IXWebhosting being migrated to SITE5 by EIG

This afternoon I received an email from IXWebhosting that they had been purchased by EIG (which I already knew) and that they were being shut down and assimilated into SITE5 webhosting. A mental image of the BORG came to mind immediately. The email gave a telephone number to call SITE5 if I had questions, ( after 1 hour and 2 minutes of Long Distance on HOLD to Site5, I gave up on trying to get information from them. ) and decided to call IX. I got a person at IX after a few minutes who was NOT very helpful and unable to answer even the most basic questions... so here is a recap.... 1 - When are my sites going to me migrated? (I have about 20 websites hosted there in one large hosting package with 15 dedicated IP addresses.).. *** NO CLUE *** 2 - What effect will this have on my hosting costs? Will the cost changes be effective as soon as the site is moved or not until my current hosting contract runs out with IX in September 2018. *** NO CLUE *** They will let us know when they get farther into the migration process. (so they are migrating without a plan?) 3 - What version of PHP are they running at Site5. (Answer: Oh, the newest one, 5.6.something.) Really? PHP7 is faster than 5 and very stable... Version 5.6 is ancient history! I hope they are running on version 7 but nobody seems to know. I have about 20 sites running on PHP7 at HostPapa and GoDaddy... NO issues. 4 - Site5's Terms of Service has all sorts of hosting limitations based on the number of page views, etc, etc, etc. Are they including bots and search engines in these limits? Dunno, but if they are, I get a lot of bots and crawlers as well as spam referrals. On some websites that can be as high as 90% so I would be over quota every month just due to bots, spiders and crawlers. In addition I get as many as 6000 attempts/month to exploit /wp-login.php and WordPress plugins which I have no control over. Does SITE5 count that traffic against my site usage? dunno! Nobody seems to have any answers. 5 - When I called the number in the migration email for SITE5, and the recording said... (interestingly) IN ORDER TO GiVE YOU THE BEST POSSIBLE SUPPORT, WE WILL BE DISCONTINUING PHONE SUPPORT AND MOVING ALL SUPPORT TO LIVE CHAT. So I sat on hold for 62 minutes and I supposed to be grateful that they still have telephone support? Or am I supposed to be thrilled that they are dropping it and forcing me to use a chat box. There is nothing like getting a whole load of new customers given to you and then you 'upgrade' your support to a chat window. BEST POSSIBLE SUPPORT'... You gotta be kidding me.

You can change host whenever you want, do you have an off-site backup?

An even better poll would be one on how many hacked Digital Ocean, Vultr, Linode and Amazon AWS VPS's there currently are.

Glad it worked out. When I saw an alert for this thread I forgot it was from months ago. The one member who deemed to have an attitude towards the situation (hobby)...it was from a place we all share when it comes to EIG. Too many customers who basically hijacked into waiting for the process to complete or in some cases lost everything. I've seen it a few times with clients. Not fun, but we live and learn. I find it funny with the limitation of PHP7 when it's already 2 years old and about 6 months away from 7.3. Ah well. With any new host, pay monthly until you have a trust level with them. That could take months or years, but if something should go wrong, you're only out a few days of a payment instead of months or years. With the BBB...they were relevant in the 80's. I know of previous clients that admitted to paying the BBB a little extra to maintain a A+ rating. That alone shows how "trusting" the BBB is, and how those clients are ex-clients. Leaving a review on here and the thousands of other forms of "social" media holds more weight. Unless you plan a class-action lawsuit, they will continue to be who they are....the borg

The one issue I have found is that their NGINX servers handled PHP differently, in particular they didn't care about BOM's or header instructions halfway down a php file where it doesn't belong, the Cloudlinux-Litespeed servers do. So be sure to set the file encoding to UTF-8 and not UTF-8-BOM (Microsoft Notepad sets it like this) on all PHP files and test your PHP files. That may not have affected your setup though, I guess it would depend on what PHP package is being run.

i would recommend you either learn to be patient or take up a new hobby? maybe waiting for paint to dry? this can be a lot more fun then sitting on live chat or the phone waiting for a response On a serious note. I have never used site5 but only what we hear on here and previous experience with other EIG companies. I would say if they are migrating accounts they are more than likely very busy and hence the longer wait times etc

Yes, I do. But how can I do that?

So what? What you're saying is just rubbish. "predatory by nature". I used to have a really great free host for a few years, I never had a problem it was even with an Australian host. Even increased the bandwidth allowance for free when I was attracting more visitors. It's so long ago now I can't remember the company name or anything, but I decided to let that site go. Just to clarify it wasn't a free host, it was a paid host that periodically offered a limited number of free accounts, mine was a free account. Here's the point: if you don't like your current provider you can shift your site elsewhere any time. If you find they have excessive downtime, or if they don't allocate the resources you require for the number of visitors - then all you have to do is set up a hosting account somewhere else and move your content across... it's not difficult. You may have to pay a bit more - for example after I decided to set up my blog, I wasn't able to find a reliable free host (funny that). I could run a sever from home no problem, my ISP will provision be an IP block as well (they cost I think A$4/m for a block of 4 something like that). However, you think I really want to run a server from home when I can pay $18/year and have someone else host it in a datacentre? That's cheaper then it costs just to provision an IP block from the ISP let alone the other associated costs and the fact it'll be using bandwidth I could otherwise use for other purposes. And how do you think my home network will cope if it gets hit with a DDoS? "Ah just put it behind a CDN" - well I don't believe in CDNs (see Scott Helme 's article as a basic overview of the reason why, ironically he's now switched it back on).

I have a mix of websites at HostPapa.ca. About 20 are have their own shared hosting packages and another 20 are on a managed VPS. They have given me excellent service for about 10 years now. I keep almost all of my DNS at GoDaddy. Their user interface is a pain, but they have great 7x24hr service so when it acts up and blocks something because it does not understand that I am in Canada, they staff are quick to fix it. I do not have the time or patience to deal with the day to day problems of managing a Linux server. 20 years ago, my daughter used to ask why I was walking around with my pager attached to my pajamas. I have no intention of becoming enslaved to a computer again! WHM is a pain to use as a management tool but a big improvement over having to use SSH and remember what commands to type in the Olde Days. WHM is much like a Swiss army knife with 300 blades assembled in random order. Out of all that there are about 10 items that you need to use to set up an new domain so it is not that bad. There are some good video tutorials for WHM on Youtube.

Thank You. For clients I was doing it manually with moving emails from the old to new account through a mail client. I've had zero issues doing it this way, and would just set it to complete in the background. A bit of longer process, but if I should have any clients in the future that needs this done, I will try this option. You or the account owner doesn't have to have full root access. As long as you have a full cPanel backup, then you can upload it and the host can restore it for you, or give them the root access information to the "old" account, and they can do the process for you as well.

Well, that it is a 'hobby' is not the dumbest assumption you could have made, but since you are in the webhosting biz with that attitude, you can be sure I will not bother to contact you when I start moving those sites. Given that EIG is the driving force here, I see little chance of a favorable outcome for the staff at IX or clients. From what have I read here, EIG gutted SITE5 when they took it over as seems to have been the case with other take overs. I was hoping to hear if there was anyone here who had already been through the migration process of IX->Site or anyone who was a current customer of Site5 who might be willing to share their experience.

