Time to Leave TSO Host

[S Isaac]

When I fist started off, TSO Host was very well regarded on here. In fairness to them, they've always been pretty good for reliability and telephone support.

I've only recently been reviewing our site and trying to improve the speed and then found out that they were taken over by Paragon who ultimately are part of GoDaddy (I think I've got that right?)

Either way, they've slowed down, wanted to charge me for VPS just to have keepalive and I've decided it's time to move on.

Someone suggested a few hosts for me on another thread and from the few suggested, I really liked the spec offered by https://www.hostxnow.com/wordpress-hosting

SSD, RAM, Cores etc etc.

However, they don't offer phone support and I'm not sure I can manage to do everything on my own.

At the moment, it's just one site I need hosted. But I may need a couple more later this year.

I may also need to have hosted exchange email, so a well priced option to add that on could swing it too.

I'm basically after a UK host that can offer a similar/better spec of hosting for a similar price. I'm after good spec hosing with excellent speed, good reliability, decent phone support. Don't mind paying a few quid more a month, but nothing crazy, it's just a fairly basic wordpress site.

Also not sure if I need a 'proper' SSL certificate or the free one that most host seem to be offering these days. I don't capture any data via forms etc and no payments are taken online.

 

[arnydnxluk]

I've only recently been reviewing our site and trying to improve the speed and then found out that they were taken over by Paragon who ultimately are part of GoDaddy (I think I've got that right?)

Almost! Tsohost merged with Vidahost to create Paragon Internet Group some time ago, the problems began once Host Europe Group bought Paragon a couple of years ago. Host Europe Group was subsequently acquired by GoDaddy.

I may also need to have hosted exchange email, so a well priced option to add that on could swing it too.

Would you consider going directly to Microsoft for Exchange Online (or Office 365)? This is the best way forward for most use cases these days and will offer you a high level of reliability. Hosted Exchange is becoming less common as more providers choose to resell Office 365.

Also not sure if I need a 'proper' SSL certificate or the free one that most host seem to be offering these days. I don't capture any data via forms etc and no payments are taken online.

The free certificates are normally issued by Let's Encrypt or Comodo which means they're trusted by all modern browsers and provide the same level of encryption as paid certificates.

 

[ryedale]

Are you really sure you need a VPS?

We've had so many people come to us who were talked into a VPS by one of the larger companies that they simply didn't need

Once their sites were on decent optimised shared hosting that wasn't overcrowded, they performed perfectly

 

[S Isaac]

Pretty sure I don't need VPS. But it's the only way TSO Host would active keep alive which is just one of the e reasons I'll be leaving them.

Don't mind who I use for exchange email, would prefer it to be with my host if possible though. Not keen on office 365.

 

[webhostuk]

Pretty sure I don't need VPS. But it's the only way TSO Host would active keep alive which is just one of the e reasons I'll be leaving them.

Keep alive is not a big deal to keep it ON on shared hosting.

 

[Sal-FastCow]

It's a shame and now they are actually merging VidaHost into TSOHost so the existence of Vidahost will no longer be around.

In terms of Hosting, there are many Hosting companies in the UK who can help you with what you require happily. Could you share some information with us such as how much disk space, bandwidth is currently being used so we can guide you?

The Let's Encrypt SSL license is enough and it's a 256bit which does the needful in requirements.

Not all companies sadly provide telephone services, just dig a little deeper and i'm sure you'll find someone who can help you as per the need

Best of luck in finding the right host and helping you host the websites you need!

Kind regards.

 

[HostXNow]

Hi @S Isaac,

Glad you to hear you were interested in our plans which means we're doing something right. You won't beat us resources/price ratio wise. Afaik we are the only provider who offers such high spec resources that of a VPS with the added benefit of using LiteSpeed Web Server (not free Apache), PURE Local SSD along with NVMe storage which is backed up to 3 different DCs' for extra redundancy. We also include Free Let's Encrypt SSLs, and yes they do the job fine.

