WeLoveServers Sold to HostWinds

[drmike]

This just now...


We would like to welcome you to the Hostwinds Family. Hostwinds recently acquired the assets of WeLoveServers. Hostwinds will continue to operate all current services, and will provide services to all existing WeLoveServers clients.
 
We want to tell you a little bit about Hostwinds if you are not familiar with us.
 
·         Founded in 2010
·         PC Magazine Editor's Choice Award Winner
·         INC 500 Award Winner (#98)
·         25 Full Time US Based Employees
·         24/7/365 US Based Support (Via Live Chat & Phone & Tickets)
·         Average Ticket Response Time 5 Minutes
·         Owns all equipment outright (Not a Reseller)
 
Our first goal and priority is to begin migrating all existing clients over to Hostwinds enterprise billing system, for faster response times, and easier management of existing services. This will take place over the next 60 days, you will receive an email with more information on this.
 
The most immediate change you will notice, is all credit card and PayPal payments will now be going directly through Hostwinds. This means that on your Credit Card Statement the charge will show up as “Hostwinds”, also on PayPal payments, it will show up as paying Hostwinds.
 
We are very excited about working with you for a long time to come and finding the most effective solutions to your needs. If you have any questions at all, or just want to chat, feel free to open a support ticket, or go directly to Hostwinds.com and open a live chat with a friendly operator.
 
--The Hostwinds Team
(https://www.hostwinds.com/)

 

[HalfEatenPie]

So...


Opinions of HostWinds?


I think I used them a long time ago.  Wasn't too bad, however definitely not my cup of tea.  

 

[zafouhar]

Do HostWinds have any racks over at the good old CC Buffalo?

 

[drmike]

HostWinds are the windbags that bought the polluted Burst.net assets allegedly... after the venture / wealth idiot ran that operation into the floor.


HostWinds claims Inc 500 crap like some other folks we know...


Inc Ranks say:


98    Hostwinds    3,416%    $3.5m    IT Services

 

[Francisco]

This one is for sure surprising. They had enough CC locations it only made sense if they got absorbed by CC/CVPS at some point, if they weren't already. To be honest, I can't see HW keeping the extra locations for long and to instead rebase things inside their own walls. The only reason I could see them keeping it where it is, is if CC is so cheap it's not worth the man hours.


As for Hostwinds, they had a pretty terrible reputation for a while but they've put in a lot of work to improve it so they get a thumbs up from me. I'm always in favor of less spammer friendly hosts.


Francisco

 

[zafouhar]

This one is for sure surprising. They had enough CC locations it only made sense if they got absorbed by CC/CVPS at some point, if they weren't already. To be honest, I can't see HW keeping the extra locations for long and to instead rebase things inside their own walls. The only reason I could see them keeping it where it is, is if CC is so cheap it's not worth the man hours.


As for Hostwinds, they had a pretty terrible reputation for a while but they've put in a lot of work to improve it so they get a thumbs up from me. I'm always in favor of less spammer friendly hosts.


Francisco

So HostWinds is hosted at CC? funny thing is their support techs don't even know that.

 

[Francisco]

So HostWinds is hosted at CC? funny thing is their support techs don't even know that.

No, Hostwinds has their own facility and absorbed the majority of the Burstnet meltdown. Isn't HW made up of old Burstnet workers anyway? quite possible they took the clients instead of them taking the old Burstnet guy to the cleaners.


Now, WLS is very much mostly at CC. They have a UK location I think but the rest are all CVPS servers according to SWIP reports people posted.


Francisco

 

[zafouhar]

No, Hostwinds has their own facility and absorbed the majority of the Burstnet meltdown. Isn't HW made up of old Burstnet workers anyway? quite possible they took the clients instead of them taking the old Burstnet guy to the cleaners.


Now, WLS is very much mostly at CC. They have a UK location I think but the rest are all CVPS servers according to SWIP reports people posted.


Francisco

Weird because I have a friend with a dedi at HostWinds that uses a ColoCrossing IP... noticed it today randomly. They supposedly have their own facility which is why I found it very weird what is going on.


Edit: the dedi was direct from hostwinds months ago

 

[InfinityDaniel]

Wow, I love hearing about business and how some get bought out.

 

[Francisco]

Weird because I have a friend with a dedi at HostWinds that uses a ColoCrossing IP... noticed it today randomly. They supposedly have their own facility which is why I found it very weird what is going on.

...


Has your friend been directly with HW the entire time? New or old signup?

Wow, I love hearing about business and how some get bought out.

I expect a lot more for next year.


Francisco

 

[zafouhar]

...


Has your friend been directly with HW the entire time? New or old signup?


I expect a lot more for next year.


Francisco

I'm not really sure, i'll need to check how he ended up with the colocrossing IP, I definitely found it weird when I first say it.

 

[drmike]

Weird because I have a friend with a dedi at HostWinds that uses a ColoCrossing IP... noticed it today randomly. They supposedly have their own facility which is why I found it very weird what is going on.


Edit: the dedi was direct from hostwinds months ago

Which geographic location?

 

[Hostwinds]

Weird because I have a friend with a dedi at HostWinds that uses a ColoCrossing IP... noticed it today randomly. They supposedly have their own facility which is why I found it very weird what is going on.


Edit: the dedi was direct from hostwinds months ago

I just wanted to chime in and say, we have never used any service provider except for ourselves. We have exclusively used our own IP space since 2011, so this would not have been one of our dedicated servers. IT could have been a server of a company we acquired, however if it was on the 15th that you saw it, then there is no way it was one of our dedicated servers.


