I am a webafrica fanatic.  I have used them since my return to South Africa three years ago, and have converted countless friends and family into webafrica fans.  I run an internet based business and have invested close to R100K in services with webafrica over this time.

I love the simple yet powerfull control panels and account management tools.  Whenever I  have an issue I just fire up the instant message client and talk directly to one of the support people.

Then it all changed….

First the instant message client was discontinued, with the promise that this would streamline customer support.  No more realtime conversations.  What used to be fixed in a five minute instant message conversation now takes a few hours of ping pong via email, often having to deal with multiple support staff as issues are rarely resolved during a single shift.

Next came bugs in the new version of the Plesk control panel software.  Adding email redirects randomly fails. Creating new domains randomly fails.  Creating email aliases randomly fails.  Creating additional DNS entries randomly fails, etc.  The list goes on and on. Now, I come from a software development background and know that software is never perfect, especially when new versions are released, but for a hosting company the Control Panel is the most important cog in the machine. To make it fail repeatedly is like running a transport company on secondhand tubeless retread tyres.

Then came the indifference from the support staff.  Whenever I raise an issue with the Control Panel it is quickly pointed out to me that it worked for the support guy when he tried.  (So the problem is with me, the customer, end of story).  Time after time I have to point out that it is not a once of, I have done their testing for them, from numerous machines, etc.  Eventually it gets sorted as I have the issues bumped back and forth.

Then came the over utilization (exploitation?). I host many many sites on the webafrica servers.  All my sites started running slower and slower, until I (and my customers) could bare it no longer.  I was told the server my sites were on was old and I needed to migrate them over to a new server. After baulking I was enventually assisted (thanks Matt for your help that time) in the process of recreating all the domain email accounts, copying databases, etc, from the old to the new server.  Guess what happened a year down the line?  Yes, once again the “new server” is overloaded.  It has  become so bad that some sites that loaded in under 5 seconds now takes 30+ seconds to load,  due to mysql and php performance issues on the hosting server.  How do I know this?  The support staff blamed my inefficient code,

I finally wrote a simple monitoring page to track the overall server utilization, so as to prove the server was being overutilized.  What solution do they have to the position I am now in?  Easy, support says, all I need to do is migrate all my clients, their sites, email accounts, databases, etc, over to the new new server, and webafrica will assist if need be, at R100 per item (website, database, email, whatever).  All just to be in the same boat again a few months down the line?  Why are shared hosting servers loaded to the point of deteriorated performance?

Now, in the beginning I used to be able to send Matthew Tagg (MD of webafrica) an email and get my issues sorted.  These days webafrica has turned into a burocracy,  nothing is simple or direct anymore.

I aim to provide a first class service to my customers, but can no longer do that by relying on webafcrica to support my underlying infrastructure.

What are my options now?

• Migrate to a new shared server and repeat the whole process again in a year or less?
• Switch to a dedicated managed server, ensuring no over-utilization?
• Switch to a managed dedicated server with another supplier like hezner (which offer a better spec’d managed server for half the price) ?

I have not decided which way to go yet.  I know I need to make a change, but do not want to end up being held ransom by deteriorating support again, so need to choose carefully.

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