Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

A change to our line-up

As more of our customers are choosing to use alternative apps and services, we’ve decided to stop offering Virgin Media Cloud, Webspace and SmartCall from 28th April.

If you’ve used Virgin Media Cloud, Webspace and SmartCall in the past, you should receive a letter in the post but here’s what’s happening when.

Webspace

Webspace closes on 28th April, but there’s something even better in store for you. We’ve teamed up with GoDaddy® – a world-leader in Domain Names, Websites and Web Hosting – to bring you 12 months’ free hosting services, plus a free website builder, domain name and professional email.

That’s a tidy saving of £59.88 over the year, with extras including:

A free domain name (.co.uk or .uk, saving you £4)
A free email account connected to your domain name
A clever website builder that makes it easy to upload text and images (bye-bye, HTML!)
Tools to help you move your existing site across (so you stay online)
1GB of storage (that’s more room and flexibility than Webspace)
150GB bandwidth (so if your site goes viral, it’ll stay online)
To get started you’ll need to enter your unique code (which you’ll receive in your letter) at virginmedia.com/webspace (terms and conditions apply).

Remember – you’ll need to save the content from your website before 28th April to avoid losing anything.

Virgin Media Cloud

It’s reassuring to have somewhere safe for all your digital valuables. So before we close Virgin Media Cloud on 28th April, we recommend downloading your family photos, videos and documents to a local device to make sure you don’t lose anything. This might take a few steps if you’ve got a lot of stuff. You won’t be able to upload anything to Virgin Media Cloud after this date.

If you’d like to back up your stuff again, why not try Dropbox? With 2GB of storage, Dropbox lets you back up all the stuff you currently have on Virgin Media Cloud, and even share big files.

Better still, it works on all your devices – seamlessly syncing your files between them. Plus, you’ll bag an extra 3GB of storage if you link the Dropbox app to your phone camera. And when you recommend Dropbox to your nearest and dearest, you’ll get a bonus 500MB for each referral.

For help downloading your stuff and setting up your Dropbox account, visit virginmedia.com/cloud (terms and conditions apply).

And don’t worry – if you’re currently paying for extra storage, we won’t charge you a penny in March and April.

SmartCall

We’re planning to close SmartCall on 28th April when the contract with our technology partner ends.

But don’t forget all those minutes you’ll still enjoy with your Virgin Media home phone – including unlimited landline calls and free calls to Virgin Mobile phones, 0870 numbers and our Directory Enquiries service.

For more details about SmartCall closing, head to virginmedia.com/smartcall

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Looks like LG are having a clear out of the initiatives taken by the former regime.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

And no price reduction I'm sure.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Not particularly. Virgin Media was bought in 2013. Virgin Media Cloud didn't launch until January 2014.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

There all the same now pay more for less.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I doubt its Liberty Global 'clearing out'

But contracts ending and new ones being made.

So I take it my ntlworld webspace will vanish?

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

All sites on virginmedia.com, ntlworld.com, blueyonder.co.uk and virgin.net webspace will be taken down at the end of April

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Smartcall is the only one I have used in the past but as mentioned no smaller bill.

It seems tons of features are going or degrading when Sky are just opening up a whole new world.
Virgin better have something fairly major up their sleeve as the only saving grace for them with me right now is the broadband.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Yes without their broadband and BT Sport they would be up the creek without a paddle in my opinion.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Cuts cuts and cuts.... has a Conservative taken over at LG?

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

... I have no issue with the closing of these services.

I wouldn't recommend their use to anyone, as it's yet another thing tying you to your ISP that you can get better elsewhere. It's a shame they're not partnering with Dropbox like they are with GoDaddy, a few extra GB's on my Dropbox account wouldn't go amiss.

SmartCall was useful back when we had to pay for 0800 calls on mobiles, but now they're free there's little use for it. Instead of paying for XL phone or whatever, just throw the same money at your mobile provider for unlimited minutes, so you can not use them as well.

None of those offerings were particularly groundbreaking, none of them were reasons to move to Virgin or stay with them.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I found Smartcall very useful in areas of poor coverage and overseas, any suggestions for an alternative?

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

So it's free for a year then £59.88 per year after that?

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

That's how it reads, although you aren't required to choose Go Daddy.

As you have to manually download and then upload content from one site to the other, you can choose another site provider if it better suits your needs.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

A lot of mobile providers these days offer a similar app for this exact reason. I'm with Three, their app is called "In touch".

IF you choose to stay with Godaddy, which I wouldn't recommend. They're one of the worst providers out there for this kind of thing and when they say "bye-bye, HTML!" they really mean "Bye-bye the one thing that lets you leave us at any time and move your site to another provider".

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Well I have my website elsewhere but I think in about a years time a few people will get caught out thinking it's still free. So long as it's not a minimum two year contract or more, it'd be worth a punt, remembering to cancel before the free year is up.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

You can't be serious? I've had "ggrider.ntlworld.com" since March 2002 and carefully preserved all it's historical website untouched for posterity and now VM are deleting it! Have they no sense of nostalgia?

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I would say if you're planning to run your site for more than 12 months, bite the bullet now and buy yourself the domain and hosting space from someone else. I've been very happy with Namecheap and their prices are reasonable.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I dont even know what Smartcall is (or was).

