Damon K.

I have used dotblock for about 5 years now... why? Because of the pricing and what I thought was services for the price I paid... it isn't the case though... you truly get what you pay for... or don't get what you don't pay for!

Today, was the final straw. It is 10/09/2019@ 11am ET... I tried to go online to access my account to insure that it would NOT auto-renew... I wanted to remove my credit card. But, I was unable to do this... I could not connect, and their webpage simply showed me an Ooops... page... I tried several times.

Finally, frustrated yet again, I called up. I explained to the woman who answered that I wanted to insure that my account would not auto renew. "I'm sorry, that can only be performed by the client, online, by removing your credit card information". Okay... but I tried doing that... but couldn't log in...

"Yes, I know... unfortunately, our billing site is undergoing maintenance right now..." In the middle of the day? On Wednesday? "Well, we are a global company... so there is never a good time to perform this..." Yes... I know... I am a DevOps/SRE/SysAdmin for a global company... but there are some times that are better than others to do maintenance on your 'global' servers... (like Saturday night... very late... into Sunday morning...) "well... you can't login right now..."

So, by example... this is how we end our, at best... mediocre relationship... but, why was I canceling? (aside from cost, level of customer service, availability, security...? Isn't that enough?)

Dotblock provides you with a management console so you can administer your own servers... good... but once, I tried to log in to my server... because it was unresponsive... and guess what? IT WAS UNRESPONSIVE! So, I opened up a ticket with them to reboot the one server... they rebooted it and it eventually came back online... trying to do some root cause analysis and a post mortem... blameless, of course... I came to understand that they disabled this feature... because... apparently... if you don't pay your bill on time (does not apply to me) they will simply disable/turn off your server... okay... but why can't I log into my server remotely? They disabled the feature so that if there ever was a late payment, or no payment, they could insure that the server and my data would still persist (I don't know... and don't really understand this at. All.) But, I explained that I want the ability to access my console remotely... so, after telling them that I understand the risks... (that my server can be turned off for non-payment) they again gave me access to my console...

EXCEPT... at least once a year... this goes away... AND my server or two... goes off line and I am unable to connect to the console remotely... AND... I have to call and ask them to reboot the server for me and to explain again why I am still unable... when I need it most, to not access my console... pfffftttt... that's why I was canceling my service...

Oh, and one more example... the first time I asked them to reboot the server... I don't recall the entire conversation... but they asked me to confirm that my console password was whatever it was... um... it's not encrypted and secure (apparently not... if they were telling me what it was...)

Very unprofessional... if you just want to play in an environment and you do not have real business requirements... okay, maybe... but other than that... don't waste your time. And don't ask me about subnetting the network. That is another rant...