Last week we had to disable the referral system due to some… well… abuse. We have re-opened the referral system and once again you can refer your friends for a one time credit of 50% of what they pay. The person you refer must be with us for 30 days before you can cash out your credit.

New Rule: No person can refer themselves for a credit. Anyone found to have two accounts with us will not receive a referral credit if it came from themselves.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been getting a lot of emails from people who have noticed our site looks different every once in a while. It’s true. Depending on where you are or when you load our site (or where you found us), you might have noticed different designs. In fact, for the past 7 weeks we’ve been split testing over 10 custom designs to see which one performed best. Some of these designs also had a waiting list link for plans we don’t normally advertise (again, just us split testing different plans).

Due to the amount of questions this caused, I decided to put up this blog so my staff can simply link to it if they get any more questions. And yes, we have picked a new design that will go live sometime next month… and we are also making a LOT of changes towards more un-managed services and prices. For the past two years we’ve had insanely low prices that barely made a profit, simply to build a customer base. However, now that we have people knocking on our door for service every single day, it’s time to move towards a more sustainable business model. But enough of that for now… more to come in the later weeks.

-Eric

I had hoped to have the refugee plan up by last week, but ran into some issues. In short, I wasn’t able to get it approved (business partner) for zensix.com, so I decided to put it up on .ORG instead. The plan can be found here: http://zensix.org/refugee.html

Yes, there is only one plan (and if you already have a lifetime plan, yes it is on the same server with the same IP). It’s a combination of all the cPanel plans that we offered last year, in fact, it offers more than most of the plans we ever offered (ssh access anyone?). All support and billing will be handled via .ORG, so if you have any questions, contact me over there, since the .com employees aren’t a part of this deal.

Again, this expires on the 21st, so if you’re with VPSoutlet and want to come back to ZenSix, do it now, because once the offer expires, it’s gone for good.

-Eric Reynolds

Instead of two posts, I’ll just split this one into parts and kill two birds with one stone…

Launch of ZenSix.ORG – Lifetime Shared Hosting Accounts!

As most people are aware, we discontinued our shared hosting plans on our main site (zensix.com) earlier last month. Because of the cost and organization issues that arise from hosting both shared accounts and vps accounts under the same umbrella, we needed to split them up. So I give you: zensix.ORG (use coupon code “60percent” to get your lifetime account for just $60)

There are some advantages and disadvantages to our lifetime hosting offer, but instead of me explaining them to you here, just visit the site. That’s kind of the point. ;)

An Update on the VPSoutlet cPanel Acquisition (from back in August)

Back when we first made the acquisition deal with VPSoutlet in August I thought it was going to be good for everyone. Instead of forcing a change to DirectAdmin on everyone, we could just let a trusting company take over and our clients could keep using cPanel and wouldn’t have any problems.

Unfortunately things don’t always go as planned. Over the past six weeks we have had numerous reports from previous clients who said VPSoutlet doesn’t respond to tickets. And after trying to contact them myself for over six weeks, they didn’t respond to me either.

Now I can understand how the clients who were part of the acquisition would be upset, but a lot of them think that we still have control over their accounts and ask us for help. The problem is we don’t have access to the accounts, servers, billing, etc… nothing. The acquisition was just that, an acquiring of the accounts. Meaning we no longer owned any part of them. They were transferred to a completely separate company.

So here’s what we are going to do. Sometime next week we will make an announcement on our Twitter page that will offer a VPSoutlet refugee plan. It will only be available for a few days, so if you know someone who might not read this blog and they are currently with VPSoutlet, let them know. But keep in mind that these plans will be on a DirectAdmin server, so you’ll have to be okay with making the switch. You’ll also be required to move your data yourself.

If anyone has any questions, contact support or sales and we will get back to you. And keep an eye on our Twitter page and this blog, because we’ll update them both when we have more details for you about the VPSoutlet refugee plan.

Due to the amount of new vps sign-ups we are receiving that then cancel a few days later with the reason, “didn’t like DirectAdmin”, we are changing our refund policy.

