Hi Hosting hosted site is down 19th April 2022

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

Anyone else having issues with sires hosted by Hi Hosting. Our main site has been down since yesterday and a subsidiary site also.
I can't get any response from Dan and i have 3 people in the office waiting to process orders.
Any idea when this will be sorted?
AJ

 

[estwig]

My site is up, Dan has always been good as gold with me in the past.

I'm sure he'll sort it!

 

[Steven Ayrshire]

Anyone else having issues with sires hosted by Hi Hosting. Our main site has been down since yesterday and a subsidiary site also.
I can't get any response from Dan and i have 3 people in the office waiting to process orders.
Any idea when this will be sorted?
AJ

Have you tried accessing your sites via a mobile device?
You may find that your IP address has been inadvertently blocked.

 

[ctrlbrk]

Anyone else having issues with sires hosted by Hi Hosting. Our main site has been down since yesterday and a subsidiary site also.
I can't get any response from Dan and i have 3 people in the office waiting to process orders.
Any idea when this will be sorted?
AJ

First thing I usually do to understand whether a hosting provider is having issues is to check their twitter account.

These guy's last tweet was in 2016

 

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

My site is up, Dan has always been good as gold with me in the past.

I'm sure he'll sort it!

Can I ask how do you contact him? We can only log tickets and have no number.
I have 3 people in the office waiting to process orders and we can't do anything at the moment.

I run Watchbattery.co.uk.
Andrew

 

[Steven Ayrshire]

Can I ask how do you contact him? We can only log tickets and have no number.
I have 3 people in the office waiting to process orders and we can't do anything at the moment.

I run Watchbattery.co.uk.
Andrew

I can see the problem, the domain that they use (hihosting.net) for nameservers expired a few days ago and hasn't been renewed.

 

[estwig]

Can I ask how do you contact him? We can only log tickets and have no number.
I have 3 people in the office waiting to process orders and we can't do anything at the moment.

I run Watchbattery.co.uk.
Andrew

A ticket on his site, there isn't a phone number.

 

[WESH.UK]

Anyone else having issues with sires hosted by Hi Hosting. Our main site has been down since yesterday and a subsidiary site also.
I can't get any response from Dan and i have 3 people in the office waiting to process orders.
Any idea when this will be sorted?
AJ

Why not just pickup the phone and call? They do have a phone number you can reach them on surely? Failing that, proper tracked support tickets?

First thing I usually do to understand whether a hosting provider is having issues is to check their twitter account.

These guy's last tweet was in 2016

Really? Why not just call the hosting company directly?

Checking our Twitter account is the last thing we'd ever expect any customer to do if they were having problems with their website. We'd expect either a support ticket or a phone call, not a social media post...

Unless you're going straight for the "Have they gone out of business" train of thought?

 

[ctrlbrk]

Really? Why not just call the hosting company directly?

Apparently there's no phone number on their site.

Checking our Twitter account is the last thing we'd ever expect any customer to do if they were having problems with their website. We'd expect either a support ticket or a phone call, not a social media post...

If one single site from a hosting provider was down I agree, Twitter wouldn't be necessary. Assuming the worst case scenario though, when the entire hosting provider is down, then they would need a system to communicate to their client base. Twitter is independent of their own hosting infrastructure and I have seen hosting providers (as well as website owners) using it as backup comms.

 

[Ian J]

Anyone else having issues with sires hosted by Hi Hosting. Our main site has been down since yesterday and a subsidiary site also.

No problems for me and I have several sites there within two different hosting packages

 

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

Really? OMG what can I do?
I have 3 people in the office waiting to process orders.
I really need this sorting.
Why would the expiry of that host affect our site?
Can you offer any advice?
Andrew

 

[AWA Training]

Its unusal for the host to be down for that long, have you tried this link https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/
As i recollect, when i was with Hi Hosting, there was never a direct number to contact him, only email. There was a gmail account he gave out in case of emergencies, but cannot recall what it is.

 

[Steven Ayrshire]

Basically the nameservers are pointing to a domain that they haven't renewed, and have probably not used for customers for a long time but it has just been there. If you go to your HiHosting account, click domains, manage the domain, and update to the default Nameservers, your site should come back up although it will take some time to update around the world

ns1.hihosting.co.uk
ns2.hihosting.co.uk
ns3.hihosting.co.uk
ns4.hihosting.co.uk

 

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

Steven,

Thank you for this. I have checked my Nameserver via the control panel and indeed these are
nsx.hihosting.net

I assume I merely change these to the .co.uk variant above?
Does this assume that nsx.hihosting.co.uk is a DNS server?
Is there another Nameserver I should use to be sure of success?

Thanks

Andrew

 

[Steven Ayrshire]

When I was with HiHosting the 4 nameservers above were the only ones I ever used.
I can guess you have used their services for some time now, hence being on the older nameserver settings.
But that is the ones I used most recently as does my friend who still has hosting with them.

