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Date Submitted :
October 13th, 2010
Length of time hosted by this company :
More than 3 years
Overall Rating :
1 out of 5
Reliability :
1 out of 5
Support :
1 out of 5
Pricing :
2 out of 5
Verdict :
Very bad server and service. the customer support are SO incompetent. Endless issues from day one, in fact they were so bad and unable to help in any way that. I have very bad experience with them (4 years). However Clear you are with them they seem not to understand a word of what you are saying, and dissolve everything into circular arguments.
Finally they asked me 50$ to restore my database file
I WOULD NEVER RECOMMEND THEM NOT EVEN FOR A DOMAIN NAME
I host about 70 business websites and I have had these guys for a while. Email went out for a few days, they couldn't figure out the issue. Site is VERY slow (wondering if they're using a dialup line), too many issues, down constantly, database errors. They told me I needed to optimize my databases to make my sites load faster. They use to be decent until they split the sql server to another box which now they're probably the worst host I've ever had under Globat. I'm about to make the painful switch to another webserver but this is going to take lots of time. sigh.
Terribly bad service to top up with extremely incompetent tech support. Annoyed with the never ending reliability and database connection errors. It was okay until a couple of months, I wouldn't recommend this host for sure. They are good for nothing. They don't even know how to care for their customers.
dot5hosting is not really good, and it is far not the best, to make it short. I used it for my business project for 2 years and it was down for 12 hours more than 2 times and the email server was down more than 4 times. The most recent email failure was about 2 weeks ago for over 24 hours (FTW!!!). My business was paralyzed for more than a day! These problems cost money, people!
Pathetic service, on Thursday their mail server is down and lost all mine and company collegue mails which are on web server (we did not keep on outlook).
Today after week, they replied saying they are still attempting and may not bu successful.
I am looking for legal action taken on them for loosing all my data.
I have about 5 sites with sql databases and email accounts with Dot5Hosting so it would be very difficult for me to move to another hosting company and get the same amount of features for the price but I would definetly not refer them to anyone asking about a webhosting company! At least once or twice a month I have issues with either the web server not processing requests or the sql servers not working which also take my sites down. Every time I contact support, they always are idiots and not customer friendly. They never want to give credit for downtime. If switching to another host wasnt such a hassle for me, I would have already done so.
Idiots, without a doubt. the customer support are SO incompetent. Endless issues from day one, in fact they were so bad and unable to help in any way that I downgraded from hosting with them to just having a couple of domains within the seven day money back they offered. I never saw the money back and still haven\'t regained my hosting space. However Clear you are with them they seem not to understand a word of what you are saying, and dissolve everything into circular arguments.
I WOULD NEVER RECOMMEND THEM NOT EVEN FOR A DOMAIN NAME
I\'ve had several issues in the past, mostly with website speed, and always it was practically ignored till I went away. I recently tried to follow up and get them to do something. I posted my exact conversation with their tech support that made me leave at http://burntoutcomic.com/wiki/index.php?title=Dot5hosting. Their servers are so overloaded that if you try to do anything technical with php or sql, you\'ll notice slow webpage load speeds. Then they\'ll basically ignore your customer service requests. Had occasional problems even getting to my website though it was ususally fixed just by hitting reload.
Do not make the mistake of signing up with Dot5Hosting, since i joined up my websites has had sporadic downtime and their customer support is nothing more than an auto reply email. You will also find that the FTP and HTML file transfer speeds are disappointingly low. Overall i definitely would not recommend Dot5Hosintg to anyone, STAY AWAY!
I'd rate 0 if I could. I bought a hosting in dot5hosting, I got a domain as well, they offer an extravagant lot of space and price seems cheap but I set up menalto's gallery2 and then I made a copy of this just in case and I got a sign that says that I exceed the quantity of files uploading to my account, so they offer you a huge amount of space but they limit the quantity of files therefore without notice to me they erased all my e mails to fit it.
I also bought another domain at the beggining, which is going to expire and I want to renew it, but when I go to the panel to administrate the domains I get a internal server error, I comunicate with them via write support I call them they make me wait for over an hour someone answered and then put me on hold for another hour and finally they disconect me, the next day I tried again and I waste over 4 hours for nothing they just put me on hold forever, they really stink. The chat option is another waste of time, before I have to wait about 40 m. to start to chat with someone beside the fact that they don't solve anything. Now when the chat windows open up you only have the option to send a message and when you send it the small windows automatically closes and you never get in touch with them and never get an answer. I regret having a deal with them. Oh my God! I DO NOT recommend to anybody dot5hosting.
Don't make the mistake and make an account with this company, unless you have strenght!!! Oh my God, untill now i'm trying to get my administrative info for a domain which i had registered with them. Don't even think to try them!!
Oh my god. I made a mistake of signing up with them, and now they won't let me cancel.
I sent out an email and told them i wanted to cancel. No response.
After waiting for a week, I finally tried to talk to them via their "live chat". I explained the issue, and he seemed to understand the issue but he was responding very slow. He finally says "You have to call to cancel your account." Why didn't you tell me this in the beginning?!!
So, I called them. They put me on hold for 15 minutes! No exaggeration. I finally got to speak to the customer rep. I explained that I tried to cancel my account for awhile now, she kept insisting that it was my fault? WHAT? I emailed them! Left my phone number!
Then I asked to talk to her manager. She put me on hold for another 15 minutes. Dear God. Then she tells me, without letting me talk to her manager, that her manager said there cannot be a refund. OMG WTF.
I explained myself again. That it was their fault for not responding to my email, etc. Then she put me on hold for another 10 minutes.
She finally gets back to me, and says, Ok, your account is canceled and you will get your refund.
Good! I thought. NO SO FAST. After two weeks later, I haven't received the refund. I tried the live chat today, and I am still talking to this guy Marvin Nelson who keeps going in and out of the chat "doing research" but he was unable to find any record of my conversation two weeks ago. He says he needs to get this issue resolved at the Billing Department. And that he will send me a confirmation email as soon as this is resolved.
