:eek: :eek: GEE

They must have hired some genius for account restoration, otherwise why labour seems so $$$ there. They charge $60 while everyone else here provide it FOR FREE

1) We charge a $60 non-refundable fee for the 'service' of restoring a backup and we do not guarantee the contents.


Can anyone provide a easy way to transfer our hsphere accounts out like cpanel?

That's quite expensive to restore a backup.
Currently cpanel does not have feature to transfer from Hsphere to cpanel.

wow $60 for a restore, thats quite expensive, especially if they do not even guarantee the contents. It might just as well be a corrupt backup and you still have to pay $60.

While i understand there might be some work for the host to restore an account most here would see it as customer service. And i believe almost all would not guarantee the contents of the backup.

While you don't have automated import functions form hsphere to cpanel, you might be able to find a host which can help you transfer the sites by hand.

Wish you all the best in finding a new host.

Wow, thats expensive. Taking into account that restoration of an account takes only few minutes.

and did I mentioned that it is only for ONE account?
if you, as a reseller, have 3 clients who wants to restore their website in a month, you pay $180 extra!!

No you didn't thats just outrageous, in that case i can only advise you to look for another host asap, and hope you have your own backups (never a bad thing to do).

It's $60 PER domain/account?

I can understand a fee but not that high and not on a per account basis.

I highly recommend you either start making your own backups _or_ to avoid paying charges like that, look for a host that's within your budget and at least offers free account transfers or restoration. Many include this as part of their service these days.

I was also recently looking for a transfer process to move from hsphere to something else (cpanel).

I was not able to find anything. :(

You can't even move from one hsphere provider to another. Hsphere is sorely lacking in this area.

hi

with Vortech, how much did you pay for hosting. usually the super cheap hosts have these types of hidden costs.

Their lowest priced account is the Cypher Account for $35/month. I have that one myself. $60 for restoration would be fine if the system generally worked but reliability of mail, web and db servers are a major headache. I think they have let the system get too overloaded and have let maintenance drift for a couple years. The owner says he is going to get back into managing it after being away for a long time, (I heard his main interest is a motorcycle shop), and that there will be improvements but he is not saying when or what. We are all wondering what is going to happen but are not being told anything.
A lot of long time clients have moved away but not enough to reduce the overloading of the servers.

I also have an account with FluidHosting, a VPS and the difference is tremendous. No fuss, just works great, fast and always up, although I've had it only 2 months.

(I heard his main interest is a motorcycle shop) (...) I also have an account with FluidHosting, a VPS and the difference is tremendous.Interesting concept, asking hosts before buying, what's the owner's/manager's main interest (besides family of course), to help you determine the "right" host. :)

You can't even move from one hsphere provider to another. Hsphere is sorely lacking in this area.One more reason to become an H-sphere provider, I guess. Locking customers in, is not a feature to balk at. :)

If you think about it, this is reasonable.

You, the customer, are responsible for maintaining your own backups and restoring from them. Why should the company, who's sole responsibility is your network, cover your tail end? Seriously, please, explain this , because there are plenty of people who'd love to hear that.

Now, before you get all defensive, if the restoration was because of THEIR screwup, then, by all means, they should (and probably would) offer a free restore, but, it's usually not. Usually, 'account restoration' is necessary only when the user did a stupid thing (such as removing the wrong directory, or not backing up before a major change in code), so why should the company have to cover that?

Account restoration can be easy, or it can be hard. This depends fully on the amount of data that needs to be dealt with, and the company's policies on charges. My guess is that you're looking at a $60/hr charge, with a minimum 1hr bill. This is NOT sub-standard, it's pretty much industry standard (the 1 hr bill), and $60/hr for decent tech work is pretty good as well. Maybe slightly high, but, really, not too terribly awful.

In the long run, $60 is a pretty fair amount for account restoration, and paying it will teach you your own lesson as well. ALWAYS back up your data! Never rely on the provider to do this.

If you think about it, this is reasonable.

You, the customer, are responsible for maintaining your own backups and restoring from them. Why should the company, who's sole responsibility is your network, cover your tail end? ....

Of course you are right in the normal context but remember, the main complaint clients have with this host is that their system has caused every single user downtime, lost data, email being blocked by the major ISPs, daily dropouts, mysterious resetting of configurations, daily crashes of application pools, daily rebooting of the windows servers, times outs with even the simplist db queries during busy times every day....etc.

