Why you shouldn’t use ViLayer as your hosting provider
To those that generally read my blog posts over the last couple years (which isn’t a ton of posts since I don’t post much, but hope to start doing more regularly) You would be familiar with my opinions and feelings towards Hypernia Gamerservers as well as HostDime/Surpass web servers. Both of these companies have shown time and time again that they can’t handle the customers they have and don’t usually know what they are doing.
Today, we have another company to add to that list. ViLayer. While I think I still hold them to a higher level of respect than Hypernia (which isn’t hard to do), this company clearly has SEVERAL issues in how it operates its servers and its support infrastructure. As I have mentioned in my other posts, when you have a product or service to sell, you need to be able to support it. 9 times out of 10, the support you provide will make or break your relationship with a customer. You can have a mediocre product, but as long as your support kicks ass, the customer will continue to come back for it and continue to use your services, because you have shown that they matter and that you care. The issue with ViLayer is that they have less than mediocre services, as well as absolutely garbage customer support. Let’s dive in, shall we?
1.) Let’s take a look at their control panels which are hosted on different “layers” than their game server so that when ones goes down, the whole system isn’t effected. More often then not, we log into a system that simply says “Status: Uknown”. This is as much information as we can get. There is absolutely no where in the control panel that we can go to help determine if anything has happened or has caused an issue. Additionally, there is nothing we can do to fix it. Since we at GSN Gaming have AMPLE admin experience and typically manage our own servers, this is frustrating to us and makes it so that we are helpless. This issue was last seen yesterday AND today again…. Yea – two days in a row. We are at OVER 15 hours of downtime in two days, and are still fighting to get adequate support.
2.) When we see the issue above we open a “high priority” help ticket to the support staff. It always takes a MINIMUM of 5 hours to get a response from these guys and that is on a good day. We have gone 12+ and even up to 24 hours without an initial reply and when we do get a reply, it’s a trivial, broad, and unacceptable reply such as:
Very sorry about this the server is down due to a large DDOS we could offer to move you to a more protected location if you wanted? If you have any other queries or issues don’t hesitate to get in touch.
So, it took you 5 hours to realize the box was under attack and let us know about it? Your solution is to move the box somewhere else rather than to mitigate the attacks or implement null routing of large DDoS attacks? Hysterical…. That was today’s reply, let’s take a look at yesterdays:
I’m sorry that you are having problems with your Server, I have informed our server staff who will be checking the node and hope to have it resolved shortly. The server may have to be restarted to get this working and online.
We are sorry for any inconvenience caused and hope to have this resolved as soon as possible, if you have any further problems or find the Server is not up in 24 hours time please reply back on this ticket so we can can investigate further.
As for the delays,
When you create a support ticket, this ticket is added to our support ticket queue.
Each ticket has a time stamp and we go off of these timestamps to work with the oldest ticket first.
Thus allowing us to work with tickets in the order we receive them.When a client submits a ticket and then creates a multiple tickets, multiple responses, or “bumps” the ticket before staff has a chance to respond, this actually pushes the ticket the end of our ticket queue.
This causes delays in us responding to tickets and can cause clients to wait over 24 hours for a response.We ask that you please allow support to respond to your ticket before creating a new ticket or making a response. This will prevent any delays and will allow us to respond in a timely manner.
If you have any other queries or issues don’t hesitate to get in touch.
So, it took you 10.5 hours to give us a reply about our server which is completely offline for unknown reasons, and your excuse is that IT IS OUR FAULT that we bumped the ticket? Come on…. At least try to come up with something a little more intelligent. Now, don’t get me wrong, being in support management and a senior level support engineer for the largest software companies in the world, I understand the concept of bumping tickets, but 5 hours is MORE than ample time to respond to a help ticket, especially high priority ones. If it’s not, you need to hire more staff…..
4.)The support staff has absolutely no idea what they are doing and what the end issue is. They are merely a liaison between the customer and the people that “know what they are doing”. (I put that in quotes, because I can’t be confident that they know anything either). The replies we get from them, when they finally come, offer little to know explanation as well as no remorse, sympathy, or guidance on how the issue can be addressed next time. Most times, it just comes back on and they don’t offer the explanation. In the case of the ticket yesterday, I specifically asked for the reason for the down time, and their response was to close the ticket out. That’s right, without saying a damn word or replying to my question, the closed the ticket. I mean wow….. How do these companies stay in business?
