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Forums › DEALS › Virtual & Physical Music Gear Deals › The Best Service Website Is BACK!!! [The Deals are Back!!!]
The Website for Best Service — one of my favorite online music retailers — has been down for two days [EDIT: it’s now 17 days] with a message on their home page reading: “We are currently undergoing essential hardware maintenance.”
Not even a mid-size e-commerce company suddenly — without notice — shuts down its website for two consecutive days to do hardware maintenance. At most, you take a couple of hours and notify your partners and customers about it ahead of time. I can’t help but wonder if they’ve had a serious cyberattack or have shut their doors. Has anyone heard anything about the situation? I’m a tiny affiliate to help with the costs of running this site, and if this were scheduled, they would almost certainly have sent out a notice to give a heads up. But an e-commerce business going down for multiple days without notice? That’s pretty concerning…
EDIT: On 6/18/2025 Best Service’s official account posted: “…your Best Service User Accounts and associated licenses have not been impacted by this technical incident. Thanks again for your patience.”
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
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Third day that BestService.com is down. That’s not a good look. It creates an appearance that will cause many to wonder if the company has gone out of business. The lack of communication and the dead websiite with a maintenance message has a long history of being many e-commerce site’s final message. I sent the contact I have an email this morning, but several hours later, and it’s now around 1PM in Germany, where they’re located, I don’t have a response. I’ll report back when more is known.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
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That seems like quite a bit of speculation.
While it is entirely possible, it’s also equally plausible they’ve either had some significant IT outage, or ransomware take down a core system.
Given they have a hardware upgrade notification on their website, it would’ve been just as easy for them to have it say they were no longer in business if that were the case.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was simply a failed upgrade to their database, or webserver.
My KVR listing for swapping or selling any duplicates or licenses I don't need:
https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=622422
That seems like quite a bit of speculation.
While it is entirely possible, it’s also equally plausible they’ve either had some significant IT outage, or ransomware take down a core system.
Given they have a hardware upgrade notification on their website, it would’ve been just as easy for them to have it say they were no longer in business if that were the case.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was simply a failed upgrade to their database, or webserver.
Well, in the absence of any communications from Best Service during the 4 days since their site has been down, all a affiliate partner and customer with several hundred dollars of unredeemed software licenses with the retailer can do is speculate why their site has been down so long and they’ve had zero communications with customers or partners during this period. That’s very surprising. Being down for 4 days for an e-commmerce business is a very long period of time. It clearly wasn’t planned, because they would have given a heads up to partners and customers. And now, it’s been four days and their normally responsive affiliate manager is completely unresponsive, and they’ve gone dark on their support forum at KVR.
I’ll summarize the facts:
1) There has been no communication from Best Service out to their affiliate partners or customers during this 4 day period when their website has been down. In this kind of situation — which appears to be a crisis (4 days for an e-commerce business site to be down is a crisis) — it is highly irregular for any e-commerce business, even the smallest ones to be down that long PLUS have no communications during the same period. A crisis PLUS the company having no communications with the customers, partners and the public — that’s a HUGE red flag. They went dark on their KVR support forum.I have a thread there that no one from the company has responded to, and once again, their affiliate manager, who is normally very responsive, has been unresponsive.
(2) If this were indeed merely planned maintenance, Best Service almost certainly would have notified their partners and customers ahead of time. That’s corporate communications 101.
(3) If Best Service were hacked — as you have speculated — and has been unable to get their website working again — you would expect that they follow basic data backup practices. But even more, you would expect that they would be reassuring their partners and their customers that everything is fine, and give an estimate of when they’ll be back up. Every site with decent traffic — even my little money pit passion project we’re having this conversation on — is regularly attacked by malicious parties. On one occasion, a file was hacked into that damaged the operation of the site. I don’t recall how long this site was down for, but when it was restored, we only lost no more than a couple of hours of data. If this were an e-commerce site and not my passion project / money pit, it would surely have a lot more regular backups.
I’ve been in the digital space since the 90s. I’ve led digital marketing — including corproate websites and e-commerce sites — at three major global brands, and advised far more than 100 companies over the years, including small startups. If this were a mom and pop e-tailer, I could imagine an extended period of their site being down. But Best Service is a pretty decent size player in this space. They are a plugin/sample library developer in addition to being a retailer of many brands. Consequently, I would expect that they know enough to follow smart data backup processes.
