TRY CLEANING UP OR MOVE ON?
Alright, so you're runnin' a web hostin' business, things are goin' great, and then suddenly, disaster strikes. Your server gets hacked, accounts get wiped out, and you're in damage control mode. To make matters worse, your main domain's got a crappy rep on all the major web hostin' forums and communities. So, what's the plan, man? How do you recover from this kinda disaster?
- Try to clean up the reputation. (It is difficult but possible)
- Let the old domain drop. Buy a new domain and start fresh(easy route but you lose all the existing customers.)
I am asking this question because there are so many webhosting companies created and dumped everyday.
Comments
Short answer - Get out and stay out.
If someone is not capable of running a service with full backups and a disaster recovery plan then they are bound to fail.
Don't risk the companies and your reputation (it takes a VERY long time to recover). Hosting should not be seen as a get rich quick scheme.
The easy way is to drop and create something new. If you are known for the hosting business, the rep will follow you as a person. The new domain/company will probably get an even worse reputation when people find out who's behind it.
What would gain kudos in the LES world if you rebuild while keeping transparent about the situation.
At least if you are known for helping others when they are in trouble.
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg
Let's say, hypothetically, you're runnin' a burger joint and a customer discovers a cockroach in one of your patties. They snap a pic and share it on social media, and suddenly it's goin' viral. In a situation like this, it's probably best to shut down the shop and start fresh at a new location with a new brand identity. This principle applies to any business - when you hit rock bottom, sometimes it's better to cut your losses and start over with a clean slate.
Sure, but especially in the low end hosting market you will get found out and linked to your previous trainwreck, and your reputation will be far more tainted than if you tried to fix what was broken instead of running away and reappearing wearing a disguise.
If a server gets hacked you wipe it clean and break out the backups. We are talking downtime at tops a few hours here, this should not have any major effect on your domains reputation as long as you handled it professionally.
A lot of lowend hosts here have had disasters and they are still running with a rock-solid reputation.
I mean, sure you can drop a domain name.
But like.. you name is in the company register. It's not that hard to figure out who runs the new hosting business.
So, you have to do the clean up work in any case.
do we talk about charity host?
Any person worth a damned would try to make things right before doing anything else. Getting another domain is the cowards way out and tells me they did not take things seriously, or they planned to run an exit scam anyways.
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I think it matters a lot what really happened.
If a provider gets hacked but handles it in a professional manner, I would say there is very little damage done. Full disclosure, wipe the server and restore from backup, compensate complaining customers for the few hours of downtime and just continue. I would even dare to say that correctly handled such an event could even strengthen a providers reputation. Everybody can get hacked, crash a server or lose data, how you handle it is what makes a difference.
But if it's a case of provider fuckup it's a different thing. There have been a lot of such cases, like the 22k crypto thing, the scanning of users pron, various deadpools etc, where providers fuck up all by themselves. Such things are harder to clean up, even if you drop the domain and change names on everything people will still remember who did what. The guy from Alpharacks somewhat pulled it off, the new business seems to work well but a lot of people still refuse to do business with him and I even think he is banned from here, right? Those kind of things stick forever, dropping a domain will not save you.
Just stay away from the niche. There is standards and procedures. If you cut corners, you are not up to the game and should be voided to host any production data.
Unless you aknowledge that customers data is precious - than start again from clean sleve. Sell asn, drop previous dc. Start fresh.