iMOUNTAIN Shared Web Hosting - 6 Month Review
Preface
When I had the arduous task of finding a new host, the some forums were an indispensable resource of information, guides, and reviews. As thank you for the great host, Iron Mountain, has pointed me to, I now offer my 6 months of experience with Iron Mountain to this community.
I also would like to state for the record that I have been a paying customer of Iron Mountain for the past 6 months, am not affiliated with them in any way (other than the fact I am a customer), and have not been solicited or compensated in any form to write this review.
I hope this will be of use to people who are in a similar predicament to where I was 6+ months ago.
Background
Hello everyone at In August of ’07 I was looking for a quality web host in order to build a new website. I primarily use (X)HTML/CSS, PHP/MYSQL, and Flash/Flash Video in the sites I build, so my requirements in a host are more stringent than what pure HTML sites would require.
After doing a lot of “due diligence,” including spending a lot of time on these forums (thanks), I narrowed down the list of candidate hosts down to just a handful. I was biased towards quality over price, so my list did not include any hosts considered to be “oversellers.”
Although there were several strong contenders in the short list of hosts I selected, I chose iMountain because their implementation of clustered hosting (i.e. web servers are separate from database servers) intrigued me. In general, whenever a computing task can be effectively distributed, it is a good thing (for speed, scalability, redundancy, etc.). Also, their strategic location in Southern California, where I expected a majority of my new site’s visitors to come from early on, would take advantage of the shorter round trip distance between the host servers and clients (low latency).
So, at the end of my search I chose iMountain, and I haven’t looked back.
Uptime
I would consider iMountain’s overall uptime to be excellent. From time to time, approximately 1 -2 times a month, there are brief interruptions in service for maintenance (usually about 5-10 minutes).
I’m in the same time zone (Pacific Standard) as iMountain, and I’ve noticed that these interruptions in service almost *always* occur very late at night, the earliest I’ve seen about 11ish, but much more frequently between 12 AM and 1 AM. My only conclusion is that iMountain makes a continual effort to minimize any inconvenience to its customers caused by this required maintenance and secondly that they keep their equipment updated.
If there was anything I could nitpick about is that these interruptions are almost never announced – BUT I personally do not consider this to be a problem because the interruptions are so brief, and they occur during hours of low traffic. This is also a shared hosting account we’re discussing, so in my opinion all of this is very reasonable.
Also, since the servers are clustered, if for example iMountain is only patching the MYSQL server on a particular night, then only database-driven portions of my website are affected. The HTML works fine during those times.
One notable exception to iMountain’s uptime record occurred when we had an interruption of PHP/MYSQL service for approximately 5 hours during the middle of one day in early February ‘08. The cause was a RAID failure in one of the new MYSQL clusters.
In my opinion this was an isolated incident for the simple reason that this interruption occurred only because iMountain had spent the previous month upgrading its MYSQL clusters (even though performance was still good – now it is even better) and had not finished mirroring all of the drives.
Also, I must say that during the entire incident I was kept well informed via e-mail of what was happening, what they were doing to fix it, and estimated times of completion. I was given enough information that I didn’t once feel the need to e-mail them. As far as I know, their new MYSQL clusters are now replicated. I have not had any interruptions on this scale since.
Support
iMountain’s support is THE benefit/feature of their service which allows me to build my community and website instead of worrying about the servers. The few times I have had to send support tickets I have always been responded to VERY promptly, even as quickly as 5-10 minutes. Also, their tech support is very competent and detail oriented – they are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty when required and overall are very helpful.
In fact, as I remember now the only support tickets I have had to submit actually were in regards to an issue with my ISP, not iMountain (although at first I mistakenly thought my site was down). For some reason, an intermediary hop in my ISP was blocking my personal IP address from accessing iMountain’s servers. It was a very odd problem to diagnose, but with the aid of iMountain’s tech support, we were able to isolate the server in my ISP that was causing the problem.
iMountain’s support techs were willing to do some traces and other diagnostic tests for me, even though the problem technically wasn’t theirs. Since we happen to share the same ISP, they were even willing to make a call to them on my behalf (iMountain’s tech support has direct access to higher tiers of the ISP’s support, whereas I would have had to start from ground up)! Of course, the ISP’s commercial division immediately pointed fingers at the residential division… lol. It just made the contrast between the two levels of customer support that much more significant.
Overall, I would classify iMountain’s support as SUPERIOR.
Value
This is something that everyone has to determine for themselves, but from my point of view iMountain has very competitive pricing in general (without even considering service). When you begin to consider the quality of the service they offer, then the overall value is superb.
Another thing I like about iMountain – and this may sound strange at first – is that they prominently feature a “money back” button in their control panel. Whereas some companies like to offer money back guarantees, warrantees, etc. but then do their best to hide them, iMountain puts theirs in plain view. Although I’ve never had to think about using it, it’s nice to know when a company stands behind their product or service. As a last note, iMountain has also done an excellent job of informing customers via the control panel whenever activating a certain new feature will incur an additional expense. Their billing has always been very straightforward, honest, and transparent. No hidden fees here.
Features
- Clustered Servers – offer *excellent* speed, especially for PHP/MYSQL applications. Always updated, and they operate as expected.
- H-SPHERE – to each his own, but I personally like the ease of use yet powerful capabilities of this control panel. It makes my job as a website administrator that much easier.
- Scalable – iMountain offers a variety of services, right from your starter shared package all the way up to a custom built dedicated cluster. It all depends on your needs, but once you start with them, there shouldn’t be any reasons why you’d suddenly need to find a new host to satisfy your growing needs.
- Business Experience – iMountain is owned by a group of individuals who also own and operate a variety of other businesses, and have been doing so for many years. Why does this matter, do you ask? Well, for one it means they won’t make any amateur mistakes like forgetting to pay an electric bill, and they also know how to effectively plan for the growth of their own business (which is especially relevant in the hosting business, where fast paced demand can make a great host with poor planning not so great in just a matter of weeks). Also, it means that if you should ever need to speak with iMountain, you’ll get someone who is not only professional but can speak the Queen’s English. It may not sound that important now, but if you ever have a big problem to solve and are already under a lot of pressure, it makes all the difference in the world.
- Progressive, Forward-looking Mindset – iMountain also manages to do some pretty cool “value-added” things, the biggest of which is their push towards solar power. The servers which host my sites are solar-powered, which may not translate into a distinguishable direct result as far as user experience is concerned (faster loading times, etc.), but it does indicate a forward-looking frame of mind on behalf of iMountain. I’d be willing to bet that this mindset is prevalent in all aspects of their business, and it is reassuring to know those who are “steering the ship” are proactive instead of reactive and are not suffering from some sort of myopia. It’s a nice touch, and more end users notice than you might think.
Conclusion
I can highly recommend iMountain as a hosting provider. The combination of excellent performance, support, and value makes for a compelling reason to choose them as your host. If you especially are interested in implementing database-driven applications (forums, blogs, dynamic web sites, etc.), then I especially recommend them as their clustered implementation is excellent. Even though I am on a shared account, most of the time it feels as if I’m actually on a managed dedicated solution. Of course, do your own due diligence and explore your options, but I think you really can’t go wrong with iMountain.
My 2¢ (or $2 if you’re considering inflation).