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Has lowesthosting.com gone out of business?




Posted by peeceelee, 06-01-2008, 09:15 AM
My site isn't coming up and neither is their main site. It's been down for at least a good part of a day now. Anyone else hosted there having problems? Have they gone under?
Posted by MH-2006, 06-01-2008, 09:27 AM
I would guess they are just having hardware/network issues. Email their offline address and im sure they will provide you with a reason !
Posted by coight, 06-01-2008, 09:29 AM
It's likely related to the issues at theplanet, please check the outages forums.
Posted by xssa, 06-01-2008, 09:42 AM
Lowesthosting has been down since about 4pm Saturday, May 31st. I have e-mailed them at all known addresses (including their support gmail address) and have gotten no response. I have also looked for a telephone number for them and they only list fax numbers as their main telephone...
Posted by coight, 06-01-2008, 09:45 AM
As above they are likely affected by Theplanet outage: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...wpost&t=697065 Still maybe you can recommend that they keep their own site on another network so if these issues happen they can be contacted.
Posted by xssa, 06-01-2008, 09:54 AM
Sorry, are you saying Lowesthosting is hosted by ThePlanet?
Posted by Sparrow-Sean, 06-01-2008, 09:55 AM
If it is there is over 9500 Clients Affected by the outage ... There have been some specs it will be up by tomorrow. No Guarantees.
Posted by page1graphics, 06-01-2008, 10:40 AM
I see from the posts they are down and it is not just me...however, what exactly is the explanation please? I am not able to deduce that from the postings here...Is another person on this forum able to provide that information please? I need to contact my clients and let them know what is being resolved? Thanks for your input
Posted by Sparrow-Sean, 06-01-2008, 10:43 AM
I do not know the Full Details, A Dedicated member here is with The Planet and their Servers are down. It is like: 9500 servers 7500 clients I cannot say of the time the host will be back though Power outage was the problem. A Fire, Nothing was damaged to what I hear and it should return soon!
Posted by kdkrone, 06-01-2008, 11:28 AM
I, too, have been having the same problem. I had assumed that they were playing with their software again (every 6-8 months it seems that they manage to screw up my email server by tweaking software). in some ways I am glad to hear it that there is a different problem...! I will be looking for a different webhosting service with a phone number and live human beings with whom to communicate. While I have had response from their support people each time I have had problems with them, it is SO frustrating to have to wait when there have been problems. My main hesitation is the potential of losing email service for a few days in setting up with a different webhosting service and not knowing which webhosting services are reliable!! Cheers KK
Posted by Sparrow-Sean, 06-01-2008, 11:31 AM
Hello, I am sorry to hear from the issue that has happened to all the customers affected by this major issue. I can understand how it is a massive hassel and changing hosts again is not helping. I wish you the best though I mean there are many reliable hosts out there but Things like this can happen just it sux yeah, Though you got to take into consideration not all hosts are immune to such problems.
Posted by kdkrone, 06-01-2008, 11:56 AM
JetWash, Reading your responses, you seem to imply that the problem with lowesthosting.com is related to the fire at theplanet. Is this speculation or do you know this for a fact? you have not directly answered the questions about this posed earlier in this thread. Thanks KK
Posted by page1graphics, 06-01-2008, 11:59 AM
It seems to me in this day and age, there should have been some kind of disaster recovery or continuance of operations in place. Just like most businesses have these days in the event of some random act. An offsite mirrored set of servers to keep sites up in the event of this kind of tragedy. I guess you get what you pay for eh?
Posted by page1graphics, 06-01-2008, 12:19 PM
Sorry, I just discovered that two other sites of mine with different hosting companies are also affected, does anyone know just how many hosting companies are affected by this problem right now. I am curious because these two other sites are up but I am unable to alter them presently and both are with different hosting companies than lowesthosting.com.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-01-2008, 12:51 PM
Same here. No response!!! No way to contact them, and they have not contacted me to let me know what was happening. You think LH would email us at our alternative email address and let us know what was going on. Very happy to find this thread. My site and webmail have been down since yesterday around 6:00pm. Last edited by iamislandgirl; 06-01-2008 at 01:00 PM.
Posted by page1graphics, 06-01-2008, 12:57 PM
so if I am reading this correctly then there is no certainty that Lowesthosting or any other hosting company was affected by this fire - if that is what happened - so it could be that lowesthosting is actually out of business...since there has been no response from them to my emails that I have sent since I can't reach them on the phone unless I was just going to fax them my message which would probably burn up their fax line for sure at this point and I can't enter a support ticket!...argh! this is beyond frustrating!
Posted by kdkrone, 06-01-2008, 01:24 PM
iamislandgirl, I noticed the service was unavailable about 4-4:30 PM PST in between flights. The coincidence of the problem with theplanet.com is very compelling to assume they are related. We will just have to see, I suppose. I have tried emailing, but, like others, have received no response... even at their gmail.com address... KK
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-01-2008, 01:55 PM
kdkrone & page1graphics.. It is quite a coincidence that all our sites went down as theplanet was having problems. I wish LH would at least post something to let us know if this is the issue or in fact they did close shop.. Is there any way to check and verify this?? You would think we could get some answers to this!!
Posted by Janie, 06-01-2008, 02:02 PM
I too have been down and have 4 sites hosted here. Never have had a problem, and always happy with service. Am really freaked that all sites and emails are down. Can't do any business. Was very glad to see there are others with some inkling of source of problem (although feel bad for all!!). Have too sent fax and emails to Admin, but no reply to 'safety' email...hope it recovers soon.
Posted by page1graphics, 06-01-2008, 02:03 PM
I have no clue...how can you verify what is going on when you can't get an answer, you can add a support ticket, they are not responding to emails (which does not give me a warm feeling at all) at the very least on their gmail account they could have some kind of autoresponder stating the problem. How in the world can you run a business like this? and how the heck are we supposed to explain this to our clients? oh and how are we supposed to be able to transfer our sites and domains to another perhaps reliable (what a concept!) hosting company when they have essentially disappeared.
Posted by skielly, 06-01-2008, 02:14 PM
I am very happy to have found this thread. I have 12 sites hosted with LH, all down since yesterday. I have tried emailing too. But my emails bounce back. I agree ... I wish they would send an email to say they at least know about the problem and are working on it. So should we start looking for a new host now? How would we even move our sites without having access to LH?
Posted by Janie, 06-01-2008, 02:16 PM
If it is related to The Planet, I just read through their messages, and they said they will be bringing things slowly back on line around 5:00 CDT. So there's nothing to do but wait. If LH was affected, they probably don't have any access to their client info either...just like us. I seriously don't think they just went out of business. That would be too weird.
Posted by MFrag, 06-01-2008, 02:55 PM
their dns ns1.lowesthosting.com is not responding, but ns2.lowesthosting.com is responding to ping. However when I checked ns2.lowesthosting.com for any of my domains they did not exist. In fact the DNS server appears to have no records at all. This is a bad sign I would say since the secondary Domain server is up but not resolving any domains. If both were down, I would suspect an outage. This does not look good. Time to get a new supplier and point my nameservers for all my domains at another provider. (Glad I moved control of all my domains away from lowesthosting.com and transferred them to godaddy.com to consolidate. If they are dead, I find another, ftp the site, repoint the DNS servers and back online.) But I hope it isn't true. I have 6 servers with them and it is a PIA. No notice at all is not very honorable, not to mention I just paid for 3 renewals...
Posted by peeceelee, 06-01-2008, 02:57 PM
The Planet is huge, and I would assume that LowestHosting is a customer of theirs (as is site5 and hostgator i think). I'm sure that it's not a coincidence that LH is down since The Planet had the fire issue. When I first posted, I didn't know that The Planet had the fire issues...I'm pretty sure LH didn't go out of business now and when TP gets things back up, LH will be back up also. Again, these are just my assumptions, and not official news.
Posted by MFrag, 06-01-2008, 02:59 PM
The planet is also "servermatrix.com" and if I recall LH purchases their servers from planet. I have a quad CPU gaming server at Planet, but it is up, and is always up. Backup bandwidth, power. I don't know if LH has the same premium services for their servers. I would think not...
Posted by skielly, 06-01-2008, 03:10 PM
I posted a question on another thread on webhostingtalk.com that's discussing the outage at ThePlanet. My question asked if anyone knew if lowesthosting is impacted by the outage. I have seen one reply so far that says lowesthosting is a customer of theplanet. To see the other thread go to webhostingtalk.com and do a search on "The Planet Down". (Apparently I can't post a link yet).
Posted by dottielove, 06-01-2008, 03:20 PM
Hey--I've had lowesthosting.com for my two websites for maybe 5 years--NEVER a problem. The couple of times I emailed, they got right back to me. I love 'em (but also thankful I found this forum to tell me what's going on. I assume their lack of communication is due to their outage--I understand. How do you know the tornado's coming if the TV went off? We just gotta wait--Dottie Love
Posted by lindsaycoats, 06-01-2008, 03:43 PM
Can anyone confirm for sure that lowesthosting.com's outage is due to the outage at theplanet? I want to be sure I'm giving my clients the correct information. Thank you! Lindsay
Posted by Movio, 06-01-2008, 04:11 PM
Its unfortunate some resellers and such dont have backup contact systems.