These people look like swindlers. For several weeks they simply did not reply to my e-mails. Then they wanted images (both front and back side) of my credit card. Then, when I asked them to cancel my account they wanted to know the last four numbers of my credit card or password. PLEASE BEWARE OF THIS SITE !!!!!!!!!!!
To say that this is a bad web host provider is an under statement. I had a ticket requesting some one at Dot5hosting to look at a problem I am having. The request was basically for several days ... meaining I filled the ticket with Dot5Hosting live chat and I never got a email acknowleding the ticket or anything. In any case, I went back to Dot5hosting live chat and requsted a supervisory email address to log a complaint. The rep provided me with bogus emails 3 times in a row, knowing they are bogus. With the lst one, I told the rep to hold on until I confirm that the email went through. When it bounced back, I asked for a real good non-bogus supervisory email address and the rep refused to give one. Not only bad service, they lie.
Literally THE worst hosting company I have ever seen. They constantly have problems with their servers, twice went down and I was offline for over a week each time. You can 1 out of 5 times log in properly to your vDeck control panel, which is junk and out of date, and their support "center" is completely useless.
They, with no notice, no email, no warning shut down my site, email and admin access because I had "a file in my FTP folder not used to display my site". I don't know this of course, since I wasn't informed, I contact them 4 separate times, email and live chat to find out what the problem is. I get NOTHING as far as what's wrong or how to fix it FOR TWO WEEKS, but I do get plenty of tickets and reference numbers, not to mention links in generic emails saying "there has been activity on your ticket" then the link would only give back a error page! I finally call their 877 number, which I am charged for, and only then am I told the issue. The support Tech says I would be temporarily UNSUSPENDED for 40 minutes to delete the file. Fine... so I go to do that and still no access to anything, I called back, was left on hold for over an hour at my expense and now no email reply no NOTHING two days later!
I HAVE NEVER IN MY LIFE HEARD OF A COMPANY SIMPLY SHUTTING DOWN A CUSTOMER FOR A SINGLE FILE WITH NO WARNING, NOR EXPLANATION, THEN TAKE TWO WEEKS TO FIGURE EVEN WHY THEY DID IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. Don't waste your time or your money with these people. I should also add that I am a web designer, so I have dealt with MANY hosting companies over the years and they are by far the worst I have ever seen.
Horrible...customer support is basically useless. Do not go with them unless you are putting up a static web page that you will never want to move anywhere else.
trying to login to vdeck (where you maintain your website) can be a trying experience. After I type user name and password, I wait and wait and wait and wait and wait until I fianlly get in. The problem is that I only have few seconds to do somethin, because of you do, you will be timed out. Once you are timed out you have to go back to typing user name and password, wait and wait and wait and wait and wait until I fianlly get in. This silly cycle can go on for 15-30 mintues (mostly waiting for the logins to happen) before I luck out and get into my web site.
FTPs are nitemare. I get disconnected all the time in the middle of ftp'ing.
The "The page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.
"
are pretty common.
I suggest that you find another host. On the surface dot5hosting seems to be a legitimate and professional ISP. However, my current experience with them indicates otherwise. They show all the signs of a business about to go under.
I design and create websites for businesses and individuals. I decided to give dot5hosting a try for one of my clients last year. The services offered were great, and the price was, too. I signed up my first client without a hitch. I had their website up and running within 24 hours. I'm thinking, what a great experience. I then learned that they had an affiliate program through CJ, so I signed up and began promoting their service.
Last week I sold a one year plan to one of my clients, registering for a domain name at the same time, which they offer for free. I got an email thanking me for the order and indicating that I would being receiving sign on information withing 24 hours. I did not receive anything within 24 hours, so I put in a support ticket. I did receive a response the next day asking for more information, which I provided. I was then told that they were having issues with their server and the technical support team was diligently working on the problem. That was three days ago. I still have nothing. They are no longer responding to my emails. I am being disconnected when I call their support line.
I also verified with CJ whether they had credited any sales to my account. No sales were credited, not even the two I made. I tried contacting the affiliate email address provided, but my email was returned as undeliverable. I then tried calling the affiliate support line, and guess what? I was disconnected again.
Ok, at this point I will be blocking the charge for the last sale on my credit card, and then begin the process of moving my clients to another ISP, before dot5hosting turns off the power.
Aaaaahhhh! Why didn't I check here first!? A week ago I ordered a 3 month plan with dot5. I made the mistake of checking for reviews *after* throwing 30 dollars out the window (not much money, thank goodness), but all the negative reviews here were quickly confirmed.
After purchasing the plan, a screen appeared thanking me for me purchase, but that was all. It didn't tell me I would receive an email shortly or anything. I went to my email, and yes I did receive an email which also thanked me for my purchase, and also said I would receive a setup email within 24 hours. Two days later I still had not received it, and I sent dot5 an email reminding them about my purchase. Now it's exactly a week later and I still have absolutely no means to set up my account, and no response from my previous email. The domain I payed for isn't available anymore , so I know the order went through, but I have no way to access it!
I contacted them again requesting a full refund, seeing as I still haven't been able to set up any kind of website for a full week after my purchase. So I'll see what happens with that. I've already gone to another hosting service which has already given me access to my account (I went to lunarpages, which has a very high review on this site).
It's amazing to me that "services" like dot5 are even allowed to exist. Maybe a class action suit is required to get everyones money back who only received a partial refund!
I have had a relatively good experience compared to some people. There were a few technical problems at first, but then the site actually worked for about six months. Outages occurred, but they were not too severe and the FTP would upload quite well.
I made the mistake of uploading some CD size videos that I actually have the rights to distribute. Even though I was only using a small fraction of the bandwidth that I was promised, it appears to have been too much for dot5, and videos were erased twice.
I talked to people in their office by phone and even received a call back from a Tier 2 technician. Billing asked me to stay with their company, and the technician was fluent in English and very professional.
