Web Hosting Lab

Page 2 - Dot5Hosting benchmark results

Dot5Hosting is located in California and is currently hosting more than 25 000 clients. I liked what I saw on their “About us” page, namely: "We operate on the theory that, if we don't look after our customers, someone else will". I sincerely hope so :)

Recently, Dot5Hosting started offering very big plans at small prices. As of the day I got my account, they are offering 300 GB disk space and 3000 GB transfer. Their plan is very rich because beside the usual stuff they are also offering: web templates, logo and slogan editor, streaming video and audio, search engine submissions, a large number of shopping cards, etc.  All in all, a very rich choice.

After I purchased an account, the welcome email arrived 5 hours later, which is okay. The welcome email itself isn’t very detailed but the most important things are included. I opened the control panel and was unpleasantly surprised – they too are using vDeck control panel. The same as iPowerWeb’s. I cannot understand these people – what is it that they like so much about this vDeck?! For a beginning – it seems that all vDeck control panels do not allow temporary tables in the MySQL. I came across the same problem with the MySQL and the temporary table here as was the case with iPowerWeb. They should fix it. The HELP section here is the same as iPowerWeb’s. When you click on the FAQ section you see the following text: "Coming real soon now - just as soon as we work out which questions asked are asked frequently :)". Since we discuss the similar problems iPowerWeb and Dot5Hosting share – I decided to check the most important thing for me as far as the mail is concerned – the IMAP support. Since iPowerWeb did not support IMAP – I assumed that Dot5Hosting didn’t either. Unfortunately, I was right – Dot5Hosting does not support IMAP! This vDeck CP sucks!

I then decided to examine their site and see if I would find something interesting. What attracted my attention first was "Best Support in the Industry". I felt I had already seen this before?! I will check now... yup - HostMonster – their site too says "Best Support in the Industry". Quite interestingly, both slogans match 100% – the same words, the same capital letters. I tend to be a little pessimistic about such texts, but I will definitely check how good their support team is. Also, according to the image on their index page, I will receive an answer to my request within 30 minutes – it’s guaranteed. The promise was almost kept – the answer arrived a little after the 30-th minute. It also turned out that the tickets opened inside the vDeck control panel do not get a response. I opened one such ticket from inside the CP but I didn’t live long enough to see the answer. Another weakness of vDeck is that it has some in-built systems, which are not quite what the hosting companies expect as far as client support is concerned. Anyway – to test again how they would cope with the task I described what I had written in the ticket, which I had opened through the vDeck. But 18 days later I still haven’t received an answer. My conclusion is the following – unsteady client support. As far as the guaranteed 30-minute response time promise is concerned – they couldn’t possibly fulfill it.

Pros:
+ they have won a budget hosting award
+ they offer a 90-day money-back guarantee
+ the hosting plan has a lot of features

Cons:
- scaringly huge plans
- Tricky terms and conditions – do not include anything specific about what could and what could not be used – only general stuff
- unsteady support – sometimes fast, sometimes completely missing
- the vDeck control panel with all its defects; lack of IMAP support; an internal ticketing system, which does not work

Page 2 - Dot5Hosting benchmark results