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General discussion

Avoid Network Solutions Hosting

Dec 20, 2006 7:32AM PST

I have just gone through holy hell with a Network Solutions shared hosting package and wanted to pass on my experience and a warning.

They are horrible. They do not have good technical support, I have discovered (from a comment from one of their technical support engineers who I managed to get on the phone) there are many problematic mail servers on the shared hosting plans.

I still do not have e-mail working (I have moved one of my domains to another provider - and that started accepting e-mails right away - while I try to fix the problem) and they take three to five days to work on a service request - on an extremely critical issue!

I really liked their packages - and assumed that I would get better support from them (they do always answer the phone quickly - but the people who you can talk to don't know much about serious problems. If you know how to use forums and help windows, then you don't need the phone people). You generally can't talk to the engineers. After enough screaming and complaining - I got put through to an engineer who was also pretty clueless.

They have offered to give me my money back - and their general customer support and service (if it worked) seems excellent. Just watch out if e-mail is important to you and you are thinking about Network Solutions.

Discussion is locked

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true
Apr 1, 2007 5:28AM PDT

from the 30+ hosting companies I worked with in the past 10 years Network Solutions is by far the worst, both as service and tech support.

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Network Solutions is killing my business
May 19, 2007 2:13AM PDT

Network Solutions is killing my business.

I started up a side business, and searched around for web hosting company. I signed up for Network Solutions eCommmerce package and they also put together my payment gateway for me.

Everything was fine until an important new client tried to use their credit card to make an initial purchase. The credit card wouldnt go through. This happened last wednesday, May 16, 2007. I have been on the phone with Network Solutions every day since.

The first time I called the support line, I was assured that the would take care of the problem and get right back to me. After they DIDNT get back to me, I called back and was led through a cycle of calling different phone numbers until I hit a dead end. I then called the original tech support line, and was told that they had no information about the problem I was having, and had to call some more phone numbers. Dead end. I called tech support back...again...and this time they did have all the information about my issue, and told me they would take care of it, but the issue would have to go to the engineering department. They even told me they would put a VIP ticket number on my problem due to the fact that I am currently losing customers, and need this problem solved! So, after all this running around, Friday the 18th I received an email.

Hello,

I have reviewed your not finalized order and I see the order with the American express card was used and it came back with an error of unauthorized transaction. The Errors received in this field are responses from your gateway. You should contact your gateway to verify if you are setup and able to process American express cards. If you have any further inconveniences, please contact us.

(Name Deleted)
Tech Support


Are you kidding? I called them back and asked the obvious question. After all of my running around with them, how is it that I get a simple letter telling them to call my payment gateway (which is one of the phone numbers I had previously been led to call)? They didnt even give me a number to call. The person on the support line told me that I had "unrealistic expectations", and the support guy asked "how are we supposed to know the number of who you have your payment gateway through"? The simple answer of course was....because it was all set up through Network Solutions. Pause on the line.

The department which I apparently need to talk with now only works from 8am to 8pm, Monday through Friday. So much for 24/7 support.

I am still within my 30 day window of my purchase of my ecommerce package, so I am currently looking for another company to host my website. I encourage anyone out there to never do business with Network Solutions. Their Solutions are expensive, and if you begin to have problems with service, they wont have a solution for you.

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another network solutions problem
Aug 28, 2009 12:15AM PDT

found this old post, and wanted to point out an issue I had with them. I signed up for nsmail pro which is promoted as an "open ex-change server". However, you cannot sync your Outlook calendar associated with your email address, with your Iphone, to me the chief advantage of sync programs. I could equally blame Microsoft for it. Anyone have a solution?

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All my email boxes were deleted.
Mar 18, 2010 11:00AM PDT

I also had problems with Network Solutions, several I might say.
Some I had to order more then 3 times a product before the order actually went thru, others I they didn't cancel what was bought because of an error.
Also all our mail boxes were deleted once and they treated it like it was nothing.
Now that we are outgrowing our Shared Hosting and needed a Virtual Private Server the same hell situation.

Moving to somewhere where they really care.
Suggestions?

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netsol
Apr 1, 2010 10:13PM PDT

back in the days, Netsol was a good domain name company, now they are trying and have failed in other "domains" like hosting, web design, ssl etc.

