I have just heard that Dialtone Internet has been acquired by Interland, Inc.
Does any body have experience with Interland?
Good or Bad
Thanks

You are right about the aquisition but i dont know anything about interland.

I *left* interland after MANY horrible experiences with them and went to dialtone. I had 4 business sites with interland, and about 25 others that we were a reseller for. After they bungled many sites, turned a site OFF one afternoon because of a billing error on THEIR part (then wouldn't turn it on until I authorized more money to be deducted...no thanks), I had to go. It seemed with their billing department, the customer is ALWAYS WRONG.

This is like leaving your old awful job, crossing the street, and being bought by guess who.

Dialtone on the other hand has been great. I really hope they don't just suck all of dialtones customers into the interland vacuum that really needs a new bag.

Sean

Greetings:

See http://www.dialtone.com/companyinfo/mediaarea/news/05072002.php?category=COMPANY+INFO for the press release issued by DialTone Internet.

Of note:

"Kocher said the acquisition differs from some of those the company has made, in that Interland has acquired all the assets and employees of Dialtone Internet, and plans to continue the operation with its current staff. Alvaro Albarracin, Dialtone founder and chief executive officer, has accepted an executive position with Interland, and is expected to continue to run the Fort Lauderdale operation. Kocher also said the Dialtone operation is already profitable, so the transaction is immediately accretive to earnings."

Thank you.

I have been with dialtone for some time, and have a number of servers with them, they are not the cheapest but I am very happy with them and the service.
I hope they can continue this level of service.

wow

I wonder how much it went for :)

I'm willing to bet Alvaro is one happy dude!

Found out Interland has a new CEO as of 2 weeks ago: Joel Kocher. I really hope he will handle customer service differently. They grew too fast over the past couple years without proper growth in the service area. I hope it's true about dialtone remaining an island. It's a good place at present.

Sean

After receiving the email announcement, I'm seriously debating moving all of our equipment out of Dialtone. Interland represents all that is BAD and EVIL. We've taken many refugee hosting customers from Interland because of the way they do business.

GRRRR :uzi: Interland

Originally posted by CRego3D
wow

I wonder how much it went for :)

Yeah I would think so, specially since his business was profitable unlike interland.

have u guys heard!!! check it out:

http://www.hostbuzz.com/news.asp?ID=437 and;
http://www.interland.com/newsroom/pressreleases/dialtone.asp

i wonder how it's gonna be like down the road. doesn't look like interland has been very good at their customers based on the posts on WHT. i hope dialtone doesn't go down with this! was thinking of getting a server with them. i think i'll sit back and wait a while...

Hope its not like everything else Interland has touched. Can you say, "Hostpro", which they have literally destroyed. If they continue to let Dialtone operate as it has, it will be fine...But, I have my doubts.

Originally posted by SeanC

Found out Interland has a new CEO as of 2 weeks ago: Joel Kocher.

Umm, he came from Micron Electronics when Micron acquired Interland. He's been CEO ever since, as far as I can tell.

You can read more about Interland and Joel on Yahoo. Take it with a grain of salt.

http://messages.yahoo.com/?action=q&board=INLD

Kevin

Well, this certianly is some news. I had no idea. I don't want to think it is for the worse or better until it is. Hopefully, at the very least, for the same, heh.

The WHIR ran an interview with Interland's CEO on the subject this morning, he says the company will keep the Dialtone name, the founder will stay on, etc. and says more acquisitions are likely:

http://thewhir.com/marketwatch/int050702.cfm

The WHIR ran an interview with Interland's CEO on the subject this morning, he says the company will keep the Dialtone name, CEO, etc. and says more acquisitions are likely:

Can you name one of their acquisitions where this held true? :)

They are not keeping him as a CEO, just an executive.

Don't plan on him staying long.

After Joel came on board in the "merger", Ken G (the original Interland founder) hung around until last month. I don't have any contacts there anymore even though they're just down the street... but the tersely worded press release hinted at problems IMHO.

FWIW, Ken G founded Interland as a hosting concern in late 97, and when Micron/HostPro came courting, they actually bought Interland and assumed the name. It wasn't the other way around.

