Like basically every other review in here, my problem pattern is the same. Every year site goes down, I stop receiving emails. In the beginning I didnt realize this, and I had customers writing to me on my social medias to tell me their emails dont get through and my website not working. This has happened since the beginning with them and they have never fixed the problems.

I contact Bludomain, and they said my domain expired because I didnt pay my fee. But, I never get a payment request (never, during the years I have been with them) So they send one, I pay it, and the next year it all happens all over again. Same story. At some point I learn that the hosting expires in March every year. Though, Im not sure about the date. They dont tell me. So it's impossible to find out.

So last year I try to be proactive and reach out to them early in the year. They take a long time to respond - then I tell them I dont want to host with them again, and ask them to release my domain.
They say that my domain expired 2 days ago, so you have to pay the fee for this year. I again say HOW can I pay the fee on time, when they never send a $#*!ing invoice?!

The on top of that, they come up with a story that I didnt pay my website OR hosting fees during the 2 years pandemic time. Say what? I had PayPal proof to prove all this, though it took me some valuable time (can I sue them for stealing time?!) They finally let THAT issue go after I proved them wrong (what kind of accountants do they have?!) But I eventually had to cave and pay for another year of hosting. My email was down during all this for 3 months, and I probably lost alot of work during this time.

This year, I reached out even earlier after finally finding out the exact date last year. First they try the same SCAM as last year "(according to our records you didnt pay the fee during the pandemic)" I immediately called them out, they let it go, sent an authorization code to transfer my domain, but then, nothing. I have since receiving the code sent 6 other tickets, none which have gotten a reply. I asked them to authorize the transfer before the weekend as I had a fundraiser I wanted my domain to point towards my new website - but nothing.

On top of that, in Summer 2023 I spent many hours rebranding myself and redoing my website, updating pricing, updating galleries, only to find out at the end of the year - that it had gone back to the way it was before! I know for sure in the beginning it worked because I had friends and family check my new site for errors etc. All of a sudden it's my old pictures, old color scheme, old pricing!?

I finally after multiple tickets again, get explained that there was a crash or something that summer that "unfortunately" reverted some sites back to its old ways.

OK, well then WHY on earth dont they email their customers and tell them of this, and asks us to double check our websites?!

I didnt get an apology, although this likely also may have affected my bookings. They could have done a nice gesture and not let me pay the website fee that year. But nope. Instead they are trying to suck more money out of you that they are not even entitled to.

This company has extremely scammy and fraudulent tactics. Its like they hate you, and do everything to make your life miserable.

Bottom line is; If I pay my invoice late, Im happy to pay a late fee. But only if they send me an invoice. Otherwise how do I know when to pay?! I dont understand WHY they dont send out invoices? Or have an easy way to see all this in your account? It's like it's meant to fail.

Do not do business with them. They are a scam. They have an F rating with the better business bureau and there is an article from the better business bureau warning people not to do business with them. They need to be shut down!
Unprofessional business, terrible customer service, money hungry people that cannot keep track of their invoices, customers info, or who they have business with. I have asked for refunds over and over again and this business refuses. I asked what I paid into build my website to be refunded to me, because they deleted my work and all traces of it, so the product i paid for didnt exist... they refused and said there was nothing they could do and would not refund me and actually asked me to spend more money to get my site back up. They are money hungry and will delete your website if your a little late on yearly dues/fees owed or if you have issues that they don't feel like dealing with. If there is any issues with invoices not be sent they will deny it and blame the customer. I had yearly dues not paid and had no idea because they forgot to send the invoice. Then I got penalized for their mistake, told it was my fault and they shut down my website. When I gladly paid it as soon as I found out about dues owed I had to wait days for my website to be back up. They would not offer the fees to be waived even though it was a mistake on their end. They would randomly change my login to get into my admin page to update my site. So sometimes I had no idea how to even get into my site or update it. They make you go to a whole different web address and log in to update your site, upload pictures etc. Its insanely glitchy and slow and not user friendly. They also would change the url randomly so i would always get some error code that the site does not exist and i couldn't log in... to a website I was paying to use. Which i could not use. There websites are not mobile friendly and they make you pay more if you want that... yes pay more. In a era where everyone uses their smartphone to view sites they want the standard to be desktop first. In the end I ended up having my site back online working really hard to update it, only to lost it all in 2018. There servers crashed and they lost all their customers websites. They had no back ups of the sites or customers sites or customers drafts or anything that could have been saved. I lost everything. I had no site, no drafts, no back ups or even customer service to help get me answers. They once again asked me for money and told me I can buy another template and start over again. From scratch. They were very unprofessional about handling this and got very hostile about the fact that they made a mistake and took it out the customer asking me to pay for more services due to there mistake. I eventually moved all my website business elsewhere and even moved my hosting elsewhere so I had no more business or monetary ties with them. And today I received an invoice for hosting fees. I terminated my hosting with them a year ago and they are still trying to get money out of me. I tried to call the number listed on the invoice for customer service and the voicemail was full. I couldn't even leave a message. This business is a joke and there level of unprofessionalism is insane. Do not do business with them... they will not take care of you as a customer and just care about money. When I messaged the company about the new charges for something I don't owe I told them I have not hosted with them for over a year and my domain is being hosted elsewhere. They replied that they will just delete my domain and put it back in public pool... And the kicker is the person who replied, Aundrea, would rather delete someones site and domain first before looking into anything. I host with a totally different service now and have no idea how she thinks i am still her customer. I hope this place goes out of business soon and people stop giving money to this incompetent business

