PowerDNN has always been very good to my company. We started out with a VPS account in Feb. 2006. This is an incredibly good setup (and no, I don't have stock in the company, nor am I affiliated). By now this offer has been discontinued, so now you can choose between dedicated or shared.

Because of several different reasons we went to the shared option (for now), and I found that the downgrade went without a hitch. The operator found that we had a somewhat different set up (with production and staging setups, without going through the control panel) and he did what needed to be done to get the whole thing set up on the shared account.

Tony (the owner) and all the staff are always very friendly, patient and extremely tolerant. I am a developer and support pro myself in my day job, and I am not half as patient as these very professional people.

I have only kudos for this company. Very knowledgeable with regards to hosting and DNN. No questions asked when I needed to downgrade. Very professional jon to get the original server setup and now the shared account. They will be my only choice when we go back to dedicated.

As you will probably ask: why go shared. Current economics. Plain and simple. Their shared account will support our current client base.

Yes, one more vote for PowerDNN here. I have a couple of sites on thier shared service and they are both rock solid and fast.

The support is 1st rate too.

PowerDNN is the daddy. My site is almost as fast as when it was on a local host installation. Even the first load time (when the site hasnt been pinged in ages) is below 10 seconds.

Expensive though!

Has anyone else had any problems with these lately?

I have been using them for a few months but just recently we have had lots of problems. It seems to be since they changed their support and want to start charging for it. If you dont pay for it, I am finding that you dont even get a reply.

I wont go into all the details as I would like to give them a chance to correct it first.
To cut the story short they deleted my account and wiped out my whole site. It took 4 days from my initial support request to put this right. i was told it was a bug in their software. This was just one problem I have had with them. They have left me feeling like they dont know what they are doing!

Is this just me? Or have they gone down hill? I went with them because of everything said about them in this forum.

I have also just found out that even though I paid $1000 for aspdnsf from powerdnn, they can not support it and neither will aspdnsf themselves as I bought it through a reseller.

They have been a very expensive mistake for us!

Hi JazzLilly,
Is there a phone number I can reach you at?  I'd like to talk with you about your issues.

You can email me at Tony.Valenti@PowerDNN.com or call me at 402-650-6072.

-Tony Valenti
PowerDNN Manager

JazzLilly,

Please let us know if your issues get resolved.  I'm getting ready to start a contract for a new website and was thinking about using PowerDNN to Host.  Most of the comments I've seen have been very good.

Thanks,

Mark

I have been with PowerDNN for about a year now. No performance degradation issues.

They do seem to go down frequently in the dark of the night for upgrades, and my pager goes off or I wouldn't know about it.   Daytime uptime has been great.  My customers are all in the US. This wouldbe be great of they were in China.

Parellels Software has screwed my sight once recently by changing the protections. A bug know by PowerDNN staff.  They fixed it quickly when I told them of the problem.

I haven't had any issues with the "new support" plans, but I haven't had any major issues either.

My biggest complaint is that when they close a call, they don't usually tell you what the problem was or how they fixed. This means that i have to reopen the call and ask.

I hope that your problems are a one of the kind.

/Dave Snow - www.AgingSafely.com

I have spoken with Tony Valenti today.  He seems like a nice man and has assured me that he will look into my issues.  I will wait to hear the outcome and post back here when I do.

I agree with DavidWSnow that it is not really acceptable to close a call and not give you an answer.  I have had a couple of problems where they have not been fixed and it has been closed without an explanation.  I have been told that this is possibly because I raised the support call by email rather than their website so hopefully this wont happen again. 

Hopefully, I am just a one off and they will sort out my issues.  I will continue to use powerDNN for our current project if I see some improvement as I do think that the performance of their servers is far better than some other hosts we are using for smaller projects.

I do agree that they are expensive compared to some others but with good support when things go wrong, especially when the problems are caused by powerdnn, then I would be happy to pay for it.
 

Hi All

I have been using PowerDNN for over two years now. Started with virtual server. Tony was always working in support at that time and they were growing. I think I recieved plenty of support in those days and was given some great pricing because they had not really nailed down there Pricing/Package.

