Questions and Common Sense.

[dr2web]

I have become so aggravated with H9 over the past several weeks. I am at a crossroad of dilemna.

H9 used to be so user friendly and the support above par. Now it seems that they do not have answers to the most basic queries... Inside RC if you go to edit dns, you notice that they have disabled this function. A function that makes life a lot easier. There is a note there instead that is dated months ago stating that the situation will be resolved within a couple of weeks.

So to get dns resolved I have to login to a seperate portal and submit a ticket. As if that was not bad enough, now I have to verify that I am the account owner by verifying a credit card. Why do I need to log in to submit a ticket if I am just going to have to verify other stuff later?

So to get the credit card information, I have to log in to another area. But that area does not like to open. When it finally does, it looks like something on my blackberry. I have to refresh that page in order to get to the information that I need to submit to the other area.

All of this just to get a simple dns change. Is it just me, or has the support for this company just taking a dive in to the sewer system?

My crossroad is that I have been awarded a contract to develop a website. I will need instant access to make changes to dns throughout this project. H9 is decent as long as I do not need to talk to someone, or get any type of support. Do I need to look elsewhere?

Like I stated in the beginning of this rant, H9 USED TO BE the best by far. They offered a unique service with unbeatable support. The support is killing it for the rest of the service. The server upgrades are without a doubt a really good call, and are very noticeable from what I can see. Good job in that area.... Now can you work on the support and make it at least less strenuous to submit a ticket for something that we were able to take care of ourselves just months ago???

The common sense approach to this is if the user logs in to submit a ticket, and then replies to the ticket from the email on file, just fix whatever needs to be fixed...

BTW... if I can log in to submit the ticket, I can also log in to get the credit card information so the security check that is in place is not even very efficient.

Hello,

For the DNS editor, yes the plan was to have this enabled months ago. The delay however, has been on Plesk and cPanel's side. We have been talking back and forth, trying to get the stuff we need, standardized. By default, the DNS editor is not enabled via the interface system we use. However, it was at one point in time, due to a system edit, we made directly. This actually failed though. Clients were making DNS edits so often, that the nameservers did nothing but reload edited zones. And if there was a mistake, it caused the nameserver to fail. After we were speaking with Cpanel, we were then informed that it was better to let cpanel make the interface, as they could add checks in the system, that we could not(due to their custom addons that are encoded, meaning we cant edit or make them functional, but cpanel can).

That is the reason for the delay. We know it's an inconvenience, but we are working on it

As for the support system, there are 2 ways of sending tickets, either submit a ticket via the support desk, or e-mail support@hostnine.com. Now, all tickets are associated with the e-mail address put in the e-mail form. This means that the e-mail does NOT have to match your billing e-mail, and if a hacker gets ahold of your support e-mail, and tries to get us to make DNS changes that will change the nature of your site, then you've just been hacked by a lack in host security. Because even if they know your billing e-mail, they dont need the password. However, if they gain access to your e-mail, due to whatever reason(we've seen clients give their e-mails to other people, so this is a real possibility), then they can get us to do damage, by making us think they were you, if we didnt put those checks in.

You might say: What about MX changes, or subdomains, changing those cant affect my site, right?

No, changing those can affect your site. For example, lets say a hacker tells us to change the MX records to their personal server(we have no way of telling), now, they get all the e-mail for that domain, and you dont. They dont need the mail password when that happens. And, every single e-mail sent to your domain will goto them.

Subdomains are a little harder to manipulate to do damage to the main site, If a hacker uses us to make a change for a subdomain, and they put bad content on it. Your site could be banned via Google(your main site as well).

Now, the worst thing would be that we change the nameservers(we do this without verification most of the time, because we check that the nameservers point to us, via the ip). But if we did nothing, and just did it, your site could be offline, or worse, redirected to another server entirely.

Main ip, should be pretty self explanatory.

You can login to support, without needing the account information and make any request you like, so verification is used to prevent these actions from ever occuring.

As for the Billing portal, this is the first I've heard of anyone having loading issues in there. Would you mind e-mailing billing@hostnine.com, and let them know of the issue and any other data you think might help. We do not want you to have a bad experience with us, but understanding the risks, should help in understanding why we ask such questions, it isnt to waste your time, or to get your ticket out of the queue, or anything of that nature. We ask only what we need.