HostMantis: Fresh Design and Inode Limit removed (unlimited inodes now)
Seems like HostMantis started the new year with a fresh website design and the removal of their inode limit for all hosting & reseller plans (in December already):
Happy to see the inode limit gone as I never hit it (by far) but I still thought it is some deprecated stat that should not really play a role in modern-day hosting offers anymore.
That's HostMantis for you. On one hand they cause an uproar regarding to pricing ever so often, on the other hand they offer a stable (premium) performance and quick support to make up for it.
Still with them for this reason but I shifted my main site to @MikePT .
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My renewal price went from 100 to 600 dollars.
Mostly harmless ™
I/O Gremlin
Lolthxkbye. Quite the hike.
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Smaller reseller account got a hike from 20 $ to 50 $ in 2019, and now to 200 $.
However, storage space got up from 25 to 50 GB - which doesn't change a thing for me, but it's only fair to say.
Still early to make any plans (suppose I'll know the "real" price only when it comes to renewal time), but for all I can see (and foresee), HostMantis is still OK for production, but too pricy for development.
MyW.pt still has problems with Softaculous WP migrations, so it's not an option for development.
Planing to see about Buyshared - if they have all of them LiteSpeed, and Softaculous. Prices seem OK there.
Though - with over a year of my subscription left, suppose it's still to early to plan.
HM might deadpool, or increase prices again, or even decrease them (if customer count drops severely, since that used to be their main selling point, even though their service quality has been very, very good). Service quality is still my main concern. That makes all the difference as far as I'm concerned.
Mostly harmless ™
I/O Gremlin
Hm? I did have some installations where I had to update paths after migration from cPanel, but all Softaculous installations work and are backed up and updated as they should be ...
Staging site also worked for me on MyW.
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I'm having problems when importing a (developed) website from MyW to HostMantis.
Server just blocks the connection.
Similar problems with some WP management plugins.
Couldn't pinpoint the problem, but it exists.
Just installing WP works (and cloning) . I suspect some firewall related problem, but neither MIke, nor I (which isn't likely in the first place) couldn't figure out what causes the hick-ups.
Mostly harmless ™
I/O Gremlin
I have 7 shared accounts with them, probably the most stable and ttfb is better than average compared to other hosts im with. Also no stupid domain limits or restrictions like ability to add/edit TXT records.
Todays news (just got an email):
No more than one JetBackup job per reseller account.
The problem?
As I logged in, after having received the email, two out of three of my backup jobs (daily, weekly, and monthly) have been deleted by the provider. Not just disabled - but deleted. Backups themselves are fine - stored off-site.
They hadn't notified me prior to doing that, so I could at least choose which backup jobs to keep and how to configure them.
Saying many people run a lot of jobs, which hampers server performance.
I had 3 jobs: daily, weekly, and monthly, all set to run at different times, for when monthly and daily, or weekly backups "align".
I'm not thrilled with the idea of not being able to keep monthly backups, along with at least one weekly one.
Mostly harmless ™
I/O Gremlin
To be fair (I guess?), their Terms of Service explicitly state you're not allowed to store backups of any kind.
Michael from SmallWeb - Please use official support methods for help.
Huh? They provide the option for the reseller to take their own backups and place them offsite on your own storage, it's not about storing backup jobs on their platform.
This is now an issue for me if they are limiting the number of jobs. Not had any email about it though. I can still create new jobs.
Damn, not liking this very much. That is, if even backups to remote locations count. This way only full account backups could be done to have it for all accounts on reseller
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@HostMantis - can you clarify what is happening?
Talking about JetBackup off-site backups.
Performance and uptime are very good.
Price hikes (two over the last two years) - understandable.
JetBackup job limit - understandable.
The way it's been executed (notification afterwards, and deleting the set-up backup jobs) - doesn't inspire confidence.
Now - one backup job per account is allowed (so no way to configure making and storing like 2-3 weekly, and 12 monthly backups, for example). However, my main complaint is that the action of deleting any extra configured backup jobs (not backups) was done by the provider.
It would be more reasonable, IMO, to let the customers know of the new rules, and give them at least a few days, if not weeks time to see what they choose to do.
Mostly harmless ™
I/O Gremlin
I missed the key word: jobs
Michael from SmallWeb - Please use official support methods for help.