He transferred me to a new server, and then the usual configuration problems started happening without resolve. I had taken a chance, and was very skeptical that they could deliver at the price they charged me. I can understand a company that is simply a rip off, but the time I spent with support people in online chat, over the phone, and answering tickets was ridiculous. These people put a lot of time in, and were not fixing the problems anyway.
My best guess, is that this company may provide nominal hosting for very low bandwidth sites. But if you use even a fraction of what you are promised, it appears that they will "fix" your account and it will never work properly again.
My recommendation to this company is that they are very inefficient at screwing customers, and they should find better excuses to pacify and dispose of unwanted accounts. The fact that they erased several gigabytes of videos, and then restored from backup was unbelievable.
What was even more unusual was that they were hosting my account on two different servers and they refused to erase the first account. I just kept calling technical support complaining that I could log onto two different directories, and they refused to shut the old one down. Perhaps there is an element of the unknown in all of this.
I've wasted far too much time on this horrible company. Why couldn't they simply be a rip off, so I could get the picture? They could've just ripped me off with little recourse on an account that only cost $90 for two years. But instead of screwing me, they actually returned phone calls. Weird. I strongly recommend that you find someone else to host your website. Perhaps they wanted the credit card number. Perhaps they are hoping to hijack domains.
And to top it all off, I had a tech respond to a ticket on the support site about my e-mail being told me disabled. He replied with the server error from his own email server, and told me that he would notify me via e-mail when the problem was resolved.
I thought dot5 hosting was quite good. I used them to host my web-site for a year and then I needed to MySQL 5 and PHP 5 because of its foreign language support. I asked if they were going to upgrade but they said they would not. So I had to find a new host. Up until the time I moved I was quite happy not too many problems. However, it seems that they switch my domain registration to BB Online when it was previously with Compila. Now to move my domain it is going to cost £20 + VAT which is nearly the cost of half a years' hosting with some hosting companies. So the main reason for my displeasure is that I cannot access my domain control panel to change the DNS to a new host without paying lots of money. I would steer clear of dot5 and I would not recommend them to anyone unless you don't like them very much.
I originally found Dot5Hosting's features very well-suited to my needs. I then found a promo code on RetailMeNot.com for 50% off so I wanted to try it out, confirm it works, before I ordered a hosting package from them once my current hosting account with another company expired. I filled out some fake details in the order form, e.g. Name: ABC, Phone: 00000000, etc. as assumed it would not possibly process my order without letting me review my details first, while letting me confirm the final price of my package with the promo code.
Then low and behold... the promo code worked but I was charged! I emailed the email address listed on the following page immediately (support@dot5hosting.com), but after two days of hearing no response, I tried Live Chat and talked to 3 different people whom referred me to another email address (sales@dot5hosting.com). After two more days of not hearing from that one, I filed a ticket on their support page and was told (without apologies or explanations) that I'd get a refund.
Well, I got refunded today... $12 short of what I paid. I was already prepared to bear a $2 foreign currency conversion fee charged by my bank but there was no reason why I would be refunded so much less for an account I never logged in to, let alone used. Like the other reviewers on this site, I also found their support staff extremely vague and unhelpful to the point it was almost like a form of torture having to ask them for help. They almost always wrote generic responses that sounded straight from the FAQ and have to this day, not answered a single one of my questions properly at all.
Perhaps D5H is good for someone who is content to not deal with support staff at all, but definitely not a company you'd want to have any problems fixed.
my time with dot5hosting has been a true hell. after a week of calling and mailing to get the site up and running i still didnt have a working site. so i canceled. but after a few day me and my girlfriend decided to go back cause they had alot of space for a cheap price. this was one of the bigest mistakes ever. now we have been trying to get the site up and running for 2 whole weeks now and we still have nothing.
everytime we called them they told us it was a problem with the dns server and that it should be fixed within a couple of hours. so after 5 hours still nothing so i call back. and yet again they tellus that there working on it and that it should be working in a few hours.
and now 2 weeks and atleast 20 calls later we still have nothing.
there site says there suport is one of the best. but there a bunch of idiots they know absolutely nothing about hosting. my mom even knows more then these guys. 9 out of 10 people we talked to didnt even speak propper english. and they just didnt want to understand us.
if i only had found this site earlyer. it would have saved us so much stress.
my adivce to people looking for a cheap hosting provider. DO NOT EVER TAKE THIS ITS A BIG MISTAKE. there the worst i have ever seen.
and as of today i'm canceling my account there for good. dot5should be closed down for good.
Bought a domain name with hosting and it never worked, after 5 days of being fobbed off by their courteous online tech support (that's why they get 2 out of 5) I asked for a refund.
Even if they get it working I have no confidence in them, I cant trust then with my livelihood. I've had my business crippled by an unresponsive host before, the site was down for weeks and I dropped off the search engines. I wish I'd checked it out more thoroughly before.
I have had them for approximately 24 days. They were suppose to have cancelled my account Friday and email me a confirmation within two hours of my conversation with their billing agent, but that never happened. Their billing department is closed today so I will call them tomorrow. There is something wrong with these people. They act like you are bothering them when you call. They don't answer emails. Their "physical" address is 919 E. Jefferson Street, Suite 100, Phoenix, Arizona, but so is Startlogic's address and Ipowerweb. If they give me any problems tomorrow, I am contacting the U.S. Attorney in Phoenix and sending an email to an appropriate federal agency who handles internet fraud claims. To me, they appear to be scamming me. They get one's money and then their attitude is one of get lost. If there had been zeros above, they would have received zeros instead of ones.
Awful. Lots of picking up the phone and hanging up and/or dropped calls. Support argued with me about what I was asking, I knew what I was asking, would they reply to an email that was sent to them over a week ago. Trying to move off of them to a different host was a nightmare. Allow at least an extra week for the process of leaving them.
