Finding an ideal web host is really a very difficult job. The competition is too much in this field and there are lot of web host claiming themselves to be the best. When considering that the hosting requirements for websites are different, it can turn out that a host which is best for one website can be worst host for another. I wish to give here a neutral review of my previous host, Servage. I hope this will help those who are considering Servage for hosting.
My Servage experience
My site is a software related site and I have lot of files for download in my site requiring lot of bandwidth. I took hosting from Servage on Jan 2007 and hosted my site completely with them for around 1 year.
Positive points
Bandwidth. The allotted bandwidth per day is 167GB/day (When I signed up it was 75GB/day). They keep on increasing their allotted bandwidth and it is good thing for any webmaster but they do not increase the hit limit per day. It is always 400,000 per day. So for most sites they will end up using up their hit limit before Bandwidth limit is reached. But if you have less graphic files and related files per page than you may be able to use the complete bandwidth allotted. I have heard few complaints that their bandwidth recording is on a per file basis, which means if there is an 100 MB file in your site and if someone starts dowloading it and then discontinue it after 100 kb, still their control panel will record 100 MB.
Multiple domain hosting in one account. This is quite good if you have more than one domain for hosting. You need not take different hosting for each domain, you can host all your domains in one servage account itself, as long as it fits into your allotted limits. Note : It is against their terms to resell their hosting to others, so I think whois of all the domains should be in the name of account holder.
Supports PayPal payments. For those who do not what the credit card details to be given to their host, they can use their PayPal balance to pay Servage. Also, they do not charge for Bandwidth overage if you happened to consume all allotted bandwidth per day any day, they suspends the account for the rest of the day.
Pricing. Their hosting is only $7.5 per month when paid for 6 months. It is cheaper if paid for 14 or 29 months.
Referral program. You can refer other customers to servage hosting and you can get 2 month of free hosting per new referrals.
Customer support. Their customer support is quick and I got responces within half hour but sometimes it seems they miss the point we asked and their reply look like some bot is answering.
Free domain. They register one free domain with each account. But my advice is to not use the free domain for your main site. This is because your domain will get tied to Servage. In the future if your site grows and you need to move to different hosting it would not be possible to transfer the domain. So use the free domain for testing or some non serious sites.
Negative points
Lack of access log. They do not provide an access log for the websites hosted with them.This can seem to be minor problem but there are times when having an access log is helpful. If some one is downloading too much from your site to deliberately use up your bandwidth, it is difficult to find that person's IP address without an access log. I contacted their customer support regarding this issue and they responded that currently it is difficult to provide access log because of their clustered nature of hosting.
Hit limit per day. They have a daily hit limit of 400,000 hits per day. If this limit is reached then the site will be suspended for rest of the day. Hit count is different from page view, each request for file, image or any other file from the server is considered as a hit . So if you have a page with 5 images, accessing that page will register 6 hits.
Limited visitor statistics. Their control panel is custom created, so the visitor statistics provided is little limited compared to AwStats or Webalizer.I think they could not use these web statistics softwares due to lack of access log.
Account suspension without informing. This is one of the reason I left Servage hosting. I do not completely blame them for suspending my site, may be my site has grown more than they can handle. But what is of concern is that they do not even mail me whenever they suspend my site. Also it takes number of support tickets before they tell me why they suspended my site. Some times the hit limit and bandwidth limit are well within limits but they will tell reasons like "Account had been suspended for high load for 3 days due to extreme load (attack?) on shaplus.com". Since they do not provide access log it is difficult to find out any attacker and I asked them if they can help me find the reason for extreme load or attack but they were sending the same response again and again.
Conclusion
As previously noted, how good an host depends on the hosting requirements. If you are considering Servage for hosting, my advice is to take hosting for 6 months and try before you sign up for longer periods. Minimum hosting period is 3 months but it has got setup fee of $14.99. I still feel servage is a good host if the negative points I mentioned are corrected. If you need to know anything more regarding my Servage hosting experience, you can contact me.