Easily, www.easily.co.uk

Used to be very good and straightforward and I used it for several years. Now it is hard to use, error messages are inexplicable and hard to spot, and nothing is where you expect it to be. It's hardly surprising people use the much-advertised competitor instead. (I won't name it but you know the one).

Okay, to be clear - I am an EX-CUSTOMER. After a few years of being messed about, I finally left in early 2020.

For various reasons, I had cause to contact Billing at Easily. On the basis of the issues I experienced prior to my decision to leave, I wasn't hopeful of a response. In fact, I had already confirmed the address to write to using Registered Mail - so sure was I that no reply would be forthcoming.

Imagine my surprise to receive a reply 54 (fifty-four) minutes later - with the info I had requested.

Because I was investigating an issue, it took a short while to establish what had taken place. It has to be said that throughout, I was pleasantly surprised at the speed of response as I queried things.

During my initial investigation, I had checked reviews to see if my fears of before were likely to be justified. I was quite pleased to see that Easily seemed to be improving quite markedly over how things had been only a few years previously.

One of the things I noted was that the name of the person I was communicating with came up in reviews over and over - and ALWAYS (as far as I could see) in a positive manner. I was greatly assured.

Anyhow, matter dealt with, and I must say, swiftly, without long silences, effectively, politely and - well, excellently!

That name that kept coming up? Tr*cy Sp*ncer [this review site advises not to mention names]. The positive reviews I spotted weren't misleading!

Upshot is that when my current hosting/email package (not with Easily) expires in early 2022, I shall definitely be including Easily as a possibility. I had been with them from around 1999 (the year, I think, when they were founded?) and I had nothing but praise for them - until the 24-36 months prior to my leaving in early 2020.

Had any of my experiences during that time been dealt with as this time by Tr*cy, then I may well have been writing this review as a current customer. As it is, if things continue to head in the right direction (as it seems), then I could very well return in 2022!

Thankfully only had a domain name with them.

Tried to renew it in July 2020, would not accept password.

Password reset page just takes you in a loop.

No response by phone, both numbers appear to be out of service now.

No follow up via email after several emails, they respond initially

and then communication stops.

Impossible to contact them.

The domain expired and am waiting to see if i can renew it with

another registrar

Have submitted a complaint to ICANN and their registrar.

Avoid like the plague and if you have hosting with them

move it to another host while you have the chance.

Easily UK came out of Easily.co.uk in 2018. They changed hands and 'upgraded' their offering. Anyone who was a customer at that time will vouch for the fact that things turned bad - really bad.

However, with multiple domains registered and parked there, hosting, and an email account, I felt it was too difficult to move. That was until they refused FIVE times to supply me with a name and address to write to in order to make a formal complaint.

I decided to look for someone to take my business and found a few companies who really knew how to do it without the hassle I had feared. I kicked myself for having suffered two years of putting up with misdirection, failing portal tools, and auto-renewals for domains I didn't want.

Having left, I'm now on my 11th request for them to delete my personal data off their system and had to supply them my credentials three times. Each reply apologises and details that they are investigating so as to resolve my case!

Hopefully THIS review will go live before they go bust - I strongly think that is the direction they are heading because I cannot believe they are all that stupid - there HAS to be an underlying reason.

Whatever it is - avoid them at all costs. If you are a current victim - you would be surprise how simple it is to move - don't fall for the tales of complexity. Any rival will have the knowledge and ability - just make sure you tell them what you want - that way they can get you where you want to be.

Short review: AVOID!

Take payment 60+ days early for Domain names you have marked NOT auto-renew (ie you wish them to lapse) You telephone Easily and discover you have to e-mail for account queries. Accounts do not reply to your e-mails.

Recomendation Get your Bank to stop any more money being taken from your account. Transfer out the domains you wish to keep and if you have hosting move that as well. Shame is they used to be quite good before they were taken over and the "upgrade" to the new "Portal".

Until today....

Until today, I would have given the lowest review star value for my recent experiences with Easily, but this review is for a very helpful chap in Canada customer services: Gillis

I did two updates to my website this past weekend, and found that although my programme said the update was successful, my site had not updated when viewed from the internet.

I decided that it was not at my end, but possibly a server problem with Easily.

