The New Aplus.net
Category: Aplus.Net
Welcome to the New Aplus.net! I would like to personally welcome you to the next generation of web applications for small business.
First, let me introduce myself. I have had the pleasure of building Internet companies for more than 15 years starting in 1993 with the launch of Tucows.com, an Internet service provider and a successful software download website. In 1999 we launched Hostopia.com, today the #1 provider of webservices sold through to telecoms and service providers. Over the years I have had the opportunity to see the Internet evolve from a fledgling network of computers to a thriving environment, bringing about globalization and economic opportunity that we could never have imagined.When we launched our suite of web services called WebsiteOS, we had one primary goal in mind to help businesses like yours grow their revenue.
How?
- By offering applications and services to help your website get more traffic.
- By helping you create a professional image with the look and feel of a Fortune 500 company.
- By providing real support when you need it – on the phone, in North America, 24/7 and by someone who really wants to help.
- By offering you a complete set of applications to help manage your website, including an email platform built for business.
- By helping you network on the Internet, design your brand, and support your website with online and offline marketing.
- And by making it as easy as possible so that you can spend more time building your company.
Today we host ½ million small businesses, and have over 400 programmers, designers, and website experts who are dedicated to making this platform the best in the world for entrepreneurs and businesses who want more than just a website. By combining Aplus.net and Hostopia we will be able to offer you a number of these new applications and tools.
In addition, I am pleased to introduce Roger Collins, former owner of leading domain company Afternic.com. As the General Manager of Aplus.net Roger will lead a team of web specialists to help you build out an effective Internet presence. Today’s market is competitive; Roger’s team will work hard to help you emerge strong in this marketplace.
Thank you in advance for giving us an opportunity to be part of your business and its future.
Sincerely,
Colin Campbell,
President, Hostopia.com
I also lost my address book in the upgrade. In addition:
My databases were both rendered unavailable, and needed to be restored (ticket 1501490)
Email forwarding to a catchall address was disabled, causing two days of lost email (ticket 1501519)
Existing crontab functionality was eliminated (ticket 1501800)
Those issues have been resolved. But over the last four days, I have spent approximately 12 hours on the phone with nearly every Tier 1 and Tier 2 support person trying to resolve DNS issues. (ticket 1502048) I correctly diagnosed a bug in the DNS manager application, and spent three days repeatedly explaining to your staff that any use of the application generates an invalid zone file, knocking all or part of my site offline.
For the past two-and-a-half days my site has been completely unavailable, and all email has been silently dropping. I have been told repeatedly that the ticket is “now escalated to our highest priority”. I have also been told repeatedly that the ticket would not be closed until the fix was verified by me, then the next representative tells me that they are re-opening the ticket.
For nearly two years I have frequently recommended you to anyone who asks for a recommendation. Now that my plan is nearing renewal, and I’m considering an upgrade from shared to dedicated hosting, I am looking at other providers.
Drew - I really apologize for the trouble you have had during this migration. Please email marketing@aplus.net if you continue to have problems and I will do my best to help you.
wow, you write a ‘heart felt’ blog entry and then two customers respond with immediate issues…not a good sign of things to come. BTW I am not a current customer.
I also have been a longtime and happy A+ customer who is now looking for another partner. My customers have been without email and the “new” staff have been totally clueless both technically and as customer service agents. It turns out they have been completely wrong about every issue, the domain still has no email, and I’m waiting once again for DNS issues. I really don’t want to leave (not the headache I need and why I moved to someone else managing these issues) but this feels like being pushed out the door.
Al - Unfortunately migrations are never 100% smooth. However, we try our best to be transparent about the issues that do arise. Each of these customers have been reached out to personally so we can help them individually. Any customers who do have issues during this process are encouraged to reach out because it is important to us to make the transition as smooth as possible.
When we website managers migrate a site to a new server, we always try to make sure that the new location is operational before going public. Could you corporate-level folks grant us a favor by allowing us to do our job properly?
The migration has blown our non-profit’s natural resources information database out of the water. (150-3120)
Yes, I was contacted and the majority of the issues have been resolved. I still haven’t gotten an answer about the crontab issue, and I’m not really happy with the loss of functionality in the new email client, but I *am* back online.
