New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
Yeah i cant say too much, but FTN have been running things past me and we are still working closely together until everything is complete.
Are you sure this is the case? Since you are a Sole Trader, "VMPort" doesn't actually exist as an individual entity (so nothing can web with VMPort), so FTN is actually a 3rd party, and details have been transfered to them. However, maybe there is some law relating to acquisitions that I'm aware of that makes this ok. However as you state, it is important to keep the customer details inside the EU.
Don't know how much you paid for this company, but i think it was a bad move. It seems not many of the acquired customers will stay with you in the long term.
@rds100 -
Thankfully, a lot of the customers are very loyal and understanding about the acquisition, and the churn rate appears to be minimal.
To any actual VMPort customers here we sincerely appreciate you and your loyalty.
My personal opinion is that all VMPort customers should give FTN a chance, as in principal, there is nothing shady or dodgy about a business being sold and/or merged with another one. This happens everyday in all industries. Looks at Microsoft+Skype, or Facebook+Instagram
I would like to express my congratulations to Anthony for the sale of his business
This is my point. I'm a sole trader and thus can operate as many brands as i like as long as its my name on the legal docs/invoices. The legislation on which the company is based now is entirely down to FTN, im not sure of the US legality of owning company's outside the US.
I don't think Anthony has sold his business :P
100% agree
Ok, but VMPort isn't a company. You have merely sold the brand and customer database to them. This is a huge difference than buying a company, legally speaking.
Actually, if I had the opportunity to, I would always recommend that providers create a Limited Company as opposed to just running as a Sole Trader. I have done extensive research into the topic, and really a Limited Company is the only way to go when your greatest asset is your "customer database". (Unlike a retail store where your biggest asset is your brick and motar shop and brand)
But like I said, it's not impossible to sell your business as a Sole Trader, and I congratulate you for doing so successfully as this is a huge step forward in your career
And also, all VMPort customers should give FTN a chance, as there is nothing dodgy in principal about a Sole Proprietorship being sold 
Oops sorry! I forget your name, even though we have spoken over PM before /embarrassed
When i looked into it (And asked a few other hosts i know) they advised against it until turnover is substantial. More paperwork/headache and not so many benefits for small turnovers.
Haha, don't worry about it.
I hear this from a lot of people and I guess it's true. There is substantial overhead involved when running a Limited Company. However, it's not as difficult as some people make it out to be. As long as you're willing to pay an accountant £500-£1000 per year, then you're sweet. Everything else is easy and can be done online.
I'd actually like to start a business where I help small businesses create Limited Companies, as there are so many benefits compared to a Sole Trader. Not so much Tax benefits for small turnovers, but so many other legal benefits. Namely ownership division/transfers and liability.
One of the only reasons i ever came across needing to be a LTD company was hardware/component finance. Which would have been an excellent deal, but sole proprietors weren't even considered
And that is a good idea, since the only real resource would be businesslink, which i was told will be closing at some point soon due to lack of government funding (Although that was back when i first started VMPort and its still here)
Yup, indeed. LTDs seem to be taken much more seriously in industry, even if it is a false sense of security in some contexts (A bit like being VAT registered).
Yeah, shame about BusinessLink going soon
Hehe my new idea: Start-A-New-LEB-Host.com .... that would go down well here :P
?
EDIT: bah 3'rd paged!
Not feeling comfortable is very understandable, the rest is pure BS
Given that FTN has only recently diversified beyond OVZ into Xen PV and taken their first baby steps by very recently putting a Xen plan into production, I must agree with @Mitgib.
I dont fault them for that though, nor would I expect them to keep VZ types running that don't fit into their current capabilities/business strategy, but it would be decent to give existing customers a months notice or so (renting for another month can't push you into the red given your size!) so they can migrate to another host with the same VZ type.
I know we've had many a thread discussing the correlation between a sole-provider's age/experience and their "trustworthiness". I'm sure Ash is a great guy, but as he said, it's time to move on -- perhaps a clause stipulating that Xen/KVM users be given sufficient time to migrate would have been nice to have.
