Afrihost Uncapped Subscribers Feedback

I tried out Afrihost 384K Uncapped for a month, but got heavily throttled after
I reached 30GB (Speeds dropped from 40K to between 5K & 10K). That was
understandable, 30GB for R197 isn't a bad deal.

My issue with them was E-mail, I communicate with my sister a lot via E-mail.
For some reason, I could only send 1 Email per day to the same address!
If I tried to send another one, it would bounce!

I checked my mail settings, and everything was fine smtp.afrihost.co.za.

In hindsight, I should probably have used smtp.isdsl.co.za, but usually,
if outgoing mail server is incorrect, it says "Relay Access Denied", this
was a different Error Message.
 
There's 80pages of complaints, I hope no myBB readers are still signing up for this ridiculous service.
 
Totempole said:
I tried out Afrihost 384K Uncapped for a month, but got heavily throttled after
I reached 30GB (Speeds dropped from 40K to between 5K & 10K). That was
understandable, 30GB for R197 isn't a bad deal.

My issue with them was E-mail, I communicate with my sister a lot via E-mail.
For some reason, I could only send 1 Email per day to the same address!
If I tried to send another one, it would bounce!

I checked my mail settings, and everything was fine smtp.afrihost.co.za.

In hindsight, I should probably have used smtp.isdsl.co.za, but usually,
if outgoing mail server is incorrect, it says "Relay Access Denied", this
was a different Error Message.
Click to expand...

Gmail? :wtf:
 
Randhir said:
There's 80pages of complaints, I hope no myBB readers are still signing up for this ridiculous service.
Click to expand...

Well, here's one which isn't a complaint. I have a 4mb uncapped from Afrihost. I'm so happy with their product and service, I've moved my line rental over to them. Over 400kbps whenever I download anything. I couldn't ask for more. Thanks Afrihost for a first class product.
 
d7e7r7 said:
What I was saying is why don'y you use gmail?
Click to expand...

I use MS Outlook, and I've had this E-mail Address for 12 years now, changing it
isn't an option. I have Gmail and Hotmail accounts, but I just use them to sign
up for free stuff and not get spam in my main mailbox.
 
Strobemeister said:
Well, here's one which isn't a complaint. I have a 4mb uncapped from Afrihost. I'm so happy with their product and service, I've moved my line rental over to them. Over 400kbps whenever I download anything. I couldn't ask for more. Thanks Afrihost for a first class product.
Click to expand...

One person out of 100's. That's some good service. Well done on winning that lottery.
 
Totempole said:
I use MS Outlook, and I've had this E-mail Address for 12 years now, changing it
isn't an option. I have Gmail and Hotmail accounts, but I just use them to sign
up for free stuff and not get spam in my main mailbox.
Click to expand...

Why not use Gmail to send and receive your email then?
You can keep your current email but use Gmail to manage and send emails.
 
i just spoke to afrihost to upgrade my 10GB package to the uncapped one. i was told i could be throttled if i get into their top 20% of the heavy usage customers over a 10 day cycle. so in 1 cycle 20GB might be ok but in another i could be in the top20 and get throttle. he did not say to what speed and what their full criteria was. it looks like its at their discretion. everyone is talking about mweb. i have been on their thread here and read about some guys doing 60GB per month, no throttling!!!
 
I use a qnap server. Download 24/7.
Average 250gig per month on a 1mb line. Afrihost have an excellent uncapped service.
 
I don't think it's got anything to do with qnap. I use utorrent, and might d/l 80-100gb a month, though not every month. I've never noticed a deterioration in speeds.
 
I was throttled down to 384kbps at round about 50GB , and i remained throttled for ages (even past month end, so usage stats carries over regardless). I eventually moved over to Mweb just to get full speed again as Afrihost gave me no indication what exactly i must do to get "out of it" and it is pretty vague how you can avoid it in the future.

It was fine before the throttle came down though.
 
I used to have a Afrihost Uncapped account (384kb/s). My account started getting throttled and I contacted Afrihost via email to ask why my internet is so slow. I determined that because the throttling is determined on the average user's bandwidth usage; and if you go over about 10GB - 15GB per month (about 600MB per day), you get throttled. My usage was around 17GB - 19GB per month (about 650MB per day).
I upgraded my line and account to 1MB/s and immediately got throttling reduced/removed. On the 1MB/s uncapped account the average usage is 25GB - 35GB per month. Since getting the 1MB/s line beginning of Dec 2011, I used 22GB for Dec 2011, 19GB for Jan 2012 and 29GB for Feb 2012, with my internet speed still normally fast, though I am on a 3 star rating (found out by emailing Afrihost and asking them). Now imagine every uncapped user email Afrihost asking for their star ratings. Afrihost will take a year to answer all those emails.
But Afrihost uncapped is supplied by/through IS (Internet Solutions) and your usage/throttling is rated by IS with a star rating out of 5. The lower your star rating is, the less priority you receive.

