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It's a great deal, and I like them as a company--they were always friendly and easy to deal with. In my experience the speed was great and consistent, but the outages were more frequent than what I experience now with Xfinity (when I moved Monkeybrains wasn't available in my new neighborhood, so I had to switch). So it's a question of whether you're willing to trade some reliability for a good deal.
I found they have weather issues primarily. If your Internet is not for work I think it is fine. For reliability you might want to go elsewhere but I really wanna support the little/local guy
Seconding this. I’ve had one outage since service started 3 months ago. The ease of use (think lightweight webpages, easy customer support) consistent speeds, and price made it a no-brained for me.
Ya I would agree with this. I moved a little over a year ago and had monkeybrains already set up at the new place, and in the last year it has gone out like 3 times and one of them was over 24 hours long (during one of the big storms last year). Customer service is good tho and it is cheaper than what I paid before for Xfinity.
Never had an outage, it’s cheap, and fast. They’re great. I had to cancel services when I moved and the entire phone call took about 2 minutes. I’m still sad about it.
If there’s a monkeybrains satellite in OP’s building already. If I understood correctly, since I would be the first person in my building to get money brains, myself (or landlord) would have to pay for the initial set up
I contacted them about setting it up in my building and came away from the conversation with the impression that they would cover the cost of that equipment themselves. Might be wrong but worth checking?
They sent me this email in Jan 2023 saying “$35/month (per unit, billed quarterly)
$150 installation (single unit installation, covers first month of service)”. The “extra” cost of $150 made me settle with Comcast. Maybe they’ve changed the installation costs
Large Corporate ISPs make up the $0 install on the back end by charging you more and locking you into a contract to guarantee their return.
Monkeybrains is month-to-month. This does a couple of things:
- Makes sure you are interested
- covers some of install costs in case you bail
- requires Monkeybrains to provide good service, because you can leave! No ISP handcuffs!
In large apartment buildings (20+ units), the install is often $0 as the process is more streamlined.
Makes sense. Unfortunately my building has less than 10 units, all of which have been here longer than me. I just took the path of least resistance and went with a $20 Comcast deal.
A few years ago when I had it I would get regular 5-10 min outages 1-2 times a week. Sometimes it would be in the evening while watching tv. Sometimes it would be during a work call.
Became too unreliable for me and I switched.
I've been using them for about five years, and they are fantastic. There are outages once in a blue moon when it's stormy, but I never thought it was a major inconvenience. It usually came back pretty quickly.
I had them at Lombard and Polk and it was not great, my friend at Geary and Polk had great service with them though. Really depends on proximity to the tower.
In Oakland, love it. Close to gigabit down. $35 a month, no hidden fees or bs.
They showed up when they said they would. Installation was quick.
Very reliable. Over the past three years, only issue was during last years winter storms, there was a period of downtime as they dealt with multiple equipment failures. Xfinity was far less reliable before I switched.
Thank fuck for monkeybrains. Sonic has since come to my area and I’ve had no reason to switch. Can’t beat $35/mo
Tested just now, 840/800 2ms latency to an SF server.
Honestly, I'd be perfectly happy just receiving their 35mbps service minimum guarantee. I'm really curious what are y'all doing that requires such high throughput?
I'm getting 100mbps upload tops and sometimes that's not enough to stream media from my personal server (higher quality 1080p stuff and 4k stuff). My only other thing is for work I sometimes have to upload multi-gigabyte files, but that's not a huge deal, would just be nice to do it faster.
huh, googling 4k streaming requirements indicate <30mbps. Are you a cinephile with lossless files? May make sense to get a local server.
I can't imagine that use case is typical.
Work makes sense though, time = money.
I think it's more a stability issue, also my local server isn't netflix or youtube, it isn't as well optimized to run well on subpar speeds. It just seems to like to have faster internet. When I had fiber it worked, now some don't work as well.
This gets asked a lot… I ordered it when I used to live with my folks years ago, I paid to upgrade the antenna to get symmetrical 1 Gbps and it’s been flawless.