I have been using BluDomain for about 3 years. I created a basic photography website back in 2013. No issues or problems. I thought it was really easy to use and did the trick. Recently I decided to create an e-commerce site as I expanded my business. I purchased the retail site Colfax for $50. After going through the setup and trying to get the site to work, I gave up. It was not advertised. No big deal. I decided to switch over to GoDaddy's online store solution. Since I purchased my domain name from BluDomain I wanted to get it transferred over to my GoDaddy Account. I found out that my domain name was registered by GoDaddy but under BluDomain's GoDaddy account. The GD people told it was simple to just have BD transfer it to my GD account name. I read how to do it this on BD support page and paid $60 to have the domain and site transferred. I didn't want the actual site and files transferred since I was going to be starting from scratch. But I paid $60 and I received no other correspondence from BD. I had to create a support ticket to find out what was the status of my request on 10/27. On 10/28 someone finally contacted me. They asked for some information which I supplied to them. They needed details about by GD account which I supplied. After giving them my information, nothing has happened and they have not written back to me. I posted messages to them on 10/29,11/2,11/3, and 11/12. They even changed the status of my request to Completed or Finish around 11/1. By me writing back it changed to the status to Awaiting Reply. I even went online to their live chat and gave my support ticket # to the person on the chat. She thanked me and said someone would contact me right away. That was about 7-8 days ago. No response. As of 11/12 I am still waiting for my request, which I paid $60, to have my domain name transferred to my GD account. So I paid $50 for the retail site that was awful. And, I never even asked for a refund. And, another $60 to get my domain name transferred to my GD account. That is $110 I am out and nothing has been done about this nor has or will anyone from BD contact me. Here is support ticket thread so you can see I am not making this up: John Rizzuto
User
Posted On: 12 November 2016 11:32 am
I am still waiting for this to be completed. If you are not going to do this then refund my money.
John Rizzuto
User
Posted On: 03 November 2016 04:54 pm
Can someone please tell what is it going to take get my domain transferred to my GoDaddy Account?
John Rizzuto
User
Posted On: 02 November 2016 07:10 am
How is this ticket closed if my domain has not been transferred to my GoDaddy account listed below?
John Rizzuto
User
Posted On: 29 October 2016 09:12 am
Do you know how long this will take to get done? Thank you.
John Rizzuto
User
Posted On: 28 October 2016 03:19 pm
Email is: *******@aol.com
Account name: johnbrizzuto
Customer #: *******

Thank you
Aundrea Hasselbach
Staff
Posted On: 28 October 2016 03:16 pm
What is your email on file & and your GoDaddy account.

