So I've been with Acunett since May 24th. Not a long time to decide your not happy with a company, I suppose, but long enough for me.
Don't get me wrong - They did the things I asked of them. They secured/hardened the server adequately, as far as I can tell.
However.
Their response time, since I've been with them at least, is not what I was hoping for. Three incidents have made me decide to move on, and I'll outline them below:
Acunett offers their '10 minute guaranteed response' server monitoring. Twice now my servers have gone down (Iweb is having a rough week!). The first time, they didn't notice and I was sleeping. Server was down for approximately 35 minutes, and I was the one that informed them four hours after it happened.
A day later, mySQL on my server crashes and burns so I throw an -emergency- ticket in. Response time? 1 hour 17 minutes. Ouch.
Today, to continue with Iweb's great luck, my server went down (along with everyone else at Iweb) due to a power failure. That happened about two hours ago, and I still haven't heard anything from Acunett or their 10 minute guaranteed response.
Anyhow. Perhaps others have had more luck there, I definately haven't.
Ryan AlexanderA few clarifications:Acunett offers their '10 minute guaranteed response' server monitoring. Twice now my servers have gone down (Iweb is having a rough week!). The first time, they didn't notice and I was sleeping. Server was down for approximately 35 minutes, and I was the one that informed them four hours after it happened.It is 15 minutes, not 10 minutes.We have a 5 minute monitoring system -- 10 minute reaction after the system is reported as down for a full 15 minutes of maximum downtime.His site was down on two seperate occasions for 34 minutes one time and 30 minutes (today).As per our SLA on <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php">http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php</a><!-- m --> he would have been due a 17.5% refund.However my response to him was:The servers being down for 15 minutes more than that guaranteed response time was poor service and I do apologize for that, which is exactly why I am refunding you the entire monthly paymentA day later, mySQL on my server crashes and burns so I throw an -emergency- ticket in. Response time? 1 hour 17 minutes. Ouch.Where do we guarantee a 1 hour response time? Not ouch to me. We guarantee a 25 minute average, 2.5 hour response guarantee.You say "emergency" ticket. Did you follow the procedure on using our Emergency Response System (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.acunettmanagement.com/support.php">http://www.acunettmanagement.com/support.php</a><!-- m -->)?No.Instead of giving you a 17.5% refund, I immediately offer you a full refund of your monthly fee ($65) without any further ado.What do I get in return?In Fact, I urge you to keep my Paypal. It'll make the review of your services that much more enthralling. And I do believe, with the quality of your service, that perhaps you and your company need it more than I do.His site was down on two seperate occasions for 34 minutes one time and 30 minutes (today).
Actually today it was down for a little over two hours, perhaps you should check your server monitor? Fairly difficult to be up when the datacenter is FSCK'ing your disk because of a power failure.
As per our SLA on <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php">http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php</a><!-- m --> he would have been due a 17.5% refund.
Actually, as per your website:
"10 Minute Reaction Guarantee" - You guarantee a reaction within 10 minutes.
The first time my server went down at 10:18AM EST - You responded to the ticket at 6:19PM EST. That's a full eight hours before you even acknowledged that my server was down.
The second time (today) my server went down at 8:35EST and was down until 10:10PM. You didn't respond to that ticket until 10:18PM EST, and that was after I let you know at 9:37PM that I was dissapointed you hadn't made good on your agreement, for a second time in a row.
From your sales pages:
Sleep well knowing that your server is looked after by experienced professionals, day and night.
Yes, your eight hour response time has left me all warm and fuzzy inside.
When I asked him about my lack of a response to my emergency ticket regarding mySQL going down, his response was this:
[22:23] AcuNettSupport: a) we do not say anywhere on our site we have a less than 1 hour response guarantee
[22:23] AcuNettSupport: b) we do not care to look at the priority of the ticket submitted -- customers always abuse that
[22:23] AcuNettSupport: c) You did not follow the proper procedure if a emergency ticket.
Why have a priority if you don't even look at it, for one? And is this the sort of response I want to hear from a guy who's argueing with me that I shouldn't even receive a refund of my services?
As I said, perhaps I've just had bad luck with Acunett, but their actions and reactions have led me to believe I'm lucky I found out this early in our relationship.
In short, if your looking for a Management provider - I would consider steering away from Acunett.
