Dot5Hosting...DO NOT USE THEM!!!!

[eyelikeart]

I know I've touted these guys in the past, but my opinion has changed significantly. I have switched hosting companies, mostly because I can get more & better service elsewhere.

I've been attempting to have my account closed & credited for the remainder of the year of service I paid for, and have gotten nothing. I've submitted several emails, and have twice spoken to someone on the phone who assured me my account would be credited that day. I'll be making my third phonecall today.

I want to share my dismay with anyone who is either using them or has considered doing so. I'd strongly suggest not using a company who is only interested in taking your money, and not supporting their clients.

[jeremy.king]

If you paid with good 'ol credit card, call your credit card company and explain your situation. Often times you will hear back from the company almost immediately. Nobody likes to deal with Visa or MasterCard.

I have done this in the past and Visa really helps when I cannot make strides with a vendor.

Sorry to hear about your struggles. I enjoy the service of Fat Cow hosting and the price of STP Web Hosting. Too bad I can't get both

[tazo]

I am just gonna put my word in for http://crisishost.com; the guy is super-super nice, willing to work with ya on payment plans for your situation, and gives ya more bandwith/space as necessary! Super super nice guy willing to do a lot for one's customers. loyal too!

crisishost.com...cant recommend them enough!

[mymemory]

I had a problem with dot5hosting too a few months ago, it was about the service. I couln't see my web site. I had to call them from Venezuela several times until I gave up and ask for a refund. They did it with no problem. That was about 6 month ago or so.

[mnkeybsness]

that sucks...

alterahosting does a great job for me... always prompt with any problems that anyone has...

but eye... i think it's a little unfair that you use your moderator status to make this thread sticky... it is really only based on one experience that you have had personally...

[eyelikeart]

Originally posted by mnkeybsness

but eye... i think it's a little unfair that you use your moderator status to make this thread sticky... it is really only based on one experience that you have had personally...

Maybe, but I've directed them to this thread in hopes that they see it. I called 3 times now, have left 6 emails, and can't even get a reply to them. I'm beyond pissed off with these people. My original request to cancel my account was before the start of the current billing cycle, and now it's 2 weeks into it.

[Sunrunner]

Sounds like a good way to leverage power to me (making sticky)...

I have noticed that there are a lot of shady hosting companies out there lately. I recently had a runin with what I thought was a good reputable hosting company that turned out to be, (after I did a LOT of detective work when I didnt get an account after sendig them money) some guy working out of an internet cafe in Russia... The little bastard swindled me and there is nothing I can do about it.

[eyelikeart]

Well, after 4 phone calls & 7 email requests...

I've been given a full refund for an entire year of service. I was asking for my 8 months of unused hosting, but got it all.

And yes, I used my Mod-Power to it's advantage my sticking this thread. I wanted everyone to see it, and u would do the same if u could.

[Punboy]

I do web hosting for those who are interested. Let me know how much space and transfer you need and i'll give you a price estimate.

What I offer as far as features:

Unlimited domain hosting on one account
Unlimited subdomains

Apache version 1.3.28
cPanel 8.5.3
Kernel version 2.4.18-27.7.x
MySQL version 4.0.15-standard
cPanel Theme X v2.2.5

Perl 5.6.1 / PHP 4.3.2
Python 1.5.2
Python 2.2
FrontPage 2002 Extensions

Agora Shopping Cart
phpBB forum
PHP MyChat
Php MyAdmin

Webalizer Stats
Web Access & Error Logs

POP3 / IMAP / SMTP Server
E-Mail Auto-Responders
Spam Assassin
Webmail (Horde IMP, Neomail, SquirrelMail)

MySQL
PostgreSQL
Customizable Error docs
Search Engine Submit

Hotlink Prevention
Anonymous FTP
Password Protected Directories
SSH Secure Shell (upon request)

My prices are very low, and I promise that if you find a better advertised price elsewhere, we'll beat their price by 10%

Check http://hosting.punboy.com every once in a while, as my standard packages and full feature list will be up soon.

[new2mac]

I recommend Freedom 2 Operate . 250 MB space 10 GB transfer access to mysql 4.16 PHP Perl CGI and Coldfusion. For 7.00 US /mo. I've never had any problems with them
New2mac

[krossfyter]

eye...if i bought a domain name through dot5hosting... my current hosting source... can i have it redirected to another hosting service?

[electric]

Thanks eyelikeart,

Thanks for posting this thread and thanks for making it sticky, I have just been through a bad period with dot 5 hosting myself. Here is the last email I sent this morning after receiving a canned response and then finding out my sites were inaccessible:

Here is copy of an email I sent to Chris the CEO. I have no way of continuing payment via the payment system I opened the hosting account with... only a month ago, so I now must seek out another hosting service. Thanks a bunch. Some advise: Perhaps everyone at Dot 5 should get on the same page, or at least the same email!


Hello Chris,

I ordered my Dot5 hosting account with the intention to use my AMEX but found no option except via PayPal with the help of a Dot5 employee named John Haines [Ticket ID #BRT-98482-697], I then opened a PayPal account for the sole purpose of signing up. I intended to pay for a full year but there was no option given to me through the ordering process, I then corresponded with John Dritsas and again John Haines and was sent an email stating "I have set your billing cycle to anual and created an invoice for the difference" [ #BRT-98482-697] . Nowhere along the line was I informed that Dot5 was no longer accepting paypal or had plans to stop accepting within the next month.

