Colorteck Network

[paul]

Hi, I'm new to the web hosting / building game and am a fine artist by trade. I've built and managed my own website since 2002 and don't have much experience other than with my own personal site.
Now that I've made that disclaimer, I'm writing this review with the hope that it will help some other newbie along the way.

When I first built my site it was hosted through earthlink. Although they where the most expensive hosts I've paid for ($19.95/mo.)  their features were very limited..... no guestbook, no cgi, no php, etc. The best ting I have to say about them was 1) my site was never down, and 2) I could always reach someone at tech support (even if my questions weren't always answered.)

I then switched to a friends hosting service at palantirsystems. Yikes! is all I can say! I won't go any further!

Then I switched to Colortech Network. During my first phone call to Colorteck I found their customer service rep. very helpful in answering my questions. I was particularly interested in their 24hr tech support as I am no expert when it comes to websites and hosting and although I don't contact tech support very often, I wanted to know it would be available to me if I needed it. Also, I had used urchin stats in the past with earthlink hosting and grown to love the info provided by them. Colorteck was one of the few companies that used urchin, in addition to awstats and one other that I can't think of now.
After a reassuring phone conversation with Colorteck I switched hosting companies. The switch was fairly seamless with honly one problem. I was using a cold fusion guestbook with my old hosting company, and Colorteck didn't support it when I made the transfer. Fortunately I had a back up of all the old posts (very valuable in my line of work!) and was able to re-enter them using a pre installed guestbook provided by Colorteck.
Colorteck uses two different control panels... one called ensim? and the other called cpanel, which is what I'm using. I found it very easy to use and navigate through and Colorteck provides  a lot of useful little items like guestbooks, discussion boards, templates for websites, etc. So far I've only used the guestbook, but the other offering seem simple enough for an artist to use  :wink: .
I've called/ text msged in a few times to Colorteck for help on small things like the guestbook switch, password stuff, etc. and I've always been able to reach someone who answered my questions.
Everything was going so well that I recommended that my wife switch over her site to Colorteck as well.
Sounds pretty good so far  huh???
Well it was /is and that's why I was so disappointed when on Monday the "servers were down" and I was unable to access my website. Originally I called because I thought it was something I had done and was hoping to fix it. When I called though all I got was a pre-recorded message saying that all Colorteck reps were busy and please leave a message. So I did. I was slightly concerned, but I know that at a small business sometimes folks need a bathroom/munchies/brain break and I was sure someone would get back to me.  
I was wrong! I recieved a generall emails saying

"Two servers are currently offline right now due to a hacking incident where the intruder has deleted the compilers needed to compile apache and php. During a routine update of the servers software php and Apache could not be compiled due to the compilers missing. We are working on this issue and will have the two servers restored as fast as we can. One of the servers hosts VPS accounts and is also affected. As soon as we get the compilers back online we will compile the programs needed to get the servers back into operation."


OK I say, maybe they didn't know about Monday... but now they know so it should only be a few hours to fix everything...
Wrong! Now I'm not blaming Colorteck... there are malicious folks in the world and sh** happens. Approx. four hours later I call to find out where they are in the fix process and I get a voicemail saying in two hours sites will be online. OK, I think to myself... they've got it under control.
Two hours go by... then three... four hours for good measure... still no site in sight.
I call again only to get the same message ...Two hours and things should be fine... uhoh.. I'm starting to panic. I've gotten a few emails from potential collectors saying that my site is not up! And then the worst happens... all of my email addresses are not working! I send a message to myself using my earthlink address... it's bounced back saying that these addresses don't exist! Now I'm freaked!
How many others are getting the same message?
So I call again to no avail (still the same two hour message!) and I get another email saying
"Please make sure you have current backups of your account as we restore the server we will be applying all backups that we have. We are working to get all websites back online. Some will come online here shortly with others to follow.

and another one saying
It seem the server has restored itself back to the original state that it was in before the server went down. We are currently making current backups of all websites and going to restore the server one more time. The backups we have are current and we will be restoring all websites. We apologize for it taking so long but the hacker has made it difficult for us to restore the backups. Right now we are currently trying to move every website to a new server. Once we get the new server online here shortly we will transfer all current sites.

and the most recent one saying
"Sometime within the next two hours as the restore is done alphabetically
so this should be within the next two hours.



-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 11:21 AM

Subject: Re: Web site restore in progress

What does that mean? Can you tell me when I can expect to have my site
back up and running?
Thanks, Paul

On Jul 13, 2005, at 11:18 AM, billing wrote:

We are moving you to a new server right now


What so magical about two hours I wonder?!
To wrap up a long story as of now I still don't exist on the web ... neither does my wife. I still haven't gotten a return phone call from Colorteck. I'm exausted and disappointed by what I thought was a great company. As I said once before, it's not Colorteck's fault that they were hacked... although I'm disappointed by the way the handled the matter. I don't want to be hasty and just switch because of one bad experience... but truthfully I've ben calling aroud to other hosts... and every one of them has told me the same thing. "It shouldn't take three days..... maybe a few hours but not three days".

All in all I like Colorteck's features etc. but I'm hesitant to wait too much longer for the servers to be up and working. I've already lost several sales that I know of... and as an artist... I can afford to be down even for one day.

I hope that Colorteck gets the show on the road and fixes the problem so  I don't have to go through the hassle of switching... but if "service" continues like this I'll be forced to....

