At first glance, Dotster appears to be only a domain registrar. However, they also offer some formidable hosting plans, starting as low as a few dollars per month for one domain. Since they host websites for millions of customers, they’re worth consideration.
If you need a website quickly or you want to minimize your learning curve, Dotster offers an “instant website” that’s free for 30 days. This plan is ideal for people who just want to hang out a shingle on the web or get the word out about an event. Setup for instant websites is fully automated and comes with some nifty extras like social tool integration and embeddable maps and images.
Dotster is serious about sustainable business, believing that “good business decisions are also good for the environment.” They purchase renewable energy credits for 150% of the power the company requires and plant a tree for each new hosting customer.
About Dotster
Dotster was founded by George DeCarlo in Vancouver in 1999. It currently operates from a massive data center in Massachusetts. The company’s mission from the very beginning was to deliver high quality services and products as well as superior online tools so customers could create or expand a successful business in their particular marketplace. Today, Dotster has over three million customers and the number is growing rapidly. The company is listed as among the world’s biggest registrars of domain names.
Dotster has committed to becoming a Green Hosting provider. One initiative is to buy renewable energy credits that equal 150% of the consumption of server energy. It’s better than 100% which merely negates the carbon footprint. It actually offsets all power used and creates an extra 50%. Every plan you pay for helps in this worthwhile endeavor.
Dotster also supports the Trees for the Future Program by buying a tree for every new Dotster customer. While one tree per customer may seem small, it’s very significant when you consider the number of customers that Dotster actually has. This initiative helps to keep our planet alive. Customers can include badges on their sites to tell their customers that they’re powered by green renewable energy. It’s another positive selling point to help customers increase their own client base.
- 8100 NE Parkway Dr., Vancouver, WA, 98662, United States
- 800 401 5250
- Official website
- Founded by George DeCarlo in 1999.
Dotster features
» Free domain name for the first term.
» Lots of new TLDs. Very useful in today’s market because most of the (dot) com and other popular TLDs have already been used.
» Hosting is available for both Windows and Linux platforms.
» 24/7/365 support via phone, live chat, their vast knowledgebase and email tickets.
» Do-it-yourself website builders.
» Unlimited sites.
» Unlimited disc space.
» Hosting for WordPress sites.
» The servers are housed in the U.S.A.
» There are lots of installs available such as: Drupal, Joomla, MediaWiki and Magento.
Dotster’s commitment to its customers is a significant feature. This commitment has three main prongs.
One-on-one customer care: You have access to some of the best services and products that you would expect from a company that’s among the largest in its field. Despite that, you receive the type of customer care you want from a company that respects small business owners.
Innovative services and products available being pushy: You won’t face unwanted advertising or people trying to offer you extra upsell products or services you don’t want or need. Instead, the focus is on delivering secure solutions, innovative products as they become available (in addition to existing options) and believable deals.
Full range of solutions for your every need: As a company that has been in business for 15 years, you have full access to experts who will provide everything you need all in one place. This includes hosting, domain names, custom website designs and business emails. It’s a one-stop-shop to help you create your own long-term web presence, confident that Dotster is also in it for the long haul.
Your site(s) are secure with Dotster because of existing multiple backups, redundancies, fire-protection, earthquake protection, humidity and temperature monitoring, video monitoring 24/7/365 and much, much more.
The company has a new solution for marketing called Local Site Promotion. This has numerous features including:
» Targeting specific areas geographically.
» Budget-friendly options.
» Only pay for results, not impressions.
» Tracking campaigns, creating special offers and making search engines work in your favor.
Hosting types and plans
Dotster is unlike other hosting companies with its plans. There are three shared plans for Linux users. There are different three shared plans for Windows users.
You may prefer to use VPS so you have access to a dedicated server without the big price tag.
Dotster can custom design your website if you wish. There are other packages available for that.
Try Dotster. 30-day money-back guarantee.
Customer support and help
» Extensive knowledge base and user guides.
» Live chat.
» Ticketing support.
» Phone support.
» Video clip tutorials.
» If you’re an Ultra Plan subscriber, you get “premium support” that gives you access to a toll-free phone number and faster response times.
» The company uses Facebook and Twitter for many of its interactions with customers. However, if you require technical support, you must ring them or submit a ticket.
Money-back guarantee
Dotster offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re unhappy with the service. However, they will charge at least $35 as an early cancellation fee. The refund only applies if you use a credit card.
There’s no refund after 30 days of use.
Dotster offers 99.9% uptime and if you do have downtime, you’ll receive service credits as compensation.
Bonuses/Extras
When joining or adding new sites to your business, you get your domain name for free for the first term.
You get an extra 1 GB of free storage in the Cloud for videos, images and music.
The company provides $100 worth of Google Adwords advertising credits and another $100 for Yahoo and Bing advertising.
Pros and Cons
So, is Dotster any good?
