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Dotster Hosting Review – Reasons To Avoid This Host

Updated: May 15, 2020 by tbwhs

Name: Dotster
Plans: Shared and VPS.
Website: www.dotster.com
Summary: Dotster isn’t a company I recommend you do business with. They have a lot of problems; there are much better options out there. Find out what other webmasters are saying about them in this full Dotster Hosting review.

Dotster.com
{{ reviewsOverall }} / 5 Users Score (28 votes)
Overall1.4
Reliability1.4
Server Speed1.5
Customer Support1.2
Features1.4
Cost/Value1.4
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Dotster LogoDotster has a lot of services that appeal to lots of webmasters.  Let’s face it their prices are quite competitive.  They offer both Linux and Windows plans for both shared, vps, and a number of different email plans.  But, a lot of webmasters have stumbled into the trap of hosting with them.

Whenever I review a web hosting company I like to look at their features, reliability, performance, customer support, and finally their price tag.  Once I carefully analyze each of those factors I will give them a 1-5 star rating.  You can see this at the top of each review.  In this Dotster review I am going to show you why there are better services to do business with.

Dotster Features

Hosting with Dotster provides unlimited website disk space and unlimited bandwidth. Customers also receive a drag and drop website builder, DNS management, standard forwarding, web analytics tools, PHP5 service, and Perl/Python. Services are available in three different packages.

Shared Plans

  • The Basic Hosting package is $3.75 per month. Customers can sign up by the month, quarter, or year. Basic hosting provides for 1 hosted domain, unlimited subdomains, 100 email accounts, 5 FTP logins, and 10 MySQL data bases.
  • The Deluxe Hosting plan is normally $7.99 per month, but is currently available at $6.75 per month. Customers receive unlimited domains, unlimited subdomains, 250 email accounts, 25 FTP logins, and 25 MySQL databases.
  • The Ultra Hosting package is $13.75 per month. Customers can sign up for monthly, quarterly, or annual service. The package provides unlimited domains, subdomains, email accounts, FTP logins, and MySQL databases. This package also provides for a $24 per month savings on the Premium Support available with Dotster.

In terms of prices and features they are far lower than GoDaddy, BlueHost, and DreamHost.

Windows Hosting

Dotster allows Windows hosting on a month-to-month basis, on a quarterly basis, and with annual plans. For new customers, the domain name is free. All three plans provide unlimited website disk space and bandwidth, along with a drag and drop builder, DNS management, standard forwarding, web analytics tools, PHP5, andActivePerl.  I do like how they do offer SSD hosting like Host4Asp.net, though.

  • The Basic Hosting package is $4.75 per month, quarterly, or year, and allows for 1 domain. Customers also get 100 email accounts, 5 FTP logins, and 10 MySQL databases.
  • The Deluxe Hosting package is $7.75 per each pay period. It allows for unlimited domains, 250 email accounts, unlimited FTP logins, and 25 MySQL databases.
  • The Ultra Hosting package is $14.75 per month, whether you sign up for monthly service, quartly, or annual. It also provides for unlimited domains, unlimited email accounts, unlimited FTP logins, and 50 MySQL databases.

VPS Plans

VPS hosting is intended for businesses and resellers. All three packages supply Linux: CentOS, PHP, Perl, and Python, and web analytics. cPanel is available for all three packages, and mailboxes are unlimited.

  • The Standard hosting plan is $29.70. It provides 512 MB of dedicared RAM, 20 GB of disk space, 1000 GB of Bandwidth, as well as unlimited mailboxes, MySQL Databases, and domains.
  • The Pro hosting plan is $41.60 per month, and provides 1024 MB of RAM, 40 GB of disk space, and 1500 GB of bandwidth. MySQL databases and domains are unlimited
  • The Premium plan is $67.95 per month, with 2048 MB of dedicated RAM, 60 GB disk space, and 2000 GB of bandwidth. MySQL and domains are unlimited.

