Club Uptime Discontinuing Unmanaged OpenVZ Services

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Posted by Matt R, 04-24-2011, 03:30 PM
Unfortunately, as the title suggests, we will be discontinuing our OpenVZ based services.

Below is a copy of the email of which we're sending out to our existing clients to note that we're discontinuing our OpenVZ Platforms.

I wanted to get this here before our clients did to ensure the full story is posted, so this is actually being posted up before I've sent out the notice to clients by just a few minutes.

Just to emphasize: We will NOT prematurely shut down ANY account. If you paid for a year, and you paid for it just yesterday, you can still use your account for a year. We're simply not renewing contracts to let the platform shut itself down over time.

Quote:

Dear (CLIENT NAME),

Before you panic, we'd like to note the following: NO client accounts will be immediately shut down! All client accounts will continue to operate until the end of their payment term regardless of length of term.

As of today, April 24th 2011, we will no longer be accepting new orders for our budget OpenVZ Platform. Over the next few months, we will be working to phase out our Budget OpenVZ Platform in it's entirety to move to a substantially more reliable and more powerful Xen based platform.

It has been decided that we will not be renewing any OpenVZ Based contracts once your product/service is up for renewal. We will not be immediately shutting down any existing OpenVZ Clients. If your next invoice is due within the upcoming 10 days, please contact us as soon as possible so that we may give you an extra months service at no cost to allow time for migration. Any clients who have paid for 3, 6, or 12 month terms will continue to operate until their term runs out. Managed clients will remain 100% Unaffected.

We're offering 15% off for life on all Xen based accounts if you wish to upgrade to Xen, and we're also offering free migration assistance to any client that is currently using cPanel. If you have ordered in the past 14 days, you are eligible for a pro-rated refund for unused time OR the full invoice amount be credited towards a Xen instance. The coupon code is "XenUpgrade" for 15% off and it will only work for existing clients with OpenVZ products.

This decision has not been made overnight and has been a hard decision to make. While we provide one of the more, if not most, stable budget OpenVZ Platform on the market today, we've come to find the following --

1) OpenVZ IPv6 Support with VLAN Routed IP addresses rather than static routed IP addresses is quite buggy and causes a lot of issues. With IPv4 Depletion just up ahead on the roadmap, we want to have IPv6 fully operational and guaranteed to work within all VPS Servers.

2) Server performance on OpenVZ, while great, can be greatly affected by a single clients actions. There are many aspects that both can and can not be controlled. On a Xen based platform, the chances of a clients performance being negatively affected is made much lower.

3) Platform sustainability has become an issue with other budget VPS companies popping up releasing products/services on consumer grade hardware at obscenely low costs. We've lost a great amount of clients to "Companies" utilizing desktop grade hardware as of lately, and we simply can not drop the prices any lower than we have to attempt to remain competitive while using enterprise grade hardware.

In the end, we've decided that our primary focus should lay in mid-grade to high-end VPS platforms and dedicated server offerings. We've secured deals at Softlayer for high-bandwidth offerings. In addition, we will be opening in San Jose within the next two weeks and in Amsterdam in about 8 weeks time. We will also be adding Chicago into the mix utilizing the Singlehop datacenters.

If you wish to remain on an inexpensive OpenVZ platform, x10Hosting has been around since 2004 and has a long standing reputation in the Free Hosting community with over 100,000 websites hosted. Personally knowing the owner, we guarantee that x10vps knows how to manage an OpenVZ Platform in a stable and reliable manner. Check them out at http://x10vps.com/ if you're interested.

If you're a managed client and wish to move your managed services elsewhere, we highly recommend MDDHosting. Mike and myself have assisted each other many times in the past and have a working relationship to where I know and can recommend his abilities as a systems administrator. He has assisted us many times in the past during emergency situations and his ability to get through and work with servers under high stress environments is astounding. http://mddhosting.com is very highly recommended.

We much appreciate your patience and look forward to continuing to do business with you, or assisting you in finding another home for your VPS.

