This has got to be the worst hosting I've ever experienced in my 9 years of dealing with web hosting companies. Not only can they not even transfer your database, your site will be ultra slow even if you hardly use any of your bandwith or space. Their customer service is not helpful...they will just keep saying "We are sorry for this inconvienence and any problems it my of cost you...is there anything else we can help you with?". That will be there answer to all the great and wonderful issues you will have with them.

Also their Vdeck options that are available to you free now might not be in a few months. For instance 6 months ago I had the ability to back up and restore my site via their Vdeck Control panel...which is an option I paid for...now they switched the Vdeck and now they want me to pay $12.95 a year for this options along with several other options I use to have for free and is a reason I went with this company and the package I did.

Please do not do any business with this company, nobody deserves this type of abuse.

We have proof of paying for two domains, they say only one. I sportatically get emails, my clients sporatically receive them. DOT5 has done NOTHING to clear this up. Anyone considering DOT5 should run. Their support is AWFUL, slow, and blames you for their issues. Might be ok to host a kids site, but NEVER a business. Please do not use them. They do nothing to remedy their problems and you cannot get anyone with any authority to help you.

I have never been one to leave a bad review about anything, but my experience with Dot5Hosting has been absolutely horrible, so I feel it is my responsibility to make sure that nobody uses this company.

I opened an account 2 weeks ago. My site still does not resolve. I have opened 10 tickets and they keep telling me it is fixed and I check and it is not. I have also called 3 times, and chatted online. I give up, never even got the site off the ground.

Also, using a temporary site name, I could get to my site and it loaded WAY SLOW and all the images would not load.

Horribly oversold. Dont use them period.

Took several emails just to get them to fully activate - it's like they didn't want my money! Eventually the CC charge went through after I was about to go elsewhere.

Several months later, they disable the site and email without notice to me. When I lodged a support ticket, they finally told me there was a problem with "warez" - which was quite a surprise since my site is only for family photos and family videos.

After repeated emails demanding to know what files they thought was warez, they must have realised their mistake and eventually unsuspend the account - no apology for their mistake or anything. My domain email accounts are still not working however - still waiting for resolution to that.

Suffice to say, billing and technical support are both very poor.

Spent lots of time working with them to bring up my site for the last few months, and here's how it is now:
- No way to add sub-domain.
- They advertised unlimited database, but I had to call them to add database cuz I have.. more than 5!
- No IMAP for email. And when I emailed customer support & asked "Is there any way to let the email users change their own password without having the admin do that in the admin cp?", their response: "login to admin cp and change it"!?!! and the support ticket status changed to "CLOSED"!
- Now that I got my databases, but every once in awhile, they just screw the servers up and all the pages with db are down for a few days, no notice, no way to find out when it's back up. Customer supports keep saying: will be in couple hours. And worse, one time all my databases just screwed up! lucky I got the backups!

They advertise that you can host up to 6 domains on one account. What they don't tell you is that only one of these domains will have email capabilities!

To read my whole story, check out the site I pounded out in about ten minutes at http://bewaredot5hosting.com/

This web host is the worst web host I have ever dealed with. Not only did my website never work, but when I tried four times over a period of three weeks to get the nameservers on the domain name changed I gave up and asked them to delete my account. Well, after three months they still haven't deleted my account. Buyer beware

I've been with Dot5 for a year now, and agree that lately things have been a little up and down, however not tragically so, and certainly nowhere near people giving it a rating such as 1/10 or something silly like that.

I'll give them a 7/10, and for $6.99 I'm happy enough to stay. Sure, if I want better uptime, or whatever, I can get it - but it'll cost me. So for $7 a month I've got a pretty good host, to be honest.

Come on, you all know there's much worse out there for $7/month. Much, much worse. True, there may be better @$7/month, but that's like finding a needle in a haystack.

What I find particularly decent about Dot5:

1. Support. It's good, and it's fast. 24 e-mail support, and soon 24 phone support. Try it. Just mail support@dot5hosting.com with some fictional query and see for yourself.

2. Bandwidth and storage. Pretty decent for $7.

3. Personal service. You can contact the CEO yourself if you feel like it.

4. Speed. It's not the fastest, that's for sure, but it's decent for the price.

5. Openness - forums.dot5hosting.com - they never had to put this up, but they do, and that's pretty cool. Come on, not every host does that.

The downsides of Dot5:

1. Occasional downtime - half an hour here, or there, usually at most. Yes, there might be an extreme occasion here or there, but it's pretty rare. I have three sites on three boxes, and sometimes I have had a problem with one of their servers, and I've asked to move to another one, with no problems at all. They've even let me keep the existing stuff on the original server until Google had found the new name server. BEAT THAT.

2. Things happen without being told, such as stats programs changing, or whatever. They could simply keep the customers informed a little better. But it's not a major problem - it's usually upgrades they don't tell you about.


Anyway, the reason I posted here was that we all received a message from Dot5 this week about upcoming developments, so I thought I'd post it, so you can at least all see the personal nature of going with Dot5.

Cheers.


Happy summer!

Firstly let me apologize again for not sending a out a news letter for a few months! As I am sure you have seen, we have been growing rapidly and breaking more records!

Last month Dot5Hosting saw it best greatest month since beginning operations a little over 2 years ago. We saw sales increase by over 50%, meeting our summer target mid way through July.

Increased Support Staff:

We have increased our support staff once again, including additional support on our increasingly popular live support via our site.

Phone Support:

In the next few weeks you will also see a TOLL FREE support number which will be manned 24x7 by our new phone support team, giving you instant results to your problems.

Dedicated Servers – “At Rock Bottom Prices!”

We are in the process of launching out new dedicated server range. We will be offering the popular Cobalt RaQ4i servers at an incredible $74.99 per month! Your own personal dedicated server at an affordable price! You will see this offer under our dedicated section on our site.

Cobalt RaQs are the most user-friendly server around. And as easy to control as your current control panel with us! Although with many more controlling features!

As an existing customer of Dot5Hosting, if you would like to order a new dedicated server we will give you free setup, a $49.95 saving!

Once again I would like to thank you all for your continued support of Dot5Hosting and would like to wish you a very happy summer.

Kind regards,


Chris Phillips
CEO Dot5Hosting

Dot5hosting.com Team
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