HelioHost

08/25/2026

HelioHost Instagram

Did you know that HelioHost has an Instagram account?

https://www.instagram.com/heliohostig

Since we have 8200 users, and only 19 people follow the Instagram account the answer to that question for 99.77% people is probably, "Nope."

If you do check out our Instagram account don't expect anything too exciting. It's just another way for us to use a bot to send out our news posts to people. Honestly, all of the HelioHost staff would much rather chat with the community, add new features, and help people with their hosting issues rather than have anything to do with social media. If you actually enjoy social media let us know, and we may be willing to let you volunteer to help manage our social junk. You can follow the Instagram account if you want, or not, we don't really care one way or the other, but if you spend a lot of time on Instagram anyways (we certainly don't) it may be a useful way for you to hear about what is going on with HelioHost.

Did you know that HelioHost has an Instagram account? https://www.instagram.com/heliohostig Since we have 8200 users, and only 19 people follow the Instagram account the answer to that question for 99.77% people is probably, "Nope." If you do check out our Instagram account don't expect anything ...

08/10/2026

Johnny Maintenance Finished

The maintenance on Johnny has been completed, and everything is back online. Let us know if you notice anything acting weird.

The maintenance on Johnny has been completed, and everything is back online. Let us know if you notice anything acting weird.

08/08/2026

Johnny Maintenance

We will be doing scheduled maintenance on the Johnny plan starting on Monday August 10th starting at about 17:00 UTC. The Johnny server will be offline for several hours, all websites hosted on the Johnny plan will be offline, users on the Johnny plan will not be able to login into their account at heliohost.org or login to Plesk for the duration of the maintenance. We will make a news post once the Johnny server is back online and has been restored to full functional following the maintenance. If you're currently on the Johnny plan and want to avoid this downtime you could upgrade to the Morty or Tommy plan prior to Monday at https://heliohost.org/dashboard/move/

The Tommy upgrade has been completed, and all Tommy accounts have been moved to the new Tommy2 server. The old Tommy server is already powered off, and will be deleted in a week or two. If you were migrated to Tommy2 please check your account to make sure everything is fully functional. If any files are missing or if anything is broken we can still power on the old Tommy to recover whatever you may be missing. If you don't notice until after Tommy is deleted, it will be gone forever though so we encourage you to check everything thoroughly as soon as possible.

The reason we're doing maintenance on Johnny is to increase the capacity of the plan to hold more free accounts. For the last couple months Johnny has had reduced hardware resources while we rearrange the way our servers are configured. Since the Tommy upgrade has been completed we will now have more space available for Johnny.

The good news is that following the maintenance downtime on Monday we will be increasing the number of free signups available each day. It would really be nice to get free signups open for at least an hour again instead of less than 1 second, but like always we have no direct control over how long signups are open for. We just offer as many free accounts as our capacity can support while keeping the speed and uptime of the free plan reasonably good. If there is no one trying to get a free account they will stay open forever.

Let us know if you have questions or comments about any of this.

We will be doing scheduled maintenance on the Johnny plan starting on Monday August 10th starting at about 17:00 UTC. The Johnny server will be offline for several hours, all websites hosted on the Johnny plan will be offline, users on the Johnny plan will not be able to login into their account ...

07/26/2026

Tommy Upgrade

Tommy is getting upgraded! Johnny may have thrown a tantrum and demanded to jump ahead of his place in line, but our exclusive donor server hasn't been forgotten, and is finally going to get even faster and even more up-to-date.

We will be starting a major upgrade soon, and wanted to let you know what to expect.

What is changing:

PHP: All of the versions of PHP currently available on Tommy will still be available after the upgrade.

Node.js: We are adding versions 26 and 25. All other versions of Node.js currently available on Tommy will remain available after the upgrade.

Python: We are adding version 3.14. Version 3.9 will remain the same. Version 3.12 will be removed.

Django: We are adding version 6.0.7 running on Python 3.14. We are removing version 6.0.3 running on Python 3.12.

Flask: We are adding version 3.1.3 running on Python 3.14. We are removing version 3.0.3 running on Python 3.12.

MariaDB: We are adding version 12.3. We are removing version 10.5.

PostgreSQL: We are adding version 18.4. We are removing version 13.23.

Unfortunately, we don't have a way of tracking which accounts are using which Python modules right now. So if you're using any modules, please take a look at https://tommy2-info.heliohost.org/pyinfo/info3.14.py as soon as possible, and request any modules that you'll need that aren't already available. In the future, we plan to add a system for tracking which modules each account needs, allowing us to pre-install them before an account is moved. For now, you will need to re-request them. You can use this link https://helionet.org/index/forum/45-customer-service/?do=add to let us know if any modules you need are missing.

