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we are having issues with a vps server on hostgator. it's kind of been a nightmare. apologies in advance if any of this is wordy. it's been a very long, frustrating week.

there are two main concerns we have: migration and support. we have about 60 domains on our account. i don't know much about vps. i know there are things like cpanel updates that will need to be done. do you provide support for all of that? i understand there's a help desk, which is good. we're actually pretty low maintenance, believe it or not. we just want things to be right from the get go.

do you help with migration? everything's whm/cpanel.

the migration -- several issues here. hostgator issues a self-signed cert which caused the security risk exception to come up on webmail and cpanel. our clients were uncomfortable with adding the exception -- you know how it is. hostgator tweaked things and globally removed the https link for login, to remove the exception notice. we were also receiving invalid session cookie/invalid login errors, so hostgator turned off secure tokens to resolve that issue. this raised questions for me about our clients' security (like i said, i don't know much but something didn't seem right to me). this was their response:

"As for the Security Tokens, this should not present a security risk for your clients, as they will still be authorizing their accounts with individual passwords, and they can use the Secure URLs to connect to your server, as long as they accept the Self-Signed SSL certificate."

i'm sure you see the conflict here. secure url's are off. i feel like i am running in huge, downward-spiraling circles. do you have the servers set up so folks don't get the exception warning when they login to cpanel or webmail (and whm, in our case)? if necessary, would i be able to purchase a single domain cert (i usually go through godaddy) that could be installed in the root and work for all of the domains, without purchasing a multi-domain cert (which we wouldn't be able to do -- that would be several thousand dollars).

some email that had been working in outlook express prior to the migration isn't working now. for example, i have three accounts on one domain. two are working and one isn't. nothing's changed, not the logins or settings -- nothing. it just won't retrieve mail from the server. the other accounts are doing what they've always done, downloading the mail and leaving a copy on the server. does this happen with knownhost?

we're getting invalid address book errors in horde, on every account on every domain. can this be fixed?

we host several mailing lists (mailman). are there any sending limits? is it ok to add another ip specifically for mailing list sending?

lastly, are we expecting too much? are these typical issues and we're just noobs who need to learn a thing or two?

thanks in advance for taking the time to read and respond.
 
Hello!

I'll try to answer your questions although I'm not with Knownhost other than as a client :) if I am unable to answer or answer incorrectly rest assured that someone from Knowhost will chime in.

cPanel updates:

By default cPanel updates itself and the OS every night. You can of course change this but you will have to run the updater yourself then if you do.

SSL cert and secure tokens:

First the certificate issues. This is a common issue with all cPanel servers. Unless you purchase your own certificate you will see this pop up. But if you read the error you will see that it is because it is a self-signed certificate and not that there is a problem with the certificate. All that this means is that the certificate was self-generated and not a purchased certificate. All encryption and security that goes with a certificate is still in effect.

And I see that your clients are concerned with security. Well changing to http instead of using https is far LESS secure as there is NO ENCRYPTION that takes place then.

As far as the secure tokens issue you saw I have never seen this issue but I've always used and required my clients to use https so perhaps that is why this issue arose.

You can purchase a certificate that will cover this, I think it's a wildcard certificate or something like that and you would purchase it for your server's host name not for all the domains you host. This really isn't necessary in my opinion as once the error is explained to the client they understand better and accept it. At least mine always have.

Migration:

Yes Knownhost will be happy to migrate your accounts for you. You will of course have to supply them with the root login and password in order for them to do so and it only works with like control panels such as cPanel to cPanel so you should be fine there.

Outlook Express:

This is an extremely old email client and even Microsoft no longer supports it. Personally I've not heard of any issues such as you mentioned but if I were to run into something like that I would recommend deleting the account from the email client and recreating it. I would also doublecheck the login and password using webmail just to make sure they were using the right settings.

Horde addressbook:

I don't use Horde but I'm sure some of my clients do and I've never had any calls about this issue. I just logged into Horde and created a contact and sent an email with no problem at all.

Mailman lists:

I'm sure there are sending limits imposed by Knownhost but to be perfectly honest you will want to limit the number you send out per batch anyways as that is a great way to get your server flagged as a spammer if you don't. You receive two IPs with your VPS and if you want to assign one for Mailman then you can certainly do that. You'll want to make sure you have Knownhost support set up RDNS for it if you do.

Expecting too much:

Not at all. The only real issue I am seeing is the SSL certificate pop up and like I said earlier I'd think with some education that people would understand better :)

Hope to see you sign up!
 
thanks so much for the quick and detailed response!

we have many clients who still use outlook express. they are non profits and/or ministries who can't upgrade as easily as some folks can.

anyway, we are feeling good about this and will be migrating everything to knownhost.

thank you again!
 
Very glad to hear it! :D

And as a recommendation you might refer Thunderbird to them as a more current email client. Personally I use it over Outlook 2010 except at work where I can't get away from it :)
 
ngestin

i hear you -- it's just hard to make old dogs learn new tricks, you know? ha!

i'm putting in our account order now.

thanks again. :)
 
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