Hosting.com Migration Update

This is an update on the A2Hosting -> hosting.com migration on Wednesday 7 May.

It has now been a week since the brand change and we’d like to update on you various areas where things have been updated.

• On the client area, we continue to make user interface improvements. We have made some improvements to setup procedures for new services, as well as some bug fixes. We have added a feedback form to the homepage where we invite feedback for improvements we can make. Obviously the key aim here is to make it easier for you to manage your hosting and server environments within the panel, and once we have tackled usability feedback we will quickly move to those features next.
• On the import, historic invoices are currently importing and running through. We are bringing in a full history but this is approximately 5 million invoices so will take another ~60 hours to get the full data imported.
• We are making it easier to start live chats from the client area and get those live chats to the right team quickly.
• On support, our average response time is now under five minutes. We will get this down to under one minute.
• We have set up dedicated sales teams to better answer new enquiries and guide clients to the right service for them.

In the next few days we will be adding quicker login links to get into hosting accounts, websites and servers with less clicks.

This is an update on the migration process from A2Hosting to hosting.com

On our panel

• It’s now easier to manually renew upcoming services and renew expired services such as domain names
• We’ve cleared up messaging where delegates could view invoices but not pay them which was causing some confusion
• We’ve made a number of changes to login, password verification and delegate flows. You may have noticed some errors logging in and those are now better handled.
• We have a large list of feedback from users on user experience which are being worked through.

On communications and emails

• We’ve made some email improvements on new invoices and credit notes

On cPanel auto-login

• Users with managed virtual servers can now log in to cPanel and WHM directly. We are aware of a few servers where if the hostname does not point to the server the login will fail, and will add a workaround in the next few days which uses a generic alias hostname. The cPanel login details are stored as secrets on the service for those who need to login manually.
• Dedicated server auto-login is rolling out also
• Logins for all shared and reseller hosting accounts are working correctly.

We are aware of phishing attempts which were using A2Hosting and are now using hosting.com. Please note that you can log into your panel at my.hosting.com (or my.a2hosting.com) to view all invoices and services - do not use any other URL.

On support, wait times are equivalent to our last update and needs improvement particularly in technical support wait times. Our big issue with support right now is phone calls where we have a high abandonment rate. Since December we have massively reduced our phone abandonment rate and are adding more people to the team over the next few weeks. Apologies if you have needed to wait longer than usual - we handled 1,000 phone calls more than usual this week.

This is an update on the migration process from A2Hosting to hosting.com.

As you know we changed our website and we also changed the client portal. This is a big migration with hundreds of thousands of services, so we wanted to give an update on things that are still underway, and also give an update on current support times.

All services and payment methods and accounts and delegates are fully migrated. The following changes are underway in the client panel

• Historic invoices are being imported. This may take a few days due to the volume of invoices to add. These are references of previous payments
• Resolved: On managed virtual servers, there are errors with using the interface to log into cPanel or WHM. The username and password are stored in the product secrets so you can log in with those credentials, but the auto-login errors.
• In progress: Similarly on managed dedicated servers, a solution for logging in to cPanel/WHM will be released shortly. Credentials to login are also stored as secrets.
• Many user interface improvements to make things more intuitive based on customer feedback.
• We have a small number of shared and reseller accounts (~200) where the auto login to WHM is not working, this is being fixed today. (resolved)

On emailing, we have had feedback that our invoice emails have been a bit trigger-happy. We historically sent invoices 3 days before they were due, whereas we now send 14 days in advance so that people paying via slower payment methods (or with slower approval processes) have more time to organise payment. Although we send the invoices slightly further in advance now, the due date remains the same. Sorry for the confusion - we have updated the template wording to be clearer.

On support volume, we have had delayed responses during the transition and are still not where we like to be. As of right now we have:

• Instant responses on live chat in all departments
• ~10 minute responses on billing tickets
• Triaged ~1hr responses on sales, domains, trust and safety
• Migrations started within 1 hour.
• Restorations of old terminated accounts are handled within 4 hours.
• However technical support tickets are currently operating on a slower schedule with up to a 24 hour response. Some escalated tickets have gone to senior engineers for further debugging. We are triaging more urgent issues where possible and the support queue is dropping quickly. Our aim is to get all ticket first responses down to under 1 hour with high quality technical responses.
• Phone wait times and abandonment rate is unfortunately unacceptably high, although it has historically been high for the last six months. In May we have a new dedicated phone support team starting who will be live by the end of May. When up and running we will pick up all calls within 2 minutes.

We have our team of account managers reach out to larger clients and they will continue to do so and give them a direct point of contact. We also have a VIP support team now live.

On products and feedback

• Dedicated servers have been added again to the hosting.com website. Dedicated servers will be a big part of our offering and we will be able to offer them in 10+ global locations as with all other hosting products.
• Existing customers can continue to use old plans and certainly in the short to medium term move between old style A2Hosting plans and billing cycles.
• We have made changes to some common support issues causing high support load and frustration for customers including working with the Imunify360 team to reduce false positive blocks, and lengthening the time before accounts are terminated after expiry to ensure customers can reactivate without waiting for restorations.

We will post a further update on Friday with the status on all of the above and will continue to publicly post ticket and support response times.

Thank you to all customers for your patience in this transition,