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The KUBBUR Interview with Ellis Woollard, CEO of Kuxo

KuxoThere’s been some drama around KUBBUR.com and its demise.  LowEndTalk veteran @BlaZe even proposed the story as “drama of the year”, and @rogerwilco compared it to the legendary HostSolutions saga.

I won’t recap events to date, but we were contacted by Ellis, CEO of Kuxo, LTD, the UK company that acquired KUBBUR, who wanted to make a statement to the community.

I asked them to introduce their company and what they’re about, and then tell us why they’re purchasing KUBBUR, what’s going on with people’s accounts and data, and why selling the same “cheap 10Gbps unmetered” plans will work at a lower price.

Let’s find out.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a fast-moving story and there are already many posts in the LowEndTalk thread, so you should definitely follow developments there.


Q: Please tell us about Kuxo and your background and your previous endeavors.

A: Kuxo has been a dedicated server host primarily, for the past 15 months, previously we were System413 (413.io), which my relation ended due to both a planned change in business direction, and me not agreeing with the general way the company was headed. Kuxo was formed, and we took out contracts in London for co-location. Right now, we have servers in both London, and Dallas, which are in full cabinets, with the servers being owned and managed by ourselves.

Q: I read on your site that you’ve spent quite some time developing your platform. Can you tell us a little bit about it, because it wasn’t clear to me. Is it a full bare metal/dedi server management interface?

Regarding our platform, we have a combination of both Open Source software, such as Pterodactyl and DCIManager, combined with custom theming, and in house software. In addition to this, we are in the process of a fully custom VM and Billing Panel, which should align with the same general theme as our new site, which is being released in the coming days.

Q: What’s your edge or differentiator in the marketplace? I take it you’re focused on game servers but of course so are many others so why should someone pick Kuxo?

Our edge / differentiator is primarily the CosmicGuard DDoS protection, combined with our incredibly low pricing. We aim to cater towards the lower price end of the market, without compromising on quality, and support. Our support and engineering team works 24/7, and is based out of our offices in the UK.

Q: Why are you buying Kubbur?

Our purchase of KUBBUR was mainly for the increased brand presence, since our inception, growth has been steady. Recently we have expanded operations largely, ordering around 50 new servers, and getting ready for immense growth from Ryzen 7000. We noticed KUBBUR was in trouble, and know Leifur and the KUBBUR team personally. The purchase of KUBBUR was mainly to prevent mass service outages, which were already taking place in KUBBUR due to a lack of payment on its services. KUBBUR has a loyal client-base, and is well positioned to assist with Kuxo’s growth, and expansion into becoming a market leader.

Q: There’s been a lot of drama about different people buying different parts of Kubbur, people’s info being sold, etc. What exactly is the plan?

Firstly, the drama and method of announcing the sale of KUBBUR was unacceptable, and i have already voiced concerns surrounding this. When the deal for Kuxo to acquire the business operations of KUBBUR was made, the decision was made that the branding was not going to be used, and as such, we worked with Leifur to find a buyer for the KUBBUR brand. Sadly, shortly after the buyer of the brand gained ownership of the domain and discord server, they decided to announce, earlier than contractually agreed, that they had bought KUBBUR, and that KUBBUR was ceasing operations, which is not the case in the slightest. This is the cause of the delay in notifying clients, as this announcement happened whilst both myself and Leifur were asleep, without our knowledge. In hindsight, we should have announced the move sooner, which i apologise for, however our reason for attempting to delay both ourselves buying the business, and the third party purchasing the domain, was to give us time to have extra staff ready, and have communication pre-sent to clients, etc, to help answer any and all queries from clients, and as an attempt to manage the influx of support tickets. Obviously due to this breach of contract, this did not happen, and clients were sadly misinformed.

To clarify. Kuxo has purchased KUBBUR Limited, this is to include all clients, all servers, and we have taken on their liabilities, such as refunds, credit balances, and contractual obligations to their providers. Services will continue to be provided to KUBBUR clients, free of charge for the next month, with the only interruption being a change in the panel url from the KUBBUR domain to the Kuxo Domain. In addition to this, we will also be upgrading all servers to a Ryzen 9 5900x CPU in the coming days, followed by a further upgrade to 7950x in mid November, when we have completed stability and thermal testing. Kuxo will fully honour any credit balances, and will refund where appropriate, we will ensure no client is at a financial loss from this.

Q: After Kubbur got into trouble, everyone pointed to their cheap 10Gbps unmetered plans as the culprit. You’re going to be selling the same plans, only cheaper – why will that work?

We have been involved with KUBBUR’s management for a while, and we would not say their cheap 10Gbps plans as the culprit of their failure, the margins are fairly solid on this type of service. KUBBUR has had numerous issues with investors being forced by a 3rd party to leave the company and investors letting KUBBUR down. This has lead to a large lack of stock, whilst the company had already planned for restocks, and had signed contracts accordingly. A massive amount of rackspace was going unused, which the small amount of nodes were unable to cover the costs of. Kuxo has significant financial backing, both from myself, and a external investor, which will allow us to fill the rackspace, and fully benefit from the economies of scale, hence the price reduction. In addition to this, we have negotiated significantly better deals with upstream providers than KUBBUR, mainly due to the cash we have on hand to pay upfront, and sign longer than typical contracts, etc. We are not doing this to make a quick buck, we are doing this to spread brand awareness, and grow as a company.

Q: Anything else you’d like to share with the community?

In closing, I would like to apologise for how this move has been handled, this has caused large amounts of needless stress to our valued clients, which was not the intention. Whilst it is not directly our fault, we cannot deny that we could have managed this better.

Should anyone have any further questions surrounding this, they are welcome to contact myself on ellisw@kuxo.io anytime, and i will do my best to assist. We are here to make this move as seamless as we possibly can for clients, and will help out where we can.

raindog308

7 Comments

  1. Susan:

    I am not trying to be an a-hole, but who really cares what this dude has to say about his new venture or KUBBUR? Just another provider in the wind ;) She said, he said bunch of hot air.

    Come on, prove me wrong…

    October 10, 2022 @ 8:49 pm | Reply
  2. Max:

    Same, not sure why this was given any light.

    October 11, 2022 @ 4:47 am | Reply
    • Rhinox:

      Kuxo CEO got a chance to explain how they screwed KUBBUR acquisition. Nothing wrong with it…

      October 11, 2022 @ 6:37 am | Reply
  3. Balleklasker:

    Awful company!

    Ordered and paid a VPS a week ago.

    Haven’t received any VPS and they are not responding to tickets.

    Scam?

    October 14, 2022 @ 11:44 am | Reply
  4. Ellis is a fraud! He took money from me for a CPU and Ram 2 months ago. Haven’t been delivered yet. Not replying to my emails.

    October 23, 2022 @ 9:24 am | Reply
    • Yeah, he’s been scamming people in the past for a long time now. Early last year I lost a server to him, and it was never returned. It’s so sad how people just scam others for the fun of it.

      December 16, 2022 @ 2:19 pm | Reply

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