Just a couple of years ago, Dot 5 Hosting was synonymous with the worst in web hosting anywhere. Hosting forums were filled with Dot 5 customers posting endless expletives. I was unlucky enough to be hosting a couple of sites with them attracted by their very low pricing at the time, and regretted it more than I ever have any other hosting decision I'd ever made. They would experience hours (or up to four days) of downtime several times a month, never ever answered their phone, wouldn't reply to dozens of email pleas or even registered letters by post. After taking 7 months to wrestle my domain names away from them, I finally walked away in disgust and of course with no refund or even an apology. In all fairness they seem to have straightened their act around in the past little while and the number of forum complaints have dropped down to a dull roar.
Plans and Features
Dot 5 Hosting's logo curiously boasts that they are "Trusted By Over 25,000 Customers," which is probably the number AOL loses on a good day. Their offerings are rather standard for the budget-priced ISP market segment, however they do stand out in offering 300 GB of disk space and 3TB of site transfer per month. Of course if all 25,000 customers were actually to use up their full allotments Dot 5's servers would explode, but they are definitely not the only host advertising outrageous theoretical limits that most of their customers would ever come close to reaching. Their offerings are packed with a comprehensive cornucopia of the usual templates, editors and scripts and the one year plan at $4.95 a month includes free setup and domain, thus it qualifies as one of the better "bang for the buck" packages in the very crowded budget hosting sector.
Dot 5 Hosting Reliability
Dot 5 Hosting's downtime nightmares seem to have subsided and they once again are able to provide consistent service that won't give their customers ulcers. Their Dual Xeon servers might be a bit light in the RAM department with 2GB each, but that does not seem to affect the current level of service. I might be singing the praises of Dot 5's current reliability if I was not still so stung from my previous experiences.
Conclusion
This is not Fox News but I do have to be fair and balanced. A customer who has just started with Dot 5 Hosting may very well find them one of the better packages in the low-end of the hosting spectrum. There are many other hosts which offer a whole lot fewer bells and whistles for $4.95 so Dot 5 should be lauded for their efforts. If you are not aware of the horrendous hash of years gone by, you could likely have a good service experience with Dot 5 Hosting. Personally, I'd dust off my old 1987 Mac SE and host my site on it through a 14.4K modem before giving Dot 5 another penny. C-.
