3 ms·

Why would they shut down though?? Worst case they can wipe the servers and start afresh.

TruthWillHurt 6y ago
Probably person who built the platform left long ago and they've been running on autopilot since.
tyingq 6y ago
Perhaps it didn't make much money prior to the hack. And you would have to operate at a loss until enough new customers came in. With probably lots of bad reviews from the prior customers. My guess is that if it was worth starting fresh, they did so with a new brand that makes no mention of the old service.
- dspillett 6y ago
  > Perhaps it didn't make much money prior to the hack. There were significant changes to cPanel licensing not long ago which caused some consternation as it would result in some hosts needing to pay more. IIRC it moved from a per-server model to per-user, with a block of users included in the minimal fee so for small hosts the change had no effect, but for a host like this with many small accounts the extra cost there would make already small margins even more tenuous. Presumably the little profit still made was better than nothing if the maintenance needed was minimal, but not (for this reason and/or others) large enough to be worth the rebuilding effort after this attack.
  - tyingq 6y ago
    "There were significant changes to cPanel licensing not long ago which caused some consternation as it would result in some hosts needing to pay more." That's interesting. And it would have hit those providers that were grossly oversubscribing the hardest. Guessing this service was in that bucket.
gvb 6y ago
It isn't worth the effort. Looking at their machine (CPU) specs, their equipment is pretty old. They likely have been running on autopilot for a few years. Rebuilding their clientele after a unmitigated disaster like this would probably take so much time that they would never get back in the black, especially since they are trying to do it on $12/year per customer. That requires a LOT of customers and they will have lost most of their existing ones before they would be able to rebuild. Add on that they probably have outdated software, probably a lot of it custom/customized, that have unknown security holes...
- darkwater 6y ago
  > Add on that they probably have outdated software, probably a lot of it custom/customized, that have unknown security holes... Then advertising themselves as a hosting site for experienced people makes all this mess quite poetic.
- mythrwy 6y ago
  With services like Wix now you have even less potential customers. They probably have been slowly losing customers for years.
  - dspillett 6y ago
    And from the other side of their potential audience, the cheap VPS setups that are readily available these days will probably have been eating away users too. Heck, for $5/mo and a setup fee you can sometimes get a small dedicated server (only an Atom CPU, but 500Gb storage and half decent bandwidth) from Kimsufi and their ilk.

Probably person who built the platform left long ago and they've been running on autopilot since.

Perhaps it didn't make much money prior to the hack. And you would have to operate at a loss until enough new customers came in. With probably lots of bad reviews from the prior customers. My guess is that if it was worth starting fresh, they did so with a new brand that makes no mention of the old service.

dspillett 6y ago
> Perhaps it didn't make much money prior to the hack. There were significant changes to cPanel licensing not long ago which caused some consternation as it would result in some hosts needing to pay more. IIRC it moved from a per-server model to per-user, with a block of users included in the minimal fee so for small hosts the change had no effect, but for a host like this with many small accounts the extra cost there would make already small margins even more tenuous. Presumably the little profit still made was better than nothing if the maintenance needed was minimal, but not (for this reason and/or others) large enough to be worth the rebuilding effort after this attack.
- tyingq 6y ago
  "There were significant changes to cPanel licensing not long ago which caused some consternation as it would result in some hosts needing to pay more." That's interesting. And it would have hit those providers that were grossly oversubscribing the hardest. Guessing this service was in that bucket.

gvb 6y ago

It isn't worth the effort. Looking at their machine (CPU) specs, their equipment is pretty old. They likely have been running on autopilot for a few years. Rebuilding their clientele after a unmitigated disaster like this would probably take so much time that they would never get back in the black, especially since they are trying to do it on $12/year per customer. That requires a LOT of customers and they will have lost most of their existing ones before they would be able to rebuild. Add on that they probably have outdated software, probably a lot of it custom/customized, that have unknown security holes...

darkwater 6y ago
> Add on that they probably have outdated software, probably a lot of it custom/customized, that have unknown security holes... Then advertising themselves as a hosting site for experienced people makes all this mess quite poetic.
mythrwy 6y ago
With services like Wix now you have even less potential customers. They probably have been slowly losing customers for years.
- dspillett 6y ago
  And from the other side of their potential audience, the cheap VPS setups that are readily available these days will probably have been eating away users too. Heck, for $5/mo and a setup fee you can sometimes get a small dedicated server (only an Atom CPU, but 500Gb storage and half decent bandwidth) from Kimsufi and their ilk.