When Paragon sold up in 2015 things continued to be good for me. Since GoDaddy have taken over HEG though there has been a noticed reduction in quality, from both a service and support point of view. Shame really, but for £10m each you can't blame them for selling up!
Tsohost issues
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Man of Honour
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I wish
Man of Honour
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The details of the split of the sale proceeds (but not the amounts afaik) are public if you have good companies house skills and some time but for me it wasn’t primarily about the money. I can’t speak for the others obviously.£9 million?
Paragon had gone from being a <£1m company to >£20m. Pretty crazy, nothing to do with me, later on more inorganic growth absorbing other companies probably. I stayed working exactly the same job (ish) for a year after we sold then left around Nov 16 for a variety of reasons, none of which really matter now I guess.
It’s easy but probably unfair to blame new owners for any and all problems, and certainly unfair to speculate on why we sold, I was exhausted, unfit and unhealthy at the time but in hindsight, who knows.
There are a lot of good people there still.
But also lots of smaller UK competitors....competition and choice is always a good thing.
Two months until my non compete is up!
I'm only joking, I'm not really interested in the financial details.
IMHO this thread exists because we were all very happy with the level of service. Even when things went wrong there was good communication on what went wrong, what you were doing to make sure it would not happen again. I remember when all the passwords were reset and I ended up locked out of my account while in the middle of something. I had a little rant and I received an apology and a very reasonable conversation about lessons learnt from Adam and Darren. This was in 2012 but sticks in my mind as it was excellent customer engagement. At the moment I've had a few things go wrong and when I've asked how it's happened the response is "no idea it's a different team that looks after it but it's fixed now so ticket closed".
Good luck with whatever you plan on doing next!
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That's a shame
It did admittedly still happen when it was me fixing whatever was broken, but usually because we were juggling many things at once. And we'd always get back to anyone who wanted more explanation.I can't really say anymore online I suppose but it is a shame to hear it and it makes me wonder 'what if', more frequently than you might expect if you truly think we're all swimming in piles of cash and laughing about our poor tiny clients (I'm not saying you are but I do hear things from others.)
I'm reassured that there are numerous other small UK hosts more than happy to give clients the extra-personal service they need however!
Heck when I first got into playing with php, I couldn't get my php script to connect to the database. Worked locally just not on Vida. Contacted support asking if there was an issue with the databases and they rewrote the php for me within the hour .
Recently I've had some DNS issues and my support ticket is still unanswered 48 hours later.
A very different company these days.
.Recently I've had some DNS issues and my support ticket is still unanswered 48 hours later.
A very different company these days
.It doesn't matter if you're swimming in cash or not if you felt it was the right time to sell up then you shouldn't second guess yourself. You should take this thread in a positive way that everyone appreciated how you ran things. I work for myself, and there are times on longer contracts where I make good friends and I am tempted to close up take up the offer of permanent employment but the reality is I cannot let emotion dictate business decisions.
If it helps just remember you guys weren't perfect and I still have the correspondence to prove it!
I'm reassured that there are numerous other small UK hosts more than happy to give clients the extra-personal service they need however!
I'm moving my business presence to AWS, partly because of the issues with TSOHost, wanting to showcase my talents with AWS and to split my personal and business hosting into separate accounts.
I would be happy to hear about any alternative suggestions you have for my personal sites when you finally get bored of "swimming in your cash".
Yea it wasn't even about the service itself, which was usually good, but rather the support you got. Always remember a personal and friendly service from all of you guys, had a few issues over the years, few silly issues too, but always resolved with that personal touch you just don't get with many companies.
Whats your name Beansprout? (which one are you! lol)
Whats your name Beansprout? (which one are you! lol)
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Why is Krystal any good? I checked their site out and there was a few glaring issues of trust, firstly no physical office and secondly when searching for a map it pulled up a Krystal brand design agency that had done work for them who’s site is riddled with malware, I’d assume the people who worked on their brand design are also hosted with Krystal which is a terrible example of a potential hosting service.
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Can anyone please recommend managed or unmanaged (on non intel machines) VPS hosting from a UK or European company?
