With basic web hosting starting at $5.75 per month, Dotster hosting provides an affordable and reliable service to thousands of clients from various fields. The domain name costs $16.00, which is a little steep compared to the rates offered by other domain name registrars. As a relatively mature web hosting services provider, Dotster specializes in domain registration, web hosting and online advertising.

Support Services

Customer is king, so they say, and Dotster certainly adheres by this rule. With an interactive, 24/7 customer support services section within the hosting account control panel, Dotster allows instant access to technical and general solutions for the customer. Dotster’s customer support services include Live Chat Support between 6:00 am and 10:00pm (PST) Monday through Friday and 9:00 am to 5:30 pm (PST) on Saturday. 24-hour, 7-day support is only available for web hosting customers. Regular telephone and email support is also available during ordinary working hours.

Web User Interface/Control Panel

Dotster has adapted an easy-to-use, interactive and feature-rich control panel of their own for managing your domains and hosting. All expected features and options, such as email, databases, FTP and domain name management are available in the Dotster control panel. The panel is also painless to navigate. Customer support is directly accessible via the Dotster control panel. Depending on the type of hosting you’ve opted for (Linux or Windows, bandwidth and space allocation etc), the control panel provided by Dotster could be either cPanel or Plesk.

Technical Features & Specifications

Dotster offers a variety of web hosting plans, as well as domain registration, site design and web promotion. However, considering all the options available, it’s quite obvious that Dotster is more suitable for simple websites. The main reasons for this observation are the limited availability of resources. Email, databases, FTP accounts and even the number of registrable domains are limited in some Dotster hosting plans.

In addition to standard hosting plans, Dotster offers Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting, operating on both Linux and Windows environments. Shared hosting plans are competitively priced, but have several limitations and must be considered carefully before opting for any of them. All Dotster hosting plans are offered as prepaid plans and require payment for 2 years in advance.

Technical specifications and features offered with the varied plans  include 5GB to 50GB disk space allocation, 250GB to 2000 GB bandwidth availability, 10 to unlimited email accounts, 50MB to 1GB mailbox space, 1 to unlimited number of hosted domains, 1 to 25 MySQL databases, PHP and Perl/CGI-BIN support and 1 to 10 web spaces allocation.

Free Scripts, Tools & Extras

Dotster doesn’t offer free scripts such as the Elephante and Fantastico installations, but it does have a site builder for creating simple websites on both Linux and Windows hosting platforms. IMAP/SMTP email authentication, POP/Webmail availability, spam filter, email anti-virus and forwarding capabilities, FrontPage plug-ins, SSL support, web analytics tool, remote database access and custom error pages are among the other available bonus features in Dotster.

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