Miva to the rescue... I hope : )

June 01, 2010 · by Michelle Lambert

Well hello all, I've been trying to hold off until my transition from Aplus.net to Miva hosting was complete, but we aren't quite there yet. There are always bumps. It's my belief that tomorrow is the day we flip the switch.

I'm currently waiting on my domain to transfer right now, that takes 5 days or so. Our name servers were pointing over last week, and so this is the final step. All in all we’ve been at this for a few weeks now. I know it could have happened much faster. Somehow we just couldn’t get it done sooner.

This is all greek to me. I'm a little overwhelmed. I will tell you that we've had great care from Miva so far. They've been extremely helpful and taken the pain out of the entire thing. They moved over my site. I didn’t have to do a thing, except provide them with access information and they took it from there. They assessed our site and told us what package was right for us… and we took the leap.

As with any transition there are things that just are a pain... obtaining transfer authorization keys, domain transfer's, name server's pointing to the new host. Grrrr. But it’s done, well, almost.

Our business has all but disappeared. I’m really hoping for good things once we’ve moved over. I look forward to my server NOT going down throughout the day. I’m looking very forward to my products actually showing their pictures all over the country, and not only in certain parts of the country. I can’t even explain that. And because it was so random, like an electrical problem in my car… it was never explained by Aplus, and most definitely never fixed.

I suspect it has something to do with our Miva data being on a separate server. Aplus wasn’t very forthcoming with this. But I’ve blogged in the past that many of their Miva customers were experiencing similar issues, and this apparently was part of the “fix”. Didn’t work.

I’m also hoping to stop paying our business bills out of our households. That’s been brutal. Now I have to pray that our mailing list still has something left to it. I haven’t sent out a direct mail campaign in over 3 weeks. I just couldn’t handle any more of Aplus’ incompetence.

We’d ALWAYS have an issue right after I’d send out my campaign. I know I’ve blogged about this in the past. But what would you do if every email you got from a company led you to a messed up site? You’d leave… ohhh, hopefully not for good!

Lee Ann got a call a month ago from a customer that represents a lot of business to us, or has over the years. She said she just wanted to find out if we were out of business yet because she couldn’t get the site to load, and some of her chapter members told her we folded. That was probably the most devastating phone call. How do hosts get away with this? Does this happen a lot?

Aplus.net ran us into the ground. I couldn’t handle the negative impact it has had on my life anymore. I couldn’t take contemplating legal action. It just wasn’t me. We consulted our lawyer, and were assured we have a case. We have the data to back up our claims. It’s not how I want to do business.

I hope our reward comes in regaining our business through the new host. My next step is giving the site an updated look, and someone giving our customers incentive to give us another try.. that is if I can get them to open my email.

More to come as soon as my migration is complete. Keep your fingers crossed!

Category: By Merchants, For Merchants | Tags: Miva Merchant, Hosting