Thank you,
Matthew Rosenblatt
CEO, Club Uptime, LLC

We do sincerely apologize for any inconveniences and we wish to help any/all clients to the best of our abilities. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns that you might have.

Myself, Andy, and Brian are also open to public discussion here on Web Hosting Talk.
Posted by XTremo, 04-24-2011, 03:35 PM
Amsterdam.....but no UK Matt? Any plans for that?
Posted by Matt R, 04-24-2011, 03:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by XTremo

Amsterdam.....but no UK Matt? Any plans for that?

We're essentially going where Softlayer goes for the most part. Chicago is the only location where we're straying at the moment.

While Softlayer does have space in the UK, it's left over from The Planet and it's not fully built or prepared for the amount of traffic that we have.
Posted by dclardy, 04-24-2011, 03:36 PM
Are you serious? I am very sure that you just pissed off a ton of people.
Posted by Matt R, 04-24-2011, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dclardy

Are you serious? I am very sure that you just pissed off a ton of people.

That's why we're giving people time to move, offering free time, offering permanent discounts on the Xen platform, and not canceling a single account prematurely. We're simply letting them roll out and not renewing contracts.
Posted by HostXNow, 04-24-2011, 03:58 PM
Shouldn't this be posted in the Hosting Industry Announcements forum at http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58 ?
Posted by Matt R, 04-24-2011, 04:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HostXNow

Shouldn't this be posted in the Hosting Industry Announcements forum at http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58 ?

Well, my thought was that if I didn't post it up in here, a client would anyway and I'd end up responding here either way

If mods want to move it, feel free.
Posted by HostXNow, 04-24-2011, 04:22 PM
Yeah. Well I think it sounds good what you're doing. Just thinking ahead an all that.

Yes, the news is going to upset many of your customers, but I'm sure they'd prefer the way you're going about it than you just disappearing off the face of the earth like so many other providers do.
Posted by phil29, 04-24-2011, 04:23 PM
"This decision has not been made overnight and has been a hard decision to make."

Then why weren't you honest and forthcoming before I purchased service from you about 3 weeks ago? Its great that you are going to give us the time to migrate to different providers, but are you going to pay the transfer costs for me to transfer all my data? Are you going to reimburse me the time its going to cost for me to setup and reconfigure my service elsewhere?

Having just purchased service from you, its a bit irritating to find out that you are shutting off my service the moment I have it running smoothly. I can't say whether or not I would have still purchased service from you had I known you were considering cancelling, but I certainly would have considered it, and it definitely would have been nice to know.

I realize this may be the best move for you to make financially, but from my point of view, as a customer, all this means for me is a) an increase in monthly fees if I choose to stay, and b) wasted time migrating my service.

I haven't yet decided if I will continue service with your Xen based plans, but your decision to inform me 3 weeks after I purchased service that my account will be cancelled will heavily weigh in my decision. Your saving grace may be that I have always found your service fast and responsive, and based on that merit alone I may choose to continue, but it won't be without having first checked your competitors.

Very Respectfully,
Phillip
Posted by kjetterman, 04-24-2011, 04:43 PM
Wait a minute -- so the managed openvz plans are being phased out as well?
Posted by Matt R, 04-24-2011, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kjetterman

Wait a minute -- so the managed openvz plans are being phased out as well?

Nope -- only unmanaged. Managed is NOT being touched.
Posted by kjetterman, 04-24-2011, 04:53 PM
*whew* Thank you for the clarification!
Posted by HostXNow, 04-24-2011, 05:04 PM
Looks like the cost of the VPS cPanel/WHM licenses have been increased from $10-$20?
Posted by Brian O, 04-24-2011, 05:07 PM
This is a pretty big decision and I can understand this is frustrating for both sides, the host (ClubUptime) and the customers.

