What would you do if your company had an investor to help your startup and out of no where, took your server offline and has control of your domain? You still had active clients and no longer have any of their files.

You'd be left up-creek-minus-paddle, unless you had a water-tight contract and a bloody good lawyer on retainer...

This is one reason why spending the extra $5000 for the lawyer in the beginning would have started to look like a good decision. Most likely it would have been cheaper than that to get a good business lawyer to write up contracts and look over investor contracts. If that is the situation that you are in, things are very unfortunate for you. Most likely, the investor has a lawyer, and most likely a lawyer that wrote up the original contracts and such. If that contract said that the investor can pull the plug if he doesn't like whats going on, and the business owner signed that contract, its over. Stuff like this happens all the time. It pays off in the long run to get lawyers in the beginning

If this is the position your in I am sorry to hear that and sometimes it just happens.
Before going with any investor you should always hire or speak to a lawyer and have some contracts written up stating what you both could do and can't do. If you are in this position the best thing to do is to try and contact that investor and get everything straighten out if you never had any contracts then its more likely its your lost.

You learn from your mistakes and next time you go with an investor make sure to have some contracts written up and signed. I hope all works out for you good luck.

Not even server backups??

You would need to register a new domain name, get a new server online asap, contact your customer base and eat some "humble pie" and hope some may stay with you.

Oh and start doing backups

Steve

You have to start all from the very beginning.

When one is getting an investor, it is important to secure the interests in the new enterprise! Everything should be planed carefully and written in paper. Another thing to do is not to welcome investor from countries in which you could not bring them into the court.

This is why I would be really leery about getting an investor. Do it yourself or don't do it at all.

you can start off with very little, start with a reseller account, build up a clientbase them move the master reseller, then onto a VPS/dedicated server as money come in.
this is how i started in the hosting business and now i have several servers

Only thing keep me from getting customers right now, is that WMHCS license. If I had customers lined up, I'd get it. But my luck I would get it and no one would sign up.

So, phooey... I am not going to get it, at least not at this point.

Yes unfortunately, this is my predicament.

Starting off we really didn't have any money which is why we got in contact with an investor, he gave us a server, registered our domain and allowed us to resell all of his servers.

We were with him for two years and all of a sudden this has happened. We have already moved to a new location and contacted all of our clients and have told them what has happened. Unfortunately as he has purchased the domain, legally it is his, and he's not willing to give it up.

Did you have an investment contract with the person? You can possibly go legal on them for damage to the business.

Definitely need backups elsewhere, but a solid contract is something you'll need for the future. No ONE PERSON should be able to destroy the company if you have the right legal provisions in place. Someone would be liable for the actions.

if you are using cpanel then why not try phphostbot http://www.idevspot.com/PhpHostBot.php one off fee $24.95 this will give you a start.

or their is Accountlab Plus (free) which will give you a start.

While trying to get more information on the investor, it seems as if most of the information given to me is now invalid. Honestly, I just would like the domain and the files of my clients so I could continue on with my business. But doesn't look like this will be happening. We are still attempting to work things out to at least get a copy of our client's files.

The main reason for the provider was for the fact that we had no money for servers at the time. So even a free billing system wouldn't of helped. Plus we already had a in-house billing system created for when we had the money for servers.

The information you have on the investor is now invalid? Was this a private individual that purchased servers on your behalf? Was this a datacenter that sponsored hosting for you or something?

I'm not sure the term "investor" is the right one, unless there's more to it. Either way, you'll definitely need a contract with whoever it is you decide to partner up with in the future.

Everything you do, and I mean EVERYTHING, needs a contract.