EIG Layoffs at BlueHost and A Small Orange
Last updated on Feb 9, 2017
Just in case for some reason you thought 2017 would be the year that things might make a positive turn around for employees of Endurance International Group and its hosting customers, it has been revealed that EIG is laying off staff at two of their offices.
Orem, UT (BlueHost, HostMonster, and JustHost)
On January 19th, 2017, employees at BlueHost in Orem, UT were informed during a meeting that their office was closing. Some of the audio from the meeting was made available in a reddit post titled: Bluehost customer support and sales being relocated (audio link here).
The layoffs are affecting 440 employees and are set to start in March with completion to be by October of this year. EIG is consolidating web hosting support from Orem, UT to their Tempe, AZ office, which already provides support services for other EIG brands including HostGator and iPage.
Update 02/01/2017: EIG is planning on adding 600 new positions and expanding their Tempe, Arizona office – Tempe Government Officials and Endurance Leadership Celebrate the 71,000 SQ. Ft. Expansion
Austin, TX (A Small Orange, Arvixe, and Site5)
The following week, on January 24th, 2017, layoffs were announced that affect approximately 90 customer support agents in the Austin, TX office that provides hosting support for EIG brands including A Small Orange, Arvixe, and Site5. Customer support in their other Texas office location in Houston will remain.
For employees that are losing their jobs at the Orem and Austin offices, EIG is offering severance packages that include the following:
- 1 month salary
- 2 weeks severance plus 1 week of additional severance pay for each year of employment
- 3 months COBRA subsidy
Best of luck to everyone affected by these bottom line decisions.
Glad I’m in the process of moving away from Site5…
I just cancelled my Site5 account today. Moved everything to Hawk Host. I’ve been with Site5 since 2005 but after EIG took over everything went to hell. Ticket response times are weeks to months now and the keyboard monkeys on live chat are useless.
As of today I am cancelling my Site5 account. Been with them for over 8 years and they were GREAT until acquired by EIG. Ever since then things have tanked-servers down for DAYS, support tickets unanswered (even after threatening to terminate my account), etc. LiveChat used to be great, but are now low-level service people who can’t do anything except triage issues up the chain. I’m outta there. Looking at Veerotech, HostWithLove and 1 or 2 others.
EIG CLAIMS they plan to “add 600 new positions…”, but they won’t do that; they’re gonna come up with some idiotic excuse and add at most 60 people…to their outsourced sh*t. Sorry, staff.
They killed Bluehost. Our sites have been down now for 3 whole days! Bluehost says it is a VPS server issue and as of tonight have still NOT discovered the cause. We are done – a customer of 5 years. We are taking our hosting and 14 websites to another independant host. Who knows how long it will be until they are gone. As for Bluehost – EIG has destroyed them.
I am still an A Small Orange customer, on a legacy Tiny Orange plan. It’s just $25/year and I don’t think I can match it anywhere else. Especially since they allow unlimited domains (mine are mostly just parked), and a bunch of other stuff that most hosts don’t allow. I guess I’m stuck with them but I was shocked to see they removed the ph# for help and now only have online chat. I couldn’t even find an email, yet the TOS require certain things be done in writing, by email. Sad, because they were such a lovely bunch of people.