Recently my domain was expiring and I had been with the same service provider for the past 2 years(DomainDirect). However, within the last year or so DomainDirect sold out and became DomainDirectHosting; a much crappier version of the once pretty decent hosting company. Naturally as the time to renew came closer I attempted to renew, like most people I believe if something already works why fix it? So I had no intentions of moving my hosting and domain from their current location and paying the $150 for a year. When I attempted to make payment though, I was met with an onslaught of poor programming and non functioning ecommerce portions of the site. I had no way of knowing if the transaction information was taken or not, it just kept cycling back through the same two pages. I thought to myself (well maybe they are waiting for another form of recognition) and in another attempt I entered my debit card # rather than my business debit card # which is what I had previously been attempting(the account was originally set up via my personal).
Nothing worked, I attempted to contact the company and find out what the heck. No response, in the meantime I was fretting about my website coming down and potentially missing important conversations/information not to mention the fact that my blog would cease to exist until the conundrum was solved.
Being a web savvy person (self proclaimed) I took it upon myself to dig out of the hole that DomainDirectHosting was putting me in by not assisting me. I checked out GoDaddy because it is a staple in the hosting world and I knew that I would never have billing issues and although the service may not be top notch, I can work around it.
Moving my services to goDaddy for a year cost me significantly less than I would have paid staying at DomainDirectHosting; I paid $60 for the transfer and renewal of my domain, sufficient hosting space, limited email capabilities and a few SQL databases.
All in all I can say that I’m not blown away by what I’m receiving, but I’m satisfied and that’s enough for now. Here is where the nightmare begins, during the transfer domaindirecthosting suddenly decided that my CC information was submitted and they put charges on both of my accounts AFTER everything was transferred away. (Still dealing with this one)
My site was down for a day or so once they transfer finally went through because I had to go in and transfer all the files, re-setup my databases and so on. The whole thing was much more cumbersome than I had hoped, but I believe I’m back and running at full steam, or more!
Just as a final thought, don’t ever use domaindirecthosting… ever.
Now for something highly inappropriate; enjoy. (Consider yourself warned beforehand)