eUK Host - Stopped my website!

[d33man]

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Vexed. Angry. Hacked off. Trying to think of descriptive words without having to resort to using **** and @@@@

This is a general warning to anyone hosting their own site and also using eukhost

Ok its half ranting and half warning so apologies in advance for a long post.

I set my first website up in Jan and after spending time on this forum decided to go with eUKHost. Since Jan support has generally been good as has server performance and application support so no issues.

Then this morning I went to access my site at around 9am and found a message stating that the website could not load because i'd PASSED MY MAXIMUM BANDWIDTH ALLOWANCE!!

WTF?!

Hang on a sec I thought.

1) I've passed my bandwidth limit, unknowingly, for the first time in 4 months (and first time ever)

2) I had no prior warning that I had passed this limit

3) My website was effectively 'switched off' because of this

WTF?

ok so:

1) my site building and SEO work has been going really well and I've managed to attract lots of visitors to my site. This obviously causes an increase in server resource usage. However did I think to check? No. You may read this and think it should be my responsibility to check the bandwidth limit, but then as a marketer you might sympathise and agree that I have had more pressing issues to tend with like content and link building my affiliate site

2) At the VERY LEAST I would expect some form of prior warning before my WEBSITE WAS SWITCHED OFF!!! Not even ISPs like Virgin or Tiscali cut you off AS SOON AS you hit your bandwidth limit? Ok if you go crazy and kill your limit you'll be cut off, but as far as I could tell (later on, as I'd also lost access to CPANEL and anything else hosted on my server) I'd only gone slightly over so this was an automated shut out. I consider this an extremely POOR level of service, one I'm not happy with and may consider moving to a better provider for.

3) I've just re-read my post and noted that I've written 'my website' a few times. Really, if you think about it, it isn't really. Ok so the content and coding is mine, but what makes a website? Servers, networks etc etc - they don't belong to me and never will. My 'website' is not mine. And this brings home how real that is.

My point?

1. Don't let this happen to you. Based on my log files, I had no hits for 9 hours. I lost my website for 9 hours. I survived today because by chance I checked my website and was immediately on the phone to upgrade my service (and bandwidth allowance). However had search engines tried indexing my website whilst being inaccessible, it would have damaged my hard earned SEO rankings no-end.

2. Does anyone know if this is a standard as far as web hosts go? I'm sure my friend who was with 1and1 had some form of notification that his site was 'reaching its limit' before it was switched off? This way you have time to react. I spoke to 'Julie' on the phone and she said she agreed there should be a process in place, but unfortunately for me there wasn't.

D

[ash]

Bit of an over-reaction imo.

This is a standard function with most (if not all) hosting companies.

If you login regularly to your hosting cpanel, there is a few little bars showing disk space usage and bandwidth.

[confuscius]

Most hosting should be configured to send out warning emails as you go through certain limits - some of of mine are set to say when an 85% limit is reached.

As regards hosting companies this is normal practice - just like driving a car, if YOU run out of petrol then YOUR car comes to an abrupt halt.

[SpongeBob]

Yes, got to agree - it's a standard thing, not an EukHost problem. It would be better to have a warning, but the way it is with most hosts is that it's up to you to keep an eye on it.

It's easy enough to monitor, and if you're getting close to your maximum then it's worth upgrading your package to one with more bandwidth.

Do you have a reseller account with them? I.e. have access to WHM? If so then you may be able to set up your own alerts.

This may or may not work, as my WHM is on a dedicated server I have elsewhere and I have more options than I used to when I had reseller accounts, but one option I have in my WHM is a 'Tweak settings' option. When I select that I get a page with lots of options, one of which is to send email alerts when the bandwidth exceeds a certain percentage, e.g. 80%.

If you don't have that option in your WHM you could ask EukHost if they can do it.

[Lawcom]

I do understand servers setting bandwidth and making money off what you use, but i've got to agree with d33 your host should show some common sense and customer service..

Let you know you have exceeeded bandwidth and give some leeway, spikes can occur, even if they send an invoice for the extra useage and give a cut off date if that is not paid, a bit like extortion I grant you ;-) but a better option to the site going down, especially if it is suddenly doing well ..

There must and should be a better way of dealing with it, that makes the host more money simply by being customer friendly..

[SpongeBob]

There must and should be a better way of dealing with it, that makes the host more money simply by being customer friendly..

Yep, I don't disagree with that. I just wanted to point out that this isn't an example of EukHost acting badly as it's the way many/most hosts supplying a CPanel account would act. You buy hosting with a set bandwidth, the CPanel makes it clear how much bandwidth you've used and if you reach it then the site goes offline - like the previous analogy of petrol running out.