If we were to add Phone support it would quadruple our costs and for what, for our techs to say over the phone please provide me with your ticket number and yes we'll update you via the ticket as that's what most other providers do. We do offer good LiveChat and will try to troubleshoot even complex issues on chat from time to time depending on workload, unlike other providers who once you're on chat with will just ask you to follow up on a ticket.

Very happy with our setup. Offering phone support is not worth the hassle, providers who offer it end up having worst support even on ticket/email/chat because of it due to some customers wanting a 4-hour conversation on the phone as opposed to getting the issue at hand resolved in ticket/email/chat within say 10-30 minutes. Ok, so 4 hours was a bit of an exaggeration but you get my point. Try telling a customer this complex/secure password over the phone 58%5fRtyo0p[/s^^ and depending on accents etc it could take a good 30 minutes plus to get right, whereas ticket/email/chat can be copied and pasted in seconds. That is just one example. If the big providers offering phone support could go back and not offer it they would but can't because their existing customer base is so used to it. I would rather do business with customers who prefer to use ticket/email/chat, but of course, if a customer ever wanted to contact me personally (mainly for VPS/Dedicated customers, not Web/Reseller hosting) then I'd gladly let them contact me. But I get a lot of customers are just so used to phone support and if it is a must for them will respect that.

How do you need phone support @S Isaac? What do you find better about it than ticket/email/chat? Interesting...

PS the trouble moving from TSOHost type host is they use custom control panel which makes it difficult to move your data away from them to a new provider using say the most popular control panel called cPanel. cPanel to cPanel transfers are usually free, but if a manual transfer is required the provider will usually charge for that. We even do the manual transfer without charging for small-ish accounts.

So while we may not offer phone support we make up for it in other ways for sure which I'm sure you'll agree with.

Hope you find the right provider for you @S Isaac

Best regards,
Christopher Smith

 

[S Isaac]

Hi Christopher,

To be honest, I opened an account with you without checking about phone support and then was a bit stumped at needing to transfer from TSO Host. I ended up closing the account and used another of the hosts suggested to me.

They migrated the site from TSO Host (for a small fee) but overall their service was pretty much as you described above - i.e. I'd call and was referred back to raising a ticket. Not an awful service, but not exactly 'phone support' either.

I suppose I don't NEED phone support, I'm just use to having it and I completely understand why you don't offer it.

I've run some speed tests and we're already faster having left TSO Host. I'm tempted to come back to you guys for an additional speed boost as the spec you offer is pretty good! I'm also now on cpanel so to migrate over should be fairly easy (I'd hope anyway!)

 

[Sal-FastCow]

Glad to see you a little more satisfied Isaac!

Hopefully you are no longer being stressed regarding the website and can do what you need to do once again without having the headache of having a website down.

Best of luck

 

[HostXNow]

Hi Christopher,

To be honest, I opened an account with you without checking about phone support and then was a bit stumped at needing to transfer from TSO Host. I ended up closing the account and used another of the hosts suggested to me.

They migrated the site from TSO Host (for a small fee) but overall their service was pretty much as you described above - i.e. I'd call and was referred back to raising a ticket. Not an awful service, but not exactly 'phone support' either.

I suppose I don't NEED phone support, I'm just use to having it and I completely understand why you don't offer it.

I've run some speed tests and we're already faster having left TSO Host. I'm tempted to come back to you guys for an additional speed boost as the spec you offer is pretty good! I'm also now on cpanel so to migrate over should be fairly easy (I'd hope anyway!)

Hi @S Isaac,

Thank you for the explanation.

I see my one of our techs did restore the website for you and you moved after that. If there was still something that needed to be done you could have asked. But no problem. I know moving websites is not easy for many.

But sure, if you would like to come back to us for the extra speed boost then you are more than welcome. We could easily transfer cPanel to cPanel and so there would be no problems there.

