Three Reasons I am Leaving Network Solutions

1. They Can’t Answer My Questions

I tried reaching out for help twice now and have been let down both times. Once on Twitter on July 20th and once to NetSol’s Tech Support phone line (Service Request # 1-410445817). Nobody responded on Twitter and the info I got from the tech support was wrong!

Here is my situation:

1. I attempted to use my site’s .htaccess file to redirect some “old” pages to new pages (about 15 in total) when launching my site redesign.
2. The old pages have a .php extension. The new pages are all in WordPress.
3. The standard .htaccess 301 redirect syntax wasn’t working or isn’t supported on Network Solutions hosting:

Redirect 301 /search-marketing-services.php http://www.yoursearchadvisor.com/services/

4. I had to fall back to using PHP redirects within the “old” .php files themselves, which is suboptimal for SEO. .htaccess redirects for .html files work fine.

2. Tech Support Gives Out Wrong Information

I called NetSol tech support with the details mentioned above and was told the following via email:

“The only ones which do not work are the ones where the page you are rewriting does not exist.  When you use the “Redirect 301″ command, Apache checks to make sure the page is there first before it does the rewrite, so if the page is not there, such as resources.php, you will get a 404 error instead. If you use RewriteRule instead, the original page does not have to exist.”

This is not true! I tried the redirects with .html extensions instead and it worked, even without the “old” .html file in the server directory. They are confusing mod rewrites with redirects. I was given this information several times.

Eventually my requests for explanation were elevated to a very nice lady in the “Executive Office”. She seemed genuinely willing to help, but after several phone calls and emails they still were not able to understand that .html files redirected properly while .php files do not and that that mod rewrites are not the same thing as a redirect.

3. They Make Up Silly Names for Things

I had already made up my mind to switch to DreamHost (site transitions in the works) but then I get this message when I logged back in to NetSol to make some DNS changes:

Seriously? What’s wrong with calling a domain name a “domain name”? And I no longer have a web site, I now have an “nsBusinessSpace”?

It’s bad enough that Network Solutions is selling half-assed fixed price SEO packages to unsuspecting small business owners (another post for another time), but they continue to prove that they don’t get it. Sorry NetSol. Your tech support and Twitter people are nice folks and seem eager to help. The fact that nobody can answer my questions AND you insist on trying to trademark silly names for commodities has brought us to this. Goodbye.

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