So, I think its about time that I stick my money where my mouth is and do a write up on Nimbus. I think pretty much everyone whos been around these forums a while will at least know of them, so this is more for people who may be looking for hosting / server reccomendations.
Lets make it easy shall we for those looking for a quick review:
TLDR: Nimbus have so far been the best host I have ever used in all 15 years of my experience.
Now the full whack.
Over time here at XenForo, Nimbus started making a name for itself, and, as time has gone on, it seems they only get better. There have been a few people with complaints, but after looking at each case, it seems each is an end user problem rather than one with Nimbus itself.
Most of you will know, once I find a host, I stick with them... I have (and still have) a contract going back 10+ years with 1+1. And for many years they were my de-facto go-to host for anything. However, a few months ago I was contacted by them saying one of my servers which I host a bunch of local businesses (and other things on) with them was going to be moved to a new datacenter, and, they have added their proffessional backup option to my account to make a backup of everything before the move, it would be free and removed from my account after 3 months. Fair enough, I already have nightly backups in place, but an additional backup can't hurt right?
Everything goes swimmingly, until the 3rd month ends and the invoice comes through. At this point my eyes glazed over as an invoice for hundreds of pounds for the professional backup has been charged to my account.
Ok, mistakes happen, so I ring up billing support, and the woman on the end of the phone basically tried to blame me for not manually cancelling the backup option "before" the end of the 3rd month. None of this was mentioned on the email they sent, fortunately I don't delete any of my emails, so double checking, and yes I was right, but she wasn't having any of it, basically tried to fob me off and blame me for the charge. Well, that was it, I rang back and got through to someone senior in billing and after a long battle, got them to cancel the charges. Regardless, by this point I was livid at their attitude so a new host was in order.
Now, at this point my experiences with Nimbus were all second hand or by proxy, and despite reccomending them myself from the glowing reviews of others, I had never used them directly. So, dropping an email through to their sales department at 10pm at night, within 2 minutes (yes, thats right) Tim had gotten back to me. A good first impression.
We discussed back and fourth, options and questions, every time Tim's answers were promt, knowledgeable and to the point, exactly what I love. However also knowing that Nimbus is essentially a fully managed service, this gave me an idea to reduce my own workload in managing and maintaining serveral individual servers/VPS's, so a plan was hatched to put them to the test!
Anyway, eventually I settle on a package with onsite backups, and Tim kicks thing into motion. At this point I throw them a couple of curve-balls. Asking them to configure or install a few things in a specific way, every time, it was done promtly, correctly and without a fuss.
Despite them offering to migrate everything for me, many of my customers sites have regular updates added by the customer, and many of them have domains / emails with long time providers, so simply migrating everything and turning off the old servers wasn't an option. This would be a long process of updating many domains and A-Records with multiple registrars and hosts. So I declined their offer and began the process myself. I have no doubt however, if it was a simple transition, that everything would have been done easily and quickly!
About halfway through, some custom CNAME records stopped working, I checked the Nimbus customer area and everything looks alright, so again emailing Tim, after a couple of emails the problem is found and corrected!
Roll on Heartbleed.
Shortly after Heartbleed was announced and the relevent patches / updates made available, I updated/fixed all my servers and saw another opportunity to test Nimbus. Their customer area was down as they were applying the fixes to their own site, so I send them a sneaky email off asking them to update my server. Within minutes the responce I got was, amazing. Before they had even fixed their own site, they had patched my server and sent a reply stating as much, along with an expaination they were going to be patching all customer servers shortly anyway. What a bonus, stunning customer service.
Anyway, the migration is almost over, and i've cancelled 2 of my VPS's with 1+1 and one of my dedicated servers only has 3 more sites to move, so in this move, I have offloaded the work of managing 3 individual machines to Nimbus, and so far they have been nothing short of stellar.
Anyway, to finish up I can only say positive things about Nimbus.
So if your looking for a new host. Give Nimbus a go
http://www.nimbushosting.co.uk/
I'm looking forward to taking a back seat and just letting them get on with ensuring my server stays up to date, working and secure, so I can focus more on other projects such as the long list of XenForo imports I currently have!