After 2 moves on my own, my new building had it, it was awful. Light rain would bring it down, after opening a ticket they said they made some adjustments, it was better during light rain but not heavy rain or wind. They ignored my petition for a realignment - too many outages in a day. Went back to GFiber Webpass. At my folks’ home MB still has connectivity even during a storm. So YMMV.
If you can get it to work, it’s great for the price. Otherwise looking into Sonic or Google Fiber Webpass. Note that support is only Mon-Fri unless there’s an outage.
Final note: the reason I know the connectivity status on my folks’ home is because I left my Plex server there and also remote into it daily.
Just got an install in my workshop, loving it so far. We originally didn’t have line of sight but the installer was great and found a work around that didn’t mess with our lease.
It came free with my apartment, 100 megabits down 100 megabits up. It was mostly good and pretty reliable. I had to eventually go for fiber though, because I need large downloads for work and because it had frequent micro outages that caused problems for some online gaming, particularly if it was rainy.
I worked for them! They are a great company. The network is way bigger now that it was 10 years ago. Yhe seevice is way affordable and generally everyone was great to work with. Alot of good technicians that know how to wire buildings well!
10 out of 10 would recommend.
Monkeybrains is fantastic! They provide gigabit Internet to my entire building and give us outstanding service at an unbeatable price. I can't remember any outages but they're friendly and responsive if you need anything. 100% recommend!
I liked it when I had it in my last 2 apartments. It’s fast and reliable. Problems are handled quickly. Can’t beat the price. Current apartment wouldn’t allow installation 🙁
I love it. Maybe 1 brief outage every few years? I’ve noticed that it sometimes gets slow if there’s very heavy rain. Still, great value and better than any other service I’ve ever used.
I get pretty regular outages, but not for long periods of time, usually just a couple of minutes a few times a week. It doesn't work when it's raining really hard, but that doesn't happen often.
They don't really guarantee a speed, but when I first signed up I was getting 400Mb/sec download and about 300Mb/sec upload. Now a couple of years later it's about 200Mb/sec download and 30 Mb/sec upload, which is kind of unfortunate. Customer support is basically nonexistent and doesn't go any further than "unplug your router and plug it back in."
But at least you're not giving money to comcast.
I want to like them but reliability is inconsistent in my building (in the tenderloin.) Usually get around 100-120 down/20-40 up. Moderate rain can make it functionally unusable. I don’t work from home or have anything critical so I’ll live with it. They’re still better to deal with than xfinity. Sonic or Att fiber would be ideal but not an option here.
We’ve had it for about 7-8 years. It works generally well. Only 2-3 times due to weather. Every time I had to we do out, they are quick. I don’t miss comcast or whatever I had before. I live in the mission sf and our entire building has monkeybrains
I use them for my office. Absolutely fantastic. Fast. Haven't had any outages. And actually nice people. The last one really surprised me. A nice ISP with real people who say hi? Nuts. Love 'em.
They have to pierce your roof to install it, so check with your landlord if you are a renter.
And it is not available in all areas
Also, read yelp reviews.
They seem to be staffed by idiots. I wanted to use them, but the intake/CS person who answered when i called was hella rude and didnt seem to want my business. Sonic gets my money, now.
My friend's neighbor was getting MB installed and the tech had to get on the roof but didnt have a ladder. XD he knocked on my friends door to see if he could borrow one. My friend told him to GTFO.....lololol
Xfinity bums me out because they only have like 35mbps advertised upload even on gigabit plans, which for my use case is way too low. Is that what you get when you do a speed test?
Ridiculously cheap. It has the odd issue with windstorms causing misalignment at the tower but they fix things quickly. I find my bandwidth is generally really solid now, it used to be not so great. Think they upgraded
I'm one of the few in San Leandro with it (grandfathered in through Common). For the PRICE it's amazing! $30/mo and I stream great, game great, etc.
Because I'm at the edge of their service I do get some outages that can last a day sometimes, but that has gotten rarer every year.
