(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
Loading ...Put your boxing gloves on. This isn’t going to be pretty.
When I say this isn’t going to be pretty, I’m merely referring to the crappy user control panel of Simple Helix VS the excellent Dreamhost control Panel. In this post I’ll detail some of the problems I’ve faced with SimpleHelix as well as the good I’ve encountered. There is more good, than bad.
The only two problems that I’ve really had with Simple Helix Web Hosting thus far:
- The Price
- The User Interface
The Price:
I guess you can’t expect “cheap” when you’re paying for the No.1 Rated Fastest PHP 5 Web Hosting in the USA. Their claim, not mine. But it is fast. About a bagillion times faster than Dreamhost, especially when hosting the new and beautiful E-Commerce Solution – Magento. I’m currently paying about $250.00 annually for their hosting services. The plan I’m on – The Standard Plan – Allows 10 domains. The domains cost $7.95 each annually, but that’s cheaper than Dreamhost’s $9.95 annual fee.
The User Interface:
Booooo! No, not the “I just scared the hell out of you” kind of boo. The kind of boo that you hear at a stadium of pissed off Utah Jazz Fans after they just lost the Super Bowl….err, I mean the National Championship (can you tell I don’t get out much?). Joking aside, SimpleHelix’s user interface leaves much to be desired.
I can deal with the home page:
But to be honest. I’m having a REALLY hard time getting over the Client Panel (control panel):
You probably don’t think it’s really a big deal, just looking at the images. So to help my case.
I’ve created a short video to vent my frustrations: (click in the box to play)
Did ya catch it? That scroll downwards? That’s my complaint. Is it honestly necessary to have that big blue bar above the client control panel in every single window? Come on Simple Helix! I don’t want to scroll down any time I want to do anything in my control panel.
Now in contrast, check out the nice, all-in-one Dreamhost interface: (Click in the box to play)
There is an obvious difference.
Can I get a witness?
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I think we got spoiled by Dreamhost’s custom panel.
The other fast Magento host, Crucial, uses Cpanel: http://x3demob.cpx3demo.com:2082/frontend/x3/index.html
A little better than SimpleHelix, but an extra $75/month better?
I’m going to agree about being “spoiled”. Too bad there isn’t a Magento host out there with Dreamhost’s backend functionality, but SimpleHelix’s speed.
As for Crucial’s Web hosting. Holy Crap! http://www.crucialwebhost.com/hosting/magento-containers/
Look at their rates! The cheapest is $80 bucks a month and that’s for a 3 year pay-in-advance. Ouch!
A few days ago my Magento site hosted through Simple Helix was compromised. At first I thought it was hacked because it had the info of a different site, uboutfitters.com on my site. I checked that site and found it was an operating store and so I concluded that it would have been stupid for them to hack my site since it would put their own business at risk. On top of that, the site I was working on was just made so I started thinking ‘how could they even have known about my site in the first place?’ I then did a WhoIs search on uboutfitters.com and found that they were also hosted at Simple Helix.
After first contacting Simple Helix with concerns that I had been hacked I later emailed them with my concerns that there might be an issue with the server itself and it wasn’t a hack. We emailed back and forth a few times and they kept ignoring my questions about the server itself. Finally I received this response from a tech support person:
[quote]Hello,
This is a problem with the server’s memory, we are already working to solve this ASAP.
We are truly sorry for all the inconveniences and will update you as soon as this is fixed.
Regards.
SimpleHelix Support[/quote]
Okay. Good enough right? Nope. [b][u]12 minutes[/u][/b] later, Min Lee, who must be the equivalent of the salesman there, sent this:
[quote]Hello Dave,
Our server is not having any issue.
There are many sites running on the server without any issues.
Problem is with the magento itself. Just to let you know that we can’t trust any third party softwares. Most of the third party softwares has security holes. If you want to use third party software like Magento use stable version.
Backup which took on 23rd doesn’t work. Let us know if you want to restore some other backup. If need to restore some other backup let us know the date.
Thanks
Min Lee.[/quote]
What the heck?! Who are these people? Explain to me why someone who hosted their site on the same server hacked my site. That would make no sense! This was clearly an issue with the server itself and Min Lee does not want to admit the problem.
UBOutfitters.com, if you’re reading this, I wish you well and know that you had nothing to do with this. I want to tell you though that your data is not secure. You should seriously consider switching hosts.
I am not going to tell you who I switched to because I do not want this to seem like a push for another host. I will only warn those who are considering Simple Helix that your data will not be secured and if there is an issue with your site they will blame you.
Oh, and in closing here’s how much they think of Magento.