One question Matt, what is going to happen with CloudPanel? I notice your website doesn't mention it anymore on the front page.
Posted by Matt R, 04-24-2011, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pheonix VPS

This is a pretty big decision and I can understand this is frustrating for both sides, the host (ClubUptime) and the customers.

One question Matt, what is going to happen with CloudPanel? I notice your website doesn't mention it anymore on the front page.

It's still being actively developed and prepped for final release. It was originally intended for XenServer and Hyper-V, so it'll be a lot more a home now.
Posted by Matt R, 04-24-2011, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HostXNow

Looks like the cost of the VPS cPanel/WHM licenses have been increased from $10-$20?

That's a typo -- it's still $10.
Posted by Matt R, 04-24-2011, 05:23 PM
Sorry for the delay in responding -- I wanted to be able to take a few minutes to sit down and respond to your message in full.

Quote:

Originally Posted by phil29

Then why weren't you honest and forthcoming before I purchased service from you about 3 weeks ago? Its great that you are going to give us the time to migrate to different providers, but are you going to pay the transfer costs for me to transfer all my data? Are you going to reimburse me the time its going to cost for me to setup and reconfigure my service elsewhere?

We started notifying those who contacted us for sales inquiries as to pricing and product changes about 7-10 days ago. The decision to completely discontinue OpenVZ service was not made until Friday afternoon.

Quote:

Originally Posted by phil29

Having just purchased service from you, its a bit irritating to find out that you are shutting off my service the moment I have it running smoothly. I can't say whether or not I would have still purchased service from you had I known you were considering cancelling, but I certainly would have considered it, and it definitely would have been nice to know.

Absolutely, and trust me, we understand. We're more than willing to extend your accounts time a bit to help out. We can provide vzdump files that you can hand to your next provider so that you don't even need to reconfigure a single thing. If they won't do vzdumps, we can show you how to rsync all of your data in a lossless manner that will boot right up just as if you're with us.

We're not trying to leave anyone stranded or inconvenienced, we're more than willing to help out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by phil29

I realize this may be the best move for you to make financially, but from my point of view, as a customer, all this means for me is a) an increase in monthly fees if I choose to stay, and b) wasted time migrating my service.

The same answer here is essentially what I wrote above. We're more than willing to help migrate you to another OpenVZ Provider (Provided they're willing to accept standard methods of migration). If you're not moving to OpenVZ and intend to stick with us on Xen, we can rsync all of your /var, /usr, /home and other data over in a bootable format.

Quote:

Originally Posted by phil29

I haven't yet decided if I will continue service with your Xen based plans, but your decision to inform me 3 weeks after I purchased service that my account will be cancelled will heavily weigh in my decision. Your saving grace may be that I have always found your service fast and responsive, and based on that merit alone I may choose to continue, but it won't be without having first checked your competitors.

Very Respectfully,
Phillip

And I wouldn't blame you, nor the rest of our clients for being a bit weary. Just let us know if you need any help. We're pretty well connected with other companies, so if we can't be of help, we'll try to get you setup at another company in as painless a manner as possible.

I can't make any guarantees, but *some* clients may be able to have their IP addresses ported over to the Xen platform depending on where they are in the IP range that they're located on.
Posted by DylanP, 04-24-2011, 05:25 PM
Hello, I paid an invoice early a few days ago for $35, it is/was due on the 29th of April. Can you refund that, and give me one month free time so I can make plans to transfer? I hate to leave, but I don't want to fork out the extra money for Xen. ClubUptime has been great to me.

My invoice number was/is: 10244

I paid on 4/19/2011. The invoice was/is actually due on the 29th of this month.

Thank you, Matt.
Posted by Matt R, 04-24-2011, 05:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DylanP

Hello, I paid an invoice early a few days ago for $35, it is/was due on the 29th of April. Can you refund that, and give me one month free time so I can make plans to transfer? I hate to leave, but I don't want to fork out the extra money for Xen. ClubUptime has been great to me.

My invoice number was/is: 10244

I paid on 4/19/2011. The invoice was/is actually due on the 29th of this month.

