Q: Can I access my website without the www?

Yes. You may access your website with or without the www.

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Q: Does VGI Networks support hosting of all top level domain names?

Yes we do. However, VGI Networks will only register domains with the .com, .net, .org, .info, .us, .biz, or .name extension.

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Q: Does VGI Networks offer a money back guarantee for web hosting?

While some competitors do, we do not. Our position on this is for your protection. While that sounds odd, in reality it isn’t. We’ve found over the years that spammers like to play games with companies that offer a money-back guarantee. They will register for an account, send out massive amounts of spam, and then ask for their money back before the guarantee’s deadline. By denying one of the resources that spammers rely on, it keeps your account from suffering by the ip address and/or network domain from being blacklisted.

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Q: Does VGI Networks offer an E-Commerce web hosting solution?

Yes. Any of our plans are capable of being upgraded to support E-Commerce. You may use your own shopping cart, or you may use one of the auto-install scripts available in your cPanel, or through your Fantastico icon in your cPanel.

VGI Networks does not handle merchant accounts or processing, but we can recommend some options if you need them.

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Q: How fast is the VGI Networks network?

Our network has multiple OC-48 and higher network connection lines, with bandwidth provided by multiple Tier 1 providers. We also monitor the amount of traffic flowing through our datapipes, and limit it to roughly 50% of capacity. This helps ensure and prevent data loss and network latency.

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Q: Which payment methods do you accept?

We accept Visa and MasterCard through our standard processing provider (Authorize.net). We also accept payments through the paypal gateway, which include Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, E-Checks (Electronic Checks), and the standard paypal transfer. All transactions are encrypted, for a safe online shopping experience.

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Q: Will you place advertisements on my site?

No. VGI Networks will absolutely not place advertisements on your hosting account, like “free” hosts do. You may place your own ads on your site if you so choose to do so.

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Q: Will I have SMTP access with my hosting account?

Yes, we offer SMTP access with every account. We use SMTP authentication, so that a user must have a username/password to send mail.

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Q: Why can’t I connect to send email? I’m sure my SMTP settings are right!

This is becoming a popular option with internet service providers. In order to “combat” spam they block port 25, which is the common SMTP port. If everything else works, look under your SMTP settings (possibly under an advanced options tab/setting) and change the default port from 25 to 26. This should correct the problem. If not, you may also use your ISP’s outgoing SMTP information instead.

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Q: Can I have multiple sites with a single web hosting account?

Yes, you may host multiple sites with your account. This is limited to the main accounts resources. You will be able to host a minimum of an additional 5 domains, and more with our higher end plans.

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Q: Can I have multiple domains point to a single web hosting account?

Yes you may. However, we do not recommend this if you are seeking decent rankings in the search engines. Research has shown that most search engines frown upon multiple domains producing the exact same content, and they will usually rank your site far lower or in the worse case completely remove it from their results.

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Q: Why isn’t your account setup process instant for your hosting plans?

There are two reasons for this.

The first is that spammers have been known to purchase such an account, send out massive amounts of spam for an hour or so, and then block the full authorization of the purchase.

Second, is that our technicians personally set-up and verify each account created. At the time of creation they place the account in the optimal location within our network available at that time. This brings a human judgment into account that an auto-creation script can not account for.

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Q: What are the name servers I need to point my domain name to?

Please configure your domain to point to the following Name Servers:

  • NS.VGINETWORKS.COM
  • NS2.VGINETWORKS.COM

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Q: Does VGI Networks offer SSH access with their web hosting plans?

Typically we do not offer SSH access with our accounts. You may request SSH access, but be prepared to explain the necessity for it. Also, there will be an additional $15/month fee for this access. Please note that not all requests will be granted.

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Q: Does VGI Networks offer account statistics with their web hosting plans?

Yes. We offer several stat formats to choose from. Including AwStats, and Webalizer.

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Q: Does VGI Networks support any open-source projects or software?

Yes. We currently would be happy to assist you with installation and minor troubleshooting for Simple Machines Forum (SMF), Lunabyte Systems Portal, and WordPress. However, we will not customize them for you. If you need customization for one of these scripts, please ask for a free quote from our Web Design team.

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Q: Does VGI Networks offer toll-free support?

Yes, during our normal business hours. Please call (866) Get-VGI-Web for assistance or questions.

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Q: Why doesn’t VGI Networks offer more disk space? I saw a company offering 10G of space and unlimited bandwidth with their account for $4 a month! Are you being stingy?