Now, my problem about this is that neither Afrihost or IS give you any indication what your usage/star rating is. There is a link on Afrihost’s Clientzone that takes you to a IS website which indicates what your bandwidth usage and average is during the month, but it does not tell you what the average user's usage is or how near you are to being throttled. In fact, the “your total usage for the month” amount on Afrihost's Clientzone and on the IS Account History pages are different. How can this be? Thus, users have to guess and hope they do not exceed the average users' usage limit and risk being throttled.

Afrihost and/or IS should create a user panel where users can see:
a) what the average users' usage is (on their respective line speed/account speed, e.g. on 384kb/s, 1MB/s, 4MB/s, etc.),
b) what your own usage is,
c) your star rating and average users' star rating,
d) how far you are or if you are being throttled
e) how much you are being throttled.
 
CactusJack6942 said:
I used to have a Afrihost Uncapped account (384kb/s). My account started getting throttled and I contacted Afrihost via email to ask why my internet is so slow. I determined that because the throttling is determined on the average user's bandwidth usage; and if you go over about 10GB - 15GB per month (about 600MB per day), you get throttled. My usage was around 17GB - 19GB per month (about 650MB per day).
I upgraded my line and account to 1MB/s and immediately got throttling reduced/removed. On the 1MB/s uncapped account the average usage is 25GB - 35GB per month. Since getting the 1MB/s line beginning of Dec 2011, I used 22GB for Dec 2011, 19GB for Jan 2012 and 29GB for Feb 2012, with my internet speed still normally fast, though I am on a 3 star rating (found out by emailing Afrihost and asking them). Now imagine every uncapped user email Afrihost asking for their star ratings. Afrihost will take a year to answer all those emails.
But Afrihost uncapped is supplied by/through IS (Internet Solutions) and your usage/throttling is rated by IS with a star rating out of 5. The lower your star rating is, the less priority you receive.

Now, my problem about this is that neither Afrihost or IS give you any indication what your usage/star rating is. There is a link on Afrihost’s Clientzone that takes you to a IS website which indicates what your bandwidth usage and average is during the month, but it does not tell you what the average user's usage is or how near you are to being throttled. In fact, the “your total usage for the month” amount on Afrihost's Clientzone and on the IS Account History pages are different. How can this be? Thus, users have to guess and hope they do not exceed the average users' usage limit and risk being throttled.

Afrihost and/or IS should create a user panel where users can see:
a) what the average users' usage is (on their respective line speed/account speed, e.g. on 384kb/s, 1MB/s, 4MB/s, etc.),
b) what your own usage is,
c) your star rating and average users' star rating,
d) how far you are or if you are being throttled
e) how much you are being throttled.
Click to expand...

Yea, i agree, this is my main reason for moving over to Mweb also. The lack of visibilty and ability to manage this from a user perspective is not really acceptable for this product. So Afrihost got two choices (or IS for that matter, however Afrihost as the "last link" to client, should build in these tools),

a. Don't throttle at all and only investigate extreme usage cases . (Mweb seems to be like this). Assumption is the ISP have the infrastructure to handle this...

b. Have a very strict system in place (with clear laid down "rules") which users can monitor and plan down to exactly when is the best time to download what. (WebAfrica seems to be an example of this).

I'm personally not bothered with A or B as options , it all comes down to knowing your own usage patterns and what you get for it. I don't think a company can (or should) offer uncapped if they are not seriously offering either A or B .
 
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I'm dumping Afrihost uncapped as well - the uncapped works great when you're not throttled, but the idiotic mystery moving cap level has become too frustrating.

I don't mind too much that they apply a progressive throttle based on usage, but the fact that the level is a big secret means that there is no sensible way to manage your usage. Also, capping based on bands of top percentages of usage is dumb because it means that at any point in time, 20% of users will ALWAYS have a degraded experience, so if you're in the top 20% you will NEVER have decent bandwidth, regardless of whether it's a busy or quiet period.

Even worse, it looks like the top 5% has virtually no international throughput. I've downloaded 12GB in the last week or so as I had a few major software updates as well as some distro's to download, and now the connection is so throttled I can barely load a Google search - which is extremely frustrating as I was relying on this account to get some work done from home. So, lesson learned, the Afrihost (palmed off onto IS) uncapped offering is organised in such a way as to be unreliable, therefore, I will not be relying on it.

(BTW - I believe some big networks in America (Verizon?) tried exactly this model and they were instantly sued in a class action and forced to provide an explicit cap level. Wish consumers here were more militant!)
 
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I agree with garp above. 100% logical and true.

How is Mweb different though? I was shaped horribly with Mweb and then moved to Afrihost. Then got nailed over there and moved to Web Africa and haven't had issues. On average I download about 30 to 35 gb per month and max 50 gb month. Never gone higher than that and haven't got close to that very often. That's why I have always been confused about this '20%' story and 'high usage users' story of Afrihost and Mweb respectively. Am I really one of our country's heavy users if I am downloading 40 gb per month? I find that hard to believe and just feel like I am being taken advantage of since I am not receiving the service signed up for.
 
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