Dear FreeHostia Friends,

FreeHostia has managed to become one of the most popular free web hosting providers. We have also managed to give many of you a reason to upgrade to a paid hosting plan and the number of paid hosting accounts grows every day. So far, the free and the paid hosting accounts have both been hosted on the same servers. Unfortunately, free hosting attracts many abusers, who are often the cause for server overload and even downtime. We have been planning to set up a separate server for paid users for months for the sake of a better service quality and uptime, and finally we have done it.

» A new separate server for paid customers – better uptime and improved performance

We have moved all paid accounts to the new paid server – HEX17. Now that the paid accounts are on a separate server, we believe that the uptime will improve drastically. Moving the paid accounts to the new server was supposed to be done without any downtime, so we did not notify you prior to the move. Unfortunately, there was some downtime after all, for which we apologize. Now that the transfer has been completed, things will finally get better.

» New mail server hostname for paid accounts

Now that we have moved the paid accounts to the HEX17 server, the mail server has changed to hex17.freehostia.com. Please update your mail clients’ settings to reflect this change. If you have any scripts that are using the mail server settings, please update the mail server hostname in your scripts too. Otherwise, there are no other changes to the configuration of your accounts. At a later point we will set up a separate MySQL server for paid accounts, which will require you to update your MySQL settings as well. We will let you know in advance to give you enough time to make the necessary changes.

» Moving paid accounts to the HEX17 server – what is the procedure?

We will be moving newly upgraded accounts to the paid server once a month. This means that if you are now using our Free hosting plan and upgrade to any of the paid hosting plans, your account will be moved to the paid server not more than 30 days after the upgrade itself. An email notification will be sent to those of you whose accounts are about to be moved.

We continue our efforts to improve the overall quality and uptime of our services. We count on your support and feedback. If you want to share your opinion and comments, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind Regards,
Steve Robinson
Head Of Customer Care Dept.
FreeHostia.com