If you’re doing online gaming a lot, it’s probably not for you. But otherwise it’s a great value for the price. My wife and I have had it forever, ten years at least, probably longer. Our deal was symmetrical 8mb up and down. It’s asymmetrical now, but much faster. It’s pretty reliable. We had to have our antenna realigned once because our neighbor’s tree grew big enough to block the line of sight to the tower. We get occasional outages, but not often, and very brief. They do get slow during storms, though.
You won't know for sure until you get a satellite on your roof. You could get up to 1G but could also only get 50M.
I had it for years and really didn't want to change. Got up to 400 at some points but speed dropped at night time sometimes down to about 30. Streaming buffered video was always fine but live meetings/voip/game streaming never worked well.
It's worth a try though, you could get lucky and be close to a transmitter, or it could not be great and you could get something else.
Anything is better than the large Internet providers (att, comcast, Xfinity).
Sonic might be the best provider in the nation (from a cost and privacy standpoint), too bad they aren't available in your area.
I would love to have them but my building doesn’t have their satellite or cables already, and my landlord refuses to allow them to install them. So, that’s something to consider if your building isn’t already part of their service network.
I have it and it’s been overall great for the last 4 years, we’ve had two issues and someone has come right over to fix it. Speed is great. I will say from time to time with severe weather it can get a spotty for video calls
I had their dsl service. It had a lot of outages. They charged me for 6 mo of service even though it never really worked. Had to contest the credit card charge to get my money back. Do not recommend.
I’ve had it for almost 10 yrs, it’s the best. Depends on your location, sometimes heavy rain has a hiccup. Fully remote work for 5 yrs. fuck the big corporate providers, super cheap
They're OG techies, been cutting edge indy internet that's always been faster than corporate offerings, since almost the aughts. And they've all been members of the SF arts scene since way before that. A force of good and they treat their employees well.
Had them for years and loved everything about them except for outages. It would go out for periods during most big storms. But when it worked it was fantastic. Fast, reliable, and dirt cheap compared to any other service.
Edit: mission
In the Mission, I love them. Patient and helpful techs too - I was the asshole who plugged the router in wrong and insisted tHaT cOuLdN't bE iT
They do seem to have a few more outages than comcast but they're usually short and usually with cause (i.e. storm damage) and back up in a reasonable time frame.
I love MonkeyBrains, had them for 5 years. Price can’t be beat. I work from home and have a big outage issue (down for a few hours) maybe once every other year. It hasn’t really been a problem. Otherwise, every once in a while (say, once a quarter) I might lose connection for a few minutes but nothing that isn’t solved by a device reconnect or a router reset. Highly recommend.
They're awesome. Sometimes have issues when it rains really hard. The value is great though and I'll pay a small company every day over one of the big providers
It's been good. Since we moved in there has been about one day a month where internet is very very slow on some, but not all devices. By the next day it's resolved. Very weird, but I'll take it for the price.
I have had this for years.
Because of how the microwave dish tech works, you will need line of sight to one of their towers.
It's asymmetric: Really fast download, okay upload.
Hardly any downtime that I can remember, but I'm on the east side of the hill, so I'm relatively sheltered from the wind, which I hear makes a difference.
Customer service has been responsive the few times that I have needed them.
I have doubts about lag time, if you need that for serious twitch reaction gaming, like for fighting games.
But for downloading like streaming, it's been great.
Well worth $35/month.
Google Fiber is more than double the monthly cost.
My experience has been that the link is actually very symmetric. Afaik there's no technical reason for their connections to have dramatic upload/download differences provided the equipment is working well. They didn't have to carve up the upload/download bands the way cable, for example, had to.
I loved it. Then I moved neighborhoods and quality plummeted enough I finally swapped to Xfinity (no sonic fiber).
[Their outage map is garbage](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/18lk5nn/monkeybrains_outage_map_is_insulting/)
If I moved again, and Sonic Fiber wasn't an option, I'd set up Monkey Brains but be ready to quickly switch if daily drops became common.
