Dotster Reviews 30

These guys are scoundrels. We've been with them for 10+ years and all of a sudden I go into the system to add a forwarding email address and can't find the page I need. Got in touch with support and was told they'd discontinued that feature. They hadn't notified me of that. And they had already turned off access to the info. I told them I needed to get the records of the email addresses I was having forwarded and they said it was impossible. Even a tech support person couldn't get to the information. About a week later I finally received notification that they were discontinuing email forwarding. A LITTLE LATE! At that point they gave customers 10 days before they shut off forwarding.
It seems they've recently merged or been acquired by web.com. Not a good sign. I recommend staying away from both.
I still haven't found a replacement solution so I'm stuck up a creek without a paddle.

Dotster is the worst web hosting service. They should not be in business. I've had a website with dotster for 20 years; the last four years have been trouble. To boost their profits, they did away with phone support. They went straight to chat support with inexperienced support agents. It is impossible to reach dotster via phone. Even their corporate offices can not be
reached via phone, period!! Anyone considering dotster is in for a loss of funds and will be very disappointed. They are just short of being criminals for their actions and how they treat customers! You've been warned that if you proceed with them, you are alone!!!!! Thank goodness we've moved all websites & email accounts.
Dotster, three weeks ago, crashed my website when an inexperienced Asian support agent attempted to address speed issues with loading web pages, taking me a great deal of time and money to get my website back up and running. Only after moving to Bluehost was my web designer able to correct the many problems caused by Dotster. I would NEVER RECOMMEND Dotster to anyone, EVER!

Auto renews. Oddly auto renewal warning went to my junkmail, but renewal notice went to inbox. Afterwards, even on the same day, they will not refund renewal amount.

We got an auto renewal notice for our web domain, and we immediately renewed, and my husband's credit card was even charged for the renewal. Dotster turned off our domain anyway, and now nothing is working... Not our website, not our email... NOTHING. This company is beyond horrible.
Update: My husband has been on Chat with them for four hours now, and they STILL can't fixthe problem.
Stay away from this company!!!!

I am using this provider just to park and renew my domain, so can't speak about other services.
Their system had an issue with my c/c renewal, and that earned me a lock out from my account. No explanation, nothing. After five minutes I got a text confirming my card was charged, at which point I was able to login again. So, it seems you get temporarily "cancelled" while their system is figuring out online banking. And if it doesn't... well, nothing you can do.

We acquired a company with many domains registered with Dotster, also using them for DNS. We have been unable to have ANY DNS updates take effect until we contact support and get them to manually regenerate the zone files. Every. Single. Time. Each time support tries to tell us that it won't fix the problem, yet it does, every time, immediately. Half the time other services also complain that the 2 Dotster name servers aren't functioning properly as well.

Don’t deal with these guys. They are a scam artists! They just auto renewed a domain name, even though I had auto renew, turned off! And they won’t give me my money back!

Dotster are a pretty good price for hosting, always have been. However my fees have tripled in the last few years, though still better price than most.

In the last year, there have been serious problems with their hosting. Websites not reachable, FTP not connecting, control panel not accessible. At this point my sites or my ability to edit WP (to log in) are unavailable every couple of weeks for hours.
This used to be a very rare occurrence, maybe every couple of years, now it's frequent.

The help chat was quite good in past years, it was clear the people I chatted with had some actual knowledge of servers, WP and hosting. In the last year I get a lot of meaningless replies from people who clearly have no idea what is wrong or how to fix it. Often they will default to "engineers are working on it, come back in 2 hours." But sometimes you get someone capable.

The price cant be beat, but its not worth anything if it doesn't stay online.

every time I contact them through customer service, something screwed up happens. I went with them because they are cheap but you get what you pay for. I put my account to not renew...they cancelled my account immediately and deleted all the files related to it. They didn't want to do anything to rectify the situation only for me to sign up again and pay more fr an plan I was getting for less a day ago. I'm loooking for someone else. nay suggestions, let me know.

For the past two weeks, my FTP client hasn't worked. I have spent over three hours on chat with dotster, and they cannot fix it.
They say, "Well, it works when we try it."
But FTP won't work for me.
I've been using FTP for 23 years, but suddenly Dotster will not allow me to upload files.

They were never a great service but they were cheap. I had pop email hosting with them for over 10 years. And now they've increased the price by 350% with no notice!! They claim the email they sent me one month before charge me was the notice. All it said was the new price, NO mention that it's an increase. Who has time to check the price, look up last year's price etc?! That kind of increase needs to be mentioned months before! And the rep on the chat could only offer me a tiny discount for this massive inconvenience. So now I have 2 weeks to transfer to another provider or pay for another year with them. I probably won't manage coz I have too much other stuff to do... argh! :(

I'm gonna second another reviewer.... I HATE DOTSTER! THEY SUCK SO MUCH!!

