Dot5 is one of the best priced hosting service packages available and the value seems to just keep getting better. At only $3.95/mo, Dot5 now offers 20 GB of space, 500 GB of bandwidth, the ability to host 6 sites on 1 account and a free domain name. The flexibility of this package allows customers to host personal sites, small business and even ecommerce sites all on the same package with one management login to control everything. There is no additional cost to expand from hosting just 1 site to hosting all 6 sites.

The service plan includes a free easy to use web site builder with hundreds of free templates to choose from, a complete marketing center for directory submissions and a $50 free trial for Yahoo marketing with no additional commitment. Also included are a free Search engine stats reporter, a Keyword and Meta-Tag Generator, a Website Link Checker, and unlimited databases for CGI-BIN, MySQL, and Perl and PHP support.

Your package also comes with server side includes, FrontPage 2000/2002 extensions, a guestbook, forum generator, bulletin board, chat rooms, a blogger and tons of other easy to use scripts.

Score: 8.5/10

Server Reliability

Dot5 Hosting puts their money where their mouth is regarding their 99.9% uptime assurance by providing a full 90 day money back guarantee to all of their customers. They provide live & real time 24-7-365 network and server monitoring covering everything from server reboots to real time reporting. Included with the package in a complete backup software program to ensure that in case a problem should occur, your files’ integrity are maintained until the system is brought back online.

Dot5 Hosting employs Dell and IBM servers with Dual Intel Xeon processors, 2GB of DDR-RAM, fast SCSI hard drives with RAID-1 redundancy. They also provide you with access to 7.2 Gigs of network capacity on a redundant and diverse AT&T Local Services ring.

Dot5 connections are through multiple backbone nodes (AT&T) with dual OC-48 access routers and OC192 transcontinental connectivity. Additional network service options include private line, ATM, Frame Relay, IP and local switched and circuit-switched services as your options for back-end connectivity.

The facility security services include instant battery power disruption backup as well as a 24-7 UPS backup generator, 24/7 closed circuit monitoring and a state of the art air cooling system.

Score: 9.0/10

Performance and Uptime

Dot5 has one of the best performance records in the web hosting industry and they clearly meet their 99.9% uptime service guarantee. Our monitoring of the Dot5 servers began in early 2003 and we have expanded our research to include several sites which are tested and monitored on a daily and weekly basis for performance.  The company philosophy has always been that your service record must be the most important aspect of running a web hosting business.

Score: 9.5/10

Dot5 Hosting prides itself on being one of the top rated customer service web hosts in the industry. Customer service is available by phone, chat and email 24-7-365. We’ve met quite a few of their service staff from their tier 1 support technicians to the tier 2 managers as well as their datacenter system administrators and everyone we’ve talked with has answered our questions quickly and proficiently and their hold times are almost non existent.

Score: 9.0/10

We’ve searched most major web hosting forum sites like web hosting talk & web hosting chat and the majority of the customer feedback that we receive about Dot5 Hosting is WOW! People are amazed that you can find such a great affordable web hosting service, especially our overseas visitors where web hosting can be up to 20 times more expensive for far fewer features. Dot5 is clearly not only a leader in their price to valued features but also the customer service, reliability and uptime is what makes them our editor’s choice for web hosting.

Score: 8.5/10