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Seeing as nobody ever checks this forum anyway to get feedback from the customers, I doubt they'll ever see this...
Still. It may help a few people from making the mistake of signing up.
It's got to the point now where their service just seems to be taking the p*ss in some cases.
Like when I had about 25meg worth of stuff deleted from my site, they didn't bother to contact people about it, they knew of the problem as Snuggly said he'd talked to people about it but there was no update on the service page.
It later turns out that they had uploaded an index.shtml page to the account of everyone who was affected telling them what had happened. This would be great but my index.php page didn't get deleted, so I wouldn't have seen the page uploaded. (monkey_man, could you see if you've had the page uploaded next time you log onto your site please?)
Now I phone up to change the nameservers on a domain, this is where things get stupid, they want me to fill in a form telling them the details now. I can't do it by email, even if I tell them EVERY BIT of my details including my passwords because someone may be lying, pretending to be me... I personally think it's because they can now charge me a £3.51 admin charge for doing this! It's also per domain! That's the higest admin charge for changing a couple of words I've ever known!
Other hosts do it for free, or even let you do it yourself. But, FREEola charge for this service as it's another way to get money.
Oh, you've gotta dial-up still to access your webspace and pay extra for MySQL. Really good deal there. Why don't they understand or listen to the countless number of pleas I've seen on here for them to launch a new service. I'm pretty sure that if they were to charge £100 to let people access their space all the time from any connection and keep the unlimited deals, plus add the MySQL into it, they'd get far more than they currently do.
OneandOne.co.uk do hosting, for £8.99 a month you get:
1 GB Web space
300 Email accounts
10,000 MB/month traffic
25 sub domains
MySQL databases
£100 a year from Freeola would be £8.33 a month and would easily beat that, apart from the subdomains. There are other things like log files which could be included too to attract people to the service but as far as webspace and bandwidth goes, this package will easily beat some of the other paid for packages...
Maybe they could introduce other cheaper paid for packages?
As for the deal with Freeola broadband, they've got something good there at least...
Still, they need to carry out some MAJOR changes with their service to attract more customers. Being cheaper and attracting more customers will benefit them far far more than just increasing their prices to force all the existing customers into debt...
Still. It may help a few people from making the mistake of signing up.
It's got to the point now where their service just seems to be taking the p*ss in some cases.
Like when I had about 25meg worth of stuff deleted from my site, they didn't bother to contact people about it, they knew of the problem as Snuggly said he'd talked to people about it but there was no update on the service page.
It later turns out that they had uploaded an index.shtml page to the account of everyone who was affected telling them what had happened. This would be great but my index.php page didn't get deleted, so I wouldn't have seen the page uploaded. (monkey_man, could you see if you've had the page uploaded next time you log onto your site please?)
Now I phone up to change the nameservers on a domain, this is where things get stupid, they want me to fill in a form telling them the details now. I can't do it by email, even if I tell them EVERY BIT of my details including my passwords because someone may be lying, pretending to be me... I personally think it's because they can now charge me a £3.51 admin charge for doing this! It's also per domain! That's the higest admin charge for changing a couple of words I've ever known!
Other hosts do it for free, or even let you do it yourself. But, FREEola charge for this service as it's another way to get money.
Oh, you've gotta dial-up still to access your webspace and pay extra for MySQL. Really good deal there. Why don't they understand or listen to the countless number of pleas I've seen on here for them to launch a new service. I'm pretty sure that if they were to charge £100 to let people access their space all the time from any connection and keep the unlimited deals, plus add the MySQL into it, they'd get far more than they currently do.
OneandOne.co.uk do hosting, for £8.99 a month you get:
1 GB Web space
300 Email accounts
10,000 MB/month traffic
25 sub domains
MySQL databases
£100 a year from Freeola would be £8.33 a month and would easily beat that, apart from the subdomains. There are other things like log files which could be included too to attract people to the service but as far as webspace and bandwidth goes, this package will easily beat some of the other paid for packages...
Maybe they could introduce other cheaper paid for packages?
As for the deal with Freeola broadband, they've got something good there at least...
Still, they need to carry out some MAJOR changes with their service to attract more customers. Being cheaper and attracting more customers will benefit them far far more than just increasing their prices to force all the existing customers into debt...
Page:
Freeola are not a hosting company. They are an ISP who happen to offer better services to their dialup customers than most. BT Internet for example give about 15mb of plain ol' web space, no domains, no PHP etc.