It may well be better if the host monitored it, but most of them do expect you to keep an eye on it yourself.

It's a lesson learnt, anyway!

[Jack Russell]

Vexed. Angry. Hacked off. Trying to think of descriptive words without having to resort to using **** and @@@@

This is a general warning to anyone hosting their own site and also using eukhost

Ok its half ranting and half warning so apologies in advance for a long post.

I set my first website up in Jan and after spending time on this forum decided to go with eUKHost. Since Jan support has generally been good as has server performance and application support so no issues.

Then this morning I went to access my site at around 9am and found a message stating that the website could not load because i'd PASSED MY MAXIMUM BANDWIDTH ALLOWANCE!!

WTF?!

Hang on a sec I thought.

1) I've passed my bandwidth limit, unknowingly, for the first time in 4 months (and first time ever)

2) I had no prior warning that I had passed this limit

3) My website was effectively 'switched off' because of this

WTF?

ok so:

1) my site building and SEO work has been going really well and I've managed to attract lots of visitors to my site. This obviously causes an increase in server resource usage. However did I think to check? No. You may read this and think it should be my responsibility to check the bandwidth limit, but then as a marketer you might sympathise and agree that I have had more pressing issues to tend with like content and link building my affiliate site

2) At the VERY LEAST I would expect some form of prior warning before my WEBSITE WAS SWITCHED OFF!!! Not even ISPs like Virgin or Tiscali cut you off AS SOON AS you hit your bandwidth limit? Ok if you go crazy and kill your limit you'll be cut off, but as far as I could tell (later on, as I'd also lost access to CPANEL and anything else hosted on my server) I'd only gone slightly over so this was an automated shut out. I consider this an extremely POOR level of service, one I'm not happy with and may consider moving to a better provider for.

3) I've just re-read my post and noted that I've written 'my website' a few times. Really, if you think about it, it isn't really. Ok so the content and coding is mine, but what makes a website? Servers, networks etc etc - they don't belong to me and never will. My 'website' is not mine. And this brings home how real that is.

My point?

1. Don't let this happen to you. Based on my log files, I had no hits for 9 hours. I lost my website for 9 hours. I survived today because by chance I checked my website and was immediately on the phone to upgrade my service (and bandwidth allowance). However had search engines tried indexing my website whilst being inaccessible, it would have damaged my hard earned SEO rankings no-end.

2. Does anyone know if this is a standard as far as web hosts go? I'm sure my friend who was with 1and1 had some form of notification that his site was 'reaching its limit' before it was switched off? This way you have time to react. I spoke to 'Julie' on the phone and she said she agreed there should be a process in place, but unfortunately for me there wasn't.

D

Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused. Please PM me your domain name so that we can investigate on this.

[d33man]

thanks for all your feedback.

I've never hosted a site before, so thanks for advising that this is the norm. I will ensure to check cpanel a little more often!

However, and this is not entirely against EUK as they've been good up to this point, unlike my car, where I have a visible guage even if it try not to look at it, its there, I'd expect a warning, as with my utilities or anything else that can get stopped for any given reason.

i've requested that i have some form of warning implemented so hopefully that will help next time

finally i hope any other newbie affiliates heed this as its not worth the stress, trust me.

[daveh]

I sympathise with your situation but I suspect that this is not your hosts fault; treat it as a learning curve.

You will find that the majority of cpanel hosts have bandwidth monitoring enabled in this way and do send out usage warnings as early as 70% with repeat emails until the usage is reset or the bandwidth limit increased. However, to recieve these warnings you need to have told cpanel your email address. This is done from within your cpanel control panel.

Good luck with your new venture.

[d33man]

I sympathise with your situation but I suspect that this is not your hosts fault; treat it as a learning curve.

You will find that the majority of cpanel hosts have bandwidth monitoring enabled in this way and do send out usage warnings as early as 70% with repeat emails until the usage is reset or the bandwidth limit increased. However, to recieve these warnings you need to have told cpanel your email address. This is done from within your cpanel control panel.

Good luck with your new venture.

Thanks Daveh - I checked cpanel and indeed my personal email address is in there, along with the following options 'ticked':
- alert for when disk quota limit reached
- alert for when bandwidth quota limit reached
- alert for when email quota limit reached

I've checked my personal email's junkmail folder (have a week's worth still there) and there's no notification to be found (yes the email address is correct) so I can only suspect a failure on the hosts part in not sending them out?

Totally agree, it is a learning curve...one of many starting out as an affiliate....

thanks, D