You should warn people upgrading to reseller plan

Today I sent a request to upgrade my account from a shared hosting plan to a reseller plan using your online form.

I got an e-mail thanking me and that an administrator would be contacting me soon. Next time I went to check my e-mail, I couldn't because all of my web sites and e-mail accounts are gone.

I contacted live support (nobody answers your phone number) and was told that I would have to contact Sales to get it straightened out. Now I'm waiting for someone to help me fix this disaster.

My suggestion is that you put a warning on the FAQ page and especially on the page with the form to request an upgrade that existing sites will be disabled.

This is a very serious problem for me as I have client's sites hosted and now they are dead and any e-mails sent to the various domain names are being bounced back to the senders.

It's going to take me hours to rebuild once I get the information from the sales department. (which hasn't happened yet)

A better solution would be to set up a transition system so that customers who upgrade can upgrade without downtime. Such as setting up the new account and leaving the old one standing for 10 days or so.

Nick.

[TMWS]

I was the user who posted the previous message. My sites are still dead.

[britbob]

I know this is no help to you, but I did exactly the same, I upgraded from a shared account to reseller just a week ago.

Before I upgraded, I emailed sales several times asking them to keep my shared account open for a week or so, just so I could move things over. Tim wrote me back and said no `problem`. Of course, I was still crapping myself after my nightmare at Midphase. My shared account is still online a week later. I`ve just about finished moving my files (but not quite)!

Hopefully you`ll get things sorted soon enough.

[TMWS]

Bob,

Thanks for your reply. I wish I had done the same. I finally got to talk to a live person in support and I was told that my sites will be down until the DNS information propagates throughout the Internet and that I don't need to upload my sites again or set up the e-mails. Of course this means that nothing works until that happens.

So far I'm still sunk but hoping they will all come back to life soon.

This is real embarrassing for me as I'm just starting to try and handle the hosting for my clients instead of pushing them somewhere else. At first I was doing it by taking advantage of the unlimited domains function but soon figured that I would be better off with a reseller plan so I could keep clients' sites separate from mine. Just launched a new client's site and e-mail this week and now they're sunk as well. Not a great way to impress them.

Nick.

[programmer]

Probably the best thing to do once your site is back up is to send an email to all of them explaining the difficulties, and tell them it is for the better, and that no more events such as this will happen again.

Just suggestions; I know they'll want some explanation.

[pulse]

This is indeed a serious issue here! Say tommorow I want to upgrade from a shared to semi ded/ded then will I have to go through all the trouble of moving my sites myself? Wouldn't hostgator do it for me?

[TMWS]

Originally Posted by pulse

This is indeed a serious issue here! Say tommorow I want to upgrade from a shared to semi ded/ded then will I have to go through all the trouble of moving my sites myself? Wouldn't hostgator do it for me?

They moved my sites over but since the DNS hadn't propagated, they all were dead and no e-mail working. I couldn't even get the e-mail with the new nameserver information.

My main site is now functioning but most of my add-on domains are not and the e-mail accounts associated with them aren't either.

The reseller part does seem to work and I was able to at least get one of my clients' sites back up and running by setting up their site on one of the packages.

Just beware of the upgrade and do what Bob did and get them to agree to do the transition the way he did.

Nick.

[GatorBrent]

When you change from one server to another your IP address changes. Due to this IP change, some ISPs don't refresh every minute, and it can appear a site is down for a few hours. However, it is up, and is just your ISP that has old information.

Many ISPs refresh instantly for their users your site never goes down.

For the extreme cases, that usually only results in a few hours before the new IP is updated with the ISP.

People who purchase a dedicated IP also will have the same results as above. Your site will be up and running on a server. Just your ISP is checking the wrong IP so thinks it's down.

[TMWS]

It's still a poor way of "upgrading" your customers. The method that was used to handle BRITBOB's account would be much better. It can't be that hard to leave the site up on the old IP address for a few days.

People moving from a shared account to a reseller account are more than likely going to be business people and any efforts that can be made to eliminate downtime should be taken.

