By By Vidahost

It's kind of a sad day for me as I received an email saying that all my Vidahosts accounts will not merge into Tso Host.

I used to love Vidahosts until they sold out to SlowDaddy, they were fast as anything, their customer support was amazingly fast I converted people to them because of their fantastic support. So today it's the end for Vidahosts (Well May 13th to be Exact) I used to earn good money as one of their affiliates.

I will miss them a little bit but my relationship with them started to fade once I knew of the SlowDaddy merger and boy that lived up to it's name "Slow" so thanks for being there when I needed you (well up until the merger) Vidahosts. You will remain a part of my memories and I will bring you up in chats at times like "do you remember way back in the day there was this great hosting company called Vidahosts" good luck to all who started it and I hope you sold your company on for lots of money as your reward for hard work and the dedication you once had.

Adios!

 

I guess your level of standards for hosting were pretty low... Vidahost was no good before but i agree definitely no good now. I guess it depends on what you require of your hosting and your support, but never would i say they were a good hosting company.

 

Well lets see they suited my needs and as we all know we all have different needs, but as I said way way back in the day when they started they were awesome in my eyes.

 

Dom from VidaHost was an active member back in the day on here and they were popular with UKBF members. When he was an active member they were good.

They grew too large, invested heavily in their own "cloud" infrastructure which was less reliable than their outgoing cPanel hosting - which they likely had to oversweat, merged with TSO Host - formed Paragon Internet Group - got bought out by Host Europe Group (who own 123-Reg among other brands) - and things quickly went downhill.

The acquisition of Host Europe Group by GoDaddy was the final nail in the coffin for many.

It also now means that a ridiculous number of hosting brands are owned by two big US businesses - Endurance International Group and GoDaddy.

Those seeking hosting the UK often managed to avoid the classic Endurance Intentional Group (EIG) trap which is buying poor overly commercial hosting, getting fed up with the poor service - and switching to another web host, not realising that that other web host was now a brand only - and all the actual hosting and support was provided by the same huge business.

In the UK we avoided that as while some will buy US hosting, typically people would seek out a UK web host.

Unfortunately Host Europe Group started following a similar model with UK web hosts - absorbing lots of brands - and then got bought out by a US giant known for its terrible service.

Dom still works at VidaHost as head of cPanel hosting I believe.

But it's a shame that so few good large web hosts exist - it's a bittersweet success story really.

Having said that we've benefited from that for those looking for the personal support they used to be known for.

 

With the exception of my blog which is hosted by Dan I've lost track of what's happening with my other sites. Originally I started off with Compila and they got taken over and I've still got some small sites with them and I think that it was Compila that was taken over by someone else who was then taken over by someone else and my main site was hosted by Open Mind Hosting as they were members here but they were also taken over by someone else.

 

Thanks guys....I guess it's bittersweet for me since I named Vidahost with my first proper girlfriend in 2004 when I was 17, and owned it until 2015 when I was 28. And married! (But not to her!) Or 2011 if you count when we founded PIG. The history of that is a bit more interesting but probably not to people who don't know us.

And definitely not to anyone who dislikes the company for any reason, so feel free to stop reading, or PM me and I can probably advise on any current issues, I do occasionally get contacted and am happy to try and help.

For for 2.5 years I've had nothing to do with the company/group (1.5 years if you count the time I left not the time we sold to HEG).

I would say one thing, contrary to what people might think, after we sold to HEG nothing really changed day to day other than me and maybe a small number of other senior people weren't on-hand 24/7, make of that what you will. Maybe cost controls running up to the sale to GD had an effect on staffing levels but I honestly had nothing to do with that so I don't know more than anyone else. I know that when we sold the idea was we were a great little group and ran reasonably independently.

After GD bought HEG I've no idea what happened I'm afraid, I'd left by then. Obviously GD doesn't need to run loads of small brands so it makes sense to consolidate.

Seb and Adam are still around. I did meet Blake (GD CEO) and he is a great guy (retired now), but GD is a big company which took on a huge and complex European operation. Lots to learn on both sides and I really hope it helps both companies. I know in the past GD were disliked by many, but Blake and others have modernised it a lot from what I've seen.

All I see these days is public reviews, and the occasional call from an old client who has my phone number...

I took myself away from the tech world for a while, and didn't touch my laptop. But old habits die hard.

