CrystalTech Review, Web Hosting Review, Domain Tip, Register a Domain - Godaddy Review

CrystalTech makes us happy, We have used 9 or 10 different hosting companies over the last 8 years - CrystalTech is the best hosting company that we can imagine. CrystalTech has the highest referral rate of any hosting company and best reviews by bloggers and other web journalists.  Our experience with Crystal Tech reflects why. Godaddy Hosting Review

We've moved our sites to CrystalTech. an American hosting company, with American Employees. This CrystalTech review reflects our opinions and experiences and is not a technical review of CrystalTech's features and options - Read this Crystal Tech review first and please visit CrystalTech.com for technical information

(Switching hosts or considering a host for a new domain?  If this review is helpful, please use prorganize.com as the referral site if you decide to use CrystalTech.)  Also see our Domain registration length of time recommendations below. 

We are impassioned by CrystalTech because of its excellent service, low prices. We believe that your experiences will be the same.  If they are not, we would like to hear about it

info at prorganize.com

Our registrar of choice is Godaddy - see our short Godaddy review on this page

Also mentioned - a Network Solutions Review - NSI Review

Also, tips to consider when choosing a registrar and how to register a domain

CrystalTech is an American Hosting Company

Godaddy  is an American Registrar .  See our review of Godaddy Hosting

 Our superb experience with CrystalTech makes us not need to use anyone else when we need comprehensive features (statistics, full service email

We are not selling anything here.

We only take time to write reviews when we find exceptional value, exceptional service

Or when we feel short changed, cheated, taken advantage of, or feel ripped off.  This review is our opinion or a reflection of our experiences.

 

New to managing a Website? We recommend CrystalTech hosting if you are a beginner.  The features are complete and best for the novice to learn

Things we like about CrystalTech

• We review Crystal Tech because service, support, web space and plan options are industry leading, and very competitive.

• Each site includes Full Features (full web statistics, full email service, etc) without any 'add-on' costs

• The price is excellent for Crystaltech's great level of hosting support and superior service.  Hosting plans start at just $5.95 a month. Free setup and 3 months free with a some prepaid 12 month plan. (We do not recommend registering your domain name with any hosting company, including CrystalTech.  Please see the remarks below about choosing a registrar and / or registering your domain name)

• We have NEVER had an extended, sustained or unresolved problem with CrystalTech!

• The control panel and Webmail are easy to understand and use.

• The CrystalTech control panel requires an  account number to log on - but the account number is short

• Account site and billing management allows for up to 5 email addresses, i.e., we get notification from CrystalTech about issues at all 5 email addresses

• CrystalTech webmail (web mail) is accessed simply by "mail.yourdomain.com"

• Web statistics are thorough.  And have recently gotten even better.  CrystalTech's traffic tools are extensive and easy to access.

• There are no additional charges for web statistics in CrystalTech's service plans

• Calls to the CrystalTech support get a system engineer rather than a help desk or call center associate.

• Turn around for problems is immediate or we are told how long the resolution will take.  If there is an issue we always get the response we expect within the time promised.

• CrystalTech is an American Hosting Company with American Employees.  We always get live technical support 24/7/365.

• We have never had to deal with extended hold times, off shore technical support, unintelligible accents, poor English or ineptness.

• CrystalTech manages our expectations well.  Crystal Tech sends emails regarding problems that occurred (even though we do not know they happened) so we can analyze the impact on our sites and to our customers

• Spam filtering is great- control panels, a knowledge base, and help screens make it easy

• CrystalTech virus filtering is great for email accounts

• Free Shopping Cart and site builders in many plans

• We started by hosting 7 sites at CrystalTech (when one of our other hosts failed us). We are hosting 29 sites with Crystal Tech as of February 2007.

• CrystalTech supports Microsoft FrontPage and Microsoft SharePoint, Dream Weaver, Macromedia ColdFusion and other web standards.  Our goal here is to document our experiences, see the CrystalTech Website for full hosting features, hosting plan specifications and specific prices.

• We've never found or incurred hidden or unexpected charges with Crystal Tech.

