Have you tried Evolucix hosting? Any reviews?
 

Just wondering have you tried evolucix hosting? I posted a thread on WHT about it and most said they'd give it a shot :)

Just wondering what KP and Digital faq may think!

I've been with Evolucix since early 2011, so about 3 years now...


History

Back in late 2010 and early 2011, I was very much into trying the alternative website control panels that existed at the time -- Virtualmin GPL, ISPConfig, OpenPanel, Froxlor, Kloxo and others. As you know, I'm at WHT a lot, for my own needs -- monitoring my hosts, monitoring the industry, seeking the infrequent tidbit of help/advice, or just sharing thoughts on the hosting industry. It was this last topic that sparked the interest of an Evolucix owner (there used to be two) who followed me here and PM'd me.

During that conversation, he suggested I give them a try for my panel testing.


Age Concerns

I was very apprehensive at first, as Evolucix had young owners at the time -- one in college, one in his last year of high school. It could have very easily turned into a "kiddie host".

Most young-run hosts:
(1) fail with the customers getting screwed -- this is VERY common!
(2) sell the "company" (hobby business) to another "host", which is often just as bad or worse!

But I went ahead and ordered an unmanaged VPS, since it was for unimportant testing.

Some months later, I went to Dallas on business, and arranged to meet the younger owner (Shayan) for lunch. I felt much better after that, as some of the things Evolucix was doing were quite impressive. He was not your typical stupid teen, with a big-head attitude or get-rich attitude; he was very grounded.

But as I knew/feared would happen, the younger owner did eventually leave.

At least 99% of young web host owners:
(1) lose interest
(2) have to quit working, in order to spend more time studying and graduate
(3) get in over their heads, and the wishful-thinking "easy" business isn't that easy; reality sets in
(4) move on with their life, onto another career path

However, that still left one owner (Avish). And he and I have had a number of email conversations since then, about his future and the future of the company. Remember, he was in college 3 years ago, meaning he's probably done now.

They deserve credit for being very honest and transparent about all of this.

And this might actually be one of the 1% of young-run hosts that long-term succeeds. :hmm:


Uptime / Support / Price

In 3 years, there's been almost no downtime. Most months have 100% uptime. When there is downtime, it's usually for brief node maintenance, and customers are notified in advance. There have only been a few DDoS incidents, and those were mitigated fairly quickly. (From what I was told, the have some DDoS mitigation hardware.) In the past, there's also been some VPS abuse issues; it's OpenVZ, after all.

They've always paid attention, and took action during the WHMCS and SolusVM exploits in 2013. Quite a few hosts get caught with their pants down when it comes to 0-day type exploits!

Support has always been acceptably fast, with with response within 1 hour, and resolutions within 4 hours. (Unlike some hosts, they don't promise responses in X minutes, and then fail to deliver. Nor do they waste time with stupid replies. The issue is generally fixed the first time. That is, when there's even an issue!)

The VPS use OpenVZ virtualization. That VM method is okay, nothing special. OpenVZ isn't as good as Xen, KVM, VMware, and Hyper-V --- which, of course, costs more. (Also see if they have a newer vswap node, I'm not a fan of UBC. I've been meaning to ask this myself.)

They use Colo4, a decent datacenter in Dallas.

The price is fine to me. It's not unsustainably dirt cheap, and it's also not expensive. Fair price for a decent service.

The fact that I'm still with them should speak volumes about the host. :)


Conclusion

If you want an honest, no-nonsense host with good pricing and excellent uptime, use them. I do!

To date, I'd never written a proper review for Evolucix. So I went ahead and spent some time answering this question. They deserve a good review! (I plan to do another one, based on some exhaustive criteria, but it's good to be a while.)

So ... does that help answer your questions? :unsure:

KP,

They are offering me a deal for their service right now for a Dedi right now for $150
Core i7 2600
8GB RAM
120GB SSD
4TB Bandwidth
4 (or 8) IP Addresses
cPanel
-- $149/month (cost w/o cpanel license is $127)

Is this a good buy?

