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Visit www.dotster.com |
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Dotster General Information |
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Dotster is providing Linux web hosting services, has been founded in 1999 and now it's years in business.
dotster.com average uptime is 99.995% (rank #587 on our directory) with total 87138 successful and 4 failed checks,
monitored since 2006-01-21. Similar companies with 99.995% uptime are and ihubnet.com.
Search for "dotster.com" on 3 biggest search engines returns average of 128666 results so company name popularity rank is #53.
There have been 32 positive votes for Dotster and 23 negative.
And overall company rank on our directory is #90 (similar companies are omnis.com and precisioneffect.com)
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Web Hosting Packages |
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Starter Plan (Type: Linux) - 5000 MB space, 250 GB bandwidth for $5.25/mo
Standard Plan (Type: Linux) - 10 GB space, 500 GB bandwidth for $7.95/mo
Advanced Plan (Type: Linux) - 20 GB space, 1000 GB bandwidth for $12.95/mo
Pro Plan (Type: Linux) - 35 GB space, 1500 GB bandwidth for $17.95/mo
Premium Plan (Type: Linux) - 50 GB space, 2000 GB bandwidth for $22.95/mo
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Some technical data about dotster.com |
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IP Location: Montana - Kalispell - Savvis
Blacklist Status: Clear
Nameserver: NS1.DOTSTER.COM
Registrar: DOTSTER, INC.
Server Type: Apache/2.0.49 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.49 OpenSSL/0.9.6b PHP/4.3.6
Website Title: Web Hosting - Site Builder - Domain Name Registration
Description: Domain registration, Web hosting and e-mail services for individuals and businesses that wish to have a unique address and branded identity on the Internet.
Back to "D" directory |
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www.Hosting24.com
#1 MOST RELIABLE, GLOBAL #1 RATING Unlimited Space, Unlimited Bandwidth, Unlimited Reseller Hosting Option, Free Domain for Life all for $4.84/mo
www.000webhost.com
Best Free Hosting provider, 250 MB Space, 100 GB Bandwidth - $0.00/mo, no advertising
www.IXWebHosting.com
Value for Money: 100 GB Space, 1000 GB Bandwidth, Host 2 Domains, Free domain registration, all Just for $7.95/mo
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Web Hosting Reviews and Ratings |
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| ngu, 01st 2011 August, 2011 |
| rip off company. dishonest in credit card charging. excessive charged and make excuses. Extremely poor service |
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| ngui, 01st 2011 August, 2011 |
| My experience with dotster has been very poor. It is a rip off company, dishonest in charging the credit card. Say something and charges are way above. When asking for correction, no correction, they will give what ever excuse. Service is extremely poor. |
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| server ifuturz, 27th 2011 June, 2011 |
Hello
we had Vps with dotster we experienced a f**ked up quality service with dotster.
we fedup with dotster.
this is a f**kin bad company dont host your site here. |
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| Ex-Dotster Support, 23rd 2011 June, 2011 |
I have been working here for about 5 weeks. I am also a former GoDaddy agent. My first clue came when I was in my first week of traiining here. First, the trainer was difficult to understand. I eventually caught on that Dotster seems to have their own language of terms for hosting and domain DNS. I found it difficult to navigate their user interface when I am experienced not only at GoDaddy, but with many other hosts as I do website work too. This was by far one of the most cumbersome interfaces I ever dealt with. Even as a trained rep helping people do things in their account I still get lost.
My second clue was that during my first week of training ALL 20 of their mail servers went down!. No redundent servers. All the servers were down for two full days! Customers were calling trying to get help for their businesses that were suffering severe losses due to not being able to take orders or communicate with their customers. Some were having customers drop them as they seemed flakey due to their mail issues that were really caused by Dotster. I could not believe that the entire mail system would go down for two days.
