This month’s Hall of Shamer had no competition when being considered for entry. They are in a class of their own when it comes to bad service and failure to deliver. This merchant is INTUIT WEBSITES and MAIL BY HOMESTEAD. For a small business owner who needs a website with basic functionality, Intuit websites may seem like a good catch. They have drag and drop technology for anyone who isn’t a web designer plus they offer several add-ons like Quickbooks and such. However, the first issue is the pricing. When you pay $21/month for a website, you would expect it to be all inclusive but this is not the case. You then pay have to pay for every single extra feature outside of the hosting packet and a few email addresses. For $21, you can get a much better hosting package with more competent companies like GoDaddy or Moonfruit which INCLUDES the eCommerce feature. With INTUIT, you can expect to pay an additional $15 per month to add a shopping cart. Now, while we’re talking pricing, allow me to mention that they offer domains for about $15 for the year which is a little higher than most but not bad for an annual rate. Once you have selected a hosted package with INTUIT, you can’t just buy and apply an additional domain out-right for the $15. You must pay $2/month PLUS a $5 set-up fee. Now, if I’m correct, that means you’re paying double what they advertised. If you’re a valued customer, shouldn’t your additional services be less expensive rather than MORE expensive? It truly doesn’t make sense.
So, with each domain, you get 5 email addresses hosted through HMAIL. You can send and receive email (most of the time) and host a calendar but that is the peak of the capabilities. No template capability whatsoever. If you need more than 5, which most companies do, it’s $2 more dollars a month per address. $2 doesn’t sound like much per month but if you need 20 or more additional email accounts, you can see how it can get expensive. Worst of all, you can forget about actually using that email. It’s estimated that in a 30 month period, you will have several 2-3 day outages where you have no access to your email whatsoever. The system will tell you that your user name and password are incorrect when really, the folks at HMAIL have had to disable the accounts due to hackings or system breaches. I don’t know about you but that doesn’t make me feel like my account and information are secure! Well, if you’re okay with 30-40 minute hold times, you might be fortunate enough to speak to someone about your issue BUT all they’ll say is “our techs are working really hard to get the issue fixed but we have no ETA”. Don’t believe HMAIL could be that bad? Visit their update board at status.homestead.com.
12