No we are not. We are also not trying to deceive you, either.

It’s no secret that today’s web hosting market is extremely competitive.

In today’s market, first impression is everything. Some providers have adopted a concept that if they offer an unbelievable plan, such as 10GB of space and unlimited bandwidth for $4, that they will lure you into their plan. However, there is a catch.

They know the following statistics:

  1. They know that the average account uses only a couple hundred MB of disk space.
  2. They know that the average hosting account only uses a couple GB of bandwidth.

Knowing this, they bet on your account falling within the averages. So, they can cram a lot of accounts on a server, and feel fairly safe knowing that even though they have allotted more disk space than actually available, only 1% or so of the accounts will actually even come close to using it. In rare cases where someone does they typically find their provider recommending a different plan due to “high server resource usage”, and in some even wake up to find their account has been suspended or cancelled.

VGI Networks does not follow this principle. We allot you resources, and you’re free to use them without having to worry or take chances. If all the accounts on a particular server happen to use all of their allotted space, the server will only be 80% full. We do not over crowd our servers, and allow for additional overhead on them for things such as swap, and temporary files. Our servers never max out over 90%, and when they come close, we make adjustments to keep the server running optimally.

VGI Networks offers you realistic plans. Granted we’re in the minority on this, but we are confident in what we offer. Considering our growth over the past few years, our customers are also confident in what we offer.

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Q: I’m confused. VGI Networks claims they offer realistic plans, but why so many pop3 accounts? I’ll never use that many.

That is true, you may not. However, you would be surprised at the people who actually do use a lot of email addresses. We host sites for decent sized businesses that run their entire email structure through their account. Some have multiple accounts, with one for their web, and one for their email. Looking at this in consideration, some clients may not use 500MB of disk space either. However, it’s still there and planned for if they need it.

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Q: I’m a current client and you did an excellent job on my design project, but my hosting fee doesn’t resemble any of the one’s listed on your site. Why am I paying more?

This is most likely because when your account was created you asked for VGI Networks to manage your account. This typically applies to our business clients who do not want the hassle, or simply do not have the time to manage their own account. Management fees vary, but are typically about $40 per month, depending on the amount of attention your particular account needs. If you would prefer to manage your own account, please contact your account manager so that they can get you situated.

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Q: What is your average Network Uptime, and is there a guarantee on it?

We maintain a 99.9% uptime average, and guarantee.

For a given 30 day month, there are 43,200 minutes. Our guarantee allows for a window of 44 minutes per month, give or take a few if it is February or a month with 31 days, for maintenance on any given server.

Our Guarantee

If your website is unaccessible for more than 45 minutes during a given month, and it is not due to mandatory network upgrades, we will discount your following month of service 5%, and another 5% for each additional 30 minutes of experienced downtime. Up to you receiving the following month at no cost.

To Qualify

If your website is not accessible, submit a support ticket through your online account manager. Please give your site a minute or two, in case of server reboot. If it is unaccessible for more than 5 minutes, submit the ticket. We will start the time 5 minutes prior to your submission. So, please do not expect that if you submit a ticket and say your site has been down for three hours, that we will give you a credit. You must submit the ticket when it goes down.

Exceptions

If it has been less than 72 hours since any changes to your DNS settings, this guarantee does not apply. This is due to DNS propagation issues across the internet which are beyond our control.

If you just registered your name, changed your nameservers, added a sub-domain, etc, these all fall under the 72 hour period.

Additional exceptions to this are that if your site is available from outside our network. We will verify your site’s status through several off-network means. If it is available, then you will need to troubleshoot your internet connection. In the case of our site being publicly available, we will not count the time towards the guarantee.

This also does not include “client-induced” errors. Such as bad code, incorrect Name Server set-up, or other such introductions to your account that are not controlled by VGI Networks.

If your site is unavailable, and you have not made any DNS related changes, try having a friend visit your site, try visiting from another computer, etc. to isolate if the problem is your computer or ISP.

To be fair, we will let you know the methods we use to verify your accounts access availability.

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Q: Are there any extra programs that I can install on my hosting account?

Yes. While there are to many to mention, every account comes with scripts that can be auto-installed through cPanel and Fantastico.

Fantastico is working on being able to allow projects to build their own auto-installers, which then hosting companies may choose to offer the new script, all without having to rely on Fantastico to add them to their offering. In the future, VGI Networks may offer additional scripts on top of the ones currently available.

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