Hosting - is this normal?

mel123

Hopefully I am posting in the right section. I just want to know what anyone thinks of this.

I have two websites with a marketing company and now want to move the hosting and get the files to transfer the site to another company. I have requested this off said marketing company, and they have come back and told me no problem, it will take two hours and they want to charge me 95euro per hour!
Is this normal? I had hosting before with eircom and moved it and there was no such charge, but im wondering do these marketing companies all charge a fee?

Kenny Logins

Sounds like they want to extract some more euros from you before you go. I'd see that as a penalty for leaving.

You could try asking them for the hosting logins and tell the you'll take the data off yourself. All you need are the website files and the database, although there may be some tweaking required on the config file(s) and database when deploying to new hosting.

seamus

Because this is B2B work, there's very little protection from this kind of nonsense.

They'll call it a data retrieval fee and claim that they have to examine the data for any of their information and properly secure it before they can send it to you. Hence two hours @ €95/hour.

If they've ever given you any FTP login details, then you should be able to do this all yourself.

As SBS says, ask for FTP login details so you can do it yourself.

Trojan

The destination hosting company will often migrate data for no charge, check with them if they offer that service. You'd still need to have access details for the current host.

KonFusion

I'm curious, are people negative to the fact they're charging, or negative to the fact that they're saying it'll take 2 hours, or is it the price? (Or all of the above?)

Depending on the companies hosting setup, it may not be as simple as giving them FTP details etc.

Where I work, there is no FTP, everyone uses SSH, has their own individual accounts, and we have very strict deployment and server access protocols in place. We'd never be able to give client access to their own hosting, unless that was a specific requirement of the project (and this is made very clear upfront, it's not to scam them out of a few quid if they want to move).

So if a client wanted to move away from us and wanted all files, the DB etc, it could take an hour maybe, given the time to wrap them up nicely, put together some docs on the stack so the new company can replicate it, etc. I don't think it's all that unusual to charge for that service?

Furthermore, this marketing company may not even have in-house developers, so they'll potentially need to pay someone to do this.

Anyway, I feel like I might be de-railing the thread, but given no more info about the OP's setup/situation, I think some of you may be jumping the gun a bit.

mel123

The only login's I have are wordpress admin login details so I can make changes. The provider who I want to move it to has asked me for databases. Sounds like nothing much I can do, its just very greedy, we've spent a lot of money with them on promos and advertising! Lesson learned.

Graham

mel123 wrote: »

The only login's I have are wordpress admin login details so I can make changes. The provider who I want to move it to has asked me for databases. Sounds like nothing much I can do, its just very greedy, we've spent a lot of money with them on promos and advertising! Lesson learned.

If you've got the WP Admin login, you might be able to install a backup plugin and bypass your original provider completely.

Added: just make sure it's a plugin that will backup the entire site not just the database.

If €95/hour is their normal rate, 1 or 2 hours probably isn't unreasonable if your original providers packages the existing site for you.

If you've got wordpress admin logins you're sorted. Install the duplicator plugin, create a package. Download the two files this makes, and your developer will be able to rebuild the site from the two files in a matter of minutes.

Trojan

I don't have any problem with anyone charging for their time, far from it.

I do think that there are companies who attempt vendor lock-in through various techniques - high cost of exporting data, registering domains in the own name (without that being explicitly understood and pre-agreed), etc.

In your case, KonFusion, could you not just give the client SSH details and leave them to it? If their permissions are correct then the only damage they can do is to their own stuff, and they're leaving anyway. SEP?

KonFusion

mel123 wrote: »

The only login's I have are wordpress admin login details so I can make changes. The provider who I want to move it to has asked me for databases. Sounds like nothing much I can do, its just very greedy, we've spent a lot of money with them on promos and advertising! Lesson learned.

For the new company you're moving to, ask what your hosting requirements are. Then ask if the company can purchase it on your behalf, and transfer ownership of it to you (or you could source it yourself, and give them access).

That way you won't have worry about moving fee's in the future. Agencies generally make very little on hosting* (as they're usually re-selling, or sticking you on one of their VPS's etc.) so I doubt the new agency would have an issue with this.

* Assuming there's no maintenance contract or some other unknown variables to influence the price.

Kenny Logins

KonFusion wrote: »

I'm curious, are people negative to the fact they're charging, or negative to the fact that they're saying it'll take 2 hours, or is it the price? (Or all of the above?)

Depending on the companies hosting setup, it may not be as simple as giving them FTP details etc.

Where I work, there is no FTP, everyone uses SSH, has their own individual accounts, and we have very strict deployment and server access protocols in place. We'd never be able to give client access to their own hosting, unless that was a specific requirement of the project (and this is made very clear upfront, it's not to scam them out of a few quid if they want to move).

So if a client wanted to move away from us and wanted all files, the DB etc, it could take an hour maybe, given the time to wrap them up nicely, put together some docs on the stack so the new company can replicate it, etc. I don't think it's all that unusual to charge for that service?

Furthermore, this marketing company may not even have in-house developers, so they'll potentially need to pay someone to do this.

Anyway, I feel like I might be de-railing the thread, but given no more info about the OP's setup/situation, I think some of you may be jumping the gun a bit.

If that is the case here, what is the second hour billed for? :pac:

KonFusion

Trojan wrote: »

I do think that there are companies who attempt vendor lock-in through various techniques

Agreed!

In your case, KonFusion, could you not just give the client SSH details and leave them to it? If their permissions are correct then the only damage they can do is to their own stuff, and they're leaving anyway. SEP?

Possibly, it completely depends on the scenario. Preferably they'd already own their hosting and we'd just be using it on their behalf, so we don't need to worry about transferring ownership (or billing, support etc).