Inception Hosting acquired by Clouvider Limited

mikho

email sent out today:

Inception Hosting acquired by Clouvider Limited
After many months of friendly discussion and negotiation Inception Hosting has been bought by Clouvider Limited. Inception Hosting will continue to operate as a separate company. You will see no changes, the invoices, payments and your contract(s) remain with Inception Hosting Limited.

The history of Inception Hosting
Inception Hosting started from humble beginnings back in 2011 in part because I Anthony Smith, previous owner and director of Inception Hosting was as a service user frustrated with a lack of quality of service and care in the budget side of the market. Having spent a lot of years running enterprise-grade technical service desks and doing so to a high standard I knew it would not take much to provide a great alternative to many of the other hosts out there with a "you get what you pay for" frame of mind when it came to support and quality because usually, you did not even get that.

It brought me great pleasure to generate a reputation as a stable, competent affordable yet quality hosting option in the budget end of the market often getting favourably compared to significantly more expensive option. However, in truth it has taken years and years of 12+ hour days, 7 days a week rarely with a day off for the last 10 years to get it to the stage it is at now.

What does the future hold?
With trends changing and significant development needed to innovate and advance the future offers available to customers; new and old, that meant some investment was needed in order to take things to the next level rather than tread water for years to come.

Because Clouvider is already the trusted backend to over 70% of Inception Hosting's servers and often publicly acknowledged as a very high-quality network and server provider themselves with their demand for high standards and quality above all else it just made sense from my perspective for Inception Hosting to be absorbed by Clouvider in order to give it and Inception Hosting customers the best possible chance of being where it needs to be within the market over the next 10 years and it will be exciting to make available services from Inception Hosting in other Clouvider locations.

Many customers have now trusted Inception Hosting for a full 10 years and I am very excited for the future, I really believe this was the best move to position Inception Hosting where it needs to be to take the service and quality to the next level. To be clear Inception Hosting did not need to be sold, nothing was ever at risk this was a mutual meeting of minds, discussions took place over the best part of a year and both sides felt comfortable about the idea right away.

Is Anthony staying onboard?
Yes! I will remain active, employed now directly by Clouvider and part of my primary responsibilities will be to continue to look after Inception Hosting so not a huge amount will change for customers in the short/medium term although some new names may pop up on the support desk.

I have a question...
If you have any questions or queries about this acquisition then please do not hesitate to
get in touch with us.

Kind Regards,
Anthony Smith,
Team Inception Hosting

InceptionHosting

Happy to answer any questions I can (within reason).

CamoYoshi

Congrats Ant on finally getting the ring put on the finger... may it be a happy marriage for many years to come.

Kidding a little bit. But seriously! I think this is a fantastic move that will hopefully finally let you have a bit of a break from going 150% all the time. Very happy for you and only wishing you and your clients all the best moving forward.

ehab

at first i was like

but then , since you are still holding the wheel then its fine

AaronSS

@AnthonySmith said: Happy to answer any questions I can (within reason).

What does this mean for LowEndSpirit? I assume nothing?

cybertech

does it mean moving out of low-end segment? from a mid-long term perspective

Chievo

Congrats for the future steps. Growing and thinking about tomorrow is a clever move . Clouvider is a prem and you are still on a high position so presumably nothing would change drastically. Hopefully you would be growing together offering great services.

arirang

@AnthonySmith said:
Happy to answer any questions I can (within reason).

This year no more black friday deal or huge discount?!

Anyway Congratulations.

Nyr

Congratulations on the acquisition, interesting news.

Will be interesting to see how Inception Hosting is doing 2 years from now.

My bet: trying to attract higher value customers, expanded to more locations worldwide, likely even offering some of the "cloud" services which are necessity to survive during the next decade. We will see

InceptionHosting

@Aaron said:

@AnthonySmith said: Happy to answer any questions I can (within reason).

What does this mean for LowEndSpirit? I assume nothing?

means nothing we are planning its migration now.

@arirang said:

@AnthonySmith said:
Happy to answer any questions I can (within reason).

This year no more black friday deal or huge discount?!

Anyway Congratulations.

haha well, maybe, I did suggest after the last one I want to try something different this year.

@Nyr said: Congratulations on the acquisition, interesting news.

Thanks, much appreciated!> @Chievo said:

Congrats for the future steps. Growing and thinking about tomorrow is a clever move . Clouvider is a prem and you are still on a high position so presumably nothing would change drastically. Hopefully you would be growing together offering great services.

Thank you!

@cybertech said: does it mean moving out of low-end segment? from a mid-long term perspective

Nope, check out the new AMS KVM prices, they are in line with historical prices I mean ultimately that sort of decision would be out of my hands but there is nothing to indicate that.

Pasweb

@AnthonySmith said:
Happy to answer any questions I can (within reason).

what about service in USA DC, is it still continued?

InceptionHosting

@Pasweb said:

@AnthonySmith said:
Happy to answer any questions I can (within reason).

what about service in USA DC, is it still continued?

That's the plan.

arirang

Was this mail sent to some customer? I didn't get the mail.

