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Review by RayW 
UPDATED: 1.3 years ago
member for 8.2 years, 3633 visits, last login: 7 days ago
 Layton,Davis,UT
 $50 per month (12 month contract)
 about 11 days
 Qwest
 "It works like 1.5/1 meg should (yes, I have the old upload speed still)"
 "It is 1.5/1 (but that is a Qwest limit) and a static IP"
 "Been good for the last year, just minor blips"
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Update 07AUG2008 : For 1 year my cost for Xmission is now $168/yr and qwest is listed at $25/month not including taxes, fees and unfees. Not sure what my cap is, it is not clearly posted anymore on the open site anymore, but it is looks like 100 GB total from my usage page. My usage pattern has me charged for 1/3 of total usage, so I have lots of head room, even with a teen on youtube and anime sites. Qwest has been better this cycle for long outages than in previous years.
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Update 28OCT2007 : For 1 year my cost for Xmission was about $130/yr, but has jumped to a bit over $140/year. Total transfer cap is now 100 GB (both up and down) but that is still only during weekdays from 7 a.m. - midnight.
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UPDATE 11OCT2003 : Still recommend this ISP to those who need one and do not need an AOL like environment. The only gripe I have is that they are not visibly pushing Qwest to give better service, but then I suppose that given some of the horror stories I hear about other ISP/telco situations, I should not complain much. 12 G up and 12G down a month is plenty at this time, even with the active web page I have. Price was still $102/6 months at last renewal.
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UPDATE 10Feb2003 : Still doing fine, most of the problems they jumped on right away. The only two big complaints were when the newsgroups went down for several days and there was a major problem with connections for a significant time, there was no update on what was going on. Other than that, they now give a free lunch on Bandwidth at night and on weekends.
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Static IP, DMT, Cisco 678 into a network with Win98/Linux/Win2000, 640/256 connection, $32 to Qwest/$18 to Xmission
Transfered from Burgoyne about 3 weeks ago. So far I have a better connection for HTTP, PING/TRACERT, FTP, POP3, and SMTP, and a live body answers the phone and checks the line when I have a problem after 2100 (or there is a message on the recording saying there is a problem). Most downloads now come in at around 50-72 KB/s instead of 30-40 KB/s.
Install coordination was marked low because I did all the leg work, but was not marked 1 because everything was in place when Qwest FINALLY got the line shifted a day late. Mybe it should be higher, but...
Web page for those who want to do that stuff is easy to do, the only bad thing is that the default webpage has your email all over it. So I edited the files and replaced them. Piece of cake with WSFTP and Netscape edit.
There are some easy to use Xmission addressed proxy servers available that seem to work fine for most normal operations.
I find that most tech calls are bordering on brusque (but that could be because they assume you know what you are doing). However the one time that I could not logon to Xmission the tech walked through the checks verbally, verified that he could see the 678, and was professional. When I said I would go research my end again, he said call back if I needed more help (turned out to be a M$ problem from the bug fix applied the previous session).
The only thing I am currently worried about is that twice now I have had an outage where I could not get to DSLR or www.wrh.noaa.gov (for example), but other sites were accessable.
And of course it does not hurt that some of the staff prowl about on DSLR forums either  and they increased the transfer limit for those who are hungry.
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 Review by CocoaVanilla
Posted: 1.4 years ago
member for 1.6 years, 287 visits, last login: 146 days ago
Tucson,Pima,AZ
$50 per month (month by month)
about 3 days
Qwest
"Great pre-sales and tech support, low pricing on IPs, reliable"
"Ping times on regional services (via Mammoth Networks) high"
"Probably great for Utah based on other reviews. Avoid regional services."
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I switched to XMission about a week ago in Arizona, because of their new regional product offering through Mammoth Networks. Unfortunately, the ping times are too high (versus what I got with Qwest.net) so I've had to switch back to Qwest.net, which sucks because, for one, their support is great and their IP pricing is very low ($7.50 for a block of IPs that Qwest charges $14.95 for, and $10 for a block that Qwest charges $29.95 for).