• Discounts up to 30% are offered by CrystalTech when multiple sites are hosted under one account

• CrystalTech hosting offers 50% discounts to not-for-profit organizations on one hosted site.

• Account log-on ? FrontPage access requires a user name only to logon - i.e., it can be something simple like "yourdomain".  You can change the name on the control panel

• Other hosting companies have turned off our sites because we have missed emails about our need to change credit card numbers or expiration dates.  CrystalTech has the best policies of any hosting company that we have used, for notifying and giving time to update billing information

• Our sites are RELIABLE with CrystalTech.  Others seem to be saying the same - in our time with CrystalTech, the total sites hosted by CrystalTech has increased from less than 40,000 to over 100,000.

• Even with its growth, Crystal Tech is not a mega company - ever try to get a complicated billing or service issue resolved at a company that is really big?

• We used to complain that control panel email problem reporting page was not secure but Crystal Tech changed because of customer recommendations.  Just another reason why we think CrystalTech is a great host and a great company.

• Crystal Tech has an automated 'ticket management' system for reporting problems.  The actual technician response time on 'tickets' is usually under two hours

• When it has been necessary to call CrystalTech's technical support, the hold time has usually been under 5 minutes.

• CrystalTech is our favorite host

• Let us count the ways - Crystal Tech makes us happy - Crystal Tech has its act together

• When we need full service hosting we use CrystalTech.

• We recommend CrystalTech hosting if you are new at being a webmaster.  Everything is included and managing the account, site, email and statistics are the best and simplest we've experienced

Things we don't like about CrystalTech

• FTP space is limited - we've had to create sites with Godaddy when we need FTP space greater then 5 gigabytes

• Plan offerings were reduced and prices were increased by CrystalTech in October 2008.

• Because some of our sites are basic and minimally or non-revenue producing, we've had to move them to GoDaddy hosting (see review) to continue to support them

If this review helps you, and you choose to sign up with CrystalTech, we would appreciate your entering prorganize.com as the referral site when you register.  It costs you nothing.  You'll get a great hosting company with exceptional service at a great price and we'll get a couple of bucks off our bill .

Still not sure?  Call CrystalTech Technical Support at 1-877-323-HOST (1-877-323-4678) and ask questions before you sign up.  The call will likely convince you. (We highly recommend you call tech support of any new host before you sign up - you will get a sample of the support you are likely to receive when you are a customer). If you do not find a convenient tech support number on the hosts home page - do not consider them.
 

And a note on your bill:  Do not over-subscribe to CrystalTech or whatever host you choose.  We have one Crystal Tech Front Page site with over 1500 pages: 1200 full size photo pages, text pages, a  registration form and several short movies.  The site has an average of almost 5000 visitors a month.  The site space used and bandwidth used is less than two thirds of the maximum permitted on Crystal Tech's $5.95 per month shared personal plan. 

Just starting a site? We recommend beginning with the economy hosting plan  - you can upgrade hosting plans when you need more space, more bandwidth, or more features. FYI, this site is on Crystaltech's $5.95 per month plan. 

But just so you know, we also use Crystaltech's other, more expensive plans; our clients use Crystaltech's SharePoint hosting plans, Crystaltech's ASP hosting plans and others. 

Domain Registration Hints

* Domain Registration and recommendations:

We recommend that you do not register your domain name with your hosting company.  The hosting company is usually a reseller (3rd party affiliate) for some other Domain Registrar.  Godaddy

You may not know which registrar is being used until it is time to make some changes. (recommendation: find out how much your domain name renewal will cost if you do choose a free first year from your hosting company). CrystalTech

If and when you change hosting companies, you will have to first get freed of the registration relationship with the host you are canceling. Also, you might decide not to keep your site up on the web - if you cancel your hosting you will need to know what will happen to your (registered by your host) domain name registration - having a hosting company independent of a registrar will eliminate this issue. In our case of leaving Purehost (see our hosting review page), and with the difficult time reaching customer service, it was a chore to get it done.  The initial free one year site registration was not worth the price.  CrystalTech Godaddy

Our first domain hosting company / registrar, back in 1999, was Mindspring. We moved to Dellhost and had trouble moving our site.  Then, when Dell sold their hosting business to Purehost, we found that the actual registrar (wholesaler) was Network Solutions (NSI.com).  In order to eliminate our Purehost problem, Purehost first had to change our registration from a wholesale account (aka: third party) to a retail account at NSI.

