GreenGeeks

Overview

Our carbon footprint grows every year and there are many ways to lessen that, but have you ever thought that you could lessen your carbon footprint through your website?

GreenGeeks is a company that realizes the internet’s carbon impact on the world and has found a way to make a negative carbon footprint. To accomplish this, they purchase wind energy credits at 3 times the amount used by their servers.

GreenGeeks.com and GreenResellerWebHosting.com were established in 2006 by CEO Trey Gardner. The company has offices in Santa Monica, California with data centers in Chicago and Phoenix. They provide a full range of web services for over 300,000 websites across 150 countries offering enterprise-level service while helping to make a cleaner environment.

Usability

Services from GreenGeeks include Top Level Domain registration such as .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us, and .ca. Registering your domain is quick and easy with GreenGeeks staff providing assistance with name registration and maintenance such as renewal, parking, forwarding, and transfer. As domain is basically an add-on here, its usability as web hosting provider will be the focus.

The company offers a wide range of hosting packages and domain reseller privileges along with domain name registration. Renewing domains is one of the trickier areas of domain maintenance for which GreenGeeks has a Redemption Grace Period, a three-stage system which allows users to avoid the hassle of having domains removed inadvertently. Without having to go into detail, this three-stage domain renewal system involves an initial stage where the user is given a certain number of days to renew his domain at prevailing rates. Second stage involves the domain’s turn-over to an ICANN-managed system where a domain’s expiry is given an extension. Final stage involves the deletion of a domain that has not been successfully renewed, after which it will be available for purchase by other users.

As for web hosting usability, account management can be done in “cPanel” which is an industry-standard account management page, deployed by many web hosting companies. Having access to cPanel requires a user to have one or several domains registered, and control panel settings can be adjusted easily, including theme. One of the more appealing aspects of it is the user-friendly icons that conveniently let a user know where certain functions can be found.

Domain Privacy

Domain privacy is offered at GreenGeeks for a non-refundable $9.95 a year. This is available upon sign-up but can also be purchased after the domain name registration or transfer. For this service, GreenGeeks uses ID Protect which is a third party provider of domain privacy. This feature lets customers keep their contact details from being publicly displayed in the Whois database, which is basically a public platform from which personal information is accessed by online marketers, spammers and junk mailers. Using a service like ID Protect greatly reduces domain owners’ exposure to these entities and, consequently, from getting unsolicited snail mail and/or email. That and the obvious benefit of limiting the risk of having one’s own details posted on the internet.

When transferring a domain to GreenGeeks, it is important to note that privacy protection from the previous registrar needs to be disabled. A user who chooses to avail a domain privacy plan after having a domain registered has the option to get it at a later time by emailing GreenGeeks’ sales department, calling their hotline or clicking on live chat. There are restrictions for private registration, ie, it can only be used for certain Top Level Domains (TLDs): COM, NET, ORG, INFO, BIZ, PRO, TV, CC, ME, ASIA, CM.

Features

Other than its well-publicized green web hosting, GreenGeeks.com offers plenty more options for those looking to make their presence felt online and therefore the world through an environment-friendly hosted website.

Its basic web hosting plan is a fairly impressive package that comes with unlimited space and data transfer, free website migration, unlimited domains on a single account, and other free services including site building tools, domain name registration or transfer, and marketing and SEO tools. They also offer WordPress hosting which comes with enhanced security, account isolation, real-time security scanning, and DDoS Protection, among others.

Reseller hosting, meanwhile, is offered with a 30-day money back guarantee and in a white label hosting platform. Virtual Private Servers (VPS) at GreenGeeks, on the other hand, has a functional proprietary VPS management portal. Excellent and round-the-clock customer support, fast servers, and unlimited storage, among other benefits on offer make GreenGeeks a great choice for shared and other types of hosting.

Bulk Registrations and Management

Bulk managing your domains is a relatively uncomplicated affair at GreenGeeks. Registering a number of domains can be done through the “Bulk Register” menu under the “Manage My Domains” section: type in your list of domains, fill in the rest of the form, hit ‘Add to cart’ and the process is finished. For a site that specializes primarily in web hosting, GreenGeeks has a surprisingly efficient bulk registration and management capabilities.