Well when we first switched over to Dot5 everything was fine. The main reason for me needing a host was to host a forum. So the forum was installed and it was running fine for about a year. Then in the last 6 months I've been getting errors after errors after errors. I contact them through their live chat. I get told the problem has been fixed. Click to access my forum and low and behold it's down again. SO I contact them AGAIN, 'oh our admins are working to get this problem fixed.' Or they say it's an issue with the server. Just feeding me crap everytime I talk to them. It's annoying that they don't just tell me the truth. I've had to restart my forum numorous times over the last year. Due to tables in the database just suddenly disappearing and no explination to why and no fix either.
By advice to anyone looking to getting a hosting package is to NOT GO WITH DOT5.
I am a computer programmer by profession. I usually run my own server, but was tired of it. I was with dot5hosting for less than 1 week. I received a partial refund within 4-5 days.
Problems:
1) I couldn't hit my site %50 of the time (maybe even less). Occasionally, just pieces of the site wouldn't be accessible. (All file and folder permissions were set correctly)
2) There wasn't any way to manage sub domains.
3) I received no response to a support email regarding the first two problems.
4) Nowhere on the site is there documentation on how to cancel your service.
5) I was $13 short of a full refund of $118 for a 2 year agreement with no explanation. After reading these posts, I'm content with that. They have a 90 day, %100 refund policy.
I think some people on this page are being too harsh, I have been with Dot5Hosting for a few months and have experienced fast customer support, brilliant features and more than enough disk space and bandwidth. I reccomend Dot5Hosting to anyone who is looking to make a website for a low cost.
Attention!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are out of business. After days of unresponded comunication, I decided to go to their office as I live close to Santa Monica, and it was empty, they have moved out. I amnot surprised, but am stuck with a mess. Please post this to wherever you can.
Dot5Hosting SUCKS Big Time! Purchased 1 yr service in good faith and never heard from them again. Sent emails, talked to live chat, nada! Finally, four days later I called and got some rude dude from India who said he had to have my first name rather than initials because so many people were setting up fake accounts. I told him I gave him the name exactly as it appears on the credit card I used. He said he still had to have first name. BUT when I asked him why Dot5Hosting didn't call me to request my first name, he said they were waiting on the customer to call in and inquire what's wrong so Dot5Hosting would know I was legitimate. After telling him I am not a mind reader... I said CANCELL DOT5HOSTING IMMEDIATELY. Thank goodness for these reviews... now I know I did the right thing. I'm going to cancel my credit card immediately because I don't trust these guys not to still try to bill me. AVOID Dot5Hosint.
Very rude support center, Don't help with anything, very long response time, never give a straight answer, site down at least once a day, don't know anything about site code...etc.etc.etc.
You can ask questions and you'll get an answer and when you reference that answer later they will contradict what the said before. They try to do anything possible to avoid any work on their end.
The support is HORRIBLE. I've submitted 10 tickets after only been with them for a month. I keep getting errors when trying to connect or transfer anything. Their live tech support chat person just told me to send a ticket. Which I already did. Multiple times. It's really frustrating. DO NOT USE THEM! They suck. Here's a convo I had with their tech support in live chat.
Chat InformationWelcome to Dot5Hosting! An online representative will be with you shortly. You are number 1 in the queue. Your wait time will be approximately 0 minute(s) and 6 seconds. Thank you for waiting.
Chat InformationYou are now chatting with 'Andy'
Andy: Thank you for contacting Dot5Hosting Live Chat. How may I assist you today?
Nikole: Whenever I try to transfer something onto my site I get a Disk Full. Please upload later message.
Andy: Please forward me your Domain name
Nikole: www.harsh-light.org
Andy: please hold
Andy: let me check
Nikole: Okay.
(11 minutes later)
Andy: Please send email at support@dot5hosting.com with your issue
Nikole: I did. They told me it would be fixed but it hasn't been.
Andy: Could you please provide me ticket ID that you get
Nikole: FXQ-552945
Andy: Okay
(7 minutes later)
Andy: Please send reply to this email
Andy: with your issue issue ,that is not fixed yet
Nikole: What email?
Andy: Please send rely to ticket FXQ-552945
Nikole: I did already. But okay I'll just wait more. Thanks anyway.
That's pretty much how every single chat goes no matter what the error. I mean wth? They told me to reply to my own ticket. That makes no sense at all. Freaking morons.
When I first signed up with Dot5Hosting I had no complaints. Something has gone terribly wrong with every aspect over the years, however, and I would strongly recommend not using this company. It all started when I wanted to transfer an existing domain to a dormant account with about 4 months of service left before expiration. Pretty standard, however, after setting the nameservers and 6 days of submitting service tickets, my website still received an error: "Broken DNS server: Reports a server failure". I decided to cancel the account which had already been paid in full with four months remaining.
Before you disregard this as an error of mine in setting up the site properly I should tell you I am a web designer and frequently set up accounts for clients. I have never had this problem with a hosting company before or since. It's very easy to transfer a domain, should take far less than 6 days, and that's only the amount of time it took for me to decide they couldn't do it and terminated the account.
I didn't ask for or expect to receive a refund, but imagine my surprise the next month to find a charge to my debit card for new service. Again I contacted Dot5 to explain that I was not a satisfied customer, did not want to do business with them, and had not authorized any charges for a new account. This time it took eight days of going back and forth with them to get a refund for the unauthorized charge.
Ah, if only that was the end of it. Now it is 3 months later. Last week I got a renewal notice which I promptly deleted. Today I got another saying they were going to renew my account automatically in three days.
This time I sent a response:
I do not want any services from your company and I will consider any attempted charges made by your company from my bank account theft. I do not want any communication, marketing or fake renewal notices from your company for an account I have closed twice already. If any changes are made to my debit card I will contact the district attorney in each state your company has a physical office. I don't know why no one at your company can remove a very dissatisfied former customer from your database. I truly believed I would have no further contact with Dot5Hosting after finally getting the previous fraudulent charge reversed, but no, it seems to be standard operating procedure for your company.