Brandon

Originally posted by jgriff64
I have just heard that Dialtone Internet has been acquired by Interland, Inc.
Does any body have experience with Interland?
Good or Bad
Thanks

Actually, Im pulling my acct with interland as we speak, since they took over ICOM. I for one dont want my traffic or have users unable to visit or receive messages because of the ongoing spamming and spam support interland provides. They are blacker than black as far as what they do with spammers, and much of their netspace are on so many private block lists that world War 3 would have to happen in order for them to get out of them. In fact, the email server I am with has been actively blocking Interland traffic because of their in-attention to their spam problem.

My advice. GET AWAY from them as fast as you can, and dont look back.

More on Interland an their blacker than black spam activities:

Worlds biggest spam supporters (http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=interland&as_ugroup=news.admin.net-abuse.*&num=100&as_scoring=d&hl=en)

Please do not turn this thread into yet another SPAM discussion. This thread is not about Interland in regards to spamming. It is about their aquisition of Dialtone.

Actually, Im pulling my acct with interland as we speak

OH NOOO!!!! They will crumble!!! Someone call the CEO....HURRY!!!

Didn't we already go throught this with you? Look, if you and your little e-mail box that uses SPEWS is happily blocking spam from non-spamming accounts, then hurrah for you. But to tell people that Interland are the "Worlds biggest spam supporters" is BS. As discussed in numerous threads you posted in, many people do not have your positive attitude towards a bunch or scab-eating, vigialnte punks who do more harm then good - SPEWS.

While obviously I hope this aquisation of Dialtone by Interland won't cause levels of service and support to drop, I'm glad we did not choose to get any servers with them... :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Chicken
Please do not turn this thread into yet another SPAM discussion. This thread is not about Interland in regards to spamming. It is about their aquisition of Dialtone.

Yes its about Dialtone being acquired by Interland. Interland is notorious for bad service, pink contracts, having entire netblocks blocked by more than half the isp's on the net.

Hey its fine and dandy that someone may want to stick with Interland from this point onward, but when they find that they can't get traffic or people complain why they aren't getting emails, they should know about the kind of business they are dealing with.

Its about not doing business with a company that has poor business practices and to help others to avoid any pain and hardship they could encounter by getting space or staying with a company with poor business practices.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord


OH NOOO!!!! They will crumble!!! Someone call the CEO....HURRY!!!

Didn't we already go throught this with you? Look, if you and your little e-mail box that uses SPEWS is happily blocking spam from non-spamming accounts, then hurrah for you. But to tell people that Interland are the "Worlds biggest spam supporters" is BS. As discussed in numerous threads you posted in, many people do not have your positive attitude towards a bunch or scab-eating, vigialnte punks who do more harm then good - SPEWS.

Not its about where MY money is going and what its doing for hte company I choose to do business with.

IF MY money is supporting a company that doesn't handel their customers and keep spammers on their network causing other businesses to suffer, should I continue my business with that company? Hell no. They can take their pink contracts and live happily within their own intranet.

If you are happy that your $$$$$$$ supports spammers because you support a Webhost/isp that doesn't kick off their spammers, then that's fine, you can live with their intranet as well.

Hey its fine and dandy that someone may want to stick with Interland from this point onward, but when they find that they can't get traffic or people complain why they aren't getting emails, they should know about the kind of business they are dealing with.

You keep missing a big point. SPEWS is not as far reaching as you think.

Good luck on your quest.

Looks like Dialtone is gonna go not very good
People with Dialtone servers should find a new host

As a generally VERY happy DI customer, I have a wait and see outlook. DI deserves and has earned the benifit of the doubt and the reasonable assumption that thier operation will be left alone and continue to provide great support and boxes :)

Rushing to another host because (and only because :)) the purchaser appears to have a sorid reputation is premature, given the time line, complexities, and financial implications.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Agreed Steve S. I've been with DI for about 8 months and have been very happy. If interland is planning on sucking all DI's customers into their inferior system, then there will be some attrition. If Interland is smart, they'll realize dialtone had a very successful business model that actually *made* money. I realize that Interland has set its sights quite high, and advertises a ton.