Lets make it easy shall we for those looking for a quick review:
TLDR: Nimbus have so far been the best host I have ever used in all 15 years of my experience.
Now the full whack.
Over time here at XenForo, Nimbus started making a name for itself, and, as time has gone on, it seems they only get better. There have been a few people with complaints, but after looking at each case, it seems each is an end user problem rather than one with Nimbus itself.
Most of you will know, once I find a host, I stick with them... I have (and still have) a contract going back 10+ years with 1+1. And for many years they were my de-facto go-to host for anything. However, a few months ago I was contacted by them saying one of my servers which I host a bunch of local businesses (and other things on) with them was going to be moved to a new datacenter, and, they have added their proffessional backup option to my account to make a backup of everything before the move, it would be free and removed from my account after 3 months. Fair enough, I already have nightly backups in place, but an additional backup can't hurt right?
Everything goes swimmingly, until the 3rd month ends and the invoice comes through. At this point my eyes glazed over as an invoice for hundreds of pounds for the professional backup has been charged to my account.
Ok, mistakes happen, so I ring up billing support, and the woman on the end of the phone basically tried to blame me for not manually cancelling the backup option "before" the end of the 3rd month. None of this was mentioned on the email they sent, fortunately I don't delete any of my emails, so double checking, and yes I was right, but she wasn't having any of it, basically tried to fob me off and blame me for the charge. Well, that was it, I rang back and got through to someone senior in billing and after a long battle, got them to cancel the charges. Regardless, by this point I was livid at their attitude so a new host was in order.
Now, at this point my experiences with Nimbus were all second hand or by proxy, and despite reccomending them myself from the glowing reviews of others, I had never used them directly. So, dropping an email through to their sales department at 10pm at night, within 2 minutes (yes, thats right) Tim had gotten back to me. A good first impression.
We discussed back and fourth, options and questions, every time Tim's answers were promt, knowledgeable and to the point, exactly what I love. However also knowing that Nimbus is essentially a fully managed service, this gave me an idea to reduce my own workload in managing and maintaining serveral individual servers/VPS's, so a plan was hatched to put them to the test!
Anyway, eventually I settle on a package with onsite backups, and Tim kicks thing into motion. At this point I throw them a couple of curve-balls. Asking them to configure or install a few things in a specific way, every time, it was done promtly, correctly and without a fuss.
Despite them offering to migrate everything for me, many of my customers sites have regular updates added by the customer, and many of them have domains / emails with long time providers, so simply migrating everything and turning off the old servers wasn't an option. This would be a long process of updating many domains and A-Records with multiple registrars and hosts. So I declined their offer and began the process myself. I have no doubt however, if it was a simple transition, that everything would have been done easily and quickly!
About halfway through, some custom CNAME records stopped working, I checked the Nimbus customer area and everything looks alright, so again emailing Tim, after a couple of emails the problem is found and corrected!
Roll on Heartbleed.
Shortly after Heartbleed was announced and the relevent patches / updates made available, I updated/fixed all my servers and saw another opportunity to test Nimbus. Their customer area was down as they were applying the fixes to their own site, so I send them a sneaky email off asking them to update my server. Within minutes the responce I got was, amazing. Before they had even fixed their own site, they had patched my server and sent a reply stating as much, along with an expaination they were going to be patching all customer servers shortly anyway. What a bonus, stunning customer service.
Anyway, the migration is almost over, and i've cancelled 2 of my VPS's with 1+1 and one of my dedicated servers only has 3 more sites to move, so in this move, I have offloaded the work of managing 3 individual machines to Nimbus, and so far they have been nothing short of stellar.
Anyway, to finish up I can only say positive things about Nimbus.
- The customer service is fantastic.
- The support is amazing.
- The price is reasonable for a fully managed service.
- Their customer area is clean simple and just works.
- Replies to support or email are personal and it seems like people know who you are, and you're not "just another customer".
So if your looking for a new host. Give Nimbus a go
http://www.nimbushosting.co.uk/I'm looking forward to taking a back seat and just letting them get on with ensuring my server stays up to date, working and secure, so I can focus more on other projects such as the long list of XenForo imports I currently have!
