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We are no longer accepting new clients into the FreePgs service.

All future plans for setting up new servers have been cancelled.

Existing accounts will not be removed at this time, but further discussion will need to take place to determine how this will continue.

We are going to start work on replacing all Plesk servers with cPanel/CloudLinux servers in an effort to standardize our offering and provide greater performance.

We will likely start with our EU region clients since the provider we are using has had a few problems over the past week.

Old Setup:
Plesk 11.5 over CentOS 6.6

New Setup:
cPanel (Latest) over CloudLinux

Benefits:
-We can limit the amount of memory, CPU, disk I/O on a per-client basis, which will keep your site running fast (by keeping abusers or hacked sites from using all of the available resources).
-Better functionality of PHP version selector, this setup lets you pick the modules you wish to enable/disable on a per-account basis!
-Alternative PHP versions are also correct when you SSH or run via cron, unlike the way it works with Plesk (you simply call it via "php" and you will get the correct version your site uses).
-Ability to limit outbound emails per account instead of having to disable email functions after we get blacklisted.
-Ability to select from more PHP versions than we can offer on Plesk, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6 for example.
-Automated system updates including PHP version updates (about 1 week delayed) without manual intervention from us.

These functions are already available on our NYC server.  If this is your closest server, you might want to request migration and see if it offers any benefits for your site.

PHP 5.2.17 and 5.3.29 have now been removed from Plesk.  5.3.3 is still available using "Apache Module" as that is the patched OS vendor version.

If you were using 5.2.17 or 5.3.29 you have automatically been switched to 5.4.35.

We are no longer able to maintain these PHP versions on our Plesk servers.  We can continue to offer these versions along with a few others on our NYC cPanel server due to the additional isolation and protection available on that platform.

We don't plan on stopping services in 2015.  If anything, we may need to move to different providers in some areas.

Our goal will be to either have everyone migrated over to cPanel/CloudLinux servers (which solves this as well as allowing one site to slow everyone else down) OR at least attempt to upgrade all servers to Plesk 12.x which offers similar email limiting options.

Email is only half of the problem, the other half is when sites are spamvertised via another source put point to our servers.  (Along with phishing sites being uploaded to users sites because they are not keeping their scripts up to date, do not use strong passwords, do not have proper permissions set, or their passwords were compromised (the case for mail being sent from someone's account).

This is sad news though understandable. Does this mean that Freepgs is slowly going to be wound down?

From the topic posted earlier this year on the same subject, http://forum.freepgs.com/index.php?topic=2084.0, the task looked quite daunting to me; getting the balance between keeping things running for competent web-masters against, almost a parental role, on the users that are leaving their sites open to malicious misuse.

Personally I would really hate to see Freepgs go, I have been here almost since the beginning you guys have always gone above and beyond on the level of service that you provide.

Users have got better, but unfortunately, it only takes a few to cause problems.

We are facing more and more problems with spam, exploited sites, phishing emails, emails contain viruses, constantly being blacklisted, etc.

We will no longer be able to provide this service due to all of these constant issues.

Starting next year, we will be forced to scale back operations.  We will be going through payments to determine the number of accounts paid beyond the end of this year to be sure we continue offering service to those accounts or process a refund.

5.4.34 and 5.5.18 have been released and will be installed within a few days.

5.6.2 will be available on the cPanel (NYC) server within one week.

Please let us know if you would like PHP 5.6 to be made available on the EAST, EU, and LAX servers.

We already have it available on the new NYC cPanel server.

We are thinking of migrating from Plesk to cPanel w/ CloudLinux for new servers which will prevent one user from using all of the resources of a server.

This also allows us to sell packages with different CPU/IO/connection limits instead of just disk space.

If you are currently on the EAST server and would like to try out the new system, please email plesk at lvcs dot net or use the helpdesk to request migration.

This also allows us to offer a wider range of PHP versions due to the way users are isolated.
SSH access is standard on this server for Gold and Titanium plans.

5.4.33 and 5.5.17 have been released and will be made available to Plesk servers within the next 24 hours.

The cPanel server typically takes a week or more as those are provided by CloudLinux alt-php.

For those that must use PHP 5.2, we can migrate you over to the NYC cPanel server.
That server runs each user in an isolated environment, so the risk of using the older version would only be with your sites.

We will be removing 5.2 and 5.3 from Plesk servers very soon.  The NYC server will continue to offer older versions due to the way it is setup.

I applied for migration via help desk, but i cannot access the ticket anymore because I tried to upgrade my help desk account to a full account. As a result I am as of this post am still waiting for the validation email which until i receive and click on the link won't let me log in. The helpdesk username is the same as my panel username. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Aleeious

I have forced your Helpdesk account as validated.

Sorry I'm still getting the error:

Sorry, you must validate your account by clicking the link you received in our email to you. If you did not receive and email, click here.

Please go back and try again. If the problem persists, please contact an administrator.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Aleeious

If you still can't access the helpdesk, please email plesk at lvcs dot net, that would be much faster then replying to this thread.

There are no pending accounts to be verified as per the helpdesk, so you may just have to continue creating new tickets under guest or we can remove the user and let you try it again.

I applied for migration via help desk, but i cannot access the ticket anymore because I tried to upgrade my help desk account to a full account. As a result I am as of this post am still waiting for the validation email which until i receive and click on the link won't let me log in. The helpdesk username is the same as my panel username. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Aleeious

I have forced your Helpdesk account as validated.

We are testing a new cPanel server at the NYC data center.

If anyone would like to be moved to this server, please let us know by sending a message via the Helpdesk.

This server is running CloudLinux so it allows various PHP versions to be selected, modules to be included/excluded, PHP settings changed, etc.

If you are on EAST, this server should provide more performance as it is SSD based.