Of course, once I was on the phones myself I found that there were many other issues that were causing businesses to lose customers. With all the issues I saw, even when Dotster techs accidently deleted a customer's entire website, they NEVER offered to take responsibility and make it right to the customer. Since I have been with Dotster I have found a general apathy among the service reps due to their not being able to do the right thing for the customer. There are many good people working on the first level support, but their hands are tied.
I find it gets old to be telling people we could not help them after we caused their issues. I am used to being a good tech support rep and do this sort of work to help people, not just to get a paycheck. So I am leaving Dotster after a month and a week as I don't think this company deserves me. I am not going to support a cheezy company like this. Just remember though, when you call you are probably talking to someone who would really like to help but has his/her hands tied and is probably as frustrated as you are with the issue. They just know more about where the problem really lies - with Dotster upper management who seem to really not care. |
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| OshunDee, 08th 2011 February, 2011 |
Dotster's support is a joke. You might as well ram your face into a brick wall. You'll get more of a reaction. My major problem with dotster is that they do not allow me access to important files I need to change. I'll give ONE example. They had the option to install zencart software via their web app. interface. I did it. It installed to a place I couldn't access. When I asked how I could move it so that I could access it, they told me I couldn't and that they didn't grant permissions on files stored in the web apps folder, which is where all the web applications they offer automatically install to. So what good are they?
Another example. I ask "support" a question, they give me a generic answer that doesn't really answer anything and close my ticket before I can respond. Every ticket you open to support gets closed after one mediocre response. If you rely on the internet to communicate (don't have access to a phone) then this kind of blows.
Another example. You may create databases, but for some reason, the third parties you give access to can't access them. You tell me?
And finally, a tip for anyone who is interested in self-torture and wants to go with dotster, regardless: If you have to be massively frugal in order to keep yourself & your family fed (like I do), then don't try transferring a domain over to them. |
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| Jack, 09th 2010 November, 2010 |
| They are blocked my domains and do not let me transfer my domains to another domain provider. |
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| Mark, 27th 2010 August, 2010 |
Doster has got to be the more horribly run company i've ever dealt with. I have a VPS with them...today... i find out my vps is shut down and not working. Why? Turns out their system hadn't charged me for 8 months. So... what do they do... they shut me down... don't call me... and tell me i should have seen that i wasn't getting charged and contacted them.
I used to refer to them at one point. Now i send people to imsmb. I am moving Everything from them and telling everyone i referred over to move. No service, no support, and just excuses from them over and over and over again. I'm through. |
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| Roger, 13th 2010 July, 2010 |
My company purchased 2 years in advance hosting with Dotster. We were happy with the service until a number of issues occurred.
1) Support decided that we were using too much space and had to migrate us to a new server. They did not even bother coordinating with us and just sent us one email but again no coordination and we were down for days.
2) After the move, we had to change all of our passwords and logins.
3) Our stats were removed and we did not have stats for many months and when we kept trying to get those recovered, they were non responsive and basically in a round about way it was too bad so sad. We have clients that relied on those stats so we had to use other methods to product stats.
4) I just tried to cancel my account and I was told that we would not receive a refund for any unused months in our plan. We have over 6 months left.
I have dealt with many hosting companies in the past and I would rate Dotster as the worst. Buyer beware. I have never been in a situation where if I canceled early, I would not get a refund. I do not need to be hateful or anything but their plans are high and the service is not something I would recommend. At first things seemed great but after a while, service went down as well as speed. We were running a site with videos and the HD videos were so slow to load where Go Daddy has faster service and lower priced plans.
This is just my 2 cents. I know reviews do help with so many hosting companies out there.