Normally cancellations are understandable, but DirectAdmin offers a fully functional demo, so you should be able to tell if you are going to like DirectAdmin or not before you sign up. Because setting up a new vps with DirectAdmin takes time and money on our part, we are changing the policy to make sure we aren’t losing money on someone who didn’t try a demo first.

Refunds: All VPS accounts are eligible for a refund at any time during the first 7 days of service. After 7 days, starting on the 8th day, no refunds will be issued for any reason. Full refunds are available if no DirectAdmin license is issued. A 50% refund is available if a DirectAdmin license is issued. The cost of an Installatron license is non-refundable. Clients who have their accounts suspended or terminated for violating the AUP are not entitled to a refund.

Thank you,

Eric Reynolds
ZenSix Owner

Today was a learning experience. As most of you on DA5 know, the server was offline for close to two hours this evening. The reason? Our datacenter unplugged the server due to several spam complaints. We’ve hopefully worked out a system with our datacenter where this would never have to happen again, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t. So I’m going to take this opportunity to clarify a few points from our terms of service.

1. If you spam from your account, you will be terminated.
2. If you spam from your account, you will be terminated.
3. And by terminated, we mean everything. Not just your single account. If you have 10 shared hosting accounts and 5 vps accounts with us, they will all be gone.

Sending even one unsolicited email can qualify as spam. And while you might not think one email is a big deal, it is. A single email can land our our server IP on a blacklist. Once on a blacklist it can take days/weeks/months to get our IP clean again. That means that emails to other servers could be rejected due to our poor reputation. This obviously causes a problem for everyone on the server. But here’s the kicker… Some blacklists will not just block a single IP, they’ll block the entire IP block. Meaning one small email can get all of our servers blocked. Meaning, in theory, even our support and sales system wouldn’t be able to contact you because your ISP might be blocking us.

But why would a datacenter like ours decide to pull the plug on a server? What do they care? Well, just like a single email can blacklist our entire IP block, it can get an entire datacenter blocked as well. So just as we would terminate a shared hosting account for a spam complaint, a datacenter would terminate a server as well.

From here on out we will be implementing a zero tolerance policy for spam. One strike, you’re out. I mean, that was the policy all along, but from now on there will be no second chances and we will be monitoring email logs VERY closely.

User chr1831 asks:

what happens if an account is compromised (backed up by ftp logs and what naught) and the account is used for malicious activities?

It’s pretty easy to tell if a user is spamming from their account or if a script of theirs has been compromised. The users who were responsible for getting our server unplugged definitely spammed themselves. The emails came from our server, with their login/pass, and all contained messages about domains hosted under their accounts.

With that said, it is up to each and every user to make sure that all scripts they use are up to date. You are ultimately responsible for your account. If anyone has any questions about any of this, please send in a ticket to our support department with “ATTN: Eric” in the subject. I will respond within 24-72 hours.

Thank you,
Eric

Hello Everyone,

Due to the amount of double payments we are seeing every month from customers, we will no longer be supporting PayPal subscriptions. If you are currently on a subscription, it will not be deleted, but no more will be accepted in the future.

The problem comes from the fact that our billing system sends out an invoice before your payment is automatically made. A lot of people are getting this invoice, forgetting about their subscription, and then paying it. Then a few days later their subscription kicks in and a double payment is made. This month alone 50% of all of our subscription clients made a double payment. This causes extra work from everyone involved, so we’re just going to stop it all together.

-Eric

Hey Everyone,

Over the past six months, ZenSix has been slowly making the transition to a DirectAdmin only host. During this time we’ve slowly fazed out our cPanel offers, while at the same time we have moved forward with more DirectAdmin plans, and we’ve even launched VPS plans.

We’ve debated over switching all cPanel customers to DirectAdmin, but didn’t want to force that change on anyone who didn’t want it. So for months now, we’ve been looking to other companies who might be interested in aquiring our cPanel customers, who at the same time could live up to our support expectations. Today we can finally announce that the search is over, as of today all cPanel accounts have been aquired by VPSOUTLET LLC (www.vpsoutlet.com).