You need to:
(A) Use common sense
(B) Compare what they're offering with other hosts -- price, specs, support

I like Evolucix, and would not hesitate to use them for personal projects, or even secondary business needs. I've recycled my own VPS there several times -- testing panels, developing personal blogs, backup storage for a business server. Quite a few gamers use their VPS offerings (as those were always the node abusers). Small local businesses surely use their shared hosting. But I would not suggest them for a Fortune 500 company.

Right now, our dedicated servers all come from EuroVPS, Namecheap, WebhostingBuzz, and LiquidWeb. But price obviously is not our main concern.

4 IPs and cPanel makes it a tempting offer. That's at least $20 worth right there.

SSD may be tempting if the SSD is a good drive (Google it!). Is 120GB enough? I assume the SSD is SATA, not RAID.

Core i7 is a desktop CPU, which is surely why it's not costing ~$200. Xeons are server grade CPUs.

Don't be fooled by bandwidth numbers. Less than 1% need lots of bandwidth. You're not planning to start the next Youtube or Google are you? Probably not. 4TB is plenty. (I mentioned this because some hosts give 10TB or even unlimited, yet few people use more than 1TB.)

Do they include any management or priority support?

Overall, yes, right now the price does sound good. :congrats:

Hi all,

Sorry if I'm gravedigging but I stumbled across this review by chance and thought I might give a little update about myself and the reasons surrounding my leaving Evolucix, just to make sure that that isn't a deterrent for anyone thinking of using their stellar services.

My name is Shayan, and I was the co-founder + CEO of Evolucix for the better part of 4+ years (and the guy that KP spoke to in Dallas!). While hosting has always been Evolucix's bread and butter, during my stay as CEO we branched out into a wide variety of areas. At one point we were operating a (very) talented development team based in the US and Switzerland, building interesting side projects, and handling client contracts big and small. We helped set up/fund a hacker lounge at EPFL (The MIT equivalent in Europe) as well as a leg of a hackathon called the "International Space Apps Challenge". Honestly, we did a lot - and we were successful at it.

While in University, I got a number of opportunities due to my past experiences (Evolucix and otherwise) to explore quite a few very interesting industries (Healthcare, EduTech, Enterprise 2.0, etc.) and solve a variety of interesting problems. That's sort of where I am now - I'm a full time student, and part time consultant for companies that have interesting problems that need solving.

During the transition from CEO to, well, not-CEO - I had 3 priorities:
1) Identify a new CEO
2) Leave the company in a cashflow-positive state
3) Make the transition transparent to our clients, without being disruptive

Avish is the most capable CEO I could have ever asked for. Period. I have never met anyone so personally invested in building solutions for clients - so I knew Evolucix would be in very good hands when I left. I left Evolucix in a good financial state, and due in part to the success of the first two points, I feel that I hit the mark with regards to non-disruptive transparency to those that host with us. I still check in quite frequently, and have in fact been helping with support issues whenever Avish asks.

I hope this post sheds some light on the company history, and hopefully alleviates any bias surrounding the departure of a co-founder.

Nope, not gravedigging.

As I said several posts back, a lot of young (under 25) hosting owners move on with their life. It's not really unexpected. That's a time of turmoil for most young adults, with much change, and I certainly was no exception in those days. Most young-run hosts fail, and should have never been in business in the first place. (The internet is full of horror stories of disappearing kiddie/young hosts.)

However, that was not you. Your business beats the odds, and worked well. Evolucix was in good hands, and still is.

It's actually nice to see you on here again. I wish you well in your future endeavors. You impressed me, which is not easy to do. I'd enjoy hearing about your successful exploits from time to time, especially in regard to the healthcare-related industry, should you find yourself there one day.

Take care. I'm sure you'll go far in life. :)

PS - I'm not sure where the "bias" is, seeing as how this was a fairly glowing review. ;)