I have had a few domain names registered with Net4India since the past 4-5 years. All these years I never needed to contact the customer support team of the company as all the domains were not basically in use by me, they were just parked there.

I decided to use on the domains a few days ago and logged in to the Net4India Domain Control Panel. From the login page itself, the company showed how much fun they have not being a professional company. First, you cannot login with your “username”. You need a CRN ID which is associated with your username. So I had to check my email to find my CRN ID and then login to the Control Panel.

Next up, the Control Panel design. It is so amateurishly made. The page refreshes very slowly everytime you click on a link (Change MX Records, ABT Records, etc) and comes to the same place as before, then it gives a javascript popup where you can make changes to your domain. That’s not all. I tried changing the Name Servers of my domain and everytime I was given a Sever Database Error. After about 6-7 tries, the page finally loaded up very slowly and telling me that they would about a day to make the changes sent by me. Don’t tell me they do take requests from their customers and then they make all the changes manually!

After that, CName Record changes. I could not find a link where I could add/edit CName Records. After digging the website for a few minutes I gave up and called the customer support call center. They took about 15-20 minutes to attend my call. The representative asked me to click on “Add Subdomain” to add my CName Record. I was like wow! Then he asked me “Are you setting up Google Apps?” I replied with a yes. So he then advised me “not go with Google Apps as they are unreliable and I should go with Net4India’s Business Email Service”. That was the most unethical business attitude I had seen by a company till now. I politely declined his offer and hung up. Then out of curiosity, I visited they Business Email Service and was flabbergasted by the price of the service. For 1 user account with 1 GB, they charge Rs. 2549 (approx. 57 USD)! I mean why wouldn’t I pay Google 50 USD for 25 GB/user account + the other perks?

Anyway I proceeded to add a CName Record happily and guess what? After I clicked on Proceed, it gave a server error, yet again. So after a few tries I successfully added my first CName record. Now I went ahead to add another CName Record and what I saw then, completely blew my mind off. It was asking me for Rs. 500 (about 11 USD)! Where in the world does a domain company allow only one CName record change other that Net4India? And, why would I pay 11 USD/CName Record? The time was approximately 10:30 PM now so I tried calling their “24 Hours Customer Call Center” but in vain, got no response. So in fact, the 24 hour call center is just a publicity stunt. What surprised me was that when I tried calling their Sales line that time, somebody picked up. So they want to do sale, but after sales support - “Who cares once they pay us the money!”.

Anyways, I had to send them an email for my problem. So I emailed this:

I am unable to add more than one CName entries for the ***.in domain. It is taking me to the Shopping Cart when I an trying to add more than one CName record. Kindly change the CName records as follows: 1. Enter the following as the CNAME value or alias: mail calendar docs sites 2. Set the CNAME destination to the following address: ghs.google.com

And this is the canned reply which I got next morning:

This is in reference to your query; we would like to inform you that the CNAME can be created from control panel. Below mentioned are the steps for the same:- Login to “net4.in” along with your crn id and password – click on Manage my Services – click on Domains – click on “Add Sub Domain” link – select Cname – page will automatically get refreshed – In the sub domain text box enter the alias name like www – In the right side Text box enter destination address like ghs.google.com – click on “Create Now” button, further it will take 4-8 hrs to reflect globally. For any further assistance do contact us, on 39891414 (from Landline), from Mobile phone dial city code as prefix

So I replied:

In reference to TT-20100317-183740. I am sorry to say that after following the steps you had instructed to, the goal cannot be reached. Only my first attempt of adding a CName record was accepted. All the other attempts are taking me to my shopping card and asking me to pay Rs. 500/per subdomain. I hope this time I will receive a sensible reply and not a Canned Response telling me to goto “add subdomain” and follow the same procedure. Kindly add the requested CNAME records in my previous record. Thank You.

After a few hours, I get a reply. But, the same canned response which was sent to me earlier:

This is in reference to your query; we would like to inform you that the CNAME can be created from control panel. Below mentioned are the steps for the same:- Login to “net4.in” along with your crn id and password – click on Manage my Services – click on Domains – click on “Add Sub Domain” link – select Cname – page will automatically get refreshed – In the sub domain text box enter the alias name like www – In the right side Text box enter destination address like ghs.google.com – click on “Create Now” button, further it will take 4-8 hrs to reflect globally. For any further assistance do contact us, on 39891414 (from Landline), from Mobile phone dial city code as prefix

I mean how unprofessional can the company be. They do not even read the full support tickets.

So I sent a reply again:

In reference to TT-20100317-183740 and TT-20100317-192659. What sort of a professional business model does your company have to provide just one CNAME record for domain-only customers? Doesn’t that sound silly that one can have only one CNAME record for his domain? I would like a much more sensible reply back this time.

And, got this reply:

This is in reference to your query; we would like to update you that there is only one CNAME/Subdomain free with domain only pack. Incase you required another CNAME/ Subdomain that we would request you to make the payment for the same. For any further assistance do contact us, on 39891414 (from Landline), from Mobile phone dial city code as prefix.

After that I called the Call Center again to ask what was going on and the representative who attended my call was very rude in telling me that as I was “just” a domain-only customer, they cannot allow me to have more than 1 CName record per domain.

Oh by the way, I don’t understand this, they allow the “domain-only” customers to change the Name Servers of their domains but do not allow more than one CName records. So I changed the default NS to MediaTemple with which I host my domains and then activated a DNS only hosting there. Vola! Now I can set as many DNS records as I want to. So basically, Net4India just lost a customer with this attitude as I am definitely not going to renew my domains with them anymore.

Just in case you are planning to buy domains with them and if you do not believe my review, do a Google search and see for yourself what sort of a reputation do they have. Oh and don’t go by their attractive “Just Rs. 199 for .in Domains” offer. They will charge you Rs. 199 for just 1 year. If you buy it for more than a year you pay the overpriced Rs. 499/year (before multiple-year discount). So they are just pulling you for a one time sale. And you know by now about their after-sales support. Oh, seems like I am not the only Net4India unhappy customer here.