Hi, the RC refugee here.
In Spring 2004 I become sick of being pushed around by my hosting provider, so I decided to make educated decision about choosing the new one. I quickly discovered that HSphere is the way to go. I went to Psoft website, made a list of all providers (15 at that time), researched them, narrowed down to three: RC, Jodo, and ourinternet. I actually signed up with them and played around for two months before settling down with RC. I thought, I couldn't be more thorough.
My experience with RC was between "very good" and "great" until the take over. The main reason why I left was the fact that the server, which hosted sites of my most important client, was unstable for a week. A week of emails, trouble tickets, forum posts. The mail server ordeal was a just straw that broke camel's back. That fatal Wednesday I dug up my notes from a year ago, revisited runners up and compared them with a few companies talked about on RC and WHT forums. I decided to go with Jodo for two major reasons: this company really takes care of all its clients and communicates with them. You may be able to find company giving more resources for less money, claiming being more bullet proof and flawless than others. But the fact of real life is: shit happens. Sites will be down, servers will blow, switches will clog up - it is unreasonable to expect the perfection from the hosting company measured in 100% uptime. What makes the difference is how the company prepares for inevitable, how quickly responds to it, and lastly: with what kind of attitude.
At the fatal Wednesday at RC I signed up with Jodo and had to transfer asap. I needed assistance a couple of times. At that time I needed to have my issue resolved right there on the spot. I placed a phone call - that turned out to be interesting learning experience of communicating over VoIP line with about 2 seconds delay. The guy I talked with suggested using chat feature. That was it. Tanmaya was very helpful and patient with me two times that night. I was quite aggravated with the situation at RC and necessity to transfer. Tanmaya's help reassured me that my quick decision was the righ one.
Within last month I needed help when I got in trouble coding the submission page in php. At some point I made a bubu and sent about 2000 empty emails to myself and thought that my account was put on the email shit-list, as the script stopped sending emails. I chatted with a guy that day (can't recall the name), who checked the black-list, offered information about signing up for mass mail priviledge, checked the whole bunch of other things for me. He did not fix the problem for me, but we worked through this issue together; without his help it would have taken hours instead of minutes. Most importantly, he did not turned away with excuse "we don't support the code", like the other companies would. He did not blame me for my problem. Actually he was wrong about one thing, but he did not try to impose his idea on me, like others tend to. This is the kind of attitude I deeply appreciate and are very thankful for.
For guys who consider choosing Jodohost: don't expect faster servers here, more feature bells and whistles, 100% uptime, and so for, and so on, and such like... The technology is the same for everybody. All major players on this market are very much alike as far as the features and reliability. But be prepared that you will be treated with respect, serviced promptly, will be given all the attention you deserve. It's like in that old commercial: in the world of technology people make a difference.
