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SpartanHost review
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SpartanHost review

I'm going to preface this and state I don't buy many VPS's. I don't test them for network speed or disk speed, or CPU capacity. I test them for uptime, and for me, SpartanHost did not provide.

I bought the VM on the 14th thinking "hey, that's a good price, $2.4/mo for a VPS that suits what I need". 20 gigabit DDoS protection (I just had my ramnode VPS nullrouted because sz1hosting got butthurt and threw a fit, so that was a plus), a bit of disk and ram, I can use this for email and ZNC. So I gave it a 14 day test run, moving ZNC to it connecting to freenode via tor hidden service. Multiple times I've been seeing people talk on minecraft but not on IRC (I'm using eirairc on minecraft server).

On the 18th of November, I received this email:

Hi Andrew

>

We have taken the decision to block all SMTP outbound traffic on port 25 immediately to curb abuse of our IPs.

>

If you send outbound SMTP traffic for a legimiate reason then please open a ticket with our support department showing as much documentation as possible then if we approve, we'll unblock your SMTP.

>

Regards,

>

Spartan Host Abuse Department

Today, at about 3PM central time, it went down, requiring a reboot to come up. Same at 5:15, although I've not tried rebooting yet. Instead, I submitted my cancellation request for end of billing period and decided to move on and purchased a Fliphost VPS 3 days ahead of plan.

Comments

  • SpartanHostSpartanHost Member, Host Rep
    edited November 2014

    Hi Andrew

    We're sorry to see you go and apologise greatly for the network issues you experienced. We have been having issues with our IPv6 network which has been the sole cause of the downtimes you've experienced. We're working as quickly as possible to get the IPv6 network up and stable. Once this is complete, uptime should be perfect for the foreseeable future.

    As mentioned in the email you quoted, we have no problem opening port 25 on a per case basis if you can explain what type of email you'll be sending. I'm sure if you were going to send legitimate email then you would have had no problem with this.

    Again, we apologise and hope you might give us a go in the future as we resolve the current issues you outlined.

  • SpartanHost said: I'm sure if you were going to send legitimate email then you would have had no problem with this.

    To be honest, it was less a complaining motion and more a "This isn't public on website but relevant to host" spiele.

    Depending how performance goes for the remainder of the month, I may or may not keep it for non-critical tasking.

  • SpartanHostSpartanHost Member, Host Rep

    @Rallias said:
    Depending how performance goes for the remainder of the month, I may or may not keep it for non-critical tasking.

    It was only a new thing therefore was not mentioned anywhere. It'll be mentioned clearly on all our future LET discussions. Thank you for giving us the chance to see how the rest of your month goes. We're working as quickly as possible to get IPv6 ironed out, once it is, there will be no need whatsoever for network disruption on the node.

  • SpartanHostSpartanHost Member, Host Rep

    We have now resolved the IPv6 issue meaning all new orders will receive 16 working IPv6 addresses. Existing customers can open a support ticket to claim their IPv6 addresses. This also means we'll no longer need to restart the networking meaning there should be no more unscheduled downtime for the foreseeable future.

    Thank you for your understanding.

  • @SpartanHost said:
    I'm sure if you were going to send legitimate email then you would have had no problem with this.

    I send legitimate email and I would have a problem with this.

    "You would only encrypt mail transfer if you have something to hide." (OVH, when asking if their anti-spam filter on VPS's even reads mails sent via TLS)

    "Why don't you use mailgun if it's only for legitimate reasons?" (crissic, when asking about bulk mail restrictions)

    P.S.: A spammer would say his email is legitimate as well (when asking you to open port 25).

    P.P.S.: Can't a spammer simply run a SMTP server on a different port..?

  • SpartanHostSpartanHost Member, Host Rep
    edited November 2014

    @4n0nx said:
    P.P.S.: Can't a spammer simply run a SMTP server on a different port..?

    They could but the absolute majority use port 25. We have found that the majority of spammers do not contact us whatsoever to begin with, nevermind when there is abuse complaints therefore we think the best way is to manually unblock port 25 at least upon request as communication is usually not a spammer's strong point.

  • SpartanHostSpartanHost Member, Host Rep

    We have now scrapped the blocking of port 25 and switched to rate limiting at a high rate instead.

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