Sincerely,
Aundrea

John Rizzuto
User
Posted On: 28 October 2016 11:55 am
My site hosted by Blu is http://johnrizzutotravel.com/html/index.php?v=v1#!/HOME

I do not need the site and files transferred because I am creating a new site. I need the Domain name johnrizzutotravel.com transferred to my account at GoDaddy. Right now the domain name is at GoDaddy but under BluDomains GoDaddy account. My account name at GoDaddy is johnbrizzuto.
Aundrea Hasselbach
Staff
Posted On: 28 October 2016 11:15 am
Hello,

I will need two things to transfer your website to your new hosting company:

1. The link you use to view your site by BLU.
2. I will need the following information from your NEW hosting company.

Thank you, once I receive this information it will take a full 24 hours to transfer your files. To avoid frustration please test the below information to make sure all of your information is correct. Delays happen when our programmers can't log in.

Sincerely,
Aundrea

SETUP REQUIREMENTS FOR ALL OTHER NON-BLUDOMAIN SERVERS:

Please answer the following:
1. What version of PHP does your server have? (php4. Xx or php5. Xx)
2. What is your ftp host name or ip?
3. what is your ftp user name?
4. what is your ftp password?
5. what is your control panel url?**
6. What is your control panel username?
7. what is your control panel password?
8. what is your hosting company url?

Aundrea Hasselbach
Staff
Posted On: 28 October 2016 11:03 am
Hello, I sent you an invoice now.

Aundrea

John Rizzuto
User
Posted On: 28 October 2016 09:38 am
I sent this similiar last night but did not receive a confirmation message so I am not sure if it went through.

I would like to switch my domain to GoDaddy for hosting and it needs to be transferred to my Godaddy account. My account name is: johnbrizzuto

I understand there is a $60 charge to do this so please send me the paypal link to pay this.

Thank you.

I was with blu for four years. The templates were simple and beautiful, but had a few minor bugs that were never addressed. The templates also came with video instructions which were very helpful in the designing process. I didn't mind reading instructions and communicating via email or live chat, but could improve drastically with more employees and a 24/7 chat. The new sites that came out yearly had more features which I always looked forward to. I bought a new site every year even though the site would go down periodically (this was my first website & I thought it was a normal maintenance thing). I put two stars to be fair because the first few years were great with them, even with the few hiccups. Then it all began the third year. I got my typical yearly bill and paid it ahead of time, which I always do! Then they billed me again and took my website down. I resorted to the "live Chat" located under the contact tab, after trying to email them. The person I finally got a hold of through email got snarky with me and was adamant that I didn't pay the bill without even looking into it, but then I sent screenshots of the Paypal payment. She still tried to insist I did something wrong and I had to get Paypal involved to prove to her it was paid for. After a week it was finally resolved, but then three months later they billed me AGAIN! Once again I went through the same steps to resolve the issue. My biggest advice is to pay their invoice through Paypal. Then it happened AGAIN (yes again) and I grew very frustrated, impatient, and finally decided to leave. I couldn't deal with the headache of fixing something repeatedly that was an issue on their end, while they held my website hostage. If you go to their "Live Chat" just watch all of the conversations that take place! It's really unfortunate because I might still be on the site if the billing wasn't such an issue. Even after I discontinued my services with them I received yet ANOTHER bill a year later from them. I even brought these issues up and they didn't seem to care enough to look into it. I lost trust in their ability to be organized and care for their customers. I'd really love to hear a good turnaround for them when it comes to these minor things that are very fixable. I thoroughly enjoyed the affordable aspect and simplicity of the templates.

I tried to post this on their FB page, but it wouldn't go through. I'm thinking they may have disabled comments, or are filtering them, due to other unhappy consumers.

"This is an attempt to be acknowledged by BluDomain, regarding 3 un-answered tickets that I have sent to them over the past 2-3 weeks. My website has 100% trashed the quality of my images and I have turned to using a FREE website, with a non-custom URL, over my BluDomain website that is a month or less old by now. That's sad... I would really appreciate an answer or response to my ticket, and highly discourage anyone who is considering buying a BluDomain website... there are many other quality options. Also, because it seems BluDomain likes to erase comments from dissatisfied customers on their FB, I will be spreading this news from here to every where, on every forum I know... and all of my personal, and business FBs. I'm not normally the type of person to do this, but your awful customer service deserves to be held in the spotlight for a few moments, and not for admiration, to at least save the money of some other photographers and small business owners. Thanks for reading. (www.krystalynnephotography.com) The website I REFUSE to share with my clients."

Bottom Line: BUY ELSEWHERE.