Lunarpages. Learn from my mistakes.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Written by: Jed

There are plenty of webhosts and domain providers out there. And for every one service, there’s a website singing its praises, and another filled with complaints. It’s hard to sift through and weed-out the right one for you – even the best of the community maintained web-host review sites have conflicting reviews for any one host. I’m not here to make it any easier, but I just want to share my experience with my webhost and advise those reading, to learn from my mistakes.

It was almost a year ago that as a birthday gift, I was given a two-year hosting plan, and a one-year domain registration with Lunarpages. My hosting needs were and are pretty minimal. It’s not as if my sites (such as this one) are consistently updated, nor do they drive much traffic (sadly). I just needed somewhere to start, and the most cost-effective solution made the most sense. But as with most things you get what you pay for.

I can’t recall exactly how much everything was (it was a gift), but the two-year hosting couldn’t have broken the $100 mark. And when it comes to web hosting, that’s a bargain. Not to mention all the unlimiteds that came with it – from storage to bandwidth. Admittedly, they didn’t lie. It’s not as if I pushed the storage or bandwidth to the limit, but I never once did hit an arbitrary cap.

What unlimited doesn’t mean, is reliable up-time. There were plenty of random moments (although brief) where my sites were inaccessible. I would like to believe that it was all the traffic – but I know my analytics and there’s nothing further from the truth. The sites were just randomly down for short stints here and there. But because I rarely maintain my domains (this site is proof) it didn’t bother me much.

As for the domain-registration, my plan generously included one for a year. What it didn’t include was private WHOIS registration. That was another $8. I understand that certain domains (.US) aren’t eligible for these privacy settings, but whenever possible – I don’t understand why private registration isn’t the default setting; believe me, you want it.

Then there’s the fine-print, also known as the terms of service. Before signing up for a plan, please consider the costs once the special promos attached to your account expire. A lot of hosts offer discounts for the first 6-months or year, and may make it hard for the typical user to unearth the regular price thereafter. For instance, though I did register for a two-year hosting plan, my domain registration was only covered for one-year. The regular price at Lunarpages (at least for me) turns out to be around $20, and that doesn’t include private registration. This is more than double what other providers charge (who also happen to include private WHOIS by default).

And perhaps the most important part to look over in your terms of service – billing. Initially, all these fancy promos look great, and are practically giving you the service for free for that limited amount of time. You may even nonchalantly register and tell yourself that you’ll just cancel at the end of the promo. There’s two words that you should keep watch for, auto-renewal. Lunarpages, by default, opts its customers into an auto-renewal system. This means exactly what it sounds like. Your card will automatically be billed once your account nears expiration. In the case of Lunarpages, they will charge you 14 days prior.

I found this out the hard way. Knowing that my domain was nearly expiring, and of Lunarpages’ outrageous prices, I planned on filing for a domain transfer to another registrar (in this case 1&1). I started the process 15 days prior my expiration, and was met with a credit card charge for a non-refundable auto-renewal the day after. Not cool. In all fairness to Lunarpages, all of this information was pretty clear once you dug into their support pages. I may have a problem with some of their policies, but I should have known about them before hitting the checkout button.

Again this is all common-sense, but we all need a reminder sometimes – please at least glance over the terms of service you are agreeing to. And as for a good hosting recommendation, I clearly don’t have one.