A few months ago I got the bright idea to purchase and create my own dot com after reading an Epinions review of Dotster, a company that sells domains at an extremely reasonable price. I purchased a site name and, due to time restraints I didn't have time to deal with it so it was pretty much parked at Dotster patiently waiting for some attention.

A month ago I decided to begin searching for a hosting service. Do you realize how many hosting services are out there? There are hundreds, possibly thousands. I would find one that was perfect but they billed only yearly or I would find one that billed monthly but seemed shady. I could go on and on. I searched for over a week when low and behold I happened upon Cedant Hosting Services.

I'm very thorough when it comes to my money so I studied their site for a couple of days before I took the plunge. I didn't want to jump into just anything, end up dissatisfied and then pay a fortune in transfer fees. The features offered really appealed to me. I'm admittedly an idiot when it comes to this type of thing. Granted, I can throw a halfway decent webpage together and pretty much learn things as I go but I had never purchased a site before.

Initially their price of $7.95 a month for the basic plan and no setup fees appealed to me the most. Then I learned that their basic plan required pre-payment for a full year which was a turn off for me. I wanted a monthly plan. However, when I dug deeper I realized that, aside from this, their service was very user friendly and they do support Microsoft Front Page. That was my biggest concern. When it comes to html, I can do some things with ease but for the most part I must take the easy route. Also, their standard plan is only $5.00 more a month (which isn't that much more) and carried a monthly, quarterly or yearly payment schedule.

In exploring their site and reading information about their services, I learned that they can have your account set up in one hour, provided that there are no problems with the transfer, the seller of the domain, etc. I found that to be a plus because once I'm enthused about something, I'm ready to get started. I handled the transfer myself and provided Cedant's primary/secondary name server, IP address and NIC handles to Dotster. True to their word, my account was set up within an hour and I had the ability to begin publishing my page directly to the web under my very own domain.

Seeing the account control panel finished selling me on this hosting service. Everything is right there at your finger tips. It is so very user friendly with icons and text descriptions. Having used the control panel for a month, I'm already spoiled. The features they offer are either set up with the click of a button or they provide detailed step-by-step instructions on how to set it up.

For instance, say you want to create a form for your site. You want the e-mail to come back to you but you don't want the sender to see where it is going. They give you the coding to place in the html view of your document. You want to redirect your visitors somewhere other than the default "This is the information you sent" page? No problem, they give you the exact coding along with instructions on how to accomplish this. For html dummies like myself, this is a god-send.

They offer four different pay plans which come with different features. Naturally, the basic account doesn't include all the features but then again, if you're new to web page authoring, like me, you probably don't understand or need the additional features anyway. As you become more knowledgeable of web authoring and want to upgrade your account, that's not a problem either. You can upgrade or downgrade your account at any time.

A basic account ($7.95) comes with the following features: 10 megabytes of disk space, 500 megabytes of data transfer, one POP e-mail account, phone and e-mail support, a file manager, ftp updates that are unlimited, the ability to create password protected pages, a site creation tool (if you don't have an html authoring program, very thorough and detailed website statistics, a cgi bin with free scripts, and more.

A standard account ($12.95) comes with all of the above plus four or five additional features and it comes with an increase to 40Mb of disk space and 1550Mb of data transfer and an additional 24 POP e-mail accounts.

The advanced ($18.95) and the webmaster ($24.95) accounts come with all the features available. With the advanced account, available disk space increases to 75Mb, data transfer to 3000Mb and POP e-mail accounts to 50. The webmaster account increases available disk space to 100MB, data transfer to 4000Mb and POP e-mail accounts to 75.

Extra e-mail accounts are only $1.00 each. Extra disk space is available in 20Mb increments costing $5.00 each. If you have a lot of traffic and use more data transfer, you can purchase 500Mb for an additional $7.00. I seriously doubt I'll be needing any of those additional features and I'm sure most average website owners wouldn't either.

They definitely have plans and features that fit most every need. They do offer a 100% satisfaction or your money back guarantee and you're not billed at all for the first two weeks.

I can't really comment on the value or quality of their customer support because I've never really had a problem that I wasn't able to resolve either on my own or by use of the detailed support manual. If I'm ever stumped or run into something that I don't understand, I click the help icon on the account control panel, spend a minimal amount of search time and I find the answer I need.

I've worked in my account every day and have had no problems accessing it. I've viewed my site from work and have never been denied access because of server problems.

To date, I'm very satisfied with my choice. They provide services and features easy enough for a first-time web author to understand and implement. They provide services and features that probably appeal to advanced and expert web authors as well. I definitely recommend Cedant!




Recommended: Yes

Monthly fees (US$): 12.95
Main focus of Web site: Publishing/Content