How to Cancel Your Hosting Account Properly
I know… I’m about to break the hosting vow of silence – you know, the one that says you never make it easy for someone to cancel because then they’ll… um, well, they’ll cancel.
If they can’t find out HOW to cancel that means they WON’T cancel even if they WANT to cancel and then they’ll just sit there on your servers unhappy and pay you perpetually! Muahahahaha!
Actually, that’s not really how it works.
Run! Run and don’t let them see you leave!
There’s a prevalent suspicion that the best way to leave your hosting company is to sneak out the back door behind everyone’s back, hoping they don’t notice. Then, when you have moved everything you come back to inform your old hosting company afterwards, victorious and triumphant that you left them without their having ever getting wise to your move thereby thwarting any attempt they would have had to be vindictive in destroying your site or services early in retaliation for your rejection of them! Ha!
So, first off, I have to point out this isn’t a middle school love relationship.
The idea that a professional company will retaliate against you just because you rejected them is pretty lame – now, there’s a caveat in that just as there are bad web designers, there are bad hosting companies and some are not professional. Most are, though, and hopefully you have an idea which one you’re with (and if you’re with us, hopefully you know we’re not certifiable or anything). This industry isn’t all that huge and a lot of us know each other. We pass clients back and forth all the time, and its not unheard of for two hosting companies collaborate on a move so that it goes well for everyone involved. So, relax. No need for cloak and dagger stuff.
While you’re moving from here to “there”, you’re still our client and its our responsibility to give you good, sound advice on the best way to gather your toys so that you can easily plunk them down in someone else’s sandbox. That’s just part of the service you pay for, and since you pay until the last day you are here, it is help and advice you should feel entitled to expect.
We can’t give you advice on your new host – that you’ll have to get from them. But in our case, we would definitely prefer that we know so that we can make sure everything goes smoothly and we don’t do anything that could screw things up for you (like move your site to a different server and overwrite DNS settings you changed and the like). Saving and moving a lot of files also may mean that your resource usage explodes, and if we know what’s taking place we’re less likely to put a stop to your processes thinking there’s a problem because of out of the ordinary usage.
So, tell us. It goes better for you and we’re happy to help whether you are coming in the door or going out the door.
We want you to cancel
Ok, let me clarify that heading – no hosting company generally wants to lose your business (unless you are one of those clients and that is a subject for another article). Obviously, if there’s something we can do or change or offer you to make things better for you here, we want that chance to make it right if we can do so.
If you are absolutely, 100% moving hosts, then we absolutely, 100% want you to cancel your account formally so that we know you’re gone. Why?
- While we do audit the servers to see what sites are not resolving here, it involves auditing 6 servers and several thousand sites. Manually. It’s a big undertaking, and we don’t generally do it more than quarterly – if you don’t formally cancel, you’re going to pay for services you don’t use.
- If you just take your credit card off recurring billing thinking that’s a cancelation, its not – it’s taking your card off so we can’t charge you. Your billing account will remain open, and your account on the server will remain installed, which means…
- You owe us for the time your account is installed regardless of whether it resolves here, regardless of whether you login. We still have to secure it, back it up, monitor it, and those services are still provided to you. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t using it – we treat all accounts as if they are and perform services on them that we expect will be paid for. (I know, you figure you’re never coming back so it doesn’t really matter, but you’d be surprised at how many return clients we get. It’s never a good idea to burn bridges, just in case.)
- If you just walk without canceling, you leave an unmonitored login sitting on the server and that additional login point of entry that is unmonitored puts the servers at a slightly elevated risk. If its not needed, we would far prefer to shut that door down.
While we hate to bring it up, we do need to point out that if you just walk without canceling your account AND you leave your card on file, we will continue to charge you for the service, and you will legitimately owe that money by the contract. If you think to yourself “I’ll just dispute the charges and get the money back”, think again.
We can, and will, provide the card companies with your contract (the TOS), and documentation showing you were installed, and a search of all tickets with your domain name in it showing you never canceled, and in every case where we have done this the former client lost the dispute. You may be the first to win one for the team, but I wouldn’t bank on it (no pun intended). We take our reputation with our merchant bank very, very seriously and defend accusations of fraudulent charges vigilantly if they are used as a way to get something for nothing.
Of course, the easiest way to keep this from happening is to simply use the cancelation form. There’s a link to it in the Terms of Service itself, and if you search the FAQ for “cancel” you’ll find it there as well. We also send the link out in past due notices so people can grab it easily.
It’s Just Business
Most hosts have a target market and while I’m sure every CEO sometimes dreams of hosting the entire world, the simple fact is there are a wide variety of companies with a wide variety of specialties, and no one host fits all (no matter what the marketing crap suggests).
Generally, we all recognize we cannot perfectly serve every client and every need they may have, and we don’t take it personally when people find something that fits them better somewhere else. While we’re sorry to see you go to another host, we’re certainly not surprised or stunned or hostile about it – hosting customers have gotten savvier over the years about what they need, what they want, and most seem to recognize different companies have different strengths and weaknesses.
So, don’t assume a cancelation is going to immediately get you the cold shoulder from your old host. Since they know your site, they are the best resource you have to help make sure the transition to a new hosting home goes smoothly.
If you take the proper steps and keep everyone informed, you’ll be happier with all the companies you’ve dealt with than if you try and perform a slipshod move without utilizing all the resources available or following all the rules (formal cancelation) you should be following.
Tags: cancelation, hosting
