Synthesis reviews

Poor tech support

My website went down. I posted five support tickets. It took more than 24 hours for tech support to respond. They sent a form response that didn't explain the problem clearly or completely. The problem was that Synthesis hosts only websites, i.e., they don't do e-mail or domain services. They recommend GoDaddy for e-mail and domain name services. OK, so I set up e-mail and domain services with GoDaddy. GoDaddy asked for nameserver info, which Synthesis doesn't provide. Synthesis provides A record info, which GoDaddy didn't seem to want. I have since found that you can enter A record info on the "Advanced" tab of your GoDaddy domain services page, but at the time I didn't look on the "Advanced" tab. There are also MX records, IP addresses, and a whole lot of other stuff that I had no idea what they all were. So I just left blank the stuff that I didn't know. My website worked for several months, then vanished, along with some of my e-mail (but not all of e-mail). It turned out that I'd left some of those records on my old hosting provider (SiteGround) and it took them several months to delete my account. I posted support tickets with Synthesis and got no response. It turns out they were responding to my e-mail address, and that e-mail address wasn't working, and Synthesis doesn't use an e-mail service that tells them when their e-mail bounces. Synthesis doesn't have a telephone number or "chat" service for tech support. I kept sending in support tickets and they kept sending out the same form response. They appear to contract their tech support to some giant "help desk" contractor in India where each tech zombie has no idea what the previous four tech zombies did. In the fifth ticket I used my alternate e-mail address and they responded to that. They sent me a form response about A records. which I had no idea what to do with. In contrast, GoDaddy has telephone support, chat, e-mail, everything. I called GoDaddy several times that day and they helped me puzzle out what the problem was. When I entered Synthesis's A record into my GoDaddy domain service advanced settings tab my website and e-mail came back up right away. In conclusion, GoDaddy has great tech support, and Synthesis sucks.

Biggest Con: tech support