If you have a full backup with all your files it's simple. I note you were using a Windows based system, that's the reason your ASP includes are broken (Site5 only provides Apache hosting, not Windows). Your first decision should be whether you wish to continue using a Windows server or if you wish to convert to xNix. In that case you will need to change your ASP includes to PHP, i.e.: Code: <!--#include file="c_bottom.html"--> Becomes: PHP Code: <?php include 'c_bottom.html' ; ?> And you may need to set .html files to php handling in .htaccess like so: Code: AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .html .htm From the look of your homepage that should be all you need to do. However if you're concerned feel free to make a zip file of the entire contents of your site (minus the binary files) and send it to me via wetransfer (or dropbox or mega etc) and I'll be happy to have a look at it and upload a test website for you, my email address is aractus at msn.com. Anyway once you've decided if you're sticking with Windows hosting or moving to Litespeed the basic procedure is: 1. Set up a hosting account somewhere of your choice. 2. Once the hosting account is set up get the server IP address (it will either be emailed to you with the account information, or you can view it in cPanel by clicking on "Server Information"). 3. Open up your hosts file and set the IP address for all the domains you will be using (this is temporary). This will allow you to view your site from your browser before making it live. In Windows you can open the run box and paste this command in to open it: notepad "%windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts" Add the lines like so: 93.184.216.34 example.com 93.184.216.34 ftp.example.com 93.184.216.34 subdomain1.example.com 93.184.216.34 subdomain2.example.com etc. (Site5 actually has a decent guide on this). 3b. You can optionally set the nameservers for your domain to your new host now as well, or wait until you're satisfied with how your site looks. Note it will take 24hrs or so (up to 48hrs I think for some?) for cached DNS servers to refresh. 4. You can set-up your subdomains and upload your site to your new host and view it. Once everything looks good you can set the nameservers. 5. Set the nameservers for your domain to your new host. You have to do this in Site5 as they are your registrar (guide is here ), although note that they are required to provide you access to your domain management (separate to your hosting) and if they don't you can lodge a complaint here to regain control of your domain. However if you can't access domain management I would suggest trying the Site5 support and asking them to make the changes for you. You will also want to unlock the domain and get auth key at the same time (again if you can't access domain management, contact Site5 support and request they do this for you I would suggest doing that by phone). Then you can either transfer it to your new host or better still to an independent registrar and I would suggest name.com as a reputable registrar. 6. Wait a couple of days, and delete all the DNS entries you put in your hosts file in step 3.

That article is nonsense from the first sentence. Why? CloudFlare is not a CDN. It never has been. Yes, it has pseudo/quasi-CDN abilities, but it's true nature is as a cached reverse proxy. The CDN is more of an after effect, and fully automatic with limits ("easy") unlike true CDNs. The proxy nature is what leads to his TL;DR rant on SSL. What he wants doesn't exist. If he wants an actual CDN, then he needs to use one. Ironic, seeing as his 3rd paragraph refers to it being a proxy. The business/enterprise account has far more advanced SSL, but he just brushed that aside. Then he concludes by saying it's great, and he still uses it, so was that point of that little tirade to begin with?

Unfortunately fraud is quite rampant in this industry so by having someone pay for a purchase, regardless if they remain, it is a way to verify your identity and reduce the amount of fraud. Spammers would eat a company alive that offered a non-paid trial that had full access to services.

^^ THIS! I went out for back surgery in FEB and never got any notice of this 'sale' from IXWEB - I took 4 months medical leave and left my 48 websites in the hands of my P/T IT guy while I was away - He wrote me saying he couldn't access anything in March - so I logged in just to see some note about 'migrating' to a new platform - "whatever" - I was in too much pain and too doped up to care at the time - Figured it'd be resolved in a day or two... Fast forward to June 25, 2018 (5 months now) and just tried logging on again - and whilst it let me 'in' for a millisecond, it then popped up with a message saying my account (or websites) were still being migrated and to be patient - So I flipped open my phone and dialed IXWEB - Nada! - No phone number on their page anymore either.... So started Googling around and landed here - and I see I'm not alone here - and this has cost me a load of new business and a TON of lost emails (any one know if they're saving our 5 months of mails right now??) ... We had (have) 5 copyright applications ($420 EACH!) 'in process' and the lawyer stopped doing them after 2 months and pulled our applications (and refuses to refund his fees - and Federal filing fees are non-refundable) - so there's $2000+ this migration has cost me in REAL money b/c none of our mail servers got 'migrated' and got no notices from the Gov't or our lawyer - I (we) cannot access our CP to change it to redirect or anything - have defaulted back to using a fallback Gmail account - (that's very professional!) but at least we're able to speak with clients now and handle some new inquiries as our CMS system also goes to the servers too (Double Grrrrr!) - but the websites still all point to our 'contact us @ domain name . com ... Grrrrrrr! Thankfully a few of the newer sites I put in a "forward a copy" to Gmail in case the IXWEB servers ever went down as I've been burned before with 'lost mails' when IXWEB would crash for weeks at a time back in the 2000's (been with them since 1999) - Now I'm seeing (reading) about CC issues and accounts being forced closed or lost - and a new CP that everyone is bashing... That all said - What are we supposed to do now after 5 months??? I can't call them? I can't 'chat' with them b/c the stupid migration notice screen can't be closed - so I have ZERO access to my account - What about the 5 months of service I'm paying for??? It's useless as I can't update sites with our weekly deals or promos or events - This is killing me! What are others doing?? TIA - BB

I would say this. Go and make backups of all your sites now. It might be a good idea to go ahead and find a new host and just move your sites now and not worry about the issues that are about to start happening. Best of luck

Wow! 5 years prepaid? That's quite a bit, but if you were with them for that long and were happy, I can understand why you would take the risk. It's a shame to continue watching EIG gobble up good hosts and destroy them.

Well, firstly you have a special definition of "CDN" to exclude CloudFlare. That aside, CloudFlare breaks the chain of trust - plain and simple. 1- You don't know if your communications to the server is encrypted, and importantly - even if it is you don't know if it's a weak connection or not. 2- You also don't know if webmaster shared their private key with CloudFlare or not. It used to be required, but the problem I have is purely with security - if a webmaster downloaded the private key to their personal computer, maybe a hacker stole it? Maybe he emailed it insecurely? Maybe he downloaded it over insecure FTP? Lots of bad things can happen once someone blissfully ignorant of security decides to take their private key off their server. I once had a customer that wanted to email me their credit card number! And this was while I was on the phone to the customer!! I told her that was a really bad idea and to read it to me on the phone, which she did. I wrote it down, used it later when she emailed confirmation of her purchase, and shredded the paper with her card number in the cross-cut shredder when I was done (all standard CC number handling as far as I'm concerned). Right, but a customer has no way of knowing the level of security between CloudFlare and the server, or if the inept webmaster leaked his private key, and that's the problem.

Yup. Once you have children, the views of being attached to work changes. ...and within those 300 blades, some websites only require 5 blades to do the job, while the other 295 blades are cutting into RAM in the background

Have you got any backups? Have you tried calling or contacting Site5?

As soon as I heard EIG had bought IX, I was expecting to have to move the sites. It was not a matter of IF but WHEN. Actually, it is not that bad because I can get good local hosting at HostPapa and billed in $CA so we don't have to pay the $CA->$US conversion which is about 25 percent and the sites are always backed up ready for a midnight move. Ideally I would prefer NOT to have another 20 websites hosted at HostPapa just in case something does happen there too. I don't want to be dealing with moviing 40 or 50 websites out of there a year from now if, say, EIG or someone similar expands into Canada and eats up all of the decent hosting companies. What amazes me is the high handed attitude of EIG towards the IX customers where they dont give us a migration schedule or even any idea of what the cost difference will be and when. There is no technical information available about the packages that we are being moved to. Just a telephone number for support which is totally clogged up with callers. If there are any decent CANADIAN Webhosting services on this forum, I am open to suggestions otherwise Hostpapa will probably get the sites by default.

