stefan

My home email isn't working after a change of country and ISP, and due to regular country (and ISP) changes, I need a stable smtp and pop3 mail account once and for all. That gets me thinking I need a domain... plus a host... and why not make a small family website in the process? So the search started.

I came to dotable by accident while trawling through dozens of other hosts -- most of which made me smell a scam. I even tried some of the 'live chats' on other host sites, only to feel I was talking to a robot. There were prices too good to be true. Flash animations, rebates, tokens, resellers that had my better judgment saying "STAY AWAY"... No support forums or telephone numbers. Fantastic, repetitive and suspicious reviews across the web written by webmasters of dummy sites....

The Dotable site seemed an island of normality in a sea of pimps and pirates. The first page is a forum, home to genuine homo sapiens... and not clipart characters. It seems small but serious, friendly but professional, no hard sell, excellent price for more than what I need (single domain, small site). A few stupid questions and polite, easygoing replies minutes later and....

Signed up, paid by CC. Minutes later I get a confirmation mail. Then the account details several minutes after that. I point my domain name to the server and it works. Cannot access the cpanel from office PC (due to some VPN/firewall clash), but get home and it all works fine. A fiddle with nVu and some scratching of head on ftp settings and I get a page up. A fiddle with cPanel and the email works. A steep learning curve but not too much of a struggle.

Everything seems to be working fine. Service has been quick, polite and professional. Site seems fast. And Dotable does exactly what it says on the box. Given that I'm totally new to this, it has been surprisingly painless.

Early hours yet, so will update in a few months or so, when I explore what I can do, test things out... My demands are not very high, so I suspect I won't have anything to add to what other more advanced users have written here.

So all I can do is say... so far, so good (just perfect, in fact)...

Aussie Bob

Stefan, thanks for that. Loved the "an island of normality in a sea of pimps and pirates". I've got to use that somewhere.

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• Dotable • "an island of normality in a sea of pimps and pirates" •

stefan

you're welcome!

Well, just a quick update to say that one year on, I renewed my single domain account with dotable.

To be honest I have a very low bandwidth need -- mainly emails for the first year, although have now started a very basic wordpress family page and am using IMAP/webmail more. I'm a pretty low-demand client in that respect -- I use nowhere near the bandwidth I could and don't need support much, as my issues are mainly trying to figure out cPanel and so on from the perspective of a newcomer. As a bit of a compulsive diyer, I tend to figure these issues out myself.

sometimes I browse around and see what others are offering -- 1TB storage, 10TB bandwidth for $5.95 a month and so on. Seems too good to be true, which means it probably is. And then a search reveals horror stories about overselling, overloaded servers, downtime, fly-by-night operations with dubious practices. Dotable, on the other hand, seems to have a refreshingly normal business model.

I also feel happy not sharing space with adult sites.

I can't claim speak from the perspective of a heavy user, but I certainly wouldn't hesitate to recommend Dotable to someone like me looking for a safe spot for a personal site. Dotable has been a safe choice, and just one less thing in life to worry about.

cheers, stefan