This is a 3.5 year review of KnownHost, and you can validate this by visiting the VPS forum where I first reviewed their company. I first started out on their VPS, and at the time their company was fairly knew, so their service was top notch. About a year ago they introduced dedicated servers and I decided to upgrade to their "entry level" server, but I noticed at the time the service seemed to be going downhill slightly.

Two days ago we decided to enable http compression on the server and immediately the servers went offline. Now my sites have been offline going on day two. I tried to contact their sales department after their tech department kept telling me I needed more server resources (they didn’t know I was already on a dedicated server). They made no mention to the fact that their sales department was closed on the weekends, so I sent in a ticket for an upgraded server. I waited hours and finally got a response from Joel. He made mention that they would waive the upgrade fees for me (after I asked of course). I kinda skimmed his response and then asked him how I would ensure I wasn’t charged the setup fee, but no response. After a few hours I sent another response, and here is a portion of the response from Joel, after I complained about their slow response time: "It’s a holiday weekend and we are replying off hours (Sales department isn’t even open) to you so sorry if this isn’t good enough for you. We are a professional host and treat customers with full respect but we won’t commit to replying on holiday weekends to sales tickets at any hour of the day. We do our best but we don’t advertise we are open 24/7 in Sales. Our Support is 24/7 but our Sales office is open Monday-Friday 9-5pm EST as we advertise on our website. We have many customers who’ve been with us for years as we are one of the best of the best as we know what we’re doing. If you feel moving is in your best interest then please do so. We wouldn’t want someone as a customer who doesn’t feel we provide what they need."

Now understand, this was after I had to deal with their tech support regarding the issue. Here is what happened on that end.

My site was down all day (and still is by the way), and I keep getting different information as to what will fix it. First I am told I need more server resources (as your own tech support doesn’t know that I am already on a dedicated server so I have access to all server resources). Another tech says I need more RAM, which I ordered immediately, and it does nothing to fix the issue. Then I am told it’s my scripts which are causing the issue, yet this started exactly after the server was changed to http compression. Finally, I ask your tech support if upgrading my server will fix this issue, and here is the response:

Posted On: Dec/27/2009 12:06 AM
Hello,

We are working on this issue and will update you shortly.

Thanks,
Chris
KnownHost Support

And then Finally

Hello,

The account "mysite.com" is consuming much high cpu usage in the server. Especially "forums" in the domain…..

Remember, my question was if upgrading my server would fix the issue, not what was causing the issue. I am sure anyone one of you who have have your sites down can relate to how frustrating this can be, especially if your income is dependent on those sites being online. You are told many different things as to what will fix the problem, and then when you ask a simple question as to whether or not an upgrade will fix the issue, they simply repeat what they have said already 10 times in the tickets.

Now, I may have missed that portion regarding the invoice, but that is no excuse to treat your customers in this manner. I have been sitting on the computer all day trying to get my sites back online, something that you don’t seem very concerned about. Some of us site owners make our daily bread based on our sites being online and cannot afford to have our sites offline all day, with little help from sales or tech support.

I would have never expected this type of behavior from you guys when I first wrote this review years ago, but how the company has changed.

Regards,
Bob

I don’t know about anyone else, but I found the response from KnownHost to be very rude, especially to a customer who has been with them for so long and whose sites are all down. These sites are my only source of income to help pay the server fees.

Lucky for me I found a host whose sales department is open on the weekends, and I will create a new review for them once I get a chance to use them for a few weeks. They say they can have the servers up and ready within 24 hours.