Remember when Network Solutions was like a god on the intarweb? I remember bowing to them repeatedly, and being screwed by them repeatedly as well. In fact, I have a class action settlement check at home from them for screwing me on auto domain renewals.

Anyway, I haven’t been there in awhile and checked it out today (for some reason I still use them for WHOIS) and it is interesting to see how they’ve tried to adapt to this new reality. They provided services before, but now they are all about “Create . Drive . Boost”. Interesting. This certainly isn’t the netsol I remember.

I was most interested by the Create option, so I checked out their Do-It-For-Me Web Site Packages. HOLY CRAP! If you want a site design and 10 pages it will cost $999 (thank god it isn’t $1K) for design and $54.96 (thank god it isn’t $55) PER MONTH. That’s about $660 per year. So, for 10 pages, designed by Network Solutions, you would need to shell out $1600 up front. Thankfully you get a free domain. At least the site design doesn’t look like crap… oh wait, it does.

Now, this is not right. I, the consummate web professional, have a very hard time getting that kind of money for custom sites with countless additional options, revisions, pages, etc. Hell, I got laughed at for a $750 price tag on a site with a CMS and blog the other day! Times have certainly changed, but man… are people really paying Network Solutions that much? I would be pretty bummed if that were the case, but hey, they screwed me before, why would I be surprised they are screwing me again?

P.S. The image at left is from their homepage. The chick is artwork - zoom in, she isn’t real. She probably was at some point, but she is crazy airbrushed. Scary. wtf?

This entry was posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Marketing, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.