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| JJ, 03rd 2010 May, 2010 |
| Awful. Avoid at all costs. |
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| JJ, 03rd 2010 May, 2010 |
| No to Dotster. My website stopped working 2 days ago and they still haven't responded to my e-mails. Look at their web page--it's all advertising. I have another site at SoftSys and the difference is night and day: SoftSys fixes problems in MINUTES and really cares. Dotster just doesn't much give a s**t. |
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| Linda, 09th 2010 January, 2010 |
| I wish I had read these reviews before purchasing hosting at Dotster. They leave you on terminal hold and DO NOT answer emails to customer support. |
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| Jeffrey, 30th 2009 July, 2009 |
| yes.... Dotster is HORRIBLE. They go down w/o notice and for no reason. You get no explanation at all. You get BS answers to your questions. My site is down again this evening, but it's because drupal can not talk to the database. When I go into dotster admin everything shows as okay... then is works for 30 minutes after changing permissions on a PHP file.... now it's down again... they are a total PIA... and this evening has sealed the deal. i'm going to find another place for hosting and reg. Just horrid service. I mean the last time I was having all these weird ass issues the jerk I was talking to via tech support email suggested I get a more expensive package. I said, "Yeah right, you want me to spend even more money with you when you can't even get this simple package working right. They really do SUCK. Avoid them unless you enjoy this kind of useless, time wasting BS. |
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| S Roberts, 30th 2009 June, 2009 |
I had a frustrating experience with Dotster. I bought an Ultra hosting plan with 200GB storage, 2TB transfer, and unlimited domains and email.
I had hoped for the amount of money I was spending that it would at least be reliable. Unfortunately, I suffered regular outages and aggravated customers.
I called customer support and endured long delays. Even after I finally got a rep, he told me it was a problem with Dotster's vendor and there was nothing he could do.
I would not recommend Dotster hosting
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| Pete, 24th 2009 May, 2009 |
i have quite a few websites hosted with dotster. a short while ago, all the sites were down. they claim to have 24 hour support - maybe they have a different idea to what that means. to me it means having a qualified tech support person ready to answer your calls for 24 hours. their 24 hours is maybe 12 hours, and thats just for the nice lady that takes your message.
so it took them (after many emails, tickets, phone calls...) around 12 hours to get my sites back up again. by the way - site went down not bacsue of me, i hav'e touched these sites for days. it was somethin gdone over on their side - think anyone gave me an explanation? compensation? anything? nada. with dotster shit happens! when it does - its nobodys fault. it just happens, and you as a client should be very thankful for every hour your sites are online.
so all this bullshit goes on for an entire day - finally they get my sites back up again. All is well for about the next 10 hours, becasue when i get up in the next morning - the same shit goes on AGAIN! all sites are down - no one answers any email tickets, or the phone - once they do (took hours for anyone to get online!) same routine. they take your message and hours later the sites magically appear again. No explanation, no apologies. no one gives a shit.
i would strongly recommend against using dotster. Take it if only if you're into self torture or something... |
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| ken, 07th 2009 May, 2009 |
| quit using dotster hosting right after they took my site down for a silly reason - no email notification, no nothing, just took it down and after dozens of repeated emails and phone calls agreed to let me know why they did it! truely one of the worst support in the history of the world wide web |
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| Sandra, 05th 2009 May, 2009 |
| very disappointing! just go over what the last few users wrote here and you'll get the truth about their support. am about to close the account. |
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| Ben, 19th 2009 April, 2009 |
Poor customer support. It's one of those companies that everything is sunny and nice, till the point where something goes wrong - then you discover their true face, which is an ugly one. Their support is something to be ashamed of - they would rather torture you for 48 hours before they'd have a real technician take a look,not that a real tech guy is even needed in 99% of the cases - just someone that knows a wee bit about the web, like my 7 year old son does...
I would not recommend them to anyone. |
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| Jay, 13th 2009 April, 2009 |
I recently had the same thing as Devin here. I got dozens of domains registered and hosted with dotster (soon to be moved from them...).
