As it was owned by a friend-of-a-friend, I started using XCalibre Communications for my domain registrations and to provide secondary DNS services (aka DNS 'slaving'). This relationship started sometime in 2001 and until two weeks ago I was very happy with the service. In fact, I was so happy with the service, I had a number of clients also start using them during the intervening years.
The first I knew about any issues with them was when an attempt to view my site resulted in a 'domain not found' error on the morning of October 1 this year. It was very odd as I knew the domain didn't expire until sometime in 2012.
A quick check of the primary DNS server yielded no answers – it was responding to queries happily; something must be broken down the line. My next check was to do a 'whois' lookup which showed the following (I've highlighted the problem):
Domain Name: DOWNAGAIN.COM Registrar: CSL COMPUTER SERVICE LANGENBACH GMBH D/B/A JOKER.COM Whois Server: whois.joker.com Referral URL: http://www.joker.com Name Server: ns0.moneyam.com Name Server: ns1.moneyam.com Status: ok Updated Date: 01-oct-2010 Creation Date: 16-jan-2001 Expiration Date: 16-jan-2012
For some reason, an update had been done on my domain and the registrar had been told that one of my former client's nameservers were authoritative for the domain. I did a spot check of all my client's domains as well as the remainder of mine and they had all been updated to point to the same set of nameservers.
Going to XCalibre's site, I saw they had been bought out by Webfusion; a company I'd not heard of before.
After speaking with a support representative, it became clear that due to an 'administrative error', WebFusion had nuked – effectively disabled – all my and my client's domains! My client's businesses were offline; no-one could access their services. It also became clear that WebFusion also weren't going to be able to fix the problem any time soon.
After speaking with the sysadmin at MoneyAM.com, he agreed I could configure the most important domains on their servers in order to restore name resolution for the affected domains. Ten minutes later we were up and running; clients and clients' clients were happy.
After a number of stressful telephone calls, Webfusion finally resolved the issue and successfully re-registered the proper nameservers for the domains in question (over 50 of them). This, I hoped, would be the end of it.
Alas it was not to be. The following Friday I received an email from WebFusion saying 'as previously communicated, XCalibre were not going to be providing slave DNS services from that evening onwards.' The only problem is I never received a previous communication from them saying anything like this; effectively we were given two hours' notice to completely reconfigure the DNS infrastructure again for all my and my client's domains.
Phone calls requesting they hold off this service cancellation were met with replies of, 'well, it's too far along now, I don't think I can stop it.'. Once again, within 7 days, WebFusion were going to nuke our domains. Apparently it was acceptable this time because we had two hours' notice.
After emailing management to explain my extreme displeasure, I configured a new nameserver, entered into a mutual domain slaving agreement with another client and migrated to the new DNS infrastructure within an hour. WebFusion were then emailed and told once they'd updated the registrar with the new information they could remove our domains from their systems.
Yesterday I received an email from one of their engineers saying this work has been completed and could I confirm the updates had been actioned. Of the 50+ domains, 16 still had incorrect information. I hope it's resolved today as I'm not sure another Friday of DNS hell is one I want to experience again so soon.
Any company who behaves this was does not deserve my business and I'll be migrating domain registration management away from them as soon as possible. XCalibre was an awesome company and the support team were very good at what they did. WebFusion, well, I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot bargepole and I recommend you keep your distance too.
Thanks for the heads-up. I seem to remember it was you who recommended Xcalibre to me when I wanted to buy my domain. I only really use it for my email address, so if I have any problems I'll probably just fall back to GMail and leave them well alone.
XCalibre were great and it's likely I did recommend to you – I recommended to a lot of people. A tech friend recommends PortFast (http://www.portfast.co.uk) and that's where I'm likely to be moving all my DNS to.
I'm always amazed when companies behave like this and believe that customers will stay..
Even more amazed when customers stay after being ass-fucked like that..
Neither myself nor my clients will be staying with WebFusion nor using them for domain registration. One day of outage and another threatened is quite enough for me.
Yeah, no, know you wouldn't be staying.
Just meant that SOME people do actually stay after being .. reared.
I feel for you on this! I've got 2 dedicated servers with Donhost and 5 virtual private servers with Webfusion. I've also got some 300 domains registered through 123-reg.
Donhost used to be exceptionally good and are still quite responsive although not as good since they sold to Webfusion. Webfusion are incompetent. I had a VPS running very slowly today. I called them and the guy tried to tell me that MySQL wasn't running. Every site on the server is database driven and was working, albeit painfully slowly. I got off the phone, tried a couple of the other servers and they were just as slow. Obviously a problem with their network yet their flowchart reading staff and their status page were not updated.
I've had 2 major outages of 12 hours + in about 2 weeks. On both occasions it's been when I've been pitching for work with existing clients and my credibility has been shot to pieces. In one case, it's a 10 year relationship with a client and several thousand pounds worth of work at stake.
Very, very poor service. The only reason anyone who's been with them for a while will stay is that they can't face the hassle of the migration to another company.
Oh well, that's my little rant over!
Andy
After a further week, they've finally correctly updated all the records for our domains to point to the new nameservers we rush-configured last Friday. It has only taken emails on Monday, Wednesday and today to finish getting these done correctly!
Thankfully we're only using them for domain registering and slaving; I dread to think of the nightmare situation we'd be in had our sites have been running on their infrastructure proper.
If you're interested in VPS/hosting recommendations, a trusted friend has been using Gandi.net for years and swears he's never had a problem with them (he's not the only one I've heard sing their praises either!) They're not the cheapest around but, as it seems you've experienced, cheap isn't always the best option. Personally, I'll be moving my and my client's domains over to Portfast, but compared to migrating a VPS, that's a walk in the park.
Portfast are great. Minimal intervention to move a dozen or so domains of mine over, and I am seriously impressed. I did it all myself through their control panel.
XCalibre were good, but went downhill. Similarly, when Areti were bought out by Alentus, service went through the floor. I've just completed a tortuous two-month process to cancel a contract and get a hosted server back. Most of that time was spent asking them why they weren't talking to me. Frustrating and unprofessional – if they are like this to everyone, it's a miracle they're still in business.