Reading the other reviews it would appear the service is decent in Utah. I wouldn't hesitate to use them in Utah, or for their other offerings (say Web hosting or email hosting). But I'd avoid the regional services.
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Review by Thad
Posted: 2.2 years ago
member for 2.5 years, 11 visits, last login: 310 days ago
Grantsville,Tooele,UT
$60 per month (month by month)
about 7 days
Qwest
"Best support anywhere"
"qworst"
"xmission is the greatest"
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I have used xmission for webhosting and dsl service for companies I work for for years and now I moved to a place where I can get fast dsl. I recommend calling xmission initially and letting them order the dsl from qwest it saves a tremendous hassle of not having to deal with qwest. So far the three lines I set up with qwest first asking them to set xmission as my isp qwest screwed up. The two lines set up through xmission worked flawlessly. The xmission techs are amazing. They have helped me with obscure problems on several occasions. The connection is very fast dsl 5948/752 latest test. I recommend xmission without hesitation.
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Review by maddox_xm
Posted: 2.7 years ago
member for 2.7 years, 1 visits, last login: 2.4 years ago
Salt Lake City,Salt Lake,UT
$19 per month (month by month)
about 2 days
Qwest
"Unparalleled customer service run by smart people."
"None"
"Best ISP in the Universe--seriously."
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I've been an Xmission customer since 1995. I signed on with the ISP because a few of my friends worked there, and it had a good buzz in the old Utah BBS scene. Xmission is a unique ISP because they go out of their way to offer you services that few other companies offer. For example, one of the big reasons I've stuck with Xmission over these years is because they offer shell support, 24-hour tech support over IRC/phone, Xmission gaming servers, and they even offer a tech support over holidays in case of emergencies. I do most of my work through my shell account, and having full access to everything from cron jobs to command-line perl, a God-send for people who are familiar with Linux/Unix.
Even if you're not a nerd and don't know what Linux is, Xmission provides unparalleled customer service. Every time there's a problem or even a potential problem, Xmission sends out a notice to let you know what the problem is, what they're doing to fix it, how long it will take to get the problem fixed, and what they will do to prevent the problem in the future. I trust my data with Xmission more than I do on my hard drive. Xmission offers multiple layers of redundancy, including full daily backups of their systems, multiple name servers, full access to server logs, access logs, bandwidth graphs, etc.
Best of all though, are the people who work at Xmission. You're dealing with some of the friendliest, brightest, and most down-to-earth people in the entire industry. I know this sounds like a gushing advertisement, but it's true. You don't have to take my word for it, just hop on ircd.xmission.com and join #xmlounge to feel them out. Everyone at Xmission really knows what they're doing, and they bend over backwards to take care of you. What more is that Xmission's founder, Pete Ashdown, is a stalwart champion of free speech and consumer rights. Pete actively works to make downtown Salt Lake City a better place by providing free wifi Internet access at a number of popular locations including the Salt Lake City Library, A Cup of Joe, Thaifoon, Salt Lake Roasting Company, Main Street, the library in Sugar House, The Bayou, Fiddler's Elbow, The Coffee Garden, etc, just to name a few. Most giant telco monopolies charge $10/day for crappy wifi service at coffee shops (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile just to name a few), yet Xmission provides this service for free.
I also happen to have a popular website hosted with Xmission called "The Best Page in the Universe." Back in 2002, my site blew up and received millions of hits almost overnight. Rather than let the site languish under all the server stress, Xmission promptly and efficiently moved my site to another server that could handle all the traffic. They configured the server settings, and even helped migrate some of my scripts to work with the new OS.
I've recently had to start using another ISP because I do a lot of work outside of Utah, but I continue to pay for Xmission because I think it's worth it. I've dealt with Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner (Road Runner), and MSN, and all of them pale in comparison with what you get from Xmission. The only weak link is having to use Qwest for DSL, unless you're in a Utopia service area, but Xmission's techs are very savvy and can pinpoint any problems that may arise without playing the blame game. They just want to help you get connected and nothing else. I paid for 7 megs through Qwest, and usually tested at about 6.5 on speedtest.xmission.com. I had another account with 7 megs and it was a bit slower, but I think it was a line quality issue since both accounts were within one block of each other in downtown Salt Lake. In general, you should never have to worry about uptime and outages with Xmission. In over 11 years of service, I can only recall about 3-4 significant outages, and those only lasted a few hours at a time.
