The cost of leaving your current web host

April 23, 2019

By: Alun Rowe

It might seem strange that the first blog post on our shiny new website is one about customers leaving, but recently we’ve had so many instances of customers being charged exit fees by their old provider for moving to our services. So much so, that I felt it important to set out our stall on these charges.

Let me give you a few examples:

Moving a WordPress website to new hosting

A large, local, manufacturing business after having asked their existing provider to update some elements of their website (within the realms of their support contract too!) found the reason the items weren’t being actioned was that a key member of staff had left and weren’t at this time being replaced. In frustration they contacted us about taking over their website.

We contacted the exiting host about moving the site and were met with a bill for over £200 for them to give us FTP access to their servers. After discussion with the client we both decided to use a backup plugin to simply take the site away from them without the need for FTP. Within 2 hours the site was up and running on our servers, the customer was happy, the old company have not only lost a customer but their reputation will have been tarnished locally to anybody who asks and best of all for the client the transfer to our servers despite the slightly unorthodox process was at ZERO charge.

Transferring domain names

Domain names are, on the whole, cheap. £15 per annum or so gives you a nice name plate for your business’s home on the web. A local financial consultancy wanted to tidy up the location of all of their domains so they were all with a single provider. They spoke to the 2 other companies holding their domains and found a strange imbalance. One company simply asked for details of the new host and wished them well. The other told them there was a charge of £40 per domain to transfer it away.

Exit fees

Our policy is very simple, we DO NOT CHARGE EXIT FEES. If significant work is required to help a customer move on then this will be charged but it will also have been made clear to the customer in discussions throughout their contract. 95% of our customers do not require any specialist help to move away.

The reality is that updating a domain to move it away, providing a new login for SFTP or even taking a snapshot of the website are the kind of things that any reasonable company would do as part of their ongoing annual/monthly costs eg they are included in the price we already charge you. Asking a customer to pay extra for these services just because they are moving elsewhere is simply profiteering and borderline blackmail unless these costs have been made very clear at the start of the contract (and even then they are questionable!).

At Pentangle we pride ourselves on giving our customers the best service we can and giving them transparent terms. We continue this ethos even after customers have left our services should there ever be any help we can offer and in fact is a key reason why customers come back to our services time after time.

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Whether you are just starting out in business and need help getting going or you are an established brand looking to take your sites and services to the next level our team can help you find the right solution for you.  We’ll talk to you in plain English and help you understand exactly what you need.

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