While on the virtual sever I had a few minor issues and they were resolved quickly and had no down time
 
Today I'm on a dedicated server and not really sure why I have had so many down times and for very long periods up to six hours.
 
I have gone over with support on several issues usually around a module problem.

They have been responsive but unfortunatly I have suffered 5 major down times and twice it effected all of my sites on the dedicated server.

The one site that seems to suffer is www.conservatoryseniorliving.com which would be my largest account. The issues seem to surround a module thats used for contacting the company for more info.
The thing is I use this module on other sites and never have had a proplem.

Next I was not happy about there pay for support system after not being told they would move to doing this. I have paid $85.00 per/hr for several hrs and have been told the issue was resolved and that it would never come back.

Well it did. Now I have been told by the client that they are shopping around for another developer and will leave my services.

The last time I was told by PowerDNN that it was some errors that they cleared from the BUS ????? I had no clue what that meant.

And after saying I would pay again to resolve whatever the module was doing (just to be sure this module was recently updated) The support person said you can just go check your logs.

Now I want to be very clear here.
 
I know that Tony has responded to others on this forum and I want everyone to know that by and all PowerDNN has provided me with some outstanding service JUST seems lately that I have been cursed with some unknown Murphys Law.

I wanted to participate in this forum not to shred as bad as it may seem PowerDNN as I still believe they are the best.

It would be a shame to start out with one of the best support teams and then because of good business and rapid growth lose that edge.

In a world that seems to have everything everywhere the problem still remains GREAT Support.

It bothers me to talk to someone offshore not because of their accent but because I dont believe they care about MY BUSINESS.

I need people like PowerDNN to care about MY Business and  thats the business of websites that use DNN.

I know several of the people who have made post in this forum. We kinda grew up together using DNN.

I couldnt have made it without all your help. It still stings to lose a client and not feel good about it.

Kemper Burt

 

To all

I just recently added a post to this forum. What I didnt say is that I have several sites housed on WH4L. Best Practice for me is to build out on a test site then move my sites to another more stable Hosting Platform.

That Hosting platform is PowerDNN and if you read my post you would think I was not happy with PowerDNN thats NOT the case.

I think because we have an open forum and this is the only one I would consider (Thank you Lee) it's important to stay open and honest.

In consideration of this that may very true foranyone at just that moment.

So it's important for me to say what it it is at any given time. Where Im at with it all.
 
I have been working with DNN for 5 years. It is more time than I've given any open source program no matter who's it is.

And we have all had our issues here Im sure!!!!!.

Again if it wasnt for the input talent and creative minds of the people who have come together to make DNN work I wouldnt be where Im at today with some exciting prospects.

Rodney you helped me the very first time I wanted to put up video with a menu system over two years ago.

Lee if wasnt for your pursuit of passing on information on this site and teaching me I may have given up.

To Tony Valenti if you hadnt worked with me from the start I wouldnt have even been able to build an enterprise site to begin with.

I have had more than my share of different hosting platforms and today in my humble opinon you will not find a better Hosting service than PowerDNN.

To make it clear I am moving everything off of WH4L. I have found this service to be more than lacking. Poor speed poor support and the new ticketing service they put up frustrates me.

They have implemented a Security Guard feature that does not allow me to work on a site that has a temp URL.

I use a temp URL because I dont want it live yet.

My appreciation of the DNN community is filled with respect thats why Im here.

And to Tony and his team at PowerDnn I will be signing up for your shared hosted programs to help facilitate my move off of WH4L

Thank you all for what you have done for me.

Best Regards
Kemper Burt

 

I have been with PowerDNN for about a year now, and was very happy with them when I first signed up. However, recently (in the last 2 months or so) things have gone downhill with them in terms of reliability. I don't know why. I am paying $105 a month for the service so it's not like I'm on the cheapie plan.

Let me give some examples. But let me preface by saying this: their support is top-notch; they always respond quickly and politely and usually fix the problem right away. HOWEVER, the frequency of problems is unacceptable.