If you want better hosting you should go to a web host. Virtually no ISP will let you upload from an external connection. Freeola is no different.
As for faxing or posting forms - you have to sign them to make it legal. That's the point in not doing it over the phone!
If you want better hosting you should go to a web host. Virtually no ISP will let you upload from an external connection. Freeola is no different.
As for faxing or posting forms - you have to sign them to make it legal. That's the point in not doing it over the phone!
Is he a staffie in disguise ?
I remember about 3 years ago when Freeola didn't charge to transfer domains, they suddenly introduced the charge overnight, surely any names bought before this day you should be able to transfer FOC.
I remember about 3 years ago when Freeola didn't charge to transfer domains, they suddenly introduced the charge overnight, surely any names bought before this day you should be able to transfer FOC.
Phi11ip,
We are here on regular occasion checking these forums and I'm sure I've replied to you in the past on other matters.
I'm genuinely sorry if you feel that Freeola offers you bad value. For the majority of customers who want to buy a domain and then not pay any hosting charges, I personally feel that a cost of around £20 for the domain and two years hosting is really quite reasonable.
There is massive choice in the domain hosting market, so I recommend you exercise your rights as a consumer and choose a package more suited to your needs.
At the end of the day, Freeola is a business with staff and infrastructure that need to be paid for. Sorry folks but that's the harsh reality.
Danny Corder
Freeola Manager
We are here on regular occasion checking these forums and I'm sure I've replied to you in the past on other matters.
I'm genuinely sorry if you feel that Freeola offers you bad value. For the majority of customers who want to buy a domain and then not pay any hosting charges, I personally feel that a cost of around £20 for the domain and two years hosting is really quite reasonable.
There is massive choice in the domain hosting market, so I recommend you exercise your rights as a consumer and choose a package more suited to your needs.
At the end of the day, Freeola is a business with staff and infrastructure that need to be paid for. Sorry folks but that's the harsh reality.
Danny Corder
Freeola Manager
Your service would be excellent if we didn't have to use the Freeola dial up, but that's going to change so we'll have to call it quits.
And before you mention Freeola BB, you charge
512K - £26.99
1 Mbit - £49.99
NTL prices: 600k £24.99, with free activation and 1 free month
or 1 Mbit £34.99, again with free activation and 1 free month
So if a new customer signed up for 1 Mbit a month for a year they would save over £250 by going with NTL, not a small difference is it ?
And before you mention Freeola BB, you charge
512K - £26.99
1 Mbit - £49.99
NTL prices: 600k £24.99, with free activation and 1 free month
or 1 Mbit £34.99, again with free activation and 1 free month
So if a new customer signed up for 1 Mbit a month for a year they would save over £250 by going with NTL, not a small difference is it ?
phi11ip wrote:
> Seeing as nobody ever checks this forum anyway to get feedback from
> the customers, I doubt they'll ever see this...
We do check the forums - though not very often outside of work hours. We do have real lives too you know.
> Still. It may help a few people from making the mistake of signing
> up.
>
> It's got to the point now where their service just seems to be taking
> the p*ss in some cases.
Please don't use filtered words with *'s in them, or any other character for that matter.
> Like when I had about 25meg worth of stuff deleted from my site, they
> didn't bother to contact people about it, they knew of the problem as
> Snuggly said he'd talked to people about it but there was no update
> on the service page.
We didn't contact everyone because we didn't know who was affected. There was a message on the status page at the time, and on our phone system too.
> It later turns out that they had uploaded an index.shtml page to the
> account of everyone who was affected telling them what had happened.
> This would be great but my index.php page didn't get deleted, so I
> wouldn't have seen the page uploaded. (monkey_man, could you see if
> you've had the page uploaded next time you log onto your site
> please?)
For sites affected, everything in the web space was lost - so if your index.php file didn't go, then perhaps you were affected by a different, unique problem. The idea was that the index.shtml page would only appear until the user replaced their index.php / index.html file, as .shtml is last in the hierarchy.
> Now I phone up to change the nameservers on a domain, this is where
> things get stupid, they want me to fill in a form telling them the
> details now. I can't do it by email, even if I tell them EVERY BIT of
> my details including my passwords because someone may be lying,
> pretending to be me... I personally think it's because they can now
> charge me a £3.51 admin charge for doing this! It's also per
> domain! That's the higest admin charge for changing a couple of words
> I've ever known!