This afternoon, I phoned customer services and got Gillis - right away, my doubts faded because he looked into the problem properly, and finally realised that at the date of my updates, it was just after they had moved to a different platform!

I should have received notification of this, plus new details to enter onto the FTP Host, FTP Directory, and FTP User name. The password had also changed.

Service from Easily used to be so good, that it had been many years since I'd had to make any such changes that I'd completely forgotten how to do it in my programme. He looked up the programme on Google and searched it until he found the information necessary, and then talked me through accessing it and entering the details. Had a few hiccoughs, but eventually, it stopped rejecting the changes, and published the site with the updates now showing.

He fully explained things as we went along, and I was totally grateful for what must have been an hour of patient and very helpful service.

Hats off to him and also the colleague he spoke to for verification of something at one point ...first class.

When they charged me twice for domain name renewals earlier this year, and didn't explain that they take the payment 60 days in advance now, I got a customer service chap who was absolutely useless, and so laid back he was no help at all. I never did get a refund when I emailed to ask for one, but emails don't get answered most of the time.

The Easily control panel for my account is now terrible to navigate on their new website, and the website is unhelpful generally. I was never told that I no longer needed to top up data transfer as there's no limit now, but the chap I spoke to a few months ago couldn't even tell me that when I asked where it was!

I'm not pretending that there isn't a lot wrong with Easily since things changed, but if their Canadian customer services today is anything to go by, things are looking up in that respect!

So, a big thank you to the two guys I dealt with for being so helpful today.

Have been with Easily for many years. They "upgraded" their offering and the whole service is a complete disaster. When upgraded the password didn't work and there followed a continuous loop of e-mails which required the old password which didn't work in order to obtain a new one. It took 2 months to sort out.

The new functionality is worse than the old. I never got spam on the old system but had over 40 spam items waiting for me when I eventually got access to the new system.

On renewal I started getting daily e-mails some 60 days before payment was due saying that payment had not been made. After 45 days of telling them that I do not consider it acceptable to demand payment every day for 60 days before payment is due they eventually stopped sending daily reminders.

I have not renewed and I would advise anyone and everyone not to use them.

Since the 2017 'upgrade' Easily have consistently faiiled to fix any ensuing issues. The billing department is a shambles, and despite the good intentions of staff technical support is slow and largely ineffective.

On the phone the staff are polite and helpful, but they are clearly incapable of making a broken system work, however pleasant and friendly they are.

I cannot recommend using Easily for anything, the company is unreliable, disfunctional, unresponsive, inefficient, ineffective, prevaricating and untrustworthy.

DNS, Email, Linux hosing:

As per ALL of the other recent reviews: despite being with this 'service' provider for an exceptionally long number of years (since their establishment) their server switchover has been handled with a level of incompetence that would make the TSB consider that it had got off lightly - completely horrendous!

Their 'support' team mean well, but just raising tickets is not actually what the support teams of my other 5 domain providers do - they fix issues on the fly.

What really angers me is that I was not even forewarned of the server switchover :(

So that is 2 web sites and multiple email addresses offline from Tuesday, with no sign of ANY progress at all. They do at least say that I 'should' be able to transfer domains during this period - just REALLY annoying that I have recently undertaken 5-10 year renewals - still, I just can not risk staying with them any longer - having no emailed business orders since Tuesday has severely hit my bottom line; some incoming emails are black-holed, the rest leading to bounced responses.

Finally, I asked if the matter could be escalated - SORRY NO,

OR can I atleast raise a formal complaint? - SORRY we do not have a customer services OR complaints servicing team - guess that would create too much work...

I've been a customer for 18 years and Easily has been moderately priced and things seem to work. Then I was told my account was being upgraded to "their new portal" with extra facilities.

On the day of the changeover I had 23 issues. 8 weeks on I have 20. I have received minimal support - one support ticket was closed because they said I hadn't paid to have the 20 faults repaired. They couldn't re-open the ticket, so some poor s*d had to type it all in again. And no-one has dealt with it. Or my request to delete my payment card details. Or my request for an update on two tickets. Or anything....

Utterly, utterly disgusting from a former great company that no seems to be based in Canada and not where thir website says...

Avoid at all costs - they're incompetent, overloaded and not fit for purpose. I was promised a reply in 1-2 days. 8 days on, nothing.... See what I mean...