Cloud hosting and support on Blacknight query

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oliflorence

New Member
Hi All,
I have a shared server account with a couple of small sites on Blacknight and it seems fine but I am looking at moving a large number of sites to either a VPS or cloud service to get more reliable hosting, more control over the server, backups etc and more importantly a reliable 24/7 support.

I have dealt with support on Blacknight and have been satisfied with the response but always during office hours. Can anyone tell me how the out of office hours support is, is there a phone support or just an email and it is responsive enough if one rings with an emergency, for instance a site down etc request at 3am on a saturday night....

Also, any experience on the could hosting system?
 

paul

Ninja
Hi All,
I have a shared server account with a couple of small sites on Blacknight and it seems fine but I am looking at moving a large number of sites to either a VPS or cloud service to get more reliable hosting, more control over the server, backups etc and more importantly a reliable 24/7 support.

I have dealt with support on Blacknight and have been satisfied with the response but always during office hours. Can anyone tell me how the out of office hours support is, is there a phone support or just an email and it is responsive enough if one rings with an emergency, for instance a site down etc request at 3am on a saturday night....

Also, any experience on the could hosting system?

Hi Oli, it's been a long time !

I've used BK's VPS since March / April this year and I've only had a problem when I had too much used hard disk space, but that was really my own issue. With respect to costs, I think you can get cheaper VPS's in other countries, but my take on it is, I pay a premium for their excellent support, I'm supporting an Irish company and they are always pretty easy to deal with.

The VPS cloud is good because it's scalable. With a large number of sites, i.e. 50+ I find it good to have them all in the one space, but I do worry if an upgrade to the next version of Plesk is possible (it wasn't on the previous VPS offering). Keeping a server up to date and patched can be a pain in the bum, and if you aren't so confident with managing a Linux server then you should at the very least get the Plesk option (I did).
 

paul

Ninja
sorry to hijack

yep. on the old VPS I was advised not to upgrade from 8.6 to 9 at the time, as it would cause things to break (also possibly the license was only for 8.6). is it possible to upgrade to the latest version on the same license ?
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
sorry to hijack

yep. on the old VPS I was advised not to upgrade from 8.6 to 9 at the time, as it would cause things to break (also possibly the license was only for 8.6). is it possible to upgrade to the latest version on the same license ?
The technology is different on the new system so I know a lot of things that weren't possible are .. I'll have to doublecheck with Paul on our side, but I *think* you can - the only issue I'm aware of at the moment is the lack of support / updates from OnApp for some software
 

oliflorence

New Member
Hi Oli, it's been a long time !

I've used BK's VPS since March / April this year and I've only had a problem when I had too much used hard disk space, but that was really my own issue. With respect to costs, I think you can get cheaper VPS's in other countries, but my take on it is, I pay a premium for their excellent support, I'm supporting an Irish company and they are always pretty easy to deal with.

The VPS cloud is good because it's scalable. With a large number of sites, i.e. 50+ I find it good to have them all in the one space, but I do worry if an upgrade to the next version of Plesk is possible (it wasn't on the previous VPS offering). Keeping a server up to date and patched can be a pain in the bum, and if you aren't so confident with managing a Linux server then you should at the very least get the Plesk option (I did).

Thanks Paul,
I would be looking for a Windows server and would have over 150 sites to move over time so it is important all works fine.

Can you let me know if you have used the phone support after hours?

Blacknight offers a "enhanced support service", i would be interested in knowing what's offered with and without in terms of support.
You mentioned keeping the server up to date and patched up, i wonder would this support covers those.
 

Niamh

New Member
Thanks Paul,
I would be looking for a Windows server and would have over 150 sites to move over time so it is important all works fine.

Can you let me know if you have used the phone support after hours?

Blacknight offers a "enhanced support service", i would be interested in knowing what's offered with and without in terms of support.
You mentioned keeping the server up to date and patched up, i wonder would this support covers those.

Hi Oli,

Our Enhanced Support service is outlined, in detail, here:
https://support.blacknight.ie/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=530

Im afraid out-of-office telephone support is not included with this service. If having telephone support was a priority for you I would highly recommend that you opt for a dedicated server option. If you would like me to draw you up a proposal for this please feel free to email me at sales@


Thanks,

Niamh.
 

oliflorence

New Member
Hi Niamh,
What time is support opened for phone and do you offer out of office hours email support.
My only concern is if something goes wrong in the middle of the night and support is required.
 

Niamh

New Member
Hi Oli,

Support is available on the phone from 8am-6pm Monday to Friday along with our Live Chat facility however our help desk is open 24/7 (between Twitter and Facebook there is usually a member of staff online outside of these hours :tears_of_joy:).

Again with a dedicated solution, you would be given our on-call engineer contact details should you need to contact them outside of office hours.


Thanks,

Niamh.
 

Ciari

New Member
Hi Oli,

I have a pretty basic hosting package with Blacknight for the last couple of years, nothing like what you're looking to work with, but I can certainly vouch for their support service. Any time I've had an issue I've used their Live Chat thing and in my experience there has never been an issue that they haven't helped me resolve, nor have they ever been unavailable. The email support is similarly impressive. I've never needed to ring them, so can't comment there.

C.
 
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