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NS MAIL PRO
Jul 30, 2010 5:12AM PDT

Although I didn't have any "hosting issues" with networksolutions, I had MAJOR problems with the "upgraded" email product NS Mail Pro. Where do I begin????? The spam button does not remove the spam it simply forwards it to a server and God knows what happens at that point. I thought the purpose of the spam button was to REMOVE and you never see again. If I'm still getting the same spam mail in my inbox what purpose does the spam button serve? I paid extra to have this email product and network solutions has had to refund me almost all my money back because I was on the phone with them almost everyweek because I would get these system errors and all my email folders would just disappear(the inbox, sent, trash etc). Sometimes the mail doesn't load and I'll have to hit the refresh button several times, and the amount of space available for your message is mediocre for a business email product. If you want to save messages you very limited. Definitely would not recommend upgrading to this "enhanced" email product..

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And you thought Network Solutions was basically competent!?
Aug 2, 2010 4:13PM PDT

Late last year, I took on a new client who is hosted on Network Solutions. All initially went generally smoothly. The first thing we needed to do was to establish a NEW Windows hosting account because the task at hand was to replace an aging native HTML web site with a database-enabled ASP.NET web site. Development proceeding and we were able to cut over to the replacement ASP.NET web site in late March.

My interactions with Technical Support at Network Solutions were sort of a black-and-white affair: It shortly became obvious that during US East Coast business hours (M-F), you would reach U.S. support while outside of "prime time" you generally got a totally different service. Over time, it became somewhat apparent that while the non-prime time folks were generally competent, there was (and is) a bit of a language barrier and I came to understand that the support, indeed, seemed to be a team in the Ukraine. For the most part, this was not a huge problem except that there always seems something slightly syntactically "disconnected" in explaining a problem or particular need. On the whole, there was nothing hugely inconvenient, but just not the service level of comprehension that one would get from a fellow American technical support analyst. (I certainly am sympathetic to the ?bottom line? issues of providing competitive service rates and it seems unavoidable that this should involve some globalization of support services.)

Segue to last week: After a couple of client staff training sessions on the ?background administration? facilities supporting the new database-enabled web site, we decided it was time to release the unused Unix/Linux hosting. The associated emails for the domain had been moved/connected to the replacement Windows package (fairly transparently with little or no service interruptions?which is as it should be for a ?internal switch?). Since I always have the client maintain control over the hosting account, I let them know that it was now safe to delete the Unix/Linux shared hosting account as we have fully vetted the replacement Windows web site.

Late Friday afternoon, the client confirmed in an email that the Unix/Linus account was canceled and that the appropriate credit was either being refunded to them or applied as an extension to the remaining Windows shared hosting. Or such was the INTENT!
After receiving a confirming email from the client that the turn-off of the old Unix/Linus hosting had been communicated to NS, I had the occasion of running a test of some new as-yet-unreleased. By some horrid coincidence, when I ran the test (online, interfacing with the hosted MS SQL database) the test failed with an ASP.NET error that I?d never seen before (the yellow screen of death mentioned a ?transport-level error?). Curious, I immediately went to FTP to check that had loaded the correct 2 or 3 test files into the web site source (?htdocs?) area and was surprised to find that my FTP id and password no longer got me into the website source area.

Moving away from my controlled test area, I then attempted to bring up the normal ?home page? of the ASP.NET web site and instead got the standard NS ?website under construction? placeholder. Huh? What?s happening here?
So I called in to NS Tech Support and reported the symptoms I was experiencing to the rep. The rep proceeded to tell me that the Windows hosting account had been CANCELED! Huh? Could my client have gotten things backward? I asked for clarification on the customer interaction notes and was then told by the rep that the request clearly showed that the request was to shut off the Unix/Linux account and that the implementation of this did seem to show that NS had gotten it backwards.

Somewhat relieved, I then asked what sort of ?priority fix? could be applied to correct this obvious error on the part of NS. The first-line rep told me that someone would first need to purchase a Windows hosting account as the current account had been closed and there could be no action until that was established. Incredulous, I asked ?you mean in order for you folks to correct YOUR error my client needs to purchase a hosting account before anything can occur?? That was confirmed and I then asked to speak to a Supervisor. The story was the same with the Supervisor at which point I asked, ?well, can I purchase a one-month Windows hosting now with my credit card to effect that repairs could get under way?? and was informed that yes, that would work. As it was the weekend now--indeed now into the wee hours of Saturday morning--I authorized a one-month account. I was assured that NS would proceed with a ?priority? repair/re-establishment of the incorrectly cancelled account and that we could expect the web site and database to be back in place within 24 hours.