I think the Companies House history for the tiny company I started when I was 17 tells the story from a technical point of view - my favourite is the first set of accounts we filed, in March 2006:

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/05079572/filing-history

I have so many memories and stories but I honestly don't know if people would even care about them. I tell people "I did IT....eg have you heard of Godaddy? Something like what they do"

I made a mistake of telling a group of business students at Plymouth what I did (I ran the company whilst at uni in Plymouth) and got quizzed for a while, tho actually enjoyed it because it reminded me that a decade ago I didn't know the answers to half the things they were asking me, and also, they had better ideas/answers than me to the other half!

I have always been and always will be a geek, maybe one who's got a bit more outgoing and confident over the years, but otherwise, still a geek.

One thing's for sure, when you start a business and it gets into the deep end, take a look at the bigger picture, catch up on the outside world, and try to see yourself in 3-5 years.

These days whenever I see a firm that's been running unchanged for a while eg under family ownership, I really admire them and I use them. And wish I was still in their club. Sometimes. The workload in hosting is immense because you have a constant responsibility to your clients. But as I said, I am a geek and appear to be back on my laptop.....

 

We've been approached three times in the last few months by buyers acting on behalf of the larger groups to see if we are interested in selling our client base

Load of guff about providing our clients with a seamless transition and fantastic ongoing support.

Declined each time, I made a promise to a lot of clients who came to us from companies which had been bought out (with subsequent service deterioration) that we wouldn't be going down the same route.

 

That really tells how much you cared about your customers, that's the reason customers are finding it difficult to be with the company at present..good to see you responding.

 

Yes I have 5 websites with Vidahost and now need to move to someone else. Any ideas how we can avoid the big players and go with a good host like vidahost?? Any suggestions?

 

Dont you mean will merge with TSO Host? As I received an email saying that my vidahost will be merging with TSO Host

 

If you are happy with Vidahost why not just stick with Tsohost after the brand merge?

It's only a name change - the two brands are owned by the same company and I believe share the same infrastructure, staff, etc, so everything else should remain the same.

 

At the end of the day all your data and website will be managed and handled by Godaddy so your end question would be do you want to stay with Godaddy or not?

 

sorry I did mean to say "Vidahosts will now merge with TSO "my bad spelling at the time @albertramsbottom

 

I think there will 'always'* be a market for a web-host that is upmarket and responsive. Discerning clients will pay more and be less hassle to the webhost.

Let CheapoHost deal with people who are cheap, who have no idea of the value of what they're offering and have constant problems, resulting in technical support who just don't care any more and owners who are just crunching the numbers.


*Technical advances notwithstanding.

 

I have several sites with Vidahost and the only problems that I have ever suffered were of my own making yet their technical support acted quickly and efficiently on every occasion.

You say "Let CheapoHost deal with people who are cheap" as if cheap automatically equates with poor quality yet you own signature is promoting "Low-Cost Mail Forwarding?" which I assume is also poor quality and aimed at the same cheap people

 

Ha! A good riposte.

I've been down the cheapo web-hosting route, in a personal capacity, in the past and had some ... frightening experiences.

e.g. I had a Hostgator account and then they got bought out and I had to research why their service went downhill. Same story as the OP. I had to move my sites fast. I found out that there were very few CPanel-enabled low-cost independent webhosts with good reviews, remaining, that offered fast technical support.

Based on what the OP said, and my own experience, I suspect a mass-consolidation is going on in the industry.

Mail-forwarding is not a comparable niche, I think, and we achieve economies by automating most of what we do. We are also not part of a larger entity.

 

Have had two recent outages on TSO host (one this morning).

Will be looking to leave them soon based on the outages and them wanting me to get VPS just so I can use KeepAlive.

The question is, who's the 'best' UK based host these days? - A question for another thread I guess.

 

My answer would be one of many,https://www.hihosting.co.uk/ ,https://krystal.co.uk/ and https://www.hostxnow.com/, in my eyes all the companies I just mentioned have offered me great customer support and to me that's worth its weight in gold.

No hosting company can promise 100% up time as there can be so many factors that can lead a host to show to us as a customer that it may be down when it fact it may not be, it could be your ISP having problems connecting because of so many hops and other reasons, old cache on your computer and a host of other things.

To me the three companies I just mentioned are my go to hosting companies

 

Thanks for the recommendation @bigbuzzbelfast, that's much appreciated.

We take the service we provide very seriously so it's always rewarding to read that a client is pleased with the support we provide.

Everyone likes personal service but businesses especially benefit from this. It's great to see UK businesses grow and provide support and advice over the years to help with that journey.

 

Another happy customer here too