Over the next seven days, we will continue to provide support for all cPanel accounts. However, starting on August 24th, 2009, all technical and billing support will be handled by VPSOUTLET LLC at the following address: http://billing.vpsoutlet.com

After August 24th, 2009, all cPanel billing information will be removed from the ZenSix system. Please note though, if you are a cPanel customer of ZenSix and you currently have a DirectAdmin shared hosting plan as well, your account will remain in the system. You will only see the cPanel services removed (which means you will come to ZenSix for technical/billing support for your DirectAdmin plans and you will go to VPSOUTLET LLC for your cPanel plans).

IMPORTANT: Your site will not be affected by this change. For now, VPSOUTLET will be keeping all of your accounts on the servers at DimeNOC and we will keep the nameservers working under our name. If they decide to change this in the future you will be notified. This acquisition only changes who you go to for support and your future billing/invoices.

In short…

* All ZenSix cPanel accounts have been aquired by VPSOUTLET LLC

* ZenSix will continue to provide support for cPanel accounts until August 24th, 2009

* August 24th, 2009 ZenSix will remove all cPanel information from our billing system. This means you will go to http://billing.vpsoutlet.com for support and billing. If you only have a cPanel account with ZenSix, your billing information will be removed (from the ZenSix side). If however you have both a cPanel account and a DirectAdsmin account with ZenSix, only your cPanel information will be removed from the ZenSix billing system.

* There are no changes for you to make. Your site will remain on the same servers for now and will continue to use the ZenSix nameservers. If this changes in the future, you will be notified by VPSOUTLET.

* IMPORTANT: VPSOUTLET will be sending you a new password, which you will use to log in to their support/billing system.

If you have any questions about this acquisition, please let us know.

###

I would like to personally thank all of you who have been using ZenSix over the past year. I believe this change will be beneficial to everyone involved. Again, if you have any questions, let me know and I will try to personally answer you.
Thank you,

Eric Reynolds – ZenSix Owner

It’s been a while since our last post. I’m not sure why it took me this long to update the blog with the news, but we are now offering VPS plans! Our goal is to move our focus from shared hosting to vps hosting over the next 6-12 months. Our VPS plans are hosted on UNDER-sold servers and are FULLY MANAGED. You’re not going to find a better deal, anywhere. For more information, see our VPS Plans.

Hey everyone, Eric here (owner)… I just wanted to take a few minutes to let everyone know what’s going on in the world of ZenSix. As most of you know, we started offering DirectAdmin hosting a little over a month ago and the response was fantastic. Almost everyone who has talked to us about it has said they now prefer it to cPanel. Which brings me to my next topic, the beta accounts.

For a little while now we have had a beta server running out of the WSI/Virpus datacenter in Kansas City. And while I was unsure as to the quality of the datacenter at first, the server there has turned out to be the most stable of all the servers we utilize.

In the past we’ve made deals with other datacenters and hosting companies, namely DimeNOC, that sounded great at first, but just ended up becoming a royal pain. There are just too many variables that can cause problems when you share servers, let other people configure them, have to wait hours for datacenter techs to answer tickets, etc… So from this point on I am hoping to utilize WSI/Virpus for all new servers. Mainly because they have not only made us good deals, but like I said, the datacenter seems solid and it’s just a few hours from us (as opposed to a few thousand miles away like DimeNOC). That means I can physically take servers to the datacenter to have them colo’d once we ramp things up with them, something I can’t do with other datacenters.

So what does that mean? It means that once the DimeNOC servers are full, we won’t be getting another one. We’ll also be scaling back the cPanel hosting until we reach a point (far into the future) where we don’t offer it anymore.

Any finally, this means that the days of dirt cheap offers are over (don’t worry, if you signed up for one it’s not going anywhere). It’s been almost a year since we started and I think we’re to the point where word of mouth advertising has surpassed the lure of cheap prices.

Within the next few weeks we’ll be rolling out a new offer, which we think people will really like. It’s different and it’ll definitely be worth a few dollars more. So keep an eye out, because when we’re ready we’ll be sending out emails and making some Twitter announcements.