Frequently Asked Questions

Existing clients: Please use the Support page for all technical questions.


Account and Billing Questions
 

Answers

  • Is there a minimum time contract/commitment?
    No. You can pay monthly, quarterly, yearly or bi-annually. You can also cancel at any time and you will receive a refund for all unused service excluding the current month being used.
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  • How soon will my account be set up and ready for use?
    Your account will be set up near real time (normally within 2 hours). Your site can be uploaded to our servers immediately after receiving the welcome email, which will contain the access procedures for your domain.
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  • Do I have access to update my site 24 hours a day?
    Absolutely. Whether you're a day person or a night owl, your cPanel is available for you to work with.
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  • Can you register a domain name for me?
    Yes. We can automatically register, in your name, the domain name that you choose in the first part of the signup process, and we will renew the name each year for as long as you wish. You can also use a domain name that you already own by editing the DNS nameservers to point to our servers. The nameservers are ns.hdllc.net and ns2.hdllc.net.

    If you keep several domain names, you may be interested in our NameRocket service which provides a powerful umbrella where you can more directly and autonomously control your holdings.
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  • Can you set up domains other than .com, .org, and Net?
    We currently support the registration and hosting for .com .net .org .info .biz .us .tv .ca .co.uk and .org.uk
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  • Do you offer a money back guarantee?
    Yes. If for any reason during the first 30 days as a Hosting Direct customer you choose to cancel the new hosting package, we will refund the signup payment. Domain name registrations are not refundable, but the new domain name is in your name as your property to keep.
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  • I see some hosts offering incredible deals. Can you match their price?
    Technically speaking, there is no such thing as "unlimited bandwidth" and often the huge disk space allottment is unusable because of other restrictions in the fine print. We have carefully calculated the service which we can honestly provide for the money. And we choose to market our service in a straight forward, plain talking manner.

    If the offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You can find out the hard way, or buy from an honest outfit in the first place.
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  • Do you host Adult sites, warez, gambling or sites containing illegal material?
    No. Please see the Acceptable Use Policy for our official statement of policy.
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  • Can I send bulk mail from the server?
    That depends. We are very strict about spam email and we do cancel domains which are clearly spamming, as per the terms of the AUP. Many sites keep a member list or other legitimate mass-mailing list for various reasons. Our servers are set to allow 2000 outgoing emails per hour for each account. Our clients with larger lists often either program their mailing applications to send slowly, or simply break their larger list into smaller chunks. Be careful with your email advertising and keep it clean.
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  • Is my site backed up?
    We perform daily, weekly and monthly backups for our own technical convenience but it is ultimately YOUR responsibility to keep a current back-up of your site. The cPanel has some powerful backup tools which you should use regularly. You should frequently download the entire cPanel backup package to your own computer at home.

    Even if you are not yet our customer: Back up your website today and download it to a safe place! In the end, you alone are wholly responsible for all of your files.
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  • Where are the servers and how fast are your connections?

    We currently lease space in three commercial data centers and maintain one private server room.

    DC-1
    We have servers co-located at the FORTRESS ITX in New Jersey which runs on a dark fiber ring. Each fiber leg is capable of handling all traffic in case of a failure. Each leg can upgraded to provide transport capacities up to 320Gbps totaling 640Gbps of available transport capacity. The core consists of Dual Cisco 6509 SUP720 Routers, fully meshed to multiple aggregation switches for maximum uptime. Our multi-homed network is fueled by premium tier 1 carriers Above.net, NLayer (GlobalCrossing), coming soon are Level3 and NYIIX peering.

    DC-2
    We also have servers in our McLean Virginia data center which is known as DC-2. This data center has connectivity via the Global NAP's network which is robust and unsaturated, with a dual redundant OC-12 architecture.

    DC-3
    Many of our core resources are located at Verio's Flagship data center in Sterling, Virginia where we have leased rack space for many years. The power, climate control and routing has been impeccable.

    Our servers are monitored 7 days a week 24 hours a day by highly qualified technical resources. We have a fully automated trouble ticket and reporting system which allows our customers a view to monitor trouble progress real time.

    All of our servers are equipped with Cpanel and Web Host Manager and each has a second hard drive dedicated to nightly, weekly and monthly backups.


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  • What are your server specifications?
    Our custom web server minimum configurations are Intel based Pentium Xeon 2.8 GHz processors, 2024 gigs of RAM, dual drives and ethernet machines. These are industrial strength network appliances and they are highly reliable for a 24/7 web serving environment. We keep the domain density lower than normal to ensure excellent server response.
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  • Do you have a secure certificate that I can use?
    We do not offer "shared certificates" and do not believe that shared certs are within the realm of "best practices" for administration and security.

    You can however easily purchase a SSL secure server certificate from us that we will promptly install on your domain. We offer the lowest possible price and include the dedicated IP address necessary for a true secure domain.
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Account and Billing Questions

  • What payment methods can I use?
    We accept payments through Paypal, and credit cards including VISA, Mastercard, Discover and American Express. Understandably, some organizations need to pay once annually with a check. If you need to pay by check, please contact sales.
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  • Can I upgrade my plan or features later?
    Yes, just notify our sales group and you can purchase new or expanded features, or upgrade to a new plan. There is no set up fee for upgrading, so buy the smallest package that you need at first.
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