DailyRazor Customer Review

DailyRazor Review

Here is what Keith had to say about DailyRazor and the overall experience with their web hosting service.

DailyRazor cites a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This means that in any given month, they they can be down for .744 hours or less. Seven days down amounts to about 25% downtime for that month, or only 75% uptime. We will see that this is a sham, and that uptime has been far less than this, and in some cases the server has been down or unavailable for days at a time.

Seven Days in June

For a couple of years I have been hosting at Daily Razor. The servers generally run OK, and about half this time when things go wrong they fix it promptly. The other half of the time I have to call them to fix it. Usually it is something simple, like they acidentally erased a file or something, and after a couple of tries they will restore it.

On May 30 or 31, 2008 server hosting my site went down. That was a Saturday. I noticed it Saturday morning, the server was not available. It was not addresed. Finally, on Sunday, 01 Jun 2008 07:56 PM, I filed a support issue with Technical Support. You will find the record under support issue FDW-975215. What you will see in this issue is that it was filed on June 1, and the problems were not fixed until June 7. The server was down for 7 days from when I first noticed it.

This was a well known problem. For example, it was documented in TechBlog, here, as well as a later article.

18 hours in September

I find the site down on occasions, but this is the second documented case where the server was inaccessible for more than a few hours because they forgot to re-register the free domain name that comes with the account. The details are in CPV-639788 and you will see that the report was made on 07 Sep 2008 04:12 AM and was finally addressed on 08 Sep 2008 03:50 PM, almost 18 hours later. So, for a second month, they failed to meet the committed .744 hours or less of downtime.

Multiple Days, Multiple Problems in October

This case started by an initiative on their part to move my files to a new server on Oct 13: YDQ-205313. OK, I don't have a problem with that, but when they moved the files on October 15 (NYM-433927), they messed up the configuration and started about 1 month of problems.

* On Oct 22 I found the site down (OSS-489757) and the reason given for the site being down was that "forgot to ask us to reload shared tomcat after you uploaded JSP files or made some changes in the code of your site". Except I had not uploaded any files or made any changes in the site at all. Actually, I was travelling on a business trip the three days around that date, and had not accessed the server at all except to try to use it.

* On Oct 31, KEZ-996454 i found that failed to confiure the new server in the same way and the main page of the site had not been working for 16 days.

* Several times in the following days I found my site down, and called in for them to address the problem.

* On Nov 6 the site was down again, and according to this ticket (VPJ-791613) because they got some idea that my application was causing overload of the server, and it had been down for 26 hours. The ironic thing about this is that the application in question had been on my server for more than 2 years without causing this problem in the past, and since re-eabling (OSS-489757, DZF-757799) has not shown the problem since. If you read the messages, there is indication that a completely different application (none of mine) was the fault, but they got mixed up and thought it was mine. "oops"

* On Nov 7, I found the server down for the fifth time that week: ROS-369082

* On Nov 9: KGZ-304861 I found the server down again for the sixth time in seven days. I don't konw how long it had been down for on most of these occasions. I asked them to move my files off that server and onto another, which they did, but the updating of the domain name was done incorrectly and caused a long interaction.

I called the support department, and they assured me that if I filed a request, they would refund a month -- or at least give me a one-month credit that would be tacked on to the end of my current service cycle. I believe they owe me three months, but OK, let me see if I can get one month? That is, after all, the guarantee.

Enough is Enough

Honestly, can anyone here say I have not been patient enough? I really have gone though a lot. What I have not mentioned is that during two of these outages, I had critical demonstrations in which I told a number of people we would use the application for a meeting being held, and because of this I had a very hard time getting people to use the application when they were so unreliable. I could never convince them that the application was stable enough to use, and this cost me a lot personally. That was really just bad luck, but the server being down so much is a real problem which was clearly due to their inability to run a proper server hosting service. So, I would like to cancel the service. (Who wouldn't)

I suspected that they would be difficult, so I got a different hosting service, and moved everything to the other service (MochaHost ... and so far they have been a pleasure to deal with), and have that up and running. So I am not dependent upon their servers at all. Now, how long will it take to cancel the service? Will they attempt to hold the domain name hostage as other have said they would do?

Billing Cycle

Back a year, on Sep 22, 2007, I asked them to change my billing cycle to "yearly" as you will see in KJC-44236. They failed to do this, and I had to remind them again on Nov 12, 2007 (PLR-108686) and they finally did this and note that the yearly cycle will start on Dec 2007. That means my year is up Dec 1, 2008.

Cancellation Notice

End of November, I call technical support and tell them to please cancel my account and release the domain name. I am told that I have to file a technical support request in order to do this. This is not convenient for me for a couple of days, and finally on Dec 7, I send in such a request to cancel the account (see JVI-885471). At this point, I am told (and I quote) "all cancellation and/or account request must be received 5 days before the last day of the month unless to prevent your account from automatically renewing."

This is actually a bit sneaky: the service is for Dec 1 2008 to Dec 1 2009, and they want to bill me the entire year, for 7 days of service. After all, their service was DOWN for 7 days, and they want to charge me a year for the first seven days in December.

This is probably the most important message to read (JVI-885471) because it outlines clearly the failure to meet the SLA. This exchange involved messages on Dec 7 and again on Dec 8. At no time is the failure to meet the SLA addressed. I have been promised that this extensive down time, would offer a credit to extend the service for one month. Therefor, deadline would be Dec 31, and I am well within the deadline for that.

I am sure they will come up for some other "rule" that will prevent me from getting my refund. To this, I will claim that their "guarantee" of 99.9% uptime is a sham, and false advertising. I have evidence that shows it is true, due to their unwillingness to make good on the guarantee, and to try to take advantage of a customer by placing rules that prevent the actual handling of such a claim. I don't know what they will do, I am only guessing here.

So, what is the Reponse?

I filed a complain with the Better Business Bureau of the Greater Washington DC area which is the branch of the BBB that handles the zip code that Daily Razor is located in.

I am filing a complaint with ICANN. They are refusing to handle my request to unlock the domain name. I don't actually care about the domain name and I don't need it (I stopped using the domain name because I figured they would make it very difficult to release the domain name, or possible levy additional hidden charges). They have on numerous times been surly and difficult to deal with, and I simply want to get them to release the name because it is not their property.

This page is to allow me to present all the facts clearly and succinctly. If later you come back and can not find this page, it is probably because they have "finally" cancelled the account.

Account Setup Feedback

See the documented example of the request to convert to yearly, and how I had to contact them multiple times to get that working.

Host Reliability

during three months of this last year the site was unavailable for multiple days.

Pricing Info

They are cheap. Probably too cheap, although I have another site at APlus.com for several years which costs 2/3 the price and has been completely reliable.

Final Host Comments

See documented trail of communications and how they avoid the subject of the "up-time guarantee". Their data center in Houston was out for multiple days, and this has been documented in newspaper articles, but these "hosting review" sites often miss even obvious signs of bad service.

DailyRazor Customer Support Review

Customer Hosting Reviews is the only website with a seperate customer support review box. Customer support is the top reason why customers tend to stay with or leave a web hosting company such as DailyRazor. How was your experience with DailyRazor? Submit a DailyRazor review today!

Here's what Keith had to say about DailyRazor's Customer Support:

They often did the wrong thing causing me to have to call in and get it corrected.

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