Posted by lindsaycoats, 06-01-2008, 04:12 PM
Completely agreed. I've never had a problem with lowesthosting before, but the fact that they don't provide a phone number is troublesome. Makes me rethink where I'll be sending future business for sure!
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-01-2008, 04:23 PM
I understand that these things happen, what I don't understand is why LH has not notified anyone.. If we found this board, I am sure they could. LH could post a message here to keep us updated. As someone else mentioned, why did they not have their gmail address forward a response back to us!! I have never had any problems before with them so I am giving them the benefit of the doubt, for now. But if I do not hear anything by tonight from LH. I will take my business elsewhere!!!
Posted by Jeff Cooper, 06-01-2008, 04:25 PM
I finally got through to the support line!! YES they are still in business! YES it was caused by the fire at theplanet! YES our servers are fully intact and undamaged! YES all incoming email during the outage will remain intact and will be received when they come back up! It may be 36 hours before everything is restored, but FEAR NOT! All is well... Here is the support number, but you'll probably just get a busy signal as they're being inundated with calls right now: 503-579-7973 Cheers, Jeff )
Posted by srob222, 06-01-2008, 04:27 PM
We use Lowest Hosting and it went down in the midst of my updating our site. After reading this message board, I decided to check out the planet's site. At least this is some answer...LH and my site are still down however Customer: there is a rumor that the planet's hosting services has been down due to a fire. Is that true? Jeff K Scott: In the interest of keeping you updated, yesterday at 5:45 p.m. in Houston, a transformer in our H1 data in Houston caught fire, which required us to take down all generators as instructed by the fire department. All servers in the H1 data center are down, as is our ServerCommand customer portal, which are working to move to another data center. None of our other data centers are affected. Our management team and facilities staff are on site evaluating the situation. In our latest assessment, we have determined that networking gear has not been damaged, but we are without power so assessments continue. All disaster recovery systems are in motion, and we have teams already working in the data center. We are posting messages in our forum, in Orbit and on our customer support phone system. We appreciate your patience. We are working around the clock to resolve these critical issues.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-01-2008, 04:28 PM
Hey Jeff.. That number is a private residence??
Posted by Jeff Cooper, 06-01-2008, 04:38 PM
I'm sure that's the number... I checked my call log and that's it. I got the number from the transaction details in my PayPal account that I used to pay my yearly hosting fees last month. Here's a copy and past of the contact info from PayPal: Business Contact Information Customer Service Phone: 503-579-7973 Maybe you dialed wrong? Cheers, Jeff
Posted by GeorgeA, 06-01-2008, 04:48 PM
I called form my cell because this phone number does not except call from unpublished phone numbers. The service will be restored by late afternoon. 20 people are working to replace transformers. Emails will be delivered within 36 hours. Looks good for now.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-01-2008, 04:58 PM
Jeff - Got thru.. I must have dialed the wrong #??? Anyhow... They were very nice and apologetic. It does involve The Plants Transformer fire.. Explained that we were upset that we were not notified via email, message board, something. Said he understands and getting all that together now. Said they will learn from this and have something set in place if this should ever happen again. That way they will be able to notify their customers about problems.. I am pleased with his answer and sincerity!! They will keep my business..
Posted by xssa, 06-01-2008, 05:10 PM
Thanks Jeff! That was super helpful. I just spoke with them and they were v. sincere + apologetic, etc.
Posted by Linda Anne, 06-01-2008, 05:32 PM
Sunday, June 01 2008, @ 2:28 PM (-0800 GMT) I have 5 webs with them and never had a problem other than an occasional server crash. NEVER what we are going thru since about noon on Saturday pacific time. Support has ALWAYS been GREAT. however, I was troubled to learn that they use "dotRegistrar" as their tie with ICANN. From what I have seen, dotRegistrar may be another "weak link?" Dunno know for sure tho. Anyone have knowledge of dotRegistrar?
Posted by page1graphics, 06-01-2008, 06:21 PM
ok good...they are not out of business...that's helpful...and perhaps they will learn from this...very scary situation!!! I have always had outstanding support from them and this just really concerned me regarding their continued lack of communication...hopefully with a disaster recovery plan or continuance of operations for the future and an implemented autoresponder they will be able to appease their clients in the future...its been a rather unsettling weekend to say the least...and I really don't like having to spend hours scouring the 'net to find out what the heck happened when we should have been notified in some capacity even if they had some quick email!!! whew!
Posted by Linda Anne, 06-01-2008, 06:23 PM
Sunday, June 01 2008, @ 3:22 PM (-0800 GMT) ...is "up." Is that a good sign LH will be next, or is the page I'm seeing not one involved with the LH problem? Thank you,
Posted by page1graphics, 06-01-2008, 06:58 PM
funny I was just wondering the same thing...that it is "up" or some mirror site that is not up to date, because I looked around on the site and saw nothing about the problem...so I am guessing that maybe it is a backup copy in the interim
Posted by goldengirl, 06-01-2008, 07:34 PM
I've been pulling my hair out for the last day trying to figure out what was up with lowesthosting. Thank you for saving me another day of angst...although I'd still like to see it resolved soon and would have appreciated some type of notice. But maybe that wasn't possible.
Posted by Jonathan J, 06-01-2008, 08:01 PM
Hey GoldenGirl, Take a look at 'The Planet' thread. Apparently there was an explosion/fire in the datacenter which I think Lowesthosting servers were in! - Thus why they probably couldn't give you any notices!
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-01-2008, 08:04 PM
Hello , We appologize for the delay in reply. Most cleints have been calling and this email is normally only used as an off network emergency access to our domain for updating dns. There was a major power outage in one of the data centers where we maintain many of our servers in this case the H1 data center in houston. Although we own our servers and have our own datacenter staff we lease access in the datacenter to supply our access poin to the internet backbones (level 3, savis etc) and to provide us with power for our server racks. The Datacenter has N+1 redundancy and does have UPS battery backup and Backup generator capability but a completely unusual occurance happened where the main Stepdown power transformer shorted resulting in an explostion and small fire in the electrical interface room. Normally when Power goes out the network swiching swiches over to the UPS which is a short term 2 hour battery system while the backup generators go online and are cut into the master power buss. The problem was that the explosion destroyed the Power panels where the generators connect to the main power busses. This outage effected not only Lowesthostings servers but 40 other major hosts and over 9000 servers so it was a major unexpected outage. The good news is the new Transformer has finally been aquired and is being installed and we are told it will be tested over the next 2-4 hours and various switches & routers brought back online and tested before power is sequenced to our server bank so it should not be more than another 1-2 hours after that before your server comes back online. Once power is back, your server and all data will come online as before. Anyones mail server that has attempted to send you emails during the outage window will automatically attempt redelivery so you may get a few 18 hour old emails but none will be lost. Our main Lowesthosting.com website does have an emergency backup server in our other Datacenter but it takes 24 hours for that to propagate so our main customer portal has been down which has frustrated our staff and many cleints for our inability to post news or reply to tickets during the propagation to our emergency server. We appologize for this window where we were unable to reach you and although we have never had a catastrophic outage in 8 years and pride ourselves on average a 99.84% cleint server uptime we will be installing a new high availability cluster on our main website so should we ever have a major outage our website and news and ticketing system would not go down for even a minute. You should know that we not only backup all of your data in our data center but maintain an emergency archival copy off network so we really do maintain the integrity of your data. Again we appologize for any inconvineience. Its been a long difficult sunday for our staff as well and we will be posting a full story and pictures on our website shortly. Regards, Ray Alin Assistant Manager Lowesthosting.com
Posted by treetop327, 06-01-2008, 08:07 PM
Grateful there's a resolution in the works! I have had no problem with LH for 8 years and 3 domains. However...is anybody else concerned about the lack of security certificate authentication when you go into the control panel??? Should I be? Thanks, Treetop327
Posted by Jeff Cooper, 06-01-2008, 08:23 PM
I'm glad that people are getting through now! This incident was NOT Lowest Hosting's fault, but it is plainly clear that they had ZERO contingency plan for any such problem. I am happy with the service that they've provided in the past but I hope that you fellow business people will be diligent in writing them when this problem is resolved to let them know that their handling of this situation was completely unacceptable. PLEASE don't be rude to the support staff! This is a MANAGEMENT problem as there was obviously ZERO contingency plan in place for even notifying their members to let them know that there was a problem that was out of their control. I'm a very small business and even I have my contact lists backed up on several drives and was prepared to send ot email notifications to my people from a remote email server if the problem was not resolved by Monday morning. Anyway... It was nice to meet some fellow website owners, and I wish you all the best... Cheers, Jeff B dash films dot com
Posted by BrevardFLRealtor, 06-01-2008, 08:31 PM
I finally got through on the phone to someone at LH and it was essentially the same thing that he told me, however the fact of the matter is we still don't have our emails nor our websites up. So we should get those up first and hopefully none of us have lost any business from this!!!
