We sent this out originally as an email, but figured we should post it to our public blog as well. You know, just for added transparency.

Hey [name], hope your weekend’s going well so far! 

We just wanted to provide you with a quick update on what we’ve been doing here at DoRoyal, as well as to ask for any feedback. We’d love to know what your experiences are like, and whether or not our hosting has met your expectations. 

But first, there’s some key points that we need to discuss. 

Customer Support

We know things have been slow, which is an understatement to say the least. Fact is, there are hundreds of support tickets open on our Portal, hundreds of Facebook Messenger requests, dozens of Discord tickets, and… well, yeah. We’re a bit overloaded, and we only have a single person answering all of our support requests. That is, one core person for every support platform and method we provide. 

Every single ticket is handled by me, Tyler Harvey. While we have a team that runs and maintains the servers, the actual frontline support is all done by me. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve let things slip. 

You see, one of our core ideologies is to run all support stuff in-house. We will never outsource our customer support services. The main benefit, is every DoRoyal customer is treated like an actual person, rather than some nameless number on a spreadsheet. It’s a personable experience, or at least, I try to make everything as personable as possible. 

The downside, is when something big happens (like a major outage for example), tickets get backlogged. Severely backlogged. And while we have a team that handles the actual server maintenance, every single front-end thing is handled by me. (though even then, I still end up doing a lot of server related stuff myself, too)

If you opt to review us, or share feedback, please be sure to do so based on the actual hosting itself, and not our customer support.Fact is, we’re confident (very, very confident) in our hosting. It’s world-class, and offers a ton of value for the dollar spent. I am also very confident that our support issues will be resolved, it’s only a matter of time. Literally, it’s a time thing. 

Speaking of reviews, 

Statement on Reviews

We’ve been receiving quite a few negative reviews as of late, which is totally justified. Many of our customers unfortunately believe we’re ghosting them, or ignoring them with some form of malicious intent. I’ve let a lot of people down, and as a result, the reputation of DoRoyal as a whole has fallen. 

However, I’m also a strong believer in transparency. As of this email, we have a 2.8 star rating on TrustPilot. This is down quite a bit from the 4.2+ that we had only a few short years ago. 

As a direct result of our recent reviews, we’ve opted to create a Reviews page on DoRoyal itself. It’s in the primary navigation bar, and is visible to everybody, including potential customers. You can find that page here – https://doroyal.com/reviews/ 

There’s even been a few people questioning the authenticity of our public reviews, even going so far as to suggest that we buy them. Now, to be clear, we have never purchased a review, ever. This is also never going to change. Every single review that we have is 100% authentic. We don’t even offer a credit for those that review us. There’s literally no incentive to do so, other than to share your voice and opinions with the world. 

Domain Names

You may have noticed that we’ve been pushing our updated domain pricing rather hard lately. You may also be aware that this is a direct response to the various domain issues we’ve had in the past. We know people were losing confidence in our ability to offer a quality domain registration service, which is why we’ve been trying to improve our domain services at every conceivable level.

As a result, DoRoyal is now one of the cheapest (and best) places to buy a new domain. We’re cheaper than GoDaddy, Namecheap, HostGator, Squarespace, IONOS, WIX, DreamHost, Shopify, and hundreds more. If your domain is currently registered with any of those providers, switching to DoRoyal will save you money every single year. (just saying)

We have also recently introduced our Royal Club membership program, which lowers each and every domain that we sell to our actual at-cost pricing. What we pay for a .COM is what you pay, with no markup whatsoever. 

Needless to say, we’ve taken the feedback, and learned from our past failures and experiences, to try and build up the best possible domain registrar around. 

Hosting Improvements

We’re never sleeping when it comes to our hosting network itself. Despite the public-facing and customer support issues, we’ve been working behind the scenes on enhancing and growing our website hosting. Today, things are more stable than ever before, faster than ever before, and more reliable than ever before. 

1. We’ve introduced several new website hosting plans. 
2. We’ve partnered with Automattic and Infinite Uploads CDN.
3. We’ve upgraded our entire hosting infrastructure. 
4. We back our server up every 3 hours, with these backups being accessible at any time by the user. 
5. We’ve updated the look and feel of our entire website, including the storefront and Portal. 
6. We’ve added deeper integration between our Portal and DirectAdmin, allowing for most management functions to be done through our Portal itself. 

We’re also looking to add PHP 8.5 to our entire network within the coming weeks. 

It’s Your Website, We Simply Host It

We’re not trying to lock you into our services, nor has that ever been our intention. Unlike platforms such as Squarespace or WIX, we provide you with every tool imaginable to ensure that your data is your data. This means, if you ever wish to download your entire website and account, you can do so at any time with a click of a button. You can easily migrate away from us if you should ever want or need to do so. 

There is nothing at all locking you to DoRoyal. We want for you to host here with us because you actually want to, not because you’re forced to. Even our SitePad Website Builder (did you even know we had a site builder?) lets you download your website at any time. It’s your data, not ours. We simply host it for you. 

We Want Your Feedback

The DoRoyal Kingdom is growing each and every single day, but simply bringing on new customers doesn’t directly result in a better hosting experience. 

That’s why we’re writing this email. We want to hear from you. DoRoyal was built by our customers. You’re what keeps us going. Literally, as without your support, we wouldn’t exist. (economics 101)

So when I say we’re looking for constructive feedback, ideas, or suggestions on how we can improve, that’s not just an empty promise. We will actually take what is said, and use it to improve our services. Cause again, you’re [name], not a random number. Your voice actually matters here. 

TrustPilot: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/doroyal.com
HostAdvice: https://hostadvice.com/hosting-company/doroyal-hosting-reviews/ 

If you would like to leave private feedback instead, simply open up a ticket. 

Anyway, that’s all for now. Talk about a long-winded message, huh? Enjoy the rest of your weekend, [name]!