Frequently Asked Questions

This section of our site covers popular topics such as placing an order, site migrations, SSL certificates and domain handling. If you need additional assistance, you can refer to our Online Manual.

Ordering

First you need to choose the proper package for you from our order page. You can select datacenter, hosting plan, and subscription period. If you already have a domain, you need to choose the "Use my already registered domain" option. Click on the "Continue" button and fill in all the required fields of the order form on the next page. You must agree with our Terms of Use (by checking the respective box). If your order includes a new domain name registration, you will also need to agree with the ICANN terms. Choose one of the available payment methods, then click the "Place Order" button. Then you will be forwarded to the site of the respective billing agent or authorized retailer, where you will be able to submit the payment for your service.

Once you complete the account order and submit the payment for it, it will take several minutes to have the account opened. You will receive a Welcome email for the hosting account to the email address that you specified in the account order.

If you have not received your Welcome email, first you can check your Junk/Spam folder to see if it is not mistakenly received there. If it is not, then you can contact our support team, or fill in the contact form on our site. We will resend the Welcome message right away.

All our customers receive discounts on their subsequent hosting account purchases made via the ICDSoft Account Panel. Discounts start at 40% and go all the way up to 90%. The more accounts you have, the greater discount you get. If you have one hosting account and you want to order more accounts and services, you can quickly and easily do this through the Order section of your ICDSoft Account Panel. Your discount will be applied automatically.

If you want to have one hosting account and several domains pointed to it, first you need to purchase your hosting account using one of the domains. After the account is opened, you can add domain names through the Domain Parking section of the hosting Control Panel. Note that parked domains are full aliases of the main domain; they open the same content and share the same mailboxes.

Site migration

The site migration service is offered with each new hosting account purchase. To initiate the process, you need to post a support ticket during the first 100 days of your hosting subscription. Our support team will check the website and request access to your previous host, so that they can get the required files and/or databases. Please note that we perform website transfers and reconfigurations to the best of our abilities, but sometimes there are factors beyond our control which may affect the successful completion of a website transfer, or its reconfiguration to work on our end. Such factors include, but are not limited to:

Limitations or technical issues at the remote host that affect the ability to:

- access the service on their end;
- create a proper backup;
- maintain a stable FTP/SSH connection to/from their server.

Website customizations that require deeper understanding of the underlying website/code structure.

The information we request from you is used solely for the purpose of migrating your website. We follow strict procedures, and none of the credentials you provide will be shared with third parties, nor used by us for any purposes other than completing the migration of your website and making sure it works properly on our end.

We recommend that you keep your website active on your previous host during the migration process. If your site collects a lot of dynamic data this may cause data discrepancy between our copy and the copy left on the previous host. In such cases, you can arrange with our support team to have the site stopped at off-peak hours to ensure all data is correctly replicated.

We will move one website for each hosting account. If you have additional websites hosted, they will need to be handled separately.

We can move your email service if certain conditions are met:

- if your previous host uses cPanel and we can get a cPanel backup of your emails;
- if we can get a Maildir-formatted backup of your email accounts.

If you are unsure whether your current email service can be migrated, post a ticket at and our support team will check this for you.

Generally, you need to complete this process yourself. We may be able to do this for you only if the domain name is registered by ICDSoft.

We strive to complete all migrations within 72 hours of getting access to the previous host. The quoted time however is dependent on your active participation. We ask that you reply promptly to our team to take advantage of the quoted timeframe.

Compensation for unused period of hosting at previous provider

Anyone who gets a new hosting account for an existing website that has some time remaining on the subscription with the previous host.

The maximum free hosting period you can get is 6 months.

For proof of the remaining time with the previous provider you can provide screenshots showing service due date, service-related receipts/invoices, or similar documents that confirm you have an active subscription with the previous host.

The request for compensation must be submitted within the first 30 days of a new hosting subscription.

To request the compensation, you must submit a support ticket and provide the proof of remaining time with the previous host.

Domains

You can order a new domain registration on our website or through your ICDSoft Account Panel.

ICDSoft is not an ICANN-accredited registrar. We register the domains of our customers at the ICANN-accredited registrar Enom.com. An exception to this are .eu and .bg domains - ICDSoft is a registrar accredited by EURid and the .bg domain registry.

Domains purchased in a package with a shared hosting account are offered at a discounted price. Here are the current domain prices for the most widely used top-level domains:

- .com $11.30
- .net $13.57
- .org $11.67

The price of separate domain registrations is not discounted. For a full list of available TLDs and their prices, check our Domain Pricing List.

Domain Pricing List.

Domains in a package with First Class and Ultimate hosting accounts are offered for free.

You will be the legitimate owner of the domain name, and we will be your service provider. As the legitimate owner, you will be able to change the contact information for it, point it to other hosting service providers, or transfer it to other domain name registration providers.

Domain registration orders are typically processed within minutes. The newly registered domain name will become accessible over the Internet almost instantly.

We can register .com, .net, .org, .us, .biz, .info, .eu, .ca, .de, .hk, .com.hk, .net.hk, .idv.hk, .org.hk and .edu.hk domains. For a full list of available TLDs and their prices, check our Domain Pricing List.

We can host any other Top Level Domain as well, but you will have to register the domain name yourself with a domain name registrar that supports this TLD.

For a transfer to be successful, several conditions have to be met:

- The domain name has to be at least 60 days old, i.e. two months must have passed since its initial registration.

- The domain name must not be expired. If your domain name has recently expired, you need to renew it with the current registrar before you can transfer it away.

- Since transfers may take several days to complete, you should make sure that there is a sufficient time until the expiration. We recommend that you start transferring your domain name at least 7 days before the expiration.

- The domain must be unlocked. You can request from your current registrar to unlock the domain.

