I will say, I’m surprised by the premium recommendation too. Most hosting providers are not eager to host websites that are likely to be the target of a DDoS attack. Either the attack was quite minor, or some lines got crossed internally at iFastNet.
A DDoS attack is basically just digital vandalism. Is vandalism usually done with some clever and nefarious purpose? No, it’s usually people being bored and stupid.
I’m more surprised that the account was reactivated at all. I have seen many suspensions over the years due to sites likely being the target of a DDoS attack, and usually the gist was “find a different host, we don’t want to host your website anymore”. Which is harsh, and unfortunate if your website was the target, but I am convinced that it is a necessary measure the protect the stability of the platform and the millions of other websites that are hosted on it.
Just reactivating accounts that were the target of DDoS attacks and not taking any measures to prevent our servers from being attacked again is reckless and betrays the trust of everyone else affected by the attack.
And to be very clear, none of this is “holding a website ransom”. If your account is the target of a DDoS attack, we’re always happy to provide backups so you can migrate your website to another host without data loss, completely free of charge. And your free account will not be reactivated, even if you offer to pay us for it. If we wanted to extort people, we wouldn’t do that.