If there is any way to misinterpret this message, I'm sure you will find it, so let me be clear:
I AM NOT A CUSTOMER OF DOT5HOSTING.
I WILL NEVER AGAIN BE A CUSTOMER OF DOT5HOSTING.
ANY CHARGES MADE OR ATTEMPTED BY DOT5HOSTING ARE UNAUTHORIZED, WILL BE CONSIDERED THEFT AND REPORTED TO THE PROPER AUTHORITIES.
DO NOT DEBIT ANYTHING FROM MY BANK ACCOUNT.
I DO NOT WANT TO DO BUSINESS WITH DOT5HOSTING NOW OR AT ANY TIME IN THE FUTURE.
If that is in any way unclear, you may contact me with questions at this email address. Otherwise, I sincerely hope this is the last time I have to deal with your company.
To which they responded asking for the last 4 digits of my credit card. The only reason I'm writing this is because the level of incompetence at Dot5 is so unbelievable, I want potential customers to be aware this is what they will be experiencing should they choose to do business with this company.
Dot5 hosting appears to have a great package, but they miss things in their site host description about their hosting capabilities. Much of this is covered in the comments listed here, but inability to support multiple domain handles, SSH, and have a decent rate of FTP transfer are high up there for me.
It has been almost impossible to transfer content to their hosting providers, let alone reconfigure your own webspace to host domains and multiple accounts.
Live chat support is spotty at best. Adding subdomains, FTP accounts, and enquiring about SSL have all required interaction with staff to get any information or service moving.
On two occasions so far, simple requests haven't been fulfilled within the given time (1-2 hours).
I joined dot5hosting.com just because I needed some people to send me large files over FTP and host a lightweight website. The account was set up shortly, but after I uploaded my site (they told me I have 50 Gig, and my site was only 15 MB) the server told me I am out space. I could not upload anything through FTP. I contacted their support dept. through live chat, but they always told me their "senior" admins have been alerted and the issue will be fixed.
Not only this cost me alot of money, but also alot of precious time that I could have well spent focuing on my business. At the end they told me that their server is running out of space and I should request a back of my site, when I did that, their server crashed on me and since I do not have an option to back up site.
I encourage anyone interested in this hosting facility to look elsewhere and those who are customers to cancel your accounts and get whatever is left of your contract, they company will probably go bankrupt and other newbies will be saved from joining this company.
I only signed up 3 days ago and already I am pulling my hair out, I've never experienced anything like it!
The first few hours everything ran fine... then my website disappeared along with my account .... I have given them the benefit of the doubt, their first response seemed quite helpful and I was told that I would be up and running within a few hours... that was 3 days ago ...
Since then I've not been able to get any sense out of their support.... I have already requested a full refund and surprise surprise (wish I had done a bit more research before hand) they are now not responding to any of my e-mails or support tickets ....
I signed up with the promise of 100 gigs and hosting 6 websites with one account. So far I have 50 gigs, which is fine, but the software will not allow the hosting of more than one site. I have talked with support twice, but no results. They said that they will have new software in a few days, and in the meantime they will set up an additional website on the account. I gave them the name of a second url, but no results. A month as passed, but the software has not been upgraded. The subdomains also do not work. Pass up this offer, because they just don't deliver.
I have excessive amounts of money and the $70 I spent on dot5hosting is completely irrelevant. I could care less about getting my money back and if I could, I would throw it back in their face. This company is by far the worst I have ever dealt with or ever will deal with. The customer service gets a -1000 if this score was possible. They don't give a rats ass about your site, they only want your money.
If there was an easy way to set this up, I would pay people not to go with this hosting company. I am so incredibly frustrated with them that words cannot even describe it. I've been with them for almost a year and there subdomain manager does not, and has never worked. Are you a webmaster? Do you know what an A-record, CNAME, or MX-record is? Well if you need them added to your account, you can't do it manually. You need to contact them with your request and wait. And let me tell you, wait you will my friend. I don't even have a dynamic site that relies on 99% uptime for business. I do web design for fun so I can imagine how people feel who have finances at stake.
As far as I know, you cannot SSH or SFTP to your site, so you are left using their ridiculous Vdeck interface for everything (FTP access is horrible as well). This is fine and dandy for alot of things, but sometimes there is just no substitute for command line access, which they do not provide. If you are considering going with this company to save between $100-200 per year in hosting fees, you are an idiot.
Look at this site, nobody who has half a brain has rated this company any more than 1/5. If a 0 could be entered, I, like others, would have given them this score. DO NOT GO WITH DOT5, THEY ARE THE WORST COMPANY IN THE UNIVERSE.
The customer service and reliability of this host is horrible. In the 4 and a half months that my site was hosted with them the MySQL database went down on a number of occassions, usually for between 6-24 hours but the last time was for over a week. I changed hosts before the database started working again, in the process losing the money that I had paid them for the hosting account. I didn't receive any responses to any of the methods I used to contact them. Don't make the same mistake I did!
NO NOT USE THESE GUYS. I have had dot5hosting for 5 days and my email accounts do not work.I can not receive emails and when I call for help, All I get is everything is OK when it fact I still can not receive email. I tried phone support, live chat support and email and no luck. Their reps don't speak English well and it's so hard to understand them. I am cancelling and going with another company. Please don't waste your time and money. I spent about a lot of time trying to get it fixed and Dot5Hosting is not helping. Look somewhere else for your Company Hosting. www.bnspro.com
I cannot tell you how frustrated I am with this company. I have only had an account with them for 5 days and 4 of those 5 days I have not been able to access the vDeck. I called and spoke to some woman who could not speak English and it was obvious it was a international connection because the echo was so horrible!! Anyway, that whole conversation was a complete waste of my time and all I kept thinking was I want that hour of my life back!!
DO NOT USE THEM!!! ITS NOT WORTH THE HEADACHE!! TRUST ME ITS TRUE WHAT THEY SAY...YOU DEFINITELY GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!!! PAY THE EXTRA MONEY IF FOR ANYTHING THE PEACE OF MIND!!!!
