REVIEW REQUEST: Sarvi Hosting

Opened quickly for me but I am on cable. It definitely looks best at 800*600 as at larger resolutions the striped side is a bit too much IMO.

The layout isd fine but I think it needs more colour, the orange is nice but just with the grey it just feels a bit bland. Maybe introduce the blue more instead of some of the grey. The font you have for the top links I feel is a bit hard to read and a sharper font would be better. My only other comment is that I feel the main_picture01.gif is a bit too big height wise and if that didn't take up so much of the mid-section then the 3 images below would sit better above the fold.

Good clean site though.

Design.....: 4
Speed.....: 5 (on a T1)
Packages.: 5

This looks very good to me. If I was looking for a host I would consider going with yours. Everything here seems to be well thought out and complete. I'm actually having a hard time finding something to complain about.

On the control panel page, I find it annoying how the panel keeps scrolling up and down like that. Maybe you could do something that would allow people to scroll it themselves. Or, hey, why not just use a static image and then link to a full scrolling pop-up window.

The plans page looks good but I think it might be a good idea to find a way to divide all the features into categories, just to make it easier to read. All those options seem to kind of blend together on that list and it's hard to pick out certain things. You could divide them into sections such as e-mail, porgramming support extras etc. Or you could just take the ones that are checked for all of the plans and put a separate list saying that "all plans include:" etc. etc. etc..

On the order page, you've got a drop down there that lets the users choose which plan to get - I would include the prices in there as well as the space and bandwidth.

See how picky I have to be??? Good job

Edit: Forgot - when I was looking at the front page I was thinking that the important content is below the fold. I would find a way to move the latest news and guarantees up. The guarantees part is something that I think would significantly improve your creditibility, so that's something people should see right away.

Thank you both for your comments.

The Webmistress, I kind of like the stripes and think they look pretty cool in higher resolutions (much better than leaving it blank and empty), but of course, not all people share the same taste. Thank you for your comments though. I appriciate it.

Megan, thank you for your kind words. I actually find the flash animation very annoying as well, just haven't had time to replace it with something less irritating About the order page, we do have disk space and monthly transfer in the pull down. The only thing that is missing is the price and that is because the price differs monthly to annually. Didn't want to take the chance of confusing people. Your suggestion about splitting the features sound very interesting, I will surely look into that. And about moving the news/guarantees further up, I would love to, but I think that would ruin the layout? Anyways, the guarantees are linked on the plans page as well and users with 1024x760 and higher resolution will see them without scrolling.

Did you guys hear the mouse over sound?

Thank you again for taking time and reviewing our website. I'm interested to see what other people think.

I always have my pc speakers turned off when surfing the net, so no I didn't notice the mouseover noise. IMO things like that just get annoying hence the reason for speaker off

The Webmistress, trust me, there's noone that hates sounds on websites more than me. But if you turn your speakers on and try it out you will notice that they are very soft sounds and no auto play

Ok, I've removed the annoying flash animation and I'm going to see what I can do about the features list.

By the way, I was thinking about maybe making the server picture on the main page animated in Flash (something cool). What do you guys think?

Another thing, what categories do you think I should split the features in?

[edit]
Ok, I've now split them into categories. Please take a look and let me know if anything is missing of is misplaced. Thank you.
[/edit]

Quote: The Webmistress, trust me, there's noone that hates sounds on websites more than me. But if you turn your speakers on and try it out you will notice that they are very soft sounds and no auto play

I did try it with my speakers on once you mentioned it but I'm not really for sounds like that, just my opinion though!

Quote: By the way, I was thinking about maybe making the server picture on the main page animated in Flash (something cool). What do you guys think?

I wouldn't!! I think it'll spoil things and could make it look tacky and increase opening times unnecessarily.

Quote: Originally posted by The Webmistress
I wouldn't!! I think it'll spoil things and could make it look tacky and increase opening times unnecessarily.

LOL! Yes mam! You're probably thinking, "That's just what we need, an annoying flash intro on the main page. Like if it wasn't enough with the sound on mouseover and the irritating stripes!".

lol, not implying I'm domineering are you!!

I just think that you have a very professional, classy looking site and I think that animation would spoil that, but try it if you want to by all means!

Design: 5
Speed: 5 (56k)
Packages: 5

An attractive, neat design, and good products as well.

It loads surprisingly fast on my modem.