Regards,
Ryan AlexanderActually today it was down for a little over two hours, perhaps you should check your server monitor? Fairly difficult to be up when the datacenter is FSCK'ing your disk because of a power failure.
You posted to the ticket 30 minutes after it was down reporting it was a power failure. As far as our job is concerned there wasn't not anything we can do at that point. We are not going to give you SLA credit for something outside of our control. If you want to count it to the time where I responded to your reply concerning the power failure and the refund -- that's fine. Add an additional 41 minutes. At that point, it was considered a billing matter.
"10 Minute Reaction Guarantee" - You guarantee a reaction within 10 minutes.
-- You can argue semantics if you would like.
The first time my server went down at 10:18AM EST - You responded to the ticket at 6:19PM EST. That's a full eight hours before you even acknowledged that my server was down.
--- I'm sorry sir, but your server was down for 34 minutes. Not 8 hours. Our monitoring system does not send alerts if the server is back up. The only reason you had an 8 hour response time was because you replied to it. Otherwise, it would most likely have a 72 hour response time (31st - right now).
It was down at 9:08PM. You responded at 9:37PM.
Looks like your monitoring system is off by 30 minutes. You stated your monitoring statement caught the May 31st downtime at 10:48AM, however it started at 10:18AM (which is what I told you on AIM, and which is what you have now posted).
Why have a priority if you don't even look at it, for one?
--- That priority will be removed. Thank you.
And is this the sort of response I want to hear from a guy who's argueing with me that I shouldn't even receive a refund of my services?
--- Excuse me?
This was my response as you were IMing me:
This indeed was late by 15 minutes which you would be credited back 7.5% of your monthly fee as per our management SLA
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php">http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php</a><!-- m --> I will see if it's possible to give you a full refund.
I then repeated myself 4 times on AIM that I was giving you a full refund for your entire monthly service although as per our SLA you were only entitled to 17.5%
As a matter of fact that refund was sent immediately when I had a chance, after finishing our conversation on AIM.
Here's something you said:
In Fact, I urge you to keep my Paypal. It'll make the review of your services that much more enthralling. And I do believe, with the quality of your service, that perhaps you and your company need it more than I do.
Enough is enough. You can post your review, but please try to post facts.
You were told you were being refunded from the beginning.
Your server was never down for 8 hours.
I apologized from the onset about your downtime. I even stated it was poor service on our part.
As for your issue about the 1 hour response, I'll consider that a miscommunication.
No where on our site does it say that your SLA will automatically be upgraded from a 2.5 hour response guarantee to a sub-1 hour response just because you select "emergency" in Kayako. It does however, say what you should do if you want a 25 minute response time on your ticket -- although it looks like you did not know that. This should have been communicated better to our clients and I will make sure all clients know to use this system in case of emergencies.Strange, I don't recall ever saying that my server was down for eight hours. In fact I recall stating rather clearly that it was down for 34 minutes the first time, and two hours the second.
My argument was that even though you advertise a 10 minute response time, ask for datacenter details, etc, both times you never initiated any action on behalf of your company as to inquire what was wrong with my servers, or to notify me.
I stick with my statement that perhaps you and your company need my cash more than me.
I'm not looking for a refund, I'm looking for good service.
It's unfortunate that you can only provide one of the two.
