Complaint Review: Unim

Things You may not know about the WEBSITE Unim offers

My husband and I started our journey with unim and all the must haves in Feb 2005. I have been so disgusted and frustrated for the past six months. I thought I was the only one that has had a problem with them until I ran across this site. There are so many things wrong with their website package, builder, and hosting. Everytime I have tried to discuss issues with them I get the same response that can't help and if they do then there will be a charge. They talk to you like your an idiot and are rude on top of that.

I got tired of them treating me like this so I took a course and became SEO certified. I now know the ends and outs of setting up websites and marketing them. SO now when I call,email, I try to reach them on live chat they refuse to reply or answer. I have had many conversations with them about the issues that need to be implemented in order to make this a profitable business and again they say there is no way they can fix these things when in all they are simple and easy to fix. I also had the same problem that the gentleman from Washington had with the eamil.

I went in to check my webmail and there it was someone elses mail so I logged out and logged back in and there was my mail. I didn't really think much of it until I read the report here. SO I know exactly what hes talking about.I refused the mentoring. Thank goodness. But the websites are no better.

I'm going to let you know of some of the basics here and why unim is not concerned if any of us succeed.

URLS
There are 2 reasons why the urls are important but unim refuses to fix these flaws. If you notice that your webpages (not the home page) looks something like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/custom.em?pid=123456

The first reason that this is a problem is search engines do not recognize the ?(question mark) in the url. Most refuse to rank these pages. If you are trying to get your website out there all pages HAVE to be optimized this is impossible with the way unim has the urls set up. Search engines rank pages not sites so how limited is you profits when only the home page makes a presence.

The second reason is your top keyword for that page, needs to be in the url. Search engines will rank your competition higher if the keyword is in the url and not yours. For example say you sell professional office supplies and briefcases is one of the products you sell.(for even more optimization break it down to leather briefcases)your url needs to look like this:
http://www.professionalofficesupplies.com/leather-briefcases.html

Unim doesn't let you name your own pages, therefor you get stuck with what they give you and they refuse to make the necessary changes.This is simple but WILL cost you in profits when the other company is getting your traffic.

METATAGS

Unim offers the Title, Keywords and description options and although they are the necessaries alone they ARE NOT enough.

You should be able to implement a robot file,author file,revisit file, content file and many others that are necessary when competeing for business on the net. Again the company with these files implemented are going to get ranked higher more often and reap your profits. If unim would let you alter the head html codes then this wouldn't be a problem it could very easily be implemented. But, they dont you can only alter the body of the html inside the builder.

When I asked them to fix this and discussed the reasons why, they told me there is no way to do it and when I asked if a tech person could do it for me they said yes but it would cost you $140.00. I told them that was crazy for something I could do myself, If I only had the access.

Let me explain that these things that I am mentioning are a given with most other websites and hosting. JUST NOT WITH UNIM!

WEBPAGES
If you notice in the unim builder that every page you put on is registered on the navigation bar. WHY is this a problem? lets take for example you have 100 products of briefcases. You can not put all 100 on a single page. (customers don't like to see more thatn 25 products on a page plus it will make your page size to large and search engine will not rank pages that are to large) So you have to put a second and third page up to display them all but it also is linked on the nav bar when you do this. It will lokk something like this:
Home
Briefcases
Briefcases-2
briefcases-3
This is unprofessional and doesn't make sense. If you go to most any other site that has alot of products when you click on the page of briefcases (per say) it would have something like this at the bottom:
1 2 3 Next >
The pages are hidden from the nav bar but they are there and you can reach them from the section you are in. Again most other website builders and hosting you can do this. NOT WITH UNIM!!

DOWNTIME
Unim has an uptime of 25%, seriously. This poses a problem for 2 reasons and probably more but here are two I'v experienced.
1)When customers are shopping for your particular product and your site is down whos going to get the profits? Your competetion of course. And if Unim is down (which they are most of the time) you ARE losing traffic and potential customers.

2)Links are necessary to get ranked! The number of inbound links(links to you from other sites) tell the search engine how important your pages are. Therefor, good quality links to you from other sites get you ranked. Again if your competetion has inbound links from top ranked sites and you don't they WIll reap your profits. Well I have traded links with many top ranked sites but on more that a several ocassions when the business I was trading with went to veiw my site It was down and I got little letters denying me saying that they could not find the website. How embarrassing!! Im trying to establish business relationships and unim MY HOSTING SERVICE is sabbatogging me.

SHIPPING

With unim you only have the choice of one shipping price. The problem with this is how are you suppose to do international business. Some people may only want to ship within the United States but let me tell you something if you are on the net conducting business you are international. WORLDWIDE WEB means world wide and if we limit ourselfs to just US, YOU WILL be losing major profits. I have discussed this with unim on several occassions also. There answer was:

When the customer checks out add the extra shipping cost to their credit card in the builder and then approve it.

I asked how ethical was that. The customer has a right to know the exact amount they are being charged when they check out not after the fact and they are charged more on their bill. That will make us look bad and as if we are adding charges they did not approve. Again most other hosting places offer a shipping calculator for different prices and different carriers. JUST NOT UNIM!!

SEARCH ENGINES
On page 50 of the smart start book that unim gives you with the website package it tells us that there is a button in the builder that you can submit to the search engines from with in the builder. THIS IS A LIE there is no such button.

I hope I have expalined clear enough some of the issues with the website and unims hosting. Unim is not concerned if any of us make it online. They use the website piece as bait in the conferences to get to the bigger profits witch is the mentoring. If they had of told you about the mentoring up front, most would have gotten up and walked out. They are mot here to help you they are here to help you just them.

I am in the process of switching to a new host and merchant account. I have done much research on hosting and what they offer. So I'm going to let you all know that you don't have to be stuck with UNIM and that all your hard work is not in vain that you don't have to start over.

Let's take yahoo for example (I am not endorsing them they are just one of the better I found) You can switch your domain over to them and you have to find who you registered the domain with and change server name to yahoo so that browsers will point to the new website with yahoo. And if you think like I did, what about all the work I'v done to have to start from scratch. Well here is a trick even though the domain that you registered is now with yahoo, the domain that Unim gave you at first is still up until you cancel with unim for example:
Http://www.yourname.unimwebcenter.com
This means all you have to do is go to your site through that web address copy and paste your files and images to your yahoo store.

Next if you want to get away from innovative, yahoo offers a merchant account that can be set up in their store and you don't have to pay a gateway fee every month. Also if you want to keep innovative they will let you transfer it or you canfind another that you like and set it up with them. Most of your banks offer merchant accounts.

And get this they offer everything I have talked about and more as most hosting company's do for the same price or LESS.

Yahoo has a $50 set up fee which is waived. If you get to the page where it isn't waived contact me and I tell you how to get to the page where it is. Like I said most hosting companies offer these things that are basic but just please do research on any that you are considering. I also know that from my research 1 in every 8 business on the web are hosted by yahoo. They do have their flaws but as I have found they are minumim compared to others like UNIM.

I hope and pray that something good comes out of all of your bad experiences with Unim. I am more than happy to help any of you with the what knowledge I have attained and will be more than happy to help you implement any of these things or answer any questions you may have to help you succeed. FREE OF CHARGE

Antoine & Carren
Huntsville, Alabama
U.S.A.