I have been trying to sign-up with the Dotster Instant Reseller Program for the last 24 hours and the page appears to be down. I hope they didn't take it down to implement the $150 setup fee.

There whole system is down. Not just the signup

Originally posted by netsolutions
There whole system is down. Not just the signup

I have been trying them for 48 hrs. no luck. Emailed them several times -no response.

Kinda amazing...then they want you to have confidence enough to do business with them. For myself... all it takes is an email to say we're down, been down...you know just so we can think that they are at least in touch with the real world and alive.

It's back up ... try again everyone.

It's not the first time. They were down for a day or so some weeks ago as well. Maybe one should look for alternatives

I've had quite a few problems with Dotster's IR system. They also take ages to forward payments!

Quite frankly, for what they charge ($12/year/domain), you'd expect something which actually works.

I have always heard good things about Dotster so it's disheartening to experience the down time and lack of response from Dotster.

I was considering going with OpenSRS but I have a question for hosts that prepay for domains and then resells them.

Have you ever had chargeback fraud on a prepurchased domain and were stuck with the domain for a few years? Common sense tells me it's unlikely for someone to use a stolen credit card to register a domain (especially if it's one that's unique or valuable).

Take Care

I hope I am not breaking the rules by providing an insider's perspective, on a few of the issues that have been brought up. I will do this as frankly as possible.

As noted, there has been occasional instablility on the Instant Reseller on 1 or 2 fronts: 1st, as mentioned on this thread, there is the IR management site, ir.dotster.com, where the sign up occurs, and where you log in to manage your the IR.

The 2nd is from the user side, where someone logs into your IR site and registers a domain.

Preventive steps are being taken. The interface was originally in ASP, and we have been migrating to PHP for the very purpose of increasing stablility, but a few problems have occurred.

The end user interface has been quite stable for some time. There have been problems with the VeriSign Registry, and the new TLD registries which caused domains checks to time out.

Earlier in the year, we did experience difficulty with Oracle that caused problems on the user interface. We settled out of court with them, and that problem has been resolved.

First off, it's great to hear "from the source". :)

Just a few questions;

1. Why was I able to register new TLDs with Joker.com, when they were timing out with Dotster?

2. Will you offer PHP scripts which your resellers can integrate into their own web sites?

3. Do you currently have any plans to reduce the per-domain charge? $12 is IMHO a bit high, especially with with companies like GoDaddy and Stargate offering domain registration for $8.85.

I've also sent you a PM.

Oops--forgot one thing--about payments: IR transactions are posted to our Oracle database. We just converted our accounting software to Great Plains latest version, and one goal in this upgrade was to automate the IR check/statement process. The IR growth has been exponential. We now have 1000's of resellers signed up. Problem is, we have been having a heck of a time importing the Oracle sales results into the accounting software--incompatibilities with fields and a bunch of other problems with data that I don't fully understand. But, the net result is that for the last couple of months, we have had to manually reconcile all of the transactions, charge-backs, etc. in order to send out correct statements and amounts to the resellers, and it is a monumental chore. For this reason, we have been behind schedule, and it looks like the problem may continue for another month or so.

Now, if *I* were a reseller, and *I* wasn't getting paid, the first thing I would want to know is if Dotster is financially sound. I can assure you that this is the case. In fact, we are doing very well. We are cash-flow positive, profitable and debt free, something not too many registrars can say today. We've no outside venture capital. Even in this difficult economy, we are doing far better than last year, and are pretty proud of ourselves! So, I would ask that you bear with us, and we will get this straightened out.

I want to thank you who have put up with some of these difficulties--I know how frustrating it can be. I do believe the corner is turned on these issues, but I would appreciate any feedback to the contrary.

Thanks!

...to avara's questions:

1. "Why was I able to register new TLDs with Joker.com..."
**We were returning results together, i.e, the program waited for all results to return before posting domain availability--sort of an all-or-nothing process. If the registries were all functioning right, there would have been no problem. We changed the program eventually. Re: VeriSign, a problem a while back existed due to "access throttling" software they put in that was not recognizing our disconnect after a process completed. They would cut us off because it appeared we had too many connections open.

2. "Will you offer PHP scripts..."
**Hmmm. Not sure, but we are working on an updated API that will allow integration into your sign up process, etc. I should say that I am not technical, so I don't want to mis-speak. It should be ready in about 60 days.

3. "Do you currently have any plans to reduce the per-domain charge...like GoDaddy and Stargate..."

**I can't speak to all differences, but we are providing customer support and paying credit card processing fees. If you provide the support link, or, depending on volume, we can certainly discuss price.

It's good to see someone from dotster is on this board! I do agree that the $12 is a little high.

2. "Will you offer PHP scripts..."
**Hmmm. Not sure, but we are working on an updated API that will allow integration into your sign up process, etc. I should say that I am not technical, so I don't want to mis-speak. It should be ready in about 60 days.


Not technical sounds about right.. I called and got your voice mail today which dated back to Nov 17th

Hey, let's not get personal (blush). My recording of a temporary greeting must not have "taken", i.e., in haste I hit the wrong button and an old greeting went in instead. Gee, not only not technical, but not perfect too! Being human has its downside...

(But thanks for letting me know...)

Well anyhow i just ran into this at the wrong time
I just wanted to sign up and whatnot.. But the form
had submit form errors on the java script check..

I suppose the easy way out for you guys was to hack up the form so it didnt work while you were having troubles and out of the office..

But with no knowledge of any problems that left me here wondering what was going on. So then I decided to write my own signup form, Which i did, and thats how I got my account created. :)

Then only to find out none of the example sites were displaying results, and nothing worked.....I was really wondering what kinda crap solution or this was even a service still in operation.

Word to the wise.. Say your having technical difficulties!
You'd be surprised how easy that is, and how fast you can get an answer as we know what your problem most likely is.

I notice you are having major session problems.. From what I see
it's just fast script work with no experience from who did your scripts. You need someone who has massive session experience dealing in your software enviroment. I not into asp and that junk And I am sorry you are.. But find someone who is expert in session work and works DAILY on session control in large critical operation enviroments should go over this.