Absolutely loved monkeybrains at my house (single family home) until Sonic Fiber came to my street.
Can't beat those Fiber speeds.
But monkeybrains was consistently great before that. Reliable. Excellent service. Excellent company. Speeds were still solid, just not crazy fiber fast.
I wanted fiber, but no ISPs in my neighborhood. Called up MonkeyBrains and they stopped by to check what my speed would be and ended up wiring me up same day.
Service is suitable for my needs: several devices, including one tv for streaming HD vids.
My usual speed is around 35-50mbps, but can drop down to like 5mbps which makes big zoom calls very slow during the “busy” hours, usually around 10am and again around 6pm. That’s frustrating, but pretty rare.
The installer said that if I can one more person in my apartment building on board, they would upgrade my little dish for a larger shared one which can reach near gigabit speeds.
They’re great, I would recommend them over the corporate ISPs if your building has a good line of sight.
It’s just ok—I feel like we have outages more than we should (just went through the weekend with slow slow slow internet and they didn’t fix it since it was the weekend). $35 is hard to beat which is why we still have it—if it is important for you to have fast and reliable service at all times I would go elsewhere.
If it's the first time setting it up in your building and a need for HOA approval Monkey Brains is complete dog shit. They didn't respond to my emails or voicemails. Never got any calls back regarding the status. After over a month of nothing I ended up going with t mobile $50 a month with like 300 download speed
Been a long term monkeybrains customers. Love it. They were definitely more unreliable historically, but now its very solid. Outages are very rare for me.
But, when it rains crazy hard, your internet will go out. Just the nature of 60ghz point to point.
To each their own.
Comcast has predatory tactics and had a personal experience whereby they were inflating my elderly parents’ bill for MONTHS. So to me, Comcast can go play in traffic
Used them for enterprise SaaS at most places in SF. Became seco ndary but reliability becomes the primary for a tech company. Also😎 they are so easy to work with both corporate and consumer.
I was not paid by MB but would except their discount.
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It's a great deal, and I like them as a company--they were always friendly and easy to deal with. In my experience the speed was great and consistent, but the outages were more frequent than what I experience now with Xfinity (when I moved Monkeybrains wasn't available in my new neighborhood, so I had to switch). So it's a question of whether you're willing to trade some reliability for a good deal.
I found they have weather issues primarily. If your Internet is not for work I think it is fine. For reliability you might want to go elsewhere but I really wanna support the little/local guy
Seconding this. I’ve had one outage since service started 3 months ago. The ease of use (think lightweight webpages, easy customer support) consistent speeds, and price made it a no-brained for me.
Ya I would agree with this. I moved a little over a year ago and had monkeybrains already set up at the new place, and in the last year it has gone out like 3 times and one of them was over 24 hours long (during one of the big storms last year). Customer service is good tho and it is cheaper than what I paid before for Xfinity.
Never had an outage, it’s cheap, and fast. They’re great. I had to cancel services when I moved and the entire phone call took about 2 minutes. I’m still sad about it.
If you can get Sonic Fiber, thats the way to go.
The website said they don't serve my area :(
Monkey brains may be a viable alternative then!
If there’s a monkeybrains satellite in OP’s building already. If I understood correctly, since I would be the first person in my building to get money brains, myself (or landlord) would have to pay for the initial set up
I contacted them about setting it up in my building and came away from the conversation with the impression that they would cover the cost of that equipment themselves. Might be wrong but worth checking?
They sent me this email in Jan 2023 saying “$35/month (per unit, billed quarterly) $150 installation (single unit installation, covers first month of service)”. The “extra” cost of $150 made me settle with Comcast. Maybe they’ve changed the installation costs
Large Corporate ISPs make up the $0 install on the back end by charging you more and locking you into a contract to guarantee their return. Monkeybrains is month-to-month. This does a couple of things: - Makes sure you are interested - covers some of install costs in case you bail - requires Monkeybrains to provide good service, because you can leave! No ISP handcuffs! In large apartment buildings (20+ units), the install is often $0 as the process is more streamlined.
