Howdi folks!  We’ve received some disturbing news over the weekend that 20 different budget hosting brands have e-mailed clients this weekend to give notice that they’ll be closing their doors and ending service tomorrow (Monday 9th).

Details, reports and suspicions are still coming in across the major hosting discussion forums, but so far the information we have is:

• All of the companies involved are budget VPS and shared hosting providers
• Many have advertised deals on the LowEndBox forum in recent months
• The e-mails sent to clients contain similar or exact wording
• Roughly 20 different ‘brands’ are affected
• Clients have been given until Monday to save/backup their data

If you are affected by this incident, don’t panic, we’re here to help.  Here is our advice for anybody caught up in this unfortunate situation:

1. Back up your data, right now.  Download important files, e-mails and databases, or use a WordPress plugin such as All-In-One WP Migration to easily download your site, themes, settings and data.
2. Who controls your domain? If your domain was registered by your old provider, it’s important to transfer it to a new provider as soon as possible.  If your provider goes out of business and closes their client area, you may lose control of your domain and face a lengthly process to claim it back.
3. Find a new home.  Use a reputable forum such as WebHostingTalk to find recommendations for a new provider.  If your old host does remain online, use your live data to migrate to your new provider.  If your existing site is now offline, contact your new provider and explain that you have backups that you wish to restore and any reputable host will assist you in restoring these to your new account.

Here at Valcato Internet we offer a range of award-winning VPS services as well as great value Plesk and cPanel shared hosting, and we’ve been serving our users since 2002.  If you’re affected by this developing situation, we want to help.

Enter promo code ‘lowendbox’ when signing up for any Shared Hosting or Scalable VPS service to get your first month for just $1/£1.  Our team is also online 24/7 to assist with restoring your site backups and files.

We’ll be monitoring the situation throughout the week and if we have any more details on this developing story we’ll let you know.  Again, if you’re affected, don’t wait – back up your files, now.