5.) Their SLA is laughably tight enough to ensure that you can’t hold them accountable for anything and is worded in a way that makes NOTHING their fault. They are not obligated to assist or support you in any way for just about anything. Additionally, unlike most SLA’s, there are no ETA’s on support replies and how long support replies should take. I can only assume this is because they are understaffed and can’t guarantee a time, which is asinine.
6.) They don’t know when they are having a DDoS attack or not. If the down time is due to a DDoS attack, you should be able to determine that instantly and handle it effectively (in most cases). There is no science to prevent and mitigate DDoS attacks that is 100% effective and I get that (having a BS in Computer Systems and Network Security), but you CAN make it so that other customers aren’t effected quite easily by null-routing the IP That is under attack, and by not putting so many games servers on the same IP’s. Most hosts worth a grain of salt will actually PRE-EMPTIVELY report DDoS attacks to you to let you know that you will see down time. In fact, NFO usually knows, has an update about it, and a plan in place by the time I can even open a ticket. If I still do open a ticket, I get a reply within 5-10 minutes tops. Additionally, they make sure we are good and follow up after the attack is completed and subsided.
That all being said, at the end of the day we use ViLayer because they are one of the “approved” hosts to host the KOTH mission for ARMA 3. It was the first one we tried and our server has a great deal of popularity because we have a huge team of diligent admins, so we don’t want to switch to another host.
In summation, if you want a server that might work some of the time and you can’t get any support, than ViLayer is the host for you. If you want server that will work and when they don’t work you get the best support in the industry, go with NFO Servers. It won’t be a decision you regret.
I have to say I have had 2 servers with Vilayer and 1 with NFO for the past couple of months and never have had am issue with any of the three servers until yesterday. Yesterday my TF2 server webt down and I put in a ticket. I believe it was several hours before I got my response. I have never had to wait more than an hour to maybe couple hours when submitting a ticket to Vilayer in the past and have always been treated courteously. That being said I have to say that NFP IS instantaneous on replies with live support.
I had a couple issues regarding somehow ordering multiple servers and Vilayer responded and instantly refunded my money which was back in my account directly. Perhaps your issue… or mine is an anomaly; however, I have been extremely happy with both, the services from vilayer and NFO. The upside to me for Vilayer was the pricing was half of NFO (cod2 and TF2 servers) which are 42 cents a slot. Also my redirect speeds at Vilayer are upwards of 1.30/mbs while NFO seems locked in around 700/kbs. People connect and download maps/mods faster. For an fps game this is ideal.
Some background… I previously had 2 servers with a company called Multiplay which took 12 hours to 3 days to get a ticket response and their control panel offered maps and mod add ons that were not proven to work nor did they seem to be able to fix the mod/server combination I wanted and both servers were down for over half the month I had them. At the end of the month they said they were sorrt but perhaps I needed a different provider to which I was more than happy to accomodate. They refunded my money and it took 17 days to see the refund. I purchased my Vilayer and NFO servers and had the Vilayer up and running myself with the the game/mod combo I wanted running on Vilayer in less than a few hours of purchase and NFO within a day.
So you can see why I may be able to use the ticket system Vilayer uses after that ordeal. I realize they may not be total 24 hour support, (it seems that being in the UK their schedule is slightly off from mine ,US) But it is soooo much better than my last experience. and for the money 29 bux/month for 2 servers and 15 slot TS3 I am happy over NFO at 22/month for 1 server and 5 slot TS3. NFO is an amazing server company, but for me Vilayer has been solid, understanding and fair. Again, perhaps my case is isolated, but at the present I am happy with their service.
PS You should do a write up on Multiplay… Oh the stories I have from just 1 month of service. Great Blog by the way! We need these types of things, if I had read one before It may have saved me a whole lot of trouble and time.
Thanks for the reply (and a detailed one at that). I used the examples in the post as just a mere select few of the run-ins that I have had with them. This is not the only times that I have had issues. I’m not the type to go around blasting companies for them making single mistakes once or twice as I understand what it’s like to be on their side of the fence. I appreciate the work and management that must go into their craft.
The issue we faced we continuous and they could never explain themselves.
I don’t disagree with NFO being more expensive. In most cases NFO is SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive, but that is a price that I am willing to pay for premium service and support. In this industry, support makes or breaks the service.