Posted by Ray Alin, 06-01-2008, 08:50 PM
Hello, This is Ray the Assistant Manager for Lowesthosting.com My apologies for not posting here sooner but I was only recently made aware of this threads existence by a client in a phone conversation. Most clients have been calling and writing to our off network email but tragically our main website and customer portal is down so we understand your frustration. Our phone numbers were sent to every client upon sign up and are listed on our website however many clients did print them out and were unable to reach us. As you no doubt know by now, there was a major power outage in one of the data centers where we maintain many of our servers in this case the H1 data center in Houston that is affecting approximately 60% of our clients. Although we own our servers and have our own datacenter staff we lease access in the datacenter to supply our access point to the internet backbones and to provide us with power for our server racks. The H1 Datacenter has N+1 redundancy and is considered one of the largest and most state of the art data centers in the country and does have UPS battery backup and Backup generators but a completely unusual occurrence happened where the main Step-down power transformer shorted resulting in an explosion and small fire in the electrical interface room. Normally when Power goes out the network switching switches over to the UPS which is a short term 2 hour battery system while the backup generators go online and are cut into the master power buss. The problem was that the explosion destroyed the Power panels where the generators connect to the main power busses. This outage effected not only Lowesthostings servers but 40 other major hosts and a few hundreds small hosts and over 9000 servers so it was a major unexpected outage. The good news is the new Transformer has finally been acquired and is being installed and we are told it will be tested over the next 3-4 hours and various switches & routers and the HVAC air conditioning brought back online and tested before power is sequenced to our server bank so it should not be more than another 5-6 hours before your server comes back online baring any major problems. Once power is back, your server and all data will come online as before. Anyone’s mail server that has attempted to send you emails during the outage window will automatically attempt redelivery so you may get a few 24 hour old emails but none will be lost. This is a catastrophic event in that it affects many servers and even our main website and in our 8 years of operation we have never had such a failure. Our main Lowesthosting.com website does have an emergency backup server in our other Datacenter but it takes 24 hours for that to propagate so our main customer portal has been down which has frustrated our staff and many clients for our inability to post news or reply to tickets during the propagation to our emergency server. We apologize for this transition window and we will be installing a new high availability cluster on our main website so should we ever have a major network or power outage our website and news and ticketing system would not go down for even a minute. If you are a client for any length of time you know that we strive for quality fast support and maintain an extremely high server uptime. We not only backup all data to in network NAS storage servers but also maintain an emergency archival copy off network so we really do maintain the integrity of your data. Again we apologize for any inconvenience. Its been a long difficult Sunday for our staff as well and we will be posting a full story on our website shortly. Regards, Ray Alin Assistant Manager Lowesthosting.com
Posted by jimsz, 06-01-2008, 08:55 PM
I've been a customer of LH for many years and urrently have over a dozen remaining hosted domains on their servers. While this issue is not their fault, it is part of the normal days of doing business with LH to have outages. One of my domains is inaccessible for a portion of everyday. Their servers are running very out of date mysql, php, etc. Their email tech responds quickly but are of little help as the problem they claim is rarely theirs (even though you supply screen shots form their own server info page showing the load). Nope, while this problem is not their fault it is the last straw for this customer. My migration has already begun and by fall, if it goes well everything will be moved. The largest problem is that LH is running a very outdated version of mysql and I have had real problems being able to import the databases onto a server running current software.
Posted by BrevardFLRealtor, 06-01-2008, 09:03 PM
While noone is perfect, there are MANY MANY people out there that have lost numerous emails, numerous dollars from potential people typing in their website address and it comes up unavailable and then people move on to the next website and purchase "items" from them. It shouldn't be US as merchants to have to frantically find the reason why our website and our emails are NOT working. This down time is a MAJOR outage and noone was notified of it. (well those of us at LH, right?) So I looked at their numbers and they have been going down the last month, now I assume that their numbers of domain registries will be dramatically reduced NOW! Yes I know there there are situations beyond our control, however I feel that it is there responsibility to inform their customers of the situation and not just leave them in the dark, no phone numbers, no emails, nothing. However I feel that this "emergency" will eventually loose them MANY customers. My 2 cents!
Posted by kdkrone, 06-01-2008, 09:03 PM
Whom have you chosen to replace lowesthosting and how did you make that decision? I have no idea how to vet the myriads of companies out there to know who is naughty and who is nice... Thanks Ken K
Posted by Linda Anne, 06-01-2008, 09:19 PM
Sunday, June 01 2008, @ 6:07 PM (-0800 GMT) There is a site called "Hosting Review." The link I got is below, but may work just as fine if all the goobledegook after the .com/ were left off? I TRIED to paste the link to it HERE but this board wud NOT let me post it becuz "you cannot use this feature" becuz I have not got to the 5 posts mark, or some such nonsense! I have no clue as to how unbiased this site is in its reviews as I've just come across it. The list may be those who PAY to be listed as being in the "Top 10," (pessimist view), OR it may be legitimate (optimist view). How is one to know? Really? Are there sites that do make legitimate comparisons? Wud be nice if down time, customer satisfaction, and that sort of thing were monitored by some benevolent person with time on their hands.
Posted by sonixi, 06-01-2008, 09:31 PM
Hundreds. .
Posted by sonixi, 06-01-2008, 09:34 PM
I cannot speak for them, but how will they manage that if email is bouncing? Are you sure they told you emails will be saved which came in DURING the outage? I don't think that is possible unless they have a non-THE PLANET mirror server somewhere.
Posted by BrevardFLRealtor, 06-01-2008, 10:08 PM
I was under the impression that the number was thousands of hosting companies have been affected.
Posted by xssa, 06-01-2008, 11:22 PM
RAY, It has certainly been more than 24 hours and a simple page for lowest hosting (with news and information) has yet to appear. When I spoke with someone in your HQ I was told the exact same thing you are posting (currently 4-5 hours longer) and it seems to me that it will be much longer than this evening. Also, since we are past the 24 hour mark with being off line (30+ hours) will our e-mails still be intact?
Posted by danamml`, 06-02-2008, 03:05 AM
I have had an account at LH for several years - and this is my first real problem. I have often wished for another way to reach them besides the email/trouble ticket system, but they have always answered helpfully and quickly, so I just lived with it. That irritation has blossomed into something more substantial, now, with the comment in Mr. Alin's letter that phone numbers were given/available but people just didn't print them. I did. They are fax numbers. I went into WHOIS and found Lowest Hosting LLC in Las Vegas and was getting ready to do some more digging tomorrow during business hours to see what I could find out. The phone numbers listed there were all the same fax number I already had. It is reassuring to hear something is being done - but the lack of communcation is very frustrating. I will be host-hunting tomorrow. This forum has been very helpful. Thank you everyone for sharing your finds.
Posted by Linda Anne, 06-02-2008, 03:27 AM
Monday, June 02 2008, @ 12:20 AM (-0800 GMT) Very shortly it will be 36 hours. Wasn't THAT supposed to be the "magic #" ?? I got my 5th domain only about 7 weeks ago. I just went thru the "Welcome" letter carefully and found no phone # in it? Wasn't it said somewhere that this was where the phnoe # was given the one time?
Posted by vjwebb, 06-02-2008, 05:39 AM
The phone numbers for lowesthosting are: 800-762-4913 503-579-7973 However, the best place to find a status report is on ThePlanet forum.
Posted by page1graphics, 06-02-2008, 06:31 AM
Ok, this is starting to really upset me. Ray says the phone number is in the information given at signup - I have looked just to verify, its not. The only numbers I have now are the ones posted here besides the fax line which is useless unless you are going to send a fax to them to get their attention. Ray also claims we are going to be up and running in a couple of hours from when he finally made his post on the forum, and I have tried all of the sites I manage and lowesthosting and still NOTHING! So, I will be looking for a new host for my sites today. I can deal with pretty much anything thrown my way but don't lie to me. And don't make me look bad with my clients. Lowesthosting has done both!!!
Posted by vertoss, 06-02-2008, 06:51 AM
couple of us from here are talking about this on IRC, quicker responses /server server.chatspace.org 6667 /join #TP-MAYHEM
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 07:05 AM
Ray, Despite what you say, the phone number was not on the website and it was not in any of the initial sign-up emails as I have them from ALL of my hosting packages at LH. For the last two years i have been asking for a phone number to speak with an administrator or manager and the replies I have received has been "we do not allow giving out any phone numbers". If you have the sites stored elsewhere why are we still down after 36 hours? If it only takes 24 hours to propagate, we should have been up and running 12 hours ago. LH was not prepared for this and as a result once again we are receiving substandard service.