On the sounds, I think they're pretty good where you've used them.

The Webmistress,

I'm not implying anything, it's just a habbit from when my fiancé tells me to do something, LOL!.

Abhishek Reddy,

Thank you for your kind words The reason it loads fast is because we've optimized the images and also mod_gzip and a fast network helps a lot

Don't really have anything to add. Just wanted to say that I think you have done a great job here. Very nice!

Thank you.

I'm new at this website rating, and at being a hosting customer--but sometimes a naive viewpoint has some value. I have shopped around for a host a lot (and have reported my experiences on my website), I just haven't been a customer long enough to have experienced many problems.

Design.....: 5
Speed.....: 19 seconds to load completely @ 28.8 dialup, though your logo appeared at once.
Packages.: 5 Assuming that you can deliver; The one guarantee seems to say that I must somehow monitor your uptime and then request a discount if you fail. I think you should simply offer the discount if you fail because then you seem to have more confidence in your own ability. When I began shopping for a host, I read so many negative reviews and horror stories that I became fearful of any without a history. And then I read that some unscrupulous hosts surreptitiously write bad reviews for their competitors--must be a tough business...

As for an unqualified lifetime price guarantee, I'm always skeptical of deals like that. What if there is a round of unexpected inflation? That would break you if you have a large customer base and make the "lifetime" part irrelevant.

Just a few ideas off the top of the head of a tough customer, I hope that helps.

Andrea

Design.....: 5
Speed.....: 19 seconds to load completely @ 28.8 dialup, though your logo appeared at once.

20 seconds on a 28k8 is pretty good considering that the main page is mainly images. Try loading the Terms of service page and see how long that takes, it's a 45Kbyte HTML page

Packages.: 5 Assuming that you can deliver; The one guarantee seems to say that I must somehow monitor your uptime and then request a discount if you fail. I think you should simply offer the discount if you fail because then you seem to have more confidence in your own ability. When I began shopping for a host, I read so many negative reviews and horror stories that I became fearful of any without a history. And then I read that some unscrupulous hosts surreptitiously write bad reviews for their competitors--must be a tough business...

Well, so far we've had 100% uptime *knocking on wood*, but if we ever get below 99.5% uptime in a month, I'm sure our customers will notice. At that time, it is up to the customer to decide if they would like to receive a discount or not. The option is there if they do.

As for an unqualified lifetime price guarantee, I'm always skeptical of deals like that. What if there is a round of unexpected inflation? That would break you if you have a large customer base and make the "lifetime" part irrelevant.

That is a very good point. We will look into adding a few lines explaining that the price freeze guarantee will not be valid in exceptional situations such as inflation.

I would like to thank you for taking time and reviewing our website and for the ideas. If you ever are looking for a web host, let me know and we'll make sure you have an excellent hosting experience.

With the images cached your main page loads in less that 5 seconds @ 26.4 (AT&T sure sucks--why provide 56k service while trying to sell broadband?). Terms of service page loaded in under seven seconds.

As for server downtime, do your clients have access to your downtime stats? If so it's a good guarantee, if not it's just an empty promise and no promise at all is better than one that looks weak. I personally do not monitor my site's uptime, in fact I stay away from it so as not to skew my real stats, so the only way I'd know my site is down is if I'm told by a disappointed visitor. Most who get 404's just move on though, myself included. My host does provide their server downtime stats (by server).

I've added your link to the list of hosts in my database and the update should appear on the site in a day or so.

Andrea

I’m offended! I assure you that it's not an empty promise! We have always worked very hard to provide the service and guarantees we advertise. If our downtime exceeds 0.05% of any given calendar month, we will refund 50% of the next month’s service fees for any affected user that requests it. I somewhat understand where you’re coming from though and we will without doubt look into providing that information on our website in the future.

Ok, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that it was an empty promise but that it seems like one--which from the point of view of a prospective customer is just as bad, if not worse. I value communication over all other things when it comes to a relationship like that of website host. My own perspective is not as critical because my site is not that complex nor does it depend on a cash flow. But if I were engaged in e-commerce I would do very rigorous and unrelenting research on my host. This is why I chose a host that has an active and outspoken community on its forums.

Andrea

We were actually considering adding a message board to Sarvi Hosting, but we don't get that many support requests and I don't want to have a dead community. Maybe I should shake the servers a little (just kidding).

Looks great! I only have two minor comments.

