Hosting Issues

[Flibnipktz]

Hi,

New to this forum, looking for input on hosting. First, the situation... We've been with our current host for about 2 years and for the most part, good service. Prompt answers to support questions and a good attitude towards the odd stupid ticket on my part. (yes, limited IT skills)

However since the end of August, a) our site went down one Sunday without warning, and b) we've been unable to send out emails twice. Explanation for the site going offline was... "It was a database table crash and I've repaired it for you. We had restarted the server due to some technical issues." I understand routine maintenance done on weekends with possible scheduled downtime. What I don't understand is routine maintenance that apparently involves an unexpected server restart... am I missing something here?

The blacklisting of our IP twice is the more irritating issue. The August block was pretty much all networks as per Spamhaus, and that one was resolved more or less within 72 hours. The recent one earlier this week was Hotmail and Att.net; Hotmail resolved within the usual 48 hours, Att.net has been blocking our IP since last Sunday. Responses to my questions are:

Also I could notice that you've a dedicated IP address here so I've changed your domain mail sending IP address to that one... it will take time to delist the Ip address from att n/w. Your account is on our shared server and a lot of clients using the email service on this server. So if you purchase a vps server here you've your own server and email service on the server only use for your accounts. We've already requested them to delist the Ip from their network region. Since you had a dedicated IP address with us, I've changed the mail server IP address for your domain to that IP address. So it will be fine now.

I feel like we're being taken for a ride. Apart from trying to decipher the above, why are we still being blocked, and should we start expecting this to be a regular semi-monthly occurrence? Can the host not shut down any client spammers that are sharing our IP, within 48 hours? Is this some hard sell for us to upgrade to a VSP? We have an average max of 50 members on the board at any one time.

Is this merely par for the course? I don't want to consider another host if this is normal, just don't like the feeling that we're being screwed. We already pay this host $50.00/month, and I have no motivation to get into VSP concerns. Again, limited IT skills.

Any thoughts welcome.