If you are unable to access your website and have viewed the following message:
This account has been suspended.
Please contact your hosting provider for details.
Or
This website has been disabled.
If you are the site-owner, please contact Technical Support for further information and assistance.
Then your website has been suspended. While this can be frustrating, it is necessary to protect our servers and prevent any additional harm from impacting them.
If your website has been suspended, you may contact GreenGeeks Support by Phone or Live Chat for general guidance and assistance. Please note that our Support team cannot take action on or resolve Billing or Compliance tickets. All required actions must be completed by you, and you must reply directly to your notice for the matter to be resolved.
Why Was My Account Suspended?
There are dozens of reasons why your account may have been temporarily suspended, with the most common reason being the detection of a malware infection. Website security is critical because hackers target and infect thousands of websites every day. According to the ISACA, a cyber attack occurs every 39 seconds. Hackers leave malware to infect the website, which poses a risk to any other websites on that server. As such, the accounts are suspended to prevent this from spreading.
Naturally, there are a variety of security risks that may prompt your account to be suspended. There are also reasons unrelated to security that may cause an account to be suspended. Here are some of the most common reasons:
- Brute Force Attacks
- Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attacks
- Detection of Illegal Content On the Website
- Violation of our Terms of Service
- Failure to Pay for Web Hosting Services
- Exceeding Your Resource Usage Limits
- Participating in Spamming Activities
This list is not extensive, and many more reasons exist that can lead to account suspension. To avoid this from happening, ensure that your account security measures are adequate to protect against modern website attacks and that your website follows our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy.
GreenGeeks takes every effort to take minimal action in Compliance or Monitoring issues to stop the problem while attempting to keep other services online. This is not practical in every scenario, and may require us to do a full suspension to protect our servers or network reputation.
Suspension is not punishment; it’s a precautionary measure to protect your account and prevent further issues from occurring.
Compliance and Monitoring issues are time-sensitive and require each incident to be properly ticketed and documented for historical purposes and to ensure proper history is kept. As such, GreenGeeks is unable to place outbound calls for notifications before taking any necessary actions.
Compliance, Monitoring, and Billing issues cannot be resolved via Phone, Live Chat, or via our Support team. All notices and suspensions must be resolved within the original notice opened by GreenGeeks.
What To Do
If your account has been suspended, you’ll need to take the appropriate action to lift the suspension. The action you take depends on why your account was suspended in the first place.
Compliance Violation
If your suspension was caused by compliance violations, take the following steps to lift the suspension:
- Check your GreenGeeks Account for a Compliance or Monitoring notice. This will have a subject such as “GreenGeeks Malware Notice” or “GreenGeeks Spam Alert.”
- Read the notice in full, as this will contain all information regarding why you were suspended, and what is necessary to resolve the notice and lift the suspension.
- Complete all necessary actions needed to resolve the issue. This may include, but is not limited to:
- Remove all reported malware, copyrighted content, backups, or other data causing issues with GreenGeeks servers.
- Reset all passwords under your control.
- Confirming ownership of domains and websites in a shared hosting environment.
- Optimization of your website’s database, including implementation of caching or other performance-related changes.
- Upgrade your service to a higher plan to become compliant with our policies.
- Note: EcoSite Lite and Pro customers can upgrade their accounts automatically via their GreenGeeks Account. Premium, Reseller, and VPS upgrades can be handled via a ticket with our Sales Department.
- Answer any and all questions in full that the GreenGeeks Compliance Team may have regarding your account, your data, domains, or any other activity on your account.
- Reply to the ticket with all changes you have made to resolve the issue, or with any questions or concerns you may have regarding your notice.
- Wait patiently for our team to review your reply and respond to your inquiries. All inbound ticket replies are processed and responded to in the order they are received.
Billng Suspension
If your suspension was caused by billing issues, take the following steps to lift the suspension:
- Check your GreenGeeks Account for a Billing notice. This will have a subject such as “Overdue on payment” or “CB XXXX“. (XXXX is a specific Chargeback ID number)
- Read the notice in full, as this will contain all information regarding why you were suspended and any amount(s) that may be due.
- Make all necessary payments needed to restore service. This may include, but is not limited to:
- Overdue invoices for hosting services, domain registrations, or addon services
- Payments collected by GreenGeeks that receive a chargeback from your bank or financial institution.
- Note: This will incur an additional reactivation fee.
- Answer any and all verification questions in full that the GreenGeeks Billing Team requests for verification of your account.
- Reply to the ticket once you have submitted your payment(s), or with any questions or concerns you may have regarding your notice.
- Wait patiently for our team to review your reply and respond to your inquiries. All inbound ticket replies are processed and responded to in the order they are received.
Ensuring a Timely Resolution
While account suspensions can be frustrating, annoying, and scary, it is important to stay calm and follow the proper procedures for a speedy resolution of your Compliance and Billing ticket.
Submitting repeated updates to a ticket without providing new or relevant information, or paying your invoice can extend response times. This may delay resolution and keep your website(s) offline longer.
Opening multiple tickets in an attempt to expedite resolution significantly delays our response times. All communication regarding Compliance and Billing tickets must be kept within the original notice to ensure proper history is kept.
Response Times
Compliance
The typical response time for Compliance and Monitoring tickets is 30 to 60 minutes; however, each instance is different, and response times may vary.
The GreenGeeks Compliance Team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Compliance Management is available Monday through Friday during normal business hours.
Depending on the severity of your issue and when your response is received, there may be a 24 to 72-hour delay for replies.
NOTE: Customers found to be deliberately abusing GreenGeeks’ services may be permanently suspended without prior notice, at GreenGeeks’ sole discretion.
Billing
The typical response time for Billing tickets is 30 to 60 minutes; however, each instance is different, and response times may vary.
The GreenGeeks Billing Team is available from 8:30 AM to 7:30 PM EST 7 days a week.
Billing Management is available Monday through Friday during normal business hours.
NOTE: Account suspensions for chargebacks and non-payment are done automatically by our systems, and are beyond the control of GreenGeeks staff.
Take Control of Your Security and Payments
It is important to point out that you are responsible for your website’s security, maintenance and all applicable payments. When websites are infected with malware, it is not only dangerous for that website, but for the entire server; thus, as a web host, we must act fast and suspend any site that endangers the server where other sites are stored.
While being suspended may feel bad, it is an essential part of not only preventing the malware from spreading throughout the server, but also preventing new files from being injected on your site. Once the website is offline, that’s it; nothing new can be uploaded to it until the issue is resolved. Consider it a shield for your website from further access and damage by attackers.
Once the website is offline, you must remove the infection and improve your security measures to ensure that a similar attack does not take place again. A secure website is essential in today’s world, as compromised websites can easily lead to your visitors’ data being stolen or data loss.
At GreenGeeks, protecting your account is one of our top priorities. Our team is standing by and ready to help you in the event your site is suspended due to a cyber attack or billing suspension, so please do not hesitate to contact us. The faster your issue is resolved, the faster your site can do business again.