I'm not sure about the email and home page links at the top of the page. I didn't realize what they were for until I looked at the tooltip. IMHO, you might want to try using some kind of icon like a house and letter, for example.

Also, I don't really like the "GO >>>" button moving forward when you mouseover the three image links on the home page.

Thank you for taking time and reviewing our website. A few people have told me about the two links on top. We will do our best to change them in the near future

About the arrows moving forward, why don't you like them? Their movement kind of simbolizes moving forward, like go.. You know, animated.

I don't really know *why* I don't like it...I just don't. Maybe I'm just odd.

Hehe. Well, I'm thinking about maybe adding a little color to the boxes on mouseover. I don't know yet. I will play around with it a ltitle later when I have some free time.

Thank you for your review though.

Ok, we finally got around and did some updates on the site.

Here are the changes:

1. New logo, what do you think?
2. Made logo clickable to go home
3. Removed the 2 home/email button from upper right and added HumanClick instead so people can chat with us live.
4. added creditcard logos to bottom of virtual and reseller pages.
5. Removed sound on mouseover.
6. Replaced the flash animation of the control panel with a static image.

What do you guys think of the new changes?

7. As requested, removed the arrows moving forward but instead added background color to the 3 boxes one the first page.

Logo looks quite good.

How come the second box (Reseller) doesn't change bg on hover?

Looks good. Wouldn't have noticed about the removal of the sound

Quote: Originally posted by Abhishek Reddy
How come the second box (Reseller) doesn't change bg on hover?

It might be reading the picture from your cache or something? Hmm, it works fine for me. Can you try again and see if it does change bgcolor?

Thank you.

Quote: Originally posted by The Webmistress
Looks good. Wouldn't have noticed about the removal of the sound

Hahaha! It actually swaps images faster, but it's sooooooooo quiet..

Checked again and all seems to be working fine.

I noticed the first time everything loaded quite slow so I doubt the images downloaded right. (Connection is always bad during peak hours.)

Overall, the site still looks great. If I'm to pick on anything, it'd be the anti-aliasing on the navbar text. It's perhaps a little too heavy making it somewhat hard to read. Not really a big deal, though.

Quote: Originally posted by Abhishek Reddy
If I'm to pick on anything, it'd be the anti-aliasing on the navbar text. It's perhaps a little too heavy making it somewhat hard to read. Not really a big deal, though.

Do you mean where it says "POWERFUL & AFFORDABLE WEB HOSTNG!"? Or maybe I misunderstood..

I've just looked at the site again and you've changed the 'When quality makes a difference' part and I'm not sure I like that as much as the old version. I don't think that font fits in with everything else.

Quote: Originally posted by The Webmistress
I've just looked at the site again and you've changed the 'When quality makes a difference' part and I'm not sure I like that as much as the old version. I don't think that font fits in with everything else.

I'm actually experimenting a little. I wanted to add a little color to the main page. Do you guys know of any good professional fonts?

The trouble is that if you make that part too fancy it's overpowering your logo! The one you have there now is better as it's plain but you have the colour there. What's happened to your squares on the logo?

I didn't like the squares, the logo looked nice and all, but it did not go with the page. Im my opinion that is.

I think that it needs somthing or it's getting lost on the page, especially with the new look middle part. IMO

Ok, I changed the colors a little (made the bg white again) and also changed the headline back..

I like the middle bit but I'm still not sure about the logo now

Well, the problem was that I thought the logo was too colorful for the page and it took all the attention. However, I think I've found a good combination now.. Take a look, I also change the color of the 3 boxes..

Yeah, that's good. See what the others think

Thank you for checking the site so many times.

Anyone else got any comments?

I was referring to the navbar with "Virtual Hosting | Reseller Hosting | Specials | Terms of Service..."
It's not really a problem.

The new combination works nicely. I like the gray boxes/highlighting in the middle

I miss the color in the logo. It's a little bit lifeless now.

New bgcolors for the boxes are fine.

The site looks great!

I'm not sure that I'm seeing what you are talking about regarding the bgcolor for the boxes.

I think you mentioned before the possibility of adding a mouseover color to the GO>>>'s instead of the forward movement. I thought that was a good idea. Maybe having the GO>>>'s change to orange like the titles would be good.

Scott

I think you'll find that he's still playing around with things! Now the Headings for the sections are changing colour.