However, the features (RAM) are much lower than you get with MyHosting and Hostgator.

Email Packages

Dotster provides for personal and/or business email, with your domain.

  • The Basic email package is 99 cents per month, and provides OX webmail, protection from spam and viruses, 30 email aliases, and 10 email addresses.
  • The Deluxe email package is $1.99 per month, and allows for 25 email addresses, OX webmail, protection from spam and viruses, and 75 email aliases.
  • The Business Email package is $6.99 per month, and provides document management, shared calendar and contacts, push email for your phone, and protection from spam and viruses.

Security

In today’s internet world that we live in security can be an issue whenever you are hosting your companies site or clients site on a remote server. Thus, a lot of companies have added security services to help safeguard your personal information. One service that Dotster does offer is SiteLock. This helps keep hackers from hacking into your server. It will cost you an extra monthly or yearly expense though. I actually wrote an article on SiteLock; you can see if I believe SiteLock is worth it or not though here.

Dotster Uptime & Performance

Uptime

Dotster Uptime

Obviously, one huge issue with webmasters seems to be downtime.  If you’re website is going offline daily, weekly, and monthly that is a huge problem.  According to webhostingstuff.com Dotster’s website has been up 99.99% of the time for 3,310 days.  Yes, if you do the math that is more than 9 years.  From the research I have done it doesn’t look like customers are complaining about their uptime.  In fact, it seems to be quite good.  However, lets not get ahead of ourselves and sign up for them just yet.  There is more to this piece of the puzzle.

Performance

Dotster in terms of performance is spotty at best.  Everything is either up and running smoothly or it’s a complete mess.  And all signs usually point to problem after problem with their companies performance.  Simply put, if you host with Dotster be prepared for problems with your cPanel, site speed, response times, email issues, etc.  Really, it would be easier to list what is good about them rather than all the issues webmasters have reported over the years.  Of all the hosting companies I have reviewed the performance with them seems to be quite horrible.

Response Times

Ok, so now comes the time when I will check them with isitdownrightnow.com.  This will give me a readout of their response times on their servers.  Once, I get the response time on their servers I will then be able to see the actual numbers.  Just in case your wondering how I gauge response times I will clarify it down below.

dotster response times

Response times are measured in ms (milliseconds).  Basically, any site that responds in under 20 ms I consider to be fast.  If their responds in 21-50 ms I consider it average.  Anything over 51 ms I consider to be slow.  So I conducted my test with Dotster and found out they have response time of 151.79.  As you might have guessed this falls in the slow category.  There are number of other web hosting companies like InMotion, WebHostinghub.com, SiteGround, and GreenGeeks that respond way under those numbers.

From a check around the net people are ripping this company to shreds.

This are just a few of the negative reviews they have gotten over the years!  Pretty much the first page of Google when you Google “Dotster review” is a site warning you not to do business with them.

Dotster Customer Service

Dotster customer service is lacking.  Maybe that is an understatement.  Many webmasters have reported that their customer support is useless. The first problem I have with their customer service is there is no live chat.  Sometimes it’s just easier to hop on live chat and see what the issue is when problems arise with your server.  You can’t do that with Dotster!  Next, if you want to contact them they do have a number, but this is only for sales.  So basically, if you’re interested in purchasing their plans they have no problem talking to you.   But, if you’re an existing customer and you have problems, and you will; you’re going to have to email them or submit a ticket to get a response.  This wouldn’t be a huge deal with me if they responded to their tickets in a timely manner.  It’s very common for them to take 2-6 days to respond (during the week), and you can expect even more of a delay if something happens over the weekend.

Dotster Summary

Dotster is not your answer for web hosting.  They are another company owned by EIG that I don’t recommend.  In fact, if you learn anything from my review it’s this; just say no to Dotster.  They have a mile long list of problems.  Their customer support is lacking.  You will be saving yourself a lot of time by just clicking the X button when you land on their site. For one, they’re not reliable and are really offering cheap plans with pretty much no support, period.  You’re essentially on your own if you decide to use them.  True, their prices are competitive, but the value in the service just isn’t there.  I would like to hear from any past or current Dotster customers.  If you could take 5 minutes out of your day and leave your experience with them it would be much appreciated.