Another thing to keep in mind during an upgrade like this is that your IP address will be changing. If you use our nameservers, ns1.heliohost.org and ns2.heliohost.org, your DNS records will be updated to the new values for you. If you use external DNS, such as Cloudflare, you'll need to manually update your DNS records yourself. You will receive an email with the correct values when it's time to change them. If you don't want downtime due to incorrect DNS records, you could temporarily use our DNS until you're moved, and then go back to the external DNS afterwards.

You will receive an email when your account begins its migration to the new hardware, and a second email when the move has completed. We are taking volunteers to be the first ones to experience the upgraded speed and features, so if you're ready to move, let us know. If you need a little more time to make sure your website is ready for the upgrade, let us know, and we can move you to the end of the list too. If we don't hear from your we will assume you're ready to move now.

Let us know if you have any questions.

07/19/2026

Free Morty Trials

When the Johnny server crashed we decided to give out free Morty trials to any affected users who wanted to get their website back online as soon as possible, since it would take a few weeks to get Johnny running again. We gave those free trials with no credit card required, no commitment, and without even a concrete end date for the trial, etc. Just HelioHost being generous, and trying to help people out like we always do.

We gave out about 50 trials with no expectations that anyone would pay to stay on Morty, and honestly we thought 100% of the free trials would just happily move back to Johnny without a single upgrade. We were completely shocked and overjoyed to see that we received nearly $100 of upgrades from the free trials for Johnny people.

The next round of free trials has begun, and this time around we're intentionally targeting businesses who are running their website on Tommy or Johnny. We've noticed that a lot of start-up entrepreneurs test out their website on our free hosting, with the intention of moving to AWS, or some other ridiculously expensive hosting option once they start to do some actual business. We figured it would be a good idea to show people that they don't have to leave HelioHost if they want blazing fast speeds and amazing uptime for their business.

Once again, no credit card is required, there is no commitment, and we don't even really have a concrete end date for the trial but we expect it to last a month or so for people to get a chance to test Morty out thoroughly. Honestly, most free trials are basically "if you forget to cancel we'll automatically bill you some ridiculously high price" which is just evil corporations trying to prey on forgetful people, so it's understandable that we've had a few skeptical people get upset about receiving a free trial. I refuse to accept any free trials like that because it's not worth the risk of forgetting to cancel and getting billed. This isn't one of those scams. If you forget about the trial, we'll just move you back to the plan you were on before without getting billed anything. No big deal.

If you're running a small business on Tommy or Johnny please contact us to let us know so we can get you a free trial as well, and make sure your business is being hosted on the plan that it needs to be on.

When the Johnny server crashed we decided to give out free Morty trials to any affected users who wanted to get their website back online as soon as possible, since it would take a few weeks to get Johnny running again. We gave those free trials with no credit card required, no commitment, and wi...

06/29/2026

VPS Signups Invite Only

We've temporarily closed our automated VPS signups to make some upgrades to our billing system. In the meantime we can still build VPS manually. If you're interested in signing up for a VPS please select the plan you want from https://heliohost.org/vps and submit your email address. After your VPS request is submitted post at https://helionet.org or chat with us at https://heliohost.org/chat and we can manually email you an invite link to get your VPS set up. We hope to get the automated VPS builds without needing to contact support soon. Let us know if you have any questions.

We've temporarily closed our automated VPS signups to make some upgrades to our billing system. In the meantime we can still build VPS manually. If you're interested in signing up for a VPS please select the plan you want from https://heliohost.org/vps and submit your email address. After your VP...

05/08/2026

When it Rains it Pours

Last week we had an issue with Brody and Cody, our nameservers, and we have been very busy during the subsequent days rebuilding them and getting everything back online. Since the older brothers were getting so much attention, the youngest brother, Johnny, threw a tantrum and demanded all of our attention. We noticed Johnny was acting up a couple hours ago, and shut him down to take a closer look.

It turns out the master boot record needed to be rebuilt and the partition data needed to be reconstructed as well. We have access to the hard drive now, and it seems like most of the data is still intact. This could indicate that the hard drive is going bad though, so we've already started making backups of everything.

It's actually interesting timing because Johnny was already scheduled to be rebuilt in the next month or two anyways, so we've just accelerated that plan. While the backups are being created we will be building a new Johnny on newer hardware and a more reliable hard drive raid array.

Once all of the backups are ready we will let you know, so you can download them. If you'd like to get your website back online immediately, the Morty and Tommy servers are still operating normally, or you could even move to a VPS as well. If you'd like to stay on Johnny we will get the new server finished and the backups restored as soon as possible, but there is no promised ETA and it may take a week or maybe even longer.

Last week we had an issue with Brody and Cody, our nameservers, and we have been very busy during the subsequent days rebuilding them and getting everything back online. Since the older brothers were getting so much attention, the youngest brother, Johnny, threw a tantrum and demanded all of our ...

05/04/2026

When Servers Explode

First of all, sorry for the long downtime on our main website.

Over the past few years our main database has just been getting slower and slower. It was last rebuilt in 2017 so it was well overdue for an upgrade. A few days ago the main database was so slow that we decided to take it offline, and rebuild it with a modern operating system and up-to-date software.