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 08:13 AM
Attn: Ray Alin Based on the updates that are being posted on The Planet's web site ( service-update[dot]theplanet[dot]com ) it looks like this is going to take longer than projected. How is the power outage affecting LH? Are you on the 1st floor or 2nd floor? In the meantime, is there some way to forward our email to an alternate address? Lowest Hosting is very short on answers. I think you need to provide more information now. The way you're handling this is completely unacceptable. You can pass the blame for the explosion, but not for the way you have treated your clients.
Posted by Linda Anne, 06-02-2008, 08:14 AM
Monday, June 02 2008, @ 5:13 AM (-0800 GMT) 4 of my 5 webs are UP and RUNNING! One site, my newest, 7 weeks old, is still dead, as is the LH home page. I'ts now been 40 HOURS.
Posted by Linda Anne, 06-02-2008, 08:32 AM
Monday, June 02 2008, @ 5:30 AM (-0800 GMT) All 5 of my sites are supposed to be on the SAME Server, #22, but only four are now UP. Wouldn't this suggest that (maybe) Server #22 is really SEVERAL servers in a group ?? How else can 4 be up and 1 still dead ? I don't understand. ;(
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-02-2008, 08:35 AM
Well said!!
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 08:56 AM
theplanet.com tech people just told me "maybe today" for some and no guess on the rest. I still say it will be a week or some people. LH has dropped the ball on this with their silence. A mass migration will be starting as soon as the sites are back online. Anyone have any suggestions for a new hosting service?
Posted by normwerner, 06-02-2008, 08:58 AM
This whole mess has provided the opportunity to seriously rethink how I host my sites. They may have started as hobby sites, but three of them are now critical to my business. The othyer two will not likely sustain damage from having been down for 2-3 days. going with Lowesthosting was an easy and cheap way to get on the web; however, once one's web presence becomes an integral part of how onew does business, then it's time to look for a more professional hosting service. I certainly agree with earlier posts that state that there is no excuse for not having a backup and recovery plan in place in today's day and age. Ther eis also no excuse for not having a way, or apparently even attempting, to communicate with one's customers to give them information and updates. It's apparent that you really do get what you pay for and in this case that is the minimum possible level of service. So, lesson learned. Time to look for a more professionally run hosting company, even if it isn't the lowest cost operation. Low cost means nothing if you're not up and running.
Posted by Linda Anne, 06-02-2008, 09:31 AM
Monday, June 02 2008, @ 6:28 AM (-0800 GMT) 4 of my 5 sites are UP & RUNNING at 5:13 AM. Altho all are supposed to be on Server #22, why then is one site NOT up? The LH main site is still DOWN here and I cannot access ANY of my FTP servers.
Posted by xssa, 06-02-2008, 09:31 AM
I asked LH the following via e-mail: Can you please provide details as to what floor(s) the LH servers were located on within theplanet facilities? Also, what is the updated ETA? ---------------------------------- Ray replied with the following @ approx 4am EST: We have our own 20 rack cages full of servers on the main floor. Power has been restored to the upper floor and we are told it will be on any moment to our floor. -------------------------------------- As of right now (9:30am EST) I have received 1 e-mail via my blackberry from Saturday, but this has yet to be received on my regular e-mail server/program.
Posted by page1graphics, 06-02-2008, 09:42 AM
I have yet to get a response from LH...AND all 6 of my sites are still down...any moment - WTF is that?
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 09:53 AM
If they are on the main floor, floor 1, that is not good news. Here is what "ThePLanet" has posted about the 1st floor. Let me next address Phase 1 (first floor) of the data center and the affected 3,000 servers. The news is not as good, and we were not as lucky. The damage there was far more extensive, and we have a bigger challenge that will require a two-step process. For the first step, we have designed a temporary method that we believe will bring power back to those servers sometime tomorrow evening, but the solution will be temporary. We will use a generator to supply power through next weekend when the necessary gear will be delivered to permanently restore normal utility power and our battery backup system. During the upcoming week, we will be working with those customers to resolve issues. We know this may not be a satisfactory solution for you and your business but at this time, it is the best we can do. We are looking at at least a week of issues.
Posted by kdkrone, 06-02-2008, 10:10 AM
Where is the info posted on theplanet.com? I have looked around the website and have not found any updates on the situation. Thanks Ken I remain down (lowesthosting)
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 10:16 AM
There is a thread here forums.theplanet.com/index.php?showtopic=90185 38 hours of downtime and counting.
Posted by skielly, 06-02-2008, 10:23 AM
lowesthosting.com ~ can you give us an update on what is happening?
Posted by Sparrow-Sean, 06-02-2008, 10:25 AM
My friend has his own Dedicated Servers and they are partly backup.
Posted by Janie, 06-02-2008, 10:25 AM
Attn: Ray Alin Mr. Alin - This is impossible!! It's morning in CA and MONDAY. No word from you on emails sent and nothing is running on my web sites. If I hadn't found this thread and theplanet issue, I would be hysterical at this point. When can I expect to be up and running? My world depends on you.
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 10:30 AM
The Planet is posting updates here: service-update.theplanet.com/ No surprise that Lowest Hosting is not updating anyone.
Posted by elsberry, 06-02-2008, 10:45 AM
LH is not the person to blame. They could have done things better, but when a transformer blows up in a datacenter, a lot of things are going to go wrong very quickly. The Planet has about 5500 of the 9000 affected servers back online. Unfortunately LH has their server banks on the first floor. This will not be up until tonite CDT. My website has been down since 3:45 PM on Saturday and we depend on it for our company. I don't want to sound like an apologist for LH. They certainly could do things differently in the future, like host their own sites at a different location. This would give them the ability to communicate with their customers. Given this, they are in the same boat as the rest of us. I have a completely redundant website hosted offshore. The problem that I ran into is that the company that I use for my domain name registration was also in The Planet, so I can't even update my DNS to point to the alternate website. The best we can do is try to plan for the unforseeable, and then go on with our business.
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 10:54 AM
They MAY be up tonight and if you speak with the planet, they are NOT GIVING any eta for full restoration of anything on the first floor. The post I put up earlier with quotes from theplanet stated they won't be fully operational until they perform work NEXT weekend. LH may not be to blame for the fire but they are to blame for their lack of contact and planning for something catastrophic.
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 10:55 AM
The fact that Lowest Hosting does not have a fail-over plan for the data center is inexcusable. Am I mistaken in believing that they have been advertising that they have multiple data centers, in TX and another state (GA?). Why hasn't all this been switched over to GA?
Posted by kevinob333, 06-02-2008, 10:56 AM
Thank you all for this forum -- without it I would have zero information on why my two sites are down for the count. I recently talked my boss into hosting some of our pages through lowesthosting, and man do I look like a big jack-*** at my new job. It is amazing to me that after posting here last night and telling us that this would be resolved in 5-6 hours there has been no further communication on the part of lowesthosting. Ray said Lowesthosting is not going anywhere -- but with service like this and the mass defections I expect after they get restarted -- I don't see how they will survive. Customer care and service is attrocious.
Posted by erglpusa, 06-02-2008, 11:12 AM
We are in the same boat as everyone else. I'm sorry if this is a stupid question but I'm hoping someone can help. If I simply transfer domains to another company (yahoo or go daddy for example) does that mean all of our pending emails that are stuck at LH will be lost? We haven't been able to retrieve email since Saturday. I don't want to lose the ones that our customers have sent. However, I also want to get back to work and figure we can do that if we transfer domains. Can anyone help with advice? Thank you!!
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 11:15 AM
The emails are not being saved at LH. There is no place to save them to. They are being bounced back as undeliverable. Many sites will attempt to deliver the email for 12 - 18 hours and then they give up. That means a lot of email is now lost. If you switch hosting services, after you point the registrar info to the new DNS numbers, email will strat to go to that service (after the DNS propagates).
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-02-2008, 11:35 AM
I sent 5 emails to my website to see what happens... CC and BCC to another functioning address email I use. 3 were sent yesterday, 2 today. What is weird, none of the CC and BCC came back to my working email address and no emails have been bounced back as undeliverable. No receipts have been reported as delivered.. Seems all the emails have gone MIA.. Very disturbed my LH lack of response.. Been checking other hosting company's to transfer my site today. At least then I can put some kind of explanation up on my new site for my customers to know what is going on. Got a lot of calls this morning about orders. I don't want to leave my customers in the dark as LH has done to us!! This is not good..
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 11:39 AM
The fact that Lowest Hosting does not have a fail-over plan for the data center is inexcusable. Am I mistaken in believing that they have been advertising that they have multiple data centers, in TX and another state (GA?). Why hasn't all this been switched over to GA?
