I'm logging every complaint and what the host did about it — nine months, six providers

Every which-host-is-bulletproof thread on this board is a list of opinions about hosts nobody has recently tested. I'd like one that is a log instead.

The setup: I run six boxes across six providers, deliberately, and have done since November. Same content class on each — nothing illegal, nothing that attracts a court order, but the kind of thing that reliably generates form complaints from brand-protection outfits. Roughly comparable traffic on each.

What I will record, per complaint, for as long as I keep this up:

• the date
• which provider
• what the complainant was
• what the provider did: nothing, forwarded, forwarded with a deadline, suspended
• how long between the complaint arriving and me hearing about it

I am not going to name a winner in this post because I do not have one, and anybody who tells you they know the answer has not measured it either.

First tranche in a month or so. Post your own in the same shape if you have them and I will fold them in with attribution.

Finally. FWIW record the complainant's own turnaround too — some of these firms send three notices for one resource, and the host's response to the third differs from the first.

Six boxes at six providers is real money. Who's paying for this?

I am, and it is about a hundred and forty a month, which is less than I have wasted on worse experiments. Nobody has offered me anything and I would say so if they had.

Depends what you're running, but I'll say now that the result will be less differentiated than anyone expects. Most hosts do nothing about most complaints; the difference shows up on the tenth one, not the first.

Good thread. Anyway everybody will still ask which host is bulletproof next week.

I did a version of this in 2016 with four hosts and I'll save you a month: the variable that predicted everything was not the host's policy page, it was whether the host owned the hardware or resold somebody else's.

Resellers forward, because their upstream forwards to them and they have no room to do anything else. Owner-operators decide. Every DMCA-ignore shop that folded on me turned out to be reselling.

Worth capturing which of your six own their racks, because I suspect that's your whole finding and you'll get there in November instead of March.

First tranche. Five weeks, eleven complaints.

Date	Provider	Complaint	Provider action	Notified after
Feb 14	A (Sweden)	brand-protection form	nothing	never
Feb 17	B (NL, offshore tier)	brand-protection form	forwarded	4 days
Feb 19	C (Iceland)	brand-protection form	forwarded, no deadline	2 days
Feb 22	D (Seychelles-registered)	brand-protection form	nothing	never
Feb 26	E (US commercial)	brand-protection form	forwarded, 48h deadline	6 hours
Mar 02	E	second notice, same resource	suspended pending response	1 hour
Mar 05	B	second notice, same resource	forwarded, 7 day deadline	1 day
Mar 07	C	unrelated hosting-abuse report	forwarded	3 days
Mar 09	A	second notice, same resource	nothing	never
Mar 12	F (Romania)	brand-protection form	nothing	never
Mar 15	D	second notice, same resource	nothing	never

What is already clear

The US commercial host is not in the same category as the other five and I knew that going in; it is in the sample as a control and it is behaving like one. Six hours to first notice, and a suspension on the second complaint.

PipelineRat's point about second notices is the finding so far. B moved from a bare forward to a deadline on the second notice for the same resource. E went from a deadline to a suspension. A, D and F did not change behaviour at all, because their behaviour was nothing.

What is not clear

Whether A, D and F are ignoring these on policy or because eleven complaints in five weeks is beneath anyone's attention. I do not have volume yet. Ask me in July.

I am not naming them until I have more than one quarter, and I would rather people did not guess in the thread.

Why not name them? The whole value of this is knowing which one is A.

Because a five-week sample with a name attached becomes a recommendation on this board within a day, and I have watched that happen to worse data than mine.

November, with names.

He is right. A name attached to five weeks of data becomes a permanent claim on this board.

this is the best thread on here right now!!

I'll do the thing hexforge won't and put a name to the category, since I sell adjacent to this and people can weigh that how they like.

If your box is at the Swedish operator that's been doing this since before most of the board could drive, the nothing-never row is exactly what you're buying. They have been raided, sued, and had governments take an interest, and they are still answering the phone. That history is the product; the panel is dated, capacity is limited, and it starts around thirty euro a month, which is five or six times what the cheap tier costs.

I would not put a low-value redirector there. Depends what you're running — if the answer is something where a form email is the worst that will ever happen, you're overpaying enormously and one of the cheap Romanian or Seychelles boxes does the identical nothing for six euro.

Where it earns the money is the case nobody plans for: when the complaint stops being a form email and becomes a letter from a firm. Then you find out whether your host has done this before.

You've disclosed the interest, so — fine. Do you actually resell them, or is this a clean recommendation?

I don't resell them and I can't; they don't do reseller accounts, which is arguably part of the point.