InceptionHosting

@arirang said:
Was this mail sent to some customer? I didn't get the mail.

it is still going, it is a big batch and it is going to 25 recipients every 30 seconds, will probably finish by 3am haha

Pasweb

@AnthonySmith said:
That's the plan.

plans to migrate to Clouvider USA DC?
I pray there is no change in price.

Btw, congrats for the acquisition
I hope to still find Ant friendliness at Help Desk

NoComment

@AnthonySmith

Can I ask what the trade-offs are for you to make this decision? Is it a thing where you get more free time but make less money, or less free time but more money etc.

beagle

Congrats @AnthonySmith. Looking forward to some exciting future offerings.

deank

Who gets the ownership of this forum?

@AntGoldFish still retains its ownership or will it be transferred to @Cider?

hey

congrats to both parties.

are you rich now?

Chievo

More golf and squash and padel time for him

mikho

@deank said:
Who gets the ownership of this forum?

@AntGoldFish still retains its ownership or will it be transferred to @Cider?

The forum is excluded from the deal.
Still in Ant-hands

Not_Oles

Hooray! ? Congratulations and best wishes to @Clouvider and to @AnthonySmith!

sureiam

InceptionHosting

@Pasweb said: plans to migrate to Clouvider USA DC?

I believe there are plans to expand into Clouviders USA DC's but nothing set in stone as yet, as you can imagine a lot is going on right now

@Pasweb said: Btw, congrats for the acquisition

I hope to still find Ant friendliness at Help Desk

Thanks, I am still effectively running Inception Hosting so I will still be replying to tickets

@bibi said: Can I ask what the trade-offs are for you to make this decision? Is it a thing where you get more free time but make less money, or less free time but more money etc.

To be honest, it was not really a trade-off based decision, it was more a case of me being stuck in the same routine over and over again and the thought of still doing the exactly the same thing 10 years from now was driving me a bit mad as I am already essentially doing the same thing I was doing 5 years ago.

I really needed some help, perspective, ideas and resources to make Inception Hosting better, I have to just make things clear, I am not a businessman, I am an IT guy that started a business, frankly, I should have been screaming for help years ago in terms of what to do next with Inception Hosting.

Dom and his team have been great in all of this so far, this is a huge change for me, although we had been in talks for a long time the actual sale process itself happened pretty quickly and the way they have treated me is amazing.

The good thing about this is that it was not a financial decision, sure money was involved but it was not the motivating factor.

@beagle said: Congrats @AnthonySmith. Looking forward to some exciting future offerings.

thanks, me too

InceptionHosting

@deank said:
Who gets the ownership of this forum?

@AntGoldFish still retains its ownership or will it be transferred to @Cider?

basically, this accelerates my plans to hand it on, expect nominations within a few weeks.

LES was completely excluded from the sale.

lgsin

Inception Hosting acquired by Clouvider Limited
However, in truth it has taken years and years of 12+ hour days, 7 days a week rarely with a day off for the last 10 years to get it to the stage it is at now.

Must had been tough. Congrats for the relief of burden and it's comforting to hear you're still holding the wheel. One suggestion and one question here.

Just checked the new AMS KVM in the clients area and found out the names of VPS categories became more inconsistent. Maybe it's a good chance to re-name the categories to make names more meaningful:

• Netherlands KVM VPS: NVMe SSD KVM
• UK SSD KVM: NVMe SSD KVM
• UK KVM Virtual Servers: SSD cached KVM
• USA KVM VPS: SSD cached VPS

I guess the inconsistency of names might be because there was different hardware configuration available from different upstream providers at different time, making planing names ahead hard. This leads to my question: since clouvider has a US location, is there a imminent plan of switching USA upstream provider?

InceptionHosting

@Not_Oles said:
Hooray! ? Congratulations and best wishes to @Clouvider and to @AnthonySmith!

thank you!

@sureiam said:

brilliant! haha. I am the same way which is why I have been doing the same thing without a break for 10 years!

Amitz

While I (personally) would not like the idea of being one of @Cider's employees, I still think that the new situation offers benefits to both parties. All I wish for Anthony is being happy in life. Is that too much too ask for? No. It is not! So, Ant - If you are happy, then I am happy with you.

And, @Clouvider: Be prepared - If I ever have to see Ant in tears because of you, then I will come over to your place and spank your rectum with a rotten trout. Remember: I am Amitz, the Grand Rectumfier. I am serious when it comes to trouts. And ass spanking. And rectal operations in general.

InceptionHosting

@hey said:
congrats to both parties.

are you rich now?

well, I won't be retiring any time soon but I am not excluding the possibility of getting a motorhome for all the holidays I have been graced with... apparently people pay you for taking time off ?!?

InceptionHosting

@Amitz said:
While I (personally) would not like the idea of being one of @Cider's employees, I still think that the new situation offers benefits to both parties. All I wish for Anthony is being happy in life. Is that too much too ask for? No. It is not! So, Ant - If you are happy, then I am happy with you.

I am happy

Thank you!

Amitz

@AnthonySmith said:
I am happy

Party time then!