Hypothetically, if @mitgib or @ramhost or any "elder"/more experienced provider decided to retire one fine day and sell out, Im sure he would make sure his Xen/KVM users wouldnt be left up shit creek without a paddle
To be fair i had no idea they were going to drop KVM before the sale. But its their decision, if they arent comfortable with it then i suppose its better to discontinue it.
This was partly my issue and what led VMPort to cover too many virtualization types/locations which i pointed out earlier, my weakness was wanting to expand at every given chance, but in reality i didn't have the marketing force behind me to sell/market them all efficiently.
This obviously led certain nodes to empty when no longer marketed, putting us into a circle of replacing those empty OVZ nodes with new KVM clients and never really getting a decent profit margin for the amount of clients i had.
I was speaking to somebody from LET earlier and said something which i think pretty much sums up the reason for the sale, in fact i will quote the email conversation directly;
"Stuff was a mess in the back end, but i didn't have it in me to shut down servers that were under utilized but had clients on them."
Basically, i could have resolved the issues i had gotten into easily by ending certain locations/virtualization types and cutting back on pointless expenses that were no longer marketed, but i didn't want to upset people that had stuck with me from the start.
FTN Have been great throughout the entire transition and i still stick my decision and feel if customers give them the chance they will prove it was worth it.
Some questions to URPad/FTNHosting to feel more comfortable about the possible move:
1/ Why is the SolusVM customer control panel for URPad running on another domain (http://control.dzfav.net/) without SSL?
Furthermore: If I open http://www.dzfav.net, I just see a "Index of /" page. Mmmmh.
2/ Does URPad (FTNHosting) have a physical office address? There is no address on the URPad Site that I have found and the FTNHosting site does not look too detailled or trustworthy as it is nothing more than a simple blog. I have entered the address to which your domains are registered in Google Maps and judging by what it shows, you are either living in or operating out of a forrest.
3/ Is Chris Miller one of those 3 and how old is he?
Don't get me wrong: I am really trying to come over the VMPort disappointment and to give you a chance but am still undetermined because of the above mentioned points. Another clarification: I have ordered the smallest package that URPad offers to get an impression and indeed, technically everything is fine. The ressources are there, Disk I/O is very, very good and connectivity seems to be fine also. So it's not about nagging.
@Amitz That picture is about 2 years old as you know, and I would say now he is in his Mid twenties (not in that picture but more recent ones).
@Amitz https://control.dzfav.net/login.php. Not SSL?
@infinity
He means a valid ssl cert, not a self signed.
He just said "without SSL?" the only problem with the self signed cert is the warning that browsers pop up.
I will be letting Chris address the other concerns mentioned as they seem to be related with him, but if you wish to use SSL on Solus simply add https as the prefix - we do not have a valid SSL cert because we have lots of VPS resellers, this is for whitelabel purposes. If you wish to use SSL self sign it, doesn't take but a second.
As for why it's "dzfav" this is once again for whitelabel purposes, we care about our VPS resellers and a huge portion of our URPad brand is actually built on our valued resellers
Amitz, I'm glad to hear that! Thanks for sharing
In Ethan's defense, SolusVM has much more features for OVZ compared to KVM. I have personally played around with KVM and Solus in my free time and can attest that there is definately less support.
The biggest one being no template support, and every OS install must be done through VNC manually.
This is good feature because you can setup own partitions etc. using install program via VNC.
@Amitz
1.) Around beginning of the new year after acquiring multiple brands, we decided to discontinue active selling off from the FTNHosting.net site.
2.) The whois is set at my address, google maps does not accurately place it for some unknown reason it places my address about a mile off from its actual location, and to answer your question I do live out in the wood's as of most of Northern Michigan is like this.
3.) It was taken back in 2007 To answer your question I am the one on the far left in the glasses and @LV_Matt is right about my age.
Thank you both for your answers.
Feel way better now!
Agreed, it's painful. I was astonished to see template support for KVMs in Virtualizor when I first signed in to the control panel for one of @Mon5t3r's VPSs.
The funny bit is, Solus does seem to support Xen HVM templates, so I don't know what's up other than them just being lazy.
Never knew Virtualizor had template support for KVM. Interesting