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Servlets.com | ISP Reviews

Reviews for ISP: Colossus

The following comments have been recorded for "Colossus".

Average Overall Score: 2.0
Average Features Score: 2.5
Average Reliability Score: 2.5
Average Support Score: 1.7

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A good ISP with an excellent service for both virtual host users and dedicated customers

Date: April 18, 2000
Reviewer: Sean Doherty
Reviewer site: http://blue2blue.com
Overall: 4 Features: 5 Reliability: 4 Support: 5

Colossus are a Linux shop so if you are looking for something else don't go there. Servlets and JSP's are supported on Apache with JServ and GNUJSP. We have been using them for a couple of years now. Starting with virtual server accounts and now we have our own dedicated machine. Colossus support it well and allow us to install our own JDK and to upgrade the JSP support. The recent addition of mySQL as well as mSQL for dedicated customers is most welcome.

broken JSP, servlet classpath, weird support

Date: April 22, 2000
Reviewer: Tom Ritchford (tom@swirly.com)
Reviewer site: http://cliktrik.com
Overall: 1 Features: 2 Reliability: 4 Support: 1

I signed on there to discover that they only support JSP 0.91, which is rather a drag. They were supposed to upgrade at the start of the year but there is still no date or indication. Running even simple examples from the servlet and JSP toolkits led me to see that they didn't have their servlet class path configured correctly, so any JSP demo that referred to any other class would fail. After a lot of wrangling they changed the config file for ONE of my domains but the others never got changed (I never followed it up because I only needed it in the one domain). Yesterday, one of our programmers changed the .rhosts file on one of the domains, so that we could use the source control system CVS. Colossus locked out the account without any warning and without any notification, accusing us of "doing something evil"! There's nothing at all on their site regarding .rhosts being untouchable. If they don't want people running rsh, don't run rshd. If you don't want me changing .rhosts then own it yourself. When I complained, they gave me 30 days to vacate the account! BOTTOM LINE: they don't really support servlets and JSP and they are rather high-handed too. NOTE: they weren't able to show me any working servlets or JSP pages on their site when I was arguing with them about classpaths. If you want to run servlets and JSP, ask for a demo first. In fairness, their user interface, "the brain", is pretty good, and they did offer to let me make all the changes I liked if I upgraded to a dedicated server (which, however, would have cost some three times as much as their "senior account", advertised as having JSP and servlets...)

Good ISP for low to average Java needs

Date: July 21, 2000
Reviewer: JC
Overall: 3 Features: 4 Reliability: 3 Support: 1

This is a good hosting service if you're aware of how to do everything on your own. Their customer support does return emails within 24 hours, however, the response is usually "find it on the net" or "upgrade to a colocated server to do that". I have been unable to tie a JSP file to bean or class because they won't change the classpath for you. I've also been unable to make a standard function within JSP work. Even ones used in tutorials! Again, a good site if you have low expectations or needs from a Java enabled site.

The hosting firm still uses jdk1.1.7, truely sad...

Date: April 26, 2001
Reviewer: mike smith
Overall: 2 Features: 2 Reliability: 1 Support: 1

The service is slow and the server I was on crashed twice in a 30 day period...

Colossus servlet support is a joke!

Date: May 1, 2001
Reviewer: Tom Hj
Overall: 1 Features: 1 Reliability: 2 Support: 1

Don't bother trying Colossus if you need: a) JDK1.2 support (they only support 1.1.7) b) to set any initArgs c) to set any servlet aliases d) use any JAR files as part of your servlet. They properly setup your domain with your own JServ servlet zone and even put a symbolic link to the zone configuration file in your servlets directory -- but you don't have write access to it and they won't change it for you. They insist that would require a dedicated server (which costs several hundred $'s per month for just a pitiful 75MHz machine).

I'm dumping Colossus

Date: January 18, 2006
Reviewer: Jon Fairhurst
Overall: 1 Features: 1 Reliability: 1 Support: 1

I've used Colossus for years now, even though there are much better deals for multiple domains with servlets.

Unfortunately, their service has completely tanked recently. They must have lost their core technical people. I get only rare responses to e-mail, there's no phone to call, and they don't have the skills to even set up a domain, when their automatic tools fail.

I've been gracious in my e-mails to them. Shortly, they will get a gracious good bye.

-JF

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