Just in the last two weeks, two of my own sites (including email) have gone down because of DNS problems on their servers. I never did get an explanation from them on why it happened. I tried browsing to my site to make some changes and got the "address not found" error.

Just in the last 2 days, my email has been stopped (no errors sending and receiving, but no mail is transferred so it took me a day to figure out I wasn't receiving any mail) because of server problems on their end. Nor could I log into my PowerDNN control panel (kept saying the control panel was down for system maintenance). I haven't received an explanation for that either. The problem first happened yesterday, to which I sent an urgent tech support request to them and they rebooted the server and all the sudden I got all my mail. Guess what happened today? Exact same problem, and exact same explanation - nothing.

These issues are affecting my own sites as well as my customer's sites. I am starting to look very bad in the eyes of my customers, after having promised them that PowerDNN is fast and reliable. Every time something goes wrong I have to explain to my customers what happened and apologize. I can only do that for so long before the customer moves elsewhere.

Tech support has offered me free month's worth of service for my trouble, to which I stated I'm not looking for any freebies, I just want the service to be reliable. *Some* downtime is to be expected, but every week? And with little or no explanation, or gameplan to not let it happen again? Unacceptable.

I hate to say this, but if you are looking to move to PowerDNN I would consider what I have said above, and do not make the switch. Look elsewhere.

-Rob-

I too have been having PowerDNN reliability and support issues over the same period. At first they acknowledged that the changing or file/directory permissions and the hogging of the CPU was a problem caused by an upgraded of their "control panel" software. Now when it happens their solution is to limit your CPU usage to 20% and suggest that the cause of the problem is your and likely log files. I use Lee's suggestions for self managing of log files and they never have been a problem in the past with similar usage. If this doesn't get better very soon I will be considering switching.

/DaveS

Hi Rob and Dave,
I am very sorry about the troubles that we've been having lately. The past two months haven't been fun for us either. Two of our vendors released buggy software "upgrades", DotNetNuke 4.9 has been having scheduler issues, and Microsoft's recent security patches along with .NET 3.5 SP1 have been keeping us extremely busy and not in the way that we want.

On the bright side though, we have just recently expanded our staff by 30%, and, although the new guys are still green at DotNetNuke, I have never had more confidence in the technical abilities of our team. We're also setting up all new servers with SmarterMail Pro which is greatly improving our systems performance and reliability. We've also implemented a much more stringent patch Q/A process to help us ensure that when our vendors release patches, it doesn't break things for our customers. We've also just finished development on our Control Suite 2.0 DotNetNuke Management application. We are also currently running a private beta on PowerMenu, a highly customizable menu navigation system for DotNetNuke. We also just finished our "Network 2.0" design which is going to be bringing 10gig ethernet to our infrastructure.

Again, I am extremely sorry for the recent problems we've had. It hasn't been fun, but we're working hard to improve our processes and always deliver the best service to our customers.

If you have any ongoing issues, I would really like to work with you to investigate the issue more fully and find a permanent resolution. My direct cell phone number is 402-650-6072 and my email address is Tony.Valenti@PowerDNN.com . Please feel free to give me a call at any time.

I hope to see you at OpenForce this year!
-Tony V

Ok Tony I know I have'nt called you back. Sometimes I need to take a while to talk to people after I have had a major set back due to anothers problems. As I reported in my last few posts the problems with PowerDnn was causing my largest client 5 site (locations) with a social media sites for each location all under Conservatoryseniorliving.com with child sites running DNN.
 
In the last post I said they may leave. WELL THEY DID !!!. I pay $ 450 dollars a month from my own pocket to have a dedicated server with your service and Im very dissapointed.

Unfortunatly I cannot find somewhere else to move my accounts right now because Im being buried by econmics. As Im sure everyone is.

I think it's great your hiring new people I had to let one go that managed my biggest account that I no longer have.

I was just billed again from PowerDNN and I have to say I cringed.