[quote]The website could get hacked if the magento has lots of bugs, which it has in plenty. I have checked the server and other websites and it just works fine. Could you please contact Magento support as we had this issue where one of the website has hacked due to a buggy Magento.[/quote]
So Magento is a buggy program and at least one site hosted on their servers has already been hacked, or so they say.
I have a question for you then, Min Lee and Simple Helix. Your whole business is aimed at hosting Magento. So why base your business on such a “buggy” software?
Stop lying and own up. I would have never had a problem if you would have just admitted the mistake and moved on.
Stay away from Simple Helix.
I signed up for SimpleHelix hosting today and was in the middle of installing the magento files when the server went down. Not only has my server been down for an hour, so has the simplehelix.com website.
Not a good start here. I hope this isn't something that happens often.
I agree with the user panel, it is a big joke.
Today has been a joke for SimpleHelix. I'm not sure what's up. It seems that they have started outsourcing their customer service to India just like every other company in the book as well. I'll give them a break. This is only the second "problem day" I've had with them in about a year of using their service. I hope things end up going better for you Tara.
I agree simple helix has gone down hill, it seems they grew too much for their own good and have now outsourced their support which is useless. We switched our sites over to elief.com and it is actually cheaper then both crucial and simplehelix and runs just as fast
@Jeff:
That’s kind of the idea I got. They seemed to grow very quick. Customer support went from very helpful, English speaking, to unhelpful and obviously outsourced. Thanks for the Elief referral. I’m going to check them out right now.
If you and others feel that they have been wronged by Simplehelix, please put your tickets together in a well organized manner and explain your situation to the Attorney General Of the state that Simplehelix operates from and also the Better Business Bureau. There are Numerous bad reviews and “AstroTurfed” good Reviews regarding simple helix. but sadly the horror stories are true, all of them. See below.
Review Of Services: F
- Fraud : There is NO 100% SLA, Private SLA Reports 93% very poor
- Fraud : You are not on the server you think you are on
- Fraud : Server hardware is falsely reported to customers
- Fraud : Customer Service/Support will LIE to you for no reason
- Fraud : You are paying for services never provided or setup
- Fraud : NO customer service number
- Fraud : NO 24/7/365 Support. NO Phone support, Partial Email
- Fraud : Your SSL Cert issued is not the correct one. Below Quality
- Fraud : THEY ARE A SMALL RESELLER FROM Various LARGER HOST.
- Fraud : THERE ARE NO SERVER MONITORING STATISTICS, Fake Links
- Fraud : Management (left unnamed) cannot/should not be trusted.
- Fraud : Server Usage Stats are not correct, and manipulated
- Fraud : LITTLE to Zero Tech support
- Fraud : NOT #1 Fastest PHP5 Hosting, NO PROOF, No accurate results
- Fraud : Company has multiple addresses, still dont know which one is correct, Alabama?, Texas?, California?
- Fraud : Real Support is only available from 9-3 CST Time from email only. If your lucky.
SUPPORT : F
- Support NOT experienced with CPANEL or PLESK Systems
- REPS, Not Compitant to perform basic server request
- Servers get restarted 1-3 times daily to prevent crashes during peek hours.
- Systems go down from 11:30am – 1:30am daily due to fatal memory issues on server. Due to overselling and bad hardware configs
- YOU ARE ON A SERVER with 600-800 other suckers, even if your a reseller.
- I was told by the management (left anonymous) that there are only 30 people on my server. Bold faced Lies
- THEY WILL IGNORE YOU for Days, especially when you need them the most
- Support is highly disorganized and unreliable.
- After 3 month of being with Simplehelix they are forcing me to migrate to a newer server or “continue having website outages everyday”. After 2 weeks no move/migration has taken place after numerous request confirmation and feedback. Support says they will, but when the day comes to do the work, Simplehelix is missing in action with ZERO support feedback or even a reply back.
The Support Tickets : (brief) Titles only
12/08/2008 12:39 : NO Account Welcome message sent. Credit card charged, Waited 2 days for my welcome message with login info, Requested Cancellation before email was sent.
12/15/2008 13:12 : Incorrect setup of account, Not assigned reseller privileges until third attempt to complain
01/06/2009 19:43 : SSL Cert request – Two days till completion, (paid for better cert, installed cheapest version)
01/07/2009 12:07 : Cpanel Error, Server misconfigured 500 error
01/08/2009 11:03 : mysql, ftp, cpanel, whm down, Server Crashed (3 HOURS DURING LUNCH, TILL SERVER CAME BACK UP, RESTART ONLY REQUIRED)
01/09/2009 07:56 : REQUEST FOR SHELL ACCESS (NEVER COMPLETED)
01/13/2009 11:27 : SERVER IS DOWN AGAIN!
