Score: 9.5/10 - My best yet!
Following my ordeal with burst, I travelled to Fastservers. In the 3 years that I have been with them, everything has been beyond great. In fact, it’s been super. You can read my original review here, but I’ll expound a bit on that in this post.

Firstly, I chose Fastservers because it was a LOCAL company. You know, wanting to contribute back to my local comunity and all that (and no, I didn’t/don’t live in California). I’d had my eye on them for some time but just couldn’t get things settled at all. Either they had a setup fee (long since removed) or their prices were too high.

Finally, I got a deal through one of the sales individuals there on a server that they were just going to toss anyways. The thing wasn’t anything powerful (still isn’t), but it is STILL up and running (and still in my name) to this day. As I’m not using it (my needs grew), I’m leasing it to one of the original customers of that server, and they’re just loving it as much as I am.

Now, why continue the quest, right? You’d think I’d found the perfect experience and server here. Well, the quest MUST be continued, because not everyone’s perfect. Case in point:

About a year ago I went back to FS sales and told them what I needed for a new server. At the time, the 2.6 kernel was getting a lot of good reviews, so I was using it. There were numerous performances, etc, and when you’re running a site that makes a ton of queries , well, you want something beefy enough to handle it.

The problem? I was given no OS choice. No worries, I figured they’d load the latest EL/CentOS on there. Well, I was wrong. They loaded a 2.4 kernel OS on there. When asked why, they simply said “We don’t support 2.6 kernels right now”. Well, oookay, maybe they should publish that somewhere. Thankfully, they have since reversed said decision.

There have been minor network hiccups with these guys, but if you want perfection, well, you are going to pay a LOT more than what these guys are charging (and they’re towards the top of the food chain). Nothing major, however, and they’re always more than willing to lend a hand whenever necessary.

These guys are the ONLY individuals I still have a server with, after 3 years. Usually, I’ll just close out the service altogether, but FS deserves every bit of support they can get.

Keep on kickin ass guys!