Ryan AlexanderMy argument was that even though you advertise a 10 minute response time, ask for datacenter details, etc, both times you never initiated any action on behalf of your company as to inquire what was wrong with my servers, or to notify me.-- Where was the argument? I stated several times that we dropped the ball on this and it was poor service on our part. I gave a full 100% refund on the monthly service instead of 17.5%.That's fine. Unfortunately your refund was already sent so I cannot reverse it. I don't believe there's much more for me to say here.My purpose in this thread was to give background information concerning your "emergency" ticket. We failed your monitoring guarantees on two occasions. I hate to see poor service given by my employees and myself, which was why I offered a full refund on the onset without question. I am sorry you are not satisfied with my apology and the refund.Good luck with your next management provider.To be fair, Ronny and AcuNett are good at what they do. You seem to have misunderstood what "reaction" is. It's not fixing the problem, its preliminary investigations, flagging it for an appropriate staff member.At the end of the day, Ronny offered you a full refund and his personal apology. I don't see how he can give you any more than that, and I would URGE you to reconsider. You will be hard pressed to find a more professional company than AcuNett in the same price range.Is this a place for two people to argue?I cant blame either, but maybe ralexander should read agreements before posting incrimination and harmful statements.And ... well, if you offered a refund, OK. But people still would like to have a site that is stable instead of one that works, but then dies for an hour.We use acunett for a lot of our work and haven't had a problem with them. There was once that httpd went down and it took them 13 minutes to get it working. They still got it up and running without any problems and that server was good to go. I use them for two of my personal servers and they do a damn good job with the work. Usually pretty fast at responding to tickets and concerns. They are almost always available via AIM.Ive used Acunett for years. They are an honest shop and I would recommend them to anyone needing management services. Unfortunatley as with any operation mistakes/problems occur and this time it happened to be the OP.I have been with them for several years as well and never been dis-satisfied. They are good at what they do. Everybody makes mistakes and when you have employess you are responsible for the mistakes they make. They did all they could do in the circumstance. They still get my vote as best management company around.I'd still stick with Acunett whenever I have problems with my server. To me they get work done fast, maybe the op were just unlucky. I don't see why you keep complaining here since Acunett already give you a FULL refund. If your business is as important as you make it sound, perhaps you should have invest in better server solutions, instead of just having one server and making a fuss when it goes down.Thanks for the review Ryan, move on and find the solution that is best for you.People love to argue on WHT. This is the official venue for trying to sink your host on the basis of personal vendettas
We also provide managed services mainly in Europe, after reading this story i have to back accunet up altough, i am sure the customer (and TS) misunderstood 15 minutes response time for 15 minutes to fix a problem, sometimes problems are that complicated that a 15 minutes repair time cannot be guaranteed at all.I personally think it's good to see both sides - good and bad - when it comes to reviewing a service. One party brings the cons (of a particular incident) and the other party explains and gives background on what happened. Ronny, it's safe to say by reading these forums today (all day for me as I'm doing extensive reasearch for a host) that you and your staff have a very good rep. But there will always come some unfortunate incident where problems come up and restitution has to be made. It helps me make a decision that when something bad happens, what kind of action takes place by the hosting company. I think you did the right thing, and couldn't offer much more than what you already have. Kudos to you!
Don't get me wrong - They did the things I asked of them. They secured/hardened the server adequately, as far as I can tell.
However.
Their response time, since I've been with them at least, is not what I was hoping for. Three incidents have made me decide to move on, and I'll outline them below:
Acunett offers their '10 minute guaranteed response' server monitoring. Twice now my servers have gone down (Iweb is having a rough week!). The first time, they didn't notice and I was sleeping. Server was down for approximately 35 minutes, and I was the one that informed them four hours after it happened.
A day later, mySQL on my server crashes and burns so I throw an -emergency- ticket in. Response time? 1 hour 17 minutes. Ouch.
Today, to continue with Iweb's great luck, my server went down (along with everyone else at Iweb) due to a power failure. That happened about two hours ago, and I still haven't heard anything from Acunett or their 10 minute guaranteed response.
Anyhow. Perhaps others have had more luck there, I definately haven't.
Ryan AlexanderA few clarifications:Acunett offers their '10 minute guaranteed response' server monitoring. Twice now my servers have gone down (Iweb is having a rough week!). The first time, they didn't notice and I was sleeping. Server was down for approximately 35 minutes, and I was the one that informed them four hours after it happened.It is 15 minutes, not 10 minutes.We have a 5 minute monitoring system -- 10 minute reaction after the system is reported as down for a full 15 minutes of maximum downtime.His site was down on two seperate occasions for 34 minutes one time and 30 minutes (today).As per our SLA on <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php">http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php</a><!-- m --> he would have been due a 17.5% refund.However my response to him was:The servers being down for 15 minutes more than that guaranteed response time was poor service and I do apologize for that, which is exactly why I am refunding you the entire monthly paymentA day later, mySQL on my server crashes and burns so I throw an -emergency- ticket in. Response time? 1 hour 17 minutes. Ouch.Where do we guarantee a 1 hour response time? Not ouch to me. We guarantee a 25 minute average, 2.5 hour response guarantee.You say "emergency" ticket. Did you follow the procedure on using our Emergency Response System (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.acunettmanagement.com/support.php">http://www.acunettmanagement.com/support.php</a><!-- m -->)?No.Instead of giving you a 17.5% refund, I immediately offer you a full refund of your monthly fee ($65) without any further ado.What do I get in return?In Fact, I urge you to keep my Paypal. It'll make the review of your services that much more enthralling. And I do believe, with the quality of your service, that perhaps you and your company need it more than I do.His site was down on two seperate occasions for 34 minutes one time and 30 minutes (today).