Our first goal with WeLoveServers is to get the massive spam problem taken care of. This company did not have a competent abuse department prior to us taking over, and handling abuse complaints, meant forwarding them on to the users in questions. There were never any suspensions or terminations, we use mailchannels for filtering all outbound SMTP traffic leaving our network, and so getting weloveservers clients moved on to our network, to begin effectively filtering spam, is our number one priority.

 

[zafouhar]

I just wanted to chime in and say, we have never used any service provider except for ourselves. We have exclusively used our own IP space since 2011, so this would not have been one of our dedicated servers. IT could have been a server of a company we acquired, however if it was on the 15th that you saw it, then there is no way it was one of our dedicated servers.


Our first goal with WeLoveServers is to get the massive spam problem taken care of. This company did not have a competent abuse department prior to us taking over, and handling abuse complaints, meant forwarding them on to the users in questions. There were never any suspensions or terminations, we use mailchannels for filtering all outbound SMTP traffic leaving our network, and so getting weloveservers clients moved on to our network, to begin effectively filtering spam, is our number one priority.

Thanks for chiming in, it was/is very weird but it does seem the server was not a direct one, must have been one acquired from some Colocrossing provider - it wasn't actually from the 15th but I can't remember when I noticed it exactly. Anyway thanks for clarifying!

 

[drmike]

Our first goal with WeLoveServers is to get the massive spam problem taken care of. This company did not have a competent abuse department prior to us taking over, and handling abuse complaints, meant forwarding them on to the users in questions. There were never any suspensions or terminations, we use mailchannels for filtering all outbound SMTP traffic leaving our network, and so getting weloveservers clients moved on to our network, to begin effectively filtering spam, is our number one priority.

WeLoveServers = massive spam = no competent abuse department = no handling abuse complaints = no suspensions or terminations.


^^^^^^ THIS IS THE DEFINITION OF LOWEND* COMPANIES, at least the high growth ones.


@Hostwinds you vetted this deal with WeLoveServers and everything came back all right?  Are you fully aware of the owners prior conduct selling hype businesses in a box for many thousands (get rich by being lazy).. Big enough scam that it was covered in the UK on prime time television. Fully aware that WeLoveServers was doing the same skit since August selling expensive and odd reseller businesses for big cash annual buy in?


Rest of it, and your steps to right the wrong = GOOD @Hostwinds.

 

[joepie91]

This seems to be missing from this thread: HostWinds are the guys involved in the hostile takeover of the ZPanel project (leading to the Sentora fork).

 

[Hostwinds]

WeLoveServers = massive spam = no competent abuse department = no handling abuse complaints = no suspensions or terminations.


^^^^^^ THIS IS THE DEFINITION OF LOWEND* COMPANIES, at least the high growth ones.


@Hostwinds you vetted this deal with WeLoveServers and everything came back all right?  Are you fully aware of the owners prior conduct selling hype businesses in a box for many thousands (get rich by being lazy).. Big enough scam that it was covered in the UK on prime time television. Fully aware that WeLoveServers was doing the same skit since August selling expensive and odd reseller businesses for big cash annual buy in?


Rest of it, and your steps to right the wrong = GOOD @Hostwinds.

Was not aware of the hype business in a box selling conduct. I was aware of all the super cheap annual buy in packages that were being sold. 

This seems to be missing from this thread: HostWinds are the guys involved in the hostile takeover of the ZPanel project (leading to the Sentora fork).

This is not the time or place to argue about this ,however. we did not perform a hostile takeover. The founder and owner of the project messaged us directly looking to sell out, he offered us a price and we accepted the deal.

 

[drmike]

Yeah, @Hostwinds might want to check on resellers and anyone who bought these recent biz-in-a-box annuals.  They were big buy in relatively speaking.  Like $800+ a year lump sum.  Likely you have inflated sales numbers too from that, if they actually roped folks into it.  The creative for this was semi good, so I expect they got some buyers.


Glad to see HostWinds appearing to be on right side of things.  Long wondered about the operation due to Spam prior and the Burst customer base.  But, I can put things to bed where things show improvement and seem to make sense. 

 

[joepie91]

This is not the time or place to argue about this ,however. we did not perform a hostile takeover. The founder and owner of the project messaged us directly looking to sell out, he offered us a price and we accepted the deal.

Depends on how you define "hostile takeover", I suppose. The way things played out certainly leaves a sour taste in my mouth. And yes, this is absolutely the place to discuss this.


EDIT: By the way, I don't know what exactly you believe you've purchased, but it's certainly not ownership of the source code nor a license to it - there's no CLA, and from the thread I linked, it seems to suggest that other contributors did not have a say in the sale. Which would mean that, at most, you've purchased the domain and a few accounts. You're certainly still subject to the requirements of the GPL.

 

[Licensecart]

Depends on how you define "hostile takeover", I suppose. The way things played out certainly leaves a sour taste in my mouth. And yes, this is absolutely the place to discuss this.


EDIT: By the way, I don't know what exactly you believe you've purchased, but it's certainly not ownership of the source code nor a license to it - there's no CLA, and from the thread I linked, it seems to suggest that other contributors did not have a say in the sale. Which would mean that, at most, you've purchased the domain and a few accounts. You're certainly still subject to the requirements of the GPL.

I don't trust either party in that software, The main developers are idiots and Hostwind gets involved with bad businesses which dissolves trust.