We are using a newer company right now for KOTH (InitialServers) and they have been great so far. We shall see how things go.
[…] Why you shouldn’t use ViLayer as your hosting provider […]
I have a problem right now with Villayer and I request my money back.
I have a ARK Survival Game Server, hosted on my country – Brazil.
Since i got it, i got only problems.
First with Ark remote, an support program to config and manage your server. They told me wrong configuration and took more than 4 days with one ticket, just to enable it. In the end one shit supporter do shit and i lost all my server’s data and them they had unisntalled the Ark Manager, because no one has capacity enough to activate it without errors.
After that, on two days, the server got down and takes more than one day to take it online back.
I was talking with a chat supporter donkey, and he tolds me more than 4 times that the service is working, because on the control’s panel it was saying that it was Online.
But i can’t joint server in game, I can’t edit the configs from online editor’s and I can’t connect from ftp.
So i asked him: Explain me how the server is working for you? What you did for connect to it by ftp? What you did to joinned it in game? What you did to change the config file? Tell me how its working, please. I’m not understanding you.
They just asnwer back that he will transfer my ticket for a more capaciple supporter. After all, they are LIARS too.
The server was online for only a week, so i asked them to NOT manage my serve without I ASK for it. There aren’t no one capable to manage it, trust me.
Two days after that, yesterday, my servers got offline.
More than 24+ hours by now and they did NOT answer my high priority support ticket.
I’ve talked with 2 supporters on online chat, and both told me that they DO OT HAVE ANY REASON OR ANSWER for my problem. They don’t knew when it will be fixed.
THEY ARE LIARS, they offers 24/7 hs support that is LIE, don’t believe.
When you got a answer, that is always SHIT: only apologies and no solution.
I request back my money today and I NOT RECOMMEND to no one.
If i got a bad answer i’ll talk with my lawyer and start an juridica fight. I paid for a service, if i dont get a service i have to get my money back.
Im not asking nothing more than I paid for.
Thanks for your comment Lucas. I feel your pain. They are a garbage company. I just can’t decide who’s worse, gameservers.com, or them…..
I made the mistake of purchasing a dedicated server from Vilayer several weeks ago, before reading all the bad reviews.
They claimed provisioning would take 24-72 hours, but it’s been over 2 weeks and I still have yet to receive my server.
When I first purchased the server I received the typical automated emails, “thank you for your order”, etc. and a support desk ticket was automatically opened that I’m guessing is set up to notify their staff that a new server needs to be provisioned.
After the 72 hour mark I replied to the ticket asking for an ETA on the server.
Never got a response to that request.
Another week went by and their automated support desk emailed me saying that “your support ticket has automatically been closed since we’ve received no reply from you in 7 days”.
No reply was required from me, it was them who needed to be replying to me with information about my newly provisioned server.
So I looked up as much information as I could find on the companies that power Vilayer, such as
GoDaddy (their domain registrar), OVH (who owns their website’s IP), Rage4 Networks Limited (who owns the IPs of their domain’s DNS servers). I even found out that a “Lee Benson” is the apparent director/secretary/CEO of ‘Vilayer LTD’.
I reopened the ticket, and basically threatened to send complaints to all of the above companies, as well as filing formal charges against Lee Benson for violating the UK’s “Fraud Act 2006” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud_Act_2006 ,
and just to ensure that whoever was running Vilayer received my message, I also emailed it to support@vilayer.com and abuse@vilayer.com.
That finally got a response from an actual person.
This was sent from their abuse@vilayer.com email address, and then later merged into the support ticket with the same message:
”
Lee Benson Staff 28/09/2016 13:26
Hello,
Your server should be setup shortly today, we’ve been extremely busy dealing with a huge amount of requests this month.
Lee Benson (CEO),
Vilayer LTD | http://www.vilayer.com
”
That was 3 days ago, still no server.
Being “extremely busy” is no excuse for this level of inefficiency.
If you’re too busy to fulfill orders, you need to turn off your automated processing/accepting of those orders.
At this point, I’ve demanded a refund from Vilayer.
If this is how they run their company before I even receive the services I purchased, then I can’t imagine how horribly inefficient everything would be after I received those services.
Regardless of whether they return my funds or not, I’m still going to file complaints with the above companies.
I suggest anyone else who have experienced the same fraudulent behavior from Vilayer do the same.