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Before you leap into one of these discount ISP's there are a number of considerations that you need to look at.
Do you have a personal website?
If you have a personal website there are quite a few tasks to perform before you can cancel your current ISP service. Once your service is cancelled all of your webspace files will be gone. Poof! You can take this opportunity to download all of your files and clean out any dead wood. I recommend downloading your files to a separate directory. When I switched ISP's I took the time to 'UNIXize' all of my html, gif, jpeg and xls references. Unix and search engines like filenames like baby_ground_squirrel_hose.jpg and not what most Windows users are used to seeing - Baby Ground Squirrel Hose.JPG.
I changed the name of every file that I was going to put back up on the server to a UNIX and search engine friendly format. I next went through each and every HTML file and changed all the references to match the new file names. This took two or three days of work but I think it was worth the work. Of course ideally I would have set them up this way in the first place but that is the price you have to pay as a Windows user that wants to play in Unix land.
My contract with Mindspring was set to expire on the 14th. I later learned that it expired at 12:00:01 on the 13th since apparently that was the date of my first credit card billing. I wanted my new web hosting service and ISP up and running before that for several reasons. First, it allowed me to have my new web page tested and ready for use before I made the switchover. Second, it allowed me to redirect my existing Mindspring pages to the new web pages hopefully so the search engine robots could pick up the change.
Do you have a list of your ID / passwords for all of your Internet contacts?
Pull out your list of email contacts. Anyone you have ever given your email address to needs to be notified of your new email address. This includes your friends and family you contact via email and companies you do business with including online stores, brokers, utilities, banks, employers, health care providers, your library, government agencies - well the list can go on and on. This could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days or more. It can get quite ugly, but use this as an opportunity to notify only those who you actively contact or absolutely need to be contacted. The good news is that the people and companies you don't want contacting you can be ignored and won't be contacting you again.
Send all of your contacts your new email address from the new ISP. This way if they reply to you at a later date it will be to your new email address.
If you don't already have a list of ID's annd passwords for websites you visit, this is definitely the time to make one. I have an Excel spreadsheet that is password protected where I keep my list. It's not totally secure but it is better than a Word document or a text file. You don't want to leave this information lying around in an unprotected file. There are programs that will do this for you, but then you have to trust that your personal information really is protected and that the programs you are using do not have any spyware.
Go through each company and organization on your list and modify your account on their web page. You should receive a confirmation email of the change from them. If you don't receive a confirmation email you have likely made an error and you have incorrectly typed your new email address. Check off each company on your list after you have received the confirmation.
Have you checked for a local number for your preferred ISP?
Before you set up your Internet connection to dial the new ISP it is important to verify that the new number is a local number. Telephone numbers in the U.S. are in the format xxx-yyy-zzzz where xxx is the area code and yyy is the exchange. If the three digits are a local exchange there shouldn't be any toll charges.
If so, is the local number really local?
You can determine if the exchange is a local exchange several ways. Your phone book may have a list of exchanges in your local calling area. If the exchange you need to contact is not on the list you can contact your phone service provider either by phone or email and ask them.
You can also pick up the phone, dial the number and listen for a statement that there is a charge for the call. If you don't hear this statement it doesn't necessarily mean that it is a toll-free call. If you do hear that there is a charge associated with the call you will know right away that this is not a number you want to use for your dial-up connection.
I was so paranoid about receiving a $1000 phone bill that I coordinated my service cutover to a few days before my phone service billing cycle. I kept my usage to a minimum by disconnecting while not actively working online, which is a good habit to get into anyway. I then went online to look at my bill to be sure that I wasn't making toll calls to my new ISP.
Overlap your service by at least two weeks
If you have a website, give yourself plenty of time to get your new website set up. You might consider one month to do this. Search engines may take a week or more to pick up new websites. Submit your website address to the big search engines. You may have a tool in your new Internet service package that will allow you to submit your site automatically. Use it with caution. I used this service and began receiving more Spam than I have seen in years.
During this two to four week period note any email you get from a company at your old email address that you are not getting at your new address. You can use this period to update those accounts and other accounts each time you login to a website that you haven't already changed. Don't forget to add it to your contact list.
Your existing ISP may have a Spam blocker service. If so, many of your email messages may be kept in a separate area on the ISP email server that you can access by logging in to your Web email account. Most if not all of these emails will be Spam, but this is a good time to log in and review these emails before they disappear forever. You never know. You might find an important 'quarantined' message that you would never had seen if you hadn't taken the effort to look for it.
You may want to keep your old email address. It may be possible to do this, for a price. Your old ISP may offer you the opportunity to keep your old email address. At Phreego, this was $4.95 per month, a hefty price for what you are getting - simple email service. I had all of my email addresses changed over to my pecos-softwareworks.com domain email addresses and declined the offer.
The Bottom Line
Moving to a new ISP is not a trivial exercise especially if you do a lot of online work, have a personal website or have a lot of email buddies. Planning will help, but expect to spend a lot of time before the change. No doubt ISP's rely on this fact to keep their customers from jumping ship. One thing you can be sure of, your old ISP won't be helping you make the change. They won't keep any emails in your email boxes and any further emails to your old account will be returned to sender. They won't keep any of your personal webspace files. Any pictures or other personal files stored on their servers will also be lost.
Plan the cancellation of your old ISP to allow for the two to four week overlap. Know what your exact termination date will be. Is it immediate, end of month or end of the billing cycle? Try to get an end of service date when canceling your current service. Also get a confirmation number or email to verify that your old service really has been cancelled.
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