Mae West Would Be Proud: Intermedia Steals the Show
Written: May 14 '01
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Pros: Fast, reliable, cost effective NT-based web hosting
Cons: No phone support, No SQL replication
The Bottom Line: Intermedia.net provides fast, reliable, shared or dedicated business class NT and MS Exchange hosting. Shop and compare, but this is one you’ll definitely want to consider!
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| shurie's Full Review: Intermedia |
What does Mae West have to do with web hosting?
MAE-West, in San Jose, CA, is one of two major Internet junctions in North America. A MAE, which stands for Metropolitan Area Ethernet, is a place where many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) connect together. MAE-West and MAE-East (in Vienna, VA) are known as Tier 1 sites, which means they’re huge! A substantial amount of all ISP traffic in the United States flows through at least one of the Tier 1 MAEs.
But what does this have to do with web hosting?
Well, if you’re very, very serious about web hosting, you might consider building your data center right near a Tier 1 junction. You might consider tying in to the Internet backbone with triple-redundant fiber optic transmission lines. You might build it like Fort Knox. You might equip it with some of the world’s most reliable computer and networking hardware. And you might staff it with highly trained people who know exactly what they are doing.
Hmm – that sounds like Intermedia!
A Healthy Dose of Fiber
If you’re running a personal family web site, you probably don’t mind a little down-time, a little slowness, and the other gotcha’s that often come with a free or budget hosting plan. But if you’re running a serious business web site, you definitely care about downtime, reliability, bandwidth, and SPEED!
Intermedia has multiple redundant OC-12 connections to the Internet backbone. What’s OC-12? Optical Carrier Level 12 is designed to run at a top speed of 622.08 Mbps. (Mbps. = Mega – or Million – Bits Per Second.). That’s a little more than 400 times faster than a typical T1 line!
With its close proximity to MAE-West, and triple redundant fiber optic lines to the Internet backbone, Intermedia is well positioned to provide speed, reliability, and amazing bandwidth.
Hot Swap Nights!
When you’re dealing with computers, equipment failure is inevitable. When a failure occurs, the only thing your customers care about is how soon you’ll be back up. That’s where hot swapping comes in.
What is hot swapping?
Want to pop out that failed hard drive and put in a new one while the server is still up and running? Want to change out a dead primary power supply while your server hums along on the secondary? Your users never know you did it. This type of failure could easily have meant hours of down time – and lost sales – if you weren’t prepared.
Intermedia maintains a large inventory of hot-swap spares on site. You’ll probably never hear about it when they replace a failed component. And that’s exactly the way you want it!
Don’t Put Your Eggs in One Basket
Well, in computer terms, this translates to don’t keep your backups at the same location as your primary equipment. It’s prudent to keep a copy of your daily backups off site in a secure data vault. Most of us know that, but so many companies let this one slide. Intermedia is fully set up to rotate backups to the off site storage automatically on a daily basis.
I’ve visited many IT Departments over the years where off site backups were often discussed but rarely implemented or maintained. You’ll feel a lot better when you know that someone is taking good care of your data.
Services
Intermedia is an NT based hosting company, which means your server will be running Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 Advanced Server (it’s your choice). But you’ll find no Unix or Linux servers here. If you are looking for Unix-based hosting services, Intermedia cannot help you.
But when it comes to Windows based hosting, you’ll find more choices than you could ask for!
Intermedia offers shared (virtual) hosting plans, dedicated server hosting, and MS Exchange hosting. That’s a broader range of services than you’ll generally find elsewhere. It is especially difficult to find a company that offers both shared and dedicated hosting.
Virtual (Shared) Hosting Plans: The standard shared hosting plan starts at $ 24.95 per month with a $ 25.00 setup fee. For that you get a whole list of features, including:
· NT 4.0 / IIS 4.0 or Win 2000 / IIS 5.0
· 50 Mb. storage space
· Unlimited bandwidth
· Mail server with initial 50 mb. storage
· Unlimited email accounts
· Up to 50 FTP users
· Host Pilot control panel
· Web Trends reporting
· CGI
· Front Page extensions
· Dreamweaver support
· InterDev support
· Active Server Pages
· VeriSign Pay Flow
· Cybercash
When you upgrade to a 100 Mb. account for $ 49.95 you also get:
· Unlimited ODBC setup
· FoxWeb
· Cold Fusion 4.5
· Secure Certificate Installation
· Verity Search engine
· StoreFront
· Drumbeat
· Perl
And with a 150 Mb. account for $ 79.95 per month you get all the above plus:
· Microsoft Index Server
· Custom OCX and DLL registration
· Ciao! Chat server
With any of the plans, you can add on disk space at $ 5.00 per 25 Mb – up to I believe 400 mb. You can also add up to 12 domain names, advanced DNS management, SQL Server 7.0, and several other advanced features.