I unfortunately do not carry a credit card that allows me to pay my balance and therefore do not know what to do at this point, you guys have been a great service so far and I am not looking forward to seeking a new hosting company.

When I think about it they really were not that great, I had several downtimes and periods of no ftp ability and sometimes I could not receive email, sure they would reply emails right away but most of the replies said

Hello Thomas,

Thank you for your recent e-mail.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any further questions you may have regarding this matter. You can reopen this ticket or open a new ticket for the same.

Regards,

******,
"We look after our customers, or someone else will"

They did not look after their customer and now someone else is. I set up service with a new server and am crossing my fingers.

T

[basicman]

I see that your post was from 2001, well things have not changed one bit -- except perhaps to get worse. Their tech support guys are really fast at telling you nothing and doing nothing.

I only wish I had seen your post before I move so many domains to them.

[basicman]

So... who do I turn to for dedicated server hosting? Any good experiences out there?

[brianellisrules]

Originally posted by basicman
So... who do I turn to for dedicated server hosting? Any good experiences out there?

There's another post floating around here that's multiple pages long where everyone touts their host as being the best.

That said, there's also a free promotion with www.1and1.com that's about to expire (tomorrow, I think) for 3 years of free hosting. Several people have good things to say, except for the slow control panel load times when using Safari. I signed up and have some webspace with them, but I haven't done much yet.

I use www.netrillium.net for my website. I've been with them for about 4 months now and so far everything's been great - zero problems. I've contacted their tech support several times and the longest I've had to wait for a response was like 6 hours. No complaints here.

[mnkeybsness]

let me just say that the free 1and1.com is aMAZing!... just use mozilla firebird when you need to access the control panel.

i have had zero downtime and absolutely no problems at all with them, unlike my old host which touted 99.99% uptime, i had about 3 hours every couple weeks of downtime... right in the middle of the day... and they tried telling me that everything was fine and that it was my internet connection that was bad!

[Kwyjibo]

I feel as a former dot5 customer i should chirp in here.

For the last seven or so months I was using dot5 , I did everytihng thru them (setup domain and histing) because that seemed like the simple thing to do. I picked a plan to pay my bill on a month by month basis incase i decided the hosting company wasn't for me or if it folded or whatever. Last week I canceled my service and transfered my domain to point to my free webspace at 1and1.com. So far thats been a pleasant experience.

Pros of dot5:
I always had luck with the online help people, they even closed my account for me and repointed my domain. They were helpful and made my first website a little more bearable.
It was easy to create ftp accounts/email accounts quickly
They had great stats software (urchin 4) that I was using for free.

Cons at dot5:
They once shut down my domain three times because they lost a paypal payment, I was livid and it got fixed with enough complaining but i shouldn't have had to do it in the first place.
I stopped getting billing emails and I don't know if I owe them any money anymore.


overall I learned a lot because of my time at dot5 butwith a free option i can learn about a lot of the things that i need to run the website. 1and1 is good but things do take a little longer and the ftp/email stuff is trickeir to configure. Bottomline is that I'm not as scorned as everyone else ... but i wasn't dissatisfied with my time with them completely.

[Rower_CPU]

So far my dot5 experience has been fine, less a short outage during a server upgrade.

[Horrortaxi]

I used Dot5 for about 6 months. I was always able to get good tech support--though I needed it more that I think I should have. I was never 100% satisfied but they were cheap. I regularly got double billed and finally one day their server was "compromised" and they lost all their data. I only found out after I emailed them asking where my website went. "Hi, yes--we lost everything. If you'll tell us who you are we'll reinstate your account." I switched hosts immediately and cancelled Dot5. I still get billed.

[mystixman]

Host Dime Web Hosting

These people give so much for so little. Their uptime is amazing, as well as their customer support. CPanel is also included.

[Rower_CPU]

OK, I'm an official dot5 hater now. They just let my domain lapse for the second time in 24-hours even though I paid for my renewal 2 weeks ago.



Needless to say, I'm shopping around.

[brianellisrules]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
OK, I'm an official dot5 hater now. They just let my domain lapse for the second time in 24-hours even though I paid for my renewal 2 weeks ago.



Needless to say, I'm shopping around.

coughwww.netrillium.netcough

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by brianellisrules
coughwww.netrillium.netcough

Hey, keep it in the web hosting recommendations thread!

This is for dot5 bashing only.

[Nermal]

Nothing to do with Dot5, but I feel like sharing a funny-ish story.

My dad has an old website he doesn't want anymore. So at the end of the year, he gets a message from the hosting company saying that if he wants to continue with the site, he'll need to pay for the following year. That's fine, he doesn't need the site anymore, so he didn't pay.

A couple of weeks later, he gets a "reminder" that the current billing cycle has nearly finished and he'll need to pay within the next 2 weeks.

Two weeks later, he's told he needs to pay by the end of the week.

The following week, he gets an email saying they'll disconnect his account in 3 days if he doesn't pay. Of course, since he doesn't want the site, he doesn't pay.

A week later, he gets another message saying he's got 3 days left. Fast-forward by 2 months or so, he's still getting messages saying they're going to cut off his account (and the site still works perfectly).

I wonder how long it's going to last?

[xjohn]

I'd just like to add another voice against Dot5Hosting.

See this thread: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...threadid=60667