Geek Storage Web Hosting Review

This is our experience purchasing web hosting from Geek Storage. Matthew Eli promises hyper-speed web hosting but did not produce it for myself or a partner in this adventure.

Their shared hosting is supposed to be top notch. GeekStorage.com “Web Hosting For Geeks, By Geeks” is supposed to be better than most shared hosts, but what we experienced was not good at all.

In my personal opinion, if you have a small website without much traffic, geek storage will probably suffice for your needs.

A small company that promises lightning fast web and vps hosting. They use terminology like “hyper speed” and other statements to sell their service, but apparently have the resources spread too thin. The old saying pack as many as you can onto that server comes to mind in this situation.

This whole ordeal started out as another blogger and myself looking for a better web host. We both used Host Gator for the past few years. However HG recently migrated a lot of their clients to a different server farm. The migration email was mostly hype, better, faster, most modern, etc. To make a long story somewhat short after the migration my account was noticeably slower. A week after the transition the MySql server went down and was down for the better part of the day. I guess the old saying that the grass is always greener on the other side of the street applies to web hosting too.

So when HostGator’s SQL server went down i was reading the migration related complaints on their forums. One guy had said the hell with HostGator and that he moved to Geek Storage and loved it. “now I’m wondering if that might be a shill post to drum up some business?” This person claimed geekstorage.com blew away HostGator. So i figured i would try Geek Storage for a month and ordered their pro plan $9.99 and the account was set up instantly.

I decided to transfer an existing WordPress website and give Geek Storage a test drive. Zipped up the sites files and ftp transferred it to Geek Storage, dumped and imported my database, switched the domains name servers and waited for the name servers to propagate.

While i was doing this i was chatting with another blogger buddy that was trying to set up a video website. He too was with HostGator and decided to try another host for his new website. Well the hosting company he picked was having major migration issues of their own. Possibly a spin off of HostGators parent company. But to make a long story short the support dept had told him their server was under a ddos attack. That really sucks. So he decided to give Geek Storage a try as well and also order their Pro Package.

To run his video script he needed 4 mods installed that processed the vids.flcdata.org Geek Host installed the mods reasonably fast and he was initially impressed. Meanwhile my WordPress site had propagated and was live on Geek Host. I immediately noticed the site was much slower responding than when it was being served up by HostGator. I ran a script that imported around 20 posts via rss using a plugin Feed WordPress. No sooner did i do that and the site fell on its ass! Taking a peek in my cPanel i see the CPU resources were 100%. The site was refusing traffic and was down for 5-10 minutes. What had happened as Geek Storage has their shared hosting to only allow a small percentage of processes to run before using up all the server had. See the image in the upper right corner of this page. Geek Storage Shared hosting accounts are set up to allow very few processes running before throwing a 500 server error.

Meanwhile my partner was having the same problem with his video website. Just processing a single video was using up all his allotted resources.

Matthew Eli then suggested we get a Geek Hosting VPS Server that would positively host both of our sites with no problems. We discussed the cost and decided to split the account for a month and see if it works out. I cancelled my shared hosting account and was refunded the cost quickly. My new partner ordered the VPS and we made arrangements to split the cost. We were off and on our way to a great experience, or so we thought. 🙄

We got the VPS set up and running in a couple of hours. I once again transferred my sited files and imported it’s database. The day was done and i headed to bed. Meanwhile my buddy was trying to get his site up. Geek Host told him it probably would take 1-2 days to get the mods installed required to run his video script.

To make a long story short it took a good two days to get the mods installed, but they didn’t work! This must have been a crappy leased box that Geek Storage resold. It totally sucked too!

I ran my Feed WordPress import script and it took out Geek Hosts MySql database server after importing 20 posts. That’s not any where near the threshold that would overload a good server. But it was time to log into our OnApp control panel and request a reboot. 🙄

Below is a screenshot of our WHM control panel showing the down MySql server.

Meanwhile my buddy was going round and round with Matthew the Geek Storage support rep. Matthew was pointing the finger at my partners video script saying there was something incompatible with it. Geez it worked on his shared hosting, but not on his VPS Server. Something is mucked up here!

Please note that our managed service does not include third-party script support other than to ensure the modules installed on the server are working as expected. At any rate, I’ve done some digging because I know how hard it can be to configure video scripts, unfortunately it looks like the syntax used to run ffmpeg in the ClipBucket software does not match what the installed ffmpeg expects. The ffmpeg installed is the latest version, unfortunately ClipBucket doesn’t seem to play nicely with it. This is something you will need to take to ClipBucket so they can address it in their application build.

Regards,
Matthew Eli

GeekStorage.com
“Web Hosting For Geeks, By Geeks”

Here is one of several Geek Storage HANG Notification emails my partner received!

We ended up cancelling the account. 3 days of support ticket hell! My partner was so pissed he hurled a battery on his desk into the wall.

This is an email Jay Higdon the other “geek” at Geek Storage sent to my partner. It’s quite often easy to point the finger at the client, and hopefully they accept the excuse.

But it’s really quite simple. The video script worked on Geek Storage shared hosting, just not enough resources available. But here is a Geek Storage hyped up FAST More Powerful VPS Server that will not run the same video script that worked on Geek Storage shared hosting. With out a doubt, something is seriously mucked up at Geek Storage!

You were a customer for a 4 days, not 7. Furthermore, over that period of time, we bent over backwards to assist you, often times going above and beyond what we would normally do for a customer. You required more resources than we allow for shared hosting, our servers are more than capable of running that software however it is a shared environment. We can’t let you use any more resources than your fair share given that it is a shared environment. I’m sorry that you expect us to allow you to hog a shared server’s resources. CloudLinux keeps resource use in check and is what ultimately throttled your account, not some resource limitation of your video script.

You then ordered a VPS, which we again installed all of the requested modules for. Turns out, your software script doesn’t support latest versions and this has somehow become our failing. Bottom line, we gave you more than your fair share of hand holding and guidance and all you did was threaten to cancel and then apologize, rinse and repeat and blame your “partner” for being in a “rush”. We obviously weren’t a match for you from the beginning and I should have recognized it sooner, likely when you tried calling multiple times for technical support when it clearly stated both on our website, and on the phone call, that we don’t provide tech support via the phone.

You have no problem with our technical support in terms of getting something done – great, that’s something we agree on. We bent over backwards to assist you and all we received in return was your threats… first your threats to cancel and now your threats to “keep digging a hole” and some rambling about a review. We’ve been in the business for a long time, unfortunately you fall within the 5 percent of customers who can’t be pleased, we’re sorry that’s the case. You were promptly refunded and should move along and find a host that better suits you.

Again, good luck to you.

Regards,

Jay Higdon
GeekStorage.com
“Web Hosting For Geeks, By Geeks”

Matthew Eli and Jay Higdon @ Geek Storage talk good web and VPS Server Hosting but didn’t deliver on their promises. 😥

It all boils down to a small company that is promising lightning fast web and vps hosting, but apparently have the resources spread out too thin. The old saying pack as many as you can onto that server comes to mind in this situation.