Greetings TCH family:

As some of you have heard, cPanel announced a dramatic pricing structure change that has caused waves around the hosting industry. While they gloated about never having increased their pricing, cPanel has implemented both a significant price increase as well as an additional price/tax on user accounts.

Their announcement and follow-up update can be found here.

Their forum post can be found here as well.

To be clear, TotalChoice has never made a profit on the sale of a license. It is a little known secret that some providers, such as ourselves, subsidize the cost of the license with the price of the server; effectively selling cPanel licenses at a loss. Unfortunately, this means we cannot absorb the cost of this price change and must pass it on to the end user. That said, we’re still absorbing a small portion of the increase while still keeping the previous subsidy in place.

We will be announcing new cPanel product pricing towards the middle of next week, please stay tuned. For some end users the price increase will be relativity small, however for users with oversold dedicated servers, VPS servers and or reseller accounts the increase may be dramatic. Please know that this is happening across the hosting industry, and is not specific to TotalChoice.

Price increases will be levied on invoices with due dates on or after October 1st.

As you can imagine, there has been a huge backlash in the forums and social media against this drastic change. For example, their Facebook rating went from 4.6 to 2.1 within a week!  I personally find it appalling what they are doing!

Some users may consider migrating to alternative control panels. cPanel is not the only player in the Web Hosting control panel market. We do not plan on moving away from cPanel for any of our shared platforms, however if you are using a dedicated server or VPS, there may be less expensive control panels on the market.  So if your control panel invoice is something you can not absorb, we would be more than happy to help you transition to a new panel. 

Thank you for your continued business!

Dear TCH Family,

If you have a shared hosting account with us please be aware of the following announcement.  This offer only applies to TCH clients and is not available as a stand alone product.

TotalChoice now offers enterprise class Spam & Virus Protection for your email accounts. Our Spam & Virus Protection is built on TotalChoice’s Infrastructure and has the reliability and up time that you’ve come to know from TotalChoice.

For the low price of $1.95 per month you can protect a single domain and all its email accounts from spyware, junk mail, spam mail, phishing attacks, viruses and much more. This service covers one domain and unlimited email accounts and of course unlimited email.

If you would like to add this feature to your hosting account simply login to our client central area located at https://billing.totalchoicehosting.com/ and look for the add new services button on the left page and from there click add on services.

Who would have believed it could be this inexpensive and easy to clean your inbox and keep those nasty viruses out of way.

Thank you for your business and happy hosting.

Web Site running slow?  Maybe your unlimited hosting is not really unlimited!

Choosing the right hosting company to host your business or personal web site can be a daunting task.  So many Hosting companies in the market place are misrepresenting their services by offering unlimited hosting.

Truth of the matter is Unlimited Hosting does not exist.  It is a sales gimmick to lure customers in by offering them everything for little or nothing. In reality,  everything has a limit.  These unscrupulous hosts bet on the fact that the vast majority of the clients that they trick into signing up with them will in fact never use very many resources.  The clients that use a lot of resources are kicked to the curb and terminated without notice. This is done by citing the Terms of Service (TOS) which spells out in very fine terms what can be used.  This is a highlight from a TOS from such a company:

10.2. Enforced resource limits for shared and reseller packages:
10% CPU Usage
5% Memory Usage (or 512 MB)
50 Running Processes
15 Minute Max Execution Time
100,000 Total Inodes
500 outgoing email messages per 60 minute period (all excess messages will be discarded and not delivered)

This is horrible considering the fact that when these poor clients signed up for service they were told everything was unlimited.  At TotalChoice we do not place limits on our clients, because we do NOT oversell our servers.  Unlimited hosts can stay in business because they depend on people not using the resources that they purchase.  At TCH we want our clients to use the resources they bought and we leave it on the table for them to use at any time they need.  This is why our hosting packages are very defined and the client knows what they are buying, it is their money after all.

Choose wisely my friends.

Happy Hosting

Bill Kish

Is a Dedicated Server the right choice for you?

Considering a dedicated server? A dedicated server is just that, it’s fully dedicated to you and you alone. All resources including CPU’s, memory and hard drives are dedicated to the specific client and the client has complete control over the server.  Many clients have outgrown shared hosting accounts and need to move onto dedicated server plans.  A dedicated client can customize the software or choose an operating system, after all it is a dedicated server. For the client that is not tech savvy, there is also TotalChoice’s world famous Fully Managed Servers.  TCH handles every aspect of your server.  We start with the move of your domains and data and then into monitoring and maintaining your TCH server. We have both managed and unmanaged dedicated servers available.

Another reason to consider a dedicated server is scalability. As your business grows you can add servers without the headache of worrying about space at your facility or the hiring of additional support.  All these perks make a dedicated server the ideal choice!

Contact us today and we will be more than happy to discuss your hosting needs and custom build a dedicated server to fit your needs.

This is one question I get asked quite often.  As everyone knows, web hosts are a dime a dozen and it appears everyone and their brother opens up a web hosting company.  In the hosting trade we refer to these fly by night companies as “Summer Hosts”.  Do not be fooled by these hosts.  They may have a flashy cool website but it is the service that separates us from them.

Here are a few good things to look out for when choosing a web hosting company ::

1. Real time Status Pages hosted in a completely separate network and data center. The status pages at TCH are just that.  I am talking status pages that show server loads and bandwidth utilization.  The real time TCH Status Pages can be found here.

2. Up time reports for both network and each individual server.  This is something most hosts simply will not publish.  Is this because they are scared or embarrassed to present the numbers.  Not at TCH.  We publish up-times for each server and our network.  No hiding behind false promises.  The TCH Up-Time pages can be found here.

3. Public Forums.  A host with nothing to hide allows users to publish unedited comments and reviews on a forum.  TCH was one of the first hosting companies to offer a Forum for clients and guests to freely post and review our services.  Our Forums can be found here.

4. Staff Directory.  A host that outsources their support to some call center in another country will never discuss their staffing or allow clients to view photos and bios of the staff.  At TCH we pride ourselves in no outsourcing.  Every staff member works directly for TCH and we outsource nothing!  Our staffing profile page can be found here.

5. Twenty four hour support.  Yes, can you really comprehend a web hosting firm that does not staff their support team on a 24/7/365 basis.  It is common place for this to happen.  If you think about it, one of the most expensive parts of running a web hosting company is payroll to the staff.  At TCH we are fully staffed all the time , no matter when.  True 24/7/365 support is available and online.  You can test this statement here.

6.  Network and Longevity.  Does your host own all of their own equipment?  Most hosts simply rent their servers from other providers.  Not at TCH.  We own everything from the Fiber to the Switch and right down to the server.  The best part is TCH is a debt free company and we have been in the business since 1999.  We are here for the long run and you can trust TCH.

These are just a few things that separate the good hosting companies from the “Summer Hosts.”

Happy Hosting and good luck in your search for a new web host.