Portland Communications

[cimbalom]

You're right, it's nothing to do with BT this time (if it ever was). I've tried several different DNS lookups and none of them can reach portland. I last saw the www site on 27/7 - I think I had to use the IP address. Weirdly, I last managed to access the ftp site on 30/7, even though I couldn't see the www site.

 

[gbr1918]

Hi. Apparently Portland had a DOS attack last week, paid-for sites are ok but it affected (somehow) DNS servers for free sites. If you ring Portland (0870 1995 108) and tell them your domain name they'll move your IP details to a different name server (at least, that's what they say they are doing for me!) and your site will reappear. They don't have a definite date to get www.portland.co.uk back up - just said 'probably a few days'. I don't know whether they can get emails but their usual address is sales@portland.co.uk. Hope this helps. Dave

 

[niobe]

Portland

I do have a pay site with Portland and my site has been down since last Sunday. Emails to them bounce back. I'm in California and don't want to call them. Am not happy with Portland. Have been with them a couple years at first for free service and now for pay. Have been down many times. However this is the first time I have known Portland itself to appear to go dark - www.portland.co.uk "not found", even emails not accepted (as of a couple days ago). Would it be hard for them to send out a standard note to all customers, advising us as to what is going on? If it weren't for this good site, I'd have no clue.

 

[doc3434]

Portland

Don't use Portland Communication!
You register a free account, but after some time they mail you and say your site is close to over quota and have to pay. Then they close your site. The free site is just Portland's smart way of earning money!

You pay and there is still down. You mail and get no answers. Look in their Member Portal how humble their poor customers ask them to answer or open their site again.

Don't use the %&%¤# Portland. They just cheat you.

 

[gbr1918]

Portland OK with me

Well, I've got a couple of sites with Portland. One is free, about 18 months old, does about 25-30 Mb of traffic per month. I guess it's up about 98% of the time, there's a scripting engine and a mySQL database avilable, what more can you expect for free? Sure, it's obvious that Portland's business model offers the free sites as a 'loss leader', in the hope that if/when your site does go over 100 Mb/month, you'll stick with them and start paying, but there's no compulsion: if you've got a better deal somewhere else you can just go with it, never pay them a penny.
I'd be the first to agree that Portland are terrible at communicating with their customers - dunno why, how hard can it be to mass email, just let people know what's going on when there's a problem? Anyway, that's my experience: Portland have been ok as webhosts and I think that for a non-commercial website that isn't going to do a lot of traffic the free sites are pretty hard to beat. Dave.

 

[DatingPort]

I ran with Poorland about 18 months also. My site was up about 86% of the time and as I grew I paid for the premium package also with MySQL. It just got too expensive ($384 a year) and it seems I have more down time on prem02 server than on the 8bit server. Customer support is nonexistent unless you call them direct. If you call them, they usually fix your problem. I pulled the plug on my account when this blackout occured. It was the last straw. My Poorland usage for most of last year can be viewed at: http://datingport.net/ssn.htm

I was having so many problems, I switched to another host (PowWeb $93 a year - 98% uptime) in January and just got my site back to where it was trafficwise. I was just using Poorland to redirect traffic that was bookmarked. I'll never use them again.

My letter to them was simple: "Due to recent service problems over the last few months and lack of communication on your behalf, I am requesting you cancel my premium account and remove my domain from your server."

Dating Port
http://datingport.net
Your Ultimate Singles Directory.
Over 4500 site listings.

 

[Dynamix]

Well, I've got a couple of sites with Portland. One is free, about 18 months old, does about 25-30 Mb of traffic per month. I guess it's up about 98% of the time

In today's industry that is not acceptable one bit i have no sympathy for them or there customers, You say there customer support is not great well those are the signs of a very weak company, Customer support reliability and up-time should be the top of all hosts priorities, let us know how it goes with Pow-Web,
Best,