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Dead Pool November 2010 - ConnectSwitch and WebSpaceDepot

November has been an extremely busy month for me — and thank God that there aren’t too many dead providers this month :) Two oldies have “died” last month, although I have suspected that they might have already gone into coma for quite a while. Here we go.

ConnectSwitch ConnectSwitch

Current Status: Redirect to OpenSource Hosting Solutions

We first started looking at ConnectSwitch back in December 2008 — almost 2 years ago. It was a pretty good plan back then. £3.95/month with 128MB OpenVZ hosting in UK. It then went on to offer OpenVZ VPS in Germany. Sometime down the track it ot sold to OpenSource Hosting Solutions (who also owns VPSWOW and HighVPS). And just a few days ago OSHS decided to permanently redirect the website to their own, which spells the end of ConnectSwitch brand.

WebSpaceDepot WebSpaceDepot

Current Status: 403 Forbidden on home page

I first blogged about WebSpace Depot back in November 2008 on their 128MB Xen VPS offer for $6.93/month. I wrote about my investigation on their history:

WebSpaceDepot looks like a reputable company — been in business since 1997… Looks like a rather solid choice when you compare it with many failed VPS companies that I’ve reported before.

Ha. Wasn’t I WRONG! Soon after I wrote the blog entry a commenter came in to report his/her bad experience with the company. It sounds worrying as there appears to be some internal issue there. Then last month they moved their DNS to AfterNIC — a market place for domains. I guess that is the end of it. A bit of waste for a domain that has been around since 1997 though, which I am sure there will be a queue of potential buyers if it is indeed going to the market.

Upcoming…

SynHost.eu has been dead for a few days, but from their past history they do seem to go up and down regularly so I am not writing them out yet. Maybe we will see it finally marked as dead next month. Maybe :)

LEA
Latest posts by LEA (see all)

20 Comments

  1. Snape:

    ConnectSwitch was sold to OSHS in August 2009.

    December 3, 2010 @ 1:39 am | Reply
  2. Hasanul:

    I remember Sam at first ConnectSwith owner. Actually, ConnectSwith is good before HyperVM issue which make them to switch to Virtuozzo.

    December 3, 2010 @ 1:53 am | Reply
  3. Its a relief that there are less hosts going down last month, unlike previous times.
    Thank you LEA for keeping the community informed.

    December 3, 2010 @ 5:19 am | Reply
  4. Maybe SynHost.eu is going to be sold to other company?

    It was bought by the Internet Gateway of South Beach (igsobe.com)in March 2010.

    December 3, 2010 @ 6:00 am | Reply
  5. Given the past with igsobe, I wouldn’t think much of it.

    There is a thread on WHT where, supposedly, the owner got in quite the pickle. The thread went on covering that his racks were actually chained up due so many missed payments and at some point he got past security, cut the lock off and started pulling gear. Before he was able to finish, the cops arrived and he ended up having to give up a few racks worth of gear.

    Francisco

    December 3, 2010 @ 8:33 am | Reply
    • Hmmm that’s too bad. We live the life with reputations don’t we?
      BTW what load balancing method were you suggesting back in WHT? I think it is good to have a redundant system even with a low end system.

      December 3, 2010 @ 8:44 am | Reply
    • Jo:

      Do you have the thread link?

      December 3, 2010 @ 2:55 pm | Reply
    • Wonder how they got past the front door. Most of these datacenters brag about their security and scanners and whatnot. I know I can;t get into mine without producing ID and having it matched against what’s on file. Of course we have government servers on site so that may have something to do with it…

      December 3, 2010 @ 3:30 pm | Reply
      • You’d be surprised how little security even the big wigs have. We had an issue where a customer came in and stole equipment out of our rack when we were hosted in Equinix a long time ago.

        Francisco

        December 5, 2010 @ 3:58 am | Reply
        • So, you mean there is no SAS70 or ISO27001 implemented?

          December 5, 2010 @ 4:30 am | Reply
        • Well, we were with a host that had space there, but I know the only ‘guard’ was this old guy (well into his late 50’s, early 60’s), and all he did was close the door AFTER the person walked out with our gear.

          Fran

          December 5, 2010 @ 4:40 am | Reply
        • Aaw, that’s too bad. Imagine if it was a live machine or storage with customer’s data that was stolen.
          You’d might end up having a hard time explaining things to your customers if you don’t have any backup somewhere else. Not to mention the time and money to cover the loss.

          December 5, 2010 @ 5:24 am | Reply
  6. Enrick:

    Hello,

    If you seen webhostingdepot google cache, there were some underconstruction pages and it was looks like this information:

    WebSpaceDepot.com “Off It’s Leash” :)

    Specializing in Windows Hyper-V & Linux Xen Hypervisor VPS Hosting Solutions

    Linux & Windows Dedicated Servers – Co location – Cpanel Web Hosting Provider!

    Remote Reboot Free! – Free Setup & Unlimited Support!

    Welcome to Webspacedepot.com a Premier VPS Hosting Provider & ISP,

    Thank you visiting.

    We are currently undergoing some changes to our organization and will be right back! :)

    December 3, 2010 @ 9:52 pm | Reply
  7. Tom:

    G&Z Host’s billing and client portal has been down now about a week and a half. They had ip routing issues prior to this. Maybe we’ll be seeing them in the December list.

    December 5, 2010 @ 3:22 am | Reply
  8. Joey:

    You can add SolidVPS.

    http://my.solidvps.org/announcements.php?id=12

    (Technically they’re not dead, but if their owner up and takes off and machines consequently die and paid accounts (like mine) are suddenly wiped from their DB, then how “alive” are they?)

    December 5, 2010 @ 4:21 am | Reply
  9. If anyone here has been left high and dry by their dead VPS provider, we are willing to give you your second month free just to try out our service.

    Site: http://www.ChicagoVPS.net

    If you would like to read a recent thread about us: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=7159849#post7159849 that might help make your decision.

    If you have any questions please contact me at Chris@chicagovps.net

    December 9, 2010 @ 2:46 am | Reply

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