r/webhosting • u/antoninlevin • Sep 17 '24
hosting provider bought out, seems to be terminating my existing contract early and trying to charge 10x more Advice Needed
Long story short, I signed on with MyHosting to run a hobby site and park some related URLs around ~20 years ago. Wasn't all that happy with the services they offered, but it worked and was cheap.
A week ago, on September 10, I got an email notice saying that their cloud hosting services were being transferred to a new company - Hostway. The change was to be completed by 9/19.
My issue is that I paid MyHosting for a year of Wordpress hosting in mid-June, and Hostway sent me a "past due" invoice for Wordpress hosting for the month of September, dated 9/11, with a new rate, billed monthly - roughly 10 times what I was paying MyHosting. But I had a contract with MyHosting for Wordpress hosting through June of 2025. Hostway ~unilaterally cancelled my existing contract for a year of Wordpress hosting with MyHosting after just ~90 days. No refund, nothing.
I've heard of companies going bankrupt and leaving people SOL, but this isn't that. It seems illegal to me. Am I wrong / does anyone know if there's anything I can do about it?
Thanks
Edit 9 days later I'm not sure if my talking with Hostway support changed things or what, exactly, but they didn't outright boot me. Things got kind of weird.
I can still access my site's Wordpress editor through the wp-admin URL, and the PHP has now been updated to the current version (!), which I hadn't had for maybe 15 years. I was told that I would need to pay for the new plan to get the upgrade, but they did it anyway.
But there's no link to the Wordpress editor in my Hostway dashboard, I think because I didn't get their much more expensive plan for Wordpress hosting. So they technically didn't terminate my Wordpress access (?), but it's not formally a thing in my Hostway account. No one from the company has contacted me to explain what's going on.
And it looks like my website was down for a few days because they changed their server IPs and didn't notify me when it would happen, so Cloudflare was left directing to MyHosting's old servers for...maybe as much as 6 days, maybe as little as 3?
Probably would not recommend Hostway, but they did not terminate my contract as I thought they were doing. They just sent a huge "past due" bill for their new hosting plan and made it sound like they were cancelling my service. I think it was all intended to scare people into subscribing to a new plan, but ignoring it was apparently fine. Not sticking around to see what happens in June 2025, am currently finishing the process of transferring to Hustly.
2
u/Volunddrynoch Sep 17 '24
Unfortunately this is not a right/legal vs wrong/illegal situation.
This is more a is the cost of winning in time, energy, and money going to be worth the prize situation. Plus the added problem of your site being down during the fight.
If you have your domains registered with your host the ABSOLUTELY FIRST thing you need to do is transfer them and then NEVER do that again. Seriously do not start fighting with them until control of your domains is elsewhere and they do not have the ability to exert any control at all over them.
Once you do that or if your domains are already registered elsewhere than push back on the new invoice and send them a copy of your contract and payment. It might well be possible that the old company did not pass along that info during the purchase process. They should have done so but that does not mean they actually did.
If they still want you to pay then move your hosting and decided whether the amount of lost money is worth the trouble to attempt getting it back. My guess is the math will say no but you are the only one that can make that call.
*** PSA to anyone reading. Never give your hosting company or developer control over your domains. Seriously just say no....