We expected the downtime to last a few hours, but then during the upgrade everything fell apart. While Cody was down, his twin brother Brody got so sad he died too. This happens sometimes with twins because they can't live without each other, which is cute but also very tragic. So then, with both a dead Cody and a dead Brody, we had no nameservers, no main database, no website, no forum, no wiki, etc etc etc.

But here at HelioHost we never give up. No matter how many servers explode, or how many evil for-profit corporations try to destroy us we will never give up.

It took a few days, but our main website is back online, both of our nameservers are back online, our forum is working again, and a lot of the stuff going on behind the scenes are working again too. That said, there is still plenty of stuff that isn't working yet. The main issue seems to be that during the upgrade of the nameservers a lot of DNS zones got lost, so some websites are offline. If your domain gives a DNS error when you try to visit it in a browser let us know and we can take a look. It usually only takes a few seconds to recreate the DNS for you.

We're still working on getting everything functional again, but we're making progress. Thanks for everyone's patience during this crazy rebuild.

First of all, sorry for the long downtime on our main website. Over the past few years our main database has just been getting slower and slower. It was last rebuilt in 2017 so it was well overdue for an upgrade. A few days ago the main database was so slow that we decided to take it offline, and...

04/27/2026

Morty Upgrade

Morty is getting upgraded! Our fastest and most up-to-date server is getting even faster and even more up-to-date.

We will be starting a major upgrade soon, and wanted to let you know what to expect if you're on the Morty plan.

What is changing:

PHP: All of the versions of PHP currently available on Morty will still be available after the upgrade.

Node.js: We are adding versions 25 and 24. All other versions of Node.js currently available on Morty will remain available after the upgrade.

Python: We are adding version 3.14. Version 3.9 will remain the same. Version 3.12 will be removed.

Django: We are adding version 6.0.4 running on Python 3.14. We are removing version 6.0.3 running on Python 3.12.

Flask: We are adding version 3.1.3 running on Python 3.14. We are removing version 3.0.3 running on Python 3.12.

Unfortunately, we don't have a way of tracking which accounts are using which Python modules right now. So if you're using any modules, please take a look at https://morty2-info.heliohost.org/pyinfo/info3.14.py as soon as possible, and request any modules that you'll need that aren't already available. In the future, we plan to add a system for tracking which modules each account needs, allowing us to pre-install them before an account is moved. For now, you will need to re-request them. You can reply to this email or click the contact support button below to let us know if any modules you need are missing.

Another thing to keep in mind during an upgrade like this is that your IP address will be changing. If you use our nameservers, ns1.heliohost.org and ns2.heliohost.org, your DNS records will be updated to the new values for you. If you use external DNS, such as Cloudflare, you'll need to manually update your DNS records yourself. You will receive an email with the correct values when it's time to change them. If you don't want downtime due to incorrect DNS records, you could temporarily use our DNS until you're moved, and then go back to the external DNS afterwards.

You will receive an email when your account begins its migration to the new hardware, and a second email when the move has completed. We are taking volunteers to be the first ones to experience the upgraded speed and features, so if you're ready to move, let us know. If you need a little more time to make sure your website is ready for the upgrade, let us know, and we can move you to the end of the list too. If we don't hear from your we will assume you're ready to move now.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Morty is getting upgraded! Our fastest and most up-to-date server is getting even faster and even more up-to-date. We will be starting a major upgrade soon, and wanted to let you know what to expect if you're on the Morty plan. What is changing: PHP: All of the versions of PHP currently available...

04/24/2026

Ubuntu 26 on VPS

Happy New LTS Ubuntu Day! To those who celebrate the holiday anyways. The resolute raccoon just showed up at HelioHost and demanded a spot on our VPS operating system list, so we were happy to add him. He's too darn cute to say no to.

For those who don't know what is going on, every two years in April the Ubuntu operating system releases their new long term support stable version, and it always has a cute animal name with an alliteration adjective. Two years ago it was noble numbat, which sounds suspiciously uncute until you google it, and now it's resolute raccoon, which everyone can agree is about as cute as it gets.

We've added Ubuntu 26 to our custom VPS OS selection. Since it's so new, it will be a few months before we make it the default though. If you choose any of the VPS options that aren't on the custom page it will continue to build with Ubuntu 24 for now. If you have an existing VPS you can request a free rebuild to try out the new version if you want, but make sure all of your software that you're planning on running supports it. We've also added AlmaLinux 10, Rocky 10, and Debian 13 for the people who prefer those operating systems. Let us know if you have any questions about the new OS options.

Happy New LTS Ubuntu Day! To those who celebrate the holiday anyways. The resolute raccoon just showed up at HelioHost and demanded a spot on our VPS operating system list, so we were happy to add him. He's too darn cute to say no to. For those who don't know what is going on, every two years in ...