Darkoshi

I've had cable internet service through Earthlink, in conjunction with Time Warner, now Spectrum, since I moved into this house in 2007. At $41.95 a month, it was cheaper than getting service directly through Time Warner/Spectrum. Before that, I had Earthlink over DSL at the old house. (This house didn't get DSL, so that wasn't an option here.)

This is the last snapshot that the Wayback Machine has, from 2016/10/04, of the cable internet plans that Earthlink offered via Time Warner, Brighthouse, and Spectrum:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161004151417/http://www.earthlink.net/access/cable_offer.faces

Somewhen in the last few years, I read that that signing up for Earthlink service through Time Warner was no longer available for new customers. I had been looking to see if my mom could get it. This is the only page now that I can find that mentions it:
https://stopthecap.com/2017/12/27/earthlink-charter-spectrum-dead-no-new-customers-allowed/

In 2017, Windstream bought Earthlink:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/windstream-earthlink-to-combine-in-673-million-all-stock-deal-1478523397
http://fortune.com/2016/11/07/windstream-holdings-earthlink/

Now in 2019, Windstream sold Earthlink to a private equity firm:
https://www.lightwaveonline.com/articles/2019/01/windstream-sells-earthlink-consumer-unit-to-trive-capital.html

I only found out about the latter because I was wondering why my website hasn't been working for the last month or two. (Based on my browser history, the last time I was able to access it was on Feb. 16 of this year. Since then it's been showing "Sorry. It looks like there isn.t a page on our website at the address you requested (or it may be temporarily unavailable)."

I'm still able to login to my Earthlink account, and apparently the email address still works (though I never used it because initially it got so much spam).

Then I found this page, last modified on April 12, 2019:
https://support.earthlink.net/articles/web-hosting/free-webspace-faq.php

which gives a number that I can call, to potentially get my website up and working again.
But then it says:

How can I make changes to my WebSpace?
You are unable to edit your WebSpace. Your website will remain as is until March 31, 2020 at which time it will be permanently removed.

What does EarthLink plan to do with the WebSpace platform?
EarthLink will be decommissioning the WebSpace platform on March 31, 2020. At that time, all websites will be removed and the information will no longer be available.


So even if I got my site restored, I wouldn't be able to make any changes to it. And it would be gone next year anyway. Meh, so much for that. You would think they'd have at least notified their customers about this before-hand. They didn't.

A few other people have complained about it (the comments by "John of Oceanside, CA" and "Stacey of Fort Lauderdale, FL"):
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/internet/earthlink.htm

I have all my website files saved off locally, so I haven't lost anything. I'll be putting them back up at a different URL.