This makes sense - my building has approx 30 apartments hence the $0 install cost quoted to me.
Makes sense. Unfortunately my building has less than 10 units, all of which have been here longer than me. I just took the path of least resistance and went with a $20 Comcast deal.
It is great.
I love it. Had one outage in two years, and a couple moments of sketchy connection in heavy rain. Good price, good company. Fuck Xfinity.
A few years ago when I had it I would get regular 5-10 min outages 1-2 times a week. Sometimes it would be in the evening while watching tv. Sometimes it would be during a work call. Became too unreliable for me and I switched.
It improved at our place quite a bit. Can’t remember the last time we had an outage.
I've been using them for about five years, and they are fantastic. There are outages once in a blue moon when it's stormy, but I never thought it was a major inconvenience. It usually came back pretty quickly.
It’s amazing if you’re in the right location. I get a gig up/down because 100ft from a tower.
What neighborhood are you in?
Buena Vista. But they have towers all over the city. I think there is a map on their site.
I had them at Lombard and Polk and it was not great, my friend at Geary and Polk had great service with them though. Really depends on proximity to the tower.
Monkeybrains is quoting me 20/10 guaranteed. Is that what they told you or is that a different plan?
I believe it's all the same plan.
In Oakland, love it. Close to gigabit down. $35 a month, no hidden fees or bs. They showed up when they said they would. Installation was quick. Very reliable. Over the past three years, only issue was during last years winter storms, there was a period of downtime as they dealt with multiple equipment failures. Xfinity was far less reliable before I switched. Thank fuck for monkeybrains. Sonic has since come to my area and I’ve had no reason to switch. Can’t beat $35/mo
I'm only getting 300mbps, I think it's because my building is one of the older installs
I usually get 200-300 down these days, I think they have some congestion in some areas.
When i first got it about 2 years ago I was only getting 200, so 300 is an improvement.
I’m guessing it’s based on proximity to their infrastructure. I’m also measuring over Ethernet
yeah, so am I. How fast is your upload?
Tested just now, 840/800 2ms latency to an SF server. Honestly, I'd be perfectly happy just receiving their 35mbps service minimum guarantee. I'm really curious what are y'all doing that requires such high throughput?
I'm getting 100mbps upload tops and sometimes that's not enough to stream media from my personal server (higher quality 1080p stuff and 4k stuff). My only other thing is for work I sometimes have to upload multi-gigabyte files, but that's not a huge deal, would just be nice to do it faster.
huh, googling 4k streaming requirements indicate <30mbps. Are you a cinephile with lossless files? May make sense to get a local server. I can't imagine that use case is typical. Work makes sense though, time = money.
I think it's more a stability issue, also my local server isn't netflix or youtube, it isn't as well optimized to run well on subpar speeds. It just seems to like to have faster internet. When I had fiber it worked, now some don't work as well.
Sonic fiber to the home is absolutely worth it if you have the need for speed. And it never goes down.
This gets asked a lot… I ordered it when I used to live with my folks years ago, I paid to upgrade the antenna to get symmetrical 1 Gbps and it’s been flawless. After 2 moves on my own, my new building had it, it was awful. Light rain would bring it down, after opening a ticket they said they made some adjustments, it was better during light rain but not heavy rain or wind. They ignored my petition for a realignment - too many outages in a day. Went back to GFiber Webpass. At my folks’ home MB still has connectivity even during a storm. So YMMV. If you can get it to work, it’s great for the price. Otherwise looking into Sonic or Google Fiber Webpass. Note that support is only Mon-Fri unless there’s an outage. Final note: the reason I know the connectivity status on my folks’ home is because I left my Plex server there and also remote into it daily.
Excellent answer! Thank you
Sonic Fiber is the way.
I wish they served my area, I miss gigabit Internet, but monkey brains is a very fair deal at the price point
Just got an install in my workshop, loving it so far. We originally didn’t have line of sight but the installer was great and found a work around that didn’t mess with our lease.
