I wouldn’t argue with their observations on this providers reliability, but the main problem with Webfusion, or their parent Pipex, arises when you need any technical support. I short, there isn’t much and that isn’t very knowledgeable; possibly unless you’re a national magazine.

I contacted Webfusion about a problem that arose with my VPS; six weeks later and after much email, I moved to Memset without the matter being resolved. And as for Pipex, I’m still waiting for an answer to my questions about my broadband package after nearly a month.

Pipex services are low cost, reliable and performance is generally good; which would be great if their accounting and technical support was less dreadful. If your needs are mission critical this makes Pipex the biggest potential problem your business might have. The risk is yours, but it’s not one I’m willing to take any more.

I’m not happy with the web hosting package I currently use. I mean, does Fedora Core 2 sound good to you? OK, I know, it depends what I’m trying to do…

I’m trying to develop Java and Ruby on Rails applications, and just getting the thing configured with such an antiquated version of Fedora is an up hill battle! So I’ve decided to make alternative hosting arrangements before trying anything serious.

On the back of a new business enterprise — Google needn’t worry for the moment — I’m going to get a couple of new VPSs.

1. A development server; the RoR and Java machine with the appropriate server stacks.
2. Production hosting of Drupal 5 installations with LAMP for my clients, which are hard enough get faultlessly configured on the current system.

It also seems like a good idea to separate development and production; I’m bound to knock over the development server at some point.

Both these systems are going to be based in the UK. They’re also going to be much more expensive than my current VPS, but I’ve learned that you often get what you pay for and I’m prepared for the expense.

The new host? I’ve asked questions of several and the most responsive and impressive to date is MEMSET and its Miniserver Virtual Machine range.