LinkXS – The Toronto Business Reviews and Networking Website

Review: LunarPages.com

Alright so here we have Lunarpages.com, an up and coming web hosting company that has been in the industry for a few years but is really starting to look like they’re taking off…. to the “moon”, hahaha…… you know you love it!

Business Name: LunarPages
Industry: Web Hosting Company
Website: www.Lunarpages.com
Reviewed by: James Manuel (LinkXS.com)

Services:
Good good good. NEXT! no but seariously, they’re services are spot-on; they boast pretty solid prices vs big name competitors such as GoDaddy, 1and1 (who we’ll be reviewing shortly).

Their services are pretty standard for a host; shared, reseller, dedicated servers and web design through their affiliates/partners. They’re running on both Windows and Linux OS, but only Linux for their shared accounts it seems – which is fine by me! Linux and CentOS are probably the best hosting platform OS around.

Quality of Service:
Pretty solid! Nill downtime, very comprehensive control panel and not too comprehensive that techies such as myself get frustrated because they tried to make it extremely user friendly. I absolutely hate when companies create control panels trying to make them VERY easy to use for the average idiot, and in doing so made it difficult as hell for non-technically challenged people – for example, I find GoDaddy’s control panel to be about as easy as flying a jet blindfolded through the Grand Canyon.

What’s somewhat annoying about their services is that you can’t upgrade small area’s of your packages. For example if you wanted a basic plan but with twice (2x) as many email accounts they won’t have it! You need to actually upgrade to the business plan, which has a load of features you don’t even need – I JUST want the extra emails and that’s it!

Customer Service:
Ahhh customer service, the absolute foundation of any web hosting company; without this you might as well close up shop and start selling hotdogs on the street – to any of you up and coming web hosting providers. I do find their customer service to be very helpful and completely flexible, although the one problem I had was their responsiveness. I’m VERY particular about quick responsiveness and it seems it would take them an average of about 5-8 hours to respond to any ticket I submited, and often more. I think if you have a ticketing system you should respond within the hour, but that’s just me!

Aside from their ticketing system I’m actually not too impressed with their plan-based customer support. For example if you have the basic level plan you don’t get phone support. I know some companies do this, and I think its discusting, I mean I understand incentive to upgrade but if you’re going to do this then at LEAST provide timely ticket support responses. Its like they’re basically running an internet hosting Titanic, where half of their customers are sitting in the lower levels getting sub-par support, while their first class customers are laughing it up sipping champaign. Oh well, I guess that’s how the world works!

Summary:
Good service (9/10), pretty good customer support (7.5/10), very good affiliate program (10/10). So give them a try and let us know what your experience was like – I’m sure it will be a good one!

- James Manuel (LinkXS.com)

Review: 2Checkout.com

First of all let me introduce myself. I see Mark previously didnt do so and it’s quite rude I must say! geez. My name is Adam Evans, I’m the Managing Director of LinkXS.com and C.E.O of Evolve Thought | Media Group. I work along side a team of consumers, editors and content writers to bring you this unbias (as much as possible!) business review website.

SO lets get the ball rollin’!

Business Name: 2CO (2Checkout.com)
Industry: Online Payment Processor and Reseller
Website: www.2checkout.com
Reviewed by: Adam Evans (LinkXS.com)

Services:
These guys are basically big players in the resale of tangible or digital products accross the fabulous world we call the internet. When I say big fish I mean over 1.6 million products type of big, so what’s that like? a mid sized whale?… hmm… ok I’m getting off topic here, back to it! They offer an online shop which vendors may have their products listed in addition to their own websites. Basically if you are purchasing an eBook or a Car Stereo you may end up checking out through 2CO – much like you would with the wider known Amazon.

Quality of Service:
From what I gather it looks good! They have a clean easy to use website, trust worthy name, google page rank and HTTPS secure checkouts up the ying yang. I have personally used their service without concern or a sweat.

Customer Service:
Here’s where I must say I was pleased. Recently there was some confusion (perhaps on my part) with checking out through an affiliate companies online store. Needless to say there was a double charge made through 2CO and get this…. ready for it?….. It was resolved within a couple hours! One of the charges was almost immediately refunded. No 3-5 day wait time with a ticketing and billing system and blah blah blah. Their customer service opened one of those scary tickets which often take years to close, and actually did something about it.

I find Paypal and may other companies often sit on their hands while spinning in their office chairs seeing who can get the “mostest dizziest” rather than solving my problems, but these guys were spot on proper.

Summary:
If you guys at 2CO are reading this; and I know you will because you’re going to hear from us… Give yourselves a virtual pat on the back, or facebook poke, or whatever you call it. Great customer experience on my end and based on that I can only assume your vendor experience is just as enjoyable.

- Adam Evans (LinkXS.com)

Review: BHS Web Design

Alright so we got ourselves another web design company in Toronto, ON Canada.

Business Name: BHS Web Design
Industry: Website Design
Website: www.BHSWebDesign.com
Reviewed by: Mark Stevens (LinkXS.com)

Services:
Looking at their website the first impression you get is “not another web biz” but I’m afraid its in fact much more than that my little ducklings, BHS Web Design is quite the little business I must say. Their portfolio looks solid and their responsiveness was impressive; what else could you ask for from a web designer anyways?

Quality of Work:
Just look at what they’re showing! Its some good stuff. No skimping on the design style and very clean professional stuff.

Customer Service:
We at LinkXS.com tend to dabble in some undercover work and investigate the client interation with various companies. I gotta say that these guys held it together nicely; they got back to me within an hour! Answering all my questions (as stupid as they were) without any issue.

Summary:
I would personally recommend getting at least a quote from these guys. I’m not 100% on their programming abilities because their portfolio only showed me some visuals, but on the whole they seem pretty solid. Additionally their website appears to have a reletively trust worthy PR and that’s always good in my books. But don’t take my word for it – Give them a try and report back to us with your feedback – as always we’d be more than happy to do a follow up to this review.

- Mark Stevens (LinkXS.com)