Had been using Server4you (dedicated server company) for a network of websites hosting needs for a few years (this was up to 2007) and at first it worked fine, but as traffic and the number of sites hosted on the unmanaged Server4you server grew (~150 sites including sub-domains) server hosting problems became a daily event.

Prior to dropping Server4you as a server company there were 25 support tickets within the Server4you control panel and many had been on going for months: not sure how I managed to keep going with this server company so long!

Server4you Unmanaged Dedicated Server Review

Server4you Unmanaged Dedicated Server Review
Server4you Unmanaged Dedicated Server Review

Up until 2007 I rented an unmanaged dedicated server with 512MB of RAM and 700GB monthly bandwidth from Server4you.

I never came close to using the monthly bandwidth Server4you supplies (99% of the content was text based so low bandwidth usage) but I later realized the 512MB of RAM was causing a bottleneck, which was apparently causing all the dedicated server problems!

Server4you Support Review

Web Hosting Support Disaster Management
Web Hosting Support Disaster Management

So if something went wrong with the server software it wasn’t because I screwed up. This led me to believe any problems with the server were either hardware, bandwidth, DOS attack (i.e. not me :-) related.

The dedicated server was using under 50GB of bandwidth a month of the 700GB allotted by Server4you and so in my understanding of how dedicated servers work at the time, it shouldn’t have struggled.

The problem as I had to discover on my own with the help of various server forums was the hardware wasn’t up to even 50GB of monthly bandwidth!

I might have had high expectations, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask of experienced server support staff to be able to determine that when RAM usage is max’d out at over 99% all the time it’s going to cause intermittent dedicated server problems: at the time I didn’t realize that could cause problems with Apache, but not other areas of the server which is what I was experiencing

All I got from them is it’s not their problem, it’s an unmanaged server!

Had Server4you staff being actual dedicated server experts they’d have quickly diagnosed the issue as a lack of memory and suggested I upgrade the RAM or the dedicated server: they might have made more money from me.

Server4you Support Staff Quotes

I am sorry, but we are selling unmanaged servers, which means what we do is provide hardware and OS installation, and after that you are on your own. We do take care and support things, such as OS that we have installed and Plesk.

Funny thing about this quote from Server4you is since I hadn’t made any significant changes to the server software, if Apache is part of the issue (the OS they installed) and the other problem is the lack of memory (hardware) doesn’t that mean they have a responsibility to offer support?

I wasn’t asking them to update software which would be part of a managed dedicated server hosting plan, but to determine the dedicated server they supplied was up to the task of hosting my websites!

So, at least the server was running and accessible via the network. This is where our responsibility vanishes. Rest things like proper server management, monitoring and acting upon software failures are up to you as we don’t provide the management service for our servers.

Well with that attitude towards helping paying customers I’d had enough and changed dedicated server companies.

I do NOT recommend Server4you.

David Law

Dedicated Server Reviews

Used a number of companies for dedicated servers between 2005 and 2019, here they are in chronological order. The last link is the review of the company I’m using in 2019.

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David Law : Technical SEO Expert with 20+ years Online Business, SEO, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing experience... Creator of multiple WordPress SEO Themes and SEO Plugins. Interests: wildlife, walking, environmental issues, politics, economics, journalism, consumer rights.

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