Today it was announced that FTNHosting had acquired a popular LEB company, VMPort. I decided to write up this post to mix up the content on LEB a bit and because Ashley (from VMPort) has been an active member of the community for quite some time so this announcement has been encountered with mixed feelings, some excited about the change and some, well, not so excited. Change is never fun but sometimes it is needed, in this case the benefits to the current VMPort clients appear to outweigh the negatives but there’s still a hole being left where VMPort once was. There is a very informative thread on LET about this here (along with a copy and paste of the announcement on VMPort’s site for confirmation).
Having not used VMPort before, I was still a bit saddened as I read Ashley’s post about the reasons behind the decision but, I am sure it is all for the best for the clients and for the VMPort staff. Best of luck to the VMPort clients going through the transition, to the FTNHosting staff for acquiring some big shoes to fill, and to Ashley for all future endeavors.
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I hope this turns out to be a good move for the customers
We’ll be sure to take good care of them, we promise!
Best,
Kevin Hillstrand
FTNHosting.net
Congratulations guys and good luck!
I am a customer with one of your company’s, Urpad.net for over 3 months now and the service is really superb.
Cheers,
-Scott
Thanks Scott, it’s nice to see some vindication :)
Glad to hear that you’re happy with our service, we try to shoot for the stars and do our best. If there is anything we can do for you please let us know!
Have a great week.
Best,
Kevin
Surprise surprise, another one of those guys.
Dont worry if you never had a chance to try VMPort, Im sure they’ll be along with another host real soon.
For a week, before selling that for $10.
D,
May I ask what you are talking about?
Best,
Kevin Hillstrand
FTNHosting.net
And here is another one of those guys, sorry i meant trolls.
I have already explained the reason behind the sale, money has nothing to do with it.
And if we could believe you ashley you clearly have no concern about your customers. mainly for the following:
* Selling without customer approval or even notice.
* selling to a foreign entity with totally different laws (Including the ability to spy on customer data anytime)
* Did the same as your good mate james Todd.
If i genuinely had no concern for my customers i would have done a runner or shut down completely. Company’s exchange hands all the time in the real world without customers having a clue, the only difference here is that you have the means to complain and cause a scene.
I actually did this for my customers, i could have easily continued to run the company single handed and let the service/support quality slowly degrade whilst still making money, but that is not the case here.
If i had done a runner, shut down or robbed people you would be here complaining. If i sell the company to a reputable company that can offer 24/7 support to my clients then your here complaining.
Lets just face it, some people are just going to complain regardless. At the end of the day, its my company. And one of the benefits of running a company is the privilege of making your own decisions.
Its not the fact anyone disagrees wether it maybe better or not. its the fact of your total disregard of the data protection act.
its not the case hs sold it. the problem is he doesnt care about his clients or there privacy and rather sell them to a foreign company…
The UK data protection act is going to be on his case if a client wishes to peruse it.
Not that I am trying to cause a scene, but in the UK Organisations who process personal information for staff records, marketing and accounting purposes are usually exempt and do not even need to notify the ICO.
If anyone is that concerned about this due diligence should have been done in the first place and requesting evidence of ICO registration prior to purchase.
I am not saying you have no right to complain however the data protection act is entirely irrelevant in this instance as VMPort were exempt from notifying or mandatory registration day one.
For clarification I suggest you contact ico.gov.uk and they will tell you the same thing, which is what I was told when I assumed I had to register Inception Hosting from day one, they simply informed me not only did I need to register but I was not even required to notify them.
And this is even less relevant to a Sole Trader such as VMPort.
Thank you Anthony, i was going to clarify this myself but the last thing i want right now is more drama.
**by marketing I mean of your own services only
Congratulations! I heard many great things about FTN, Chris and his guys run a tight ship!
I’m sure this was the best move for everyone, and hopefully clients will give them a chance before jumping ship.
Good luck to Ash with her future endeavors.
Thanks for the support!
I found this really catchy! Hah. http://www.urpad.net/blog/urpad-rap/
When is there going to be a rap for Vmport guys? =D
I’ll let Ethan know and hopefully he will be doing one very soon after everything is all settled in. The entire team has been busy with the acquisition lately.
Best,
Kevin
Thank you Dominic-
I’m glad that you liked the URPad Rap. I will definitely be creating one for VMPort soon :-).
Regards, Ethan
@Tom, I am deleting your comments because:
1) I explained why this was posted IN THE POST (my advice is read the post before you comment and complain about it, it will save you a lot of wasted effort). If you don’t like it, don’t read it. If you do not have something related to the post or anything constructive to add, it will be REMOVED.
2) Your ignorance is not helping you any. Free speech is not a right on the internet, plain and simple. You are on a privately owned website in which the owners and staff have the right to remove anything we deem inappropriate. Even if free speech did carry over to the internet, it does not give one the right to enter an establishment and publicly bad mouth the staff of that establishment.
We do not censor comments but we do filter out GARBAGE. If it has nothing to do with the post and especially if you attack LEB.com, it will be removed. I cannot find a single website/company that allows people to enter their website and attack the website and staff. This is common sense and while it appears to be lacking in some individuals, we try to promote it as much as possible.
