We hope you are doing well and staying safe. We wanted to pass along some important news in light of the COVID-16 outbreak. As we continue to work though the CDC guidelines for social distancing, and the California stay-at-home order, our administrative office will remain closed.

As a result, we wanted to bring a few items to your attention.

Mail Delivery:

As we are continuing to work at home, mail pickup has been less frequent at the office (one or twice a week). If you send checks, please note there could be a delay in posting your checks. This is especially important, if you have a domain name or SSL renewal coming up soon. Please reach out to us in advance of the due date so that we can resolve. We are happy to defer payment or manually renew as needed. If you elect to put a credit card on file, please be sure to update your default payment method to Payment by Credit Card ( https://www.ephost.com/account/clientarea.php?action=details ). Otherwise, a credit card on file or not, the invoice will not process automatically. Please reach out with any help.

Phone Service:

Most phone calls are routing to our homes and cell phones. This has been working effectively, but there are occasionally issues with call handling and congestion. Please excuse any dropped calls, and opt to leave a message or send an email to support@ephost.com, instead for less critical issues. Customer service remains active 24x7x365.

Legacy Migration:

At this time, our migration off the legacy hosting plans will continue as planned. We do not anticipate a change to that plan unless there are staffing challenges. You are not affected by this if you have already been migrated last month, or otherwise have a Linux hosting plan. Affected clients were notified on 03/12.

https://www.ephost.com/support/News/NewsItem/View/232/legacy-hosting-plan-upgrade

Reminder:

We are waiving additional VPN fees for dedicated server customers until the threat is no longer an issue. We will also continue to honor static and dynamic whitelist requests at no charge. We do support dynamic DNS services if your IP changes frequently. Lastly, if you are struggling paying your one of our invoices we will arrange to defer payment with no late fee as needed.

At EPhost, there is no higher priority than the safety and wellbeing of our customers and staff. Therefore, while we are open for business, we are mobilizing our operation, where possible, and restricting visitors to our office and datacenter effective immediately. Please excuse our brevity or connection issues as a result of performing customer service at our homes. All other services are unaffected at this time.  

Additionally, as concerns about the spread of COVID-19 (the coronavirus) increase, and more people work from remote locations, we are waiving VPN fees for dedicated server customers until the threat is no longer an issue. We will also continue to honor static and dynamic whitelist requests at no charge. We do support dynamic DNS services if your IP changes frequently. Lastly, if you are struggling paying your one of our invoices we will arrange to defer payment with no late fee as needed.

We are truly navigating COVID–19 together and we will always do what's best for our customers and staff. As the situation evolves, we may make some more changes, but through it all we will come out stronger and “flatten the curve”.

Thank you for your continued support.

On April 13th - May 6th, 2020 we will be upgrading Legacy Hosting Plan clients to a new modern hosting plan at the same price. You will only need to test your website and report issues once moved. We cannot predict the the exact time your website will be restored. This applies only to clients who have legacy hosting plans who were not moved last month.

The move will be made in several parts. First, we will move your website to the new account, but leave your databases, email and DNS on the old legacy plan. In late April & May, we move your databases to the new plan. Your email and DNS will continue to live on the legacy hosting plan which will be renamed to the Shared Services plan. You will have 12 months free of charge to self-migrate DNS and Email to the new hosting plan. Otherwise, you can keep DNS and email ( SmarterMail ) in which case that would be an additional $5.00 per month.

Important: users with VERY old versions of WordPress, Joomla, DotNetNuke, or otherwise insecure or already hacked, it will be migrated, but not restored, for security reasons. If your website uses ColdFusion (CFML) you might want to check your application’s compatibility with Lucee CFML engine instead of Adobe ColdFusion. We have seen excellent compatibility between the two. Lastly, if your website does not point to EPhost, your files will be migrated, but not restored.

Please note, in the unlikely event your website does not restore well it will be your responsibility to resolve any substantial issues that prevent your website from running on the new plan.

Please let us know if you have any questions by sending an email to support.

Type of Work: Server Security Patches and Updates

Location: EPhost Office, San Diego, CA 92123

Purpose: EPhost Web Administrators will be working on the EPhost Network performing Linux and Windows updates on all servers.

Window Start: 3/15/2020 - 8:00pm PST
Window End: 3/16/2020 - 12:00am PST

Service Impact: This work is expected to take approximately 4 hours and you may experience intermittent access to your website during the maintenance window.

Schedule: The window for Network Maintenance is scheduled to begin at 8:00pm on Sunday, March 15th, 2020, and end at 12:00am on Monday, March 16th, 2020. Should additional time be required, notice will be provided and the work window will be expanded.

Testing & Planning: All testing and planning being conducted during this window is part of a pre-defined checklist designed by the EPhost Web Administrator team.

Regression Planning: The EPhost Web Administrator team will be on-site managing this window. As with any Network Maintenance, while highly unlikely, there is a possibility that something unexpected may occur during the work process. Should any issues arise, all equipment will be placed back into standard operation and the work will be postponed until the issue is resolved.

Type of Work: Server Security Patches and Updates

Location: EPhost Office, San Diego, CA 92123

Purpose: EPhost Web Administrators will be working on the EPhost Network performing Linux and Windows updates on all servers.

Window Start: 2/23/2020 - 8:00pm PST
Window End: 2/24/2020 - 12:00am PST

Service Impact: This work is expected to take approximately 4 hours and you may experience intermittent access to your website during the maintenance window.

Schedule: The window for Network Maintenance is scheduled to begin at 8:00pm on Sunday, February 23rd, 2020, and end at 12:00am on Monday, February 24th, 2020. Should additional time be required, notice will be provided and the work window will be expanded.

Testing & Planning: All testing and planning being conducted during this window is part of a pre-defined checklist designed by the EPhost Web Administrator team.

Regression Planning: The EPhost Web Administrator team will be on-site managing this window. As with any Network Maintenance, while highly unlikely, there is a possibility that something unexpected may occur during the work process. Should any issues arise, all equipment will be placed back into standard operation and the work will be postponed until the issue is resolved.

Type of Work: Out-of-Band Server Security Patches and Updates

Location: EPhost Office, San Diego, CA 92123

Purpose: We are performing out-of-band updates to all servers as a result of recently reported Microsoft Windows vulnerabilities among others. EPhost Web Administrators will be working on the EPhost Network performing Linux and Windows updates on all servers both tonight and tomorrow night instead of next week. The bulk of the work will be 01/19 tomorrow, but we wanted an opportunity to work on some servers tonight.

Window One:

Window Start: 01/18/2019 - 8:00pm PST
Window End: 01/19/2019 - 12:00am PST

Window Two: 

Window Start: 01/19/2019 - 8:00pm PST
Window End: 01/20/2019 - 12:00am PST

Service Impact: This work is expected to take approximately 4 hours and you may experience intermittent access to your website during the maintenance window. 

Schedule: The window are scheduled to begin at 8:00pm on Saturday and Sunday until midnight. Should additional time be required, notice will be provided and the work window will be expanded.

Testing & Planning: All testing and planning being conducted during this window is part of a pre-defined checklist designed by the EPhost Web Administrator team.

Regression Planning: The EPhost Web Administrator team will be on-site managing this window. As with any Network Maintenance, while highly unlikely, there is a possibility that something unexpected may occur during the work process. Should any issues arise, all equipment will be placed back into standard operation and the work will be postponed until the issue is resolved.