Free .ie domain with 2 years free hosting

snappieT

Very simple - free .ie domain with a 20GB hosting package (4TB monthly bandwidth) for 2 years, from OVH, a huge French hosting company who have set up shop in Ireland.

Click to avail: http://www.ovh.ie/shared_hosting/shared_web_hosting_starter_20gb_traffic_4tb.xml

testicle

Good offer, but there's a catch...

Editing the DNS and changing DNS zones (fields Cname, A. ..) are not available

Basq

FYI..

This was posted last week, but had to be locked as the person who posted it was affiliated with the company, and we all know that's not the spirit of Bargain Alerts.

I'm happy to leave it here providing it stays user-driven and no commercial interaction from OVH takes place without consent from myself or the other Bargain Alerts moderators.

My own opinion - I can wholeheartedly recommend this superb office from OVH though as I signed up on it a week back, and am currently running my Cirriculum Vitae site. The only negative for me is the OVH Manager isn't great (would have preferred CPanel), and I don't need an e-mail to my e-mail account telling me I've logged every time I sign onto the OVH Manager.

Frank Spencer

testicle wrote: »

Good offer, but there's a catch...

Right lads enlighten me as to what the implications of this is in simple terms.

sherdydan

i tried to sign up to this, helping to design a site for a small local business, but it just would not let me go through with the process, asking me for passports and stuff, not a clue what is goin on.

Basq

Frank Spencer wrote: »

Right lads enlighten me as to what the implications of this is in simple terms.

You won't be able to change the hosting provider of your website after 2 years... it'll need to stay with OVH.

sherdydan wrote: »

i tried to sign up to this, helping to design a site for a small local business, but it just would not let me go through with the process, asking me for passports and stuff, not a clue what is goin on.

I don't think you would have been able to use a business name. As far as I know, they were only offering free personal domain names (e.g <firstname><surname>.ie> etc).

As for the passport, this is the norm.. they need to validate your identity for a .ie domain.

sherdydan

yes, but the name of the business, is a persons name, she is trading under her own name. bah, confusement!

Basq

sherdydan wrote: »

yes, but the name of the business, is a persons name, she is trading under her own name. bah, confusement!

That would have been fine so I reckon.

But the passport check is normal.. I wouldn't worry about that. I scanned my passport, but blurred out my signature and the strip along the bottom.

sherdydan

well i put myself down as admin and all the rest so that it would be me being contacted with any issues about anything techy. but i put her name as the owner, so i assume i am going to need to send them a scan of her passport?

Basq

sherdydan wrote: »

but i put her name as the owner, so i assume i am going to need to send them a scan of her passport?

Yep, I'd be pretty sure of that.

sherdydan

thanks a million for the help... i may just give them a ring lol

Ricky91t

Excellent, Verified and uploaded my three bill to their site, All went very smoothly no catches so far!

mwrf

What a deal! Thanks OP.

lmimmfn

ahh no matter what( my name, made up names ) i put into the domain name it gives error 1, stupid thing

chazlan

So this can't be used to set up a website with a business name!? Anywhere else cheap to do this?

markyboy

lmimmfn wrote: »

ahh no matter what( my name, made up names ) i put into the domain name it gives error 1, stupid thing

Same here

dlofnep

Keep getting an error when I sign up. Meh. "Error 1". Tried loads of different domain names.

peckerhead

Me too.

basquille wrote: »

...currently running my Cirriculum Vitae site.

Pssst, Brian — Curriculum Vitae?

loopymum

Signed up today, where did you guys upload your ID(passport, etc) on their website, it's not very clear or can I just email a pic of it?

Thanks

Basq

peckerhead wrote: »

Pssst, Brian — Curriculum Vitae?

Ha.. thanks for that!

Did a site for my girlfriend's CV and didn't mispell it there!

loopymum wrote: »

Signed up today, where did you guys upload your ID(passport, etc) on their website, it's not very clear or can I just email a pic of it?

Thanks

You should have gotten an e-mail from them with the following subject line - " Subject: OVH : Creation of the domain name <domain name here>, documents required" - with should contain a link to their manager / control panel to upload the ID.

dlofnep

Is this working for anyone else right now? I still can't get it working

loopymum

Thanks Basquille, just uploading a pic of the passport now.

That is sufficient isn't it? I don't need anything else before I validate it?

Basq

loopymum wrote: »

That is sufficient isn't it? I don't need anything else before I validate it?

Nope, that should be sufficient. Might be Monday or Tuesday before you hear back from them though.

loopymum

Thanks again Basquille!

Can you recommend any software to do my the webpage, it's for a business but don't need anything fancy, just somewhere to advertise our special offers etc.