Give them a try, you'll love it. Then spread the word! That's how people learn about these things...
-Maddox
Followup comments:  
woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT | To this day... ...when I tell someone out of state that I work at a place called XMission, they usually say "Oh, do you work with Maddox?"
Thanks for the support! | |
| 
bodiddley
@xmission.com
| YES! YES! YES! I cannot say enough good about Xmission. They truly are some of the most knowledgeable industry experts- and they have always made me feel SO comfortable in approaching them with any needs for mine or clients' websites. I can't believe how liberal they are allowing all types of scripts within your account- I've done some of the strangest things as workaronds for clients- and xmission tech experts have gone FAR FAR FAR beyond what they need to do when I have a problem with a script working. Very few times, I've needed to ask them to check for permissions on a site- to allow certain scripts to run, but even more often, they've helped me troubleshoot issues WITHINT THE SCRIPTS THEMSELVES- something that they really need not do, as if I have a faulty script, it should be my problem and my problem alone. I feel that I know enough to really be dangerous...(I'm still a newbie at some of the heavy-duty scripting) and xmission is ALWAYS there and ALWAYS willing to help- they've really made things easy.
I have a client who, unfortunately, is listening to some so-called marketing "experts" who keep recommending other hosts, as they may be slightly cheaper- but the trouble I've had in trying to keep this client's web functions working are not worth any savings, compared to what xmission has done for us in the past.
I've been with xmission since roughly 1996 (I think) and will never leave- for anything - there are some cheaper plans out there, but it means so much headache. My only issues with the upgrade to broadband have been with Qwest service... xmission is here to stay, and I really really wish we could have elected Pete Ashdown here in Salt Lake City... I love the feeling I get from xmission as a company- which means it's inspired from Pete... I think the same could have been translated to political office! | |
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RedDelPaPa
@wattscomputers.net
|  Xmission is the best ISP west of the Mississippi, hands down
As others have mentioned, their "only" weak link I have experienced in their ugly bondage to Qwest for DSL service. I'd like to see Xmission break away from them and run their own phone line service too. I'd abandon the Qwest ship in a heartbeat. | |
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Review by Nick125
Posted: 3 years ago
member for 5.7 years, 141 visits, last login: 27 days ago
Albuquerque,Bernalillo,NM
$52 per month
about 5 days
Qwest
CLEC party: Qwest
"Great support (telephone + IRC), reliable"
"Qwest"
"A great ISP"
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I placed an order with XMission on November 6th, 2006, with an activation date of November 10th, 2006 after 5PM. November 10th comes, and, after 5PM, the line is still syncing with my old ISP. Huh. I talk to a few techs in their IRC support channel, and they say according to Qwest's database, the line is active. I call up Qwest, and, they state the same thing. Around 9PM, a few people from Xmission said that I should probably call up my old ISP, Speakeasy, and see if they have received a disconnection notice from Qwest. I call them up, and, they say they never receive disconnection notices, and that I would have to cancel the line. So I did. The line finally went dead around 11PM, and, now I had no sync at all. I call Qwest back up, and, they have the CO check up on something. Finally, they figure out that I was plugged into the wrong port and they would have to rewire it to the correct port, and that could take up to 24 hours, but, they had people working on it. I decide to call back up around 2am and they say that the CO is closed, and, that it should be fixed when the techs get there at 8am. I get up at 8:30am, and call Qwest, to see the status on the order. Oops. The representative at 2am never put the ticket in for the tech to fix the line. This rep called up the CO and had the guy paged to work on it. After that, around 9:30am, the line became active and synced with Qwest. 5 minutes later, the guy from Qwest I talked to earlier called me and told me they had fixed the line. Finally. It took five minutes of fooling around with the modem (an Actiontec GT704, a modem that I already had, and, I didn't feel I should have to get *another* one. Besides, I've already got 5 DSL modems laying around.) to get the thing to authenticate with Xmission. It's all been good so far! I decided to order the 8 additional IPs package from Xmission, which gave me 5 usable IP addresses. It's only $7.50 more, which brings the total of the Xmission part of the bill to $24.50.