Actually today it was down for a little over two hours, perhaps you should check your server monitor? Fairly difficult to be up when the datacenter is FSCK'ing your disk because of a power failure.
As per our SLA on <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php">http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php</a><!-- m --> he would have been due a 17.5% refund.
Actually, as per your website:
"10 Minute Reaction Guarantee" - You guarantee a reaction within 10 minutes.
The first time my server went down at 10:18AM EST - You responded to the ticket at 6:19PM EST. That's a full eight hours before you even acknowledged that my server was down.
The second time (today) my server went down at 8:35EST and was down until 10:10PM. You didn't respond to that ticket until 10:18PM EST, and that was after I let you know at 9:37PM that I was dissapointed you hadn't made good on your agreement, for a second time in a row.
From your sales pages:
Sleep well knowing that your server is looked after by experienced professionals, day and night.
Yes, your eight hour response time has left me all warm and fuzzy inside.
When I asked him about my lack of a response to my emergency ticket regarding mySQL going down, his response was this:
[22:23] AcuNettSupport: a) we do not say anywhere on our site we have a less than 1 hour response guarantee
[22:23] AcuNettSupport: b) we do not care to look at the priority of the ticket submitted -- customers always abuse that
[22:23] AcuNettSupport: c) You did not follow the proper procedure if a emergency ticket.
Why have a priority if you don't even look at it, for one? And is this the sort of response I want to hear from a guy who's argueing with me that I shouldn't even receive a refund of my services?
As I said, perhaps I've just had bad luck with Acunett, but their actions and reactions have led me to believe I'm lucky I found out this early in our relationship.
In short, if your looking for a Management provider - I would consider steering away from Acunett.
Regards,
Ryan AlexanderActually today it was down for a little over two hours, perhaps you should check your server monitor? Fairly difficult to be up when the datacenter is FSCK'ing your disk because of a power failure.
You posted to the ticket 30 minutes after it was down reporting it was a power failure. As far as our job is concerned there wasn't not anything we can do at that point. We are not going to give you SLA credit for something outside of our control. If you want to count it to the time where I responded to your reply concerning the power failure and the refund -- that's fine. Add an additional 41 minutes. At that point, it was considered a billing matter.
"10 Minute Reaction Guarantee" - You guarantee a reaction within 10 minutes.
-- You can argue semantics if you would like.
The first time my server went down at 10:18AM EST - You responded to the ticket at 6:19PM EST. That's a full eight hours before you even acknowledged that my server was down.
--- I'm sorry sir, but your server was down for 34 minutes. Not 8 hours. Our monitoring system does not send alerts if the server is back up. The only reason you had an 8 hour response time was because you replied to it. Otherwise, it would most likely have a 72 hour response time (31st - right now).
It was down at 9:08PM. You responded at 9:37PM.
Looks like your monitoring system is off by 30 minutes. You stated your monitoring statement caught the May 31st downtime at 10:48AM, however it started at 10:18AM (which is what I told you on AIM, and which is what you have now posted).
Why have a priority if you don't even look at it, for one?
--- That priority will be removed. Thank you.
And is this the sort of response I want to hear from a guy who's argueing with me that I shouldn't even receive a refund of my services?
--- Excuse me?
This was my response as you were IMing me:
This indeed was late by 15 minutes which you would be credited back 7.5% of your monthly fee as per our management SLA
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php">http://www.acunettmanagement.com/sla.php</a><!-- m --> I will see if it's possible to give you a full refund.
I then repeated myself 4 times on AIM that I was giving you a full refund for your entire monthly service although as per our SLA you were only entitled to 17.5%
As a matter of fact that refund was sent immediately when I had a chance, after finishing our conversation on AIM.
Here's something you said:
In Fact, I urge you to keep my Paypal. It'll make the review of your services that much more enthralling. And I do believe, with the quality of your service, that perhaps you and your company need it more than I do.
Enough is enough. You can post your review, but please try to post facts.