I really feel Dotster needs to add telephone support.  When we have issues with our websites we want someone to talk to.  They don’t have live chat or a phone number to call other than sales.  They seem to get a lot of negative reviews around the net.  I really feel they have a lot of key points addressed in this review, they need to improve upon.  I would be more than happy to reevaluate them if they would address these issues mentioned in this review.

I recommend InMotion and GreenGeeks because they have great support and can be trusted.  I personally use both of those hosting providers myself.  You’ll experience excellent customer support, reliability, and performance with both of these companies. As always, thanks for reading my Dotster review.

I started this part specifically for Dotster in March of 2015. Rather than all the other hosting review sites that just state stuff about web hosting companies; I wanted to show you why I stated whatever I have said about Dotster. So this section shows my research I have done on Dotster in my review. I commonly browse the internet for content on them. Whenever, I find something interesting I read it, summarize it, and post it up on tbwhs.com.

I categorize my content into three different categories. These categories are positive, negative, or neutral. I don’t add anything I don’t believe comes from a creditable resource. I really feel it helps to add a ton of value to tbwhs.com to have this special section. There is no need to Google “Dotster reviews” or anything because I have done the research for you. I will be updating this section for Doster whenever I see fit.

“Positive”
“Negative”

WebHostingGeeks.com

WebHostingGeeks.com is a web hosting review site much like tbwhs.com. They offer blog posts that instruct the user concerning different features of server selections and hosting platforms. Most of the reviews posted are from users of different hosts, who drop by to leave reviews. This is a web hosting review site, but again, most of the reviews are from users. These reviews of Dotster are quite revealing.

Positives
According to WebHostingGeeks.com, there are apparently no positive reviews of Dotster. The highest rating Dotster received from any of the reviewers was 3 stars for the price, meaning that it is moderately affordable in comparison to other web hosting companies. In fact, the majority of reviewers gave Dotster a single star, overall. This shows that they are really unhappy with the quality of service at Dotster.

Reliability
Several reviewers commented that they had lost business because of down time experienced on Dotster. One reviewer, at the time of the review, had been without his website for 2 weeks. This type of service is devastating to a business. Even customers who have used Dotster for years have expressed frustration and downright angerd with the failures of the host.

Software

Dotster’s software does not always work with the host sites they purchase. Because of this many of their new customers lose email functions with their customer base. The business owners find that emails from customers and vendors are not getting through, and the owners are unable to update their customer data bases.

Tech Support

Tech support from Dotster, according to the reviews on this site, is practically non-existent. Customers report waiting weeks for problems to be resolved, and are still waiting. In all, we advise staying away from Dotster. There are huge red flags with them for customer support. This has been addressed time and time again with the reviews left about Dotster.

All and all, they get horrible feedback. While there are only 6 reviews left on them all of them are negative. Based on the research I have done other websites have a steady stream of complaints about Dotster, as well. For this reason this is another piece to my research that is filed in the negative section.


Whoishostingthis.com

This is another web hosting review site that was founded in 2007. They have collected thousands and thousands of real feedback on various web hosting companies. They write their own “expert” opinion of Doster and then the customers vote on the company. The voting system is from 1 to 5. Here are some pros and cons that were left in their reviews:

Pros

  • Good features for the money.
  • Some loyal clients.

Cons

  • Domain names auto renewed and wouldn’t refund the client. They did put the domain to manual renew.
  • Overbilled a client 3 times in four years.
  • FTP doesn’t always work.
  • Customer support doesn’t listen to clients.
  • Slower than average support (outsourced).
  • Nameservers were change mysteriously.
  • Hard to use UI.

Overall, Dotster just doesn’t get very good feedback at Whoishostingthis.com. In fact, they get 2 out of 5 stars. Most everyone can agree that their customer support needs to be improved drastically.


