Dotster Review
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Dotster.com doesn’t hide the fact that it is a domain registrar at heart. However, like most domain registrars, it has realized that the domain business is an intensively competitive, low margin commodity business. Also like most domain registrars, Dotster has entered into the equally competitive, equally commoditized, but far more profitable web hosting business.
Dotster Plans
Dotster’s space and bandwidth allocations for its shared plans are moderately competitive, but the plans do require a closer look. Those used to normal cPanel oversellers will notice a difference in Dotster’s plans: the company limits the number of email addresses and mailbox sizes. For heavy email users, this can be a serious problem. They also limit FTP accounts, databases, domains, and the like. It’s important to consider what extra features your web site will require before choosing a host like Dotster.
In addition to its standard plans, Dotster offers VPS hosting running on both Linux and Windows platforms. Email hosting is also offered and some plans come with and even focus around a SiteBuilder that makes it easy to create a simple web site.
Dotster adopts the standard industry practice of encouraging customers to pay in advance. They allow pre-payment of up to five years in advance, representing a 30% savings over the yearly plan. Comparatively, though, the savings that Dotster offers for paying so far in advance are relatively insignificant. This also means that you don’t have to pay too much extra if you want to signup for a shorter period of time.
As the plans get more expensive, the payment schedule gets more flexible. The most expensive plan (which is $25.95 a month when paid monthly) allows you to pay monthly, quarterly, yearly, every two years, every three years, and every five years.
Dotster uses a custom control panel. From the control panel, you can manage essentially every aspect of your account (including domain names). The control panel is surprisingly intuitive and offers all of the expected features. Email, FTP accounts, databases, etc. can all be managed as expected from Dotster’s custom control panel.
Testing Dotster
Upon testing, FTP speeds seemed to be reasonable and comparative to those of other hosts. The control panel loaded quickly and without errors.
Support at Dotster does not seem to be a top priority or a competitive differentiator; it seems to be more of an after thought. The company has an extensive knowledge base and provides support via a helpdesk, live chat, and the telephone. However, live chat and telephone support are only offered on weekdays during normal business hours. I sent a simple request to the company’s support team at 2:15 PM on a Sunday and received a reply Monday night at 8:03 PM. When it takes more than 24 hours to receive an email response, that does cause concern.
Pros: Intuitive control panel
Cons: limited availability for live chat and telephone support, plans designed to severely limit features that are unlimited with most hosts
Bottomline: Dotster’s plans are obviously targeted at a type of customer who only wants to create a simple web site. Those requiring serious features and capabilities should look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Dotster Review by: Douglas Hanna
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June 30th, 2008
Any Dotster users out there? What say you?
August 9th, 2008
We’ve been using Dotster for more than two years and are very satisfied. We’re a small organization without huge traffic, and we’ve mostly been able to take care of our needs with the control panels and explanations provided. Only one-two phone calls needed over the time. Occasionally we are having problems with email being blocked by providers due to “spam reputations” which we’re trying to find out about; that’s the biggest challenge at this point.
September 24th, 2008
I think the advantage with going through Dotster is the variety of products and services they offer to small and medium sized businesses. Getting a bargain basement domain or hosting plan is nice, but getting a full suite of online marketing, SSL certs, domain tools, and other services to get your business website up and running is better in the long run when you’re searching for the right company to help you set up a larger website or blog.
December 5th, 2008
Dotster sucks
December 30th, 2008
I have been a subscriber to the top level VPS package for 3 years now. Normally, we never need support, but when it is necessary, it is generally non-existant.
Last night our VPS went offline, and we immediately reported it via the phone support. After 12 hours, I contacted them again and was told that it would probably be another 24 to 48 hours. No explanation, other than “thats our policy”. I have numerous customers, with many domains. These are all businesses who have no website (read online stores) and no email for their employees. Not acceptable for a business. I cannot give better service than my supplier, and in this case my supplier is not giving adequate service. I simply need to move to a new supplier.
January 12th, 2009
Dotster is evil.
I am switching all my registered clients away from Dotster. One client’s domain expired, and as such, they replaced the client’s site with a MENU OF COMPETITORS ADS. Not a temporary page for a day, right into competitor ads. That is abhorrent. Low beyond low. To me that is another form of cybersquatting.
