinced multiple clients of that as well.
Now, after experiencing some poor customer service from them, I’m wondering if there is a better choice.
Recently they implemented a new Intrusion Protection System rule that filters out access to any URI containing /member/ in efforts to keep spammers and bots from abusing unprotected ExpressionEngine CMS installs. Meaning if any of their EE sites had links to the member profile area, etc. using “member” as the trigger word, visitors to those links would get a 403 error.
Certainly changing the trigger word is a good idea and their minds were in the right place. However, they made this change without notifying their customers in advance, or even afterwards. So at least 2 of my sites were basically rendered non-functioning for about 3 weeks before some customers brought it to my attention. They could navigate the site, but could not update their accounts, update their posts, log in, or purchase products. (Sales are infrequent on this site so there was not a sudden dramatic dropoff that I would have noticed).
When asked why they did not notify their customers, their unbelievable response was, “We do not have a mass email method for all clients at the moment for disseminating hosting news.” Really? Every company in the world has a way to contact their customers via email. Ever heard of Constant Contact? How about using your EE “communicate” tab?
Their recommendation was that I follow them on Twitter. What if I don’t use Twitter? What if I have about a zillion things on my to-do list like the rest of us, and I don’t have time to go checking my hosting company’s latest update every morning? I’m paying them for the service, they should push the notification to me.
In addition, they have done similar things to my clients like shutting down the site for several hours for “maintenance” without informing them, and acting as though it was the client’s fault for not keeping up with EH’s blog or twitter posts.
Sorry for the rant, but give me a break. Would love some recommendations for good hosting companies you’ve worked with that know how to work with EE! I’ve heard Rackspace, are there others?
Thanks!