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They’re not production ready but these guys are working AMD based secure virtual hosting:
https://epycly.com/roadmap.html
Man of Honour
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We always tried to do that, we employed far better PHP coders than me and usually didn't mind if someone spend 20min on one ticket for example. Obviously not all of that scales and when there are 20 people waiting in your queue it's harder to go the extra mile I suppose. Well, I know, it exhausted me!Heck when I first got into playing with php, I couldn't get my php script to connect to the database. Worked locally just not on Vida. Contacted support asking if there was an issue with the databases and they rewrote the php for me within the hour
I joke with friends and ex-colleagues that my Facebook messenger is also known as DomAPI. These days however I think they've replaced most of the scripts I wrote.
But what I think I did bring to the company is the way of thinking that a formal comp sci education brings, especially to the hosting/cloud world which is primarily rehashing old concepts first used in the 60s/70s/80s.
Just much bigger, for all the good and bad that brings I suppose. Bear in mind that for every bad ticket there will be 100 good ones. The operation is huge these days. I guess most of my old colleagues don't read OcUK but many are enthusiasts who do.A very different company these days
Thanks. Appreciated.
I remember this always in everything I do. And I can remember most problems I've ever dealt with, and the names, server names and special items of most old/key clients. I have a geeky memory.If it helps just remember you guys weren't perfect and I still have the correspondence to prove it!
AWS is great. So is GKE. Not feasible for the average small WordPress site run by an SME though.
I spent my teenage years swimming competitively at a national standard. I'm fedup of swimmingI would be happy to hear about any alternative suggestions you have for my personal sites when you finally get bored of "swimming in your cash".
I use Digital Ocean myself for small things. And Namecheap and Catalyst2 for some other stuff. I know senior people / founders at NC and C2 and and count them as friends
Thanks. It's because we all had literally nothing to fall back on so it was everything to us. None of us inherited a million quid to build our DC or even a hundred quid a month for our first servers. Big companies forget this perhaps.
I'm Dom. Seb was (is) my old school friend. Adam and Darren founded Tso (more or less) and we met via OcUK.
That's not entirely reassuring but I know a Krystal sysadmin and some other staff there. They seem an honest operation and not yet growing too large. I've not used them personally.
But, bear in mind that malware is rarely due to hosting and more often simply an outdated WordPress plugin, or a new exploit from a badly-written plugin. mod_security and Cloudflare etc can help a lot but aren't perfect. That said they really should fix it so let them know!
The internet is what we all make it, and those of us on forums are years ahead of the general public.
[/useless philosophy]
If anyone has big issues with Tso/Paragon/etc my trust email should be up to date and I can advise but honestly these days I know few senior people, only some good sysadmins. And if you have to ask me then, tbh, there is probably a more techy-focussed company for you. Maybe I'm not allowed to say that and some lawyers are going to chase me down so shh
Maybe I should do an OcUK ex-Pig client reunion hosted at my house. I've got **** all else to do these days and it was OcUK members who started the whole thing!
It’s great to have some insight @Beansprout
I’ve now migrated most of my sites to Krystal and am quite happy, though I have one that is still with TSOHost and it operates absolutely fine albeit a little slow at times (TTFB/waiting for server usual stuff).
I’ve now migrated most of my sites to Krystal and am quite happy, though I have one that is still with TSOHost and it operates absolutely fine albeit a little slow at times (TTFB/waiting for server usual stuff).
Soldato
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My hosting account is still live on thermalthree. Not needed it in years and I've never paid for it in 9 years or so either despite it still being live.
I remember seb replying to support tickets. I think I had beansprout on msn messenger.
I remember seb replying to support tickets. I think I had beansprout on msn messenger.
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Associate
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That's not entirely reassuring but I know a Krystal sysadmin and some other staff there. They seem an honest operation and not yet growing too large. I've not used them personally.
But, bear in mind that malware is rarely due to hosting and more often simply an outdated WordPress plugin, or a new exploit from a badly-written plugin. mod_security and Cloudflare etc can help a lot but aren't perfect. That said they really should fix it so let them know!
The internet is what we all make it, and those of us on forums are years ahead of the general public.
[/useless philosophy]
There’s definitely space for a UK based hosting provider. From a customer point of view it is a matter of being trustworthy as a core value of the business. A UK based alternative to AWS/GCloud/Linode/Digital Ocean etc would be good.
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Hahaha.
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Vidahost had a selling point of UK based support, no longer seems to be the case or there’s some problems going on with my communications.
why’s this thread not about Vidahost any more?
why’s this thread not about Vidahost any more?
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Because Vidahost doesn't exist anymore. They 'merged' with TSOHost who are subsequently owned by GoDaddy via a plethora of parent companies.
Outsourced to Bulgaria IIRC.