Update - TsoHost - cpanel migration disaster. Have you had similar issues?

Carefulspender1

I hope I've posted this in the right forum - if it's a problem admin please let me know.

I set up two small business websites 12 years ago using wordpress and chose Vidahost as the hosting company. They were brilliant - very little downtime and excellent customer support by phone. A few years ago Vidahost were bought by TsoHost who have slowly degraded their service, taking away telephone support and replacing that with live chat and raising a ticket. The hosting has slowly gone down hill with more and more instances of downtime.

The last straw has been this year when they informed all of the customers who had been purchased over the years that they were migrating their accounts to new servers and costs would increase. My annual hosting cost has doubled but as the charge hadn't increased for a few years I accepted that. Migration day arrived on 29th July and I had an email stating all of our sites had been successfully migrated but as my domain had been bought through another provider (Vidahost) I would have to contact them to arrange dns forwarding! 

This was obviously a mistake as Vidahost is Tsohost and, having tried to sign into our business emails unsuccessfully, I went online to start a live chat with them but I cant because TsoHost have taken the live chat facility away. I raised a ticket and waited. As I had no reply I thought I'd have a look around and then saw all of the recent negative reviews on Trustpilot. 

It looks like TsoHost has left the building! Customers who have been migrated earlier in the year have not had tickets answered for over a month, like me they can't access their business emails and cannot  sign into cpanel in order to sort out dns forwarding. My partner and I have customers who contact us regularly via email and therefore not only are we losing appointments but clients, who may have personal issues, are going unanswered. 

I have given TsoHost the benefit of the doubt over the years but this really is abysmal and crucifying small businesses all over the country. So I have two questions:

Has anyone else had similar experience and what are you doing to counter this? 
I am looking to move to a new hosting company - can anyone recommend a good budget priced hosting company which has a good customer service rating?

**Update - I decided, after a forumite's recommendation, to switch to Cloudabove hosting. They have been brilliant - excellent customer service and reasonable prices including free SSLs. Highly recommended! **

martindow

I'm afraid I can't help, but what a nightmare.  There is a techie board on MSE

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/techie-stuff

It may be worth searching on there and/ or reposting to see if anyone has any ideas of how to resolve your problem.  Good luck.

Carefulspender1

martindow said:

I'm afraid I can't help, but what a nightmare.  There is a techie board on MSE

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/techie-stuff

It may be worth searching on there and/ or reposting to see if anyone has any ideas of how to resolve your problem.  Good luck.

Thanks Martin - that's a good idea, I'll go have a look. Yes it really is a nightmare, the Trustpilot reviews were an eye opener - there really should be a regulator for this aspect of the web industry to protect businesses large and small!

Carefulspender1

It was suggested I repost this here from the small biz moneysaving forum - hope that's ok.

I set up two small business websites 12 years ago using wordpress and chose Vidahost as the hosting company. They were brilliant - very little downtime and excellent customer support by phone. A few years ago Vidahost were bought by TsoHost who have slowly degraded their service, taking away telephone support and replacing that with live chat and raising a ticket. The hosting has slowly gone down hill with more and more instances of downtime.

The last straw has been this year when they informed all of the customers who had been purchased over the years that they were migrating their accounts to new servers and costs would increase. My annual hosting cost has doubled but as the charge hadn't increased for a few years I accepted that. Migration day arrived on 29th July and I had an email stating all of our sites had been successfully migrated but as my domain had been bought through another provider (Vidahost) I would have to contact them to arrange dns forwarding!

This was obviously a mistake as Vidahost is Tsohost and, having tried to sign into our business emails unsuccessfully, I went online to start a live chat with them but I cant because TsoHost have taken the live chat facility away. I raised a ticket and waited. As I had no reply I thought I'd have a look around and then saw all of the recent negative reviews on Trustpilot.