If it wasn't for the fact that I have two other sites there right now I would move my business. It's not easy looking for good hosting, from the posts that I read here seems it's difficult for everyone.

I have 4 sites on WH4L as well and yes it's slow sometimes and I bought into the Schedular service they have (like a keepalive) and it's helped.

These sites dont have the scope that the ones on PowerDnn have nor are my clients able to support you Great growth as I have.

And while Im blowing off steam I can't remember how many hundreds of dollars I have spent with your company to get services for problems that did not get fixed or go away.

If your having trouble believing anything Im writing here please feel free to contact your accounting dept. and look at my account.

Or the many payments for using your tech services for non issues, such as migrating and upgrades to DNN sites.

This is an open forum and Im hoping Lee dosent prevent this post from being seen. Everyone has a right to express.

Thank you
Kemper Burt

Hi Kemper, I'll give you a call this afternoon. I really want to get a handle on your situation. As a customer on a dedicated server, you have been unaffected by the issues that I mentioned above. I did take a look at your account and I do see that way back in july/june you purchased a couple of different consulting services from us, but other than that, the only other thing that stands out is that, at least since august when we upgraded our support system, your account has no support tickets on it. Please also remember that PowerDNN is a hosting company but that DotNetNuke is a web development "platform". When a DotNetNuke website is crashing due to an old or faulty module, as a hosting provider, there's only so much we can do - recommend upgrading the core, recommend upgrading the module, and as a list resort, uninstall the module.

Hello,

Just to add my 2pence in. I also have a dedicated server with PowerDNN and have not had the problems you have been experiencing. - Of course this post will stay on here as I try to keep the forum on here as open as possible.

Hopefully you will manage to solve your problems, good luck,

Oh cool you have a dedicated server? Fancy selling me some space? Sykehosts! xD

Lol! - mmm could be a possibility, but I wouldn't offer ANY support!

A quick update for everyone...Previously I commented how unhappy I was with PowerDNN and recent outages and other problems they have been having.

Shortly after I left my comment, I received an email from Tony, the owner, saying he would personally be looking into the problems I had and will let me know the outcome. He did look into the problem and offered some solutions and explanations and was genuinely concerned with my problems, and admitted PowerDNN has been having an unfortunate string of events of late.

So far all of the problems have been solved, and I know PowerDNN has taken steps to ensure the problems don't happen again.

Kudos to Tony and PowerDNN for acting swiftly and for taking a sincere interest. I told Tony on a voice phone call that it is for this reason (his personal involvement) that I stuck with PowerDNN. If it were another provider I highly doubt the response would have been as positive and I would have moved my business elsewhere.

I can't speak for what will happen in the future at PowerDNN as far as reliability, but for now I'm more than satisfied and wanted to update everyone as such.

-Rob-

Hi everyone. I have been contacted by Tony at PowerDnn and feel that I in some areas was not fair or correct in all of my complaints.

Only one area that stuck was over a critical update issued by Microsoft that was a serious culpert on my dedicated server. One that I could not resolve and PowerDNN did (albiet not fast enough for my client).

Bad timing and SH!T Happens

Once Tony and I disscussed things he was very easy going and really listened to what I had to say. Listening is a quality I admire and which
I have the inability to express myself without sounding like an A&& for the most part.

So he listened and offered solutions. Better to be in the solution than part of the problem.

I need to point out that if it were not for PowerDNN I would not have been able to build the sites I have.

I am not someone who is intimatley familar with SQL,IIS and other various aspects of maintaing todays servers. I say todays because I no longer work as an IT manager or build call centers.

My days would have us all still working on Mainframes and little green screens. Ok so what if Im an Amazon developer anyone can be you just have to signup

I do push the limits of DNN in every way I can(sometimes not even knowing)

Thank you PowerDnn and thank you Tony for taking the time to put the "personal" back into customer service.

Thank you Lee for letting us work out our frustrations here.

I will be moving TWO new sites to PowerDnn This weekend no pain no gain.
You will not in my opinon find a better DNN hosting service than PowerDNN.