Best regards,
Christopher

 

[S Isaac]

Thanks Christopher,

Considering it's since taken this other company half a day to respond to an urgent ticket, I think moving from them may be a good idea.

Can you reactivate the account or do I need to raise a ticket for it?

 

[HostXNow]

Thanks Christopher,

Considering it's since taken this other company half a day to respond to an urgent ticket, I think moving from them may be a good idea.

Can you reactivate the account or do I need to raise a ticket for it?

The account has been restored and the website is now working fine.

All the best.

 

[Breffni Potter]

Can I just make a comment as an IT guy and say if you want good business email hosting, please don't run it off a VPS/Website host.

Pick Google Apps / Office 365 or a dedicated email package from a smaller provider.

 

[S Isaac]

Why not, I've had hosted exchange and standard website hosted IMAP.

I'm back to website based hosted IMAP because it's free and does everything I want.

 

[Breffni Potter]

"Why not" Here it comes:

• If you are sales focused and sending cold emails to new prospects, their server will check the server the email came from and see if it has a good reputation. If it does, congratulations. If it does not, you'll go straight into their spam or just get blocked before it ever gets to the destination.
  
• If one customer at the hosting provider is really naughty and gets added to a black list, it affects all of their customers too.
• Inbox size limits crop up from time to time. You get more when you pay more.
• When its time to expand the website / make a change. Your website designers now need to make sure they don't break your business emails.
• Spread the risk by having your website be in location Y and the email in location X. When that provider goes down so do your emails. Is your website as vital as email?
• Some providers don't include anti-spam/malicious checking before the email hits you.

 

[S Isaac]

Of all your points, only the second one could present an issue for me. The rest are all covered by not doing sales emails, having enough storage size (it's dirt cheap to add more), I backup my IMAP to .pst regularly and my host includes quite good spam filtering features.

 

[GURUCLOUD]

Second point is also covered as most hosts;
1) Virus/SPAM filtering on outgoing emails by people like mailchannels or spamexperts
2) options to purchase dedicated IP addresses for your own service so you basically control your email 'reputation'

 

[DanH]

Sorry to jump on the thread but I am also thinking it is time to move from TSO Host. We pay around £180 + VAT for a dedicated server with TSO Hosts who were formerly Donhost who were formerly X who were formerly Y etc

Having tried to 'escape' the big hosting corporates who always seems to buy whatever hosting I have moved to over the years, how can I tell that whatever I jump to now won't get bought out by TSOHost/Webfusion? This has happened to me a few times over the past 18 or so years

I also wonder what actually happens when hosting is bought out by the bigger boys as, arguably, if the service and performance were the same or better after the buyout then there would be no need to change! It seems to me that inevitably something always changes for the worse and I end up like the Littlest Hobo...usually the customer service/support if I think back and probably all in the name of efficiency and saving money.

Dan

 

[arnydnxluk]

Having tried to 'escape' the big hosting corporates who always seems to buy whatever hosting I have moved to over the years, how can I tell that whatever I jump to now won't get bought out by TSOHost/Webfusion? This has happened to me a few times over the past 18 or so years

In reality, you can't. IMO the best defence against this kind of thing is to be ready to move your own data at any time you need, I would do the following:

1. Make sure your provider uses a standard control panel. The proprietary control panels from the likes of Heart Internet, Tsohost (cloud platform), etc make it much more difficult to migrate away from them. cPanel is the most popular control panel and makes moving entire accounts between servers, including email etc, painless.
2. Generate and download your own backups from time to time.
3. Keep your domains with a separate provider to your web hosting provider, ideally a provider specialising more in domain registrations than web hosting.

If you receive news of an acquisition, you can then jump ship much more easily on your own terms.

I also wonder what actually happens when hosting is bought out by the bigger boys as, arguably, if the service and performance were the same or better after the buyout then there would be no need to change! It seems to me that inevitably something always changes for the worse and I end up like the Littlest Hobo...usually the customer service/support if I think back and probably all in the name of efficiency and saving money.

