Dot5 Hosting Introduction
Dot5 Hosting is a small web hosting company with a decade of hosting experience. The company is focused on shared web hosting ‘at an affordable price’, and it promises ‘a friendly and high-quality level of technical support.’
Dot5 Hosting Hosting Plans
Dot5 Hosting only offers Linux-based shared web hosting. It only offers one plan.
The Dot5 Hosting plan comes with unlimited disk space and bandwidth and allows for unlimited hosted domains. Customers can choose from a one-year hosting plan or a discounted two-year plan.
Dot5 Hosting also has an affiliate programme, a reseller programme and a referral program for its customers to take advantage of. Customers can also buy additional products such as site backups, SiteLock, an SSL certificate and a professional SEO makeover.
Dot5 Hosting Uptime/Downtime
Dot5 Hosting does not provide any assurances or guarantees about uptime. Their servers are based on a pooled network at two data centres in Boston in the US which have 24/7 security, but other than that, there’s not much information to go on.
Dot5 Hosting Support
Dot5 Hosting customers have access to an online support console to raise support tickets. They are also provided with support 24 hours a day and a telephone and live chat tools are available. Unfortunately, Dot5 Hosting does not provide details of where its support personnel are based.
Dot5 Hosting customers have access to a range of self-help tools including a knowledge base, plus various user guides and tutorials. There is a Dot5 Hosting Twitter feed, but at the time of writing this review, there had not been any posts at all. There doesn’t appear to be a customer forum or a Facebook page either, so it’s probably safe to assume that no help is provided by these alternative channels.
Dot5 Hosting in the News
As Dot5 Hosting is a relatively small hosting company, they have not attracted any attention in the media despite being around for 10 years. The lack of news, either good or bad, suggests that they provide a relatively stable service.
Dot5 Hosting Control Panel
The control panel offered to Dot5 Hosting customers is the vDeck control panel. Most customers will be familiar with cPanel when it comes to web hosting; vDeck is commonly seen on shared hosts, but I find it less aesthetically pleasing. Whilst it may be unfamiliar to many people, it may be worth getting to know since many companies do use it, including many of the low cost hosts I’ve reviewed. If you’re used to using cPanel or Plesk, it will probably feel like a step down in terms of its functionality.
Dot5 Hosting Extras
Dot5 Hosting customers receive a generous wad of Google Adword credits, Yahoo credits and Facebook credits to help sweeten the deal when signing up. Customers also get access to free shopping carts, website templates, search engine tools and a website builder.
CGI, Ruby on Rails, Perl, PHP and MySQL are all supported, and customers also get free Joomla, WordPress, Gallery2 and more scripts which are easy install through vDeck.
Dot5 Hosting Money Back Guarantee / Cancellation Policy
Dot5 Hosting has a 30-day money-back guarantee should any customer be unsatisfied with its services. This guarantee does not include the cost of domain name registrations, nor will the company refund other setup fees. Note that the guarantee is only applicable to customers who pay by credit card.
As a customer, you can give 30 days written notice to cancel your account at any time, but you will incur a charge if your terminate your account early (assuming it’s after the first 30-day guarantee period has passed).
Dot5 Hosting Summary
When compared to many other web hosting companies, Dot5 Hosting does not offer as much variation or innovation when it comes to its web hosting plans. Simplicity appears to be the main point of the company; this will make it appeal to customers who are new to web hosting and who do not want to be dazzled by a range of hosting options. If you just want a simple hosting plan to enable you to get started, they will undoubtedly provide that.
Kian Simpson, a 36-year-old blogger from Washington, USA, specializes in providing useful information and advice about web hosting and domain names. With extensive IT experience, Kian began his career as a systems administrator before moving into more advisory and strategic roles in technology companies. He has worked with a variety of hosting platforms, from classic web hosting to cloud solutions, which has allowed him to accumulate significant knowledge in the field of server management and website performance optimization.