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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Longtime hosting and Internet service provider BuffNET (www.buffnet.net) has decided to quit, sending many unsuspecting customer sites offline with less than a day's notice, according to a Business First of Buffalo report.
Business First of Buffalo reported Friday that BuffNET, founded in 1993, sent an email to its customers on January 8, which read, in part, "Effective Thursday January 8th, BuffNET Dialup and DSL service will discontinue, followed shortly thereafter by web hosting and email services." The company also thanked customers for their patronage and apologized for the disruption in the email, yet could not be contacted for interview.
BuffNET hosted websites will not be accessible to end-users and with BuffNET's servers only online for a couple more days, Business First of Buffalo reports that BuffNET clients will have to act fast to transfer their domains and sites.
BuffNET's email also notes that domain names will be released for transfer and authorization codes will be issued from the third-party domain registrars that registered them such as Go Daddy (www.godaddy.com) or Register.com (www.register.com).
Web hosts unexpectedly dropping clients has unfortunately become a recent trend. In December, Ann Arbor, Michigan, web hosting provider IAS.net (www.ias.net) was evicted following a dispute with its landlord over its building's poor maintenance and poisonous mold growth, leaving a number of nonprofit organization and business websites also out in the cold as well.
BuffNET's quick disappearance serves as a reminder to web hosts about the risk of appearing untrustworthy to clients. A recent blog entry, WHIR editor Liam Eagle offered some tips for smaller web hosts to separate themselves from the BuffNETs of the world.
Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
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Comment by Anonymous on Saturday, January 10, 2009
I had read a cautionary article on BuffNet, but I couldn't believe a well-regarded company, as they have been, could fold. I transferred my hosting to Downdoggy.com with a minimum of disruption. The hardest part for me was realizing BuffNet was no more.
Comment by Anonymous on Monday, January 12, 2009
The (above, in the article) link to their website still works, and still leads to signup pages.
Comment by Anonymous on Monday, January 19, 2009
On January 7th , they still charged my account for services. I hope they are not going to continue to do so every month. I can't reach anyone to stop this. It is causing a hardship to go through my bank to stop payments, as so many other services are tied to that account. I did not receive any email notifications. I stopped actively relying on their email as it became so infected with spam in the last year, it was impossible to control. My website is also located on my hard drive, so I can upload whereever I want. I feel truly sorry for those whose websites were lost. I've learned to always keep a copy elsewhere.