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Why are your prices so low?  Sequoia Data aims to give our customers all of the features that they need, and none of the features that they do not need. Other hosting providers typically give you more than what you require - like hundreds of megabytes of space (most sites use only a few megabytes), huge amounts of bandwidth and other unnecessary and expensive features. Our plans have been optimized based on several years of requests by our customers, as well as volume commitments to our partners. We maintain modest but adequate office space to further reduce our costs, which translates to additional savings for our customers. Some irresponsible and/or inexperienced hosting providers will load a server with up to 1,000 or more sites. This is typically done to maximize profit for a given server or, in some cases, to lower the monthly fee so the offering appears very attractive. However, all domains suffer response and download time issues as the loads increase. Sequoia Data does not do this! Our servers hold a responsible load of between 8 and 250 sites, depending on the resources needed by the domains hosted on them. Special software monitors loads and can help identify domains to be moved to other servers to balance the loads placed on any given server. If a hosted site consumes excess resources on a shared server, the customer will be asked to move the site to a dedicated server as stated in Sequoia Data's Terms of Service. Sequoia Data maintains flexibility when billing its customers. While some plans require specific minimum billing periods, most allow your choice of monthly, quarterly or annual billing. Annual and quarterly billing not only helps to reduce our costs, which helps us maintain lower prices for our customers, but is actually requested and preferred by a majority of our customers. For our business clients, it reduces their costs as well. You may or may not know what it costs a company in hard and soft dollars to receive, process and pay an invoice. Many people do not understand the complexities involved and typically estimate the cost to be between $5.00 and $25.00 per invoice. Reliable industry studies have determined the actual costs to be between $35.00 and $125.00, depending on industry. ................................................................................................................... Do your prices include the cost of registering or transferring a domain name? No, they do not. The domain name registration or transfer charges are separate. If you don't already have a domain name to use, would like to extend your current registration period, or transfer your domain and gain access to advanced features, please visit MY995.COM. ................................................................................................................... Do you offer domain name registration or renewals? Yes. Sequoia Data offers domain name registration at very aggressive prices. We can also handle domain transfers or renewals. Please visit MY995.COM for complete details. Please be sure to review the extensive list of features included in the price of each domain name registered or transferred using MY995.COM. Others may be slightly less expensive, but they can't compare with our overall value. Please don't cheat yourself over a buck or two. ................................................................................................................... Do you host adult sites / chat servers / IRC clients or bots? No. From the beginning, technical concerns about maintaining the quality of service for our entire customer base led us to establish a strict policy against adult-oriented sites, chat servers and IRC clients or bots. This policy also covers anything illegal or unethical. For complete information, please read our Terms of Service. Please note that you will not be in violation of our Terms of Service if you install and use any chat software included with your hosting plan. Such software, if included in your plan, can be installed via your Control Panel. ................................................................................................................... Why don't you offer unlimited POP3 accounts, disk storage space, etc.? The short answer: Because there is no such thing. Any provider who offers "unlimited bandwidth" or "unlimited POP3 accounts" either has no concern for the performance of their network and servers, or is misleading their customers. The long answer: There are two examples we hope will illustrate to you the absurdity of an 'unlimited' offer. The first is hotmail.com. If what hotmail.com claims is true, then everybody could start their own free mail service on their servers for a relatively low annual cost. After all, they promise unlimited traffic and space and mailboxes. Microsoft wouldn't have to spend millions of dollars per year on their servers, they could just use hotmail.com for all their email! We all know that is not about to happen. The second example assumes you begin hosting with someone that offers unlimited disk space and POP3 accounts for, say, $19.95 per month. Tell them you need 50 GB of space because you have 100,000 email users and a vast amount of archived material to be stored. Don't expect a reply, but if you get one, you'll see they don't define "unlimited" the same way most people do. In reality, if a provider offers "unlimited" anything, there is a catch somewhere. Most such hosting providers stipulate that "unlimited" means "up to any reasonable level"! That simply means that they can tell you anytime that you're using too much, and charge you excessively for it! Ask them for their terms and conditions, and if they STILL insist that you can have as much space and bandwidth as you like, let us know as we would like to start using their servers! At Sequoia Data, we prefer to be honest with our customers. We do not overload our network or servers with any accounts that have "unlimited" bandwidth. Eventually all of our customers would suffer from this irresponsible policy. Things that are "unlimited" or have "no limit" at Sequoia Data, like email forwarding or aliasing for example, still have SOME limitations due to storage space or other considerations. ................................................................................................................... What happens if my bandwidth exceeds my monthly allowance? If you exceed the monthly traffic or bandwidth allotment, congratulations may be in order. In any case, you have a very busy site! You may monitor your usage by logging into your control panel. If your traffic exceeds the allowance for your particular plan, overage fees may apply. Please refer to your plan features and/or confirmation email, or our Terms and Conditions of Service for details. ................................................................................................................... Do you charge a setup fee for your hosting plans? Sequoia Data has never charged our customers for the privilege of doing business with them. This applies to all hosting plans, including our reseller plan, with the single exception being our personal plan. A decision was made to charge a setup fee on the personal plan to cover our costs; this plan does not allow us to earn a profit, but is an outstanding value due to the included features for those customers that cannot afford or truly do not need a bigger plan. If you honestly feel like you're paying too little, throw something extra in when you pay your invoice. Just kidding! ................................................................................................................... How can I pay for my account or services? Sequoia Data chose PayPal to handle most of our transactions. Using PayPal allows customers to pay using VISA, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, a checking or savings account, or PayPal balance (this was highly requested by our customers). We personally tested PayPal for well over a year before making this decision. It truly is a