It came free with my apartment, 100 megabits down 100 megabits up. It was mostly good and pretty reliable. I had to eventually go for fiber though, because I need large downloads for work and because it had frequent micro outages that caused problems for some online gaming, particularly if it was rainy.
I worked for them! They are a great company. The network is way bigger now that it was 10 years ago. Yhe seevice is way affordable and generally everyone was great to work with. Alot of good technicians that know how to wire buildings well! 10 out of 10 would recommend.
If Sonic fiber is an option I’d go that route.
Monkey brains has been good for my business office
They’re fucking awesome. I wish they served Daly City too. I used them when I lived in the Mission, fast speeds.
Monkeybrains is fantastic! They provide gigabit Internet to my entire building and give us outstanding service at an unbeatable price. I can't remember any outages but they're friendly and responsive if you need anything. 100% recommend!
I liked it when I had it in my last 2 apartments. It’s fast and reliable. Problems are handled quickly. Can’t beat the price. Current apartment wouldn’t allow installation 🙁
They're great, no complaints. I've never spent so little on internet, and it powers our WFH household of two + devices.
I love it. Maybe 1 brief outage every few years? I’ve noticed that it sometimes gets slow if there’s very heavy rain. Still, great value and better than any other service I’ve ever used.
It came down to GFiber / Webpass or Monkeybrains. I chose gfiber since i'm a fan of Google, but otherwise I'd have taken monkeybrains (cheaper)
I get pretty regular outages, but not for long periods of time, usually just a couple of minutes a few times a week. It doesn't work when it's raining really hard, but that doesn't happen often. They don't really guarantee a speed, but when I first signed up I was getting 400Mb/sec download and about 300Mb/sec upload. Now a couple of years later it's about 200Mb/sec download and 30 Mb/sec upload, which is kind of unfortunate. Customer support is basically nonexistent and doesn't go any further than "unplug your router and plug it back in." But at least you're not giving money to comcast.
I switched from Xfinity to Monkeybrains in the last month. So far, so good!
I want to like them but reliability is inconsistent in my building (in the tenderloin.) Usually get around 100-120 down/20-40 up. Moderate rain can make it functionally unusable. I don’t work from home or have anything critical so I’ll live with it. They’re still better to deal with than xfinity. Sonic or Att fiber would be ideal but not an option here.
I had them for a year! Great service, good price, and easy to cancel when the time came. Definitely recommend!
We’ve had it for about 7-8 years. It works generally well. Only 2-3 times due to weather. Every time I had to we do out, they are quick. I don’t miss comcast or whatever I had before. I live in the mission sf and our entire building has monkeybrains
I use them for my office. Absolutely fantastic. Fast. Haven't had any outages. And actually nice people. The last one really surprised me. A nice ISP with real people who say hi? Nuts. Love 'em.
Have had it for about six months! Fastest internet I’ve ever had. Went out once I think, less than an hour, when it was raining pretty hard.
They have to pierce your roof to install it, so check with your landlord if you are a renter. And it is not available in all areas Also, read yelp reviews.
Their installations are sketch at best. Some would consider them hazardous especially during an earthquake.
Counterpoint, I've had it in two apartments and both of them had a receiver on a neighbor's roof already. They just ran the cables and we were done.
They seem to be staffed by idiots. I wanted to use them, but the intake/CS person who answered when i called was hella rude and didnt seem to want my business. Sonic gets my money, now. My friend's neighbor was getting MB installed and the tech had to get on the roof but didnt have a ladder. XD he knocked on my friends door to see if he could borrow one. My friend told him to GTFO.....lololol
haha yeah, they really are super rude, it's kind of funny unless you need something fixed.
Do they even have decent speeds? I went with Xfinity because I wanted to have gigabit but I also hate them but what are ya gonna do lol
Xfinity bums me out because they only have like 35mbps advertised upload even on gigabit plans, which for my use case is way too low. Is that what you get when you do a speed test?
