Web Host Accidentally Deletes Some Websites During Maintenance

— -- Mistakes happen, but some are more embarrassing than others.

Web hosting company 123-reg effectively deleted some of its customers' websites, according to the company's support page. It was unclear how many of the 1.7 million sites hosted by the United Kingdom-based company were impacted by the error, which occurred during server maintenance, however the BBC reported the company said it was a "small proportion."

"We can conclude that the issues faced have resulted in some data loss for some customers," the company said in a statement, according to the BBC. "The fault was limited to 67 servers out of 115,000 across Europe. ... We are investigating the restoration of each VPS [virtual private server] on a case-by-case basis and are working individually with customers to keep them informed of the website recovery process."

Virtual private servers are cheaper than dedicated servers and can host a number of websites, making them especially affordable for small business owners.

The host did not immediately return an email from ABC News seeking comment, however 123-reg's support page notes the company is communicating with customers as they try to salvage their data.

"Our system engineers are testing multiple third party data recovery software and we are definitely seeing some results," an update posted today said. "As this is referring solely to data recovery, the next thing on our list is actually reimaging the hosts with the data we have retrieved (aka getting the VPS packages back online)."

The blunder has caused a headache for customers, with many tweeting their concern at the company.

"This will wreck my business & plenty of others I am sure," one user wrote.