Dedicated Hosting Plans: Now we’re talking big time. Dedicated hosting runs from $ 415. per month to $ 950. If you add on extra features, you can add as much as another $ 1000. to your bill.
For that you get a fully dedicated server and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. The Service Level Agreement (SLA) will guarantee a rebate if the service level is not achieved.
MS Exchange Hosting: This is great for small or medium sized companies who can’t afford to dedicate staff to support MS Exchange. For just $ 9.95 per month per mailbox (and no setup fee!) you get the full power of MS Exchange Server. Your staff can access their email through an email client like Outlook, Eudora, or any of the others. Or they can access their email directly through a web browser from anywhere in the world. With this service, you get:
· Email, contacts, tasks, calendar, shared folders, and public folders
· Firewall protection and redundant OC12 backbone
· Virus checking on all incoming and outgoing email (and attachments)
· Management through the Host Pilot interface
· 99.5% service level guarantee
· 24 x 7 x 365 technical support, monitoring, and management
· Live phone support during business hours
· 100 Mb. storage per user
· Daily backups and offsite storage
· Full per-user licensing
Support
This is an area where Intermedia shines, but not in the way you might expect. In fact, it’s the one area that may disappoint you if you’re a telephone-centric person. While Intermedia provides telephone support to Exchange Server and Dedicated hosting customers, it is not available to shared hosting customers.
This is more of an adjustment to your way of thinking than an actual drawback, because their technical support technicians are highly responsive and effective. Believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time on support issues with other hosting companies, so I know! At first I too felt a bit uncomfortable with the lack of telephone support but over time I have grown to appreciate the reasons for it and to respect the effectiveness of the support staff.
If you just can’t do without that ‘insane’ instrument called a telephone, then you may want to go elsewhere. But you’re not likely to get better support!
At Intermedia, you will also have access to online product documentation, their extensive knowledgebase, and the customer support forum. I’ve found each of these helpful when I needed to learn a new trick or resolve a problem.
Resell It!
If you’re a reseller, Intermedia has a great program for you. You can earn a discount from 15 to 30 % when you sign up to be a reseller, and after 50 accounts all setup fees are waived.
If you’re like me, it’s difficult to remember the login ID and password for more than 15 or 20 customer accounts. Yes, you can write them down or track them in a database, but somehow the information isn’t readily available at that moment when you really need it! Because you can manage all your accounts from your main Host Pilot screen, it is easy to manage a large number of accounts or sign up a new customer.
Certify It!
With NT hosting you certainly want your provider to be Microsoft Certified. Intermedia, naturally, is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Provider. But you’ll also want to look further. On Intermedia’s home page you’ll find references to some of the top awards and certifications they’ve won. You may also want to explore their business partners, to get the feel for the type of affiliations they maintain in the industry.
Take a Test Flight!
If by now you’re convinced it’s worth a try, you might want to take a ‘test flight’ with Intermedia’s Host Pilot control panel. Get a feel for the management interface, try it out, and see what you can do!
Remember, it’s Intermedia.net, not Intermedia.com.
Summary
Intermedia.net provides fast, reliable, shared or dedicated business class NT and MS Exchange hosting. Shop and compare, but this is one you’ll definitely want to consider!
Recommended:
Yes
Monthly fees (US$): From $ 24. to more than $ 1000.
Platform used: Windows NT
Hosted on Secure Server: Yes
Database used: MS-SQL
Main focus of Web site: Sales/E-commerce
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Epinions.com ID:
shurie
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Location: Southern California
Reviews written: 36
Trusted by: 96 members
About Me:
Computer nut with lots of interests - and always an opinion!
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