Afrihost ADSL = value for money

Afrihost ADSL = value for money

Afrihost recently introduced their now well publicised R29 / Gig ADSL plan for prepaid bandwidth.  As this is much much lower than the R49/ Gig that prepaid bulk bandwidth costs at WebAfrica, my ADSL provider for the last three years.

As I use lots of bandwith every month (40 – 50 GB) I sat up and took notice when the offer surfaced. It would save a lot of money each month, but then performance is also an important factor. I use and supply lots of local services, so local bandwith performance is as important to me as international performance.

There is thus good news and bad news with the ADSL bandwith that comes from Afrihost (via the IS network). Local traffic is noticibly slower (Click the orange graph) whereas international traffic is noticibly faster (Click the green graph).

Local TrafficTracerouting local sites hosted on Webafrica and Telkom ADSL show a significant increase in route hops, from typically 5 to over 10, and an increase of between 40ms to 70ms in ping times.  International ping times on the other hand is roughly 100ms quicker. This has been confirmed with multiple sites, using Nagios, Smokeping and PingPlotter.

International Traffic

For now I am willing to live with the slower local speeds, considering the cost saving, but will keep a WebAfrica account going for a dedicated VOIP link, as the performance of VOIP over Afrihost ADSL is simply not acceptable, due to the increased latency.

Some concerns remain, like the “there is nothing I can do about it” comment from the support guy when I asked him to amend my original order from 20GB/month to 50GB/month.  I guess I will really find out what their support is like when I get to need support.

Gian Visser, CEO of Afrihost has taken a bold step by introducing the below cost offer, and so far it seems to have paid off. Let’s hope it is sustainable without affecting the quality, else I suspect many new customers will reconsider the value for money attraction.

7 thoughts on “Afrihost ADSL = value for money

  1. Hi imel

    A Big Thanks for the review of our R29/GB ADSL offer.

    First of all let me say that I’m delighted to have you on board. It’s our aim to delight our clients with our product and service and If we ever fall short of your expectations please let me know and I’ll do my best to help you out.

    I’m also (obviously) delighted with the good news mentioned but (just as obviously!) disappointed about the bad news.

    I will follow up with IS regarding the difference in Local traffic speeds and ask them what plans they have (or will have!) to ensure faster local connectivity.

    Regarding the “there is nothing I can do about it” comment. My sincere apologies for this. We try and teach our team to go the extra mile in everything they do. While they get this right most of the time they clearly failed in this instance. To be honest we underestimated the excitement this offer would generate so our team has been putting in herculean effort to try and maintain the high support standards we attain to. However, no excuses – I’m sorry about this lapse and I personally take responsibility for it.

    Re: the upgrade: At this time our system does not allow upgrades in the last few days of the month due to billing issues. However, after receiving many comments such as yours we are now redeveloping this aspect so upgrades can be done at any time of the month.

    Thanks again for your post.

    If there’s anything further you need please let me know

    Gian Visser
    CEO, Afrihost

  2. Gian, any chance you will introduce an API that will allow me to monitor and graph my bandwidth usage on my own site, without having to log into the client zone?

    I got spoilt by webafrica’s extended api’s that allows me to monitor individual adsl lines sharing a single adsl account. This way I can keep better tabs on where all my bandwidth goes.

  3. We’ve got a myriad of things planned for the future and the API option has just been added to the list! I can’t promise you an exact delivery time (our first priority is to focus all our resources on our R29 product to make sure we get that 100% right) but we will definitely introduce it.

    I know that it is reflected based on individual adsl line in our Afrihost client management system but not sure just how much work it will be to create the APi’s. I’ll chat to our developers and let you know.

  4. @Gian – Afrihost
    Great, I could also find a lot of use for that API. Keep up the great work!

  5. Have been using afrihost ADSL for almost a month now, and can honestly say it has been rock solid throughout all this time. For those that have taken advantage of the special, great move. I personally have settled on 50GB / month.

    Well done Gian, your marketing endevours have certainly paid off big time. Looking forward to future innovations from afrihost!

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