Frequently Asked Questions
Q. I new to this whole hosting thing. I don't even know where to begin. Can you help me?
A. Of course! If you feel overwhelmed by the whole process, by all means contact us, give us a call, or feel free to submit a support ticket and we'll be happy to guide you through the process of getting up and running.
Q. I'm moving from another host to you. How long will my website be down? How easy is it to make the transfer? Will I lose e-mail?
A. It's fairly easy provided you take some simple steps. First, setup your account with Infuseweb. Configure the domain and all e-mail accounts as they are on your old host. This way when your domain switches over, the new site will take over. The thing that normally results in the most down time is changing your DNS information for your domain name at your registrar. When you change this information to us, it can take up to 48-72 hours to "propagate" or filter out across the Internet. So, we recommend you leave your old site up and running while you make the DNS changes so as the process happens, you won't lose any e-mail and your site won't be down. Once you are certain your domain name is resolving to our servers, you can shut down your account at your old host. We'll be glad to help you through this process if you need it.
Q. If I sign up now, how long will it take to setup my account?
A. Once you complete the signup process and your credit card payment has been confirmed, your account will become activated within 24 business hours. This is to allow for fraud review and verification. When your account is provisioned and ready to go, you will receive notification by e-mail.
Q. What payment methods do you accept?
A. We accept Discover/Novus, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. We also accept PayPal payments. We may accept payment by certified or personal check with prior arrangements .
Q. If I sign up for a web hosting plan with Infuseweb, can I upgrade to a higher shared hosting account at a later time to a higher plan?
A. Yes, this is easily possible. Just contact us requesting a plan increase and we'll adjust your plan and billing accordingly, including any proration of money.
Q. There are other hosts who I've found cheaper than you. Why are you more expensive? Will you negotiate your pricing?
A. We base our pricing according to the high level of reliability, features, and support we offer with our hosting. When comparing hosts, be sure you are comparing Windows hosting plans. Linux plans are often cheaper because software is freely available for Linux servers.
Many cheaper hosts are also fly-by-night and may charge small amounts with the end result being poor service, and poor performance. We invest heavily in a solid infrastructure, enjoy working with our customers, and are continually upgrading our systems to keep our customers happy with the latest technology.
We typically will not negotiate on pricing as our costs are already priced as low as we can without compromising service or reliability to our customers.
Q. Can I upgrade to a reseller account if I currently have a shared web hosting account? Will I be able to keep all my settings?
A. Yes, we can upgrade your shared hosting account to a reseller account if you desire. It will transfer most settings, but due to the complexity and nature of reseller account, there will still be a significant amount of configuration you will have to do to finalize the setup of your reseller account.
Q. What kind of servers do you run? What are their specs? How are they configured?
A. Our critical servers are Dell and HP servers with dual and dual quad core processors, redundant power, high speed SCSI and SATA RAID hard drives for failover protection, up to 16 GB of memory running over a Gigabit backbone. We have a large number of servers to help balance our load and mitigate downtime in the event of a server malfunction and do backups daily to provide you the best redundancy and reliability we can afford.
Q. Where is your equipment located? Do you own your own equipment?
A. Our primary servers are located in a first class Data Center in Austin, Texas, USA, owned and managed by DataFoundry. For more about this Data Center, please click here. We also have some servers located in Dallas, TX, which house various components of the Infuseweb web site, store, and off-site monitoring services. We own or lease most of our equipment.
Q. What is your uptime?
A. Our normal uptime is typically at least 99.95%, excluding any scheduled maintenance or emergency patch updates at the recommendation of Microsoft. In the event of a server failure, we are notified by our alerting system usually within 10 minutes and can respond to the issue quickly. We won't pull the wool over your eyes and promise you 100% reliability. Because Infuseweb servers are shared, reliability depends on many factors out of our control such as coding practices of customers, third party component issues, sudden heavy site traffic or attempts by malicious users to target specific sites, hardware issues, etc. We can only promise you that we will work hard at resolving critical issues as they arise and as quickly as possible.
If you are looking for the ultimate in reliability, consider one of our dedicated server plans. However, keep in mind these usually require extensive knowledge of adminstering Windows servers, so it may not be for everyone.
Q. Do you offer an uptime guarantee for shared or reseller accounts.
A. No, we do not. Due to the shared nature of our web hosting, we can never guarantee that we will reach a guaranteed uptime since there are so many variables that can cause issues on a shared server. We typically maintain greater than 99.95% uptime, but we do not back this in terms of a refund or Service Level Agreement.
Q. What are your support options/hours?
A. Infuseweb's support hours are currently from 9 AM to 7 PM Central Time Monday through Friday. Support tickets are typically responded to within 3 hours during normal business hours, and within 12-24 hours on holidays, weekends, and non-business hours. However, you will find that we are often checking and responding to support tickets quickly even outside of normal business hours. This is part of our comittment to you to provide you with great customer service. We also have a great support section with self-help tutorials, knowledgebase, and support forums that can be visited here.