Amanda,
After considerable research I chose Aplus as the hosting for my new website last month. I am sorry to say that I am very disappointed with my experience of bring up a simple basic site. In the past month I have had so many issues that it would be humorous if it were not so sad. The support replies, quite honestly, have been clueless. It has all been *VERY* painful.
I want you to understand that I a know the issues. I have been in software engineering for 35+ years. Over the last 15 years I have been involved with building dozens of complex enterprise B2B and B2C applications. I know most of what can wrong during a migration, so I have a certain level of compassion for your problems. On the other hand, I and others are trying to get on with our lives and having to put 10 times the anticipated time and energy into bring a website online and managing it, is not sustainable.
My suggestions is that Aplus make a clean and clear statement to all of its customers as to the level of problems and your promise for how and when they will be addressed. I and believe others, can give you some slack if we know where this heading. While if it is simply one issue after the next with no end in site, quite honestly you can expect me and I probably many others to vote with our feet.
With regrets,
Joel
I am having a lot of problems uploading files to my site. I have tried using filezilla and that just gets hung up over and over again.
Joel - I understand your frustration. Transitions never run 100% smooth and this one is no exception. I apologize for the difficulties you have experienced and would like you to know that your concerns have not gone unnoticed. They have been escalated to the support management team for a resolution to be found. I do want to assure you that our goal is to upgrade customers to a system that will ultimately provide more flexibility and features to enhance your customer experience. I again apologize for the bumps in the road you have had to experience along this path.
John - can you email your domain name or email to marketing@aplus.net so I can get this issue researched?
I, like other customers above, am experiencing FTP issues, database issues on two of my three sites on Aplus.net. The sites are broken, but I cannot even access my files through FTP to try to fix the problem. It’s been almost a week.
My third site has a scheduled upgrade in 10/23 and when I emailed customer service for detailed info on what will change during this upgrade (so I can at least prepare myself), all I got was a link to FAQ site. When I replied by asking again, I received a link to FAQ site again with no further information.
So I tried LiveChat, which seems to be down. And when I tried the phone, I was on hold for 30 minutes before hanging up to go to a meeting.
I used to be able to speak to a real person before all this happened.
Now, I can’t even access my own files to try to fix a broken site. Please please help.
Who should I email my domain names to to get my problem escalated?
every day another problem and waiting 24 in between support responses is killing my clients. Now a client can’t consistently email within own domain. Meaning they can’t conduct business. Been trying to get someone to escalate this, but I just wait. My only answer to client is I could switch hosting today and have problem solved by tonight….I have no idea if this is migration related or not, but it makes me look like a powerless idiot, because I can’t help them.
I find this really disturbing. Our migration didn ot start until Oct. 2, and it’s inconceivable to think that knowing all these problems from the first group to be migrated, that Aplus decided to go ahead and keep migrating without fixing the problems they are already experiencing. It’s like nothing was learned in the two weeks prior.
And now, not even a simple request like providing a back-up copy of our database gets a response. I may be putting my own business in jeopardy by the following comment but I feel I’m at a point where I have nothing left to lose. Give me my dammmed database copy so I can go find another host….PLEASE!
Haewon - email me personally at marketing@aplus.net.
Peg - So sorry. Please contact me at marketing@aplus.net to escalate.
Kei - I’ve escalated this. You should hear something shortly.
I’m having the same problem as Peg, where users can’t email reliably inside their own domain. Peg, did you get an update on this, I’m having the same problems as Paul with the ticketing system, where I’m not seeing updates made by support on the support site.
Amanda, ticket number is 1505166, I’ll try to add more details to the ticket, in case the issue Peg is having isn’t resolved yet.
I’m impressed at how dilligently you’ve been monitoring the comments on this page. Thanks!
I have been unable to FTP anything to my site since the upgrade. I have emailed numerous messages to support and received cryptic responses with suggestions that do not work. I desperately need to update my site to mark certain merchandise as sold/unavailable. Can you help me, or will I have to change web hosts?
Guys, wanted to say I like the new Webmail client… Waaay better than before … My email seemed to work without issues as well as my customers…
Keep up the good work …
All of my issues have been resolved! Thanks Aplus.
Paul - Glad to hear it. Thanks for the update.
Jenn - Thanks for the feedback. Keep it coming.
Adele - Escalations has your account now and a manager is looking into it. You should hear something soon.
Dave - We are trying to stay on top of everything. Thanks for the ticket number. One of the managers is looking into it today.