By the way, I have been trying to get someone on the "live chat" for an hour now...all I keep getting is this...
Please wait for a site operator to respond.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
Dot5 says they have email forwarding. I can't get it to work. I can set up another account on my system but I travel and use other pcs and want email forwarded to on-line mail accounts.
24/7 service? I have yet to speak to anyone after 7 phone calls and 15 - 20 minute waits. The chat serice comes up but no one answers.
Disapointing! Frustrating!
They claim that you may host up to 6 domains on the account. What they don't bother to tell you is that only 1 of these domains can have email capabilities. To read my whole story, check out http://bewaredot5hosting.com/
They got to be the worst in the world. It does not get worse than dot5hosting. The CEO of dot5hosting is only a kid! When I saw his picture, he looks as if he is under 20. Kids just dont have enough experience or the skills necessary to run a webhosting company. This is one of the reasons why dot5hosting sucks.
When you call their 24-7 support line, the wait is about 30-40 minutes to get someone on the phone. No one has the patience to wait that long to resolve their issue. The live chat is equally as bad. You wait forever for someone to come talk to you about your issue. And sometimes no one will be there to help you, phone or chat. Even if your lucky enough to get someone on the phone, a lot of times their english is bad, and they dont resolve the issue!
Asking for a refund is difficult too. They will just keep replying to your email and convincing you to stay with them. You would have to keep demanding refunds through email numerous times in order for them to listen. But the whole refund process can take weeks or even months.
I wish I had known about this website before I commit to dot5hosting. Just a few days after my website with a forum is up, it started having mysql errors. I contacted the "tech" support many times, and they weren't able to fix the error. I end up deleting the forum and reinstall it, which cause me to lose all existing data. I gave them the benefit of doubt since it's only the first few days.
I started having a 403 issue during new user registration on my forum on the second week. I didn't think it's database related error, but when I called in to "tech" support, they kept telling me they are having database issues. So I gave them a FEW DAYS to fix the issue, but to my "surprise", the issue never get resolved.
When I called them again to verify the issue, the "tech" guy was able to duplicate the error, but within a couple minutes, the whole site went down with a "Critial Error" from database. He wasn't able to tell me what's going on and HANG UP on me while I was waiting to get an answer. I couldn't reach the support by phone or by IM afterward.
I'm REALLY FED UP with dot5hosting. Their reliability and support is so incompetent that it makes the whole deal seem like a SCAM. I just wish I can get my money back!!
Terrible. Within one week of signing up for hosting with them, our site was down three times, each for an hour+. This happened at least once a week. After contacting customer support each time, they kept saying nothing was wrong and if I had any further problems to contact them. What kind of help is that?
I am going to be asking for my money back and switching hosts. The price might seem very good, but you're just paying for a headache.
I'm just unlucky not to discover this website review before purchased from Dot5.
Their website support is good and they will reply to your technical question within 30 minutes.
But they don't leave up to what they have promise to customer like me. Some of the features mention in their website is totally wrong. The reason I bought from them because of the IMAP features (mention in their website), but only to discover after purchased that they don't support it.
With huge storage space but you can't reconfigure your email quota, to me is such a waste.
They also mention about their 3 to 4 days money back guarantee, but I received mail from them and they require for 10 to 12 days refund. So far after few days and email sent to them no news form them regarding my full refund.
I'm very upset with them and definately not recomending anyone for their service
For the first few days everything seemed to be going well - that is until I asked to add an additional domain name to site.
I contacted 'Live Support' online with my request for an addional domain. After 10-15 minutes I was told to send my request to an e-address. I did that immediately - on Saturday. It took untold phone calls, emails, visits to 'Live Support' and moving my site over to a new server, all the while listening to "Give us 2 hours and it should be done" said by someone obviously from India on an in-and-out connection that was obviously over the Internet, before it was actually completed on the following Friday.
I will be asking for my money back. I shudder to think how much time and aggrevation that'll take to accomplish!
All they seem to care is money from you and after that there is no service at all.
When I siged up with dot5 over a month ago, the account was not ready at the time specified. I called numerous times and got someone on the phone. He was impatient, rude and asked me to have patience etc. He asked me what I expected him to do (meaning he could not do anything except wait), I told him to deliver what he promised to.
Then there is email problem. Extremely slow and spell check did not work. I asked them to get this resolived and talk and emailed for nearly a month before they agreed to move my accout to a "new" server. Now it seems to work but is still extremely slow to do any work.
Then there is the whois privacy. From dot5's control penal, they obviously say they offer free whois. Every time I called and emailed to let them know that I never was successful in enabling the whois, they put the blame on Tucows, the registrar. When I forwarded Tucows response which obviously indicates dot5's responsibility, they stopped responding to my emails anymore. At one point, one rep. asked if I paid them $10, they would provide the whois privacy, which is in contrary to their plan offer. Yesterday when I called to have them follow up again, they assigned another case number to this case that was still open. I asked them why they did it and said assigning another number would not help me, they asked me why. I told them I want solutions instead of assinging numbers. On hearing this, and after more than two weeks of doing nothing, they came up with another story, saying that they just received an email from Tucows saying that they were not offered the free whois capability and they ssid Tucows mentioned my domain name in the email. I asked them to forward a copy of the email to me, they responded that it's dot5's confidential info. Due to their horrible service and inconsistency, I have all the reason to believe they were telling lies. And sure enough I found out from Tucows' email response today that Tucows offer whois option to all resellers. And this together with dot5' control penal tells me dot5 is in the position to and responsible for providing its customer with free whois privacy and the fact I don't get is the result of dot5 blocking it.
Also they do not provide the right disk and tranfer quota as promised. When pushed, they would just tell me that the administration will do it in the next two months.
I would rate them 0 if there wwre such a category.