My clients main website missed a payment due to card getting expired. I used to getting multiple notifications from the likes of Godaddy that send out notifications and warnining many months before anything is about to expire. Even though that client had an activity with dotster for 4,5 years, spending well over $1,000 USD yearly on their services - for a lousey 20 bucks, they put the site down - no warninig, no phone no email. That's not even the worst part. The worst part is their terrible "customer support" which Dante Alighieri could have easily as one of the stages of hell. The company (dotster) policy is have your call or email blocked at that poor nice representative that knows nothing about anything - and her only job is to forward these cries for help, just so they would get ignored. To make a long sad and frustrating story short - it's been over 24 hours, after everything was fixed and tended to on our part - yet site is still down, support is yet to reply to multiple calls and emails, and i'm at the stage that's after the anger and frustration. That's the stage where you call all your clients and tell them that it would be advisable to terminate all business with dotster and take it elsewhere. Personally, i'd rather take my money and throw it out the window than have to give it to the likes of dotster. |
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| Devin, 02nd 2009 March, 2009 |
| Crap. I have several domains hosted with them and one (the most heavily used) which is set to auto-renew did not renew. I did not get a call or email stating that there was an issue. I had no idea until a customer complained to me about not being able to get to their hosted app. I was unable to get Dotster tech support on the phone even after 50 minutes on hold (at 1PM Mountain time) before giving up and sending them a scathing email. I am currently looking for a different registrar that is not owned or operated or affiliated with Dotster. |
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| Dotster shutting down, 24th 2009 January, 2009 |
| Extremely slow VPS. Can't get any help. They have been laying off a number of people--I'm switching over to GoDaddy as I'm afraid Dotster is shutting down |
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| Thomas, 12th 2009 January, 2009 |
| DO NOT use this company. Without a doubt, they are the most difficult company I've every had the misfortune of dealing with. Their technical support reps are some of the most arrogant individuals I've ever encountered. |
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| Dave, 30th 2009 December, 2008 |
| I have had the top-level VPS Plan for about 3 years. Since we have Linux gurus on staff, we have had little or no need for the technical support, so it was not until our VPS went offline unexpectedly that we made our first call to them. Terrible. Accordiing to their "policy", I was told that they would look at the problem within 24 - 48 hours. In the meantime, all of our customers have no online stores, and all of their employees have no email for the next two days. My customers find that unacceptable, with which I agree. Unfortunately, I cannot provide better service to my customers than that which I get from my provider. My only alternative is to find another provider. |
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| Ron, 26th 2008 December, 2008 |
Companies Control Bulk of U.S. Registrar Accreditations. If one were to look at the Internic directory it would appear that there are 529 ICANN accredited registrars in the United States. Having this many different companies would give the appearance that there is diversity and competition in the domain marketplace. However, you would be wrong. Four companies control 318 accreditations: eNom (116), Directi/PDR (47), Dotster (51), and Snapnames (104). Another 122 accreditations are owned by only 23 companies. What is left are 136 registrars that appear independent. So, that would make 163 the realistic count not 529. Considering this data the U.S. Registrar industry looks less like a an open and competitive market and more like a cartel.
Accreditations Controlled by Dotster
000domains, LLC
123domainrenewals, LLC
1800-website, LLC
24x7domains, LLC
995discountdomains, LLC
Address Creation, LLC
Addressontheweb, LLC
Allaccessdomains, LLC
Alldomains, LLC
Allindomains, LLC
Austriadomains, LLC
Austriandomains, LLC
Bearsdomain, LLC
Bidfordomainnames, LLC
Capitaldomains, LLC
CAT, Inc. dba Namezero.com
Chinesedomains, LLC
Chocolatecovereddomains,LLC
Claimeddomains, LLC
Cocosislandsdomains, LLC
Columbiadomains, LLC
Decentdomains, LLC
Department-of-domains, LLC
Deschutesdomains.com LLC
Diggitydot, LLC
Discountdomainservices, LLC
Domain Pro, LLC
Domain-A-Go-Go, LLC
Domainbulkregistration, LLC
Domainbusinessnames, LLC
Domaincamping, LLC
Domainducks, Inc. dba Personalnames.com
Domainhostingweb, LLC
Domaininternetname, LLC
Domaininthehole.com LLC
Domainnamebidder, LLC
Domainnamelookup, LLC
Dotregistrar, LLC
Dotster, Inc.
