13861 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
Herndon, VA 20171
1-800-361-5712 (Sales)
1-866-391-4357 (Support)
Network Solutions is one of the pioneers in the domain industry. Known as the original domain registrar, Network Solutions has also branched out into the world of web hosting in recent years. Network Solutions offers shared Unix and Windows web hosting, virtual private servers, Wordpress hosting, and SharePoint services.
Review
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Sales
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Sales questions are handled by telephone. I rang Network Solutions to learn more about their basic shared web hosting packages and ended waiting on-hold for nearly 45-minutes for an operator. Once connected to an actual person, I found the sales reps at Network Solutions to be helpful, though I was put on-hold four times during a brief ten minute exchange. Not a great first impression.
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Setup
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Signing up for an account with Network Solutions can be done online by filling out a simple form. An invoice and welcome letter is sent within seconds of payment and account setup takes place the same day. Smooth!
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Billing
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Network Solutions accepts PayPal and all major credit cards, and billing questions can be asked within a customer control panel or telephone. I had only positive experiences with the billing team.
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Pricing
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Network Solutions has a wide array of packages to choose from, including three shared web hosting plans. Paying at least one year in advance nets the biggest savings, plus earns a free domain name. Those who pay month-to-month will shell out $12.95/month for 300 gigabytes of space and unlimited bandwidth, and need to fork over domain name registration costs.
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Reliability
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My Network Solutions server was reliable during a one year stay. My one issue, which involved an email server on the blink, was resolved within twelve hours of my reporting it.
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Help & Support
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Network Solutions gives customers support by phone or through the control panel. Phone wait times are embarrassingly long—sometimes topping out at over an hour---and basic support by control panel takes anywhere from 24-48 hours. Aside from the lengthy response times, I got the feeling that the support team didn’t always know what they were doing. When reporting an unresponsive domain, I was told on one occasion that the cause was that my database was overloading the server. The problem with that was that I didn’t have any databases. When I told the support rep this, my connection immediately went dead. Disappointing!
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Uptime
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My premium uptime monitor indicated that Network Solutions logged a 97-99.8% uptime record. There were a few outages here and there, though none lasting longer than 30-minutes.
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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 Network Solutions are online. Highlights include:
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Copyrighted material may not be used without permission.
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Spam is strictly forbidden.
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Mirroring download files and file storage not allowed.
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Bottom Line
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Advantages
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Free domain with some plans.
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Wide variety of plans and services to choose from.
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Money back guarantee.
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Disadvantages
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Pitiful customer service.
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Website load speed times were reported as slow on numerous occasions.
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Wait time to reach support or sales by phone is lengthy.
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Phone support reps not always helpful.
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