01/13/2009 11:35 : (cpanel) is down again. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE ANYMORE..
01/14/2009 07:20 : Down this Morning – AGAIN, Complaint Filed
01/21/2009 07:43 : FTP and POP3 is Down (POP3 down for 3 DAYS)
01/21/2009 12:14 : SEVER IS DOWN -(cPanel) is DOWN!
01/22/2009 13:42 : SEVER IS DOWN – (cPanel) – Twice today
01/22/2009 13:45 : SALES DEPARTMENT : Continous Server outages and Website Offline (ignored request to honor SLA Agreements, no responses to refund account)
02/04/2009 21:43 : PHP memory limit error. Reported that the limit set in cofig shows 3 million. This was never fixed. (Ignored, server crashed next day)
03/11/2009 11:58 : sites going down today – MEMORY ISSUES (all day)
UNRESOLVED AND IGNORED
03/18/2009 12:11 : anything with DB IS down (UNRESOLVED, IGNORED)
CURRENTLY: STILL WAITING TO BE MOVED TO A RELIABLE SERVER /AND OR EVEN RESPONDED TO, BEING IGNORED BY SUPPORT, MANAGEMENT and/OR STAFF. Currently Contacting Legal Professionals and the State Officials to file a formal Compliant/and more against SimpleHelix.
Dont believe me? contact me and I can show you the ticket info and their responses from my support account. I am a web vendor who builds 20-30 sites a year with 10 years of professional experience. DO BUSINESS WITH SIMPLEHELIX at your own RISK. Dont be fooled like I was with the performance/cost ratio. It will COST you Time, Money and stress in the very near future. I spent countless hours researching and searching for a solution to performance hosting and made a big big mistake with signing up with Simplehelix.
Shame on you Simplehelix. Ripping people off!
I echo your sentiments, sir. Simple Helix is ridiculous. I’m going to switch to crucial or someone as soon as I get the energy.
We have a store hosted at simple helix and it was recently down… FOR OVER 24 HOURS!!!
The make matters worse, their backup software failed and they lost the entire previous day of backups. So when the restore finally did complete we lost a whole day of orders!!!
Their rememedy? Our next month of hosting is free… Below is the timeline of events as reported to us:
—————————————
Here is a timeline of events. These events are directly from our
ticket history with GNAX (the data center) as well as our backup
software (r1soft).
5/12/09
1:00am – Server crash – we opened a ticket with GNAX (the data center
where our servers are located)
1:30am – Auto FS check failed
1:30am – Started manual FS check
6:57am – FS check was stopped by tech due to errors & data was being
dumped into lost & found
9:39am – We requested KVM to work on the server remotely
10:35am – We requested hard drive to be replaced
12:47pm – Hard drive was replaced – started to rebuild
2:01pm – Array failed at 63% – found that drive 0 was also bad –
requested hard drive to be replaced
2:54pm – Hard drive was replaced
3:10pm – Reboot requested
3:36pm – Server rebooted
3:53pm – Hard drive 01 was removed
3:57pm – Requested new drive install – replaced 01
4:08pm – Hard drive was installed
5:16pm – Download and burn CD was requested (Bare Metal Restore Disc)
5:19pm – Reboot requested
5:22pm – Server rebooted
6:09pm – CD in drive
6:29pm – Reboot requested
7:10pm – Server rebooted
7:35pm – Reboot requested
7:47pm – Server rebooted
7:56pm – Server rebooted
8:22pm – Bare Metal Restore started – ended at 6:44am (241 gigs total)
5/13/09
7:00am – Rebooted server to confirm BMR
7:05am – BMR Failed (bad grub.conf)
8:15am – Reboot requested
8:16am – Server rebooted
9:11am – Reboot requested
9:54am – Server rebooted
9:58am – Server rebooted
10:06am – Reboot requested
10:11am – Server rebooted
10:41am – Reboot requested
10:44am – Server rebooted
11:03am – Reboot requested
11:05am – Server rebooted
Started restore of the server at 7am on 5/12/09 and was cancelled at
9:31am (only 4.7/241 gigs had been restored within a 2 ½ hour period
at this rate the restore would take 128 hours. Opened ticket with
R1Soft and they informed us of a bug that affects restores or archive
of 100,000 or more files. )
THE BACKUP THAT WAS RESOTORED WAS FROM 5/12/2009 AT 2PM!!
Thanks for your review. Actually found this post by another web host showing why not to use Helix.
.-= Rich´s last blog ..Nitrous Crunk-Dub Step Mashup Mix =-.
No problem, Rich. Thanks for stopping by.
Did another web host refer you to my page specifically for evidence of why not to use Simple Helix? lol. Funny stuff.