I am the previous owner of NodeKi and this post was just brought to my attention, not by Breck, the existing owner of the business, but another customer who hosted with NodeKi when I first started the business, so I wanted to stop by and reply as I cannot reply to the post at WMPU.

If Sarah would like to confirm this is a valid post and that I am who I say I am, let me know what e-mail you'd like for me to get in touch with you at and I'll be more than happy to follow up with you immediately.

That being said, NodeKi was sold to InterQuad last year. The reason for the sale was simple, other business ventures took off faster than expected and NodeKi was the only hosting brand I owned as well as the only business I owned which required ongoing support - as other ventures grew, my time to help customers was cut shorter and shorter and I didn't think that was fair to them, so I made a decision.

To ensure customers were able to receive the same or better levels of support than what I could provide, I began searching for a company that would be financially and technologically sound, one who would be capable of taking on and managing a large number of growing WordPress sites and be able to support them should anything happen, whether it's a small issue with a plugin or an issue with a website being targeted by malware.

I spoke to over 20 companies, all of which were very much aware of the Lifetime Plans, how they were sold and why we chose to offer them in addition to monthly plans. InterQuad was very much interested in the deal so we began discussing the terms, which included me staying on to provide limited support for a period of time after the sale was complete. I stayed on up through December of last year (2013) at which time InterQuad terminated that agreement.

The agreement for the sale was based on the fact that InterQuad would be able to manage and support WordPress powered sites and that they understood the in's and out's of the LT plans, and would be able to support them whether that meant keeping the customer on an existing LT plan or assisting them with an upgrade to a higher plan if their resource usage dictated the need for such. All details were made available upfront, before the sale. Nothing was hidden.

The LT plans were profitable to a point. They weren't the most profitable, but they did generate revenue and the vast majority of the customers submitted maybe 1-2 tickets a month, if that. Others did make up for the lacking submissions from others, but that's how it goes in the hosting industry. Some customers you only hear from if something is wrong, others you hear from daily. Either way, whether they paid $10 or $99 for an LT plan, they were treated the same when I was there.

Despite what some may feel the goal of the plans wasn't to capitalize on unsuspecting customers and take their money. They were a cheap, supported alternative to existing hosting plans on the market. If you speak with any of the customers who use/used NodeKi, when I ran the operation, I'm sure they would agree things were running smoothly and I did everything I could to ensure that even small issues were taken care by me personally. Even if it was something as small as uploading a theme and clicking activate. I cared about the customers and my decision to sell the company was simply because I felt that they deserved more time than I could give and in most cases, a larger dedicated team should be more than capable of providing more than I could.

That said, I've not spoke to Breck since the 7th of this month, and the only discussion there was to aid in transferring the few last remaining domains out of my control and into his.

It's unfortunate and I am truly sorry that it's happening. Unfortunately, not all mergers and sales go as planned, despite what you hear upfront. I knew InterQuad was planning to no longer offer the LT plans, but I didn't know they'd be giving existing LT customers the boot.