Bell Canada Domain Name Registrations – Beware
By Ian Scott
I have a client that registered a .ca domain name with Bell Canada Hosting. They are also paying for a basic website hosting package which does not give them access to MySQL databases. In order to upgrade their website, they need access to PHP and MySQL. But they don’t want to pay the fee that Bell Canada hosting wants at 21.99 a month. So they decided they wanted to switch the hosting of their website.
But they cannot manage their own domain name through Bell Canada (even though they registered it through Bell Canada) unless they upgrade to Bell Canada’s “Enhanced” hosting package according to the company’s technical support.
This in my mind is fully unacceptable. A domain name registrant should be able to manage their domain name including changing the DNS at anytime they wish, regardless of hosting plans they are paying for. Registering a domain name with Bell Canada means that you do not have full control and security of your domain name unless you pay them more.
As well, Bell Canada’s technical support team are very difficult to deal with when a dns change has been made. It took one client of mine over six months to have Bell Canada remove his domain name from their nameservers. This meant that anyone on the Bell Canada network typing in his URL went to his old website located on the Bell Canada network instead of seeing his new one at his new hosting company. Also, emails sent by Bell Canada customers did not end up going to the correct network.
If you are thinking of registering a domain name and hosting the site with Bell Canada, you should be aware of their policies and procedures which can make life difficult.
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