My client renewed with them — hoops to jump through since it was registered through another hosting company — for five years. Hours later and their site is still serving up competitors ads.
Avoid Dotster at ALL costs.
April 12th, 2009
i’m with dotster – it’s a sunday – all my sites are down for no reason, no one to talk to…
i think the only hosting i hadn’t had any issues with is bluehost. I’d stay away from dotster – they are indifferent…and are’nt there to help (their support is a sad joke – you got half-witted buffoons trained at exhausting upset clients with idiotic suggestions).stay away from dotster hosting! I know i will from now on.
April 13th, 2009
funny to see many people have same problems with dotster. i see 2 last comments are form yesterday – this will make it the third in 2 days. i think something is wrong with them – my site is down and only there instead of my site – a dotster page saying “site is missing index file” – that is not true as i have it. they just have my site go down for no reason – i try and try anmd try to contact the support via emails and i also called them on the telephone, but they do’nt care about my site. they say bla bla bla, and still my site is down and no one tells me why, or what i should do. they are terrible terrible in every way. i told them that i will take my site to a different company – but they no care. terrible business – it must be going down, oterwise i can’t imagine how they can be so rude and careless. if are even a little smart, read this: STAY AWAY FROM DOTSTER HOSTING. wish someone would tell me that 2 months ago
June 30th, 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
October 17th, 2009
Dotster should get a new name … like DisaSter.
Service was terrible. No meaningful MySQL interface. Certainly no simple domain/hosting control panel and email programs are limited and push gmail as the primary solution.
TERRIBLE
January 7th, 2010
You’re a bad company………your a very, very bad company. What tech support? What email support? What phone support? Don’t do it go with Go Daddy or anyone else but this company.
February 12th, 2010
FEB 12, 2010
The WORST company i’ve delt with in years…
been a customer with multiple e-mail/domain
registrations for over five years…tech
service is non existant, always has been…
tolerated it ’cause I didn’t have time to mess
with it…a week ago Dotster access goes down
for two days…TWO DAYS. When it came back up
I had a different interface, years of data gone.
Contradictory explanations… don’t use Dotster.
February 14th, 2010
I’ve been using dotster’s services for about five years now with no problems or complaints and no need for support. This is until last week when one of my sites and it’s related emails went down. After several requests for support I still haven’t heard any response from them and my site is still down. OVER A WEEK! Their customer support seams to be completely nonexistent. I will be transferring my all of my domains away from them and posting negative reviews wherever i can. Their lack of customer support is offensive.
March 22nd, 2010
I register my domain thru Dotster for few years but never hosting w/ them
When I decide to hosting w/ dotster. I found that Support service very poor and slow. It takes 5-7 to reply you email.
After 3 week, I cancel hosting account they will not refund you. Also charge more for Domain register (that should free w/ hosting package.) I lost $240 for this stupid company.
April 20th, 2010
Steer away from Dotster!!!!
April 26th, 2010
they are worst company i have seen. they are same company of mydomain.com
they change their name but service is same bad.
many people have problems with them, so please never think for this company to get domain name or any other service.
they dont have any customer support, they never reply your support tickets, for more information visit
(www.webhostingstuff.com/review/Dotster.html)
(www.vistainter.com/reviews/D/dotster.com/)
July 13th, 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.
August 22nd, 2010
I’m worried looking at these reviews… my client purchased a year’s worth of Dotster hosting because his domain with them and he, in his own words, wanted everything to be in the same place. I wasn’t sure about dotster at all and as a web designer I was hoping that my install of Joomla would go smoothly. Afterall, dotster states that their hosting supports Joomla websites.
I used the built in installer to install Joomla – because I wasn’t able to install it otherwise – and it’s an older version that I can’t upgrade because I don’t have access to the installer’s directory.
I added a shopping cart component to the joomla install and I can’t even resolve the issue because there’s no access to the directory that joomla was installed in. Everything is set up so weird. I’ve never run into the problems I’m running into. I’m patiently waiting for tech support to respond to my issue. I’m just wanting to get this resolved for the client.
If anyone knows of any shopping cart system that would better work with Dotster hosting, please post it here!