I would give them zero stars if possible. One month prior to my domain and account renewal I called and updated my credit card information. The day after my domain and account were supposed to be renewed... everything is gone. A call placed to customer service connected me to an individual whom I could not understand very well, but very clearly did not care that I am a paying customer who has referred more than several people to their service. He stated at 8:30am that due to an error on their side it did not get updated properly, but that within 8-10hours it would be back up and running. He also promised me none of my incoming e-mail would be bounced. Wrong and wrong again. Every single e-mail sent to me has been bounced back and now, over 30hours later my account and domain has not been renewed or updated. Numerous calls to customer service and they all seem that they could care less that my e-mail and website has been offline for nearly 2 days. When I asked how they would compensate me for this, they told me to be patient and that in an hour or two everything would be running. Apparently they are on Mars time, because 4 hours ago during my last conversation I was told it would be 1-2 hours and still nothing.
Customer service is absolutely aweful. Hard to understand and they just do not care. The customer definitely does not come first. Pricing is good, but for the level of service I have received I would expect pricing to be way cheaper. I gave them one star for reliability... I wish I could give them no stars because they are not at all.
Stay away from dot5hosting like its the bird flu. Tell all of your friends too... I will be.
This has got to be one of the worst outfits. Every problem I have encountered was caused by them: DNS settings, lost data, and now they have not renewed my domain. They sent warning emails at 3,2, and 1 month, 2 weeks, & 5 days saying if I did not renew, I would lose my domain. Each of these 5 times, I would call & tell them I wanted to renew. Their answer was that it was automated, and to ignore the emails. Now my domain has expired, and they tell me on my second call after it went down my credit card was declined! (NOT likely.)
Now they are trying to make it my fault for their inability to do anything right. Avoid them like the plague! Their low price is too high for the level of service they supply.
I am pleased to write this review. I have been trying to buy a domain with Dot5Hosting.... Here are the reasons I rate this hosting solution 1/10 !! Maybe they have a good price or good technical specs, but I never been able to register.. And at the end I was just disgusted about their unprofesionnal staff and practices .... There it is :
1) I have never had any news from them after buying my domain
2) I had to go chat with the guys online (at least 3 times) to finally have them to sent me an e-mail to ask me to send copies of my credit card
3) They asked me to send pictures of my credit card throught regular (not crypted) mail. When I told them this was an unsafe practice, they said it was for my own security !!!!! Seriously.... How professionnal is this ???????
4) After taking maybe an hour to explain them that I wanted to send them an encrypted file with all the information included, I sent them the e-mail and they just could not RECEIVE IT !!! I AM 100% my e-mail services work properly... Them I did it again, sent the e-mail while talking to the online operator to make sure I do everything properly... The e-mail just didn't went through... I just couldn't imagine if I ever had a problem in the futur and wanted support, I would have taken hours and hoursor even days to explain/contact them !!!!
So , please make sure you secure your stuff when buying from them. They seem to have really unsafe bussness practicles !!!!! Makes me even wonder if they secure their client information........
I tried to use the cheapest plan ( 1 year, 5$/month)... And I lost at least 10 hours contacting them to arrange everything.... NOT WORTH THE PRICE AT ALL !!!!
just when you think all is going well, your site goes down, again and again. I have hosted with dot5 for over 2 years, It was great at first, then came the problems. lost all my site data when they moved server, without letting anyone know. now its a case of "is my site available or not". You get a couple of day when all is well the off it goes again. The support is normally available but you always get the same type of responce, "we are looking into you issue, please bear with us" no real explanation is given of the problem or resolution time. I would not recommend anyone using dot5 if they want 24/7 avalability, it ok for the occasional user at the price but don't expect your site to be there next time you look for it.
dot5hosting - very slow server.
I sign up dot5 2 months ago, the sign up procedure are lack of simplicity. You have to sent them your identification (e.g. car license ) for the first time sign up if you choosing pay through credit card. Ok, then i choose to pay with money order. And, keep waiting days and days, I need to wait about a MONTH for my account to be active in total. Later on, i noticed that the servers are SUPER SLOW which i need to wait 2-3 seconds to load 100k jpeg.
They have false advertising on the home page of their website. It says "The Worlds Cheapest Domains" and its $7.95 per year. Their are many other places that charge less than that. They have terrible support as well as terrible downtime. I never should have signed up with the in the first place after seeing the false advertising on the front page. They are a bunch of crooks and liars!!!
I purchased my hosting with Dot5 10 months ago. All went relatively smoothly. Then my account was suspended, even though I had only used 7% of my bandwith and 55% of my disk space. Most of which was from saved web stats. They refused to reactivate my account until an upgraded hosting package was purchased. Needless to say I moved my site within 24 hours.
Additionally prior to all this happening I purchased another hosting package for another website. After the above incident I wanted a refund for the new hosting I had purchased. I missed the 30 day money back guarantee by 3 days. After much disagreement they finally said they would refund me for the outstanding hosting for both accounts. The amount should have been $60 but they said they had sent $50. So I thought that would do. When the refund arrived I had only received $25. I questioned them about it, they denied they only sent $25, but as sure as I'm writing this review, I only received $25.
I'm afraid to report that these people are crooks.
Two days ago I signed up and paid for 2 months of reseller hosting. The package looked amazing. I have had 3 emails since advising that my account will be activated in 24hrs / 3-4hrs and 2hrs. Still not activated and now I'm not getting replies to any emails or attempted chat. I think they are crooks! Stay away!