Posted by Linda Anne, 06-02-2008, 11:49 AM
I have looked into transferring domains. In order to do this, you must, as you know, "Repoint the DNS Servers" from LH to yer new host. Naturally then, this will take a bit of time. Hours / days? Also, from wat I've "Googled," many using LH have dotRegistrar as their tie to ICANN. dotRegistrar does not appear to be "high up on the food chain" and, some say, is more of a bottom feeder. I do not know this, and am only repeating wat I've read. The point is, if yer gonna dump LH you may also want to change yer Registrar. THIS will take more time as you must not only "repoint servers" but you must get authorizations codes, etc. from dotRegistrar before any OTHER Registrar can take you, and before yer new web host can activate you. The 2nd point then is: How long will all this TAKE? you may still be trying to pull it all together a week or two from now, and after yer LH hosted sites are back up and running. 4 of my 5 sites came UP at 5:13 AM. 1 is still DOWN. Altho ALL are said to be on "Server #22" this wud indicate to me that Sever #22 is not one server but a group on many, some upstairs and some down. I'm guessing my 4 oldest sites are upstaires while my new one is on the main floor? Even tho 4 of mine are UP, I cannot FTP into them yet. Gud luck.
Posted by Linda Anne, 06-02-2008, 11:53 AM
Monday, June 02 2008, @ 8:50 AM (-0800 GMT) To the best of my knowledge, one center is in Dallas Texas and the other is in Portland Oregon, not that, given the spped of light, that it makes any real difference.
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 11:55 AM
I am trying to set-up email with another hosting service. I have an account at 1and1.com. They said that I can create an external domain by pointing my registration to their DNS. I don't know if this will be possible without LH's cooperation. I'll keep you posted.
Posted by RichPasco, 06-02-2008, 12:08 PM
Duplicate post deleted. Last edited by RichPasco; 06-02-2008 at 12:22 PM. Reason: Delete duplicate post
Posted by RichPasco, 06-02-2008, 12:10 PM
The phone number shown in the whois record for lowesthosting.com is (503) 210-0379 but this number has since been reassigned to an unrelated company, King Solar Products, which is using it as their fax number. Their web site is www (dot) kingsolarproducts (dot) com. (Sorry for this weird format but this BBS won't let me post url's since I am a new user.)
Posted by sonixi, 06-02-2008, 12:11 PM
FYI, there are two floors in the affected data center. More than 90% of the servers on floor #2 are back online and working. If your site is not working, then the server you are on is probably on floor #1. The last I heard, they expect to power up floor #1 servers later this evening. I know this is terrible for all of you, but do realize that this was an "explosion" with a fire. The fact that the majority of servers in this data center are back online within 36 hours is a minor miracle. I have been in this business for 11 years. This could have been worse-- much worse.
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 12:17 PM
You can reach lowest at these numbers - 800-762-4913 or 503-579-7973
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-02-2008, 12:21 PM
They are not answering as of an hour ago. Both #'s will forward you to voice mail. I was hoping that maybe they would have put a message on VM updating clients.. Nope.. No information from LH yet..
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 12:21 PM
The last update stated "Late" this evening. Since they are in the central time zone that pretty screws those in the east. Their track record for accurate times is terrible with this. According to an earlier post there will be issues through next weekend. It is terrible and there appears it be no injuries, so that part is good. As for the rest, I disagree. No company should be leaving customers uninformed as LH customers have been. There has been 1 post here from a LH rep since they were made aware of the situation. Combine this with LH refusal until this to supply customers with a phone number speaks volumes. Accidents such as this happen, can't be avoided. That's fine. Not respecting your customer or supplying them with information is inexcusable.
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 12:23 PM
So now they have bailed on the phone calls too. Yep, impressive CS being exhibited here.
Posted by svtb15, 06-02-2008, 12:35 PM
I still cant even get to lowesthosting main page.. no notifications at all.. I have had numerous outages over the past 4 years lasting up to a half a day but nothing like this.. the tech support there is alwys very courteous and prompt but the outages are a pain when trying to get important email ect. my site is still not up either.. i have called the numbers posted here and no one answers i suppose they are on scramble mode.. or just kicking back drinking a beer until the electricians get their part of the deal done... ughhh. what a pain.. i am thinking of jumping ship after this one...
Posted by goldengirl, 06-02-2008, 12:37 PM
Just to make this pill a little more bitter to swallow, I learned today that lowesthosting "took over" domain names registered through Dotregistrar years go, like mine was. Then they were all transferred to MyDomain and now my domain login information is invalid. So I can't get it changed until the MyDomain guy who knows the history here comes in today at noon PST. When I mentioned to the assistant at MyDomain that I was a lowesthosting customer, she kind of groaned...then indicated that the two companies had not been in communication for 7+ months. I've used lowesthosting for many years, and up until now my only gripe has been the moderately inefficient email system. But this entire situation is causing me concern....I just have to think there was a better way to handle the incident itself, and the subsequent communication.
Posted by Janie, 06-02-2008, 12:42 PM
So, if I understand what all this means, If I wanted to take my webs and get a new domain host today, it would not be possible to get visibility because I could not update the DNS? This is killing me. I've been fielding calls all morning from clients. "Where'd you go"...
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 12:56 PM
Correct. You can get set-up at a new hosting service but nobody would be able to find you until you can either transfer the domain name over or at least point the DNS settings to the new server. It's called being hung out to dry and we certainly have been.
Posted by goldengirl, 06-02-2008, 12:59 PM
I guess it depends on when you registered your domain, and with whom. As luck would have it, I did mine with Dotregistrar, and lowesthosting bought them and took over all those domain names. So now my domain login information is invalid. Now I have the triple whammy of no website, no email, and no way to change hosts. ....yet. When my representative from the company who took those domains over (MyDomain) gets there today - he knows the history of this debacle - he is supposedly going to take care of it and give my site back its independence. Viva La Revolucion.
Posted by goldengirl, 06-02-2008, 01:01 PM
Well that in itself is no big deal...as long as you can log into your DOMAIN account, through whomever holds that. Then just change your DNS so it points to a new server (i.e. DNS1.GODADDY.COM for example) Mine just happened to be held by a company that lowesthosting bought or took over - Dotregistrar.
Posted by sonixi, 06-02-2008, 01:03 PM
I was not defending them in this regard. I agree that communication to the customers is vitally important during an emergency. Agreed.
Posted by HostingBig, 06-02-2008, 01:30 PM
don't worry we are taking plenty of their calls as we operate as we have a similar domain
Posted by arrington, 06-02-2008, 01:49 PM
So the ETA on being up and running is, now, if you are on the 2nd floor. Since none of my pages or e-mails are up, I assume I am on the 1st floor and thus will be up this evening Central Standard Time. Is this correct?
Posted by page1graphics, 06-02-2008, 01:52 PM
who is taking plenty of calls? LH? not mine? why don't you have a voice mail with an updated explanation or something? you are going to lose bigtime when we all get our sites and domains back online...too bad so sad!
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 02:18 PM
I just got off the phone with MYDomain. The rep said that even they cannot get Lowest Hosting to return their calls. He also said that there is no way they can change the nameserver (DNS) without Lowest Hosting being involved. I've read posts here that say, "I'm thinking about switching to another hosting company." THINKING?? I don't need to think about anything. I'm leaving as soon as it is possible. Of course, with Lowest Hosting, that could be weeks from now.
Posted by HostingBig, 06-02-2008, 02:25 PM
lowesthosting is not active on these forums they do not have phone support in a previews post I mentioned since lowesthoting is down their customers are calling us (but we can not do anything for them )
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 02:27 PM
Can someone please post the gmail address for Lowest Hosting? Someone got their attention that way yesterday.
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 02:28 PM
Correct, LH has said they are on the first floor. Also correct that theplanet says they will not have that running until tonight central time. If the timeline from the 2nd floor was any indication I do not have any confidence that a fix is still not days away.
