Update 08-07-13: The A2 Migration Guide is ready for download. It will help you smoothly make the transition to new hosting.
On August 2, 2013 Endurance International Group’s (EIG) data center in Provo, UT experienced a blackout that impacted sites on Bluehost, HostGator, HostMonster and JustHost. Even EIG’s own company websites and phone services were down, making it difficult for them to distribute information. The phone outage extended to Bluehost’s datacenter as well. Here’s what else you need to know about this situation and why I’m taking down my affiliate links and moving elsewhere.
Who is EIG?
First, let’s get some background. EIG is one of the biggest hosting companies in the world. They have been buying up the competition like crazy and now own JustHost, HostMonster, BlueHost, and their latest acquisition, HostGator. According to their listing on Wikipedia, they own about 50 more hosting companies too.
What Happened?
One of the things that EIG insisted on as they purchased companies, was for the datacenters to be consolidated to their server farm in Utah. They have also consolidated some of their personnel and infrastructure.
What Happened to Me
My sites have been on HostGator for about six years. A couple of months ago I got a notice from them that my sites were being moved to a new server with a new DNS, like it or not. Didn’t matter how inconvenient it was, and wouldn’t know exactly when it would happen. The email just said they would send another email when it was finished.
About an hour later I got another email saying the move was complete and that I wouldn’t have to do anything.
What Happened Next
The next day I noticed how slow my sites were running and it has been one tech support call after another since then. Servers are slow, site has been down, glitches, quirks, and more.
That not only involved BlogAid and associated domains, it also involved all of the training and development sandbox sites I create temporarily for clients. And they started calling. Or I started to have to send emails to them begging their forgiveness for all the glitches.
What Else Happened
HostGator and BlueHost have been my two preferred vendors for about three years. I’ve got lots of clients on both. In the last six months I’ve noticed a trend in the responses given from tech support when I call for myself or on behalf of my clients. BlueHost’s response to slow site speed is to tell the client to purchase a bigger package or go with either dedicated or VPS packages, all of which cost more. Not good.
HostGator’s recent responses have been to try a caching plugin or different settings on same. That’s their first response to almost any site issue now. Not good.
A few weeks ago my sites were completely down. I was told it was a server-wide error. At the end of the day I called to get an update. They told me there was no server error reported and that the connection to my database had simply been lost. They reset the connection. When I asked about the new username and password, they had been set to something that any hacker could break in less than two seconds!!!!!!
That was my personal last straw.
In the Hunt
My business runs on my reputation as a trusted source. And I have to go where I can trust the hosting service is top notch. So, I started checking around. I have a wide spread of needs, not only for myself, but for my clients. I’m not a reseller and all of my clients have their own accounts (which I highly recommend). But, I need a reseller account for myself so that I can isolate all of the sandbox sites from one another.
What I Found
After checking with my other online business friends, resellers, developers, and yes, even a hacker buddy or two, I decided that A2 Hosting was a good fit for me.
Best Laid Plans
I planned to move my sites to A2 for a few months to check them out first hand, and then start recommending that my clients go there too, if all was okay.
Well, this latest fiasco has required me to make moving a priority.
On top of that, I’ve already had to turn down two clients who wanted to use my affiliate hosting links to receive the free, fully secure site setup offer I run.
I have just told them the truth about what’s happening. And now I’m telling you.
Next Steps
Most of my clients can afford shared hosting prices. Managed hosting on something like WPEngine is out of the question.
I’ve told you in several blog posts over the past couple of months that I’ve been maneuvering BlogAid to be where the future business will be. Moving to A2 Hosting, with solid state drives, is one of those changes. I’ll soon be offering site management packages that are less expensive than managed hosting. And, I’m already quietly offering full site management services to busy professionals. You’ll be hearing more about all of this in the coming months.
For now, I’ve already removed my HostGator and BlueHost affiliate links and site setup offer. I’ll be posting new offers soon.
I’m moving to A2 as soon as I can, which will be early next week. (It’s not just me, it’s all the client sandbox sites too, so have to time it just right.)
What You Can Do
Hold tight if you are on any of EIG’s servers. It’s not a good idea to migrate elsewhere until the servers are stabilized. Please realize that even if your site is up and running now, they could still be jumping it from server to server as they continue to clean up the cause and the fallout from this blackout.
Backup, backup, backup. This is not a place to scrimp. Get a real backup solution in place. Forget the cost. What does it cost to lose your entire site and have to rebuild from scratch? I use and recommend BackupBuddy (aff link) and to store the files off site to Amazon S3.
A backup is your only real security blanket these days.
Download my free report with 14 rated backup solutions and details on setting your backup intervals and overwrites.
