Net Top Reviews

When prices are rock bottom the normal reaction is to buy. That is what we recently decided to do when we opened an account with Sharebuilder.com. 

Before we decided to go with Sharebuilder.com we researched many different online trading sites and the ING company had what we were looking for.

Site Navigation:

The website is very well formatted and easy to navigate. For a begginer like me the design and different tools were easily found and not once did I not find myself lost among the many different links that were availible.

Tools:

No Account Minimums, Automatic Investment Plan, Real-time Trades, Mutual Funds, Express Funding, Investment Guidance, Options Trading, Margin Borrowing, Research Tools, Real-time Quotes, and Gain & Loss Tracking are the features offered with the basic account.

Since we were looking to start small the No Account Minimum was a feature that we really needed since we didn’t have multiple thousands of $$$ to invest. One of the other really cool features is Automatic Investment Plan. The Automatic Investment Plan is similar to 401k account through your job. You can set up accounts that invest automatically the dollar amount you specify but instead of being limited to the mutual funds that are provided by the firm managing the 401k account for your company. 

Although it does offer analytical tools that are very easy for begginers to use they do not offer the indepth analyst that you can find for free on sites like Google Finance and finviz.com.

Support:

Not only is the support staff helpful but are friendly as well. The guides for investors just getting started is very in depth and informative.

Price:

$9.00 trades and $4.00 per trade on Automatic Investments, on the Basic Plan.

Summary:

Overal the ease of navigation, the features, price, and the helpful guides make this a great online service that we must give a 4.5 rating. The only thing that we feel this service lacks is more in depth analysis. 

For many years we haved used VOIP telephone service and have been pleasantly suprised. We have used many different services and have been happy with most and Packet 8 was the first internet phone service we ever used. Of course, if you are able to have VOIP service then we HIGHLY recommend it to conventional landlines.

Site:

With any service the ability to manage your account online is a must and Packet 8 allows you to do that but what you can do is limited. The actual usability is very rudamentary. You can make changes to your plan or view bills and that is about it. If you need to monitor usage onine, this service is not for you. 

Features:

One of the best parts of using an internet phone service is the features, they can’t be beat. Many of the features that are extra with a landline service provider come standard. Here are the standard features you can expect;

When it’s time to upgrade your phones, naturally, you want to find the best deal and it was time for us to upgrade and after extensive shopping we found a service that saved us a ton of money. We use AT&T and we shopped on their site, we checked with Radio Shack, Best Buy, Sam’s Club, and a few other websites and Wirefly outperformed the others by large bounds.

Site:

Wirefly.com offers service for all the major cell phone carriers AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, Nextel, and Alltel. The main page offers a wide variety of deals. The layout is simple and loads quickly. The search engine is easy to use just select if you are looking for a new pan, want to upgrade (some sites that we used didn’t even offer this option), or add a line to your plan and plug in your zip and it pulls up the deals and plans availible.

Usability:

The usability of the site and services were extremely easy. The engine is similar to those of all the other sites we visited when choosing the phones and plan that you want. It is also easy to change your phone and features in the latter steps of the checkout process.

Order Process:

As soon as I placed my order I received confirmation of my order and links to track the status of my order. There was a minor delay of proof of identity, we had to email a copy of our Driver License and Social Security cards. Once that was done within a few hours we received notice that our order had been processed and phones shipped.

Value:

Ultimately, this is what we were searching for. Every website that we searched had the same phones but none offered the same value. I saved over $200.00 by using this service.

Summary:

There are only a few services that I have used online that have made me as happy as Wirefly.com has. The website’s simple layout was easy to use. The ordering and checkout process was very easy. The value was by far the best of numerous retailers.

The only thing that would have improved our experience would have been an easier process to verify identity. Online verification would have been ideal, but even with what we consider a defect the service and value are exceptional and we can only rate this service with a 5.0

Over the years we have used various web hosting services and we currently use 1and1.com. We have been with them for the past few years. We currently use the 1&1 Home package for some of our hobby sites so we will review the package we use.

Pricing:

When we decided to change hosting providers price was one of the important factors in our decision and their pricing is among the best on the net for the features you receive.  They start their packages at $3.99 a month.

Features: 

2 domain names, 100 subdomains, 50 externally hosted domain names, 120 GB space, and 1200 GB transfer volume, 1200 emails, and 25 MySQL databases. One of the reasons we were searching for a new provider was web space and we were paying double our monthly fee for not even a third of the space and external hosted domains was crucial since we had domains hosted with other providers. 

All the features mentioned so far are a plus in our opinion but there are some negatives. They do offer web statistics but they are not as detailed and very outdated. If you want to track page views, unique visitors, etc. we recommend that you use Google Analytics instead of the program that comes with 1&1. They also have their own unique control panel and it is ok but does not compare to the popular C-Panel that is common with most web hosts on linux servers.

Support:

They offer 24/7 phone support and although some are hard to understand, strong accents, they are helpful and make every attempt to resolve any issues you may be having.

Uptime:

I have only had 4 occasions where my site has been down and the longest it was down was 15 minutes.

Summary:

We think very highly of service because it offers a competitive price, great features, and 24/7 support. We can’t give it a perfect rating of 5.0 because it lacks in tracking statistics and control panel ease of use. Overall we think a rating of 4.0 is what this service provider deserves.