IX was never that great to be honest. Their hosting didn't even support SNI, nor did they have any plans to support it: In response to my question 5 Jan 2017 : Code: Dear Daniel, Thank you for contacting our Technical support dept. I'm sorry to tell you that unfortunately HSphere control panel installed on out shared servers won't allow installation of Let's Encrypt SSL nor usage of SSL certificates on shared IP addresses. Should you have any questions please feel free to contact us anytime, we are available 24/7. Respectfully yours, Artem Smolenko, Technical Support Dpt. Not to mention their incredibly rude email regarding re-entering my CC number (which of course I chose not to do). The email is titled "Immediate Action Required - Credit Card Information Must Be Updated [Ticket #3483181]" dated 29 June 2017 and begins like this (emphasis added): "We experienced a technical issue impacting our ability to automatically renew your account or process new purchases. You must log in and add your credit card information back to your account immediately. Your credit card information was not compromised but it is no longer available for renewals or new purchases. We apologize to you for causing any inconvenience." Don't presume to dictate to me what I must and must not do!! Obviously I didn't have to do anything since my account is still active (it'll expire on the 16th of April), and I didn't ever have it set to auto-renew. So their email is a lie as well, they didn't need my credit card number for anything. AND, after that email they sent two "reminder emails" lol that I also ignored, in fact I never even read them until today. There's no way I'm giving a company my credit card number unless it's to be used, that's ridiculous. Even if I was going to renew I would wait until renewal and then enter it, there's just no valid reason to give a company that you're not going to make a purchase from for 10 months your credit card number, it's much safer not to give it out until needed! This is what I like to see. Further negatives include their 2MB upload limit for php transfers, their HSphere control panel is terrible, their servers while very reliable and I never had any significant downtime don't support HTTP/2 (or SNI as mentioned) therefore there is a huge performance improvement when moving to a better host, and finally they offer so-called "unlimited space" hosting which is a pretty terrible idea and leads to servers being overloaded. Interestingly I don't seem to have a Site5 migration email at all, although when I log into ixwebhosting it does have a notification that reads "Your account is in the process of being migrated, please see your email for more detailed information". I'm guessing they haven't actually started any migration yet, but if anyone does have that migration email I'd be very interested to see how it reads!

I lost confident with Cloudflare when I found some security issue ( using their business plan ). In fact, I stopped using these 3rd party CDN or Site protection. Scary really.....

See if you can do a charge-back with your credit card provider. I don't know where you're based, but if it was a recent transaction and they are refusing to deliver the service in some countries (including my own) banks WILL intervene and charge-back the money. What you can tell them is that you paid for a service, and that they cancelled the service and have offered you another service that is not going to suit your needs. And that they say they have a 45 day money back guarantee on that service. Another thing you can do is to is to get an escort agency or an escort as a client and make a website for them - the US has just passed a law making escort services illegal to advertise, even if the escorts are working legally in other countries - that law for example took down cracker.com.au because it was hosted in the US (it's now back up). Site5 is based in the US, it's not suitable for hosting certain legal websites such as that. IX was using HSphere control panel , yes they definitely handle multiple domains better than cpanel but that's about the only advantage. It didn't even support SNI, that is so dated I can't imagine you're going to find another decent provider using HSphere. HSphere hasn't been updated in 4 years. From a response to my question to them Janurary 2017: "I'm sorry to tell you that unfortunately HSphere control panel installed on out shared servers won't allow installation of Let's Encrypt SSL nor usage of SSL certificates on shared IP addresses." Your best bet is to get Reseller hosting and then you can setup individual cpanel accounts for each domain. For 40 domains, I wouldn't use add-on domains I would use reseller. It will take some time though, but of course you can leave sites live on one provider while you make sites live on another.

Hey Dean - I found a 'back door' chat link to IXWEB believe it or not - and just wrapped up a 20 min 'frank' discussion about the migration to Site 5 ... Despite my login - this yahoo says all our sites have already been migrated and just to ignore the notice (I'd love to if it'd go away) - So am gonna clear my browser cache now and try a fresh login or use a browser I've never used before for Site5/IXWEB and see if that gets me anywhere - Anyway - Let's see if I make any progress and if not will let ya'll know... They have zero sympathy and any legal threats they just ask what else they can help you with - Trained monkeys... I suspect i was probably talking to Site 5 ppl not IXWEB'ers as I've been with then since 1998 and they've always been good to deal with out of Ohio ... Now? I guess I'll be changing servers ... Sigh... Thanks for the quick reply - Cheers- BB

This is not my attitude towards my business but towards that of EIG (from past experiences). Like others have said i would start looking for other companies outside the EIG group

Thanks, I will try that. Hope that I can get something out.

Thus is the nature of reverse proxying. It is what it is. CloudFlare is a "man in the middle" by definition. If you don't trust them, don't use them. Simple as that. (Note: Unlike other services, this is neither monopoly nor required for normal use. Therefore such advice is not facetious or disingenuous, as "don't use it" often is. It's a purely optional service, preference, and can be skipped if you so choose.) Sometimes I choose to use it, sometimes not.

I think that getting a 'free test' is not realistic as others have mentioned because people would abuse that for sure. I would still highly recommend HostPapa because they have real telephone support 7x24 as well as live chat. There reps are generally knowledgeable and will transfer you to someone else if the problem is out of their depth. Most tickets which get escalated to a higher level are handled within 24 hrs but you have to be very specific in your ticket to describe what is happening so that they can reproduce the problem. HostPapa, like many of the other hosting companies, does have a trial period where they will do a refund if you do not like the service. If you are trying to avoid EIG, check out this list.. https://researchasahobby.com/full-li...panies-brands/ or just click on this handy image for a quick reference. https://researchasahobby.com/shared/EIGHosting.jpg

Glad to hear you may have got somewhere with them You can use geopeeker.com to view your website from around the world and see if they load up etc I would recommend if you do get access is to create a backup of all your accounts If we can be of any assistance let us know

Things are only going to get worse - migrating away as soon as possible is advised. I know that HawkHost is Canadian and I do believe they have a Canadian presence.

Now ixwebhosting login even failed. The problem is that now the ftp is totally not usable. I am not able to update my website through ftp. Not sure how long this migration will take, has been 1 week already!!!!!

Interesting, do tell more. <<snipped>>

That's definitely not happening as anyone who takes 5 minutes to do the math will see it'll cost more than a shared or a vps will. The average electricity bill is something like $0.12 per kWh and you're running a server and it only uses say 50 watts (probably uses way more) which means it'll use 36 kWh which has you at $4.32/month with electricity alone. You start adding the other costs like the static IP, the cost of purchasing the equipment itself and you'll be above $5/month making it more expensive than shared and entry level VPS's all without the redundancy of these services. It really gives you perspective as to the motivation of why EIG would want to move everyone off a platform that is not being updated by the software vendor. They definitely could do a better job migrating everyone off of it but they were going to be forced to do it eventually or there would be consequences no doubt.

I am very interested to read more about Site5 after the migration. Please keep us all in the loop.

Im in the same boat as the OP, I been a member of IX since 2005 and am on their unlimited plan. Yes if worst comes to worst I can just host my sites off my dedicated server in Montreal. But I paid IX up till the year 2020 to host my websites. So I would be out a lot of money if Site5 messes everything up. I have always found IX to be good and I rather have another company looking after everything instead of me running it off my own server and having to manage it. Now I talked to IX and Site5 by live chat and had a person for both in just seconds. My account will stay Active till 2020 is what I am being told, but no one can tell me if there will be any extra fees or charges. Also these limits that the OP speaks of is a worry. although most of my sites are static and don't put high loads on the servers, I do use my personal domain email for pretty much everything. After all it my personal site in which it links too.