painless process. Haven't yet joined the 20,000,000+ members of the PayPal community? Get $5.00 just for signing up! If you prefer to pay via snail mail, we will gladly accept your business or personal checks, and money orders. We do not recommend sending cash. If you pay via check, please allow sufficient clearance time if paying for domain registrations. Depending on where bank is located, this typically takes 5 to 14 days. We rely on our bank to provide this information. IMPORTANT NOTE: All credit card billing is processed through our parent entity, SDS International, using the email address paypal@sdsinternational.com. Sequoia Data is a division of SDS International. If you suspect your credit card or bank account has been used for unauthorized activity, please contact PayPal immediately to initiate an investigation. IN ANY CASE, PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR CREDIT CARD OR BANK ACCOUNT INFORMATION IN ANY EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE WITH SEQUOIA DATA OR SDS INTERNATIONAL. ................................................................................................................... How do I access the control panel for my account? In your browser's address bar, type http://www.yourdomainname.com:2082. You will be required to enter the user name and password supplied when you signed up. ................................................................................................................... Can I get a discount for hosting multiple sites? We may be able to offer you discounts for hosting multiple domains with Sequoia Data. Please send your detailed requirements, along with any information on current or proposed pricing from any competitor, to our sales staff via our contact page. ................................................................................................................... What is disk or storage space? Disk or storage space is the amount of hard disk drive space that you have to store your Web site content, other files stored on your server and incoming email on your server. All plans include the amount of space indicated and can usually be expanded at a future time. ................................................................................................................... What is a POP3 mail account? Emails to your domain are delivered to a POP3 email account (or mailbox) which comes standard with every package. The number of POP3 accounts included with your account depends on the plan chosen. You can review the number of accounts by referring to the features of your account, or by logging in via your control panel. You can access this mailbox with many different email clients including Eudora, Outlook, Outlook Express and any other POP3-compliant email client. All of our plans feature the ability to check and send mail from any computer with Internet access. To use this feature simply enter www.mydomain.com/up into your browser's address bar. If you have not previously used this feature, then you must complete a brief, one-time registration. You will then be able to immediately access your mail. If you use another Web-based email service, such as Hotmail, you will be able to check your POP3 account on our server via that service. ................................................................................................................... Do I need more than one POP3 mail account? That depends. If you have a small or personal site, one POP3 account account might be enough. If you have a business, one POP3 account would probably not be enough. Here at Sequoia Data it wouldn't do us (or you) any good to have your technical support questions go to our billing department, so they each have their own POP3 account and are checked by different members of our team. Each POP3 account is configured via your control panel with a unique user name, and password. ................................................................................................................... What is a "catch all" email account, and will I have one? Yes. This can be used like any other POP3 account, or configured via your control panel to forward or reject any email message not addressed to a specific valid email address on your server. ................................................................................................................... What is an email alias, or aliasing? An email alias differs from a POP3 address or account in a number of ways. First and most important is the fact that an alias does not "hold" mail like a POP3 account, nor can email be retrieved from an alias. Let's assume you have only one POP3 account, but want to have several email addresses. This is what email aliasing is designed to facilitate. Assume your POP3 account is bill@mydomain.com. However, Bill would like for people to think that he has a business. A rather large business. He advertises that folks can contact his "company" by sending mail to sales@mydomain.com, support@mydomain.com, steve@mydomain.com, jessica@mydomain.com, etc. Every one of these addresses is called an alias. Anything sent to them will be immediately forwarded to bill@mydomain.com. Consider the analogy to renting a P.O. box at your local post office. Let's say you rent box number 305. This is the only physical mailbox at which you receive mail, but mail addressed to anybody or anything, P.O Box 305, City, ST, Zip will be delivered to your box. Everything after the name in this address is equivalent to the portion of the email address after the "@". No matter what you write above "P.O. Box 305", it gets delivered to box 305. No matter what is put in front of the "@", it will be delivered to bill@mydomain.com. ................................................................................................................... What is a subdomain? The anatomy of a domain name is as follows: The top-level domain (TLD), the second-level domain (SLD), the subdomain, etc. For example domains.sequoiadata.com, where COM is the top-level domain, SEQUOIADATA is the second-level domain, DOMAINS is the subdomain. ................................................................................................................... I forgot or lost my account or control panel password. How can I retrieve it? While we encourage you to retain and safeguard your login information, we understand that passwords are lost or forgotten from time to time. Unfortunately Sequoia Data does not maintain a list of passwords outside of our servers for security purposes. We will, however, assist you after the receipt of a completed Password Recovery form. Once your identity has been verified, an administrator will retrieve your password and send it to you via the method specified on the Password Recovery form. There will be a $25.00 fee charged to your account for each request to retrieve your password that we receive. ................................................................................................................... I forgot or lost my email password. How can I retrieve it? Simply login via your control panel and navigate to the Mail Manager. From there, select the POP3 account you want to modify and type in a new password. Saved changes take effect immediately. ................................................................................................................... Why do I have to provide a valid and current email address to you? We require that you maintain a valid and accurate email in our records at all times. We refer to this as "your email address of record." This email address will be used for billing notices, urgent notices regarding your account or service, and other similar communications. Please refer to our Privacy Policy if you are concerned about how we use your email address. If you fail to maintain a valid email address on file with us, and we cannot reach you via any other method, your account may be subject to suspension or termination without notice depending on the circumstances. PLEASE KEEP ALL CONTACT INFORMATION CURRENT AND ACCURATE. |
