Canaca – Worst web hosting company ever

This is my first rant and Canaca deserves to be #1!

I am a firm believer in giving credit where credit is due. So, if I like or have had a great experience with a company or service I will blab about it. Same goes for if I feel it was a horrible experience! I’ll blab!

I signed up with Canaca back in 2006 when I was in my last year of school and putting up my first website. It was recommended and cheap, totally ideal for someone starting out online. I was please with them and didn’t have any issues where I needed to get in touch with them. Soon, I started getting clients and I highly recommended Canaca, since I thought I could vouch for them. I had one client who asked me to purchase a package through Canaca, on their behalf. A year later, the domain expired and they never bothered to renew.
Fast forwarding to Jan 2008. I get a random email from them saying my web hosting was renewed, for(you guessed it!) this site whose domain expired 1 year ago! I call them up, a bit outraged they are charging for something that has an expired domain name! To actually talk to someone, I had to choose sales (they have a ‘call-back’ customer service). The sales person was able to access accounting, sales as well as technical details (I have a feeling its one person for all those different categories). I told her my issue, she told me if I wanted it canceled, I had to inform them before the date of renewal. Just a month ago I renewed my personal site for 2 years with these hacks. Now I had to wait for 2 years to get away from them.

What struck me as really weird was, when my domain was expiring I got at least 10 different emails in a span of one month, telling me to renew it. For the web hosting, I got no such warning, just BAM! an invoice, with the amount they take from your credit card and a link. Their excuse fro not sending reminder emails are, ‘we don’t want to bother the customer so we do it for them’.
The person I spoke with made me fill out a form through their site, thats the ONLY way they would address the issue. So I did, I got pretty much the same response…

====== Please reply above this line ======
AUTOMATIC RENEWAL

Dear Clarice,

I do apologize if this has caused any inconvenience, but I hope you understand that automation of renewal is the only way to keep customers’ sites online on renewal date, and avoid bothering them to confirm renews.

Invoice xxxxxx is for the automatic renewal of “mysite.com”, via the on-file Visa card (starting in xxxxx).

Since our billing system is automatic “Cancellations must be done on or before the renewal date, by e-mail and sent to accounting@canaca.com or billing@canaca.com” (our contract http://canaca.com/contract.html).

If you have requested that, please provide us with the related ticket number and we will investigate the issue.

Best Regards,
Canaca-Com Inc.
Billing Department.

I responded to their email above- no response. I sent the emails through their online forms, no response. I asked to speak with a manager or something- no response. I’ve been sending them the same email for about 2 months or so, no response. So they rip people off and can’t face the music, so to speak.

Soon after this I googled these people and theres a ton, i mean a TON of people out there who have had a lot of issues with these guys. I’m surprised the are still allowed to rip people off so badly with their automatic renewals and cutting service off for no reason (read their contract, its ridiculous, you’d never want to go with them!)

I was a loyal customer, who enthusiastically recommended them, but now, I’m ready to spread the word of what type of business they really are. Someone needs to get this hacks out of business!

Freelancers Guide to Blogging

Another awesome post, explaining the madness behind ‘blogging’! This post is brought to you by Robert Janelle, an avid writer and contributer on Freelance Switch

Everyone with a blog, please raise your hand.

Alright, those of you with hands up can leave the classroom and hit the bar early. The rest of you, stay here, because this lesson is important.

Lets start with the quick summary of what a blog is. Short for Weblog, a blog is a website that displays posts by the author in chronological order. Their popularity is immense since most blogging platforms make it insanely simple for anyone to publish their thoughts on the web.

You’re reading one right now.

But why do freelancers need one?
It’s an extension of your portfolio

First and foremost, a blog is yet another place to show off your writing, design, photography or coding skills.

As such, it’s another place for potential clients to find you.

The ideal freelancer’s blog should be another part of his or her portfolio site (you already have one of those, right?)

But a key difference is showing off a little more personality on the blog since I’ve found most online portfolios to be a little on the sterile side (I’m just as guilty on that front.)

Along with a different method of posting from a more traditional portfolio site, most blogging platforms allow readers to leave comments giving you quick feedback on what you’re showing off (once you have readers, more on that later.)
Networking and marketing

One of the biggest advantages to having a blog is being able to build relationships with fellow freelancers who also blog by linking out and leaving comments on each other’s sites.

I’ve met people who’ve expanded their business into other countries thanks to relationships they’ve built up through blogging.
Now start one!

Getting a blog is easy and for the most part, free.

Go to one of the major blogging platforms like Blogger or WordPress and sign-up for a blog. If you can’t think up a clever domain name, just go with your own name.

Using one of the free providers by default will give you a .blogspot or .wordpress domain but both providers support domain mapping (Blogger does it for free, WordPress charges $10 per year though for $15 they’ll deal with registering it as well.)

Many people suggest that having a stand-alone domain makes you look more professional, but personally I don’t think it’s that big of a deal — especially since I’ve met company CEOs who have .blogspot.com domains.
Blogging away

So, now you’ve got your own little soap-box on the web that can be updated quickly and easily, what do you do with it now?

Well, an introduction post is usually good. Who are you and what are you doing?

Since we’re looking at this as a marketing tool, after that you should be writing about your field of work. Write with authority and establish yourself as an expert on what you do.

Post sketches and doodles of what you’re working on (or the equivalent in whatever you do) to show off your work.

As an example, I tend to use mine to post material that my current roster of clients aren’t buying but I still feel like writing. These days my bread and butter comes from monthly publications so I’ll also write up topics that will be stale by deadline which kind of brings back the feeling of being a daily newspaper intern (it even includes the glorious feeling of not getting paid!)

I’ve known programmers who’ll post about whatever platform they’re currently coding on along with whatever they love or hate about it along with giving progress reports on various projects. There are lots of possibilities.

Most important of all though, inject your personality into it. This should provide a good opportunity for potential clients to get an idea of the person behind the work.

While blogging isn’t a form of passive marketing, it also doesn’t need to take up that much time. Generally, it’s best to aim for one post per week at a minimum and try your best not to let it go stale.
Promotion

Finally, having a blog is pretty useless if the only one reading it is your mother, so let’s talk about promoting it.

Now, we’re not trying to build the next big web publication here, so there’s no need to go into all-out spam mode. Adding the link to your e-mail signature, your business card and leaving it when you comment on other blogs (most of them have a separate field to do this in the comments) should suffice to build a moderate readership.