Actually it looks like the Site5 server does handle ASP through a plugin, just not for the naked index for some reason. See: asoftech.com vs asoftech.com/index.html. That said there's no guarantee of it on any linux-based host so I would advise converting your ASP includes to php which should be simple enough (the way I would do it is using replace all in notepad). If I were you I'd make a copy of the site and use it to prepare a php-friendly version, that way you have everything ready.

Thread cleaned a bit. This needs to get back onto topic, if it's to stay a viable thread, so let's get back to the IXwebhosting/Site5/EIG discussion, m'kay?

Rubbish. There are plenty of providers that provide free trial accounts, usually around 7-15 days and sometimes up to a month. You can't really "abuse" a service you only have for 15 days, and there are other things you can do to select your customers - i.e. no instant-activation, IP check on country, etc. But he's not going to find a reputable provider using HSphere. The only way to use it again is to buy a VPS and then buy a HSphere license and set it up, lol, and that's way more work then simply moving to whm/cpanel/sentora/plesk something else. Maybe Plesk is more to his liking?

Thanks for the link - Will defo keep it on file - I'm into Site5 now - and they still have me in England and won't allow me to change back to the USA now that I'm here - Sigh - I think this is gonna be a long day with 50+ domains .... lol Thanks again - BB

It seems you are clearly not happy with the way things are being handled at their end. In that case, you may want to take backups and find another decent provider for your websites. Putting all eggs into different baskets is also a good idea. We've seen EIG bought outs and migrations in the past, I can't remember seeing a single incident without their service going downhill and clients complaining here on WHT. You may not want to wait and see in this case, too.

Yeah, very disappointed as well. They always had a poor user interface / hosting management system, but the actual hosting wasn't bad. Now, with this migration it has turned into a disaster. Already started moving my domains to other hosting. Goodbye IX / site5

It's almost painful to see what Site5 has become. I hosted with them a few years ago, and they were excellent - solid, reliable, professional. But then EIG bought them, and shortly thereafter, the Site5 employees were all shown the door - the deterioration was almost instantaneous. Two lessons learned, reinforced by other posts in this thread: 1. As soon as you hear even a well-founded rumor that your beloved host is being acquired by EIG, grab your backups and start migrating. Don't wait for things to go south, at which point it may be very difficult to engineer your escape. 2. Never, ever, ever , ever pay for more than one year of web hosting in advance. I don't care how wonderful your host is. I don't care how good the multi-year savings are. Things can change in a heartbeat, and getting a refund for unused hosting from a now-totally unresponsive host is usually impossible. And needless to say, always keep your domain registrations completely separate from your hosting. Nobody likes a hostage situation, especially not when you're the hostage. Now with MDDHosting for about 1½ years, and so far I'm a happy camper.

I think the chances of running servers from home is going to be very limited compared to what you suggest. First of all, you can be sure that the ISPs like Bell and Rogers are going make sure that you do not get a static IP Address unless you pay them a lot of money for it. That alone will shoot the costs of doing your own hosting though the roof. Secondly, as a hosting provider there is a lot of regulations which you will need to handle in terms of keeping logs until h*** freezes over just in case somebody from a government agency wants to see who has been accessing the server and what is on it. You can be sure that if they see more private servers popping up, that the number and complexity of those rules will skyrocket too. If you take a look at the new privacy laws from the EU which go into effect on May 25 (which effect every country), there are so many rules to abide by that you may want to rethink that idea. The EU privacy laws now allow anyone in the EU to hack any computer in the world, complain that you tracked their IP address in your weblogs without their prior permission, force you to show what you do have logged about them, and to force you to delete that information from everything (including backups and offline storage) and to notify anyone who may have that received that information from you that they must do the same. So, this EU privacy law which was originally designed to address abuses by companies like Google and Facebook who were harvesting peoples private information for sale without their knowledge or permission has now turned into a sledgehammer to be used on any small operators, designers and owners of private websites. This is nothing short of New World Order when countries on the other side of the planet can dictate to other countries what they can and can not do with their data... even when it comes to criminal attacks on their infrastructure.

Good Luck!

If you want to keep your sites hosted there you may want to search and read threads from previous incidents of EIG buyouts and migrations here on WHT. Better to make an informed decision than to wait and suffer.

This "transfer" is a disaster. I have two different hosting accounts with IX. With one of them they will not even acknowledge my ownership so I can't even ask them to transfer. On the other after a lot of chat I am unable to FTP through Dreamwever to my site.

It is sad. We actually started at HostGator over a decade ago and it was between HostGator and Site5. The deciding factor at the time was that I knew people that had/were using HostGator but nobody that had/was using Site5 at the time. That said Site5 was a solid provider - as was HostGator. It's sad to see how far things really have deteriorated. Personally I say not to pay more up-front than you can stand to lose. If the price of 3 years is the same as the cost of 1 year with a good discount - you don't stand to lose anything if you at least get your year, but you stand to gain 2 years of service if things don't go bad. At any rate - I generally agree with you - just not on any particular amount of time but based upon how much you are willing to potentially lose. Isn't that the truth! I'm glad to hear it. If you ever need anything don't hesitate to reach out.

Yes I suspect that this was a reason IX sold-up. They realised that migrating customers to another platform would be an overwhelming task - to do it right. We're talking 100's of customers per server at a minimum, it was just never going to go well. Not necessarily, a Raspberry Pi uses way less than 50 Watts. It uses about 1 Watt. But yeah, you have to pay for the IP block and the internet traffic.

Ouch I'm really sorry to hear about that. I suggest you start looking for a new host ASAP, and that will put you back in Canada where your sites belong.

As I tend to agree with you on this as I been reading some horror stories. But I paid my hosting 2 years ago to keep me up till 2020. So again leaving, leaves me out 3 years and a few months of money I paid. So I kinda got to go along for the ride unless they completely cut my services for no reason or dishonor the agreement for the services I paid for when IX ran it as all contracts would change hands and become their responsibility. Not to much I can do unless I want to take a lost which I don't.

So this is just one of many horror stories about EIG, yet people refuse to immediately abandon the ship even they know what is happening (e.g. host sold to EIG) and try really hard to push for the sake to save few bucks. How many days until next topic "X sold to EIG but i paid so i stay" and then shortly after that "EIG ruined my life and i lost millions".

I was with Hostgator during the legendary "Provo migration." And that was after I had left Bluehost. Oy.

It uses about 1W idle but under load it'll be more like the 5W range. You'd probably see anywhere from 10-30 requests/sec using a very lightweight deployment for an application. I'm pulling these numbers from http://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/drupal which I think would give an idea for pretty much anything PHP/MySQL based application. Now it would be more like $0.43/month in electricity in this scenario but like you said there are other costs associated with it which will still drive up the costs.

best of luck with resolving this - feel for you, been in similar position myself with another company.

That is one way to cut down the costs if the sites are not important. I have seen people hosting sites on EIG servers without complaining. But then there are some who won't touch EIGs even with a plastic pole

If you've paid upfront for several years of hosting my advice is to ask for a refund of the unused portion. Say that as IX Webhosting is no longer providing the hosting service, and that you would have to agree to a different TOS with a different company (with poor reviews) so you feel you are entitled to a refund for the unused service. They will likely refund your money, but if they don't you can take matters further. If the purchase was recent you may be able to issue a chargeback through your bank for unfulfilled services . If you paid with an Australian credit card almost certainly you would be able to issue a chargeback within a reasonable time for the unfulfilled service, other jurisdictions may vary. As was recently proven to Steam in ACCC v Valve Corporation , foreign companies that offer services to Australians have to abide by Australian Consumer Law, and that includes providing a remedy for failure to deliver the product/service to an acceptable quality.

Indeed - I know a lot of people that left one EIG brand for a non-EIG brand only for that brand to be gobbled up too. You'd maybe be surprised how many times we've been asked if we are EIG or plan on selling to them.