Wow, awesomely summarized. Agreed on every point especially the one explaining the freedom of speech. I do that all the time on my personal blog too
I haven’t seen Toms comments (was there more of them?) except one where he said (and it’s nothing wrong with that) this thread really isn’t needed here.
We (LEB/LET members) had litttle discussion and #lowendbox IRC and there was more people thinking that this more or less unimportant news for most people here don’t belong to lowendbox.com special front page thread. Especially as there’s already wide discussion at lowendtalk. In past years happened so many bad budget hosting related things… we discussed about them under HOST threads/tags at LEB, in special threads in LET, etc… that I also don’t see reason why this one should have special place at lowendbox frontpage as there already was discussion at LET before someone opened this useless LEB “news”.
The idea is that we will be posting more news related to the LEB community that impacts some of our visitors, not just news like this (i.e. deadpools, runners, and milestones for current providers that impact clients). I want to post something other than offers on LEB.com so this was my first attempt.
Tom posted 2 comments and the 2nd one prompted me to post this response (the first one was just him bashing LEB.com, causing trouble, and asking questions that I answered in the post that he didn’t bother reading).
But there was dicussion with same topic at lowendtalk already. News are good.. as long they are news and you inform us about something what we don’t know and we don’t discuss already 2 mouse clicks away. Web administration usually merge not divide same topics :P
Anyway, I hope that we will get something better from next posted news – to be more positive :)
@KuJoe BOFH mentality is usually biggest step in a way to ruin some community. I friendly suggest you to use administration privileges sparingly and where is really needed not where someone say that he disagree with something and explains why.
Will you ever be happy with anything the LEB team do? A lot of my client base were from LEB/LET so i see nothing wrong with posting about such here.
Correct me if im wrong but you were complaining there were no deadpool posts the other week (Amongst other things) yet as soon as LEB do something out of the norm (Posting offers) you complain yet again.
You need to make your mind up what you want, or better yet create your own blog and run it however you want.
I think that I fairly explaind my opinion in posts above. Nothing more than that. And if there’s still something unclear from my writings feel free to ask. I am here to read and discuss :)
Spirit goes about voicing his opinions the right way. He explains things and provides reasonable arguments which I have no problem with. My only problem is when people complain about something without taking the time to read what they are complaining about.
Sure, maybe this isn’t front page news, but I don’t have the ability to post something and not put it on the front page (or even disable comments for that matter which I would have done for this since, as Spirit pointed out, there is an LET discussion already).
Where is the “thanks” button? Sometimes I miss it here :)
Hello,
Due with high demand, we have made the decision to resume services to the UK but at a new facility we are currently awaiting hardware to be shipped to the facility in Maidenhead. We should have a batch of new servers online in the new UK facility within the next 48 hours.
For VMPort customers who would like to migrate to the new UK location, please update your migration ticket or if you haven’t requested migration yet, please request one ASAP.
Thanks,
Chris.M
So far it has been causing hell for me. Cpanel license was revoked from my server 3 days ago with no notification so clients that relied heavily on using webmail for business are losing out. I have some clients who are web developers and can’t do whats needed due to no cpanel access. Last night i was told it would take 24hours for migration. . . now my entire server is offline and we open again in 15 minutes. Let the complaints roll.
To update the community, we already explained the situation to Mr. Simon Todd over his thread on WHT which may be read here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1155688
I am personally taking care of him now.
Has the UK VZ node gone down yet with Red station?
My VM appears to of stopped.
No, all servers with Redstation are online.
Are you a customer? I personally am aware of who you are Jack (as you know) and couldn’t find your name in the database.
Ashley, I was always VERY happy with your company and services you guys helped me setup. You guys were very good at doing business with everybody but this new company has already screwed me up pretty good. My servers are down, my emails are down, the migration failed twice and now I have a very screwed up system. It’s going to take me all weekend to get everything up and running correctly and hopefully back to how it was. Unfortunately, I am also having to search for a new provider as I was very clear to the new company that my system CANNOT be down and I asked to leave up my old server (even if I have to pay some extra money for a few days) so this would not happen. Hope you the best in future business and endeavors. Please let me know if you start another vm / dedicated server company.
Thank you.
Brian-
I remember working with you last night.
You see, after we migrated your VPS to our infrastructure, the IPs changed. As you are running cPanel / WHM on your server, you have to update a few configurations on the cPanel/WHM side otherwise the sites will remain down (such as the IPs the vhosts are linked up to, the shared vhost IP, DNS zone IPs etc).
When we asked you for the root password to perform this for you free of charge, you essentially refused and told us “Nevermind I’ll do it myself.”
As of now I see you still have not changed it as your sites are still pointing to your old server IP. You will need to help us help you and let us know your root password via the ticket so we can do this for you. If you rather do it yourself, please use the “IP Migration” tool in WHM and update the main vhost IP in Basic WHM Settings.
Regards, Ethan
Ethan,
Actually, as I told you the other night, I did do it myself but it takes 48 hours to take effect as my name servers and all domains are hosted by another company. I told you guys this prior to any migration and requested the old site to stay up because of this fact. As of right now, the main server is STARTING to come up, but due to the weekend, could take an extra few hours to fully register. I have everything done and have found another company, which i will post here that has decent dedi’s for a pretty good price. Like I said in the ticket, this is not a good way to start a “new” relationship when purchasing a company.
Have a nice day.