I've tried through four different ISPs and still have most of my sites down and even the add-on ones that are working, the e-mail doesn't work.

I sent an e-mail to Hostgator asking if I needed to recreate the add-on domains and haven't gotten any response.

So far I'm not too excited with the support here. Quick to take your money to setup your account.

At least be fair to the next person who "upgrades" and put a warning on your upgrade page.

Nick.

[Fidelity]

Originally Posted by TMWS

It's still a poor way of "upgrading" your customers. The method that was used to handle BRITBOB's account would be much better. It can't be that hard to leave the site up on the old IP address for a few days.

People moving from a shared account to a reseller account are more than likely going to be business people and any efforts that can be made to eliminate downtime should be taken.

I've tried through four different ISPs and still have most of my sites down and even the add-on ones that are working, the e-mail doesn't work.

I sent an e-mail to Hostgator asking if I needed to recreate the add-on domains and haven't gotten any response.

So far I'm not too excited with the support here. Quick to take your money to setup your account.

At least be fair to the next person who "upgrades" and put a warning on your upgrade page.

Nick.

Hello,

I know this is little help but I'm very leery of the phrase "no problem", "we apologize" and "I'll forward this to the head of admin". Go figure! http://forums.hostgator.com/images/icons/icon3.gif

;-)

[psylenced]

What you can do to resolve this issue. A few (3-4) days before you decide to change, set the time-out on your dns records to a really short amount.. ie about 10 mins. Leave this for a few days and then transfer your domains over.

Once that's finished set your time-out back to its original figure.

The reason for this is most hosts/isp's cache dns records for up to a few days. If you tell them not to hold the information longer than a few minutes it'll always re-query the correct information and you'll have an easy transferral. This does increase load on the dns servers so that is why you need to change it back afterward.

[gigableu]

Originally Posted by britbob

Before I upgraded, I emailed sales several times asking them to keep my shared account open for a week or so, just so I could move things over. Tim wrote me back and said no `problem`. Of course, I was still crapping myself after my nightmare..

Well I just looked for that 10 minute timer..the one with the red flashing lights, klaxon sounding through white mist and a calm female voice stating, detonation in 10 minus 6 seconds....No problema ..(g)

Bart.

This reply is about nine months late, but here's some advice that's relevant to ANY webhost.

1. ALWAYS keep updated backups of your website AND your email. Set up an automated IMAP backup using your primary account. It has access to all other IMAP account folders on the domain, at least on the shared domains I have set up here.

2. NEVER host your DNS and website in the same place. Pay to have your DNS hosted elsewhere with a host that can handle a LOT of DNS traffic. Then keep your DNS TTL's low; somewhere between an hour and six hours. If your webhost screws you, you can easily sign up somewhere else, upload your files, update your third party DNS host with the new IP, and be back online in less than half a day. This has saved my hind quarters more than once. ALL of my clients use a third party DNS host, regardless of who hosts their website.

Also, many DNS hosts (i.e. DynDNS.com) can also act as a Backup MX or an SMTP relay. If your site goes down, email is queued on their server until it can successfully forward it. You can usually put this service into a queue-only mode while you're setting up your mailboxes on the new host. Then you resume forwarding and the email will flood in. Some of these relay services also offer the ability to send an autoresponse notifying email senders of "technical issues" and asking them to be patient. Look into it.

Hope this helps.

Me

[Serra]

Let me add one more thing to the mix. When I upgraded, I didn't upgrade my account. I purchased a new account and then had everything transfered and cancelled the old account. That way you can run parallel for a short period of time.

At first I was thinking about the cost, but then I realized that one week of overlap only cost me a few bucks, so it was worth it!

[David]

Originally Posted by Serra

Let me add one more thing to the mix. When I upgraded, I didn't upgrade my account. I purchased a new account and then had everything transfered and cancelled the old account. That way you can run parallel for a short period of time.

At first I was thinking about the cost, but then I realized that one week of overlap only cost me a few bucks, so it was worth it!

We did the same thing and it worked out well.

David