Question: I signed up with a web host and paid with a credit card. Now they want me to deposit a few hundred dollars before they activate my account. Should I do it?
Answer: If you walked into a store and wanted to purchase something with your credit card, but they told you to make a deposit before you could buy. Would you make a deposit? No, you should not be making deposits to get your account activated.
The idea that you have to make a deposit to activate your account is just not cool. There are other web hosts around. You should choose another web host. A web host that requires you to make an initial deposit to activate your account, after having paid with a credit card is probably doing it because of credit card fraud issues. This doesn’t make it right and is not a hassle worth dealing with.
You should find a web host that doesn’t make you deposit money to get your account activated. If the web host that you are ordering services from is not known or brand new than this may be a scam. Don’t worry about trying to figure out if it is scam or not by avoiding web hosts that ask you to deposit money to activate your web hosting account.