Domain Registrar recommendations (a short review of Godaddy and a short Network Solutions Review):

Before you register your domain name and choose any domain name registrar or hosting company, confirm that they offer 24 / 7 telephone support.  Some registrars do not.  In fact, some registrars do not have telephone support at all.  Two of our clients used such a registrar and it took weeks to get changes made.

Network Solutions is a reliable registrar and has very good 24 / 7 technical support.   NSI is expensive however.  Network Solution's current one year name registration rate is about $35, with discounts for longer terms ($15 a year for each year of a 9 or 10 year registration).

Our favorite registrar is Godaddy.com.  The price for a one year .com site is $10 per year - sometimes less when sales are in effect - discounts are given for long term registrations.  Godaddy, too, offers very good
24 / 7 support. 

Like CrystalTech too, Godaddy is an American company with support by technicians in the USA, 24/7. (Calls to Network Solutions (NSI), off hours, are apparently serviced by off-shore support people with sometimes difficult to understand accents and limited English and language skills).

Our domain name registrar recommendation is Godaddy.com.

Godaddy expanded their facilities and employment in Arizona in April 2005   What else can we say?  This Godaddy Review recommends them as our registrar of choice.  Even though support calls to Godaddy are not toll free and hold times are a little longer than Network Solution's -  Godaddy is right. 

How many sites are registered at GoDaddy by us?  90 - our new registrations go with Godaddy.

As with CrystalTech, we recommend you call to ask questions of any registrar before you sign up. If you do not find a convenient telephone tech support number on the registrar's home page - do not consider them - if you cannot call them be assured that you will likely not get timely support if you have a problem.

We review Godaddy Hosting for specific and limited needs because of your requests but our service from CrystalTech is so superb!

(helpful heads up - remember to keep your host and registrar email address contacts current - we cancelled our Mindspring hosting account before we changed our Network Solution account registrar email address - it was a pain to get changed)

Recommended length of time to register your domain and other domain name recommendations:

Don't delay registering your domain.  Many thousands of site names are registered every day.  If your domain name choice is available today, it may not be tomorrow.  If you think you will EVER use a domain name, register it now. Not planning a web site? Register the domain name anyway, just to protect your business name.  Godaddy

We recommend that you register your domain name for a minimum of 5 years - 10 years is better - you will usually get the best discount for the greater time periods.  You will own the site name - no one else can use it even if you do not create the site now or ever.  Godaddy is our best registrar recommendation but don't be concerned about Godaddy or any other registrar you might choose - you can move your domain name to another registrar and not lose the money / time paid for.  It is the law. Crystal Tech

We also recommend that you register domain name in variations if you can afford them - if you plan to use dot com - register .net, .org, .biz, .info and others to protect your name from web poachers, spammers and scammers.  You can easily point the extra domains to your primary / active site.

Serious about your business web site? Personal web site name? Using it in the future?  Registering name variations will protect the site name - as simple examples, if your business site domain is healthproducts, a protective registration might be something like healthyproducts, or if you site is davidsweb, a protective site name might be davesweb

DO NOT LET YOUR WEB SITE REGISTRATION EXPIRE:

Expired Domain or is the domain registration expiring soon? Beware - if you let your registration pass its expiration date, an "after market" company will likely register your domain name to try to sell it at a premium price to you or someone else.  We have 50 clients and it happened to one of them. The domain was registered by an aftermarket company and it was lost by our clients.  The registration was offered to the original owner at a very high price.  The clients only other choice was expensive legal action, and that choice and cost was complicated because the aftermarket domain registration company was in another country.

If your domain name choice is available today, register it today!  Tomorrow it may be gone.  This too has happened to us.  And once again - we recommend Godaddy as registrar and recommend CrystalTech as host!

Once again - please remember to use prorganize.com as the referring site if this CrystalTech review is helpful

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Last updated: 03/27/2009