We need a signature to do a full transfer, which you can't give via e-mail or phone. The admin charge is very small and perfectly reasonable in my opinion - we do have to employ someone to do the change, which costs us money - that cost must be passed on to the end user. FYI, it's not as simple as "changing a couple of words".
> Other hosts do it for free, or even let you do it yourself. But,
> FREEola charge for this service as it's another way to get money.
If we let customers do it themselves, most of them would muck it up and complain that we let them muck it up.
> Oh, you've gotta dial-up still to access your webspace and pay extra
> for MySQL. Really good deal there. Why don't they understand or
> listen to the countless number of pleas I've seen on here for them to
> launch a new service. I'm pretty sure that if they were to charge
> £100 to let people access their space all the time from any
> connection and keep the unlimited deals, plus add the MySQL into it,
> they'd get far more than they currently do.
Name me a single host that provides free MySQL. Of course we charge extra for it, MySQL is a very resource intesive service to provide, which costs a lot of money for us to implement. If we didn't charge for it, how would we cover that cost?
Most people don't want MySQL, which is why we don't make it a compulsary part of a "£100 per year" deal. Most people would think they were paying for something they weren't using.
We do let you access your web space all the time - and it's now unlimited even from a Freeola ADSL connection. If we opened up to any connection, it would take no time for broadband users to make it into a dump site, generate masses of traffic and consume lots of web space. AFAIK, we are still looking in to offering this at a fee, however, but no dates or anything at the moment.
> OneandOne.co.uk do hosting, for £8.99 a month you get:
> 1 GB Web space
> 300 Email accounts
> 10,000 MB/month traffic
> 25 sub domains
> MySQL databases
- We offer unlimited web space
- We offer unlimited e-mail accounts
- We don't explicitly restrict web traffic, only make sure no single account causes "excess traffic or load" to any servers.
- I see little need for sub-domains, but if you really want them, then there is no harm in setting the domain's DNS up elsewhere and pointing it at your Freeola web space.
- So do we, and pretty cheaply at that.
> £100 a year from Freeola would be £8.33 a month and would
> easily beat that, apart from the subdomains. There are other things
> like log files which could be included too to attract people to the
> service but as far as webspace and bandwidth goes, this package will
> easily beat some of the other paid for packages...
>
> Maybe they could introduce other cheaper paid for packages?
>
> As for the deal with Freeola broadband, they've got something good
> there at least...
>
> Still, they need to carry out some MAJOR changes with their service
> to attract more customers. Being cheaper and attracting more
> customers will benefit them far far more than just increasing their
> prices to force all the existing customers into debt...
We are constantly working to improve the service we offer, but changes take time and can not be implemented overnight. IMO, there are very few ISP's out there that offer the same level of service as we do at the same price. But as Danny says, if Freeola isn't for you, then feel free to chose any one of the thousands of other hosts. It's a free country.
> Seeing as nobody ever checks this forum anyway to get feedback from
> the customers, I doubt they'll ever see this...
We do check the forums - though not very often outside of work hours. We do have real lives too you know.
> Still. It may help a few people from making the mistake of signing
> up.
>
> It's got to the point now where their service just seems to be taking
> the p*ss in some cases.
Please don't use filtered words with *'s in them, or any other character for that matter.
> Like when I had about 25meg worth of stuff deleted from my site, they
> didn't bother to contact people about it, they knew of the problem as
> Snuggly said he'd talked to people about it but there was no update
> on the service page.
We didn't contact everyone because we didn't know who was affected. There was a message on the status page at the time, and on our phone system too.
> It later turns out that they had uploaded an index.shtml page to the
> account of everyone who was affected telling them what had happened.
> This would be great but my index.php page didn't get deleted, so I
> wouldn't have seen the page uploaded. (monkey_man, could you see if
> you've had the page uploaded next time you log onto your site
> please?)
For sites affected, everything in the web space was lost - so if your index.php file didn't go, then perhaps you were affected by a different, unique problem. The idea was that the index.shtml page would only appear until the user replaced their index.php / index.html file, as .shtml is last in the hierarchy.
> Now I phone up to change the nameservers on a domain, this is where
> things get stupid, they want me to fill in a form telling them the
> details now. I can't do it by email, even if I tell them EVERY BIT of
> my details including my passwords because someone may be lying,
> pretending to be me... I personally think it's because they can now
> charge me a £3.51 admin charge for doing this! It's also per
> domain! That's the higest admin charge for changing a couple of words
> I've ever known!