Q. What are your payment options?
A. We offer several forms of payment. You can make a one-time credit card payment each time your bill comes due via the web-based HELM control panel. You can also store a credit card with us in your HELM control panel and it will automatically be charged on the due date. You can also elect to pay by PayPal if you have a PayPal account by making payment to billing@infuseweb.com. Or you can send a check to INFUSEWEB LLC, 9901 IH10 West, Suite 800, San Antonio, TX 78230. Please allow up to 7 days for check processing.
Q. What are your billing terms and cancellation policies? How do I cancel service?
A. Infuseweb automatically renews your hosting plan at the end of your initial plan signup period. In other words, if you signed up for a 3-month hosting plan, at the end of 3 months (the plan's anniverary date) you'd be automatically rebilled for the next three months, and so on until you request cancellation. If you have a credit card on file, the card will be automatically billed on the plan anniversary date and receive an invoice indicating you have paid. This is an industry standard practice.
If you fail to contact us prior to the end of your plan period to notify us in writing that you wish to cancel service with us, then later do so, your plan will renew and you will be assessed a pro-rated amount for the portion of the renewed plan used. Failure to pay any outstanding charges may result in legal action.
If you cancel part-way through your hosting contract (and you are not within your 30 day money back guarantee period) you will be refunded the remaining (prorated) portion of unused service.
If you are within your 30 day money back period, you can cancel your service using one of the methods below and we will refund the full amount of your purchase.
HOW TO CANCEL:
To cancel your hosting services with us, we MUST receive your cancellation request in writing on or before the LAST day of your plan period. You can do this via fax at (210) 568-2649 or via our contact page. If notice is not received prior to the last day of your plan period, your plan will automatically renew and you will be assessed a prorated charge for hosting services rendered up until the cancellation period. NO OTHER METHOD WILL BE ACCEPTED.
PLEASE NOTE! Once you have requested cancellation, your files will be deleted and you will be assessed a $25 charge for any files you wish to retrieve within 10 days of cancellation. After 10 days, we will no longer be able to recover any of your files. We CANNOT guarantee once you have cancelled your account with us that your files will be retrievable, so please be sure you have copied all your files to a local computer before requesting cancellation!
Q. I have a component from a third party I need to install to have my application run properly. Will you install it on your servers?
A. Our policy is not to install any custom/personal components, DLL's, or programs on our servers. This is to ensure the stability and security of our shared servers, which can host hundreds of sites on each. We will consider requests for third part components, provided they are repuatble sources, they do not conflict with our existing software, do not cost an excessive amount to purchase, and are tested.
Q. Can I allow anonymous FTP users to access my site?
A. No, we do not permit anonymous FTP access to any of our servers for security reasons. Anonymous FTP sites tend to attract hackers, illegal file sharers, pornography, and many other things harmful to our customers and our servers.
Q. Under the reseller plans, how many MS SQL databases am I allowed to create?
A. This depends on the reseller plan you are under. Please visit the reseller plan page for more information.
Q. As a reseller, can I have my own resellers?
A. No, our control panel does not support resellers of resellers. However, this may be possible in the next version of the Helm control panel software we use.
Q. Do you support any third party components such as image resizing or upload components? Will you install custom components for my application?
A. Yes, at this time we support Persits ASPJpeg and ASPUpload, ServerObjects ASPImage 2.x, Jukka Manner's CFX_Image, and ImageMagick components.
As a policy, we do not install custom components (DLL's, CFX tags, etc) unless the component is commercially proven, stable, and economically feasible.
Q. Can I install DotNetNuke on my site? If I don't know how to do it, will you help me?
A. Yes, we can support DotNetNuke installations and have numerous customers running it on their sites.
Q. Can I share my MySQL or MS SQL database across my Infuseweb-hosted web sites?
A. Yes, MySQL and MS SQL databases are housed on a separate database server, which is accessible to all your web sites. However, you cannot share Access databases across websites as these are created on the specific web server that the web site is on.
Q. I have a web site that is hosted elsewhere, but I want it to connect to my database at Infuseweb. Can I do this?
A. No, per Infuseweb's Acceptable Use Policy, we do not allow connections from non-Infuseweb hosted websites to our databases.
Q. What is your Acceptable Use and Privacy Policy?
A. The following links will take you to our policies: Acceptable Use, Privacy Policy, Copyright Policy
Q. Do you offer Microsoft Exchange services or Microsoft SharePoint?
A. No, we do not at this time.
Q. Can I access my e-mail over the web?
A.Yes, we offer an excellent webmail client free with all mail accounts, and a wireless mail as well, so you can check your e-mail from your cell phones or PDA's.