Furthermore - what if you need more than that piece of hardware can provide? You can't just scale it up - no matter how you slice it unless it's a stupidly tiny site that makes no money and you can deal with downtime/outages - it's not really ideal.

Make a backup of all websites, and switch to crocweb. Problem solved. I've been with them for 3-4 years and haven't had one issue, don't even think I've ever opened a ticket, besides temp IP ban due to my FTP information being wrong on my part.

Yeah the sites I host are not CPU or RAM demaning. As for cost, I paid for 5 years of service at IX because I had such great service from IX, I didn't think they ever sell out as they been around since the 90's and I been with them since 2005. IX always had a great support team and service.

Out of the blue I was notified that i was migrated and suddenly I discovered that all of my accounts were not receiving e-mail. First chat session resulted in a need to change the SPF record. After that didn't work it turned out that I needed to change the DNS servers used from one set of site5 to a different set. And now it turns out that they do not support catch all e-mail addresses. Since catch-all is a mandatory requirement I need to move - any ideas as to who would be a good choice? Any ideas as to recourse/reimbursement from site5?

Unfortunately I am one of the ex-customers of IX Webhosting; had been there for years! The migration to Site5 was a total cluster-mess (you know what I want to say...). They randomly selected one of my domains (I have about 40) for the 'primary' but it was a very minor one. They they proceeded to attach a bunch of my domains as sub-domains to this. They couldn't tell the difference between a domain and a sub-domain. I've been trying to un**** (there I said it) this mess for a month and their 'support' is a joke. I would have chucked the whole thing but I had 'upgraded' to a three-year contract with IX just before their announcement and the bastards refused to refund my money after I researched Site5 and saw they were horrendous. So I'm stuck unless I decide to write off the loss and switch to another hosting provider. Also, their primitive cpanel doesn't give half the options and capabilities that I had with IX. Email? Again a joke, no support to configure or use a 'catch-all'. It is just a gawn awful mess! So do NOT go to Site 5 and if they 'migrated you' I feel sorry. After writing this I think I WILL write this off as a business loss and look for a new hosting company. Suggesting are WELCOME PLEASE!!!!

I would actually agree with the person stating that fall out of the industry. My previous career was within the music industry, and analyzing both hosting and music...hosting is going through the exact symptoms of the music industries. That is why EIG has the constant need to buy up the market. In music, the big companies were invincible, and you could count them on one hand. Now, there's thousands and thousands of self-made record labels, thanks to the internet and lower cost in recording equipment. Before...you would need to sign to a major record company to gain their marketing channels and budget to become popular. Now...a smartphone camera, good home internet, a good concept, and you can reach millions of people online and become popular...right from anywhere in your home. Overall budget of a few hundred dollars versus a couple million that took years to recoup...if successful enough. That's why the bigger companies were crying...or "eating up the competition". They say people shouldn't be hosting at home, but many do, and if it were for small businesses, it wouldn't even hit the radar. What's funny....with all the new upgrades in home internet (as they tear up everyone's front yard with new fibre optic lines), and the constant need to optimize websites....a website will use about 1GB of data a month for local traffic, while everyone in the home uses 500+ GB for all sorts of activity and streaming....and that's just a regular DSL line. Newer residences already have upgraded internet lines. One can abuse a service within minutes of activation. By the time 7-15 days rolls, if the account hasn't been suspended, they've already moved on to another free trial host to have it ready before the current 7-15 days is done. If a suspension occurs and the host reaches out to the new "customer" hoping for a reply, they will never receive one. The "customer" has already moved on to the next host/victim, knowing the prior account will be terminated.

Best advice for yet another EIG thread that won't go away.

Having in mind you have around 20 websites most of them being with dedicated IP addresses I wouldn't hope for the best ( i.e being locked in the current price paid or similar ). It's up to you to decide if your websites are critical and if you want to move somewhere more reliable ( and accept the loss of pre-payments ) or to leave them as is and hope nothing will change dramatically. You know how they say hope for the best prepare for the worst.

I'm in this boat as well. I've been with ix for many years. We had some rough times, but for the most part, things were problem free. I was notified that my sites were just migrated to Site 5 over the weekend. I still have not gained access to 3 of my 4 accounts (billing profiles). I can't access email. Links they have sent in their migration emails are broken. I don't get emails for signon credentials. This is definately a migration nightmare. I will make plans to transfer my sites away from this host as soon as I can get access. Looking for suggestions for reliable and problem free hosting.

@ SkipStein , I wish I could say that I'm surprised? I'm taking it that IX wasn't running cPanel? I know cPanel's approach to addon domains is dated, but it should function okay (the subdomains can be ignored). That's not to say it isn't confusing for users that migrate from other panels. I would definitely recommend setting up a redirect for each subdomain created for addon domains, this will ensure that content is not served by these.

Definitely true. I haven't seen nearly as much of this as I had expected to see over the years though.

We are on site5 about 40 web sites. Monday ordered a new VPS plan with them because the old legacy sever will no longer be supported. After long chats, and then contacting EIG directly via social media, the migratuion suppoisdily finished yesterday, but getting them to finish simple taks or to explain to me why the server space being used on the new VPS is nearly nothing compared to what is really bein used on the old legacy server. The experience thus far just seems like they dont care. The former site5 owner deleted his social media account. I guess he didnt like what was being said to him about the sale of it to EIG. EIG's pattern of slurping up successful web hosting companies then dumping the great support staff seems to be status qou. Their chat support is in Indai,. The support is limited and many times results in a ticket being opened. Once the ticket is opened, you have to be persistnat otherwise, they put very little priority on it. I am spending the weekend, looking for a new host that can migrate my sites to a fully managed VPS, with backups. We are on site5 VPS 3. Trying to find a host that I can afford and trust has not been easy. I found one, I liked but they only migrated the first 25 sites for free and charged 14.95 per each one after that. They also only had a 7 day refund policy on VPS plans. Lost my confidence there. Go to the EIG web site and look for the companies they own and steer clear of them. By the way,. EIG had sasles in $1.1 Billion Last year and they own Constant Contact. Another company I will avoid.

Move out, migrate, abandon ship. Yesterday is better.

I have had hundreds of bad experiences with web hosting companies. 20 years ago I had ixwebhosting. They offered unlimited dedicated ip's back then and cpanel for cheap. it was good for a long time until the Russians took over tech support. Then everything went south, files disappeared for starters, then that famous period of sql injection which effected everyone of their customers. I left them with all kinds of infected files that even spread to my desktop. After a very long time, I understand that they eventually isolated the infection, but many sites were adversely effected. I dont think going to another web host is going to solve your problems. You need to cut the umbilical chord and get a dedicated linux server on Linode or Digital Ocean. If you do need another company, I was with mdd hosting for a couple of years. its a one man operation is what the owner told me. He was decent and service was reliable, but there was an issue with exceeding allotted space. Even though my files were well below the allowed hard disk space, I got charged extra. When I questioned him about that he became very defensive and gave me 2 weeks to get my files off his server. At least he didnt shut me down immediately. I would recommend him anyway despite his bad hair day. When I left him I made the big leap to be my own webhosting by setting up my own server. Its not that bad really. But will require some knowledge of linux commands and a basic understanding of apache and php and sql.

Generally I put a mod_rewrite redirect in each addon domain that if the site isn't loading by that domain, it re-directs there .

My main point was that there ARE providers that will give out trial accounts. Secondary to that you can mitigate the risk of abuse. I'm more concerned about solving @ SkipStein 's issue. I don't have experience with Plesk or other panels - but I do agree cpanel's handing of addon domains is crappy, I'm wondering if that's the only issue he has right now?