 

WebHostingHero.com

WebhostingHero.com is another hosting review site. The owner of this site has over 15+ years of experience working in the IT field. He has collected a lot of feedback from webmasters that have used their service. For the most part people are not very satisfied with their experience with Dotster. Here are the pros and cons that were addressed in the reviews left by webmasters:

Pros

  • Cheap.
  • Friendly customer support.
  • Have done business with them for years.

Cons

  • Don’t listen to customers.
  • Always a headache whenever they deal with them.
  • Hard to use for domain resellers.
  • Email issues constantly.
  • Clueless customer support.
  • Billing issues.
  • Site crashes.
  • Service has really went downhill over the years.

All and all, Dotster doesn’t get very good feedback from webmasters. Nearly every feedback left on WebHostingHero is tearing them down. Customers really hate there lack of support they have gotten from Doster. They get 2 out of 5 stars.


NamePros.com

NamePros is a web host review similar to tbwhs.com. It offers customer reviews of various webhosting sites. In addition to offering reviews of hosting sites, they offer opportunities for customers to buy or sell domain names. They also offer appraisals of existing websites, and have a blog section with information about building and maintaining a good website. This is a sponsored website, but they include reviews written by a variety of people not affiliated with their sponsors. Their reviews of Dotster have not been very positive. Let’s see what reviewers have to say about Dotster.

Change is Not Always Good

Dotster changed its control panel about 3 years ago, and no one likes the new one. People who had used Dotster for years post on NamePros that they plan to drop Dotster. It is slow, and older stations cannot use the flash incorporated by the control panel. The biggest problem is that Dotster switched from a proven DNS server to its own servers, and were not able to maintain their previously high standard of service.

In transferring the accounts, many accounts were scrambled and lost. As customers went back in and manually fixed their accounts, the default settings overwrote all of the changes. This happened several times.  This means you need a backup of everything.  If you don’t have a backup then you will have to create everything from scratch.

Customer Service

Reviews also said that customer service at Dotster tanked. Their formerly quality customer service changed to no service, with service tickets sitting unnoticed for days and weeks at a time. Downtime is also a recurring problem, costing businesses in sales and customer relations.

All and all, this is not very positive for Dotster.  Many other webmasters have recommended that you go to another hosting company.  Do to their technical negligence they have lost a fair amount of customers.  For the above problems that were addressed in this article this is yet another piece of my research that is filed in my negative section.

“Neutral”

TopTenReviews.com

TopTenReviews.com has reviews on lots of different web hosting companies.  Some of them I agree with and some of them I don’t.  I do agree with their review of Dotster.  Dotster was a company that they reviewed.  They didn’t get a very favorable review.  In fact, they received 5.18 out of 10.  Here are some highlights that pointed out in their review:
Pros
  • Supports both Linux & Windows.
Cons
  • Offers no unique features.
  • Entry plans don’t allow sites to grow with any kind of traffic.
  • Sites crash when they have increased traffic.
  • Limit your MySQL databases.
  • No advertising credits.
  • Lacking customer support.
Overall, the folks at TopTenReviews.com feel the cons really outweigh the pros with Dotster.  There is nothing that really sets them apart from other web hosting companies.  For this reason; I am putting them in my neutral section, because their reviews just shows that they are just “OK”.

This special section for Dotster is for interviews I have conducted with other webmasters about their experience working with them.  Whenever I get a comment from a customer of Dotster’s I will email them.  Some of the webmasters agree to do an email interview.  Once, we do the interview I post it on tbwhs.com.  If you have experience working with Dotster, good or bad, please don’t hesitate to contact me or send me a tweet through Twitter @tbwhs.

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All content on tbwhs.com are opinions and not facts. I have thoroughly reviewed each company and then provide my personal opinions on them. It’s up to you as the consumer to do your due diligence and do more research if you feel something might be inaccurate.

Filed Under: Not Recommended

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