70 Blanchard Rd.
3rd floor
Burlington, MA 01803
1-866-317-4678
Netfirms launched as a free web hosting company in 1998. Within one year, Netfirms was offering shared paid web hosting plans to customers, as well as other Internet services. Recently acquired by Endurance International Group, the Netfirms of today has offices in Canada and the United States, more than 1.2 million customers, and offers shared Linux web hosting, domain names and ecommerce packages.
Review
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Sales
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I had trouble with Netfirms from the get-go. I took my pre-sales questions to live chat and was met by a representative who didn’t seem to know what company he worked for. Before he would answer a single question, he requested that I give him the exact URL of the host I had questions about, even though I accessed the live chat services from Netfirms.com. My guess is that Netfirms either outsources support or shares support services between companies. Whatever the cause, it made getting answers to my hosting questions difficult by live chat and telephone because I had to continually remind reps who my host was. Additionally, sales support is slow. After asking a question, it would often take five to six minutes for an answer to be given. I had a bit more luck by phone, but not much. I was continually put on hold by phone and left waiting while the sales member presumably searched for the answers to my questions. I wasn’t impressed.
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Setup
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It takes less than one minute to sign up for a new hosting account with Netfirms. Clients need only fill out a short order form and then wait for their account details to be processed. In my case, I had a welcome email from Netfirms seconds after paying. Smooth!
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Billing
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Netfirms accepts all major credit cards and PayPal. I had no issues with the billing department.
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Pricing
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The smallest shared hosting plan from Netfirms costs $4.45/month (if paying two years in advance) and offers unlimited space and bandwidth, plus five mySQL databases. Netfirms is on the cheap side of the hosting price spectrum. My only complaint is that clients must sign-up for a one or two year plan.
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Reliability
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I had but one hardware issue with Netfirms, but it turned out to be a big one. My email was less than reliable over a six month period, often going down for hours at a time, and sometimes even days. Netfirms blamed this on a bad hard drive, though it took them nearly five months to replace it. With a new hard drive in place, my email and hosting services functioned at 100%.
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Help & Support
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Netfirms gives support by live chat, email, trouble ticket system and telephone number. I was never able to get much, if any help, from live chat. Each time I tried, I was referred to the help desk or telephone. I was able to speak with support by help desk and phone, though they rarely offered solutions to problems. When having email server trouble, for example, I was told that I would not have functioning email for the rest of the day and they couldn’t be sure when they’d have time to correct the problem. As a solution, Netfirms suggested I get a free gmail account and use that. Yikes!
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Uptime
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My premium uptime monitor indicated that my website retained 98.5-99.9% uptime during a one year stay.
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Guarantee
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30-day money back guarantee.
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99.9% uptime guarantee.
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Terms of Service
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The Terms of Service for Netfirms are online. Highlights include:
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Account renewal is automatic. Customers must manually cancel at least 30 days prior to hosting contract end.
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No spam or IRC.
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File storage disallowed.
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Accounts using excessive server resources will be suspended.
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Bottom Line
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Advantages
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Free domain with all plans.
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Inexpensive.
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Money back guarantees.
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Easy-to-operate control panel (vDeck).
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Simple sign-up process.
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Disadvantages
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Support is abysmal.
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Must pay one to two years in advance.
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Limited mySQL databases on some plans.
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Hardware issues not corrected in timely fashion.
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