It does look like EIG have a successful monopoly. I'm amazed at the sales though! Maybe you could avoid them, but still buy their shares. Seems like they have a steady SP increase. At least you get something back

I would move all sites now . (I had an account with Hostgator and Arvixe when they got sold to EIG - it was a very bad experience)

I have been with IX for 12 years..... But after waiting 45 minutes for a webchat with Site5 that broke the camels back.... I tried 1and1 and did not like how they ran it... I am now with QTH.com and very impressed with their customer service... They are new to me, but was recommended by someone I know... I am a former Unix systems administrator with Intel Corp, so I know what I am looking for....

This guy's reviews have always seemed reliable to me: reviewhell.com (forum won't let me post link) As I said, I went with #1 on that list, MDDHosting, and have had no regrets.

I forgot to say, HSphere isn't just the control panel, it's also the billing platform, and the management platform. WHMCS is independent of cPanel/Plesk/whatever so at least if you had to move to another billing platform it won't affect your client platforms. HSphere is basically an all-in-one thing. Hence why I was saying I think the migration effort would have sunk IX - there's just no way you can put in that much manual work and stay afloat as a business. So they sold-up and now EIG has the problem.

If I had the money I would buy them all LOL, then run the company properly. I believe I read an article where they recently refinanced their 1.5 Billion dollar loan. They have more debt than revenue.

Site5 is the most defective, most amateur and most problematic host I've ever used. I run several companies with websites hosted by Site5 - HUGE mistake - MASSIVE! emails sent to clients and sent to me by clients frequently fail to arrive - ever! I've had to run a business GMAIL account in parallel because without a back up email service, there is sometimes no way my business can communicate with clients at all. Having bouncing emails provides such a poor impression to existing and prospective clients and trying to run a business with a GMAIL account sends out completely the wrong message. Time and time again I'm making support requests, often with little result. Problems recur again and again. I went back to site5 over and over and tried to get my account closed and refunded but they refuse, insisting on making me pay for a whole two years of defective hosting with no way out. Great shame they're not based in Europe because EU laws prevent second rate companies like Site5 from conning their customers with sub-standard services that don't do what they're meant to. Word of warning to anyone in business considering Site5 - they may be a bit cheaper but you'll pay and pay again in downtime, lost business and damage to your reputation. Choose a professional web host and don't waste time with these cowboys.

Such things did not exist in 1998. Nor is/was IX in existence in the 90s. EIG doesn't employ Russians. Yes, they have horrible support -- but it's Indian and USA, not Russia. MDD hasn't been "one man" in 5+ years, and I don't recall a time when it was. (In fact, "MDD" was a husband/wife duo from what a I recall, before that turned south, but it never just 1 person to my knowledge.) I have no idea where you getting your information. It's pretty fubar. And yet you're seemingly falling prey to fake "top 10" marketing when it comes to hosting. EIG, 1&1, kiddies, etc. You need to do more research on hosting. Hosting isn't sysadmin. What's really ironic is that service actually improved at IX when EIG bought it out. Why? Because IX was really horrible, even worse than EIG. This was pretty well known at not just WHT, but quite a few other places going back years. It seems many never got those memos?

That's what I would recommend as well (though I did explain this poorly above LOL).

The difference between DIY in the recording industry and web hosting is reliability. The recording artist can reasonably rely on any number of services to help get the word out and even for distribution (YouTube, Twitter, DropBox, etc.). A small business using a home connection is very susceptible to outage, everything from a simple router firmware update (pushed out with no warning by the provider) to an afternoon electrical storm that knocks the power out for an hour. Most users don't think of issues like this until it happens, and then they move their site back to a proper DC. I can see some non-commercial sites moving over (blogs, hobby sites, etc.), I doubt small business will move in that direction. I would say social media is more of a risk to the small business market than hosting at home.

Site5 == Horrible. EIG == Makes Site5 look stellar (shudder). It may be time for you explore migrating all your sites to a dedicated server. Your learning curve will be a bit steep + you'll get great service... from yourself...

I used to have IX way way back and even then, their support was simply awful. I can't even imagine what it'll be like after migrating to Site5.

You have rather good information - as I'm not entirely sure as to how you'd come across the duo tidbit but it is accurate. We've always been small - and we still are - but we don't try to hide that or pretend otherwise. That said one does not need to be huge nor do they need to have a huge staff to provide a quality service and excellent support. There are plenty of smaller providers out there that offer far better service and support than you can get from the 'big guys' in the industry. We're definitely not a one-man operation - although I have gotten the reputation of never sleeping because I do personally try to stay as involved as I can be.

The way you said it will work - but the way I said is less specific and will catch other edge-cases that could happen in rare situations.

I understood that. My point was that many would not consider or promote such "providers" for that very reason since all they attract is spammers and script kiddies. There's one provider on here that most people know of, and everyone recommends to not use them or have blocked their IP's. Completely agree. It just reminds me of one thread where the hosts girlfriend was upset and stole or disconnected the servers from the basement.

Thanks, I am scrambling for options. I didn't think it would be so difficult to migrate sites to a new server. A few hours at most. It took them 24 hours after purchase just to set up the account. A dedicated server would be great, but I jsut dont have enough hours in the day to manage it. A fully managed VPS works great if it is hosted with the right company. I am using Site5 VPS3 and would be happy to investigate any US companies that offer reliable hosting, with fast support.

They just migrated my sites over from IXwebhosting. It was a disaster. Then, without even having got things working, they told me they would have to charge me a substantial amount for the installation of SSL certificates for each domain. That was the only way things could get working. In effect, they tried to hold me hostage. And SSL certification was already covered by my terms of service at IXwebosting! Obviously, I went somewhere else (where everything went as smooth as silk). Now they are refusing to pay me a refund for the many months I had left on my IXwebhosting contract. Unbelievable! They screw up and then want to charge you double what you were paying to the company they bought over! If you're with them get out. If you aren't, stay well clear. Kevin

MDD Do you remember me? We had a spat over HDD space used and reported. you gave me two weeks to pack my bags. I always found you helpful, but for some reason, you were having a bad day that day. Your service was always good, and I have sent many satisfied customers to you. You may recall, I went all in for VPS at linode and never looked back.

Well, I just gave 'KnownHost' a shot and they use the same lousy cpanel as Site5. Waste of time but luckily I just bought a 1 month 'test drive' account. Hope they will process the refund for my 30 minute test drive. That being said, I guess IX was not that bad as their cpanel was VERY functional and supported easy alias domain setup, email 'catch all' and aliases and redirects with ease. now if I can just find a hosting company that is as easy to use. HELP??? Open for suggestions. I am only looking for a 'shared hosting' account as we are just small potatoes but do have 30 web sites.

This company has cost me a lot of lost business, I have tried to deal with them on down websites with no support to speak of, they are the most uneducated in servers than I have ever dealt with. I'm trying to be nice here I don't want to get booted off here. But if you are a victim of IX web and got dumped on SITE 5 (More like SICK 5) I urge you to RUN away from this company before it gets worst. And it will. They aren't competent to run a server.

Hahaha. It's good advice so long as the _____ isn't another brand under the EIG umbrella.

Yes I've been planning to migrate away for sometime as well. And it's crunch time since next month is the end of my billing cycle, so definitely time to set up with a competent smaller company.

What "such things"? They offered me as many ip addresses as I had domains for free. And yes it was 2003 when ix came along. Its a blur. Was EIG involved in IX in 2003? Funny you didnt deny the sql injection issue. Very interesting read on EIG here Nice to know that there are still greedy organizations out there that still think they will gobble up all of the small players to eliminate competition. I would never do business at any of those websites listed as acquisitions by EIG.