Basically the nameserver you are currently on is closed down due to non renewal (which would have cost them no more than £12 a year)

 

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

Unbelievable! £12 a year!
I have 3 people in the office waiting to pack the (now depleted) weekend orders. Each day down costs best part of £1000 in turnover.
Dan is usually pretty good, but just recently response via the ticketing system has been slow. We pay extra for "Management" so expect better.
To answer the other questions here, there is only the ticketing system, no email, no phone number. Their fb page and twitter have been dormant for years.
I was worried about the "out of business" scenario as if you start to search Dan on the internet when associated with HiHosting and EZPZ he has a few different names. I guess I need to wait (in the absence of any response to my ticket) to see if the DNS update works within the next 24 hours.
I appreciate everyone's help here.
If I ever get the site back up will post a discount code if that's acceptable.
AJ

 

[Steven Ayrshire]

He has defo dropped the ball this time.

You still haven't updated the nameservers, to check it has gone though the Nominet whois will update immediately

Lookup - Nominet

Nominet's domain lookup tool utilises the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) to access domain name information.

www.nominet.uk

 

[Ian J]

If I ever get the site back up will post a discount code if that's acceptable.

It's not acceptable to me as I forked out £160 this morning to renew my package

 

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

It's not acceptable to me as I forked out £160 this morning to renew my package

I sell watch straps and watch related spares, not hosting packages!

 

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

He has defo dropped the ball this time.

You still haven't updated the nameservers, to check it has gone though the Nominet whois will update immediately

Lookup - Nominet

Nominet's domain lookup tool utilises the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) to access domain name information.

www.nominet.uk

Steven,

I have updated on the HiHosting client login. where else do I do this?
Actually, have just gone back, retyped the .co.uk variants and it says I have done this but defaults to the .net names...
Assume this is "queued" in the HiHosting system?

Managing watchbattery.co.uk​

You have already added this action on this order.

• Information
• Auto Renew
• Nameservers
• Release Domain
• Management Tools

Nameservers​

You can change where your domain points to here. Please be aware changes can take up to 24 hours to propagate.
Use default nameservers Use custom nameservers (enter below)
Nameserver 1

Nameserver 2

Nameserver 3

Nameserver 4

Andrew

 

[estwig]

The whole hosting thing has always been a worry to me, the industry seems to be geared towards, selling hosting in big chunks to one-man band setups, who then split it up and sell it on.

This means my website is in the hands of a back bedroom warrior, the alternative of using godaddy and the alike, seems a lot less appealing.

 

[Steven Ayrshire]

It should do it instantly maybe the whole site needs manual intervention which is unusual.

 

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

It should do it instantly maybe the whole site needs manual intervention which is unusual.

Thanks to all who replied...the site is back up. It appears that the domain hihosting.net has been renewed for another 12 months so Names lookups are now working as they should..let's see what happens next year!
AJ

 

[AWA Training]

Sorry, but is this the place to be trying to poach Dan's customers. Granted there appears to be issues, but until the man had had the opportunity to explain what's been going wrong I think its up to his customers to perform their own due diligence and make their own plans.

 

[Employment Law Clinic]

Basically the nameservers are pointing to a domain that they haven't renewed

Unbelievable! £12 a year!

He has defo dropped the ball this time.

Always frustrating, but don’t these things happen sometimes? Google, Facebook, Twitter, they all have an error of one sort or another, and even Hi Hosting does it occasionally.

My site was down with Hi Hosting not long ago. As they only accept payment by PayPal, and PayPal had decided not to accept my bank card, I couldn’t pay… more than two years that went on (while I expected & assumed the site was down, long gone), yet still Dan kept the hosting going!

Eventually I managed to get a new (Mastercard, previously Visa) from Natwest, and that together with a new PayPal account was enough to be able to make all payments. Dan actually apologised (!) for the site going down briefly, despite bills being unpaid for more than two years.

I don’t know a better hosting provider, I think Dan is excellent, and I don’t know any other hosting provider that would tolerate more than two years of unpaid bills, yet still keep the site online.

Sure, they dropped the ball yesterday, caused some outages for a few hours, but well done to everyone else here is beyond human error.


Karl Limpert

 

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

Always frustrating, but don’t these things happen sometimes? Google, Facebook, Twitter, they all have an error of one sort or another, and even Hi Hosting does it occasionally.

My site was down with Hi Hosting not long ago. As they only accept payment by PayPal, and PayPal had decided not to accept my bank card, I couldn’t pay… more than two years that went on (while I expected & assumed the site was down, long gone), yet still Dan kept the hosting going!