Another thought just hit me. How about highlighting only "powerful" and "affordable" in the orange color you have and making the rest of the words in that line gray (#D0D0D0)? Try it out...

As someone once said, it's a never ending job. We have to work on our business and its website all the time and try to improve them both.

Hello again everybody,

First I would like to thank you all for taking time and reviewing our website a few weeks back. It was hightly appriciated.

Today, we uploaded an update to our page. We have a new logo, new front page image, somewhat new boxes (the 3 on the first page), we also have a few new sections which are "Network", "Affiliate" and "Testimonials".

Your (new) opinions/suggestions are highly appriciated..

http://www.sarvihosting.com/

I've merged the threads so that people can re-read previous potst to catch up on what's changed.

I like the new logo, looks very professional. The man is ok but very fuzzy and I still think a tad too big, but I think I'm alone in that thought! I'm not sure about the 'View Testimonials' button, looks a wee bit jaggedy and IMO spoils the fine lines of the rest of the site.

I think the view testimonials button would look better without the gray surrounding it. And maybe just a tad smaller. The color goes great with the site. You should add more yellow accents.

Other than that....a nice site once again.

Sonia

Quote: I like the new logo, looks very professional. The man is ok but very fuzzy and I still think a tad too big, but I think I'm alone in that thought! I'm not sure about the 'View Testimonials' button, looks a wee bit jaggedy and IMO spoils the fine lines of the rest of the site.

I've made the fuzzy man a little bit smaller. He's supposed to symbolize a man with peace of mind. A man that doesn't have to worry about his website being slow/down half the time. Because SarviHosting.com is taking care of him.. SarviHosting.com is supporing him and keeping him up. And he's happy

Quote: I think the view testimonials button would look better without the gray surrounding it. And maybe just a tad smaller. The color goes great with the site. You should add more yellow accents.

Other than that....a nice site once again.

I've made the testimonial button a little smaller. I've also added mouse over effect to it. I like the yellow color because it gets your attention and I want people to see that button so that they go read our customers' thoughts about our services. I've made the grey around it a little lighter, it looks uggly without it.

Thank you both for taking time and reviewing our website again. But you didn't say what you think about the new sections? Do you think our affiliate program is good? Pays good? What about the network page? What do you think about our network/datacenter?

i like the site layout...only one problem...i'm running a computer with a 800x600 rez on a 15" monitor...i have scroll over or maximize the window (running in AOL), i really dont like to have to scroll over, so maybe scale the things down a bit?

Quote: Originally posted by Eskater05
i like the site layout...only one problem...i'm running a computer with a 800x600 rez on a 15" monitor...i have scroll over or maximize the window (running in AOL), i really dont like to have to scroll over, so maybe scale the things down a bit?

The page has been designed to be viewed _without_ a horizontal scroller on 800x600 in full screen. We can not make it even smaller, it wouldn't leave us any room to put all the information.

[offtopic]
How can you run 800x600? In the old days when I had 15", I always ran 1024x768. With 800x600 you hardly have room to put a couple of icons on your desktop.
[/offtopic]

Quote: I've made the fuzzy man a little bit smaller. He's supposed to symbolize a man with peace of mind. A man that doesn't have to worry about his website being slow/down half the time. Because SarviHosting.com is taking care of him.. SarviHosting.com is supporing him and keeping him up. And he's happy

One must wonder why he's smiling especially since it looks so painfully uncomfortable to have to sit on jagged letters like that.

But seriously, I think it's looking quite good.

I still think that the testimonials button needs better anti-aliasing. Or maybe a slight glow/shadow to soften the edges.

Also, my monitor is set to low contrast so the man is a bit unclear. I assume that it might help to lighten him up a bit? (I don't know how many poeple run low contrast.)

Looking at the rest of the site... I spotted a couple of typos in TOS.

Also you could italicise the testimonials — I first thought they were statements by SH, not the customer.

Thank you for all your suggestions.

I have now added outer glow to the testimonial button to make it a little softer. I've also made the guy a little lighter and colored the pillow under his feet yellowish.. Also, the testimonials are now italic (as requested ).

By the way, the guy is VERY (I repeat _VERY_) comfortable sitting on the sharp edges of Sarvi Hosting. In fact, he is so comfortable that he almost fell asleep a few times during the shoot. LOL

Abhishek, could you please point out the couple of typos you found in the TOS?

Thank you again everybody.