Most cPanel providers are going to have the same or very similar interfaces. Some will customize it - some more than others - but at the end of the day the underlying cPanel is still cPanel. I thought IXWebHosting was a cPanel based provider but it's been a long time since I've dealt with one of their accounts. How different was IX's stuff from what you saw at Site5 and KnownHost?

I have lost a LOT with downtime at Site5 and lord knows how many emails that might be critical to my businesses. I have finally migrated all my active sites away from Site5; it took several weeks and loads of time, but my new hositng company provides secure email and SSL across the board; NICE. I don't hold out any hope for any sort of reimbursement (I have a 3-year contract) from these unscrupulous idiots. Just have to write it off and let EVERYONE know to AVOID SITE5 at all costs. I've posted widely on LinkedIn and FB as well as G+, MeWe and Gab and twitter. Will continue to do so as I have time and energy!

Not according to their stock. Their SEC reports are sometimes shocking, and while the general market trend has been upwards for the past 2 years now, their stock has decreased in value. Their latest biggest "accomplishment" was reorganizing debt before it consumed them. The company is dog-eat-dog f'ups, and even the CEO/founder was ousted last year. Godaddy, by contrast, is succeeding quite well, stock is up, they're changed their image and quality. EIG isn't lost, but they are long-term failed on the current trajectory. The "new EIG" to watch for is Cloud Equity Group. Not good stuff.

Just out of interest, how much are they charging per SSL certificate? It's rare to see hosts still charging for DV certs nowadays.

Centos 6 vps? For real? 2GB ram for 74/month? Wow.

Hi there Skip, We're sorry that you did not find our cPanel interface appealing. We use the standard cPanel theme and you've got a classic option as well. All of the options you listed are within our hosting control panel. Most people find it easy to use the search function within cPanel to quickly get to each item. Any hosting provider that offers cPanel/WHM shared hosting will have a very similar interface so this is something you'll want to keep in mind. We have no issues processing refunds and we do wish you the best of luck in finding the right hosting provider for yourself.

Sorry to hear. Now as humans...when something goes wrong we tell the masses through all forms of "social" media....but how is the new host? So far you have a few good things to say about them...so why not mention who they are for others in your shoes? Then in 6 months, let us know if those expectations have still been met.

I know this is an old thread, but I felt the need to share an almost humerus story. So, like others, I was a long time IXWebhosting customer. 30+ sites, gigs of SQL data, 3 accounts, 50 domains, etc. When I got the email about the transition, I immediately starting backing everything up, though I missed a few things, no biggy. But I did prepay quite a bit of stuff and kept asking what was happening, not response to this day. Today, I get the typical email saying I need to verify all the ICANN data and to login to Site5 to verify. This is the FIRST time I have ever been contacted from Site5. Last contact I had was from IX telling me my site would be transitioned (except that it would not be for technical reasons??) and did not include where it would be transitioned to. As I type this, I am in Chat with Site 5 (it has been 24 minutes) and we have still not got past the verification process... mind you, they contacted me. The rep asked me to prove who I am and asked for my credit card... I just laughed and said Nope... try again. The rep said that was the only way... then it dawned on her (I think it is her) that Site5 emailed ME... so she sent me an email and asked for a reply, which I did... that was 10 minutes ago... I think she is eating dinner. She just replied back and said she did not see my response and asked if I logged into the site and responded to the ticket????!!!!! LOG IN? I've never even heard of Site5 until this ICANN email... LOL!!! So now she is off again, realizing the insanity of her question... probably time for desert, I am not sure what Sushmitha likes for desert, but it must be good since she has been gone awhile...(29 minutes). Oh... she is back... still know verification... now she wants me to reset my password by trying to login with my email... OK... now waiting for password email... maybe I will grab some desert... but first I will ask her what she likes... hold on... hmmm... she did not respond, maybe she thinks I am creepy... oh wait.. she responded!... Caramel Pudding! I have never had it, but it does sound delicious. Meanwhile, I got the password reset done and I am now in my account and all my domains are there... Yay! (33 minutes) Oh crap, I forgot to ask about my refund... guess that will have to wait till I am hungry again...

Okay I just made a Boom Host account and will begin migrating. :p

Yep, trolls gotta troll. IX set up their own datacentre around 2003. They are a subsidiary of Ecommerce LLC, and they only started hosting in 1999. However, the second point is incorrect - 20 years ago there were hosts that claimed to be able to offer "unlimited IPs", just like how there are hosts today that claim to offer unlimited disk space. Your advice is horrible. Most people don't need VPS/Dedicated.

I manually moved about 20 websites from IXWebhosting to HostPapa.ca about a month ago. Most of them went to my VPS server. A couple of the sites now have their own shared hosting packages. I now have about 40 websites hosted at HostPapa who I have dealt with now since about 2009. The migration to HostPapa was quite straight forward in spite of the fact that we are running a custom CMS, not WordPress or Joomla. The only trick was to make sure that there were NO PHP5 deprecated features because we were committed to changing to PHP7 which was not available at IX. HostPapa has 7x24 customer support. I would have no problem in recommending them to anyone who was looking for hosting. I did a bit of midnight madness to FTP all of the files back to a laptop, exported the MySQL databases to the laptop, FTPed the files over to HostPapa and then changed the DNS. We had all of the email and configuration done before the DNS had time to propagate. If IX had allowed us to shorten the TTL for the DNS, the change over would have been very transparent to the users. I fought IX/EIG about getting a prorated refund on the remaining time on the IX hosting contract and did get back some of the money though they put up a big fight. I have filed complaints with the BBB (Denver) and with the Federal Trade Commission about how EIG has handled this. I would suggest that anyone else having issues with EIG/Site5 formally file a complaint with BBB or the FTC otherwise this will happen over and over again as EIG slowly gobbles up the affordable hosting companies.

I hesitated to mention the my new hosting company as I am giving them a 'test drive' before committing to a longer term contract but darn, so far so good! They use almost the same cPanel as Site5 which I really don't like as it has poor email functionality but I'm learning to adapt to the deficiencies. I am using/testing ServerHub ( https://www.serverhub.com ) and found them just doing a simple search. So far I've moved like 25 domains and many subdomains and so far EXCELLENT response, speed and function. Email, like I said leaves a lot to be desired as they have a pretty simplistic email interface and don't provide domain specific email panels, catch-all function or anything else. They DO provide full TLS security and ALL the domains/sub-domains are covered by a blanket SSL so full https support is lovely. The couple of times I've opened tickets, I got a quick response the next day (maybe the same day but I didn't check??). I've not committed to any long term deal yet but sure as HELL is better than Site5. So, as of yet, I wouldn't take this as a recommendation but so far so good. Lets see how it plays out over the next month and I'll try to update the results. I still have to get into this cPanel and see what it can and can't do. I don't like it but am making it work so far.

I too transferred my IXWebhosting site (1 WP site with 25K+ blog posts receiving 13K daily unique visitors) to another provider listed on WHT here when I received the email notification. So far the migration seems good. I was only worried about wordpress mysql database, but everything went up smoothly.

Hi, I have also been using ixwebhosting for a long time and have multiple websites. Can you please guide me how to download backup of the websites. I tried the 'copy' button but it didn't work as it does not give me an option to download. Thanks in advance.

Agreed. There are enough hacked VPS's out there already due to people running them without having any knowledge of server administration. Which is exactly why shared hosting is and will still be necessary going forward.

I have requested a prorated refund from Site5 because they TOTALLY Screwed up the migration from IXWebhosting. They destroyed my structure of domain/sub-domain and email addressing and lord knows how much business and emails I have lost. They are a total mess and I'be been trying to get this un****ed for over a month. What a bloody disaster they are and support? I've had open tickets for a month and the few they do reply to are circular responses indicating they have NO CLUE what they have done and NO intention of correcting the mess they created.

