Domain & Email Questions

[_moo]

Hi. Your service looks good from the outside, but as I've learnt from a costly mistake yesterday, the other side of the fence doesn't always look so good. I signed up with another hosting provider with an extremely slick sales website, but thier actual account management pages are dire.

Anyway, having been stung in the past, I have these specific questions.

1) I have several domains registered elsewhere (no hosting). I have access to the DNS settings. Therefore can I use them as add-on domains on my web hosting package, simply by updating the nameservers to yours and then fiddling in cPanel?

2) Will you charge me extra for the above?

3) Are there any hidden charges you're not telling me about, particularly for email forwarding and 'catch-all' email support. Another provider has the cheek to ask for another £20+VAT per year for a catch-all service, and that wasn't shown on their sales website.

4) Similar to (1) really... if I want to use one of my existing domains as the main hosting domain, can I just change the DNS rather than transfer it to you? I have a feeling you are *slightly* more expensive on domain registrations.

5) Is your back-end account management as slick as the front-end sales?

Looking forward to your replies.

[Ryan]

Hi There!

Thanks for considering eUKhost for your hosting requirements. I have answered all your questions below in the same order as you have posted them:-

You can use any or all of your existing domains to be hosted as addon domains on your hosting package. All you need to do change the 'nameservers' so that they point to our servers. Once you place an order, you will receive a Welcome Email with all the relevant details. Among other things it will contain our nameservers. When you have our nameservers, you can update your domain names with our nameservers.

There are no additional charges for Addon Domains feature. You can host as many addon domains as long as you have enough spare resources available in your account.

There are no hidden charges involved whatsoever with our hosting, email forwarding and 'catch-all' email support are standard features on our hosting plans.

It is not necessary to transfer your domain name to us when buying a hosting package. You can use an existing domain of yours as the primary domain name on the package by just pointing the nameservers of the domain name to our servers.

Yes, we manage all our accounts using Modernbill which is an industry leading billing software application.

Please feel free to post if you have any more questions, we will be glad to assist you.

[jc8654]

Everything is pretty easy to use. I'm guessing as you're familiar with cPanel that side of the admin isn't a problem but just in case, this is a very easy to use graphical interface where you can make changes to email, ftp, domains, files etc. etc. etc. If you go to http://www.cpanel.net/products/cpwhm/cpanel11/demo.htm and then choose domain owner panel you will see how the backend looks.

Regarding the admin side for you, Modernbill allows you to clearly find info, invoices etc. and it's very simple to sort things.

[_moo]

Thanks for your replies. I'm a bit of a veteran of hosting services, and a techy too, so I don't foresee any problems. Looks like I'll give you a try.

Oh, one other thing... I'm assuming your servers are in the UK. My current provider is just rebranding MySQL servers from the states, and they are sloooooooow.

[jc8654]

The servers are primarily in the Bluesquare DC in Maidenhead.

[_moo]

Okay, I just placed my order. Just so you are aware, the checkout process is not very slick at all. After making my payment I was left with a blank screen and just the sentence "Thank you for ordering from eukhost".

No confirmation that my payment was successful. No pretty page taking me back to your website.

See, this is what I meant by 'slick back-end systems'. Not as slick as I was expecting, sadly.

[jc8654]

You should have received a payment email to confirm the payment which provides people with a lot more confidence payment has received. Out of interest, how did you go about paying as that may govern the options which are available for customisation...

[DPS Computing]

Hope that you have got your account set up to your satisfaction by now. I can understand what you are saying about being "slick" but I know I would definitely prefer it to work and be a little ugly in places than "slick" and "pretty" but be a complete disaster working wise or even worse be a con!

In my experience, sites that are very "slick" and pretty are mainly cons or look pretty but don't work. Most genuine systems normally have a few rough edges. I would assume that if you have got the "Thank you for ordering from eUKhost" message that your sale has completed successfully. Also, as Jonathan mentioned you should get an e-mail confirming this also.

Also if you paid by Paypal you should also get sales confirmation from the by both e-mail and on your account .