BTW... anyone else know a good host?! :wink:

[ldcdc]

Hello Paul,

Welcome to WHRForums and thank you very much for taking the time to share your story in such detail.

I'm sorry to hear about what happened. Three days really sounds like a lot of time and with the issue still continuing... that certainly doesn't seem right.

To validate your review, may we know a site that you currently have with them?

BTW, better luck in the future!

[paul]

Yes, Colorteck is currently hosting www.paulmccall.net and www.artistsrelief.com

Unfortunately, I'm still unable to access either of the websites! Very frustrating!

[ldcdc]

Thank you Paul for the added info. For the record: At this moment in time your sites do point to a colorteck server but, unfortunately, as you stated, the sites don't work.

[thomasrau]

Paul,

Sorry to hear of your ordeal (at this point still down).  I hope that you have recent backups of both sites.

[paul]

Finally.... I've stuck it out and www.paulmccall.net is back up!
Yes, I did have current back ups of my entire site, and would highly recommend backing up to EVERYONE!
After giving Colorteck one last chance... they finally came through. I just hope that they won't have anything like this happen for this length of time, otherwise I'm gone.
Ways Colorteck could have made my experience better:
1) Put security measures in plce so that this kind of thing doesn't happen.
2) If/When hackers do get through, have enough techs to get things up & running within hours... no more than one day.
3) Give customers someone to talk with instead of shutting down the 888 number. Even if it means hearing complaint after complaint. That the biz and that's what our payment includes....24/7 support.
4) Don't leave the two hour message after two hours! It's frustrating to hear as a customer.
5)Maybe offer current customers who stuck it out some kind of discount or something.

Like I said in the first post, overall the other dealings I've had with Colorteck have been great. And I wanted to show them there is something called customer loyalty, but everything has it's limits...especially when it comes to business.

I'm still hanging in with Colorteck because of the great previous experiences I've had with them, the added features they provide, and the urchin stats the provide. I would still give them five out of five stars because I hope that this was just a nasty one time thing. Hopefully they are better prepared next time, so there isn't a next time!

[ldcdc]

I just hope that they won't have anything like this happen for this length of time, otherwise I'm gone.

Let's hope it won't happen anytime soon!

Maybe offer current customers who stuck it out some kind of discount or something.

They have an uptime guarantee, but I'm not sure this is the page where it is best detailed: http://www.colorteck.com/tos/faq.php?answer=29&cat_name=Guarantee%20policy&category_id=15

[colorteck]

Just wanted to respond to this post as when an emergency happens like this it can get a little hectic when 250 clients and hour are calling. We has five technicians working on the problem and the servers where actually restored fast but the problem was the hacker found a way to get into our off network backups. We always run a script to try and pick up anything that has been installed that is not suppose to be there.

The operating systems on two servers had to be completely wiped and reinstalled along with all software. Now we reinstalled the latest backups and noticed that the servers returned to the exact state that they where in so we had no choice but to bring on two new servers and take the actual live web sites and transfer them as the person destroyed the backups.

Back to square one again adding the software back to the servers again! Then taking the actual live websites and transferring them. Before we even had a chance to install our anti- dos software the same person launched an attack against the two servers as we where trying to do the restores. Once we finally stopped the attacks we then installed the software to prevent this from happening again.

We where a little short on help when this happen so we could not sit and answer the same questions over and over again as the number one goal was to get the servers secure and get all 550 clients on two servers up as fast as we could. Usually this type of attack does not happen to us but for some reason this guy had it out for us and knew exactly what our emergency plan was just in case something should go wrong.

Most of the web sites where back up within 24 hours but some where not due to the fact the directories had changed and we needed to manually go in to each account and change the config files. Plus some of the databases where corrupted due to them not ever getting optimized or repaired. It was a nightmare but everything has been backing up and running with no problems and we are proceeding with charges against the person responsible for this.

I apologize for needing to turn the toll free number off but we communicated every step of the way by email as we assigned one tech to do this while the others worked on the servers. Trying to answer the phone every second was tying us up and we could no longer do this and get the servers back online.

The servers that got hit have been up for a few years without any problems except minor issues and reboots,


Just wanted to add something about the original poster. It does not matter what kind of security you have if a hacker is good enough he will get in. The only secure server is one that is unplugged from the internet. You hear everyday about some of the largest companies including the defense department getting hacked. there is no way to prevent this from happening all you can do is hope and do everything that you can to protect your server because sooner or later you will get hacked.

[sunny1234]

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts in detail to us.

[colorteck]

As of December 2006, Colorteck has been under new management and ownership. 

[2Macs Jim]

Congrats colorteck! Good luck with your new venture!

[colorteck]

Thanks Jim.

[ldcdc]

Thank you for letting us know colorteck! I hope the transfer of ownership went well, for all parties involved -- directly or indirectly.

[popsandlin]

Paul .... An update on Colortech based on my recent experiences.  I have been with them for many years....since back when you just contacted Bill when you had a problem.  The business has changed hands several times since then.  Currently, I can't ever seem to get anyone to answer my questions.  I had been on their "Lifetime" plan for which I paid a $200 fee.  The last ownere made me a deal and let me go for a little while until I had to start paying annual fees again.  Last month I paid my fee for this year thru Paypal and they set up a monthly subscription in my account there.  Today, 30 days later, it withdrew another full annual payment from my account.  If I could just get someone to respond to my support tickets or my emails, I'd sure be a lot happier.  Even their advertised Google Talk system doesn't get thru.  I am starting to look for another ISP to switch my website over to!