I had no downtime because I skipped Site 5 and went straight to Boomhost. Of course I just have my blog at the moment (and another small site that isn't live right now), and my domain is controlled with name.com so they couldn't lock me out of domain access. I used their free domain once, for a year, and then let it expire and never used the free domain they give you again - so really in the 6 or so years I was with them I could have saved ~$60 by making use of a free domain, but it goes against my beliefs - you should always register your domain with an accredited registrar separately to your hosting. Yeah, H-Sphere was crappy when it came to TLS. You couldn't even put a domain and all its subdomains onto a dedicated IP and then secure that, you had to use separate IP addresses for every individual domain/subdomain you wanted to secure. No support for SNI. And you had to upload your certs manually as they had no Let's Encrypt module or way to add one. Are you using the reseller hosting? If not then AutoSSL will be putting the main domain's subdomain name in the Subject Name of the certificate, which is not what you want especially if you have clients. WHM will allow you to keep all 40 domains seperate, or as seperate as you want them (you can still cluster domains that belong together of course).

It didn't work for me either, I just downloaded everything through FTP. I didn't even use a client I just used Windows Explorer for that, but you can use a client like FileZilla if you prefer. I finished migrating yesterday although the DNS wasn't fully propagated, you can check my blog for yourself. It definitely loads a lot faster now that it's on a server with HTTP/2. If you're migrating a good idea is to put the server IP address in your host file while the DNS is still propagating, that way you can see your live site. Are you using a CMS? If you are be sure to backup the SQL database as well, although I didn't need to use that backup as the WP plugin handled it.

Well as someone who is probably selling webhosting I can see how you would be nervous if it became very easy to be your own webhost. I was dependent on web hosting companies that were really predatory by nature since around 1997. We have all been there and experienced the worst time and time and time again. Most every one knows that after signing up that it would just be a matter of time before self destruct button was hit. Companies shut down after losing all of the customers and start over again with a different name. Many companies actually run several other webhosting companies simultaneously. So frequently, a burned customer would end up signing up with the same company unaware and thus jumping from the pan to the fire. The days of dependency on fly by night hosting companies are numbered. Its still an evolving internet. Once we all get fiber optic speeds in our homes, we will be running our websites from our bedrooms. You may be living in a world of denial, but its coming. its bad news for the big boys too, because they will be losing a large chunk of their customer base when fiber comes into our homes. And with a server under your desk with 16 GB of ram and cheap SSD running windows or linux, the internet will be on fire with speed. Afraid of being hacked? No more, when you have raid under your bed, delete the entire server and reboot in minutes. Hackers will see the futility of hacking for fun. Lots of changes coming.

Your hosting contract is with IXWebhosting so they should be the ones who are issuing the refund so stick with battling with them and not Site5. Fighting Site5 over the refund is taking the request to the wrong company. IX will say that it is definitely against their policy after 30 days from when you first started your hosting contract to give a refund. They are clearly in breach of their contract by not having any viable plan for migrating these multi-site packages, especially if they are not just straight WordPress or Joomla. They told me in early January that I should stop updating my websites because they were migrating them. By the end of April, there was still no sign of action. In fact, they had not even created a new account at Site5 to even start the migration. Honestly, how long do they think you can leave a website without updating it. I could have understood a couple of days, but not a couple of months. Neither Site5 nor IXWebhosting were unable to answer even the most basic questions about what versions of software they were running at Site5 so that I would have some assurances that the new server was going to be compatible. My biggest concern which was what I complained to BBB (Denver) and the FTC was that they would not give me any pricing BEFORE the move as to what the comparable package pricing would be at Site5. If you read the fine print in the TOS for Site5, it looked like my websites would have to be moved to separate hosting packages which would have caused an extreme jump in cost to operate them. Site5's TOS is very restrictive in terms of band width and the number of 'hits' you can get on your website. Since some of my websites can get several thousand brute force login attempts and probes for exploits so it would not take much for hacker bots to put those sites outside of the TOS. They were unable to tell me how the bot activity would be counted in terms of the TOS. As far as I was concerned, they had unilaterally withdrawn their service and were not replacing it with a comparable one... hence they owed me a refund... which they agreed to. It is supposed to be being credited to my charge card... I am waiting on that at this point. Yes, EIG does have a Legal Department. No... they did not respond to my email to them. I only wish that I could have billed them for my time to move 20 sites to a new hosting environment. Fortunately, my DNS was NOT with them, so that simplified the move a lot. I had learned after EIG bought PowWeb many years ago to NEVER host my DNS with my site hosting company in case I ever have to move websites to a new host quickly. AND, when I evaluate a hosting company, one of the FIRST things that I do is make sure that it is NOT already owned by EIG. This is now the third time that I have had to move websites away from a hosting company because they had been purchased by EIG. Neither company has telephone support though IXWebhosting continues to show their old telephone number on their website and at the bottom of most of their emails to me. Hostpapa has been a very solid platform for me. I now have about 40 websites there. I would prefer to have my sites split across several hosting services, but for now, I have everything with HostPapa.ca.

Thanks. I have not had any business with them, so I don't know people's views on them, but I did recall your post after an alert, and wanted to share this with you; http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1705364 I know sometimes the fit between host and customer doesn't always work, but keep some backups close by in case anything goes wrong.

We are also affected. Regret that we didn't change to other hosting before this migrating. We had this website asoftech.com. It is still up now. but you can see that the site look wearied, no header, no footer. Somemore, the ftp and all subdomains are totally down. The migrating has taken more than 4 days and still going on. The ixwebhosting support is down, after we login to our account, the dashboard is blocked saying migrating in progress, we can not even issue a support ticket. We are basically not able to do anything now, not even change to other hosing... So if you are still using ixwebhosting and not yet start migrate, better change to other webhosting now! Those site5 users, don'd mind the trouble, just change to other hosting service, their way of treating customer really sucks, you will be bit one day.

Why not poll the customers at Digital Ocean, Vultr, Linode and Amazon AWS and see if they agree with you?

I tried at first to get a refund from IX but they refused. Now I can't even log in as when I do it just gives a message that I've been migrated. What a mess and I'm out a bunch of money with apparently little recourse. I'll never trust another one of these hosting companies again. I looked at HostPapa and it looks decent but they want a full contract with up-front money; just like most of them. None seem to give an option for a 'test drive' to test functionality without a contract. Lousy way to do business and when they hide behind a bunch of marketing crap, impossible to actually test functionality. I'm really sick of these places. So many but so few with any real test platforms. When they are like that, they are immediately suspect for functionality. Sure they promise a refund but that is crazy. I've sick of this but have no choice but to try another and hope for the best. I'm not looking for high-tech, just simple static web hosting for our little business that just want to help folks get healthy.

I had similar issues to migrate from Hsphere ( Cartika ), I had little more than 100 domains. I split them between Bigscoots and Knownhost. Ziping files sites was relative easy, tricky part was copying mails acumulated in client's account that need them or I wanted to migrate smoothle, I was saved by https://imapsync.lamiral.info/ which allowed me to syncronized mail accounts when needed. No matter if the domain had 1 email account or 40 and no matter if it had one or 500 mega or folders. Tool allow to sync and no duplicates, GREAT TOOL !!! Regarding diffrences between Hsphere - WHM/CPANEL, after passing the learning curve, and with the help of both providers and others that I don't have anymore, I am very happy with WHM and CPANEL, still I found some issues with mail Alias and domain alias, etc. but providers always help to find a workarround. WHM is PERFECT if you need to Transfer from one VPS to another, as long as you have VPS full access with root. Now I am an expert on migrating hsphere to WHM/cpanel and also migrating from WHM host to other WHM host !!!