Mar 02 2008
Doteasy Hosting Review
The following is a sponsored review for a web hosting company:
I visited the Doteasy - web hosting website to check out what they had to offer in the form of web hosting. They offer four different web hosting packages to suit the needs of their clients. Their prices range from free to $20 a month depending on what kind of hosting you are looking for.
The first package that I looked at was the free package. It offers a basic web hosting set up with no banners or ads. The plan offers 100 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth and many extras that will make it easy to build a website. They do not offer the easy to install scripts such as a blog script that comes with many hosting packages.
The next package was called Ultra Hosting, this package comes in two versions, the regular or the windows version. The prices are $7.95 per month (must be paid by the year) and $15 per year (must be paid quarterly). These packages offer 1000 MB of space and 20 GB of bandwidth.
The third package was the Unlimited hosting and it also comes in regular or the windows versions. The prices are $9.95 a month (must be paid by the year) and $20 a month (must be paid quarterly). These plans include 20 GB of storage space and the bandwidth is unmetered.
According to the pricing page of Doteasy - web hosting, all packages come with free set up. However, once I did some reading, I found that they do have a transfer fee of $35 for all packages including the free hosting. This fee can be waived if you sign up for a domain to be registered by Doteasy or you refer two people who sign up for hosting with them. The problem with signing up for a domain through them is that they charge from $18-$25 per year for a a domain name registration depending on how many years you pay for.
The $35 transfer fee is to transfer your hosting to them, rather new or not. It does not include transferring your domain name to them if that is what you plan to do. You can of course waive the transfer fee with the methods I stated above.
Comparing Doteasy - web hosting to many other hosting plans, there are some positives and some negatives. The pricing plans seem to fall in line with many other major hosting companies. They are a little on the high side but they have been in business since 2000 and seem to have a solid reputation and offer a 99.9% up-time. This means a lot when it comes to finding a reliable hosting company. They do offer many features such as web building software and scripts that allow for easy installations for many popular applications. (note: the scripts are not on the free hosting).
Doteasy also has a physical address and phone number so that you can reach a real person and you know they will be around a while.
On the negative side, I was not impressed by the $35 transfer fee. I still am not sure what that is for. If you can get two people to sign up, this will not be an issue. I do not see anywhere that this covers the transfer of your website files from an old hosting account. Everything I checked seems to indicate that this has to be done by you.
I also think that their domain name registration pricing is way off the chart when compared to other name registration companies. The $25 per year price is quite high, however, it does offer free privacy and domain locking which some others charge extra for.
Bottom line is, if you are looking for a company that have been around for a while and seem to be reliable, Doteasy could be a good choice for you or your business. If you are looking for cheap hosting, the $35 fee does put a damper on getting cheap hosting. If you are looking for a company website, I would highly recommend paying for this company because there are no signs that they are going away anytime soon. If you re looking for a blog or personal website that reliability is not as important, they may be a bit high for your needs. Either way, they are worth checking out and comparing with other hosting plans you are looking at. Just do your homework to see of they are the best choice for your needs.
Wow. Thanks for the research. I really like your blog. What do you think of the one you are using now?