You were told you were being refunded from the beginning.
Your server was never down for 8 hours.
I apologized from the onset about your downtime. I even stated it was poor service on our part.
As for your issue about the 1 hour response, I'll consider that a miscommunication.
No where on our site does it say that your SLA will automatically be upgraded from a 2.5 hour response guarantee to a sub-1 hour response just because you select "emergency" in Kayako. It does however, say what you should do if you want a 25 minute response time on your ticket -- although it looks like you did not know that. This should have been communicated better to our clients and I will make sure all clients know to use this system in case of emergencies.Strange, I don't recall ever saying that my server was down for eight hours. In fact I recall stating rather clearly that it was down for 34 minutes the first time, and two hours the second.
My argument was that even though you advertise a 10 minute response time, ask for datacenter details, etc, both times you never initiated any action on behalf of your company as to inquire what was wrong with my servers, or to notify me.
I stick with my statement that perhaps you and your company need my cash more than me.
I'm not looking for a refund, I'm looking for good service.
It's unfortunate that you can only provide one of the two.
Ryan AlexanderMy argument was that even though you advertise a 10 minute response time, ask for datacenter details, etc, both times you never initiated any action on behalf of your company as to inquire what was wrong with my servers, or to notify me.-- Where was the argument? I stated several times that we dropped the ball on this and it was poor service on our part. I gave a full 100% refund on the monthly service instead of 17.5%.That's fine. Unfortunately your refund was already sent so I cannot reverse it. I don't believe there's much more for me to say here.My purpose in this thread was to give background information concerning your "emergency" ticket. We failed your monitoring guarantees on two occasions. I hate to see poor service given by my employees and myself, which was why I offered a full refund on the onset without question. I am sorry you are not satisfied with my apology and the refund.Good luck with your next management provider.To be fair, Ronny and AcuNett are good at what they do. You seem to have misunderstood what "reaction" is. It's not fixing the problem, its preliminary investigations, flagging it for an appropriate staff member.At the end of the day, Ronny offered you a full refund and his personal apology. I don't see how he can give you any more than that, and I would URGE you to reconsider. You will be hard pressed to find a more professional company than AcuNett in the same price range.Is this a place for two people to argue?I cant blame either, but maybe ralexander should read agreements before posting incrimination and harmful statements.And ... well, if you offered a refund, OK. But people still would like to have a site that is stable instead of one that works, but then dies for an hour.We use acunett for a lot of our work and haven't had a problem with them. There was once that httpd went down and it took them 13 minutes to get it working. They still got it up and running without any problems and that server was good to go. I use them for two of my personal servers and they do a damn good job with the work. Usually pretty fast at responding to tickets and concerns. They are almost always available via AIM.Ive used Acunett for years. They are an honest shop and I would recommend them to anyone needing management services. Unfortunatley as with any operation mistakes/problems occur and this time it happened to be the OP.I have been with them for several years as well and never been dis-satisfied. They are good at what they do. Everybody makes mistakes and when you have employess you are responsible for the mistakes they make. They did all they could do in the circumstance. They still get my vote as best management company around.I'd still stick with Acunett whenever I have problems with my server. To me they get work done fast, maybe the op were just unlucky. I don't see why you keep complaining here since Acunett already give you a FULL refund. If your business is as important as you make it sound, perhaps you should have invest in better server solutions, instead of just having one server and making a fuss when it goes down.Thanks for the review Ryan, move on and find the solution that is best for you.People love to argue on WHT. This is the official venue for trying to sink your host on the basis of personal vendettas
We also provide managed services mainly in Europe, after reading this story i have to back accunet up altough, i am sure the customer (and TS) misunderstood 15 minutes response time for 15 minutes to fix a problem, sometimes problems are that complicated that a 15 minutes repair time cannot be guaranteed at all.I personally think it's good to see both sides - good and bad - when it comes to reviewing a service. One party brings the cons (of a particular incident) and the other party explains and gives background on what happened. Ronny, it's safe to say by reading these forums today (all day for me as I'm doing extensive reasearch for a host) that you and your staff have a very good rep. But there will always come some unfortunate incident where problems come up and restitution has to be made. It helps me make a decision that when something bad happens, what kind of action takes place by the hosting company. I think you did the right thing, and couldn't offer much more than what you already have. Kudos to you!