It looks like TsoHost has left the building! Customers who have been migrated earlier in the year have not had tickets answered for over a month, like me they can't access their business emails and cannot  sign into cpanel in order to sort out dns forwarding. My partner and I have customers who contact us regularly via email and therefore not only are we losing appointments but clients, who may have personal issues, are going unanswered.

I have given TsoHost the benefit of the doubt over the years but this really is abysmal and crucifying small businesses all over the country. So I have two questions:

Has anyone else had similar experience and what are you doing to counter this?

I am looking to move to a new hosting company - can anyone recommend a good budget priced hosting company which has a good customer service rating?

alanjuk

I did have this issue but i was able to get to web based email via the TSOhost client area, from memory the new CPanel log in username is displayed there and I was able to use that to regain access to CPanel. I then had to update the servers in my email clients. Sorry its a bit vague but it was a couple of months ago now and I'm no expert.
I believe that they are now owned by go daddy. I shall also be looking to move next year as what was about £16.00 a year is going to be about £80.00

Carefulspender1

alanjuk said:

I did have this issue but i was able to get to web based email via the TSOhost client area, from memory the new CPanel log in username is displayed there and I was able to use that to regain access to CPanel. I then had to update the servers in my email clients. Sorry its a bit vague but it was a couple of months ago now and I'm no expert.
I believe that they are now owned by go daddy. I shall also be looking to move next year as what was about £16.00 a year is going to be about £80.00

Thanks Alan for responding - well finally I've got it working after spending all day going through all of the steps on the faq pages of their website and all emails seem to be working...although I wont hold my breath! Tsohost have become a shambles of an organisation - you would have thought that if they are backed by a large conglomerate like Godaddy they would ensure they had the capacity to deal with all of the ticket requests their support team would likely receive. Hey ho - a lesson learnt, now to look for a new hosting company. Do you have one in mind for when you move?

Carefulspender1

Just to update - after spending all day on this I've got my email  working but Tsohost will be losing my business - their support is a total shambles, I would recommend anyone looking to get hosting avoids them completely!

Farway

Our small local charity site was hosted with Vidahost, free as a charity, TSO hosts continued for us, then, like you, the troubles started, nothing major, niggles really, like FTP password no longer working

Recently, TSO decided charity hosting was no longer free so that the last straw for me, 

I found Brixly, much the same as Vidahost was, which seems to cover what we need, including free charity hosting. Limited e-mail accounts for free, but we only require two anyway.

Not had need to use telephone help so can't comment on that.

I should add Brixly has just started the changed hands route, so maybe eyes wide open?

https://brixly.uk/

DullGreyGuy

Yup, was with CSNM 20 years ago or so who were bought out by someone who were bought out by Vidahost, who were bought out by TSO 

Had stuck with them because after the last migration they bodged up our email so gave us a free second hosting package to use for email only but after a bit cancelled the paid for package and just had the free one for 2-3 years. Still had lots of problems with receivers saying our mail had been caught by their spam filters so moved email away from them about 18 months ago. 

This latest migration has been a pain, they haven't migrated the nameservers and say it's impossible for them to do it so they've lost our business. Tickets have equally been ignored so things have been migrated and I'm just ignoring their invoice

pdel61

I was with TSOhost for many years and the service just got worse and worse, a couple of years ago I've moved to:

https://cloudabove.com/ they handled the complete move and have been great.

Carefulspender1

Farway said:

Our small local charity site was hosted with Vidahost, free as a charity, TSO hosts continued for us, then, like you, the troubles started, nothing major, niggles really, like FTP password no longer working

Recently, TSO decided charity hosting was no longer free so that the last straw for me, 

I found Brixly, much the same as Vidahost was, which seems to cover what we need, including free charity hosting. Limited e-mail accounts for free, but we only require two anyway.

Not had need to use telephone help so can't comment on that.

I should add Brixly has just started the changed hands route, so maybe eyes wide open?

https://brixly.uk/

Thanks Farway - I'll go and take a look at Brixly...it is a shame how all the good small companies are getting swallowed up by all the big conglomerates, service always seems to go out of the window and costs always seem to spiral.