2degrees - iServe and Kiwi Web hosting services Upcoming change to your domain registration

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NickMack

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#299490 12-Sep-2022 17:04

Hi All,

I received this email from 2degrees on the weekend- the price for domains through 2degrees was $40.40 per .nz domain, they are moving them to freeparking, their price is $49.94 for a .nz - https://freeparking.co.nz/domain-names/nz/

Guess i'll move to another provider when they need to be renewed - 1st domains charge $28.50 - https://1stdomains.nz/register/

Hi there,

We’re getting in touch to let you know that we'll be making a change to your .nz domain registrar on record.

We'll be migrating your domain name(s) from Two Degrees New Zealand Limited to FreeParking Limited t/a Discount Domains on 23 September 2022. From this date, you'll see FreeParking Limited t/a Discount Domains as the registrar name on your registration with the Domain Name Commission. This is the only change you should notice.

There is no action required from you, and we do not expect any impact to your services as a result of this change.

Your services will continue to be billed on your 2degrees account as they are today, and there is no change to terms and conditions or any other part of your domain registration. Any renewal or changes within your domain will be managed through your existing 2degrees contacts.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with us at domainrenewals@2degrees.nz, or on 0800 022 249 (option 9).

Kind regards,

The team at 2degrees

https://nick.mackechnie.co.nz | NZ ISP latency monitoring - https://smokeping.thenet.gen.nz

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#2966278 12-Sep-2022 17:07

Ewww. Why FP ? FP has gone downhill majorly last few years :(

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mattwnz

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#2966294 12-Sep-2022 18:05

Doesn't that price also exclude GST? Strange that the FP websites homepage actually says .nz domains are $37.46

michaelmurfy

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#2966395 12-Sep-2022 21:33

Just use Metaname - https://metaname.net/ who are a Christchurch based company. You could combine this with Cloudflare for DNS / WAF.

Very surprised you're not using them yet!

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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MrGadget

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#2966398 12-Sep-2022 21:37

NickMack:
Hi All,

I received this email from 2degrees on the weekend- the price for domains through 2degrees was $40.40 per .nz domain, they are moving them to freeparking, their price is $49.94 for a .nz - https://freeparking.co.nz/domain-names/nz/

Key part is there are no other changes.
Pricing and billing remains the same as it currently is ($40.20 incl gst per year).

mattwnz

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#2966407 12-Sep-2022 23:16

MrGadget:
NickMack:

Hi All,

I received this email from 2degrees on the weekend- the price for domains through 2degrees was $40.40 per .nz domain, they are moving them to freeparking, their price is $49.94 for a .nz - https://freeparking.co.nz/domain-names/nz/

Key part is there are no other changes.
Pricing and billing remains the same as it currently is ($40.20 incl gst per year).

Is price staying the same though, it doesn't seem to mention that?

MrGadget

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#2966436 13-Sep-2022 07:46

Is price staying the same though, it doesn't seem to mention that?

Note it states;

"From this date, you'll see FreeParking Limited t/a Discount Domains as the registrar name on your registration with the Domain Name Commission. This is the only change you should notice."

The pricing is staying the same, there are no other changes.

NickMack

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#2966443 13-Sep-2022 08:14

MrGadget:

Is price staying the same though, it doesn't seem to mention that?

Note it states;

"From this date, you'll see FreeParking Limited t/a Discount Domains as the registrar name on your registration with the Domain Name Commission. This is the only change you should notice."

The pricing is staying the same, there are no other changes.

Bite :-)

https://nick.mackechnie.co.nz | NZ ISP latency monitoring - https://smokeping.thenet.gen.nz

pchs

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#2966591 13-Sep-2022 12:18

This seems an interesting move considering the 2degrees/Vocus group own iSERVE..

nztim

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#2966593 13-Sep-2022 12:20

pchs:

This seems an interesting move considering the 2degrees/Vocus group own iSERVE..

That is a name I have not heard in a very long time!

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

pchs

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#2977787 5-Oct-2022 15:19

Interesting, it seems like they have moved their own domain names (2degrees.nz etc) to iserve but customers over to Freeparking

MurrayM

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#2978466 7-Oct-2022 09:47

pchs:

This seems an interesting move considering the 2degrees/Vocus group own iSERVE..

I still use iServe for a couple of domain names and some hosting (I bought their lifetime hosting plan years ago that guaranteed me free hosting for my lifetime):

Hi there,

Due to changes to the software InternetNZ uses to operate the .nz registry, we need to let you know about some important changes to your .nz domain name s registered with iSERVE/The Kiwi Web Hosting Company.

What you need to know

iSERVE and The Kiwi Web Hosting Company will no longer offer .nz domain registration services.

On 21 October 2022, the .nz domains you have registered with iSERVE or The Kiwi Web Hosting Company (listed below) will be transferred to MyHost.