As the person to first post at the top of this blog, I can say that all outstanding issues have now been resolved. Once escalated, APlus Customer Relations worked with me directly, daily, and courteously until final resolution was reached, and I am not irate anymore. I am staying with APlus.net.
Hello Amanda- I am experiencing a lot of problems with this site. It was reverted back to old page, stats are now gone from prior year, and I am unable to tap into my ftp files. I have tried to file a ticket via support however it will not even allow me that.
I believe my other site is getting ready to make the migration & I am very nervous after not being able to get into my ftp, etc for the last week or so.
Please provide insight or help to resolve issues. Thanks.
Completely unable to upload anything. File manager is cryptic and IMPOSSIBLE, and that’s only when I can access it at all! Most of the time, I get looped back around to the login page. Completely unable to update files now. Feedback link is broken and the help link is throwing 550 errors. Also, email is unreliable now and my FTP is disabled. Have been on hold with “Eugene S” tech support chat now for 15+ minutes, and all he can do is tell me “you should just find new FTP freeware”. This is absolute garbage. Tech support is as clueless as I admit I am in even trying to get the file manager to function.
Hi Kelly - I’m looking into this now and I’ll have someone contact you shortly.
Hi Ryan - I’ll have our escalations manager get in touch with you shortly to help you out.
Amanda –
I, too, am joining the ranks of the incredibly unhappy.
Since the upgrade on Friday, I can’t post to a custom Wordpress blog. I can’t upload images.
This is a marketing blog and we are in the hottest time of our selling season and I will HAVE to change hosts if this doesn’t get resolved immediately. I am days overdue on information that is supposed to be posted, and this week was scheduled to begin a fairly major site overhaul.
I submitted a ticket about not being able to post on Saturday. This morning I received a response — the site was now working and I should be able to post. Which it did for a few hours — and now the system hangs up again.
I discovered this because I have not been able to upload any images. Just got a message from tech support wanting error messages. I have responded to this email, but am really cranky about the whole thing.
I also have a forum on another account and site that I’ve not been able to post anything longer than 2 lines to for over a week — while Kyle your rep has been really good about calling to check in, there has been NO progress. They don’t seem to be able to figure out the problem.
I’ve now spent hours either on the phone or on the computer trying to find solutions.
This is untenable. I’ve been an Aplus.net customer for years and I am dreading the work involved with shifting all of the accounts/sites I have (mine and consulting clients) to another host, but I will be forced to if this isn’t fixed.
(And, as an aside, I spent a completely frustrating half an hour trying to log on to the CP — kept getting booted off. When I finally got a rep on the phone after waiting 15 minutes on hold, he told me that your system no longer worked with Safari. I don’t understand why this is the case and I’m not happy that no one told me about it.)
My Aplus.net affections are tanking.
Leigh
Leigh - So sorry for the trouble. I will have a manager contact you right away to smooth this transition for you.
Day three of no contact, nor is the problem with the interface resolved. As a matter of fact, I’m now getting repeated authentication failures when I’m not just getting refreshed login pages. I’ve had to start using a third party FTP client.
As far as I’m concerned, my business is soon to go elsewhere. And with some research on Google, I now see it’s a pretty long line at the exit door.
Still no resolution to any of my problems.
Tonight I realized that I can’t upload my main HTML site from Dreamweaver — apparently the FTP tools are nonfunctional.
I don’t know what to do — this is a disaster. All of my sites are dead in the water. No one seems to be able to help.
Amanda — I didn’t hear from any managers today.
Update on email issues that I posted about before.
Looks like spam filtering was going into an email folder not available in the web gui. Support was able to disable spam filtering behind the scenes (not sure if I could have done the same by enabling/disabling it in the Control Panel, didn’t think to try that), and I was able to access the email via IMAP and move it into a folder that my user could see in the GUI.
If anyone wants to discuss specifics, email aplus.10.davegold@spamgourmet.com
Ryan - I have one of my top managers researching your issue. You should receive contact soon.
Leigh - I’m on it. I’ll call our escalations manager first thing this morning.
What a bunch of stupid people. Cant’ believe they didn’t have a GOOD plan for the move. I’ve been without my site for over 3 weeks, YES! 3 weeks. Today I had it.. I’m moving mu site to a PROFESSIONAL hosting company.