Eventually I managed to get a new (Mastercard, previously Visa) from Natwest, and that together with a new PayPal account was enough to be able to make all payments. Dan actually apologised (!) for the site going down briefly, despite bills being unpaid for more than two years.

I don’t know a better hosting provider, I think Dan is excellent, and I don’t know any other hosting provider that would tolerate more than two years of unpaid bills, yet still keep the site online.

Sure, they dropped the ball yesterday, caused some outages for a few hours, but well done to everyone else here is beyond human error.


Karl Limpert

Hi Karl,

I have no criticism to make of Dan or his technical ability but he his probably working in environment in which is his constantly snowed under.
Your domain being available after non payment is more likely to be as a result of lack of the appropriate systems/ procedures being in place rather than HiHosting's benevolence.
I prefer immediate honesty too. The ticket for the site being down yesterday was logged as soon as staff entered the building and we heard nothing until the site came back online at 2pm. I got more information from Steven via this forum.
Had I known they/he was on the case the stress for all the team would have been greatly reduced. The site was down for about a day costing us £100s in lost revenue. Staff had to work late once the site was back. Of course without any news or correspondence we are thinking the worst and start to think of moving the hosting to get online as quickly as possible. We have staff to pay.
That said, Dan has since come back with a sincere apology and explanation and I am happy that he has put procedures in place to prevent this from happening again.
I really sympathise with Dan. I have worked in software support for 30 years and it is very stressful when fire fighting when all you want to do is offer a great service to your customers.
I am sticking with HiHosting for now.
AJ

 

[Employment Law Clinic]

Your domain being available after non payment is more likely to be as a result of lack of the appropriate systems/ procedures being in place rather than HiHosting's benevolence.

I agree with much of what you say, AJ, and while I don't know the hosting industry well, I would imagine that Dan (and whoever he has working with him) was focused yesterday on identifying & addressing the issues of sites down (not only for the customers that reported the same via tickets, but even those that hadn't noticed or raised a ticket), and returning to individual tickets that raised unrelated issues afterwards - the priority, one would assume, being getting those servers working again for all customers' sites that were failing.

Having been in touch with Dan early & late in the periods I referenced above, I certainly consider there was a level of benevolence there, one I did not expect to extend anywhere close to the extremes it was stretched, but I know Dan was conscious of it, rather than just a lapse of formalities.


I'm sorry business suffered for you yesterday, and your staff had to work late, but at the end of the day, all tech companies make mistakes, and your own vote of confidence in staying with Dan/HiHosting I'm sure will be seen as a vote of confidence that many of us will endorse.


Karl Limpert

 

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

Unbelievable! £12 a year!
I have 3 people in the office waiting to pack the (now depleted) weekend orders. Each day down costs best part of £1000 in turnover.
Dan is usually pretty good, but just recently response via the ticketing system has been slow. We pay extra for "Management" so expect better.
To answer the other questions here, there is only the ticketing system, no email, no phone number. Their fb page and twitter have been dormant for years.
I was worried about the "out of business" scenario as if you start to search Dan on the internet when associated with HiHosting and EZPZ he has a few different names. I guess I need to wait (in the absence of any response to my ticket) to see if the DNS update works within the next 24 hours.
I appreciate everyone's help here.
If I ever get the site back up will post a discount code if that's acceptable.
AJ

As promised, in thanks for all the help, here is a discount code which will get you 10% depending on the product being purchased at watchbattery.co.uk
We specialise in watch spares, mainly Casio, so not suitable for everyone I agree.
The code is:-
UKBF052022
Valid one month

AJ

 

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

Anyone else having issues with sires hosted by Hi Hosting. Our main site has been down since yesterday and a subsidiary site also.
I can't get any response from Dan and i have 3 people in the office waiting to process orders.
Any idea when this will be sorted?
AJ

December 29th 2022 - Our website (watchbattery.co.uk) is down again and we cannot get a response from Dan at HiHosting. Anyone else having issues with their sites hosted by Hi Hosting?
Thanks
AJ

 

[Ian J]

Anyone else having issues with their sites hosted by Hi Hosting?

Nope. All mine are fine

 

[estwig]

My site is up too.

 

[fisicx]

December 29th 2022 - Our website (watchbattery.co.uk) is down again…

I can see the site. So seems to be working.

 

[Ian J]

I can see the site. So seems to be working.

It is now but it wasn't when I looked at 2:50pm

 

[webhostuk]

How about the support ? got any update from them?

 

[Ian J]

How about the support ? got any update from them?

Aah. Competitor trying to put the boot in

For what it's worth I always get extensive responses from Dan whenever I have a problem even if it's of my own making

 

[webhostuk]

Aah. Competitor trying to put the boot in

For what it's worth I always get extensive responses from Dan whenever I have a problem even if it's of my own making

Good to see atleast you are getting response .. over the year, I did not see OP confirming about support .