As far as your remark that “it would’ve been just as easy for them to have it say they were no longer in business if that were the case,” I don’t think there is any competent business manager that would agree with that statement. If a company is having financial issues, they tend to be very tight-lipped, as it will damage their ability to get credit, their relationships with partners, and their ability to establish new business relationships. Consequently, small, private companies aren’t subject to the kind of regulatory and shareholder pressures publicly traded companies are subject to and tend to disclose far less information about their financial condition.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
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I should have noted that Best Service has went dark in social media also. I had posted on their Facebook page and someone else posted a day before me. No responses. They don’t use their Twitter account, but they do post on Facebook and YouTube. They had one auto scheduled Facebook post with fmdead links they put up. So, that’s a heck of a lot of signs to ignore.
Of course, if I get a response via email from the affiliate manager, from Facebook, or from their support forum, I will immediately update this thread.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
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I didn’t catch that the maintenance sign was discussed above, so just ignore this post.
All the best.
Present past for the future
Day 4. BestService.com is still down. Still no communication from Best Service on social media (Facebook, Instagram, X), their official support forum, or an email response from their affiliate manager.
I have several hundred dollars in software licenses I never copied or redeemed (Studio One Pro, Sonible Pro EQ4, various sample libraries…), plus affiliate earnings used to help with the costs of operating this site. At this point, I don’t think anyone experienced in the world of e-commerce could believe that this company is simply doing routine maintenance and went completely dark in all communications channels. That would defy logic.
I don’t get it. From the range of products they offered, I would have thought they were doing reasonably well – it’s not like they seemed like a small/start up company offering a limited range of products.
As they were a reseller, I suppose you could contact the original developers with proof of purchase and ask them for a copy from their store. Only problem is, what happens to the Player Engine libraries that were proprietary to Best Service? Some of the Eduardo Tarilonte libraries were pretty good. It’d be a shame that they effectively disappear.
I don’t get it. From the range of products they offered, I would have thought they were doing reasonably well – it’s not like they seemed like a small/start up company offering a limited range of products.
As they were a reseller, I suppose you could contact the original developers with proof of purchase and ask them for a copy from their store. Only problem is, what happens to the Player Engine libraries that were proprietary to Best Service? Some of the Eduardo Tarilonte libraries were pretty good. It’d be a shame that they effectively disappear.
Yep, I’m planning to contact the developers of the DAW, plugins, and sample libraries if Best Service has indeed closed their doors. I’d love to find out that they just had a bunch of technical problems that impacted their website and email, but that doesn’t explain their going dark on their support forum (on KVR) or social media.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
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You can get your Studio One key from Presonus at https://my.presonus.com/ under Products. It’s possible some other titles had you register directly as well. Regarding Best Service, it could still be a hack / ransom I suppose. Most business victims are not forthcoming about their plight in the early stages.
I just received a generic response from Best Service on Facebook. It’s literally the cut-and-paste copy from their website about maintenance. Consequently, it doesn’t inspire confidence that the company is okay. However, I’m at least glad someone responded. I replied, asking when they could project their site will again be operational. I’ll update this thread if they respond.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
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This is really weird. The domain is indeed for sale through Sedo.
https://sedo.com/search/details/?language=us&domain=bestservice.com
Not sure if this has always been, but 3 of their products can be purchased on Thomann.
https://www.thomannmusic.com/best_service.html
This is really weird. The domain is indeed for sale through Sedo.
https://sedo.com/search/details/?language=us&domain=bestservice.com
Not sure if this has always been, but 3 of their products can be purchased on Thomann.
The Best Service sample libraries/plugin line is distributed through many music retailers, so I wouldn’t read too much into that. As far as the domain for sale, I don’t know. It claims the seller is located in the US, but Best Service is based in Germany. Of course, they could be using a domain broker out of the US.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
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The few times I contacted them they were prompt and kind.
I really feel for those guys…
For those not from the digital / e-commerce world. the average time an e-commerce or high-traffic website site will go offline for major maintenance ranges from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. The worst you’ll see is a few hours. An e-commerce business’ site going down for an entire day, let alone 5 days, is a giant red flag. Add the lack of communication from the company in these past 5 days — Best Service has gone dark (stopped communicating) on the various major social media platforms, on their official support forum (at KVR), and has stopped communicating with affiliate parters — a major source of their revenue — and you have some incredibly strong signs that this much more than maintenance on their server hardware.