You can bet that I’ll be posting more on this in the coming days and will tell you the truth about what’s happening and give you my best recommendations for your site. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. You need to get what works best for your situation.
I’ll be trying to work a deal with A2 for discounts, especially considering how many clients I’ll be bringing them. So, watch for a post on that and the reinstatement of my site setup offer.
What Every Site Owner Should Know could save you hundreds of dollars and months of frustration. Free with subscription to BlogAid News.
Thank you for this extremely valuable information. I knew something was very wrong when so many of my website clients starting contacting me that their sites were going down. The strange thing was they all were on different hosting companies so I found that very odd.
I manage over 100 website on HG and I am gutted that he sold to EIG. I already went through this years ago when EIG bought IPOWER, it was the worst experience of my life online. The total lack of customer support and knowledge and sites going down all the time, and you could never get through.
I can just see this happening again. EIG is not the place to be. I am going to check into your recommendation for a new place to move my sites. Thank you.
Linda, the backup report will give you a solid overview of your choices for the actual backup plugin and then places to store files. There are a lot of choices at different price ranges, and it all depends on your needs.
I feel the same way you do about HostGator. Have been delighted with them until the EIG buyout. Enough is enough.
I was really hoping to give my new host a six month run before recommending them to clients. But, this latest fiasco changed all that. All I can do is tell clients that I’m in the boat with them and they are getting as good as I get. I won’t recommend anything I haven’t field tested myself.
Hi MaAnna,
Many thanks for this. It was just yesterday I downloaded your free report on site backup. It was very comprehensive and insanely useful. I woke up this morning again to see this update. I’m on iPage anyway. Thanks for being so awesome.
But I’m just wondering…if a backup option backs everything on the root directory, does it also back everything on a different domain name hosted on the same account and pointing to a subdirectory in the root folder of the main site? And would you recommend having many domains on a single hosting account at all? If so, like how many is cool where the host allows unlimited. If no, why?
I’ll appreciate any advice you can give. Thanks once again.
Hi Abdullahi, yes, if you install BackupBuddy on the WordPress installation that is in the root, it will detect all other WP installations on sub-domains. There is a setting to exclude certain files and another setting to exclude certain folders. Although you can back them all up together, that file will likely be too big to be useful. And, it would be better to isolate each installation and back it up singularly so that each site will be easier to restore.
If you have a lot of sites, a developer’s license would be the way to go with it.
There is no set number of sites that are good or bad because it’s not about the number of sites, it’s about the space (file size) they take up. So, you can have unlimited domains, but not unlimited space. Plus, you have to keep all of those sites updated. If you have a lot of them, best to pay for a multi-site manager (not WP multi-site installation) so that you have a master login and can update multiple installations at once.
Oh my goodness, my head is reeling! Thanks for all this great info. I feel a bit overwhelmed, but at the same time grateful for your support and expertise. I’ll sit tight for awhile as my needs are simpler than yours (one site). I’ll be watching closely for details to come. Thanks, MaAnna!
Thanks Alys, and yes, hold tight for now. I’m in the process of setting up solutions for me and all my clients to make this as painless as possible.
Thanks so much for this information. I just started my own web site via Bluehost the end of June, so my site is still in infancy. However, I plan on moving half of my Squidoo articles (about 90) over in the next couple of weeks. I have been emailing them about 2-3 times a week complaining about not being able to get my site to load. They keep telling me to clear the cache, etc. Now I know it is probably not my computer causing the problems.
I am downloading your books right now to see what I need to do to backup.
Carolyn, I’ve been having trouble with BlueHost for about a year now. My last straw was when several of my clients were told to spend more money to upgrade to take care of the problem. That’s a big no-no in my book.
I’d definitely hold off on moving anything until all servers stabilize. But, if you do move them to your BH account, just know that you can likely get free migration of the whole thing to a new host. That’s one of the perks of A2 and one of the reasons I’m going that route, not just for me, but for my clients.
I’ll have more posts coming on it soon, and will be contacting all of my clients directly too. First news will likely go out in my newsletter. https://blogaid.net/blogaid-news
Thanks for your honesty MaAnna. I was lucky, all of my client sites were up and running, including my personal blog, as none of them were on any of these hosting providers. The only one affected was myself as my business site sits on one of these hosting accounts. I too am now considering a switch as I noticed the glitches and slow connectivity, however I don’t want to use the same hosting provider I’m using for my personal blog simply because of things like what happened yesterday…I’ll be checking here to see your updates as things began to unfold.
I was lucky yesterday too, as the server I’m on at HG was unaffected and my sites stayed up. Well, even if the server was affected, they jumped my site to a server that wasn’t and I had no down time.