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 02:33 PM
They posted to this site yesterday in this thread, read post #49. Lowest does take phone calls as I was given a contact number by the manager yesterday. Since then they have bailed out of the phone calls and simply put an answering machine on. 800-762-4913 Give them a call
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-02-2008, 02:35 PM
We apologize for the delay in reply. Most clients have been calling and this email is normally only used as an off network emergency access to our domain for updating dns. There was a major power outage in one of the data centers where we maintain many of our servers in this case the H1 data center in houston. Although we own our servers and have our own datacenter staff we lease access in the datacenter to supply our access poin to the internet backbones (level 3, savis etc) and to provide us with power for our server racks. The Datacenter has N+1 redundancy and does have UPS battery backup and Backup generator capability but a completely unusual occurance happened where the main Stepdown power transformer shorted resulting in an explostion and small fire in the electrical interface room. Normally when Power goes out the network swiching swiches over to the UPS which is a short term 2 hour battery system while the backup generators go online and are cut into the master power buss. The problem was that the explosion destroyed the Power panels where the generators connect to the main power busses. This outage effected not only Lowesthostings servers but 40 other major hosts and over 9000 servers so it was a major unexpected outage. The good news is the new Transformer has finally been aquired and is being installed and we are told it will be tested over the next few hours and various switches & routers brought back online and tested before power is sequenced to our server bank so it should not be more than this evening after that your server comes back online. Once power is back, your server and all data will come online as before. Anyones mail server that has attempted to send you emails during the outage window will automatically attempt redelivery so you may get a few 36 hour old emails but none will be lost. Our main Lowesthosting.com website does have an emergency backup server in our other Datacenter but it takes 24 hours for that to propagate so our main customer portal has been down which has frustrated our staff and many cleints for our inability to post news or reply to tickets during the propagation to our emergency server. We apologize for this window where you were unable to reach us and although we have never had a catastrophic outage in 8 years and pride ourselves on average a 99.84% cleint server uptime we will be installing a new high availability cluster on our main website so should we ever have a major outage our website and news and ticketing system would not go down for even a minute. We realize the problem is not that the server is down so much as people not being able to reach our website but that is purely due to the dns propgation delay for the cut over to our emergency backup server. To make matters worse many people did not write down our phone number and did not know how to reach us. For future reference our main number is 800-762-4913 and our billing number is 503-579-7973 You should know that we not only backup all of your data in our data center but maintain an emergency archival copy off network so we really do maintain the integrity of your data. Again we apologize for any inconvenience. Its been a long difficult weekend for our staff as well and we will be posting a full story and pictures on our website shortly. The servers will be back up in a few hours. Our eta from the data center is between 5pm-9pm. We want to thank you so much for your patience and understanding, and we know how difficult this situation is. Thank you for bearing with us! Regards, Ray Alin Assistant Manager Lowesthosting.com lowesthosting@gmail.com Quoted by LH To make matters worse many people did not write down our phone number and did not know how to reach us. For future reference our main number is 800-762-4913 and our billing number is 503-579-7973 That is bull....Their Telephone # is like finding a needle in a haystack. If they would have listed that on their WHOIS site and not an incorrect fax number for all of us to call, we all might not be so upset.. LH..Don't make it our fault about the telephone # that you won't even answer now or return calls!!!
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 03:24 PM
What email address did you write to? Edited.... Oops! I should have read the rest of your post. I see now that it's: lowesthosting@gmail.com
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 03:31 PM
Latest updates from The Planet service-update.theplanet.com
Posted by goldengirl, 06-02-2008, 03:39 PM
I don't see how this can legally be the case, although you can bet I'm on hold right now with MyDomain to find out... I am the ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACT for MY website. That means it's mine, mine, mine. Now I''m starting to get a lil' mad.
Posted by skielly, 06-02-2008, 03:47 PM
All 12 of my websites hosted by LH are now back online!! And the lowesthosting.com site appears to be up and running. YEAH!!!!
Posted by dneshat, 06-02-2008, 03:55 PM
Ray (Lowest Hosting Asst Manager), You posted a notice that you would be up in 2-4 hours some time 5-6 hours before 1 PM pacific time. Still no servers and no other update from the company. Why hasn't a senior manager or officer of the company posted any updates? Do you know what is going on, are you working on it, do you know what you are doing? Did something else happen that you are not sharing? You are going to be 1/2 the company you were, you cannot treat customers that way, there are too many choices in your business today. LH lack of communication will kill that company in my opinion, I will find another company and request a refund, maybe contact a class action attorney and help the process along for other customers as well.
Posted by als12, 06-02-2008, 04:00 PM
well my web page is up but my email is still down. FYI. Wayne
Posted by goldengirl, 06-02-2008, 04:05 PM
Well my email & website are both up. Yay! I still need to resolve the domain ownership/DNS issue though. I've been loyal to lowesthosting and I appreciate what a pain in the electronic a** this must have been for them.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-02-2008, 04:17 PM
Mine Too... As it was a PITA for us to...
Posted by Linda Anne, 06-02-2008, 04:18 PM
Monday, June 02 2008, @ 1:16 PM (-0800 GMT) I have 5 webs. Becuz of wat happened, I've realized that the first 4 to come UP earlier, at 5:14 AM, had to be on an upper floor. One site did NOT, so it must have been downstairs. It just came UP a few minutes ago. Hee am I happy to see www DOT girlzrus dot com again!! hahahah
Posted by goldengirl, 06-02-2008, 04:32 PM
It will be a while before I ask LH to make the DNS switch. I have a feeling they're going to be a tad busy.
Posted by sonixi, 06-02-2008, 04:39 PM
It's good that everyone is happy, but realize that your sites are up and on "generator" power. They have not yet restored permanent electrical power to the datacenter. From what I have heard, the first floor was most affected so restoring full electrical power may take longer for the first floor servers. Good luck to all of you.
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 05:08 PM
I'm still waiting for my largest to return.
Posted by Janie, 06-02-2008, 05:13 PM
Oh thank goodness we are up here too. Nice having you all to commiserate with, and glad to have found you during the 'storm.' Jane
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 05:20 PM
servers 20 and 21 are still down.
Posted by Rodeo_Gal, 06-02-2008, 05:28 PM
Hello: Use this link to read the latest reports on how the progress is going to restore web services. I have 10 sites with LH, At this time I'm not going to jump to conclusions that LH is out of business! service-update.theplanet.com/
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 05:43 PM
I've accessed my control panel and domain manager. I'll be switching over to another host. I've got my main web site domain name registered with GoDaddy, others with 1and1.com. 1and1 has great customer service. Almost no wait time to speak to a human! My video comments here: FreeGabMail.com/AV/Viewer.html?SID=n9q3RFjkSaXJ0HiJ Take care, Paul
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 07:19 PM
OK, 48 hours+ into this and some of their servers are still down with nobody answering (still) at lowesthosting. I especially enjoy the little message on their status page stating a problem occured yesterday (june 1) at 7pm. Maybe nobody told them the problem happened over 24 hours prior to that. Also, they spin what happened and then have the bravado to spoute their uptime! The last 6 times I have contacted their tech support to let them know their servers were not working they were unaware and then atteptem to tell me their servers were not actually down, but overloaded. I guess if there is power it is concidered uptime even if the customer can't actually reach the server. Way to go LH!!! Anyone know what state they are actually located in?
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 08:39 PM
From the LH website. What a load of crap. Unlike most discount hosts, Lowesthosting.com uses two separate geographically independent networks to separate our critical NS1 & NS2 name servers per RFC2182 3.1. Each dedicated name server is slaved and mirrored and uses fail-over monitoring to insure that your domain name will always point to your webserver regardless of network, router or critical path failure. Our web servers are all pentium grade 1ghz with 1gb ram and use 7200 rpm dual Raid hard drives to mirror your data real time and insure against hardware failure. To further safeguard your data , all webservers are backed up daily using compressed sequential disk archiving. This means we store a copy of all data and e-mail for 7 - 14 days so in the event of an emergency, we have a sizable safety window to retrieve critical data before the data is overwritten and the cycle repeats. Lowesthosting.com manages servers in two Network Operation Centers (NOCs) in Georgia and Texas to assist in load balancing and redundancy of service.
Posted by jimsz, 06-02-2008, 08:42 PM
OK, tried calling and emailing yet again and have been told by LH tech support that the sites are functioning, except of course LH's own status indicator shows they are not and ThePlanet.com says they are not and they don't know when they will be. But I was thrilled to learn that I should feel good because LH has a 99%+ uptime percentage! Is this how the passengers on the titanic felt as the ship went under when they were told "don't worry, up until now we have had a 100% success rate in crossing the Atlantic!" Can someone say Oregon Attorneys General office!
Posted by motherworld, 06-02-2008, 08:53 PM
I wish to express my affiliation with lowest hosting dot com and also my gratitude for their long term service, so many things could go wrong, a tornado could strike, I am certainly hanging in there past this experience. An explosion and fire is a big deal and I am grateful no one was hurt. My house is below a fragile dam, I could be washed away. Any of us could be run down by a truck. Who has any guarantees? Life is uncertain. The weather is not certain. Gratitude is the attitude. I shall not be part of any civil suit against this company, instead I am in awe that we are so blessed in our everyday lives with so many working even magical things. Glad I don't live in Baghdad. Peace.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-02-2008, 08:54 PM
And that folks about sums it all up!!! LMFAO!!!: roll2: I needed that!! I also wanted to say what a great group this has been!! Thanks everyone for keeping us posted on what you found out about LH!!
Posted by page1graphics, 06-02-2008, 09:07 PM
and of course it is the one who is the squeaky wheel...the most important one...
Posted by paullanger, 06-02-2008, 09:10 PM
I can't believe that anyone can be thankful for the monumentally bad service we've received from Lowest Hosting. Sure, anyone of us could be run down by a truck, but that didn't happen here. They had a fire in one of their (supposedly) two redundant sites. Then they ignored their customers' need for information. Lowest Hosting left us in the dark and they continue to do so. That is what is inexcusable.
Posted by sonixi, 06-02-2008, 10:45 PM
Aside from the (evidently) poor communication from LH, this could have and did happen to many web hosts who use the planet. If your site is critical to your business... why in hell are you using a company called "Low priced Hosting"? I mean... come on.