At some point they must look inward and make sure the business model is holding up and customer satisfaction levels are high. It costs quite a bit more to get a new customer signed up than to keep an existing one. And they've found that it's actually cheaper to BUY an ongoing concern and bring their customers into the fold, than to try to get people to switch to Interland. I'll be very anxious to see what the next year holds.

wow, that's news to me too. Seems Interland is buying up everything at the moment. I hope for the Dailtone customer's they do hold to their word on leaving things as they are.

Greg Moore

Great points about new customer acqisition costs. Iv'e asked DI to post in this thread via middle management.

I'm just a little fish :) with a single box and no special contacts other than my passion to "talk." I think it would be informative to see a civil and quality dialog in this thread.

The "Chicken" can fly over ever so often to insure we remain on topic :)

hmmmm.... if dialtone was already profitable, why would Albarracin sell?

DialTone is indeed profitable and the obvious answer to why they would sell is money. Interland must have made an offer they couldn't refuse and seeing as though the company founders were around I'm sure they all benefited quite handsomely from it.

When companies are bought and sold everyone is a bit uneasy because of the change but let's pretend the sky is falling. Just like when WebHostingTalk.com exchanged hands you have to wait and see how it works. Considering they are keeping the existing staff, the infrastructure is already all in place, and they are already profitable I wouldn't expect any major changes. They will probably redesign their site to receive more branding of the Interland name but I wouldn't expect many more drastic changes.

Had this been shared hosting where they were going to try and import all accounts in to their system then it would be another matter entirely. Just my two cents...

Blah, and we thought we found a good solid company last year. We moved from Alabanza to Dialtone, luckily we only had 4 servers with Alabanza that we moved clients from. Now with Dialtone we have 17 servers. Best thing to do is to give Interland a shot. Never hosted with them, but havent heard the best about them either. As long as Interland doesnt interfere too much, service wise, hopefully it wont be too bad then.

From what I can tell, to possibly reassure some of you, Interland was interested in Dialtone becuase of what they could do, not because they wanted to change Dialtone into Interland II. My guess is that Interland will be sending clients who want managed hosting over to those parts to grow that sector.

I realize that, in many people's views, Interland has 'screwed up' other hosts that people have liked, however in this case, as I said, I think they were attracted to what Dialtone could offer them, and so interested, they made a bid on them.

I'll see if I can get a statement from some of the DT'ers for everyone...

Additional comments from Dialtone can be found here:

http://www.thewhir.com/features/dialtone051302.cfm

Thanks for the article.

Hope it's true!

I also have one server with DT been pretty happy with it so far and I am not planning on moving until I see how things pan out.

If service goes down I will leave though.

My server is very stable and network downtime is not existant. I think I remember my server being down once some time in the middle of the night, they told me beforehand, too.

I believe that the Evil Empire is a major investor in Interland.
JFWS

We have no experience about Interland but have been with Dialtone for more than a year. I would phrase our whole experience in these two words:

Dialtone = Great Support + Worse/Dishonest Billing

---
Pakhost Web Services

hehe... That is soooooo true... We have been with them for 1 1/2 years and there support has come through greatly, but there billing is a joke. Once they even billed us $1000 less than what we were suppose to be billed :D When we contacted them about that, they like, didnt believe us... Like they didnt want our money :D Oh well, I havent seen much change so far from the buyout... Just hope it stays that way, otherwise we wont hesitate to leave.

DT's billing services could use some work. I don't think it's that they're dishonest, but rather, that it's sometimes just innaccurate. Like Marq says, sometimes it works in your favor, sometimes not. In either evet, it is a good idea to keep an eye on it!

Originally posted by percent5
DT's billing services could use some work. I don't think it's that they're dishonest, but rather, that it's sometimes just innaccurate. Like Marq says, sometimes it works in your favor, sometimes not. In either evet, it is a good idea to keep an eye on it!

Inaccurate my ass, they messed up my bill by the TENS of THOUSANDS and then tacked on these "bandwidth" charges. This company is a joke. BEWARE.

Can you believe some VC invested $2 million into this joke a couple of years ago?