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Dotster Reviews

User Average Rating
  • : ★★★½☆
  • : ★½☆☆☆
  • : ★★★½☆
  • : ★★★☆☆
  • : ★★★☆☆

Dotster Review

Get cPanel Hosting for only $5.25 Now!
GoDaddy isn’t the only domain registrar around. Dotster offers the third largest domain registration service in the world and is establishing a solid reputation in the web hosting industry as well. These are tremendous accolades when you consider the fact that the company has only been around since the year 2000. While they are lacking in the feature department when compared to some of the big boys, Dotster makes our top 10 because of their excellent support and reliable hardware that has resulted in great performance and high remarks among their clients.

Disclosure: We are a professional review site that receives compensation from Dotster. We test each product thoroughly and give high marks to only the very best. We are independently owned and the opinions expressed here are our own.

Main Features Language Compatibility Email Features
Disk Storage
Bandwidth
Free Domain Name
Add-On Domains
Sub Domains
Parked Domains
50 GB
250 GB
Yes
1
No
No
PHP
PHP5
ASP
Perl
CGI-BIN
Python
Ruby/Ruby On Rails
SSI
Shell Access
Cold Fusion
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
No
POP3
SMTP
IMAP
Webmail
Email Forwards
Mailbox Aliases
Auto-Responders
Mailing List
Spam Protection
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Database e-Commerce Features Multimedia Features
MYSQL
Microsoft SQL
PostgreSQL
MS Access
ODBC/DSN
phpMyAdmin
Yes
No
No
No
No
Yes
SSL Secure Server
OS Commerce Shopping Cart
Cube Shopping Cart
Zen Cart Shopping Cart
Password Protected
OpenPGP Encryption
Shared SSL Certificate
Agora Shopping Cart
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
MS Silverlight
Flash Support
Streaming Video
Streaming Audio
Shockwave
MIDI File Support
Add own MIME Types
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
Scripting Features Highlight Features Overall Rating
Fantastico
Blogs/Wordpress
b2evolution
Moodle
Mambo/Joomla
SMF Forum
Wiki
PHPAdsNew
PHPAuction
PHP Form
No
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
No
No
No
  • Free Site Builder
Uptime
Service
Bonus
Editor Rating
User Rating

Reliability (5/5)

★★★★★

Dotster’s reliable service begins with the tight infrastructure of their facility in Phoenix, Arizona. This data center has been specifically designed to house their state-of-the-art hardware. Dotster makes sure their clients are always up and running with multi-redundant systems in the way of data backups and additional power sources. Dotster upholds their reliable service with an uptime guarantee of 99.9%

Price Value (2.5/5)

★★½☆☆

Web hosting with Dotster is certainly affordable but fails in comparison to other solutions. $5.25 per month gets you 5 GB of disk space and 250 in bandwidth; more than enough for the average personal user but insufficient for the high-traffic website. Their basic plan also comes included with 10 email accounts, a spam filter, access to a MySQL database and password-protected directories. Their most appealing feature is perhaps Microsoft FrontPage which enables easy web publishing with the click of a button. Decent offerings but we’re still waiting for Dotster to include more functionality into their standard package.

Control Panel (4/5)

★★★★☆

Administering your Dotster account is made easy with the cPanel software. This program is easy to use and very powerful with a rich feature set of its own. You will get more value out of cPanel when signing up for one of Dotster’s VPS plans that comes with more capability. Whether it’s creating email accounts or enabling your spam filter, this popular control panel allows you to perform the task from a well designed centralized location.

Customer Support (5/5)

★★★★★

Dotster offers the same quality support they’ve been providing for years. Feel free to contact their professional staff via phone or email with any concerns you may have. You can also refer to the informative FAQ section on their website which makes for a great self-help resource. Dotster recently improved their support with the addition of a live chat system dedicated to their web hosting clients and domain registrants.

Summary (3/5)

★★★☆☆

Dotster hasn’t changed much since our last review. They’re still a reliable company offering a quality service and superb customer support. However, they also still have a few improvements to make in order to climb up the ladder. By adding more resources and features, they could easily be one of the top 5 companies in the industry.

Purchase web hosting with Dotster today. For only $5.25 per month you get some of the best software available and the ability control your site with the powerful cPanel control panel.

Visit Dotster Official Site

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9th December 2007
Posted by Web Hosting Consultant in Web Hosting Reviews
Tags: dotster reviews

10 Responses to “Dotster Reviews”

  1. Pines says:

    Simply put, the only thing DotSter has going for it is its control panel. It is filled with features in an easy to use interface. Besides that, DotSter is the host of choice for webmasters that wish to get nothing done. The price is sky high compared to the level of services and its poor reliability. There is no reason why this host would be considered when other options such as Bluehost exists.

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  2. disagree says:

    Dotster’s hosting plan is expensive in relation to the features they are offering with their package. For that same price you can get unlimited space, bandwidth, and emails. I think they are good as a registrar though and that what I only use them for

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  3. Daddy says:

    I would have to agree that dotster is lacking in several areas and really needs to improve. Their poor service is not helped by the fact that their packages are expensive and the features lacking. In this age where host are providing very attractive but cheap packages, dotster wouldn’t be making many new customers if it doesn’t change

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  4. ace_menace says:

    I do agree that Dotster does have a very nice control panel. They are also very reliable. My only problem with them is the features they offer on their package. Other companies are offering unlimited email account and bandwidth but dotster is only offering 10 email addresses for its $5 package. I think that is too small and they should think about increasing it.

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  5. Karlene Margaret says:

    I bought hosting with Doster a few months ago now and have never had any problems. I have since discovered that other web hosting companies do offer more storage and features for the same price or less. But for what I want I’m never going to use it all anyway!

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  6. Lars Cruz says:

    I used to use this company for private online file storage, but I quickly ended up changing. They do offer good service, but they don’t offer nearly what all the other companies give you for your paycheck.

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  7. nane says:

    May be I am wrong but after having my personal site on dotster for half of a year, I find myself in the situation that I have not enough storage and can not get high traffic to my site.
    And of course I have friends telling me, you can get a lot of more for your five bucks at another company.
    So I will soon leave but I will miss their good customer support.

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  8. AK says:

    I have to disagree with some of the other postings. I have received NO real support from Dotster. Every question is answered with a canned response that does nothing to solve the problem and we are left on our own to resolve issues. It just seems to get progressively worse. Any website requiring PHP & MySQL is slow to load and worst of all, my sites are regularly hacked. The last assault embedded malicious code into my webpage’s and deleted files on other sites. I have sent numerous emails to Dotster but have never received a response. I have a long-term contract but am seriously considering switching.

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  9. John says:

    Very disappointed with Dotster’s customer service. I spoke with two reps over the phone (David and I forget the other guy’s name) and both were completely clueless about what “htaccess” or “chmod” was. They kept talking about some “redirecting the script” bs when it was completely irrelevant to the question. It was obvious they were just trying to confuse the hell out of me in order to get me off the phone. Unfortunately for them I’m a web developer and can spot a bullshitter when I see/hear one.

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  10. Frank says:

    So this is the year 2013 and dotster still uses PHP 4. Changing it to PHP 5 in control panel IIS fails. No error message. I guess PHP 5 is not installed yet. Maybe next year.

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