I’ve been in the digital space since the 90s and have managed/led corporate sites, e-commerce and digital marketing for a number of global brands with high traffic sites and consulted or given advice to more than 200 businesses over that time from small upstarts to brands as large as Unilever. In my three decades of experience, when an e-commerce site has gone down for a day or more, the company is likely closing their doors. I can’t recall any exceptions to that.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
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I’ve bought a lot from them too. Always “best service” received. I just bought something on June 6 and received the key / registered fine. Sad to see them go, but Peter makes a good argument. JRR went through a real rough web site period a few years ago but they were very active making assurances on forums that they were working on it. Nothing at all (other than that single web post) from Best Service is evidence that no one is working there.
Google AI overviews current take on Best Service:
“Information indicates that Best Service GmbH, a German company specializing in virtual instruments and sound libraries, is likely experiencing difficulties or may have ceased operations…”
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
Check out my music.
I doubt they’re going under, but being down 5+ days means something catastrophic must have happened.
However, if it’s a hack that involved customer data, they’d probably have to had reported that already as they’re based in EU.
If they don’t have an internal web team and outsourced the backend to another company, and that another company effed up, I can see why trying to get someone else on the case might lead to great delays.
But whatever it is, doesn’t excuse the non-existent communication.
Luckily I only own some of their Kontakt libraries, so I’m only slightly tense… but holy crap if this isn’t a reminder that putting activation servers into your products comes with great responsibility.
Sample developer Chris Hein, who, I believe, has libraries released through Best Service, just posted a message about Best Service: “From all I know, I just can say: don’t panic, they will be back.”
It’s at least good to hear from someone. At minimum, this is colossal mismanagement of a crisis. Of course, I realize that Best Service is a small business with less than 12 employees, so I don’t expect them to be as savvy as even a mid-size company, but going dark when your e-commerce website goes down for 6 days, is an extremely poor decision that, unfortunately, will likely harm trust in their brand, even if they get their website working today. I’ve always found them to be a good company to deal with as a customer. With my little affiliate marketing relationship, they seem fine too. I know their affiliate manager showed that he cares about ethical practices, and that’s rare in the affiliate marketing world. So I do respect him. It’s just that they botched the handling of this situation.
[EDIT: in between other things– it took me long enough to finish this post that I was beat to post the update! Kudos, @yanthesinger !]
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
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They’ve updated the message on their website:
Hello and welcome,
Our website is currently unavailable due to a technical incident. We’re working hard to get everything back up and running as quickly as possible.
Data security and the protection of your information are our top priorities. We’re in close collaboration with a team of skilled IT experts to find a fast and secure solution.
We truly appreciate your support and patience!
If you have urgent questions, you can reach us from Monday to Friday by phone at +49 89 45228920 (from 10am to 5pm, UTC+1).
Best regards,
The Best Service Team
@skell Thanks for the update, Sean, and welcome to LinkedMusicians!
It is encouraging to at least see them change their message and show someone is there. Although, the updated message raise new questions. Have they been hacked and customer data has been compromised? It does create that impression; otherwise, why are they talking about data security? In any event, between Chris Hein’s message assuring the public that Best Service is still around and this, I’m going to take it as encouraging signs that they’re still around. I am cheering for these guys. But they really need to do much better with regard to communication.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
Check out my music.
Bestservice has changed the message on their site:
Our website is currently unavailable due to a technical incident. We’re working hard to get everything back up and running as quickly as possible.
Data security and the protection of your information are our top priorities. We’re in close collaboration with a team of skilled IT experts to find a fast and secure solution.
We truly appreciate your support and care!
If you have urgent questions, you can reach us from Monday to Friday by phone at +49 89 45228920 (from 10am to 5pm, UTC+1).
I would guess that their website was hacked or they had a ransomware attack based on the fact that they mention data security and protection of information.
This would be a clever signature if I could think of one.
I’m giving them the benefit of doubt since if they had actual critical customer data leak, they’re doing the most piss poor job at handling that, especially when they’re in the EU. IF there are issues with customer data potentially going to bad actors, the current messaging is totally unacceptable. People should know what was potentially leaked and how to protect themselves against that.
Thus, I hope also for their sake that the message on the site is something lost in translation and needlessly hinting at such a thing occurring, because if it isn’t… yikes.
A malicious attack is one interpretation – there’ve been enough making the news recently that it wouldn’t be too surprising.