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Review by J1ngo
Posted: 3.2 years ago
member for 3.4 years, 57 visits, last login: 2.4 years ago
Mapleton,Utah,UT
$38 per month (month by month)
about 2 days
Qwest
"Ping and Packet loss much lower than I had with qwest"
"I didn't even know I could get them. Plus, Qwest is in the way"
"Solid for gamers in Utah not happy with Qwest"
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OK, so I'm an avid Xbox gamer, and was completely unsatisfied with my 120+ ping, as well as getting only 16/25 of my packets when testing my xbox's connection. As soon as I got Xmission my pings dropped to 50-70 ms and my packet loss became non-existant. The only problem I had was having to figure out on my own if I could switch from Qwest to Ximssion.
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Review by brmasha
UPDATED: 3.3 years ago
member for 9.5 years, 1362 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Logan,Cache,UT
$50 per month (month by month)
about 5 days
Qwest
CLEC party: Qwest
"Price, reliablility, tech support"
"Sales dept. is so-so"
"best ISP in Utah"
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Update: 08/03/2006
I am still with Xmission the service is still rock solid. I upgraded from 1.5/1 to 5/896 and it's been great. The thing I like about Xmission is they keep you informed if anything does happen to the network. You get an email describing the problem and the solution. I am a happy customer.
____________________________
Original Review
Xmission has been around for a long time in Utah. I have been very impressed with their service. They simply know what their doing.
Originally I went with qwest.net as my ISP because they let you use PPPoE (instead of PPPoA), but then an Xmission employee that posts in the qwest/uswest forum claimed they did too. This wasn't listed on their website, but he comfirmed it so I switched to Xmission.
The price is $17 a month including a static IP. (I pay qwest $33) They allow 100gig of transfer during the daytime hours, unlimited at night/weekend and the price stays the same no matter what speed you qualify for. 1.5m, 3m, 5m, or 7m
Overall I have been impressed and have referred a bunch of people since I switched.
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Review by mkat
Posted: 3.8 years ago
member for 4 years, 38 visits, last login: 2.3 years ago
Salt Lake City,Salt Lake,UT
$19 per month
about 4 days
Qwest
CLEC party: Qwest
"Incredibly reliable (Connection and speed), Extremely helpful staff, Great pricing."
"Qwest sucks. I wish we lived in a world where the telco's didn't own the lines."
"Great value, Great connection, Hands down BEST ISP."
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I'm not going to go into complete detail about the install and everything. I have a post on the xmission forum that you can read for that. Long story short, Qwest messed up and eventually fixed it. I didn't ding xmission for Qwest's error.
So here it is almost 2 months since I had the service installed. I've not had a more reliable connection to the internet since before Comcast was TCI. I never have the issues I used to have with Comcast. No more monthly and sometimes bi-weekly DNS issues, no more slow speeds during peak times, and the only times I've had to reset my modem were when Qwest messed up the account. Not Xmission's issues.
To briefly summarize my forum post, Qwest screwed up the install. Once Qwest fixed their problem, I was able to call Xmission and get the info to connect to them. Within a minute of calling them (I timed it!) I was on Xmission. It was slightly faster than the temp Qwest account I was using. I can't explain it, but it just was.
There have only been a couple times I've had to call tech support. Once to set up the dsl modem Qwest sent me (the Actiontec 701?) and another time to help configure a Cisco dsl modem I had received from a friend. Xmission is right downtown, so they said to bring the Cisco down to them and they'd configure it right there in the office. But ended up going back to the Actiontec modem because of a bad power supply on the Cisco.
With xmission, you get a static IP. Great for people who need to connect to their systems at home for any reason. I use remote desktop a lot away from home. Never lost the connection like I would with other ISP's. I was even brave enough to get my own domain to use with my static IP. Couple extra bucks a month to have them point it to my machine and to point it to anywhere else on the internet (home. to my home computer, www. to a server, etc etc...). Well worth it IMO.
