So You Want To Bail On TextDrive

There’s been a bit of sound and fury of late regarding TextDrive, the little web host that couldn’t. I’ve posted about my experiences with TextDrive before and have recieved some email about it, so I’ll recap.

I really wanted to like TextDrive. They put themselves out there as a community-funded host for people who care about web publishing. They offered innovative new technologies and donated part of their profits to open source projects. They seemed like good guys, and lifetime hosting for $399 is a pretty sweet deal. I bought in.

They didn’t deliver. Servers were constantly down. The same cutting-edge technologies they touted were the constant scapegoat for their administrative incompetence. I hesitate to use language like that, but when your setup is such that any user on a shared host can bring down the entire web server just by deleting a file in their home directory, maybe it’s time to, y’know, fix that. It’s a computer. It’s Turing complete. It can do anything, including work most of the time if you tell it to. Anyway.

I got sick of friends and strangers always asking why my blog was down. Despite TextDrive’s stated “no refunds” policy, I asked, politely but directly, for a pro-rated portion of my money back, less my open source project donation. I dealt with Dean Allen, and he was curt but not rude. I received $199 of my $399, which was acceptible given the duration of service I’d received. If you want your money back, it can be done.

What’s odd about TextDrive is the loyalists. It reminds me of the people who stuck with Apple during the dark days of Systems 8 and 9: they have to know, deep down, that they’re using an inferior product, but they like the company ethos so much that they’re willing to ignore the obvious suck. Read through the forums and feel the righteous zeal. It’s just web hosting, kids.

Mind, I’m not happy that TextDrive is being panned all up and down the streets of sunny Blogton. I think they’re well-intentioned but overwhelmed and out of their league. I hope they get sorted, or at least that somebody gleans what’s good from their operation and does it right.