My, how things have changed around Simple Helix. From undoubtedly the best Magento hosting company, to arguably the worst all within about a year’s time. What happened? I would argue that like many small businesses, their work load far outweighed the manpower, motivation, skill, or management skills to continue performing for the end user. Put plainly: they grew up too fast.
In the beginning, I was a complete and total advocate for Simple Helix. They were reasonably priced, bragged about their ability to host the new ecommerce standard known as Magento, and had excellent response time to technical as well as sales support. I always had the impression that nearly every support request I sent was being responded to by the owner. Very knowledgeable and helpful. Things have all gone down hill from there.
The Issues:
1. Frequent and prolonged down time.
6 Hours at a time? Nearly every other day last week? Come on guys. Outrageous.
2. Customer support no longer a high priority.
In other words: they hired the Indians.
Example: I required assistance for a website today which I needed Magento installed on. They responded shortly after saying that they had installed the store on one of my other domain names. What? This was a clients site and what SH support did just happened to delete the site altogether. Good thing they had a backup on file so that when I fired an angry email back they restored the site. I realize mistakes happen, but when they respond with not so much as an apology, it really makes you wonder if you’re with the right hosting company.
Hello Jeremy,
Currently we are restoring the files, we will let you know once it is completed.
Regards,
He who shall not be named on this blog.
I hate to be stereotypical, really I do, but if that’s not an Indian response, I don’t know what is. And if it’s not, and please correct me if I’m wrong SH, then you guys have some work to do as far as communication with customers goes.
I don’t know where to go from here.
There really aren’t many other options for a Magento hosting company. Nothing that is reasonably priced anyway. I tried Dreamhost, they suck (for Magento), I don’t even want to think about trying out Godaddy, and all of the other cookie-cutter hosting companies don’t look very appealing. I hate to say it, but as far as I can tell right now, Simple Helix is still the best Magento hosting company. I’ll let you guys know if I find something better.
