Internet Marketing Company Hosting Nightmare
This past week I attended the Inbound Marketing Summit in Cambridge, MA (September 8th). It was the first annual event sponsored by Hubspot and co-sponsored by many fine Internet marketing product and services companies. The event was well attended by Hubspot clients from around the world as far away as Israel. There were many interesting sessions on topics ranging from SEO, blogging, viral video, podcasting and social media. I gave a presentation on closed loop marketing.
My week was majorly distracted by an event which I’ll not forget. While it was a major distraction, it pales in comparison to the personal trauma people are experiencing in Texas with hurricane Ike. So, let it be known that I have perspective on the significance (or insignificance) of my personal event.
On Sunday night (September 7th) I was copied on an email from my webmaster to my hosting company. Apparently, the volume of traffic on my blog had grown so much that the load it was putting on the shared server where my website and blog were hosted exceeded my hosting plan limits.
Though I run an Internet marketing agency, I don’t have an advanced degree in data center/hosting management. But, it seems to me that if a client’s website or blog is exceeding its hosting plan, the prudent thing to do is to notify the client and give them a reasonable time period to take appropriate action. The hosting company (Surpass) could’ve contacted me to explain the situation and required me to upgrade my plan. Honestly, even if they gave me an ultimatum to upgrade or move, I would’ve made a prompt decision probably to upgrade my hosting plan. All they had to do was communicate.
But, noooooooooooo! Surpass shut down my webite. They didn’t notify me. They just shut it down! When we submitted a ticket in complete disbelief they wrote a long winded email about how the load from www.findandconvert.com and www.findandconvert.com/blog was excessive and it jeopardized the other websites on the shared server. I repeat, all they had to do was communicate and sell me an updgraded hosting plan. Is that so complicated?
Instead, they shut down both my website and my blog. Over the course of the rest of the week of September 8th, I arranged to purchase a dedicated server plan with another host, migrate the website and blog with the proper set up and configuration. These details took the entire week. I was tirelessly supported by Peter Konstantakos of KDM Consultants through the entire week. My website and blog went live again about 6pm on Friday September 12th resulting in being down the entire business week of September 8th.
As I mentioned previoulsy, I attended and spoke at the Inbound Marketing Summit this past week where I networked with many fine people, some of whom may have attempted to visit my company website or blog this past week. What a great first impression that surely made (NOT).
I’m sure people understand the situation. So, in the grand scheme of things (after all, my family and I are not in the middle of a hurricane) it’s not that big a deal. But, I must admit I am truly amazed at the horrible customer service experience from Surpass. I truly question their business intelligence. In addition to my negative experience, this blog post and whatever viral affect it may have can cost them dearly for being so shortsighted.
I believe there are two lessons here.
1) If you’re blogging consistently, keep a close watch on the affect your blog has on your hosting plan.
2) Consider your communication plan with your customers if/when they have a serious setback with your company. Turn lemon into lemonade by going out of your way to communicate and make the situation right no matter what. Surpass did anything but that. I will forever steer people away from this hosting company as a result of my negative experience.
I truly hope the people of Texas are blessed with safety in the path of hurricane Ike, and that we witness the outpouring of the human spirit for aid and assistance.
6 Comments to Internet Marketing Company Hosting Nightmare
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My company is gong through the same thing with Surpass Hosting. They are absolutely the worst hosting company in the world. We are migrating everything off of their servers and will never do any type of business with them again.
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Good to know. Thanks for the info. I've been with GoDaddy and been happy with them, although I'm not at the point of significant traffic . . . YET.
Have a great weekend!
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Pretty ridiculous. Glad you're back up, Bernie
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Amazingly, I had almost the exact same thing happen late Friday night to our blog, right before heading to the Inbound Marketing Summit (to present on blogging). Luckily in our case the Webmaster and host acted quickly to fix the situation, but lesson learned . . . know your hosting plan and limits.
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Our webmaster luckily has a great relationship with our host. If that were not the case though, I would be quite stressed to keep a constant watch on our server load and bandwidth needs. Sounds like you really got a bum deal. Best of luck with the new host.
Eric Pratum
The Hotel Experience
Eric Pratum's Musings -
I have been with 1and1.com for almost 10 years. For the last year I have had nothing but problems. I develop many sites using Joomla. The 1and1.com servers continually give an error 500 message. As a result I have had to move my customer sites to other hosting sites. The tech support response is "It's Joomla." Once moved they work fine.
I finally spent 3 weeks preparing my own site to move. The domain renewal was due on the the 6th of April so I decided to wait until the 7th to shut this down (I have auto renewal). When I canceled they put the domain into redemption and shut it down. The service manager for 1and1.com acknowledged the error and said he would rectify the problem. I just got an email indicating it could take up to 5 days to resolve the problem. This has not only shut down my site, but also emails.
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