I can’t even believe what I saw today. They went to my code and change stuff around. Yes that is a big help, but you should tell users that you will be touching their code, so if you f*ck it up, then the user can fix it. Like I just did.
I really wish them luck to CODERO and the New SUCK-plus
I to had trouble with my website after the migration. The two main scripts that I run did not work, and the last months data on my database was lost. I managed to fix the script problems and database problems myself since they were just path issues.
The one oustaning issue I still have is that I am currently not getting any stats. I have had a ticket open for several days but have heard no response. Chatting with technical support now is a chore where it used to be comforting and easy. They say the problem will be resolved in 24-48 hours but I don’t believe it like I would have before the migration.
My ticket number is 1505509 if someone wants to take a look at it. I too have been thinking about leaving like many others, but it is such a hassle. I will give Aplus a little more time to figure things out, but if they are not better soon I’m afraid I will have to leave.
I think it is a real shame that we all have to take this and pay money for it as well. We should at least get some free service or a discount for our troubles.
My husband’s company, http://www.hoganbook.com, recently went through a harrowing web experience. It was made worse by aplus.net’s upgrade, causing us financial hardship. We were completely shut down for the better part of 10 days, while our sales season was beginning. What’s worse, the resulting tension caused a looming medical emergency for my husband. He is Bob Thomas, the noted golf author. His company, hoganbook.com, sells his golf books to pros at golf courses for tournament gifts and to the general golfing public as Author Editions. Bob himself had a stroke 11 weeks ago, the result of the economic crisis plus 40+ years of smoking. The stress from having his company jeopardized, together with more financial pain, was causing his blood pressure to rise to dangerous levels while this crisis was ongoing.
This is not a letter of complaint; rather, it is a letter of congratulations — for even though mistakes were made by aplus.net, which worsened our situation, staff members behaved in such an exemplary manner that I feel compelled to tell you about it.
This speak to a “culture” of professional caring at aplus.net, because each of the staff members I dealt with all exhibited the same qualities.
I learned a long time ago in business that it is not the companies that pull off being perfect that deliver the best service; it is the companies that behave ethically, professionally and with concrete caring when things go bad that you can rely on.
I can honestly say — even after our harrowing experience — that aplus.net towers over other host companies.
This is enough to push me over the edge. I joined APlus.net back in 2003 or so as a step up from Geocities. Back then APlus was reliable and easy to work with. I could call and get a human that actually worked in the datacenter anytime, and they would patiently help me work through anything.
A couple years ago my website experienced “unusually high server loading” and I was basically strongarmed into a dedicated server that I really didn’t want (Did I mention I started on GEOCITIES? I am not an IT pro, I am self-taught), lost all of my data/databases in the process, and had no idea how to admin it. It took WEEKS of complaining to get back on a normal plan.
Now I find that the problem I’ve had for weeks with FTP access was a company-wide issue. I tried logging into the control panel, but it doesn’t recognize my username/password. I can’t get through to 24/7 technical support because they don’t work 24/7 anymore?! How telling is it when my provider boasts 24/7 chat on their front page, as well as an annoying pop-up, but clicking on them gets you nowhere?
Now if I had FTP access, I could back-up my files and finally take my business elsewhere - but I can’t, because you’re holding me hostage.
I used to be a happy aplus.net customer; now I am seriously considering moving all of my domains to another webhosting company. Mostly because one of my sites (running on Wordpress) has not been functional for an entire week (ticket #2384532). Most of my other sites are okay, but I hate to think that it will take me a week or more to get my sites fixed if there are problems.
I am “this close” to taking my business elsewhere. This is the worst upgrade and service I have experienced/not experienced from a webhost. Not to mention the change in the file manager makes it nearly impossible to get anything uploaded or edited.
Aplus.net are a complete joke. Their server migration is a complete disaster. Our site has been unavailable since the migration was completed. That was 12 days ago. Despite repeated attempts, no one will tell us what is going on, other than their Tier-3 support team are looking at it. How on earth can it take 12 days to resolve our issues.
Aplus.net certainly do not care about their client base, that is clear to us. Amanda’s promises that things are escalated to management and we’ll hear something soon are hollow promises. She promised me this over a week ago. I’ve had no responses.
As soon as we find a new hosting company - we’ll be leaving aplus.net after 10 years.
I cannot believe that their staff can be so unhelpful and uncaring.