How the once awesome Arvixe became the WORST web hosting company

A few years back, I changed my hosting company from a crappy host to Arvixe, admittedly with a number of apprehensions.

To my surprise, the hosting was phenomenal and it hardly had any outages, down times or any issues. If and when minor issues did come up, tech support was readily available and these guys did an absolutely wonderful job of sorting out pretty much anything. Usually, all it took was contacting their live chat and most of the times the support staff at live chat would be able to solve issues. In cases where they wouldn’t be able to solve them, they would create a support ticket which would typically get resolved in an hour or maximum two.

Here is an example of how awesome Arvixe WAS:

Arvixe support
Contacted them on Live chat and the tech created a ticket instantly – I get a reply from support within 10 minutes telling me that they’re checking.

 

Arvixe support
Less than an hour, the issue gets fixed and I get an update

 

Arvixe support
I confirm it’s working and I ask them what the issue was

 

Arvixe support
Some wordpress php settings which happened at the back end

 

Arvixe support
I’m still in love with Arvixe

Around October 2014, Arvixe was taken over by Endurance International Group which keeps buying out small hosting companies but lets the small companies operate under the original brand name. However, EIG completely changes the structure of the company bought over and over time, the changes become very evident. By October 2015, things started changing drastically. From the March outage till October, there were only minor outages which got resolved quite quickly, so I didn’t have much to worry about.

In October 2015, I had to open a support ticket.

Arvixe support October 2015
I open a support ticket on 4th October, and get a reply on 7th October, after they fixed it. 3 days of outage.

 

Arvixe support October 2015
It working from 7th to 13th and I again had to reply to the ticket – no repy received and ticket closed. Thankfully they did fix the issue. No communication received though!

Then on 1st of December, again the website is down. No changes made at our end.

Arvixe support December 2015
No changes made from our side. After issue crops up, one of our technies tries to change permissions and gets an exception on the websitepanel
Arvixe support December 2015
Copy paste reply received. Hello Robert. Site is apparently working fine at their end. I’m not sure which site she is talking about
Arvixe support December 2015
I explain the problem to her again at 4:24 PST
Arvixe support December 2015
I ping them again at 21:48 PST.
Arvixe support December 2015
Copy paste reply and absolutely NO resolution or anything at all. Some other support person is now online
Arvixe support December 2015
I ask them again what’s happening
Arvixe support December 2015
Now they say there is some emergency maintenance on the server going on. I wonder how the previous to previous techie was able to see a working site. Oh that was Robert’s site! 2:53PST, 2nd December
Arvixe support December 2015
2153 PST, December 2nd, some of my ebsites back up. Main one still down. I message them again.
Arvixe support December 2015
Another tech support person does some perlim troubleshooting and gets nothing done. Looks like a copy pasted reply and the ticket gets closed!!!
Arvixe support December 2015
I wait for ages and someone comes on live chat and after the chat, a new ticket is opened
Arvixe support December 2015
Simon says a lot of stuff. At least it looks like he did something
Arvixe support December 2015
We haven’t made any changes.
Arvixe support December 2015
8 hours later, no resolution. It’s now over 48 hours since the original ticket
Arvixe support December 2015
20:55 PST, no reply and I ping again.
Arvixe support December 2015
They finally restore it from a backup
Arvixe support December 2015
It works after over 60 hours of downtime and endless banging my head against a wall!
Arvixe support December 2015
Last update from them… for Evangaline!
Robert and then Evangaline!

March 28th, 2016 AGAIN there is an outage!

Arvixe support March 2016 - 01
28th March 2016 AGAIN an outage!!!
Arvixe support March 2016 - 01
Someone fixes it and I get a reply on 31st of March!!

But no… the fix doesn’t last long. It looks as if they put cheap tape on the damn thing!
Writing this post is making me mad at them all over again!

Arvixe support April 2016 - 01
Good times didn’t last long. It starting acting up almost immediately after someone did some temporary fix to it!
They say it’s working fine!
Arvixe support April 2016 - 01
No it’s NOT
Arvixe support April 2016 - 01
The they admit there is a problem with the server and my patience and cooperation is highly appreciated. FUCK YOU!

Finally, something works! But hey, May is still to come!!

Pathetic Arvixe service
5th May, AGAIN it’s down and I contact support
Pathetic Arvixe service
7th May they reply as there was some issue with their blah blah blah

And then… the FINAL episode which started on 10th of May and as of 18th May still hasn’t been resolved. In this duration, I’ve just moved to a different hosting provider and thankfully now my websites are up and running.

Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
I HATE them by now!
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
I really really do hate them by now
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
Quite apparently, they’re not able to maintain their servers. DDoS attack!
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
Okay, create the new account and tell me how to take backup of the server when I can’t access the damn thing
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
They want database names. I don’t remember those!!! Just get me ALL my databases which were in my account!
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
If not all, give me the critical ones at least!
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
They themselves cannot connect to the server!!!
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
Okay, restore the last stable backup!
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
They will see if they can restore!
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
Server misconfiguration??!
Whaattt??!?
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
GIVE ME THE DAMN BACKUP!!!
Techie takes ownership
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
4th May backup is available
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
13th May, crowfoot comes back up.
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
They’re glad my issue is resolved… little did I know
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
I had a backup… NO BLOODY SERVER TO UPLOAD TO!
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
Technie passes on to billing when I ask for compensation
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
No compensation for downtime. 1 month’s credit provided – What will I do with that when your bloody servers are dead
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
15th May… it goes down AGAIN. Now i’m finding it more funny than anything
Arvixe is terrible - May 2016
16th May, I message them again and finally said FUCK OFF for good. Goodbye arvixe.

As of 18th May 2016, I’ve left a couple of random sites on Arvixe and they’re still NOT back up.
My main websites (including this one) are hopefully safe and sound on the new web hosting provider.

2 Responses

  • This is a sad but true story. I’ve been an Arvixe customer for over 8 years. It used to be a great company until EIG took over. After that, Arvixe became quickly the WORST in the industry. My websites were more often down than up. And support is absolutely useless. Needless to say that I migrated all my websites to a new hosting provider. I wouldn’t recommend Arvixe to my worst enemy. This company is a sinking ship.

    • Hi Chris,

      I’m in exactly the same situation. I moved everything out of Arvixe to a non EIG hosting and it’s just so much more peaceful.

      P.S. As on 27th May, the issue that started on 10th May has still not been resolved and they still haven’t been able to get that server up and running and neither have they created a new account for me.

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