But all it says is that it’s currently unavailable due to a technical incident and that data security is a top priority. For all we know, this could mean they recently migrated their system to a new one, got a cyber security team to hack it and provide a report, and that they’re fixing known issues before going live.
Over at Best Service’s official customer support forum, someone was upset that BestService has continued to post promos on their social media channels while refusing to respond to their customers on their forum. I’ll share what I posted in response:
“Those posts were clearly auto-scheduled long ago, as their site is down, as it makes no sense to put up a bunch of non-functioning links to a dead site. Online retailers commonly use social media management apps like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Buffer, etc. to schedule social media posts far in advance (my business does too). My guess is that those posts were scheduled before the month started and someone hadn’t gone into them to turn them off. Which it appears they eventually did.”
That said, while it is unsurprising that a social media manager might forget to turn off those posts, it also could be a sign that the social media person is no longer there. A social media employee could easily login to the scheduling app and turn these scheduled posts off in a minute or so. The fact that they didn’t could be a sign that they were let go and someone else did it.
I edited a post above because I found it toxic — aimed at me — and while the policy here is to NOT edit CIVIL positive, and negative posts about products, services, and experiences with developers, retailers and anyone we buy from for the tools we use, toxic posts aimed at members violates the rules. My tendency is to talk (shoot a PM or an email) to people when they violate a policy, not immediately turn to consequences. But it is laborious on my and the moderators ends. I don’t appreciate people being rude to others, including me.
But I’ll respond to the accusation that I am spreading rumors by having this thread.
(1) I am a customer of Best Service. I am also an affiliate partner. I presently have several hundred dollars worth of unredeemed (never opened) serials for plugins, a DAW and sample libraries I’ve purchased but never had time to register with the developers, because I’ve been so caught up in working on this site.
(2) I take it incredibly seriously when I choose to work with any company as an affiliate partner. I feel a sense of responsibility and could not continue a relationship with a company I don’t feel that I can confidently recommend to others as one that will be ethical, provide great service, and value. Best Service has always met those standards for me as a customer, as has Plugin Boutique (if I’m going to be very candid, while Audio Plugin Deals has never been dishonest, their customer service is non-existent, in my experience; they’ve never responded to support requests, and I plan on putting up a sentiment analysis of the various retailers, sharing my own experiences, and inviting our commmunity to share their own experiences; I may even create a formal rating system for retailers on this site; of course, some retail partners may not love that if they’re criticized; to be clear, I really don’t care; this is my passion project and my commitment is to my own sense of ethics and our community; this site was never planned to be some kind of big money maker like the big forums in this space).
(3) When you are a customer and an affiliate partner with an online retailer and that online retailer suddenly, without notice, has their site close down for multiple days and provides no communication to the public beyond a mom and pop notice on their website that their site is undergoing maintenance, it is incredibly unprofessional and disapppointing, to say the least. This is not a way any responsible retailer should be operating. In the absence of communications from the retailer, customers and pa (SMTPrtners are left to speculate. Best Service has an affiliate manager (and the guy really cares about ethics based on some things he’s been really passionate about — so I respect the man). He has been unresponsive during this period. Best Service has money due me during this period. Full disclosure, they’re really the only partner on LinkedMusicians where people are regularly clicking their links. While — offhand — the affiliate links for Plugin Boutique have bought in a total of around $25 used towards the costs of operating the site, Best Service has bought in around $200, which hasn’t been paid out. LinkedMusicians has received a grand total of $5 US in contributions, and I think we’ve brought in around $15 from t-shirt sales. I’ve spent more than 2,000 hours on this site and invested around $2,500 in the site and have monthly costs including hosting, email service (SMTP), software subscriptions that total more than $100 a month without additional purchases (and, of course, there are a lot of things I have planned for the site that cost additional $$$$).
So, yes, I feel invested in my relationship with Best Service as a customer and an affiliate partner. But when Best Service chose to NOT communicate with partners or customers, and I’ve been recommending them to people, I feel (personally) that I have a moral obligation to shoot straight with my community. With, what is now, one week without any communication from Best Service, I feel it is the right thing to share my experience, as someone who is widely considered an expert in the area of digital marketing and runs a dot com. What is going on, all of it, necessitates communication by Best Service with customers and partners. Their lack of communications is disappointingly unprofessional and creates an environment where customers and partners are left in the dark, where speculation is the only option. It begs the question, if things weren’t bad, why would Best Service choose NOT to communicate? It also means that the level of trust for their brand is taking a giant hit.