Thank you, Matt.

Dylan, As you're on the managed platform, nothing will be changing for you. Managed clients are 100% unaffected -- it only applies to budget unmanaged clients.
Posted by DylanP, 04-24-2011, 05:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matt R

Dylan, As you're on the managed platform, nothing will be changing for you. Managed clients are 100% unaffected -- it only applies to budget unmanaged clients.

Ah, I was just about to edit my post to say never mind, I just read some more posts and saw where you said managed clients won't be touched.

Thank you.

Just a question, will managed OpenVZ clients ever have to upgrade to Xen or leave?
Posted by Matt R, 04-24-2011, 05:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DylanP

Ah, I was just about to edit my post to say never mind, I just read some more posts and saw where you said managed clients won't be touched.

Thank you.

Just a question, will managed OpenVZ clients ever have to upgrade to Xen or leave?

Not at all. Managed OpenVZ clients will NOT be touched in any way.
Posted by HostXNow, 04-24-2011, 06:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matt R

That's a typo -- it's still $10.

Thought so.
Posted by Spirit, 04-24-2011, 08:35 PM
Is http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/clubup...nvz-vps-256mb/ offer, posted few weeks ago this "unmanaged OpenVZ service" which you're discontinuing now? If yes.. it's very strange - after so much of active advertizing lately on lowendbox, etc.. now just discontinuing it. And even direct sign up link still work.
Posted by Matt R, 04-24-2011, 11:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spirit

Is http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/clubup...nvz-vps-256mb/ offer, posted few weeks ago this "unmanaged OpenVZ service" which you're discontinuing now? If yes.. it's very strange - after so much of active advertizing lately on lowendbox, etc.. now just discontinuing it. And even direct sign up link still work.

The direct links still may work, but it will lead to your payment being refunded back to yourself if you were to order. We've yet to mark the stock on our OpenVZ platform as zero, however we are no longer accepting any orders for OpenVZ and will reject them all.
Posted by Kurikami, 04-25-2011, 03:53 AM
Great post, shows that being registered as a company means absolutely nothing, you are dumping you fail plan just like any other kiddie host this days.

Hope it will serve a lesson not to deal with you in the future
Posted by CGotzmann, 04-25-2011, 04:12 AM
Even offering people advance notice and free time to move, and you still have cry babies.

I guess they would like it better if you just went out of business one random day with absolutely no information or notice.

Good job on notifying everyone of a product offering discontinuation. Companies do it all the time. You are simply ceasing to offer a specific product line.
Posted by HostXNow, 04-25-2011, 04:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CGotzmann

Even offering people advance notice and free time to move, and you still have cry babies.

I guess they would like it better if you just went out of business one random day with absolutely no information or notice.

Good job on notifying everyone of a product offering discontinuation. Companies do it all the time. You are simply ceasing to offer a specific product line.

Exactly. It could be much worse.
Posted by Matt R, 04-25-2011, 07:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kurikami

Great post, shows that being registered as a company means absolutely nothing, you are dumping you fail plan just like any other kiddie host this days.

Hope it will serve a lesson not to deal with you in the future

Well, would you much rather us run ourselves out of business or give everyone a minimum one months time (Even if free) to move away? We're bending over backwards to help clients to assist them as well. Free time on our servers, free migration assistance, we'll provide VZDump files so you can simply hand that to your new provider and not need to reconfigure a thing, etc...

Not only that, but we're giving discounts on a properly sustainable platform. We'll help you migrate to our Xen or Dedicated platforms at no cost. We'll even show you how to rsync your data in a way that it's bootable on essentially any system.

