- Average user rating: 1.0 stars out of 13 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
0.5 stars
"Utterly Breathtaking in the Sheer Breadth of Suckage!"
Pros: Cheap + Brand Recognition
Cons: After a Year in Service, It Still Feels Like a Really Bad Beta Release
Summary: Yahoo Small Business as a domain registrar and host should not be dismissed lightly, but rather publicly excoriated and reviled at the top of one's lungs in the worst possible language.
If presented with the choice of registering and maintaining a domain at Yahoo! Small Business, or opening a vein, I just don't know how I'd advise you. It would depend on the day.
The domain management panel is very inefficient. Any action takes at least four (often more) latency-ridden clicks. Often, you'll need to resubmit your http request, because the server simply times out or drifts away disinterestedly. On several occasions, I have received a message to the effect that the management panel was not available at this time (please try again later) - and have it stay unavailable for days, or weeks, until I place a call to Yahoo!
For one or two domains, it's inconvenient and annoying, for hosting or registering several domains, Yahoo! is the hair-shirt of service providers. There is no multi-domain revision facility - so you get to wade through all of those latency and time-out ridden clicks, One. Domain. At. A. Time.
On Support - email and webform support is laughable. Your support request will get you an automated and only tangentially related FAQ response from the system. If you call support by telephone, count on 45 minutes of on hold time and a dial menu system that would have baffled the Minotaur, himself.
Level I support is useless. If your request goes beyond plugging your computer into the wall outlet, you'll get a ticket number and maybe, maybe - some form of response after a week or so, resolving some or most of the problem.
Transferring a domain out of Yahoo! Small Business is remarkably similar to Orpheus extracting Eurydice from Hades. Yahoo has outsourced registration to an Australian company. First you have to get the release from Yahoo, then from Down Under. Here, count on at least two weeks and lots of cajoling by email. (And if you look back before your domain is safely registered at another registrar - it returns to the Underworld, never to be seen again.)
I rate Yahoo! Small Business "1 - Abysmal", simply because "0 - Kill Me Now," is not an option.
- 1 reply to this review
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Suppose you're the proud owner of a domain hosted by Yahoo Geocities, dutifully paying your $8.95 fee per month. Suppose you switch from AT&T DSL to Comcast Cable Internet. You're paying Yahoo Geocities for hosting services, so your web site will be unaffected by the change in internet providers. Right? Wrong. Yahoo Geocities is so inept, incompetent, imbecilic, wretched in every respect, that you will lose access to your own web site, for which you are still paying, for weeks. Over six weeks in my case, and counting. At one point they lost all my files. Six weeks of being endlessly on hold, of exchanging bootless emails, of promises that my problem has been "escalated" and that resolution will occur in "two to five business days, and for what? Nada, nothing, zippo. Still can't update my own site. Lost the few readers I had. And Yahoo Geocities is so apologetic about sabotaging their own customer they've offered me a two month credit. After shutting me down for a month and a half. But that's ok. Their latest email assures me that my "issue has been forwarded to the engineering team" so I have nothing to worry about. What's six weeks of total service failure between friends? Don't all businesses operate this way?