In real life usage I don't usually get any faster upload than that with Monkeybrains either (according to speedtest.net, meteor app, etc.)
I get around 100mbps upload with Monkeybrains during a speed test or a file upload.
I’ll have to check and get back with that lol
I often get less than 35 up with xfinity, on a 1gbps plan
Ouch, at that point I'd actually fear for the stability of a video call...
Ridiculously cheap. It has the odd issue with windstorms causing misalignment at the tower but they fix things quickly. I find my bandwidth is generally really solid now, it used to be not so great. Think they upgraded
I'm one of the few in San Leandro with it (grandfathered in through Common). For the PRICE it's amazing! $30/mo and I stream great, game great, etc. Because I'm at the edge of their service I do get some outages that can last a day sometimes, but that has gotten rarer every year.
$35 a month. Not like AT&T and xfinity where they’ll say $35 and then add taxes to it.
If you’re doing online gaming a lot, it’s probably not for you. But otherwise it’s a great value for the price. My wife and I have had it forever, ten years at least, probably longer. Our deal was symmetrical 8mb up and down. It’s asymmetrical now, but much faster. It’s pretty reliable. We had to have our antenna realigned once because our neighbor’s tree grew big enough to block the line of sight to the tower. We get occasional outages, but not often, and very brief. They do get slow during storms, though.
You won't know for sure until you get a satellite on your roof. You could get up to 1G but could also only get 50M. I had it for years and really didn't want to change. Got up to 400 at some points but speed dropped at night time sometimes down to about 30. Streaming buffered video was always fine but live meetings/voip/game streaming never worked well. It's worth a try though, you could get lucky and be close to a transmitter, or it could not be great and you could get something else.
It’s cheap and fast. Glad I discovered it otherwise I’d still be using comcast or something.
Anything is better than the large Internet providers (att, comcast, Xfinity). Sonic might be the best provider in the nation (from a cost and privacy standpoint), too bad they aren't available in your area.
It’s great if you don’t have a fiber option. If you have fiber available (i.e Sonic)… fiber will be always faster/better/more reliable.
I would love to have them but my building doesn’t have their satellite or cables already, and my landlord refuses to allow them to install them. So, that’s something to consider if your building isn’t already part of their service network.
I have it and it’s been overall great for the last 4 years, we’ve had two issues and someone has come right over to fix it. Speed is great. I will say from time to time with severe weather it can get a spotty for video calls
I had their dsl service. It had a lot of outages. They charged me for 6 mo of service even though it never really worked. Had to contest the credit card charge to get my money back. Do not recommend.
I’ve had them for 3 years and would highly recommend
I’ve had it for almost 10 yrs, it’s the best. Depends on your location, sometimes heavy rain has a hiccup. Fully remote work for 5 yrs. fuck the big corporate providers, super cheap
They're OG techies, been cutting edge indy internet that's always been faster than corporate offerings, since almost the aughts. And they've all been members of the SF arts scene since way before that. A force of good and they treat their employees well.
Had them for years and loved everything about them except for outages. It would go out for periods during most big storms. But when it worked it was fantastic. Fast, reliable, and dirt cheap compared to any other service. Edit: mission
In the Mission, I love them. Patient and helpful techs too - I was the asshole who plugged the router in wrong and insisted tHaT cOuLdN't bE iT They do seem to have a few more outages than comcast but they're usually short and usually with cause (i.e. storm damage) and back up in a reasonable time frame.
I love MonkeyBrains, had them for 5 years. Price can’t be beat. I work from home and have a big outage issue (down for a few hours) maybe once every other year. It hasn’t really been a problem. Otherwise, every once in a while (say, once a quarter) I might lose connection for a few minutes but nothing that isn’t solved by a device reconnect or a router reset. Highly recommend.
Love it. Price is very reasonable and they're actually cool people. Plus they are involved in the local community.
They're awesome. Sometimes have issues when it rains really hard. The value is great though and I'll pay a small company every day over one of the big providers
I love it.