Pros
» Dotster is rated a B from the Better Business Bureau.
» Unrestricted monthly bandwidth and disc storage space.
» You gain access to a range of applications and a 1-click piece of software for easy installations.
» Listed as advance tools, you have access to a web analytics tool, a drag and drop site builder and a filter to eliminate spam.
Cons
» Site seems difficult to navigate compared to other hosting providers.
» There’s no cPanel. There is a custom control panel that takes a lot of getting used to.
» The basic hosting plan only allows for one small blog and a single domain on a single account. It also only allows for 100 email addresses, 10 MYSQL databases and 5 FTP logins.
» There has been a lot of negative feedback about the loading speed of their pages.
» Others have complained about the efficiency and quality of support offered by the Dotster experts. Generic answers to specific problems was also listed as a major concern.
Summary
Dotster is certainly a successful hosting provider but it has quite a few idiosyncrasies when compared to other providers. As with all hosting sites, it’s critical to do your own due diligence before making any sort of commitment. Money should never be the only deciding factor.
Dotster plans & prices
Dotster offers shared hosting and VPS hosting. Here below is an overview of their plans and current price list. For latest and most up to date prices visit Dotster’s website.
Plan name | Diskspace | Bandwidth | Monthly price |
---|---|---|---|
Basic Shared Hosting | Unlimited | Unlimited | 3.75 |
Deluxe Shared Hosting | Unlimited | Unlimited | 6.75 |
Ultra Shared Hosting | Unlimited | Unlimited | 13.75 |
Standard VPS Hosting | 20 GB | 1000 GB | 29.70 |
Pro VPS Hosting | 60 GB | 1500 GB | 41.60 |
Premium VPS Hosting | 60 GB | 2000 GB | 67.95 |
Try Dotster. 30-day money-back guarantee
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People share their opinions about companies on Twitter each and every day. We monitor tweets about Dotster and apply a sentiment analysis algorithm that classifies these tweets as positive or negative. Every review is from a real person opinion. We use this information and output an approval rating score, which is based on real people, positive and negative, opinions about Dotster on Twitter
Dotster Review on Twitter
Dotster Rating
35% Score
Dotster vs Competitor Ratings
Michael Barnes (@PolicyRiot)
@Dotster -Sad that twitter is my last recourse, short legal action, to restore rights to a South TX school's digital property @monitornews
Michael Barnes (@PolicyRiot)
@Dotster -Sad that twitter is my last recourse, short legal action, to restore rights to a South TX school's digital property @monitornews
Michael Barnes (@PolicyRiot)
@Dotster -Sad that twitter is my last recourse, short legal action, to restore rights to a South TX school's digital property @monitornews
Michael Barnes (@PolicyRiot)
@Dotster -Sad that twitter is my last recourse, short legal action, to restore rights to a South TX school's digital property @monitornews
Michael Barnes (@PolicyRiot)
@Dotster -Sad that twitter is my last recourse, short legal action, to restore rights to a South TX school's digital property @monitornews
Joe Diamond (@JoeDiamondLive)
Haven't used @Dotster in years, yet they still charge me for my site renewal? How does that work? Hate that I'm still dealing with this!
Michael Barnes (@PolicyRiot)
@Dotster -Sad that twitter is my last recourse, short legal action, to restore rights to a South TX school's digital property @monitornews
Joe Diamond (@JoeDiamondLive)
Haven't used @Dotster in years, yet they still charge me for my site renewal? How does that work? Hate that I'm still dealing with this!
Michael Barnes (@PolicyRiot)
@Dotster -Sad that twitter is my last recourse, short legal action, to restore rights to a South TX school's digital property @monitornews
Joe Diamond (@JoeDiamondLive)
Haven't used @Dotster in years, yet they still charge me for my site renewal? How does that work? Hate that I'm still dealing with this!
Joe Diamond (@JoeDiamondLive)
Haven't used @Dotster in years, yet they still charge me for my site renewal? How does that work? Hate that I'm still dealing with this!
Joe Diamond (@JoeDiamondLive)
Haven't used @Dotster in years, yet they still charge me for my site renewal? How does that work? Hate that I'm still dealing with this!
Joe Diamond (@JoeDiamondLive)
Haven't used @Dotster in years, yet they still charge me for my site renewal? How does that work? Hate that I'm still dealing with this!
Joe Diamond (@JoeDiamondLive)
Haven't used @Dotster in years, yet they still charge me for my site renewal? How does that work? Hate that I'm still dealing with this!
Joe Diamond (@JoeDiamondLive)
Haven't used @Dotster in years, yet they still charge me for my site renewal? How does that work? Hate that I'm still dealing with this!
If you still don’t know if Dotster is right for you based on our analysis, check our our sister site WhoIsHostingThis.com. There you will find roughly a reviews from actual Dotster users just like you. No bias — just the straight dope from other website owners.