- We would need the EPP key (or "authorization code") of the domain name in order to submit a transfer request. This key can be provided by the current registrar.

- Some country code top-level domains such as .eu domains could have a different transfer procedure. You can always contact our support team for more information.

The transfer procedure does not interrupt the operation of the domain name in any way, and your website and email will be working at all times. We will notify you as soon as the transfer is completed.

Additional domain names can be pointed to your hosting account with us, and this is called "domain name parking". For example, if you have an account for domain.com, and you wish other domain names, such as domain2.com, domain3.com, etc. to open the same webpage, you could "park" them to your account. E-mail messages sent to addresses @domain2.com are forwarded to the corresponding email accounts at domain.com. Have in mind that these domain names also need to be registered with some company first, and the DNS servers for them must be changed to the correct values.

If you want to transfer your domain name to another registrar, you should make sure that there is enough time until the domain name expires. Transfers usually take several business days. We recommend that you start transferring a domain name at least 15 days before its expiration. You can contact our Support Team to have the domain unlocked and the EPP code sent to you.

In the first case, you will have both your hosting account and your domain name registration managed by us. If your domain name is just pointed to our service, we will be your web host, but you will have to pay another company for the domain name registration and maintenance.

You can point the domain name to your hosting account with us by changing its nameservers or by editing the DNS records on its current nameservers. We will send you the nameserver addresses you will need after you sign up for a hosting account. It can take up to 24 hours for the new DNS settings to propagate throughout the Internet and for the domain to start pointing to our servers.

Yes, we offer free Domain WHOIS Privacy service with each .com, .net, .org, .biz, or .info domain name registered with us. You can contact our Support Team for more information on how to enable WHOIS privacy for your domain.

SSL Certificates

An SSL certificate is used to prove and authenticate the ownership of your site to its users. Additionally, once it has been issued and set up for you, a certificate will allow secure, encrypted HTTPS connections to your site, which are encouraged for the transmission of any sensitive information such as login credentials and payment data. Since 2018, all major browsers issue security warnings when sites are accessed via unencrypted connections.

Any certificate that you install for your account with us will only encrypt the web connections to the site. The email services use separate SSL certificates that are handled by us. In practice, this means that encrypted connections to mail.yourdomain.com are not allowed. For this reason, we encourage our users to set up their email clients so that they connect to a server-based hostname instead.

Certificates are issued by a list of companies known as Certificate Authorities. We offer commercial certificates by GeoTrust and Sectigo, as well as the free certificates issued by Let's Encrypt. You could also obtain an SSL certificate from a third party, and install it through the SSL/HTTPS section of your hosting account's Control Panel.

Let's Encrypt is a nonprofit Certificate Authority, trusted by all major operating systems and browsers, offering free SSL certificates. You can find out more at letsencrypt.org.

Let's Encrypt certificates are easy to install from the SSL/HTTPS section of your hosting account's Control Panel - the only requirement is that your domain name points to our hosting servers. They are generally issued instantly, and will be renewed automatically for as long as your site is hosted with us.

Free Let's Encrypt certificates offer the same level of encryption as commercial ones. Commercial certificates may also include additional features, such as static and dynamic site seals, as well as end-user warranties against loss of money when payment has been submitted on an SSL-encrypted site.

Payments

We accept credit card payments. If you choose to pay by credit card, you will be using one of the agents/retailers that we employ - 2Checkout or Stripe. PayPal is supported for our Automatic Renewal service. Also, a bank wire transfer to an EU-based bank is an option. You can contact our Support team for details if you want to pay with a bank wire transfer.

You can pay with a credit or debit card from the most popular vendors Visa and Mastercard with all the payment processors we use - 2Checkout, Stripe, and PayPal. With Stripe, you can also pay with an American Express, China UnionPay, or Cartes Bancaires card, while for the PayPal automatic renewals, you can use an American Express or a Discover card. Lists of the credit and debit cards supported by the payment processors we use are available here for 2Checkout, here for Stripe, and here for PayPal.

Note: The payment processors may remove support for specific cards temporarily or permanently without prior notice, so these lists may not be up-to-date.

We do not store or process any credit/debit card information on our servers. The payments and any related sensitive information are fully processed by our payment processors and stored on their servers.

Although we do not have a dedicated Sales team, you can always contact our Support staff for sales-related assistance. They will respond to all your presales, billing, or upgrade questions.

If you submit a payment by credit card, you will receive a receipt from the billing agent/retailer via email shortly after you made the payment. If this does not suit your needs and you need an official company invoice, you can contact our Support Team after you submit the payment, and they will arrange for issuing an invoice to you.

Of course. We offer 100-day full money-back guarantee. If you do not want to use our services, you can contact us with a cancellation request at any point during the initial 100 days of your hosting subscription. We will then cancel the account, and you will receive your money back. Have in mind that domain registrations are not included in this policy. Domain registrations are non-refundable. If we have registered the domain name for you, we will deduct the retail domain registration price (discounts do not apply).

We do not charge our customers automatically. Actually, we do not store any credit card data on our servers. When the time for renewal comes, we will send you a notification by email, and you will have to submit your renewal payment. We start sending renewal notifications 45 days prior to the expiration date.

The only exception is our Automatic Renewal service (via PayPal), which only you can enable manually via the ICDSoft Account Panel. The feature can be disabled at any time via the ICDSoft Account Panel or via PayPal.

Data security

We only keep data, which is vital for the proper operation of our systems: name, address, user logins, related logs. Of course, your data will never be presented to third parties. You can check our full Privacy Policy.

We are obligated to give the global registry information about the owner of each domain name. According to ICANN rules, this information is visible in the WHOIS of the domain. Information about who is responsible for domain names is publicly available to allow rapid resolution of technical problems and to permit enforcement of consumer protection, trademark, and other laws.