If items had been carried through as promised, this sad tale of woe might just end there. But no, it seemed that I had not yet experienced the full capabilities of the general incompetence of NS.

The 24-hour window came and went and the only sign of progress was that I was able to re-establish an FTP account and could see that the backup of an empty MS SQL database was placed in a ?backup? folder at the root of the web hosting disk space. Having expected that by the time this period had taken that there would be a full restore of the database and the web site source files, I called in again to inquire what was happening. After much sorting through of Ticket numbers, I was informed that the database had not been restore since I had not created the database particulars (db name, user name, password) that were needed before the restore could occur. As nothing had been mentioned about this sequence being important, I was incredulous and asked ?so the whole database restore has just been waiting without ANY communication to me that this is required?? and the sad answer was ?yes?.

I pleaded with the tech support rep to please expedite the promised 24-hour repair for which no progress nor communication had happened in the prior 24-hour period. By this point the client web site had essentially been out of service for approximately 36 hours. I was assured that this would be the case. Now, any of your who have done a database backup of a relative small database (i.e., less than 10 megabytes) know that doing a restore using MS SQL Server 2008 is a matter of pointing to the database ?.BAK? file and the database and hitting ?Restore?. Hot a hugely complicated operation.

Another 24 hours passed and the database was finally restored (to a full backup that was 3 or 4 days old at the time of the mistaken account deletion. I proceeded to restore the web site source files since my copies were fully up-to-date except for the need to update the database particulars in the ?web.config? file. But the comedy of errors had not yet rolled out the final act!

Now Monday morning, it looked like the web site (including the database) was now online and operational. Updating the client, I was shocked to learn that all of the email accounts were missing and had been deleted (as they were ?attached? to the incorrectly canceled Windows hosting package). Again, I contacted NS tech support and was told that the emails (slightly under 30 for this client) could be restored on an expedited basis. In about 6 hours indeed they were restored, with the final slip-up that all of the passwords for the account had been reset to ?Password1? and that each email user would need to use an NS web utility to update their password (or re-establish what had been set up in their email program).

So what?s the bottom line? I am strongly advising the client that we relocate their hosting, domains and email to a more reliable company at the earliest opportunity. Because of their general name recognition, I had always assumed that NS was a general professional and reputable hosting resource. After the experience with this account I would under NO circumstances take over another client hosted at NS unless the client agreed to move to another resource. While I would like to be able to report that the ?internationalization? of technical support is seamless and transparent and reliable, plainly that is not the case with NS. Sadly, the facts of this experience over the course of 3 days would almost be funny if the general incompetence and sequence of ?dropped balls? wasn?t so lamentable. In the first place, the supreme irony is that ALL of this experience originally stemmed from NS getting the original request 100% wrong. Ironically, at a subsequent discussion, I was provided with the documentation Ticket number that clearly indicated what the CORRECT request was and a variety of reps at various confirmed that all of this mess had happened because NS got it flat out WRONG. Throughout the more than dozen telephone conversations with various NS reps, they were generally sympathetic (and even apologetic) but no one ever took the initiative to truly undertake any ?heroic? measures to right THEIR wrong. Indeed, ANY sense of their working expeditiously to correct their mess-up was totally absent from their subsequent actions over the course of the 72-hours-plus that the ordeal lasted.

... sign me Disgusted with NS!

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Network Solutions nsMail Pro Nightmare!
Jan 24, 2012 4:09PM PST

I just moved a client off of a problematic in-house Exchange server and since their website is hosted with Network Solutions, hosted email with them met our feature requirements and made sense. Wow! What a freaking nightmare! They make it sound so EASY on their web site. You have to install an Outlook Plug-in for calendar & contact syncronization called OXtender. This is the most hoaky, unstable piece of junk I've ever experienced. Outlook crashes on some computers, plug-in errors show up on the iPhones, email said to be from Bob (for example) was really from Sally, plug-in kept disabling itself on another PC...UGH!
Then when you call Network Solutions for help, they say their product works fine and offered me paid support at $100 per hour! No matter who I spoke to, I got nowhere. One weekend the mobility module for iPhone activesync stopped working. It took them almost 1 week to resolve the problem. They used to be one of the respected hosting providers but it looks as though outsourcing and competition has gotten the better of them. Terrible, terrible, terrible...nightmare. Go elsewhere unless you have a full head of hair and need more stress in your life.
We will be cancelling our hosted mailboxes and bringing Exchange back in-house.