All registered and transferred domains are neatly separated in tabs – My Domains, Expiring, Expired, DNS Hosted, My Folders and Search in the control panel where each domain can be managed with ease. GreenGeeksDomains.com also allows the user to download reports – Registrations, Transfers In, Expiring Domains, Business Listing Domains, Order History, etc. – which can be filtered by date and emailed.

Note that there are recent enhancements with the site’s domain registration page and as of late 2015 is transitioning into an in-house domain platform with accounts in the previous platform being migrated into the new one. Therefore, most users might encounter some issues with their account, specifically the type of account – Retail or Wholesale. For these concerns, support is readily offered.

Access Level and Delegating

While most of its features are great, a downside to using GreenGeeks is the lack of capability to delegate access to third party users. The need to provide another user with domain management rights could be a bit of an issue as only one account profile is allowed. It could be a future enhancement and may well be suggested to their support team but there is currently no such capability in the site.

Pricing and Coupons

The prominently advertised price for a hosting package is $10.26 per year which is a fair amount although not competitive enough compared to hundreds of domain registries with more aggressive low-cost pricing; prices for complete plans at GreenGeeks falls mostly within the moderate range. They offer basic hosting with free domain registration, and comes with unlimited web space and data transfer, secure IMAP/POP3 email accounts, free website migration, unlimited domains on one account, 99.9% service uptime, free site building tools, 24/7 support, and a 30-day money back guarantee.

Business listing, which increases a domain’s visibility, is at $20 a year and registration comes with several features including free domain name, reliable state drives, nightly backups, 1-click install tool, secure e-mail accounts, SSH access, Google apps integration, enhanced cPanel, and a money-back guarantee.

GreenGreeks does not offer plenty of coupons. Even if you follow their blog or social media pages, there are not enough promos to sway you to transfer your domain over to them.

Customer Service

Support in GreenGeeks’s domains and hosting services can be obtained through an international and local (US-based) hotlines, email, live chat and snail mail. In the span of a year or two, you might have some concerns on security, transfer out fees, bulk transfer, and maybe, a request for lower rate for bulk transfer. The customer representatives at GreenGeeks provide, for the most part, satisfying answers or they will direct you to a specific section in their Knowledge Base page.

What wins you over, ultimately, with GreenGeeks Support is that assistance is available at virtually all times of the day (ie, 24x7x365). Live chat in particular is often available and does not take very long to ‘pick’ up. There is a small difference, however, when making queries over the chat line and submitting an email ticket, that is, chat support personnel doesn’t always have extensive answers to some complicated issues and might take some time to escalate to a more knowledgeable support tier. In such instances, submitting a query ticket is recommended as it is likely to yield a more informed resolution.

For simple questions on hosting plans, buttons or menu functions you can’t understand, or any other product concerns, go for the live chat. If you’re tinkering with the more complex issues of shared hosting, domain transfers, Drupal hosting, and/or any similar concerns, it would be best to submit an email ticket.

Management Summary

There are several reasons to consider using GreenGeeks as domain registrar, not to mention web hosting provider, and the most compelling one must be its green approach to providing its web hosting and registration solutions. They have been given multiple awards and recognitions that include best green web hosting, top web hosting, best customer service, approved green power partner by the EPA, top VPS host, and best web host to start a web site, just to name a few. The company also does a great job of announcing their commitment to green energy-backed products and services.

While these are good enough reasons to register a domain and/or get hosted by GreenGeeks, some may find its limited functions (no access level delegation, etc.) a deal-breaker. Also, while fairly priced, those looking for low-cost domain registrars or web hosting services provider might find the pricing at GreenGeeks a bit high, therefore, unlikely to encourage domain shoppers to transfer. Added features, reliable customer service, and complete hosting and registration packages, however, make up for this and the aforementioned missing capabilities.

Ease of use, green-friendliness and an extremely competent support department are some of the qualities that make GreenGeeks a wise choice. To those who remain undecided as to which domain registrar and web hosting to choose, GreenGeeks.com’s compelling mix of quality and eco-friendliness is hard to resist.