Posted by motherworld, 06-02-2008, 11:21 PM
I thought about this, after I posted that grateful one. I am a grateful person. I get through life by anchoring myself to that feeling, for survival! The reason this hasn't bugged me, to have hours of no email, is because I have two emails, and I don't use my lowesthosting.com given email for business. I use the other one, given by my DSL provider, my local phone company. They are RELIABLE and I can talk to them on the phone and dang it they even have a Kentucky accent (I live in KY). The reason I have no beef with lowest hosting is that they are so cheap! And they are nice in the support ticket game. I demand little. I just have my "hobby" website on this group, because I can handle my "casual" emails taking forever, for some mysterious reason. If I were to quit lowest hosting it wouldn't be over this fire issue. It would be because, I suspect they allow spammers to use the servers. I just have a hunch. Something about the port 25 thing. Can anybody educate me on this? Last edited by motherworld; 06-02-2008 at 11:27 PM. Reason: typo
Posted by jimsz, 06-03-2008, 06:41 AM
Let's see how grateful everyone is when they realize their sites have been down all night once again. Some of you are confusing two different situations. There is the outage and there is LH's response. The outage happened. It was not planned and it was reacted to by theplanet as quick as possible. Tens of thousands if not millions pay for the service and should expect some sort of redundancy as advertised. Though the planet has attempted to put spin on this situation they have kept their customers informed in a manner that is professional. Bad things happened, they explained and they are working on it. It stinks, but that's OK. On a grand scale of things to worry about for the end user, it's an inconvenience and it has been handled professionally. That's all one can ask. The second portion of this is LH's handling of the situation. Unprofessional in every way and that is what has me ticked. One post here from their management and then nothing as things went south for a longer period of time. Telling customers to use the phone number supplied when they have never until now supplied a phone number. Their non-answering phone numbers after two days of calling, once some of their servers came online yesterday their tech support replies to me stating everything is back and online and all my sites are functioning, except they were not. I have to point them to theplanet status page and their own server status page to point out that a number of their servers have not been back online yet and would not be (according to theplanet) for a good amount of time. What do I receive in return, an email touting 99%+ uptime. Well, to the people in life rafts watching the titanic sink, a previous 100% success rate for crossing the Atlantic meant little. I really have no issues with the outage, accidents happen. I have issues with LH's handling of the entire situation. Anyone that states they are thankful for the manner in which this was and continues to be handled obviously is willing to accept an absence of professionalism.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-03-2008, 07:00 AM
OK.. Anyone having the same problems here. 1. Any email sent during the outage has not been delivered. I know because I sent my self several to see if I would get them. I have not received a delivery confirmation receipt from the address I sent it from.. Are they are lost in Space?? 2. Went to LH site to see if MAYBE there was some kind of update from them. Nothing, and could not get into the client area. 3. Could not get into my help account or client area - timed out! 4. I have not received an email or phone call regarding any updates since the basic one they sent out??? WTF!!! And Jimsz - Your summed it up!! "I really have no issues with the outage, accidents happen. I have issues with LH's handling of the entire situation." The lack of communication from LH is sickening!!! Last edited by iamislandgirl; 06-03-2008 at 07:05 AM.
Posted by jimsz, 06-03-2008, 07:14 AM
Possibly yes. Since all the servers were (are) down, there is probably nothing spooling the incoming mail and are simply bouncing them back where they may be held for a period of time when another attempt will be made. Some of my sites were up briefly last night and at that time I had not received much of the email i should have. It is possible the servers are simply behind in processing it. If the servers are back on today maybe we will find out. They have been down again all night as are all mysites on mutiple servers. theplanet has been issuing updates and they went down (partially) again last night.
Posted by goldengirl, 06-03-2008, 08:27 AM
no service this morning, once again. i just want my damn domain back. i have no idea how LH got control of it. i did not authorize any transfer. can anybody tell me if there is an authoritative body that can help me get it back? i am administrative contact....i thought that meant it was MINE?!!
Posted by jimsz, 06-03-2008, 09:14 AM
LH is setting up an info site at lowesthosting.blogspot.com I spoke with Ray a brief time ago. Last edited by jimsz; 06-03-2008 at 09:21 AM.
Posted by Linda Anne, 06-03-2008, 10:07 AM
Tuesday, June 03 2008, @ 7:03 AM (-0800 GMT) Hmmm. don't understand? Of the 5 domains I have, 4 were back up at 5:13 AM yesterday. The 5th one, only 7 weeks old, did not come up till around 5:15 PM yesterday. Becuz of this I'm thinking my new one was on their 1st floor, where all the damage happened? If mine is up, why aren't yours? I'm very sorry !!
Posted by Sparrow-Sean, 06-03-2008, 10:09 AM
Most of them are slowly coming backup. Please do allow some alternative time as not all hosts are back from this event.
Posted by jimsz, 06-03-2008, 10:35 AM
I see or read nothing to indicate anything is back up.
Posted by jimsz, 06-03-2008, 11:35 AM
Well, 5 hours after LH started their blog there are no updates and they are still down. Since theplanet has had 5 updates since then I guess LH does not wish to spread bad news. The servers are still down and there is no eta on when they will be back.
Posted by RichPasco, 06-03-2008, 11:42 AM
It's now Tuesday morning. I got an e-mail from Ray Alin yesterday telling me that my site was back up. However it's not working today, gives "domain not found" and lowesthosting.com times out. E-mail to support@lowesthosting.com generates "Warning: Cannot be delivered...."
Posted by jimsz, 06-03-2008, 11:48 AM
Rich LowestHosting is down again and there is no ETA for services to be restored. LH has a one post blog at lowesthosting.blogspot.com though it has not been updated in 5 hours even though the planet has had nearly half a dozen updates (none of them good) since that time.
Posted by page1graphics, 06-03-2008, 01:55 PM
I can't get an email, I can't get a return phone call. I am beginning to think Lowesthosting really could care less. My faith in their good word is now gone!
Posted by paullanger, 06-03-2008, 02:01 PM
Try support@lowesthosting.com or admin@lowesthosting.com
Posted by page1graphics, 06-03-2008, 02:32 PM
I already had those emails I am the adminstrator of all 6 accounts that I have with lowest hosting...I have emailed support and admin...gotten no reply whatsoever...gave up on the phone that is just plain annoying.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-03-2008, 02:43 PM
try.. lowesthosting@gmail.com
Posted by BrevardFLRealtor, 06-03-2008, 04:21 PM
both of my sites were up for a brief time, yesterday and some of today. Just looked and both sites are down AGAIN!!! This is horrible. Well I said that if it goes back down again, we are switching. OKAY!!!
Posted by jimsz, 06-03-2008, 04:25 PM
As of this time, 9 of LH servers are still down, almost 50%. LH's blog has been useless as it was 5 hours between updates, while TP had many updates. Timely it's not. It's now gone beyond comical.
Posted by paullanger, 06-03-2008, 05:06 PM
The latest update from LH can be found here: lowesthosting.blogspot.com/2008/06/new-replacement-generator-for-failed.html
Posted by jimsz, 06-03-2008, 05:23 PM
I've lost all confidence in them at this point. For my sites that are up I have already begun complete backups and by Thursday will begin the migration off of their site.
Posted by wgriffin4, 06-03-2008, 05:30 PM
I too am moving all my sites from LH to another hosting provider. There is a lesson to be learned from this story....you get what you pay for!....I have learned my lesson and will pay for better hosting. Keeping customers in the dark with no fail over plan is inexcusable. Good Bye LH!
Posted by paullanger, 06-03-2008, 06:35 PM
I've completed the switch of my primary site and email accounts. It took about 24 hours from the time I first regained access to my Domain Manager for the switch to be complete. Even before that, I went to 1and1.com to add my LH domain as an External Domain to my 1and1 hosting package. An external domain is one that is registered somewhere other than 1and1.com. They set everything up and just waited for me to regain access to the LH Domain Manager so I could change my DNS. Once I changed the DNS, I only had to wait for the new nameserver information to propagate through the Internet. I was told it could take from 24 to 72 hours. It completed in 24 hours. 1and1.com is great. I never have to wait more than a few minutes to speak to a human. The tech support people are knowledgeable and patient. I never detect even a bit of impatience in their voices even though I might ask the same question two or three ways so I can be sure I understand the situation. They will also just as patiently follow me step-by-step as I do on screen (with them on the phone) what I probably could do without them if I took the time to read the instructions in advance. I also have sites hosted by GoDaddy, but my partner is the one who deals with those. He likes GoDaddy a lot. For my dedicated hosting I use Fullcontrol.net. They are really, really good. The tech's know me by name and will do almost anything I need, from rebooting my hardware, to installing software, or setting up special file transfers between my different companies' hardware even though they're not connected. Lesson learned: I will call all these three companies to discuss how they are protecting their customers from this exact situation and others like it. If I don't get an answer I like, I will look for someone else. Good luck everyone. Take care, Paul
Posted by jimsz, 06-03-2008, 06:47 PM
Well LH strikes again. Their status indicator says everyone is online except half my domains (on various servers) and email is still down. Quality service there LH. Once I can once again gain access my migration will begin once again. as usual nobody answers the phones.