Basq

loopymum wrote: »

Thanks again Basquille!

Can you recommend any software to do my the webpage, it's for a business but don't need anything fancy, just somewhere to advertise our special offers etc.

There's no real software that I know of persé... besides the obvious (and often ugly) tools like Dreamweaver.

I'm a big fan of Wordpress.. I use it on practically everything, but it's not for everyone.

Look in your local free ads newspaper.. you'll probably find businesses / students-in-need-of-beer-money who will throw together a very basic decent website for under €100 nowadays.

jay-me

basquille wrote: »

There's no real software that I know of persé... besides the obvious (and often ugly) tools like Dreamweaver.

I'm a big fan of Wordpress.. I use it on practically everything, but it's not for everyone.

Look in your local free ads newspaper.. you'll probably find businesses / students-in-need-of-beer-money who will throw together a very basic decent website for under €100 nowadays.

There are loads of free templates you can use too. Also coffee cup is good as is expression web.

Ricky91t

It's not giving "error 1" anymore

MunsterCycling

Where are these guys hosting from, as in which data centre?

Further investigation leads me to believe they are hosting out of Paris

MunsterCycling

basquille wrote: »

You won't be able to change the hosting provider of your website after 2 years... it'll need to stay with OVH.

>SNIP

Is that legal?

dlofnep

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Is that legal?

You accept it as part of the terms & conditions. So yes,

kazzer

basquille wrote: »

You won't be able to change the hosting provider of your website after 2 years... it'll need to stay with OVH.

Is that during the 2 years or after the 2 years? Surely you can change when the 2 years is up?

Oracle

basquille wrote: »

There's no real software that I know of persé... besides the obvious (and often ugly) tools like Dreamweaver....
I'm a big fan of Wordpress.. I use it on practically everything, but it's not for everyone...

I agree, Wordpress is great. There's also the WYSIWYG web page creator Kompozer (formerly Nvu). It's good for creating simple web sites, or just a few pages, with text and images. It's free software licensed under the GPL.

To publish a document "as is" directly on the internet, OpenOffice has a web publishing wizard built in. To use it, open OpenOffice Writer, and go to File - Wizards - Web Page.

Cr8or

I just tried to register a domain with these guys. Their ordering process is a joke!! I'm a sole trader with an RBN and they don't seem to have that option. In the end I filled in company with my rbn in the vat field.

They made me verify my mobile number via sms and then a second verification via voice call. I couldn't for the life of me get this second voice verification to work. Seems like stupid verification system!

Sorry guys .. its a great offer but this company doesn't seem to have a clue about how the IEDR application process works.

Basq

Cr8or wrote: »

I just tried to register a domain with these guys. Their ordering process is a joke!! I'm a sole trader with an RBN and they don't seem to have that option. In the end I filled in company with my rbn in the vat field.

They made me verify my mobile number via sms and then a second verification via voice call. I couldn't for the life of me get this second voice verification to work. Seems like stupid verification system!

Sorry guys .. its a great offer but this company doesn't seem to have a clue about how the IEDR application process works.

That process was painless for me anyways..

Got their SMS fine, and then the voice call was simply entering the code on your phone keypad when prompted.

Sorted!

BaconZombie

It is that you can't change is during the 2 year contract then it's legal, if they hold onto the domain after the two years then it's not legal.

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Is that legal?

You can't sign away a legal right. Just because a company puts something in the T&C / usage agreement / etc does not make it legally binding...

dlofnep wrote: »

You accept it as part of the terms & conditions. So yes,

kazzer wrote: »

Is that during the 2 years or after the 2 years? Surely you can change when the 2 years is up?

Saruman

Frank Spencer wrote: »

Right lads enlighten me as to what the implications of this is in simple terms.

I would also imagine that changing MX records falls under DNS changes which makes it useless for a company with an exchange server.
Also no A record changes mean no reverse DNS capability even if you can change the MX records.

Grand for a sole trader but no good for a medium to large business.

MunsterCycling

Right I'll give this a miss so, selling a pig in a poke tbh

Oracle

Their regular domain prices seem reasonable, €5.99 for a .com is good: http://www.ovh.ie/domains/ Plus looks like you can hide your registration details, with their privacy feature for free, most other domain resellers, including GoDaddy, charge for that: http://www.ovh.ie/domains/owo_service.xml

Ricky91t

I don't get why everyone is complaining about this, A company is giving away a free domain and some very good hosting for free, Digiweb, blacknight or any else havn't done this, So why are people complaining?