I think you answered your own question there! The large companies will do anything to cut costs and deliver results for their shareholders. As long as the charts are showing the right results at the next board meeting, everything is good. Their goals are very different from a small business where the owners are probably geeks themselves, fully stuck in and genuinely interested in making sure every individual customer is happy.

 

[Sal-FastCow]

I'll agree with the post above, it's best to keep your domains away from someone who host's you..

What type of dedicated machine do you have for 180GBP? There are many companies out here who'd love to help you and provide you with a service you deserve.

I hope you find a perfect match and someone who can serve you on a long term basis without getting bought out

 

[astutiumRob]

I also wonder what actually happens when hosting is bought out by the bigger boys as, arguably, if the service and performance were the same or better after the buyout then there would be no need to change!

It depends on who is doing the acquiring, why the host was available to be acquired and wheat the plan for the clientbase is.

For some it's a pure scale/numbers game - the more brands the more likely someone is to "lad" on one of them and if they leave to land on another one (the EIG method for example)

For others it's about more than just growth and a race to the bottom

There are hundreds of hosts for sale right now and the majority of those are selling because the business is dwindling in client numbers and revenue.

 

[DanH]

Thanks for the replies. I guess I did answer my own question but I thought that there may be others who have better insight into what happens and perhaps in some cases they acquire but leave well alone...although that has not been my experience. I've had an 18 year Benny Hill-esque runaround which I wil probably laugh about when I retire...there's nothing funnier than the relief of having jumped ship followed by the irony of it being bought out by who you've just left!

£180 gets me a few years old Intel Xeon Quad core, 2 x 500 gig sas drives and 8 gig of ram and a 50 gig backup with the added bonus of 'up and down' support .

I probably only use about 100 gigs for actual hosting files/mysql over a couple of domains running wordpress and shopping carts, the rest (about 300 gigs) are plesk run internal backups which arguably I wouldn't need if I could trust the 50 gig backups I pay for that have let me down twice so far....so I'm open to options and probably could easily swap what I have for a smaller SSD drive server.

 

[webhostuk]

Right, here you can upgrade your server to SSD drive with a good remote backup solution which can guarantee you remote backup for the time interval you have asked. If you need any help with such step-up feel to contact us.

 

[GURUCLOUD]

DanH - I think what you're wanting is someone who is still 'small enough to care but big enough to deliver'
An example being 24/7 support - how could a 'small' company do this with only 2 staff or even 4? Is it outsourced? Is it UK based? I'm not sure what your tick boxes are but best advise would be..Do your research, find a few that hit your price point and send in emails, ring their sales lines and then one evening just ring their support line. You'll get a good gauge of who is actually 24/7 and who is using an answering services/getting someone out of bed to look into your issue!
Do you need help moving out? Will they do the migration? How much is it? How is the migration handled?
What are you hosting? Is it Magento, WordPress, WooCoomerce or a mixture? Find someone who knows what you're hosting - it will make your life a lot easier if something goes wrong!

Good luck!

 

[DanH]

OK thanks, Ill start some research soon!

 

[HostXNow]

There is no 100% guaranteed way to prevent issues with mail on Shared hosting service even if some type of email filtering is used, same with a VPS. All it takes is for one customer to get the IP blacklisted.

The only 2 options you have are to use a 3rd party email hosting service like Google Apps or have your own /24 for example. When you share IP ranges with other providers etc there is no 100% way to prevent such issues. Too expensive to have your own IP space.

You need to use a provider who is extra careful with the orders they accept and then there will be fewer email issues. Also, use Google Apps if possible.

For example, we use the Google Apps plugin which is available within cPanel and so once you have signed up for your own Google Apps account at their website and followed their steps all you need to do then is just enable it within your cPanel account thus all email is routed through Google rather than locally on the Shared hosting server which is shared with hundreds of other customers.