Also for years my custom domain email has been getting blocked so often by other people's email servers. While custom domain emails I have with other providers have ZERO problems. I wonder if they let a lot of spams through their servers blackballing them?

Run away from this company as fast as you can. They have auto renewed my account for years then suddenly could not renew my account due to an internal zip code error not allowing my renewal to go thru. I reached out several times requesting them to internally make the correction and was told by chat to go to a site and correct it myself. It would not work for me to correct this myself. They caused my account to go delinquent, sold off my domain name and deleted my company web site. They auto charged my last March for a 3 yr web hosting fee that I no longer have. I requested a refund and to refund me the expenses they caused. Zero help from them and said it’s not their problem. No number was provided only on line chat box on the web site. I have been with this company 15 yrs plus and never saw this coming. This company must have been sold, information on file transported incorrectly and no one to help. I am no ruling out legal pursuit of the thousands they have cost our company and the fees they took with out permission for services I am not receiving. Horrible company to deal with! They do not deserve a 0 rating but much worse. I hope someone looks into this company for severe mismanagement and makes them stop stealing from people and holds them accountable for the actions they cause. They did not care at all this happened to us, they said they have no responsibility to what happened to us and it was my fault I did not renew

Deceiving, very unprofessional and not useful at all. Hardik Salian mistakenly made a transaction with my credit card, buying one of their product after we live chatted for an issue I had. They refunded me the amount, but between the moment they charged me and the refund, currency had changed, so I lost money by their fault, by their mistake. Nobody responded my emails, so I live chatted again to ask to be compensated or get a discount on my next bill, as it would only be fair NOT to pay for THEIR mistake, and the agent I talked to, Bindu, was not understanding of the problem at all, I had to repeat several times what was the (simple) problem, and the (simple) solution I was suggesting, only to have him say the refund was complete on their side so there was nothing they could do. I will fill a complaint.

Their customer service and online chat has netted zero help. We've been trying to resolve domain issues for days and each chat gives us the runaround.

We didn't originally sign with Dotster, but they purchased everything and we were stuck with them. Pulled the plug today and it feels so good. Stay away!

They bought my old domain registrar and I stayed them in the past years. But more and more, we have technical issues. And when it comes to renewals, they keep jacking up the prices. The support via chat is useless.

I registered two domains today and all I got was an email saying "It looks like something was amiss with your payment information. We are currently manually reviewing your transaction and we will email you shortly regarding your recent payment for your account. " So I have no idea what the status is or not.

So I'm actively looking for a new registrar. They are just not professional any more.

I am horrified at the lack of service. What a RIP-OFF they doubled my prices without any notice! They do not respond to emails and they no longer answer the phone. I placed many clients with them over the years! Their Web hosting sucks too. Nothing but problems. Now I can't even reach them! I HATE DOTSTER. They are the worst business in the Web space! None of the discounts they send works either. They SUCK. They absconded with one of my favorite domains and want me to pay them $160 to retrieve it! If I could I would purposely put them out of business for unfair trade practices. All that money I spent with them was a waste.

Absolutely the very worst I have ever experienced - "incompetent and a ripoff in every way possible" is a polite way of putting it. NO PHONE support - only worthless, ineffective, inefficient and deeply annoying "chat". Exceptionally hard (impossible) to penetrate for any viable answer - much less any satisfying resolution to the problems THEY generate and then make you work to try and resolve (good luck with that BTW).

I have been with these guys for ages - back in the Namezero "free domain for life" days. I have stuck with them out of loyalty but primarily because of their free email forwarding with unlimited email aliases per domain.
In the past I have had the odd reports of bounces for some of my forwards. However over the last year or so instances of missed emails due to bouncebacks have increased to the point where I find their email forwarding service unreliable and frankly unusable. It appears that many of the IPs of the service they use for email fowarding (eighbox.net) are blacklisted.
I contacted Dotster support and they appear well aware of the issue and simply rotate the IPs used. This isn't really a solution.
I know the forwarding service is "free" however i can't afford to play russian roulette and potentially miss important emails. I have migrated the email fowarding for my domains to a paid service. I will eventually transfer my domains as without the draw of free email fowarding, I really have no incentive to stick with Dotser.
I'm really sorry it had to end this way.

They are the worst of the worst...Never use them...

Use Go Daddy

Raised price without approval, auto billed 3 weeks before renewal date, and won't refund.

I had a domain on auto renewal and they raised the price by $2. Never saw a single bit of correspondence about the change. Just received this new charge 3 weeks prior to my renewal date. Was informed they can't reverse the charge. Saw no way in my account to even remove my Paypal link to them and had to block them on Paypal to avoid future charges.

I used to have all my domains with Dotster but this company has spiraled downhill in past years. I will never use them or recommend them again.