We need a signature to do a full transfer, which you can't give via e-mail or phone. The admin charge is very small and perfectly reasonable in my opinion - we do have to employ someone to do the change, which costs us money - that cost must be passed on to the end user. FYI, it's not as simple as "changing a couple of words".
> Other hosts do it for free, or even let you do it yourself. But,
> FREEola charge for this service as it's another way to get money.
If we let customers do it themselves, most of them would muck it up and complain that we let them muck it up.
> Oh, you've gotta dial-up still to access your webspace and pay extra
> for MySQL. Really good deal there. Why don't they understand or
> listen to the countless number of pleas I've seen on here for them to
> launch a new service. I'm pretty sure that if they were to charge
> £100 to let people access their space all the time from any
> connection and keep the unlimited deals, plus add the MySQL into it,
> they'd get far more than they currently do.
Name me a single host that provides free MySQL. Of course we charge extra for it, MySQL is a very resource intesive service to provide, which costs a lot of money for us to implement. If we didn't charge for it, how would we cover that cost?
Most people don't want MySQL, which is why we don't make it a compulsary part of a "£100 per year" deal. Most people would think they were paying for something they weren't using.
We do let you access your web space all the time - and it's now unlimited even from a Freeola ADSL connection. If we opened up to any connection, it would take no time for broadband users to make it into a dump site, generate masses of traffic and consume lots of web space. AFAIK, we are still looking in to offering this at a fee, however, but no dates or anything at the moment.
> OneandOne.co.uk do hosting, for £8.99 a month you get:
> 1 GB Web space
> 300 Email accounts
> 10,000 MB/month traffic
> 25 sub domains
> MySQL databases
- We offer unlimited web space
- We offer unlimited e-mail accounts
- We don't explicitly restrict web traffic, only make sure no single account causes "excess traffic or load" to any servers.
- I see little need for sub-domains, but if you really want them, then there is no harm in setting the domain's DNS up elsewhere and pointing it at your Freeola web space.
- So do we, and pretty cheaply at that.
> £100 a year from Freeola would be £8.33 a month and would
> easily beat that, apart from the subdomains. There are other things
> like log files which could be included too to attract people to the
> service but as far as webspace and bandwidth goes, this package will
> easily beat some of the other paid for packages...
>
> Maybe they could introduce other cheaper paid for packages?
>
> As for the deal with Freeola broadband, they've got something good
> there at least...
>
> Still, they need to carry out some MAJOR changes with their service
> to attract more customers. Being cheaper and attracting more
> customers will benefit them far far more than just increasing their
> prices to force all the existing customers into debt...
We are constantly working to improve the service we offer, but changes take time and can not be implemented overnight. IMO, there are very few ISP's out there that offer the same level of service as we do at the same price. But as Danny says, if Freeola isn't for you, then feel free to chose any one of the thousands of other hosts. It's a free country.
CaNdYfLo$$ wrote:
> If we let customers do it themselves, most of them would muck it up
> and complain that we let them muck it up.
I think that alone sums up the amount of respect you have for your customers.
> If we let customers do it themselves, most of them would muck it up
> and complain that we let them muck it up.
I think that alone sums up the amount of respect you have for your customers.
Well put
Tom wrote:
> CaNdYfLo$$ wrote:
> If we let customers do it themselves, most of them would muck it up
> and complain that we let them muck it up.
>
> I think that alone sums up the amount of respect you have for your
> customers.
Touche!
> CaNdYfLo$$ wrote:
> If we let customers do it themselves, most of them would muck it up
> and complain that we let them muck it up.
>
> I think that alone sums up the amount of respect you have for your
> customers.
Touche!
phi11ip wrote:
> Like when I had about 25meg worth of stuff deleted from my site, they
> didn't bother to contact people about it, they knew of the problem as
> Snuggly said he'd talked to people about it but there was no update
> on the service page.
Admittedly, not contacting your customers and informing them of their site being deleted isn’t good at all. I wasn’t one who was affected by the problem, so can’t comment to any hig level, but would certainly find it down hearting if my host didn’t bother telling me. Placing an index page on the customers site saying “We are a host who has lost your web site” doesn’t look to good to visitors of that site, who would quite easily decide not to come back. A simple customer notification E-mail would have been expected, would you have to agree?? After all, not all people update or view their web site for weeks at a time, so how are they to know?