There's only so much that we can do.
Posted by Spirit, 04-25-2011, 07:28 AM
@CGotzmann it depend how you look on this. They were very active in advertizing to get new budget OpenVZ customers lately. Just few examples:

http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/clubup...-year-special/
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/clubup...birthday-sale/
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/clubup...nvz-vps-256mb/ - with April promotion coupon

Quote:

Matthew Rosenblatt:

I wish more people were buying into our Xen platform. Weve got nearly about 20-30 times more OpenVZ VPSs out there than we do Xen.

from lowendbox site

In last offer they even admitted how nicely they filled OpenVZ customer base while their xen platform isn't that popular and now, just few days later... I think that subtle way to force users to switch to more expensive plan wont fool whole this lured customer base but they again.. they most likely expect this so that's why they offer migration to other hosts to make better impression.
Posted by Matt R, 04-25-2011, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spirit

@CGotzmann it depend how you look on this. They were very active in advertizing to get new budget OpenVZ customers lately. Just few examples:

http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/clubup...-year-special/
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/clubup...birthday-sale/
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/clubup...nvz-vps-256mb/ - with April promotion coupon

In last offer they even admitted how nicely they filled OpenVZ customer base while their xen platform isn't that popular and now, just few days later... I think that subtle way to force users to switch to more expensive plan wont fool whole this lured customer base but they again.. they most likely expect this so that's why they offer migration to other hosts to make better impression.

Not true. Just because we have a lot of OpenVZ host nodes and clients doesn't mean it's sustainable in the long run. We recommended other provides and have been providing backups like crazy.

If you think we're pulling a bait and switch, that's your own opinion. This move has lost us nearly all of the clients -- We've had less than 10 move over to Xen so far out of the 1500+ clients, with hundreds of cancellation requests.

We want to focus on high-end product offerings on a sustainable platform. We simply can't do that with OpenVZ.
Posted by jmayniac, 04-25-2011, 11:10 AM
In the month I've been with ClubUptime, it's been great. Coming from another dead host, 2hourservers.net, I thought I finally found a permanent place. I wish you wouldn't have made this decision, but I can understand it. Thanks for giving us time to find another host.

If it was about 20 dollars cheaper, I would probably sign up with a Xen plan, but I need 2GB RAM and that plan is just too expensive, even unmanaged. I have a feeling a lot of your customers are thinking the same way.

Good luck in the future.
Posted by jj@24khost, 04-25-2011, 12:18 PM
You could go to virtually dedicated. It seems to be really nice.
Posted by Microlinux, 04-25-2011, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spirit

In last offer they even admitted how nicely they filled OpenVZ customer base while their xen platform isn't that popular and now, just few days later... I think that subtle way to force users to switch to more expensive plan wont fool whole this lured customer base but they again..

You really believe they decided it was a good idea to risk losing the majority of their customer base in the hopes that enough would be "lured" into higher paying Xen plans?

From a business standpoint that makes absolutely zero sense, but it sure makes good fodder for you conspiracy theorists

C'mon, they were very straightforward about what is going on here.
Posted by Spirit, 04-28-2011, 07:25 AM
[CTI] Todd it has nothing to do with "conspiracy theory" as terms which are way too often (ab)used in board discussions to discredit someones expressed opinion. It's just my expressed observation - nothing more than that.
Posted by phil29, 04-28-2011, 07:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matt R

We've had less than 10 move over to Xen so far out of the 1500+ clients, with hundreds of cancellation requests.

Matt, I'd like to be #10, but you wont respond to Ticket #508553
Posted by aaronsold, 04-28-2011, 02:09 PM
It appears that while Managed OpenVZ will not be discontinued, new Managed OpenVZ plans are not available - is that correct?
Posted by HostXNow, 04-28-2011, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aaronsold

It appears that while Managed OpenVZ will not be discontinued, new Managed OpenVZ plans are not available - is that correct?

That is correct.
Posted by Matt R, 04-28-2011, 08:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HostXNow

That is correct.

Keep in mind that while we're not taking public orders, we can take some private orders: it really has to deal more with limited availability as we're not ordering more host nodes.
Posted by CGotzmann, 05-02-2011, 01:25 AM
You should make it publicly orderable but just have a "available / sold out" feature on the site for it.
Will let current clients know they can expand or even get new clients but on your terms / availability.

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