Quote: Abhishek, could you please point out the couple of typos you found in the TOS?

Yeah, I guess that would help.

5 - Costumer Content
Costumer -> Customer

8 - Intellectual Property Violation
customers'
customers' -> customer's

(Please make sure and read the Spamming terms above).
... above). -> ... above.)

The testimonials buttons is looking better. The man is more visible now.

I think it all looks good now, and the man does look quite happy & contented! On the affiliate scheme do you accept anyone from any country to sign up?

The little dude does look better being smaller. But I am thinking "Oh, my aching back!" LOL

Button looks much better too. I am ignorant when it comes to affiliates so I am not much help there. The networking page looks good. The images might could be a little smaller. If I wasn't on a dial up, I probably wouldn't complain about that though.

Sonia

Abhishek Reddy,

Thanks, will fix them first thing tomorrow. Right now I'm so beat, been working for the past 24hs...

Quote: Originally posted by The Webmistress
I think it all looks good now, and the man does look quite happy & contented! On the affiliate scheme do you accept anyone from any country to sign up?

If you have a PayPal account, yes you can apply. We will then review your website (just to filter out adult, ilegal and fraud websites) and let you know about our decision.

Quote: Originally posted by disaster-master
The images might could be a little smaller. If I wasn't on a dial up, I probably wouldn't complain about that though.

I know they're a little too big (file size-wise) even though I did lower their quality as much as I could without making the images look bad.

Design.....: 4
Speed.....: 5
Packages.: 2

the packages seem to be alot of money to me and that is with the set up fee being for free. try lowering the prices a bit.

Those packages look fine to me as far as price goes - seems to be pretty standard from what I've seen. I kind of have to wonder how low hosting prices can go - same with long distance phone rates.

What does seem a little suspicious, and this may have been mentioned before, is the price freeze. Ever hear of something called inflation? It may be realistic to guarantee prices for a limited amount of time (like a year maybe), but at some point you are going to have to raise your prices just so you can keep getting back the same rate in real terms. You might dig yourself into a hole with this one.

Quote: Originally posted by companyreviews
Design.....: 4
Speed.....: 5
Packages.: 2

the packages seem to be alot of money to me and that is with the set up fee being for free. try lowering the prices a bit.

companyreviews,

Thank you for your review. The reason we're not offering "the world for a penny" is because like many web hosts our servers are not in a low quality bandwidth datacenter where we can get a P4 server with 600GB monthly bandwidth for a little over $100/mo. We are located in the world-class NAC datacenter with truly redundant and extremely fast network which allows us to serve your website with lightning speed no matter where your users are!

Tell me, how many successfull web hosts do you know that offer cheap dirt cheap prices? Most of them don't have a good business plan and that's why they'll suddently disappear after a few months and you'll be back in the market looking for a new web host or they offer really poor support because they cannot afford to hire more techs to handle the demand.

Trust me, for the quality of service we're offering, our prices are very low.

Quote: Originally posted by Megan
Those packages look fine to me as far as price goes - seems to be pretty standard from what I've seen. I kind of have to wonder how low hosting prices can go - same with long distance phone rates.

Megan,

I don't understand why people always look for the _cheapest_ deal. When people are going to buy a new bed, a car, a TV or even cloths, do they always buy the cheapest ones or do they pay a little more to get one that has more features and is better quality? Most of the people that go for cheap hosting will be back after a while with a lesson learnt the hard way.

Quote: What does seem a little suspicious, and this may have been mentioned before, is the price freeze. Ever hear of something called inflation? It may be realistic to guarantee prices for a limited amount of time (like a year maybe), but at some point you are going to have to raise your prices just so you can keep getting back the same rate in real terms. You might dig yourself into a hole with this one.

You are correct. We do have plans to add to our TOS that the price freeze guarantee will not apply in case of inflation. Thank you for bringing it back to our attention.

Quote: I don't understand why people always look for the _cheapest_ deal. When people are going to buy a new bed, a car, a TV or even cloths, do they always buy the cheapest ones or do they pay a little more to get one that has more features and is better quality? Most of the people that go for cheap hosting will be back after a while with a lesson learnt the hard way.

I totally agree. You always have to wonder when you see prices that are well below the industry average. Yours seem to be in line with what other quality companies are charging.

Overall I thought it was a very clean site and that is what you want if you are in the web hosting business.

Design.....: 5
Speed.....: 5
Packages.: 4