Not backing-up customer sites isn’t really expected when you’re not a dedicated web host though. Although it would be nice, no doubt it would cost too much to be profitable.
> Other hosts do it for free, or even let you do it yourself. But,
> FREEola charge for this service as it's another way to get money.
No doubt you are talking about 123reg?? What you may not know is they are not a single company, but a subsidy of Web Fusion, one of the largest UK hosting companies to date ... who are in turn a subsidy of Host Europe, one of the largest hosting companies in Europe. They can offer really cheap domains and domain tools because they have the power and financial backing to do so (as well as it being its core business). Freeola maybe big, but I don't think they could compete with that, especially as they are really an ISP with Web Hosting/E-mail additions (or so gives the impression).
> Oh, you've gotta dial-up still to access your webspace and pay extra
> for MySQL. Really good deal there.
Well, actually it is quite a good deal. You don't have to have the MySQL if you don't want, and what you get is a Database with no set limit to how much information you can store. While it may not be the cheapest, £3 a month isn't really asking all that much when you consider how useful MySQL can be. Still not forgetting the unlimited web space. I'm happy with what I'm getting through my Freeola account. It doesn't cost me the world and gives some great features which I use.
Just remember they are an ISP, Internet Service Provider, so their offerings will be hard to match dedicated hosting companies. But then, what they offer now is certainly good enough for me, and for many of their customers it seems (otherwise they'd have gone out of business a long time ago). If you can find a better host, go for it, but you can't expect them to alter their services because a couple of people don't like it compared to hundreds who do.
> Like when I had about 25meg worth of stuff deleted from my site, they
> didn't bother to contact people about it, they knew of the problem as
> Snuggly said he'd talked to people about it but there was no update
> on the service page.
Admittedly, not contacting your customers and informing them of their site being deleted isn’t good at all. I wasn’t one who was affected by the problem, so can’t comment to any hig level, but would certainly find it down hearting if my host didn’t bother telling me. Placing an index page on the customers site saying “We are a host who has lost your web site” doesn’t look to good to visitors of that site, who would quite easily decide not to come back. A simple customer notification E-mail would have been expected, would you have to agree?? After all, not all people update or view their web site for weeks at a time, so how are they to know?
Not backing-up customer sites isn’t really expected when you’re not a dedicated web host though. Although it would be nice, no doubt it would cost too much to be profitable.
> Other hosts do it for free, or even let you do it yourself. But,
> FREEola charge for this service as it's another way to get money.
No doubt you are talking about 123reg?? What you may not know is they are not a single company, but a subsidy of Web Fusion, one of the largest UK hosting companies to date ... who are in turn a subsidy of Host Europe, one of the largest hosting companies in Europe. They can offer really cheap domains and domain tools because they have the power and financial backing to do so (as well as it being its core business). Freeola maybe big, but I don't think they could compete with that, especially as they are really an ISP with Web Hosting/E-mail additions (or so gives the impression).
> Oh, you've gotta dial-up still to access your webspace and pay extra
> for MySQL. Really good deal there.
Well, actually it is quite a good deal. You don't have to have the MySQL if you don't want, and what you get is a Database with no set limit to how much information you can store. While it may not be the cheapest, £3 a month isn't really asking all that much when you consider how useful MySQL can be. Still not forgetting the unlimited web space. I'm happy with what I'm getting through my Freeola account. It doesn't cost me the world and gives some great features which I use.
Just remember they are an ISP, Internet Service Provider, so their offerings will be hard to match dedicated hosting companies. But then, what they offer now is certainly good enough for me, and for many of their customers it seems (otherwise they'd have gone out of business a long time ago). If you can find a better host, go for it, but you can't expect them to alter their services because a couple of people don't like it compared to hundreds who do.
Tom wrote:
> CaNdYfLo$$ wrote:
> If we let customers do it themselves, most of them would muck it up
> and complain that we let them muck it up.
>
> I think that alone sums up the amount of respect you have for your
> customers.
As someone who used to work in Freeola Support, I am merely speaking the truth. Some people would be fine with it, but the majority would not.
> CaNdYfLo$$ wrote:
> If we let customers do it themselves, most of them would muck it up
> and complain that we let them muck it up.
>
> I think that alone sums up the amount of respect you have for your
> customers.
As someone who used to work in Freeola Support, I am merely speaking the truth. Some people would be fine with it, but the majority would not.
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