Hosting reviews

I may not have been hosted by many companies, but at least I can try and warn new webmasters of the horrible services available.

Dot 5 hosting

I decided to try out this company after hearing horrible horrible reviews of 1and1. I chose dot5hosting after researching many hosting review sites and well, with $4.95 per month for unlimited disc storage, bandwidth, subdomains, mysql databases, ftp accounts, and email accounts, I thought I had hit the jackpot! Never once did I think that this could be too good to be true. My trust in the world wide web at that time was ridiculously high.

The registration process was relatively fast, although it took hours and hours for my domain to be set up and running. I was not discouraged at this point, since I was still on a high of finding such a deal. It was when I tried to set up a subdomain that I ran into a brick wall of disappointment. Since I was used to clicking a few simple buttons, entering a name, and waiting for my subdomain to set up with 1and1, I spent almost an hour trying to find that button in my new outrageously confusing control panel. However this just might be due to my frustration at the time. After following a few FAQ links - an even more challenging feat- I finally got to the fine print that told me ever so politely that to set up a subdomain, mysql database, or extra ftp account, I needed to submit a ticket so that a member of the support team could set it up for me.

In the end it took me 6 hours to get a reply to the ticket… however, no action was made to my simple request.

“REAL 24/7 support with average hold times less than 3 minutes”

Really? I think not.

After this sad excuse for customer support, hours of downtime, and just pent up anger on my end, I decided to cancel my account, get my 30 day money back guarantee, and just stick with 1and1. I think that my journey to cancel my account was the most annoying, stress inducing learning experience I’ve ever had to handle. First of all, I had to submit another support ticket. Who told me this? Oh, only John from the ever so helpful live support staff member. I have to praise his well formatted paragraphs that seemed to repeat every now and then. I was even heartbroken when John decided to leave me for an hour… and he never came back! I guess he had something more important to do than answer my silly questions. Gosh, I wish I could have his job.

After submitting 2 tickets labeled URGENT, I got the reply, exactly the same formatted reply for both tickets… with a link to the FAQ section on how to cancel my account. Hm… I finally saw that I was being set on a wild goose chase. It was time to call the 1-800 number.

On the first try, I got a nice and polite man with a heavy Indian accent named Dave. Gee, maybe its just me, but aren’t these names extremely generic? He told me that I had called at the wrong time and then hung up after listing the small window of time that was dot5hosting’s business hours. So if your site collapsed and was costing you thousands of dollars over the weekend, I’m sorry, you’ll just have to wait until 10:00am on a weekday for a sales representative. However, when I did call on 10:00am on Monday morning, I spent 20 minutes on hold only to hear the sad message that the sales rep was busy, and could I please call back later. At this point, smoke was literally coming out of my ears. After a few more days, constant calling, and subtle threats, I finally got a none Indian and a fairly American sounding voice that asked for a pin number, and informed me that I was finally free of dot5hosting’s money greedy clutches.

Wait… but if my account is canceled? Why am I still getting monthly letters telling me that my account is going to be renewed because the “auto-renewal” is on? What is happening to all that is good in the world?

1and1

I’ve been hosted with 1and1 for about two years now. This company offers 120gb disc space, and 1200gb bandwidth, 100 sub domains, 25 mysql databases, 10 ftp accounts, and 1200 email accounts in their home package- for a low, low $4.99 per month. Overall I’ve never had any major problems with downtime. I can only remember 2 instances, both at around 4-5 hours, that my site has been offline. However, 1and1 was supposedly updating their servers at the time. During a few of my host hunting excursions, I’ve read some really horrible reviews about 1and1’s services. In my experience, I’ve never had to deal with most of the claims that other people have made. So in the end, I would suggest this company to anyone who is not willing to pay big bucks to host his or her website.