DSTR Acquisition PA I, LLC dba DomainBank.com
Enameco, LLC
Hostlane, Inc
MyDomain, Inc.
Niuedomains, LLC
PrivacyPost, Inc
Register Names, LLC
Samoandomains, LLC
Signature Domains, LLC
Tuvaludomains, LLC
Unitedkingdomdomains, LLC
Universal Registration Services, Inc. dba NewDentity.com
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| Ryan Gahl, 23rd 2008 October, 2008 |
Doster support is easily the WORST in the world. They have a support contact form on their site, that has an option for VPS customers, and when you use it to let them know that their control panel is down for your VPS instance (or anything for that matter)... you get an autoresponder that says "We don't offer VPS support via email".
Absolutely worst... They pretty much hate having customers.
I can just imagine what the internal dialog is (between the like two or three people that are apparently only in the company)... "OHHHHH GREEEAAATTT.... another fricking customer... that sucks." |
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| Rob, 14th 2008 May, 2008 |
| Customer Service poor ... LiveSupport cut me off after waiting in queue for25 minutes - took 3 days to get response to email request - upgraded accoutn to get maillist capability - then later told that they only give you 3 maillists and they do not provide moderated mail lists - i'm now looking for another company |
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| Peter, 17th 2008 February, 2008 |
I have been able to setup email and all other services and was initially very satisfied. I have setup websites before with other hosts and usuallly do not require a lot of support. However an issue with Sitebuilder is preventing me from publishing my website and Sitebuilder was one of the reasons I selected dotster as hosting company.
Even though I'm getting decent support with the 24/7 chat option, there is no follow-up besides a bunch of autoresponder emails.
If you depend on getting real support from real people who care about your issues and your business, I cannot recommend using this service. For now I will keep waiting patiently (while requesting support by chat and email) and hope eventually the issue is looked into. |
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| su ni, 10th 2007 November, 2007 |
| I've got 2 clients struggling now with being unable to send out emails. We were told that one of dotsters email servers (8) is blacklisted. They say there's nothing they can do about it and will not move us to another server. Up to this point, I had found dotster customer service knowledgeable and helpful. Now we're all just stuck and are looking for alternatives |
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| Ron Evans, 13th 2007 September, 2007 |
| If your a professional developer, you will love this service. Excellent bandwidth only just topped by 1 and 1, but an average of about 5 times faster than 1 and 1, If your designing internet applications this is the host you want, it has the resources to host any project, and the speed to let you make them more robust. However I wouldn't recommend it to the less technically savvy or starters, 1and1 is the right choice for you if you fall into that category. |
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| Ivor, 10th 2007 September, 2007 |
You need to know about apache, dns, mx, the lot. They do give you the car but you are expected to know how to drive it. The key is technical knowledge. I've set up two without a problem.
If you don't know what named.conf does and how to edit it get a more basic package. |
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| Rob, 12th 2007 July, 2007 |
| Very poor, could not get a responce out of their support. Closed the account |
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| Adam, 09th 2007 July, 2007 |
| I'm having the same issue. Even the initial e-mail with the links to Virtuozzo and Plesk were wrong. The Plesk admin account is "admin", not "administrator", and the initial password was "setup", not the random gobbledygook that was sent in the mail. I'm highly irritated at them right now. The VPS for Windows plan has literally _no_ documentation associated with it. The SQL Server instance that was installed on my VPS is great, but no one seems to be able to tell me the user name and password to connect to it... highly _unrecommended_. |
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| Mike, 23rd 2006 September, 2006 |
| Their service is aweful. I bought the VPS plan and had it for 6 hours. I spent a half hour trying to get into tech support, while I paid for the phone call (Not Toll Free). All I needed was the settings to publish my site. There is no documentation on how to do the very inportant step. There is very little information on FTP settings. When I finally got into tech support. I was told we only provide the email links to get you initially on line with the VPS, the rest is up to you. I basically bought a car from them and was then told to go a find the keys to it somewhere. |
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