Oracle

Ricky91t wrote: »

I don't get why everyone is complaining about this, A company is giving away a free domain and some very good hosting for free, Digiweb, blacknight or any else havn't done this, So why are people complaining?

Yeah well said, welcome to Bargain Alerts, where some people look for the faults with every bargain.

peckerhead

Oracle wrote: »

...looks like you can hide your registration details, with their privacy feature for free, most other domain resellers, including GoDaddy, charge for that: http://www.ovh.ie/domains/owo_service.xml

Not with .ie domains, apparently...

The free OwO service (OVH Whois Obfuscator) enables you to hide your personal whois information for all domain names ending with .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .mobi, .tv, .cc and .me .

Sniff.

smackyB

Which documents does it require? I have to upload a document to prove my legal name but what's the "other document evidence" about?

Oracle

peckerhead wrote: »

Not with .ie domains, apparently...
Sniff.

... not sure about that PeckerHead. There's a option to activate this service in the control panel, not 100% sure though, as my .ie hasn't been processed yet. Maybe Basquille could confirm?

Ricky91t

Oracle wrote: »

Yeah well said, welcome to Bargain Alerts, where some people look for the faults with every bargain.

I've been here a long time, And never noticed that... Mustn't read enough of the replies :pac:

Basq

I also don't know why people are getting a tad bent out of shape..

.. you're getting a free domain .ie name with 2 years hosting. It wasn't meant for a small or medium business.

It's a cracking offer.. even for the webspace alone. You're also getting up to 10 databases and up to 100 e-mail addresses. Blacknight's cheapest package only include 3 databases AFAIK.

Oracle wrote: »

... not sure about that PeckerHead. There's a option to activate this service in the control panel, not 100% sure though, as my .ie hasn't been processed yet. Maybe Basquille could confirm?

There is a 'Hide Whois' option but don't think it's available for .ie domains. But to be honest.. if you're getting a personal .ie domain, who registered the domain might be fairly obvious from the web address. Valid person domain names formats for .ie include the following:

Johnsmith.ie [first name / surname]
Johnpaulsmith.ie [first name / middlename / surname]
John-smith.ie [first name / - / surname]
John-paul-smith.ie [first name / - / middlename / - / surname]
Johnpsmith.ie [first name / middle initial / surname]
John-p-smith.ie [first name / - / middle initial / - / surname]
Jsmith.ie [first initial / surname]
Jpsmith.ie [first initial / middle initial / surname]
Jp-smith.ie [first initial / middle initial / - / surname]
J-smith.ie [first initial / - / surname]
J-p-smith.ie [first initial / - / middle initial / - / surname]
Paulsmith.ie [middlename / surname]
Paul-smith.ie [middlename / - / surname]
Psmith.ie [middle initial / surname]
P-smith.ie [middle initial / - / surname]

Oracle

Whether it includes the free privacy feature or not, I think its a great offer. It's clear it's more suitable for personal, small business/sole trader and non-commercial use. That doesn't make it any less of a bargain.

peckerhead

Like I said...

peckerhead wrote: »

Sniff.

Thanks for the heads up, Basquille.

Looks like I'll finally be able to change my sig! :pac:

mneylon

basquille wrote: »

Blacknight's cheapest package only include 3 databases AFAIK.

That's not correct
Our entry level plan gives you 30 of each type of DB available, so you could have 30 MySQL4, 30 MySQL 5, 30 MS SQL and 30 PostGres on the same plan

basquille wrote: »

There is a 'Hide Whois' option but don't think it's available for .ie domains. But to be honest..

The IEDR whois only shows the name of the registrant and the type of registration, so no address, email or telephone number is visible regardless of whether the registrant is a private individual or a limited company

Oracle

Thanks yeah, but do you offer 2 years free hosting and a free .ie domain? :rolleyes:

mneylon

Oracle wrote: »

Thanks yeah, but do you offer 2 years free hosting and a free .ie domain? :rolleyes:

Obviously not - no.

However if you do register a domain with us you can update the dns etc., as per the IEDR's registrar contract

Saruman

Ricky91t wrote: »

I don't get why everyone is complaining about this, A company is giving away a free domain and some very good hosting for free, Digiweb, blacknight or any else havn't done this, So why are people complaining?

I am not sure that people are complaining as such, I know I certainly was not.
People were clarifying the limitations of the free service.

As an offer it is brilliant, as long as you do not fall in to the danger of registering your precious new .ie company name only to find you can't use your shiny new exchange server or set up A records pointing to your server for remote purposes etc.

As long as people are careful and it is useful to them then as an offer it can't be beat but a certain amount of warning is warranted considering once you use it, you are stuck with it for 2 years.