{domain name list removed}

We selected MyHost to take care of your domain because of their stellar reputation in New Zealand, known for doing right by their customers, offering reliable services, and providing outstanding support.

We're confident you'll be in good hands with them.

You don't need to do anything. If you take no action, your .nz domain name s will be automatically transferred and all your future .nz domain renewals will be billed by MyHost who will be in touch to provide you with more details.

You can read MyHost's terms and conditions here.

We're confident that you'll be in good hands with MyHost, but if you would rather transfer your .nz domains to another provider, please contact us before 21 October 2022. We'll provide you with the UDAI code to transfer your .nz domains to a domain provider of your choice.

This change only affects your .nz domains, but iSERVE and The Kiwi Web Hosting Company will also stop offering domain registration for other domain extensions (e.g. .com) and hosting and email services in the near future. MyHost will also be taking over these services so you're in good hands there too. Don't worry, we'll give you plenty of notice when this happens, but we thought it would be fair to let you know about this now in case you want to take the opportunity to search for an alternative provider.

MurrayM

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#2978632 7-Oct-2022 14:02

I phoned the iServe support number to ask when the iServe hosting platform will be turned off and would MyHost be honouring the free lifetime hosting that had been promised to people that bought one of the LifePlan plans back in 2006 (Orcon honoured it when they bought iServe in 2009).

The support guy's response was "don't know" to both questions.

I have a copy of the original LifePlan contract and in the FAQs it says "Q. What happens if iSERVE is sold, or changes management etc? A. The terms and conditions of your iSERVE LifePlan will continue to be honoured for life. We are committed to providing one of the best hosting services in New Zealand, and should iSERVE ever be sold to another company, it will be one that is just as committed to customer service as we are."

A few people that I knew were also using the LifePlan plans: @mattwnz @adw @bcourtney

mattwnz

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#2978644 7-Oct-2022 14:40

@murraym I haven't had any communication from them at all and there are no announcements in their control panel. Guessing they will be migrating accounts next year sometime. Quite a big job for them to migrate things like email accounts, DNS and hosting. I have just been through this with another hosting company too. What concerns me is email and currently email users diskspace has never counted towards the diskspace usage, that solely covered diskspace used for website files. Each email account can use 200MB of diskspace. But with myhost, they use cpanel, and that diskspace does count email storage as well as thing like stats etc. So you end up with a lot of the diskspace quota being used by temporary rubbish files, which doesn't occur with iserve because the quota only covers website files.. So they are going to have to provide far more diskspace to account for this, and they don't seem to have plans that have unlimited diskspace. I wonder why they went with myhost, when they went with openhost/freeparking when they shifted away from windows hosting about 5 years ago.

I see they have a page about it but it doesn't say anything about lifeplan users https://myhost.nz/blog/welcome-vocus-nz-customers . A pity @2degrees / Vocus haven't communicated to all clients or how lifeplan users are affected.

When a company get purchased I now always fear what changes they are going to make. This topic may need the heading changed to mention ISERVE and Kiwi web hosting, or a new topic.

MurrayM

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#2978710 7-Oct-2022 15:33

@mattwnz I think the only reason they contacted me was because I still had a couple of domain names registered with them. All the other domain names that I look after were moved away from them several years ago. So I guess I was lucky to find out about the plan to shut down the web hosting, which was only tacked on to the end of their email almost as a "oh yeah, by the way".

You're right, the diskspace quota will be a problem for those that have large mailboxes. Fortunately I've only got about 16 websites still using iServe and only 2 of those use iServe mailboxes (the rest just forward to Gmail accounts or use Outlook.com)

There are lots of unanswered questions:

MyHost only seem to offer two reseller accounts, "Thin Slice - RH-10000" which offers "15 hosted accounts" and "Thick Slice - RH-20000" which offers "30 hosted accounts". I assume that 1 hosted account = 1 website, so what happens to anyone with more that 30 sites on their iServe reseller account? Will they have to manage multiple MyHost reseller accounts?

Are they actually going to try to migrate sites (along with email, databases, DNS setups, etc) or are they simply going to specify a date and expect you to migrate everything over yourself before the close-off date?

mattwnz

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#2978717 7-Oct-2022 15:53

@murraym A good company would migrate everything, especially when this was supposed to be a lifetime plan. Migrating can involve a lot of work and usually they will have scripts to automate it, and this is what other hosts do when migrating between different platforms after a company has changed ownership. A lot of there customers also may not have the technical expertise to migrate across, because to twas setup years ago with a web designer. Email will be almost imposible for a reseller to migrate themselves, as it is only POP, not IMAP
I have been through this a few times with other companies after they change ownership. Myhost can custom create WHM accounts to any size for affected ISERVE resellers, even with unlimited resources which is essentially what the iserve life plan was. The only quota was the web hosting diskspace.

@2degrees need to communicate to resellers as resellers have obviously paid for their hosting for life, and customers should be learning about this from them directly

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