Earlier today we announced that we were selling our shared webhosting services to Hostopia.
This announcement will not affect the vast majority of our Domain Direct, NetIdentity or ItsYourDomain customers. This announcement will also not impact our Trellix or Blogware customers. If you are using Domain Direct Hosting, NetIdentity Hosting or Sitebuilder or our IYD Hosting or Sitebuilder tools, this announcement will affect your services with us.
I have already posted some detail over at the Tucows company blog, but I wanted to provide some further detail for our retail hosting customers who services will be changing in the coming months.
We believe that it is extremely important for us to be able to provide world-class quality for all of the services we offer. By examining the market, seeking feedback from customers like yourself, and discussing our strengths and weaknesses internally, one thing became clear. In order to provide world-class quality for all of the services we offer, we must simplify our service offerings.
Many of our competitors attempt to provide a “one-stop internet services shopping experience”. We call this “the Walmart way”. We believe that we have a much higher chance at succeeding by doing very few things extremely well for our clients. You could call this “the boutique approach”. Our goal is to help our customers use their domain names and email addresses with the great services that other companies are already providing. In other words, rather than trying to compete with companies like Hostopia to offer better hosting services that they do, we are going to focus on making sure that our products work better with their great services than any other provider does.
WHAT WILL CHANGE WITH MY ACCOUNT?
Nothing will happen immediately. In the next few days, Hostopia will be contacting specific customers and providing them with the exact details of the transition to Hostopia. For some clients, the transition will be transparent. Others will be upgraded to vastly superior services at no extra charge. We expect that the transition will be fully completed by the end of July, 2008. Until you fully transition, your billing relationship will remain with Tucows. At no time will your web site stop operating.
WHEN WILL THIS HAPPEN?
Hostopia will be completed the transition of all accounts by the end of July, 2008. Most of this work will happen in early May, 2008. You will be specifically notified when your specific account will be transferring from Tucows to Hostopia.
I HAVE MORE THAN ONE ACCOUNT WITH TUCOWS. WILL THEY ALL MOVE TO HOSTOPIA?
No. Only those accounts that have hosting associated with them will be transitioned to Hostopia.
WHO DO I CONTACT IF I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS?
Until your account is transitioned to Hostopia, you can continue to use our Customer Service Center (http://help.domaindirect.com) to get answers to all of your hosting or transition related questions. You will receive new customer service contact information from Hostopia as part of the transition package that they are sending out.
Thank you for your patronage and support over the years. This has been a difficult decision for us, but we truly believe that this option will allow us to ensure that all of our clients receive the best possible service in the future.
