Signing up with a dedicated server provider should be a painless experience. Unfortunately most of us know that this is not always the case and sometimes hiccups (both small and large) can occur.

I have now had two separate servers provisioned with SingleHop and have only come across one minor hiccup, which was trivial at best (but more on that later).

The SingleHop website is simple to navigate, straightforward and the cute little frog appeals to my sense of humor greatly (but that is the kind of twisted individual I am).

To be honest I can’t remember what the original “Server Customisation” screens looked and/or behaved like exactly, however I have looked at the new screens recently and they are far more advanced than the more primitive screens that were in use when I originally signed up, so it looks like SingleHop is already one up on me there.

The new screens are simple yet effective, especially when it comes to the selection of the management options for a new server which can initially seem complex due to the variety of options, however the new interface displays this in a format which I feel rivals the display and representation of the same information on the rest of the site.

Following the signup and verification processes, several emails are fired off including a link to the live provisioning details of your new server so you can keep tabs on the process. Following that the login details for LEAP (SingleHop’s Server Management and Support Console) are sent as well along with the server login details upon completion of the provisioning process.

The whole process from ordering until the server was released took less than 48 hours (only 3 days before Christmas no less) which was a blessing and it has since been reported on the SingleHop Blog that the provisioning of servers is now down to ~27 mins on average (from ~ 57 minutes) so the overall time may be even faster than the 48 hours turnaround now.

The only hiccup that I encountered during the provisioning process was that on the old ordering system I was not able to select to add an additional hard drive and had to request this manually in the LEAP support system however this was added within mere minutes of the initial provisioning so I was not overly concerned.

The sales staff were helpful, courteous and professional, especially when I was really pressing them about all the individual details of the server prior to ordering. Personally I could not have been happier with the process. Furthermore, with the new ordering system and the added flexibility and ease of server customisation, the process has only become easier.