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

App for your phone that would let you call over Wifi using your Virgin Home Phone plan, i.e. if you had talk unlimited it would let you make use of that from your phone, regardless of what minutes you had on your mobile contract.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I can see email going away soon too

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Had my own hosted domains since 1999, even the VM account address forwards to them.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I was asked to check VMs Newsgroups for a neighbour. I could hardly remember how to access it, but found what he was complaining about: several of the bigger groups have been removed. So I wonder now if Newsgroups will be the next to go?

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I'd be surprised if they did this, but not that surprised. I think most people on this forum will agree that having an ISP email is utterly useless in this day and age. The free alternatives from Google, Microsoft, etc. are far superior and won't tie you into your ISP.


Virgin's newsgroups have limited retention (I think it's 30 days, it used to be just 7) and their reseller gets hit hard with takedown requests, so you have to be fast. It's worth paying the $10 a month for a better service.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Following a recommendation on here, I moved my domains to HostPresto! It's only about £20 for domain and hosting and the service has been excellent, two domains can be hosted and email accounts are unlimited.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Smartcall is extremely useful in calling back home to landlines when out of the country. We use it quite a lot, so it definitely will be missed by us and others who use it the same way :(.

I gave up my web space years ago, and I could never get all of my computer to back up to their cloud, so I personally won't miss those, but I'm sure other users who rely on them will. It's really much notice for backing up and finding new alternatives and the potential time involved for people on the slower end of the technology scale like me. So I'm grateful I'm not using those two things

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

i threw the letter out....i didnt even know there was a code. and ive got no email...how do i get a new one?

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I only kept a few car based pictures in the web space for the convenience of linking to them on another forum where I post under my real name. (The web space URL gives your name and default e-mail addy away) The threads are quite old so the absence of the pictures is unlikely to be a problem. Attaches work as well for this anyway.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

FWIW I'll see if any SU on VM forum is going to use mine, if not I'll PM you in a week with it. :angel:

I can't actually use it as BenMcr forget's that originally NTLWORLD domain users could have (and guess what) 15 email ID's and the max is now 10 !!! So unfortunately there's no way for me to move a webspace id to virginmedia domain without losing 6 email ID's! :mad:

....and before Ben predictably asks me to escalate to VM Support to do it for me then: do I really look/sound/write that stupid? (OK no need to answer that! :dunce: ).

That said I predicted VM would terminate Webspace back in 2009, 2 yrs after their re-branding but even LG in 2013 gave them another two years grace.
Despite their re-assurances then VM email ID's will not be continued when the current OSA contract runs out as that is also not in LG's mission roadmap, So I give that another 2-5 yrs before that goes the same way!
OK as my previous prediction was at least 2yrs out then say 3-6yrs. :rolleyes:

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Our speedtest code (in the navbar) is actually hosted on my VM webspace.
This was done at the time (10+ years ago) so that it ran internally on the VM network.

I guess I could move it, but actually, there are so many proper speedtests around these days, its probably a good excuse to retire them.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I still use the www.photobox.com that VM organised. Loads of my photos on there. No sign of there being a cap either.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Not sure what you're on about. The only connection between webspace and email is the use of the username from an email account for the webspace subdomain.

All webspace is closing including virginmedia.com. So all existing webspace usernames will qualify for the Go Daddy offer and code. There is no requirement to first move to virginmedia.com webspace.

So it's irrelevant whether you currently have more ntlworld.com email addresses than is allowed for virginmedia.com

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Ahhh thanks Ben, I got all excited for all of 20 seconds until I encountered the predictable:
"We apologize for this inconvenience, but an error has been detected."

Now any site that can't use English spelling for it's UK visitors and also deals with VM, means another potential Gadget Rescue farce if I start asking for help! :rolleyes:

Still a nice thought anyway so cheers again....

Oh yes it was following the VM online help on my part that at one stage suggested I could expand my Webspace to 200MB if I migrated my ntlworld id to virginmedia before then requesting a BigDaddy intro.... Clearly I was too bored and misread it. :dunce:

Appreciate you response/effort anyway....

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I think it's worth retiring it, I can't get remotely consistent results on this test - first time I ran it (ever!) on this machine gave me 853mbit, refreshed and it said 254mbit. Every test since has been somewhere between the two. That's definitely clearing the cache too, if I don't clear the cache it tells me I've got 2gbit+ (if only!).

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Smartcall was a pretty good feature, do people think they have some sort of VOIP based replacement on the horizon?

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

It's called Viber!

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

The SH3 certainly has RJ-11 ports for potential VOIPness, whether or not Virgin roles that out and gives SIP access to other devices is another matter. It'd be a hell of a killer feature though.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Seems odd for an ISP not to have customer web space.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I don't think it's that odd in this day and age. Certainly I think Virgin's approach of teaming up with a dedicated provider is a better way of doing it, just a shame it's GoDaddy.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

I decided to go with HeyPresto! - easy set up and very quick service.

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Less for £more from virginmedia yet again!!!!!

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Interesting - the letter said that webspace was closing from 28th April, and I took out another webspace with HostPresto! - but interestingly enough, over a month after the webspace was due to be closed, I see it's still there?

Was there a change of mind?

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

My VirginMedia Cloud is still there, I can still play my music. The app on Tivo was removed on the 'closure' day though

Re: Smartcall, Virgin Media Cloud and Webspace closure
 

Mine is still there too. The techs are probably busy elsewhere rather than reclaiming a few Gb.