I still use HM and no plans to change. I asked for and received a recurring discount after the price hike, and moved to DA, so I have no complaints about price. The uptime for my HM sites has been significantly better than my other hosts - Buyshared, and SmallWeb.
That is concerning. HM isn't known for effective communication with clients. They make decisions, implement them without notifying customers or giving very little notice, then suck up the negative feedback. They're not the most pleasant company to deal with for support issues. They are sort of like going to a highly competent physician that has poor bedside manor.
Not had any issues with support.
I get the reason for limiting backup jobs, if many are using it and running multiple jobs it will of course impact the server performance, but they need to let everyone know up-front not just start deleting jobs.
They should tell people upfront and have them remove the backup jobs manually. Also, they don't allow you to run backup plugins of WordPress (e.g. Updraft, AIO WP...) in the TOS (probably, because they do have their own backup tool, that is JetBackup). If their backup tool gets very restricted, though, people might resort to backing up with WP plugins again to have different backup frecuencies..
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I might just go VPS and use something like Updraft so I don't have any more issues like this to worry about...
Some backup plugins such as UpdraftPlus are on their "WordPress plugins we do not recommend" list of plugins. It may be in their ToS, cover my ass list, but I've had no problems over the last several years with using Updraft, WPVivid, etc.
Lools like backup plugins are allowed. From their TOS:
"Daily Backups
HostMantis performs daily full account backups. Daily backups include the backup of all account data, email accounts and MySQL databases. Weekly backups are for HostMantis disaster recovery purposes only. Resellers accounts and their client accounts are included in the accounts we backup as part of our disaster recovery plan, however, Resellers are ultimately responsible for their own accounts backups and should not rely on the backups HostMantis performs. No guarantee of data is expressed or implied."
To be clear I haven't either. Except for a minor billing issue where they said I was wrong and finally admitted they were at fault and issue was resolved.
HM support is the competent/cranky archetype, which is far superior to friendly/incompetent.
WP plugins are both less reliable, and more resource-demanding, compared to good server-level backup solutions.
I understand having more than one backup job per day, in a shared hosting environment, can put a big load on the server.
Having said that, if I set one weekly, and one monthly backup job - that should put less load on the server than having only one daily backup job... except when those backups both come up on the same day, a couple of times a year probably.
As far as storage space goes, I'd rather keep 12 monthly backups, and extra 3 weekly ones, than keep 365 daily backups.
Conforming to the new rules, it's probably going to be every week, or two, plus manual backups after doing some major work (which is a hassle - the manual stuff for things a computer can easily automate).
Most news I got from HostMantis, over the past 2 years, have been rather negative in terms of what I get for a dollar.
But this is not just about the money.
I understand their point of view, and I expect this policy will positively affect server performance and stability.
However, in order to keep backups to at least weekly, and still have at least 1 year of backups, I'd have to "abuse" my off-site backup storage (or do backups manually).
Based on the experience so far, I expected things to keep getting more expensive but I wasn't expecting any "reduced functionality" to put it that way. Naive of me, I know.
It does seem like: "we don't want customers like you. What will it take for you to figure it out." 
Mostly harmless ™
I/O Gremlin
JetBackup is very demanding without backup jobs.
Fair enough. Might have to opt for Updraft/AIO WP again
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Offsite backup using Koofr?
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I asked the very same thing. Got Denied. Stuck on cpanel as of right now.
For me, as a user, cPanel is still better. Though - JetBackup working smoothly was one of the main reasons for sticking with cPanel.
Even with their current cPanel prices, they are still among the cheapest, when compared with providers who offer similar performance, uptime, and security.
Mostly harmless ™
I/O Gremlin
My money is on their Bitninja protection.
I have an account at myw.pt which works great, but I cant upload some of the content I was planning on hosting there because Bitninja blocks me whenever I try. Some of the content is documentation which contains filesystem paths and linux commands, and this seems to trigger Bitninja to think it is an attack and blocks my ip.
I actually tested this by installing a wordpress and then simply trying to paste a part of a shellscript as pure text into a blogpost, and sure enough, I was blocked by Bitninja.
Last time I tested the WordPress Backup Plugin they recommend for Webdav, the plugin didn't work. So right now Updraft to GDrive and GDrive to Koofr
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Wow I like the new design.