Posted by Sour Grapes, 06-03-2008, 06:59 PM
My sites are still down and I can not locate contact info. Could someone help?
Posted by wgriffin4, 06-03-2008, 07:33 PM
The following LH servers are still down. Server 1002-20 (1002-20.lowesthosting.com) Server 1002-21 (1002-21.lowesthosting.com)
Posted by jimsz, 06-03-2008, 09:50 PM
OK, LH has hit being down for 76 hours! Attaboy LH! The fact that two servers have been down since sunday is something I want you to tout in your next 99.2% uptime post!
Posted by jimsz, 06-04-2008, 07:58 AM
It appears that finally after 76+ hours LH is back up and running. True to form, in there massive run-on paragraph LH touts their uptime! Doesn't knowing they claim 99% uptime just make you warm and fuzzy to be able to do business with them? We'll see if they make the changes they claim they will be making. However, my migration has already begun.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-04-2008, 08:41 AM
I still have not received any emails that were sent during the outage?? How about all of you?? My site has been up about 24 hrs, still no emails for that time period. LH said we wouldn't lose any of these???
Posted by jimsz, 06-04-2008, 09:39 AM
I have received very few.
Posted by RichPasco, 06-04-2008, 10:02 AM
Mails sent during an outage are normally held by the originating (or intermediate) servers attempting to transfer them to the destination servers, and re-tried periodically. How often the transfer is re-tried, and for how long, is set by the policies at the originating server. For example, one policy might be to re-try every four hours until the message is a week old, after which it is bounced back to the sender with a failure cover. If the above works as designed, such mail is delayed but not lost: it is either delivered or returned. Mail would be lost only if it were successfully transferred to a server which never returned on-line to complete the delivery, but that is not the case here.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-04-2008, 10:04 AM
Thanks Rich...
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-04-2008, 10:06 AM
Thanks Rich for explaining how that works... ETS: Did you all get the email sent by LH this morning?? If not I will post it here..
Posted by sonixi, 06-04-2008, 10:22 AM
Remember folks... the entire datacenter is on generator power. Don't get comfortable. This incident is not yet fully resolved. Do take the time to backup your data.
Posted by ayksolutions, 06-04-2008, 10:27 AM
Isn't this related to the TP outage? If that is the case, you can't really expect LH to do anything until TP fixes the issue. They should keep everyone posted however.
Posted by kdkrone, 06-04-2008, 03:00 PM
I received many emails once my particular server at LH was up and running. However, this AM, I am able to neither send nor receive emails again...
Posted by sonixi, 06-04-2008, 03:33 PM
Tell lowesthost support they need to change their server resolver IPs. It sounds like they are still using EV1/ThePlanet dns in their server resolver file (In Linux... /etc/resolv.conf ). They can find suggestions of different dns resolver IPs in the main Planet Down thread.
Posted by jimsz, 06-04-2008, 03:57 PM
You have to hand it to LH. They almost made it 18 hours straight with one of my sites uptime! Way to go! That's outstanding! Web, ftp and mail are down. Two other servers are overloaded.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-05-2008, 08:33 AM
I still have not received any emails during LH Down time. I did not get any returned either, as I sent my self several of them to my LH webmail from a working email system. They all seem to have vanished. None returned, none delivered. Wondering if any of you received any of the "lost" emails that are from the outage time.??
Posted by kdkrone, 06-05-2008, 09:44 AM
I received about the same number of emails as usual once I was up. It even included standard daily emails such as a newsletter from dealnews.com. KK
Posted by Sparrow-Sean, 06-05-2008, 09:47 AM
Massive Thread I Must Say... By the looks of things with all the issues people are going to be moving even though they are back online. I am sure it was not entirely lowerhostings fault! But who am I to speculate. Hope everyone gets things sorted out Good Luck to all
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-05-2008, 10:27 AM
BUT have you received emails that are dated from the outage time.. I am receiving current emails, but lost all the ones from when they were down for 4 days..
Posted by Sparrow-Sean, 06-05-2008, 10:29 AM
Try Contacting Lowerhosting in regards to this, See what they have to say. If you cannot reach them, Try a Number if they have one. Just keep trying and see if you get anywhere. If you are getting the new emails now, I dont think you will receive old ones. Unless maybe they are on hold for some reason. But I could not imagine so, if the server is backup you should of have got all emails. So try Contacting Lowerhosting.
Posted by jimsz, 06-05-2008, 11:05 AM
The initial problem was not LH's fault at all. even for theplanet, sometimes things just happen and you are caught unprepared, that's life. What has people (me!) ticked is the handling of the situation on LH's part. It took until Monday for any word from LH, then it was sparse. Even after setting up a site to give updates - very few were given. The problems continued with downtime on some servers until Tuesday evening. What does LH then make sure they point out - their uptime! As I said before that's like telling people rowing around the north atlantic that they have little to whine about because until their ship sank, Cunard had a 100% safety record. Uptimes mean little if people can't access their server. Yesterday a LH server went down for 3 or more hours. I filed the usual tech-ticket and after several hours it was still down, I called, after many calls I finally reached someone and the gentleman then proceeded to tell me it was my connection/location but not their server. I then informed him that his own status screen said it was down. Then it was "it's only been down less than an hour". I told him to look at my tech-ticket and note the time and it was down prior to that. he spent 15 minutes talking at how it was probably on my end where the problem was, their uptime of 99%+, etc and the bonus was when he listed the positives of all we get for the cost of $4.95 a month I suggested he look at the tech tickets for a couple specific servers to see the terrible connectivity time as even paying $4.95 a month is not worth it if a site is unavailable. I;ve have already begun the steps to migrate off LH. Any hosting site I have looked at has the same mix of positive reviews and those hating it. My criteria is moving to a hosting site that has current or near current software on their servers and not amazingly out of date. A company that I can contact and not one that hides where they are, or refuses until now to divulge their phone numbers (Yes LH your people have refused dozens of requests to be able to speak with someone). LH has not learned from this that they need to LISTEN to their customers not talk at them. As for the email question, if you have not gotten "old" email by now from the time of the outage, it is probably gone for good. I received very few messages from those 4 days they were down. Last edited by jimsz; 06-05-2008 at 11:08 AM.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-05-2008, 07:25 PM
This is what I was told... The mails sent during the down time will only reach you if the sending mail servers attempted a retry after the server came back online. Since the server down time was less than a typical sending servers give- up time, there was a good probability that your mails would be delivered when your server came back online. If you suspect any of your mails were not delivered, ask your contacts to re-send the mail. Hope this helps. Regards, Technical Support Lowesthosting.com How can I email contacts if I do not who they are... Just in case any of you are having the same problems getting all your emails..
Posted by lindsaycoats, 06-06-2008, 10:53 AM
The lowest hosting site is again down as are all of my websites. Anyone have any news? The blog has not been updated since yesterday. My clients have all been very patient, but I fear ANOTHER outage will be the last straw.
Posted by Sparrow-Sean, 06-06-2008, 10:55 AM
Yes i just get a blank screen...! Must be down again... Poor Poor Hosting Site.
Posted by jimsz, 06-06-2008, 11:08 AM
The main help.lowesthosting.com status page is down as well. A couple hours ago some servers and email were down and I did open a ticket. Most of my sites are working except for those on server 16. Server 16 was running for a little while but mysql was down so my sites were down. I think with the outage a few days ago people are really going to realize the amount of downtime LH experiences on a daily basis. Though it does not affect their "uptime" average I was told because the servers are technically running and just can't be connected to for one reason or the other. What servers are your sites on? I have sites on servers 3, 16, 20, 26 and some others which I don't remember the number.
Posted by Sparrow-Sean, 06-06-2008, 11:11 AM
Hmmm, Does anyone get any type of error when accessing Lowerhosting.com? I am not a Customer of theirs, though, I am just getting a Blank White Page!
Posted by jimsz, 06-06-2008, 11:24 AM
eventually I receive a time out error
Posted by Sparrow-Sean, 06-06-2008, 11:26 AM
Using FireFox it loads and stops. A white Page appears with Lowehosting.com still left in the address bar. I am not sure to what is happening, Hope it gets resolved soon.
Posted by iamislandgirl, 06-06-2008, 12:06 PM
Timed Out!! UUUGGGHHHHHHH.. This is unacceptable. So is the answer about emails... Contact you people so the can contact you!!!
Posted by vjwebb, 06-06-2008, 12:15 PM
The generator for phase one failed and the new backup gen was installed. Check the blog for the whole story. lowesthosting.blogspot.com
Posted by jimsz, 06-06-2008, 01:23 PM
Except LH was having issues prior to that so it is not all due to ThePlanet having problems again.
Posted by als12, 08-13-2008, 09:53 PM
has lowesthosting gone down again?
Posted by jimsz, 08-13-2008, 09:57 PM
None of my domains that still remain there are responding. Glad I switched more than half of them! Over the next month the remaining ones will be out of there too! Last edited by jimsz; 08-13-2008 at 10:02 PM.


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