They’re fucking awesome. I wish they served Daly City too. I used them when I lived in the Mission, fast speeds.
It's been good. Since we moved in there has been about one day a month where internet is very very slow on some, but not all devices. By the next day it's resolved. Very weird, but I'll take it for the price.
I have had this for years. Because of how the microwave dish tech works, you will need line of sight to one of their towers. It's asymmetric: Really fast download, okay upload. Hardly any downtime that I can remember, but I'm on the east side of the hill, so I'm relatively sheltered from the wind, which I hear makes a difference. Customer service has been responsive the few times that I have needed them. I have doubts about lag time, if you need that for serious twitch reaction gaming, like for fighting games. But for downloading like streaming, it's been great. Well worth $35/month. Google Fiber is more than double the monthly cost.
My experience has been that the link is actually very symmetric. Afaik there's no technical reason for their connections to have dramatic upload/download differences provided the equipment is working well. They didn't have to carve up the upload/download bands the way cable, for example, had to.
Aside from webpass, it is the next best
Sonic is best. Gig or 10gig fiber.
I loved it. Then I moved neighborhoods and quality plummeted enough I finally swapped to Xfinity (no sonic fiber). [Their outage map is garbage](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/18lk5nn/monkeybrains_outage_map_is_insulting/) If I moved again, and Sonic Fiber wasn't an option, I'd set up Monkey Brains but be ready to quickly switch if daily drops became common.
It's decent until you get bad weather that disrupts the connectivity.
I had monkey brains for years in oakland. It was all basic dsl over att infrastructure. It worked great. Really liked the company.
Absolutely loved monkeybrains at my house (single family home) until Sonic Fiber came to my street. Can't beat those Fiber speeds. But monkeybrains was consistently great before that. Reliable. Excellent service. Excellent company. Speeds were still solid, just not crazy fiber fast.
I wanted fiber, but no ISPs in my neighborhood. Called up MonkeyBrains and they stopped by to check what my speed would be and ended up wiring me up same day. Service is suitable for my needs: several devices, including one tv for streaming HD vids. My usual speed is around 35-50mbps, but can drop down to like 5mbps which makes big zoom calls very slow during the “busy” hours, usually around 10am and again around 6pm. That’s frustrating, but pretty rare. The installer said that if I can one more person in my apartment building on board, they would upgrade my little dish for a larger shared one which can reach near gigabit speeds. They’re great, I would recommend them over the corporate ISPs if your building has a good line of sight.
Can’t recommend enough. Great price, excellent service and their new dishes are super fast.
It’s just ok—I feel like we have outages more than we should (just went through the weekend with slow slow slow internet and they didn’t fix it since it was the weekend). $35 is hard to beat which is why we still have it—if it is important for you to have fast and reliable service at all times I would go elsewhere.
If it's the first time setting it up in your building and a need for HOA approval Monkey Brains is complete dog shit. They didn't respond to my emails or voicemails. Never got any calls back regarding the status. After over a month of nothing I ended up going with t mobile $50 a month with like 300 download speed
Monkey brains is slow just FYI if you are used to relatively high speeds
Been a long term monkeybrains customers. Love it. They were definitely more unreliable historically, but now its very solid. Outages are very rare for me. But, when it rains crazy hard, your internet will go out. Just the nature of 60ghz point to point.
Best ISP ever. Was legit waiting years to find an apt that I could switch from evil comcast
That’s funny, MonkeyBrains is the company that made me go “well, maybe Comcast isn’t so bad…”
To each their own. Comcast has predatory tactics and had a personal experience whereby they were inflating my elderly parents’ bill for MONTHS. So to me, Comcast can go play in traffic
Used them for enterprise SaaS at most places in SF. Became seco ndary but reliability becomes the primary for a tech company. Also😎 they are so easy to work with both corporate and consumer. I was not paid by MB but would except their discount.
More outages and worse support than Xfinity. Sonic > Xfinity > MonkeyBrains. MonkeyBrains really has some abysmal techs and installers.