When a Vortech reseller hears of a meltdown of a site, or its unavailability, the assumption is this host's internal problem because we all have lived with these problems. If things worked, none of us would complain or assume the worst but there is too much history to ignore.
Why stay? Well, a lot of people dread the work involved in transferring a large number of customer accounts, others are just hopeful things will return to the reliable, customer service oriented Vortech of old. All I've spoken with have gotten other accounts with other hosting companies for their new or more important accounts. In some of our cases, we prepaid years in advance and know that there is no refund for any reason so it is hard to walk away from the investment.

Hello everyone, a couple of comments here:

Currently cpanel does not have feature to transfer from Hsphere to cpanel.

I do not believe he asked to transfer from hsphere to cpanel. Looks like he asked if there was an easy way to transfer from hsphere - and what it sounds like is, an easy way to transfer from hsphere to hsphere (like cpanel has)

Can anyone provide a easy way to transfer our hsphere accounts out like cpanel?

as for the backup/restoration fee - people really need to understand that if a fee isnt applied, customers will just ask for restorations all day long, rather then taking the time to backup their data properly, backup files and data bases before working on them, etc - in other words, they will just flood your company with requests for restores and use you staff as their personal restore "slaves" rather then take the required pre-cautions themselves. For those that answered well it just takes a couple of minutes, ect - I would speculate that you arent hosting that many accounts - because as soon as you start having 100 requests per day for restores, you would quickly realize that you either need to start charging for this or you need to hire a dedicated team of people to handle just restores - and I doubt many clients would want that fee factored into their hosting services.

The answer to this of course is to use a backup system the clients can access themselves, just leaving the host out of the process completely. We used to charge a similar fee (I think it was $50) until we implemented r1soft which gives end users access to their own backups and enables them to perform their own restorations. Looking at the stats, we see roughly 200-300 restoration processes a day from customers - Imagine if that load was actually passed onto our support staff? it would not be sustainable..

One more reason to become an H-sphere provider, I guess. Locking customers in, is not a feature to balk at.

lol - interesting way to look at it. I guess there is "some" truth to this. The reality is that doing an hsphere backup of a reseller account is NOT the same as a cpanel account for example. You have accounts, data and services spread across a fleet of potentially 100's of servers. Frankly, there just isnt a reasonable way to do this. So, although it can appear to have the affect of "locking" people in - and probably actually accomplishes this to some degree - this isnt done by design. We developed a module so customers could at least export all of their settings, plans, accounts, domains, databases, emails, database users, etc, etc, etc and then import to another host, leaving just data transfer - the problem is, other hosts need to have this installed to allow users to export the data - and well, most of them seem unwilling to do so. The alternative is you can just ask your host to generate an xml file for you for your reseller account and this can allow you to just recreate everything with another provider - even though we would do this (and have done this) for any reseller that asks - many would probably not be willing to do so...

Why stay? Well, a lot of people dread the work involved in transferring a large number of customer accounts, others are just hopeful things will return to the reliable, customer service oriented Vortech of old. All I've spoken with have gotten other accounts with other hosting companies for their new or more important accounts. In some of our cases, we prepaid years in advance and know that there is no refund for any reason so it is hard to walk away from the investment.

Agreed - this is a really tough situation to be in and it obviously makes any decision really difficult...

All the best with whatever you decide...

lol - interesting way to look at it. I guess there is "some" truth to this.I definitely didn't say it with malice, nor did I suppose it was done by design. I've grown to love knowing there are options out there, and H-Sphere is definitely a worthy and quite unique one. I just think that if there would be a real desire from the developer to solve this problem, it would be solved. If a human can do it following a number of steps, a machine should ultimately be able to do it as well. :)

I definitely didn't say it with malice, nor did I suppose it was done by design. I've grown to love knowing there are options out there, and H-Sphere is definitely a worthy and quite unique one. I just think that if there would be a real desire from the developer to solve this problem, it would be solved. If a human can do it following a number of steps, a machine should ultimately be able to do it as well. :)

I know Dan ! I dont think you meant it with any malice and hopefully my response indicated that....

The problem with this isnt that it cant be done - everything within hsphere allows admins to choose what is active and what isnt. Just like in cpanel where alot of hosts have this feature disabled - almost no hsphere hosts could allow a user to backup data on lets say up to 20-30 servers at one time - it would cause a logistical nightmare - as such, almost no one would have it activated..

Its a very unique problem - I dont think for a minute it "cant" be resolved - I just dont think everyone can agree on how it "should" be done...

personally, I think the best thing to do is allow users to create their own XML files on the fly (which can be used to completely setup a reseller account with another provider. Sets up plans, billing, accounts, data bases, db users, email addresses with passwords, etc, etc, etc - then customers can just use the webshell feature to compress and server to server ftp files - it would streamline the entire process - unfortanately, there is little agreement on this approach as well - and ultimately, the whole process of finding a solution for this has stagnated...