Google Apps is only $5/month per email address and if you heavily rely on email for business/sales then that $5/month is well worth it.

Hope that helps.

 

[arnydnxluk]

There is no 100% guaranteed way to prevent issues with mail on Shared hosting service even if some type of email filtering is used, same with a VPS. All it takes is for one customer to get the IP blacklisted.

I would certainly agree that enterprise solutions such as G-Suite and Office 365 are best for any serious business email. However email filtering solutions such as SpamExperts or MailChannels are extremely effective at preventing outbound spam and in the case of their hosted services, improving delivery in various ways. I agree that reviewing all orders is important too. If you deploy SpamExperts/MailChannels, monitor outgoing email, have malware scanning in place and review all orders manually, blacklisting should be a very rare occurrence.

 

[HostXNow]

I would certainly agree that enterprise solutions such as G-Suite and Office 365 are best for any serious business email. However email filtering solutions such as SpamExperts or MailChannels are extremely effective at preventing outbound spam and in the case of their hosted services, improving delivery in various ways. I agree that reviewing all orders is important too. If you deploy SpamExperts/MailChannels, monitor outgoing email, have malware scanning in place and review all orders manually, blacklisting should be a very rare occurrence.

They are only effective if you have your own IP space. Let's say you lease individual IPs or your own /24 from the DC, it only takes one person to do snowshoe spamming or similar and get the whole /25 or whatever it is blocked at the DC which would also affect your own /24 or any individual IPs you lease from the DC. So while using filtering like SpamExperts or MailChannels does help prevent spam being sent from your own servers and IPs, the IPs can still be blocked by other customers at the datacentre using the same IP range and getting that IP range blacklisted at Spamhaus and like which also effects email for Hotmail. That was my point.
I would say it is best to use Google Apps than using email filtering like SpamExperts or Mailchannels.
Business owners should use web hosting to host the website and use 3rd party provider like Google Apps for email if they can.

 

[arnydnxluk]

They are only effective if you have your own IP space. Let's say you lease individual IPs or your own /24 from the DC, it only takes one person to do snowshoe spamming or similar and get the whole /25 or whatever it is blocked at the DC which would also affect your own /24 or any individual IPs you lease from the DC. So while using filtering like SpamExperts or MailChannels does help prevent spam being sent from your own servers and IPs, the IPs can still be blocked by other customers at the datacentre using the same IP range and getting that IP range blacklisted at Spamhaus and like which also effects email for Hotmail. That was my point.

If you are leasing tiny blocks or individual IP addresses, then both SpamExperts and MailChannels offer a hosted service which is very effective. So my point is simply that, in 2018, blacklisting is practically a non-issue if you opt for a shared hosting provider using for example MailChannels' cloud service which is quite common. Still I'll reiterate I definitely agree otherwise that G-Suite etc is ideal for any serious email usage where budget allows.

 

[Coari]

Leaving them too very soon, just a pain of moving websites but it needs to be done.
To be honest was never been able to find reliable hosting in UK and now have majority of websites with datacentres in Germany or Poland.

 

[webhostuk]

Leaving them too very soon, just a pain of moving websites but it needs to be done.
To be honest was never been able to find reliable hosting in UK and now have majority of websites with datacentres in Germany or Poland.

Migration and things can be done new hosting provider so nothing to worry about migration.
In which location are you looking to host your site.

 

[SYN]

Leaving them too very soon, just a pain of moving websites but it needs to be done.
To be honest was never been able to find reliable hosting in UK and now have majority of websites with datacentres in Germany or Poland.

Migrating websites is pretty easy and most hosts will offer to do it for you. There should be some reputable UK hosts out there

Hosts that don't offer phone support usually have live chat or at least ticket system they can help you from fairly fast.

 

[Seb de Lemos]

Seb here, just seen this thread. As I used to run Tsohost & Vidahost, it's a shame to see this thread and the direction the brand has been taken in by the new owners. To clarify, I've not been involved for a while.