Totally understand your reasoning about being on a different host than your clients. Some folks I work with have needs that require that they do that too. I’m not in that boat yet, but there may come a day when my site needs exceed those of most of my clients. So, what I use and what I recommend others use is based on their situation.
However, because of my own experience with HG, I was able to read the tea leaves better and knew something was up, and what it was, a couple of months ago. It just took me a while to research where else to go and to get to a space in my schedule of sandbox sites where I could disrupt work. Of course, there’s never a good time to do that, really. But have to now.
I have been with Bluehost for 3 years and the last 8 weeks have been a nightmare with reoccurences of my sites being down, so I appreciate you sharing the behind the seasons reasons why. Could you tell me why you chose A2 and what to do/be prepared for if I switch?
Thanks,
Elisa
Hi Elisa, I’m putting a full tutorial together now that will help everyone make the switch easily. Will have posts out every day with progress. And, am in negotiations with A2 for extra perks. Will have that done by Monday. So, hang tight and more info on the way soon.
Hi MaAnna,
Thank you as always for keeping us up to date on the outages situation. I have been a long time supporter of GoDaddy up until this year when I began migrating my websites, and my client websites to Bluehost and recommending Bluehost to new clients. I couldn’t stand one more slow loading page or 500 error from goDaddy.
With all that you explained above I’m going to wait for your review on A2 and perhaps I’ll make another switch. In fairness to Bluehost I think they did a pretty good job keeping everyone informed through Twitter. I hope it was just an anomaly.
Larry, all we can hope is that our client’s understand these things are out of our hands. I really wanted to be at A2 longer before recommending them. But, just can’t. I’ve checked them out as thoroughly as possible, including big time recommends from developer buddies and resellers who have been using them for years. Plus, looking forward to getting on the super fast solid state drives.
I’ve already got my account, but won’t be migrating until later this week. Creating all of the tutorials as I go through the process myself. And, hoping to save clients even more money with discounts. Should have all that in place by Monday or Tuesday. Thinking servers will be stable enough for folks to migrate by then too.
I jumped ship 3 days before DDOS. Decided on LiquidWeb after my brother said he has been very satisfied with their level of service and support. Glad I did. I still have one site on HG that has been down for a few days. Never going back to HG.
Good for you getting out early, Dave. I’m going to have to leave HostGator for good too. So sad. Wish they had never sold to EIG. I’ve heard good things about LiquidWeb too, but think A2 is going to be the best fit for me and my clients with their price and services ranges.
I just looked at A2 hosting as I am fed up with Hostgator as well. But when I looked at their forum, there were a number of complaints from customers who were fed up with their sites being down frequently. This scares me about moving to them.
Joyce, if you look on any hosting forum you’ll find the same thing. You’ll also find more folks complaining than giving kudos. And, you can’t rely on most of the reviews posted about any host either. It’s a game they all play. They hire folks cheap-cheap to write good reviews of them and then write posts to trash the other guys. I was with IX Hosting for six years and had super up-time and super support until they started getting hit like crazy with DDoS attacks and such. Did my homework and moved to HostGator. Stayed with them six years, but now with the EIG buyout, it’s been nothing but trouble. Same with my clients on BlueHost So, time to move again, and I definitely did my homework.
But, things change all the time in the hosting world and I may have to move again years from now. Who knows. The best you can do is go with who you trust at that time.
I’m in the same boat as my clients, so whatever affects them also affects me. They will have as good as I have, and I’m picky.
Thanks for the update. I guess that means that my planned Bluehost to online, is out of the question.I am glad that your resilience and ability to move quickly has saved your future business goals from a certain projected slow through crash future, if you had continued with EIG. Many companies which buy a previous product company have plenty of problems in the takeovers. Sometimes it takes years for these things to resolve. Another place you may be interested in is INTRINIUM, qualified hosting services, out of Spokane, WA, USA. I do not know where there HQ is located. Thanks again.
Hi Guys, Thanks for the info. I was working on a client site on BlueHost, then noticed my own sites hosted on Hostgator down. This lasted 2 to 3 hours. Was very frustrating. I am considering a move. When I worked at Hostgator – Before EIG. The way many people would bring in a site was with a Cpanel Backup. This should take all information including email accounts, Databases, etc. That would be my plan…
Dwayne, a cPanel backup is the best way to migrate from host to host. In fact, if you go to a new host like A2, they will do it for free as long as you are on cPanel.
Thanks for the information. My website is hosted by hostgator and went down September 1st. without a warning. When I contacted hostgator they said it was moving to a better server. It has been 4 days and still down. I just renewed with them 2 weeks ago and believe it to be a big mistake.I will definitely do some research on A2 Hosting. Thanks for the onfo!
Please do download that A2 Hosting Migration Guide too. I’ve been updating it with more info as folks report their migration situations to me.