I will tell you a small story. Its almost true.
I have a car – a Porsche 911. Nice car, smart, fast but also a bit strange and not without problems. Anyway, the strange thing about it is that the engine is in the back of the car – not in front.
So one day, not so long ago I go to the store where I got the car and ask for a check up. Its starting to misbehave. I can start the car, but I cannot drive it really – Im thinking there is something wrong with the gearbox.
To my big surprise I hear the mechanic say after at quick look at the car saying ”of cause you cannot drive it – there is no engine”.
”But its in the back” I argue. ”And its starting”, so surly you understand that here IS indeed a engine in the car?”.
”Look, the engine should be in the front and there is no engine, so how can you drive” he repeats on every objection I make. Its become a mantra. Not paying any attention to any arguments on my side that ”well, this is how I got the car from You” or ”You have done service on the car two times the last year so how can it now be that the car should have the engine in the front when You have been happy selling, servicing the car with the engine in the back, and I have been driving it for the last year like this with out problems”?
”Look, the engine should be in the front and there is no engine, so how can you drive” he repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats.
Its a silly story :) not true and would you believe me if I said it was? Would you accept the idea of a mechanic that would totally ignore the trues of the history and facts like this?
OK, so welcome to my world of HC. This is where the story starts to be true and very scary.
One year ago we started to look for a replacement to HELM but one that could also run and handle Linux in one setup.
Hostingcontroller looked good.
One important business idea we have and share with our resellers is this: a reseller can have his customer on dedicated servers when it comes to www and DB, but the mail is run on shared servers.
This saves resources. We have to run only few mailserveres comared to the number og resellers, and the main think for the resellers are anyway, that the www sites they have are isolated from other resellers. They love the idea and so do we.
So on contacting HC back in 2009 we asked if this was possible. It was and we hired HC to setup and install such a system so we could start testing.
It simple – this is what we have
1 shared linux www server
1 shared mysql server
1 shared www windows 2008 server
1 shared www win 2003 server
1 shared mssql server
AND then 1 shared mailenable mail server
AND then X dedicated www/mysql linux serveres – one per reseller.
Actually in the beginning we tried to have one shared sendmail server to cut the last license savings :) but it did not work well, and the “shared mailserver, dedicated www server” did actually not work – there HAD to be a dedicated mail server when it was sendmail.
This think with sendmail was a mistake we where told – if only we would change mailserver to Windows and MailEnable or something else on windows it would work.
So we did. It worked.
When ever our reseller (at the moment only two have been partly moved to the new setup) create a website, the www and mysql part is created on the dedicated server and the maildomain on the shared mailenable server.
Happy days... except for the bugs and other issues in HC of cause, but that’s just a question of waiting for the updates, right :)
Happy days, build 9 came and promised some of the long waited features we where missing and was a “need to have” for us to start really migrating websites from HELM. They came – with errors of cause.
But this is not even the crazy or scary part. The crazy and scary part is that with build 9 this shared mailserver, dedicated www/mysql server simply does not work anymore. Our reseller can still handle all existing websites and the mailboxes already created on mailenable. He can also create new websites to the extend that www and mysql is created, but he cannot create maildomains anymore.
Ok, so the scary part is just starting! The scary part is not that something stopped working – its HC so what else have we come to expect from updates.
The really, really ****ing scary part of the story is that the mechanic is saying “of cause it does not work, the engine is not in front”.
How can the support just keep saying “but look, the engine is not in front so how can you expect it to run” and totally ignore the facts that it WAS running, was working, that there are already lots of domains on the setup – lots of domains on our mailenable server? From where did they come you think? God? Im trying to cheat them into thinking it was working?
Im then trying to ask them things like...
Was it a bug/feature of the pre-build 9 that our setup worked? Or is it a bug that its not working anymore?
Was it a mistake they told us this setup would work (and it did work)? Or did they simply change the business logic of the system in build 9 so it does not work anymore and dont give a **** that this has a huge impact on some/us?
They don’t want to answer that part, but simply keep stating “you can see its not working because there is no dedicated mail resource – no engine in front”.
So what am I left with here?
Its scary to sit back with a system that is not working and might need to be totally deleted and recreated (can you imagine the situation where we had already moved all our setup – 10 times the size of our current HC setup) and had to tell all our resellers that this was “end of line” for HC – we need to move/recreate all the websites because HC broke our setup and refuse to do anything about it?
The real horror of it all is the blank expression in the face of HC support, the complete ignorance and the hidden idea that HC can, will and have done “life changing” business logic changes without any concern to the impact it will have on the users.
I understand that business logic can change over time – but call it a version upgrade from 8 to 9 maybe, not a feature update and bugfix that a “build” should at max be.
So it seams build 9 was the build that broke our business.