You get this awesome stats page that gives you all the info you need on your account. From how much space is left in your mailbox to how much you paid last month. Even tells you of planned maintenance. You can access this page from anywhere in the world as long as you have your login info.
So here's the part that a lot of people don't like. 100gb transfer limit a month. So far, I havn't even come close to hitting the limit. And I'm the type of person that will transfer a lot of data. I have multiple .torrents going, connections to work when I telecommute, files going back and forth between work and home, streaming video and audio that will be left on for days at a time, tons of gaming from my computer, PS2 and xbox and I'm not the only one using the connection at home. There's 3 other heavy internet users in the house. Combined, the max we've hit has been around 30gb for a month. There's pleanty of headroom. Of course, you could also say it's because I'm only able to get a 1500/768 line from Qwest because of how far I am from the CO. But I believe that even if I had a faster connection, I would not hit the 100gb limit. I don't take away any points from Xmission for their limit.
I only wish that I didn't have to access xmission over Qwest's lines. There have been 3 problems since I've had the service activated and all of them were Qwest's fault. Wrong account setup, line problem and a "wrong key pressed" by a service tech. Yes. Those were the exact words from the beast. A person servicing the CO had pressed a wrong key and caused a small outage for a little bit. In all 3 of these issues, xmission was never called because the problem was found to be on Qwest's end.
I highly recommend Xmission if you're able to get the service. You could even switch over for a month and give them a try because there are no contracts to use the service. You could pay month to month, 6 months or even a year. I think they might even have 3 months as well but don't quote me on that one. But give Xmission a try yourself and see what you think. Everyone in my house is extremely satisfied with the service.
I know that YMMV with Comcast or other ISP's and if you're happy with them then more power to you. Try this, load up the BBR front page once a day for a week. Is there a day where you don't see a Comcast entry under the Unhappy Campers list?
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 Review by utahusker
Posted: 4.3 years ago
member for 9.2 years, 960 visits, last login: 114 days ago
Saint George,Washington,UT
$19 per month
about 1 days
Qwest
"Excellent tech support and customer service."
"None"
"Many useful tools for the knowledgable, and new user regardless of the operating system you choose to run."
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I ordered the 7mb/896kb line from Qwest on 6-26-05 for $38 minus $5 disount per month with no contract. On 7-5 I recieved a call from Qwest stating that my service was ready for the isp to install.
I called Xmission to get hooked up and they stated they didn't have an order, but set up my account so I could activate it when needed. Qwest apparently sent the order to the wrong provider.
On 7-6 I called a few times to Qwest till they finally got my line provisioned to Xmission the same day, which is impressive.
At 6:30 pm I made a call to Xmission's tech support (two rings till answer) to set up my account. The tech was very KNOWLEDGIBLE and freindly, helping me setup my Cisco 678. He walked me through the command line setup via communication cable to activate NAT, DHCP etc.
Xmission's service includes 1 static ip, 3 email accounts, shell account, user configureable Spam Assasin filters, ftp server, and 100mb web storage. They limit your downloads to 100gb a month not including weekends. This does not impact me at all, but for some it might be a problem. This is why I dinged them one point on services.
I am presently getting 6500+kb downloads, and 775 kb uploads after doing some rwin tweaks.
All in all, Xmission is the best isp I have ever used, bar none.
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Review by mrmcgibby
Posted: 5.3 years ago
member for 5.3 years, 0 visits, last login: 5.3 years ago
Woods Cross,Davis,UT
$38 per month (month by month)
"geek friendly, amazing terms of service (really)"
"available only in utah (and some of idaho, wyoming)"
"Awesome. Highly recommend"
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I have friend who was a customer of XMission, and then moved to New York. He is simply unable to find an ISP that provides the kind of service that XMission does without paying over $100 a month.
They just recently send me a kindly update that not only were they raising the download cap by 80% for nothing, but that they created a no-frills DSL account for only $12 a month (not including telco stuff). No frills just means, a static IP and a connection to the internet. None of the shell access, web space, or any of that stuff that I don't really use anyway. It's a great deal. With telco charges, that will be $38 a month for high speed internet access.
XMISSION IS AWESOME!!!
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XMission
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