This is one of the worst experience I have come across. Initially the hosting company was quite good and I heard review about them before I joinned and I was satisfied. Things went terribly wrong after only a few months that they changed server (which took about 2 weeks for them to sort out) and they did not notify me (I assume they did not notify anybody). I am very annoyed with this as everytime after the lengthy communication with them to get things right again, not long other problems occur. It has happened so many times that when I emailed someone about an update of my site, I realised that their server was either down later or that they were moving it so that the people would find an error message on the page instead of anything else! I have to look for another hosting company as this really causes me pain. PLEASE, CAN ANYONE GIVE ME SOME IDEAS OF WHICH COMPANY CAN BE CONSIDERED????? Many thanks
I never made it as far as being hosted by these guys. After my initial application I was promised my account would be setup within 24 hours. 2 days later I replied to the support email address and it bounced. After contacting a representative through their online chat service and asking to withdraw before my order was placed, he then tried to push my order through. It was very difficult and stressful to get the message across that I didn't want to join. Eventually I managed to sort it out, and hopefully without incurring any costs. I hope they stick to their word. Not impressed. I've chosen BlueHost instead.
Worst service I ever had. As soon as the first month was over (paid one year in advance, of course there is only a 30 day money back guarantee ...), the problems started. Didn't get e-mails for over 7 hours, website could not be accessed without www. Also, they are luring customers to their site by offering registrations for $ 2.50 - but according to their system, even names, that are available according to the whois registry - are "unavailable"! Looks like a scam to get people hooked to other services ...
This host used to be a 10 out of 10. While I was not watching, they slipped to the gutter. I apparently kept going while others were having a terrible time, but the problems finally brought me down and forced me to relocate.
This was the third hosting service in a row that went from good to bad. Here are just a few of my complaints:
1. They changed their control panel without notification, which brought down my second domain and my subdomain.
2. They messed up my ability to receive email and never did get it going again.
3. They kept changing their hosting plans and making them cheaper, but they said I was locked into the more expensive plan and could not change.
I have now changed to midphase.com, who seemed to be a lot better organized. I just have to keep my fingers crossed that history does not repeat itself.
Not only have they been skirting around the issue for 6 days now (where tons of websites are down) they disconnected their one support phone number and their techs are ending the chat sessions without giving answers. Stay away if you are even thinking about their service.
I have been very busy with school, so I did not take time to scan the web for reviews and learn about the plunge at dot5hosting.com. They have gone from great to horrible, but I did not know about it until I went down last week. I still do not have incoming email in operation.
Wednesday is the renewal day for my service, and I have already warned them (when I finally reached them via their form) not to do it, because I will have it reversed.
I am still trying to get in to my admin account to blank out my credit card number. This is third third webhost that has gone from good to bad on me. I am a laid-off technology worker, so this is a prime example how a globally dispersed operation really does not work, especially when the support seems to be in Russia.
To make matters worse, they keep revising their hosting plans and making them cheaper, but those of us who are already clients cannot make use of these.
Dot5hosting is horrible. Over the past 1.5 years, my web sites, MySQL database, and email has been down or inaccessible over 50 times. And for the 3rd time now, it has been inaccessible for over 1 week. All my email was being dropped, web sites are inaccessible, and dot5 has been completely silent and unconcerned about their customers downtimes.
STAY AWAY! If you think their prices are good, consider that you will be paying for a lot of downtime, and no reasonable response. They are crooks and incompetent at best.
Below is their canned response to my 4th trouble ticket - how much time do they need? The first 3 trouble tickets went unacknowledged for 3 days, and were answered the same as this 4th one.
--------
Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you for your recent e-mail.
We are still working on the DNS issue and will update you as soon as possible.
Please allow us some time
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,
Rocky
"We look after our customers, or someone else will"
support@dot5hosting.com
dot5hosting is just terrible. Their hosts and services are routinely down or non-functional (check http://www.dot5hosting.com/status/ for yourself). Their customer support and "CEO" issue canned, untrue responses and a bunch of BS. Their slogan "We look after our customers, or someone else will" is true - you have to interpret it correctly, however. Translated, it says, "If you are not happy with us, go elsewhere and *someone else* will take care of you". Running dot5hosting is a kid - a wannabe CEO who has demonstrated his disinterest in his customers time and time again.
My recommendation, Stay Away! If you do choose to venture into dot5hosting territory, DO NOT risk anything other than month-to-month plans.
I wish I had visited here before signing up with them. It has been a nightmare. I am only sorry that the rating system makes me give them a 1 out of 5 because I would have said "0".
I have subscribed to this host because I was fed up of using free hosting companies. Well I have never had as much problems with a free host as with dot5.
Not only because they managed to lost all my data after being down for more than a week, but certainly because they does not seem to manage to keep my site up for 24h in a row.
If you subscribe to dot5, you must be aware that their service is not bad when they are online, but that the prob is that they seem only to be able to offer max. 10 HOURES of uptime per 24h.
Conclusion:
> less than 50% uptime
> live help (chat): that will only help you if they are in the mood to do so. Even than it will take them 1h.
> Don’t expect to be informed about anything. Their 0% communication towards customers is probably the most irritating part!
First of all Dot5hosting is very slow and has horrible communication skills. On top of that they seem to only deal with your issues when its dealing with payment. There servers are overfilled and most of their support are out sourced and do not know how to speak english very well. Chris has many times told me that things would be fixed asap especially since he was the ceo and could get things done quickly. However, I would have to email him over and over again to actually get any results. Ofcourse that would be weeks later. I suggest that no one ever tries dot5hosting, as it is a waste of your time and money.
They lost both my websites in december 2003, and never sent my so much as an email to let me know my sights were gone. I had to fight tooth and nail to get them to set up the two domain names again, and then more to get the proper login info. All in all it was early febraury before i could put my sites up again. And since then it has gone down twice again. Their customer support is slow and likes to give you the run around. I would suggest not having a website before having one hosted with these people. I would give them 0 out of 5 on all issues if i could. even the pricing is horrible if you dont actually get the service you pay for.
Having been with dot5hosting for over a year, I cannot stress enough the importance of avoiding this company. My site went down at least once every month.. usually for hours at a time but occasionaly for days. I was willing to let this go rather than try to move all my data.. however on February 15, 2004, my site vanished. After many calls I heard that their servers had been compromised and all my data had been lost.. oh and would i mind uploading everything again? In short they are unprofessional, substandard and a waste of time.
