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You have been connected to Megan

Megan Says: Hey Wait! We would hate to see you go without seeing what’s made us Award Winning Web Hosts, so just this once we would like to offer you a 20% discount on our unlimited hosting plan. To take advantage of this last minute offer just CLICK HERE

Megan Says: When you are ready just say “Hi” and we can get started….

You: I was wondering what the difference is between the basic and premium plans

Megan Says: Here at Just Host with our unlimited hosting plan you receive unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts and you can host unlimited domains.

Megan Says: We do also have a premium version of this you can checkout HERE,

Megan Says: For dedicated server solutions which you can customize to your own needs. Check these out CLICK HERE

You:Yes, I looked at those. However, the only difference I can see for the more expensive plan is the 3 free domains vs. the 1 free one with the basic. Is this the ONLY difference?

Megan Says: You can host unlimited domains on just one account.

You: why should I get the premium vs. the basic?

Megan Says: We have a premium package which you can view HERE, which also gives you unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth but with 2 more FREE domains!

As you can see, getting a different agent on a different day produced the same useless results. I could only see 1 difference between their basic plan and their premium plan – the number of free domain names. The basic plan offers 1 free domain per year. The premium offers 3 free – an annual savings of $10/yr/domain, so $20 savings per year over the basic account if you have 3 or more domains to host. HOWEVER, the plan COSTS $3.45/month ($41.40/year) and the premium plan costs $6.95/month ($83.40), so they are actually charging you MORE for those domains per year than if you just got the basic account and paid for the domains separately if that is the ONLY difference between those two accounts.

I couldn’t imagine justhost.com would so blatantly rip people off, so I tried to call customer service to ask about this discrepancy. I waited on hold for 5 minutes and 50 seconds and then hung up. I clicked their “chat” button, in hopes that it would route me to a different call center than the virtual agents. It seemed to route me to more specialized help where I had the following conversation with tech support, which was emailed to me in a transcript after the chat:

So, I didn’t want to waste any additional time on this hosting company. I am very disappointed that they are overcharging for their domains and then calling them “FREE”. Despite it’s great reviews, JustHost’s website and customer service were really concerning; if they can’t answer questions about their own products to win me over as a customer, how are they going to answer my technical questions if I have a problem with my website hosting? Are they going to try to pull one over on me like with their “Premium” plan?

Verdict on Justhost.com: I will not switch to JustHost.com or recommend them until their customer service improves.

…when I continue, I’ll discuss the other hosting companies I looked at…

http://www.upperhost.com
http://www.web-hosting-top.com/
http://www.top10webhosting.com/
http://www.findmyhosting.com/compare-hosting/ (very comprehensive comparison chart)
http://webhostinggeeks.com/
http://www.hostingsthatsuck.com/ (I wanted to get the alternative point of view)

After comparing from list-to-list, I really zeroed in on the companies that offer 100% money back guarantees. Since I am considering switching hosting, I don’t want to risk switching to a new company and then have it not be all that it’s cracked out to be. I want the assurance that I can back-pedal at any time. That seems like a policy held by a company with confidence!

So, I narrowed things down to:
http://JustHost.com
http://ipage.com/
http://SuperGreenHosting.com/
http://HostClear.com/

I also included http://fatcow.com on my list because they are green and I read many great reviews, despite their 30 day only guarantee.

My next priority was unlimited everything – pretty much, anyhow.  I looked for plenty of email addresses, storage space, transfer, and mysql databases.  I also looked for site statistics of some sort.  This was a standard for the most part, so I jumped to my 3rd priority: customer service.

I started with JustHost.com.  I went to their website and navigated between pages to compare plans.  When doing so, an obnoxious chat box poped up each time to entice me to puchase a plan immediately and “not leave the page” (despite me simply navigating BETWEEN pages of their site).  I figured, since I have an agent, I’ll just ask her the questions I was about to try to answer via their website.  She kept copying and pasting the same 3 discounts over and over no matter what I asked her.  She then admitted that she was a virtual agent and had no idea about their different plans.  I discontinued my chat and called their phone number to see if I received the same level of support from their phone.
…to be continued (I know, the suspense is killer!)…