I have a former colleague and friend who is one of the most skilled PR experts on the planet. He’s held top PR spots at Fortune 500s. I would get him on a Zoom call for free with me to give Best Service some very valuable advice on crisis communications if Best Service wanted it (my credentials aren’t too shabby, but I would defer to my PR pro friend, who is very experienced with crisis communications; yes, if they were paying, it would probably be beyond their budget, but even one call could be incredibly valuable for a small business in this situation). So this thread isn’t about spreading rumors. It’s about communicating with this community. I feel it’s my duty.
If someone now wants to challenge that, go ahead. But please, do it in a civil manner consistent with our community policy.
Rumors or not, speculation or not, the silence will be filled with something as people are concerned for their financial investments. And that concern increases more and more as the time passes.
Good communication builds trust with the customers and gives them assurance that everything is under control.
Rumors or not, speculation or not, the silence will be filled with something as people are concerned for their financial investments. And that concern increases more and more as the time passes.
Good communication builds trust with the customers and gives them assurance that everything is under control.
You nailed it. 100 percent.
I just want to remind folks that we don’t engage in rumors here. No one is professing to have any inside knowledge. We’re all just wondering what could be behind BestService.com being down so long and then not communicating. I don’t think anyone here isn’t hoping for the best for this company (no pun intended). I think a lot of us are customers and have had very good experiences with Best Service and want them to be around for many, many years. But we also want them to shoot straight with us right now, and it’s in their best interest to do so.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
Check out my music.
I haven’t seen any rumors posted here, only questions and speculation.
A LOT of people have personal stakes in the continued existence of Best Service.
For starters, it is a chilling reminder that all of these license validations that require a handshake with a server depend on that server being around for a long time.
When designing and engineering products, the consideration “what becomes of our customers if we go out of business” seems never to be on the table. Who wants to think about that or bring it up?
One of the things that I respect about BandLab is their keeping Cakewalk’s old registration server online over these many years. It would be nice if they also got rid of Cakewalk’s zombie website, but….forget it, Jake, it’s BandLab.
-Erik
___________
superabbit.bandcamp.com
- On June 17, 2025 at 10:55 pm superabbit said
I haven’t seen any rumors posted here, only questions and speculation.
A LOT of people have personal stakes in the continued existence of Best Service.
For starters, it is a chilling reminder that all of these license validations that require a handshake with a server depend on that server being around for a long time.
When designing and engineering products, the consideration “what becomes of our customers if we go out of business” seems never to be on the table. Who wants to think about that or bring it up?
One of the things that I respect about BandLab is their keeping Cakewalk’s old registration server online over these many years. It would be nice if they also got rid of Cakewalk’s zombie website, but….forget it, Jake, it’s BandLab.
-Erik
Yep. It is—absolutely—a reminder of the risks of any proprietary sample library platform. I don’t have any Best Service Engine Player libraries. So that hasn’t been an issue for me. But Best Service should realize that this situation may concern people about buying Best Service Engine Player libraries for a long time. If Best Service gets their site back up next week, people will still bring up what happened when someone posts that they’re considering a Best Service sample library that uses their Engine Player. If I were considering a Best Service sample library that ran on their player (I wouldn’t have as much of a concern with their Kontakt libraries), this would certainly be a very significant factor.
As far as Cakewalk, yeah, I do appreciate that they haven’t gotten rid of that either. Although, from the looks of it, and my emails with their social media manager, I really can’t imagine that they’re going to be keeping all of that stuff, or their “legacy forums” — as their social media manager refers to them –much longer. I don’t think that they’re having a lot of success with their Cakewalk Sonar subscription model. Keep in mind that they were recently valued at $450 million, so they need to focus on products that make money and shed ones that don’t. My guess is that they’ll abandon it within the next couple of years.
For anyone keeping score. I had predicted that Waves would reverse course on their subscription-only model in no less than three months and was ridiculed as clueless for that opinion by one frequent poster at the Cakewalk Forum. This market loathes subscriptions. They’ll only accept them in certain cases (like distribution services). Every software company wants to go subscription-only, the problem is, in this industry, consumers don’t want to like subscriptions. So, to those who say that subscriptions are inevitable. I disagree. Companies that sell software don’t decide that, consumers ultimately do and if consumers use the power of their wallets, they’ll win.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
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