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How to
Choose the Best Web Hosting Company |
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Web Site Hosting - What to look for and what to
avoid
Finding the best web hosting company is not always
easy. There are thousands of them, over 16,000 by
one report with more being added all the time. They
range in size and the services they offer. Finding a
dependable hosting company, however, is not as easy
as it looks. Too many hosting companies are the
electronic equivalents of the worst used car
salesmen. They lie on what they offer with no
intention of delivering on what they promise, sell
you a clunker that doesn't work as promised,
overcharge you, and ignore your messages when you
e-mail or call trying to resolve a problem.
The Internet and its relative anonymity offer the
opportunity for people to pretend to be something
other than what they seem to be. Children can
pretend to be hosting companies, people with a
computer in their bedroom or basement and a DSL or
cable modem line pretend to be hosting companies,
people with a shared server reseller account pretend
to be companies with their own servers, people using
tools like Front Page and others and templates
pretend to be site designers even though most have
no knowledge of HTML and other important design
elements. Only movie making can surpass the kind of
illusion that the Internet makes possible.
What to avoid
Beware of companies that promise unlimited
resources, especially bandwidth or data transfer.
They lie. Unlimited bandwidth/data transfer is an
impossibility. Much of the time, they are gambling
that the offer of unlimited bandwidth or disk space
will get your business (money) and that you may not
even approach the very real and finite limits they
have. There are a few places that legitimately offer
some unlimited resources under particular
conditions, but far fewer than advertise them. Along
with bandwidth use is CPU/resources usage. Many
hosts have limits mentioned in their terms of
service.
Beware of companies that treat your site creation
and hosting as a package deal. Some will refuse to
give you access to your site so that you are forced
to have them perform any changes and redesigns. They
often overcharge for their work, which is why they
hold your site hostage.
Beware of the companies that rate hosting companies.
For the most part, those ratings were bought with
advertising dollars. Many of those rating companies
are owned by a hosting company. No big surprise
there. Even if the rating company doesn't rate its
host, it may have a reciprocal arrangement with one
of the other rating companies, trading a high rating
of each other's hosting companies. None of this is
speculation but has been confirmed in our research
on the subject and candid admissions by some
individuals in that business.
Beware of the companies that make you pay for a year
in advance or obligate you to a year long contract
for a shared (virtual) server account. It's a sweet
deal for them, and often a sour one for you. A
company that is long on promises and short on
keeping them, benefits greatly when you pay for a
whole year. Remember, many of these companies make
their money from a constant influx of new customers,
not by providing service to the ones they have. When
you pay for a year in advance, you make it easy for
them to fleece you. Some offer discounts as an
inducement to have you pay yearly, while others
simply require it. If you read their Terms Of
Service (TOS), chances are they say no refunds are
allowed and that they can close down your account
for a variety of reasons, even penalizing you for
your success (referred to as using an excessive
amount of resources, what they term as abuse). You
can look at it this way, if they are as good as they
say they are, you'll probably stay with them anyway.
If they aren't, you've either lost money by
prepaying that far in advance, stuck with a bad host
for a year, or both.
Note that this does not apply as regards dedicated
servers. Because of the commitment of hardware and
other resources, a six or twelve month contract is
typical for dedicated server hosting.
Beware of the companies that hide their Terms of
Service (TOS). Terms of service are the web hosting
equivalent of reading the fine print on a contract,
with an important distinction. With the fine print,
at least you are aware of its existence. Not so with
TOS. Many companies fail to disclose them until you
violate them, which is too late to do you any good.
That is when you often find out that the unlimited
bandwidth and traffic they advertise has very
definite limits. However, once your account has
exceeded those limits and been disabled is not the
proper time to learn the terms of service. The
proper time is right up front before you have
committed to them as a customer. Some refer to their
TOS as Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).
You can't judge by appearance. This simple premise
applies to many things in life and applies as well
when selecting a hosting company. Some of the worst
hosts have an attractive web site and offerings and
would indeed be excellent if their service and
attitude were equal to the impression their web site
is meant to give. Some hosting companies have
started in garages and do not have the facilities or
equipment to ensure your site will remain
operational to the fullest extent.
You can't trust the claims made by many. They
advertise their servers are up 99.9% of the time,
but how do you know for sure? Nobody monitors these
companies so they can claim whatever they want to.
The testimonials on their sites, if not fabricated,
are only from satisfied customers. Do you think they
would print the truth from any of the customers they
have abused? One of the hosts we used in the past
shut our account down when we challenged them to
print our testimonial to their ineptitude. Many
advertise a 30 day money back guarantee and don't
keep that promise either. Once they have your credit
card number, they begin charging far more than they
told you they would.
Even some seemingly legitimate companies lie, and it
can cost you in many ways. Most will have stated
policies against spamming (the sending of
unsolicited bulk e-mail) simply because it is
expected that they have such policies.
Unfortunately, some companies are hypocrites and do
not honor those policies. They tolerate spammers on
their system or may spam themselves. Choosing such a
host can cost you in many ways. You may find
yourself cut off from a sizeable portion of the
Internet. Your e-mail may be blocked and rejected by
many servers that block all e-mail coming from
systems that tolerate abusers. The Spamhaus Project
to see if any host you are considering is listed
there. It is one of the steps in keeping you from
making a bad choice.
Sometimes (often, actually) big is too big. Some
sites boast of thousands of accounts that they host.
This is meant to impress you and suggest that if 50
or 60 thousand other customers have chosen them,
that you should too. What they don't tell you is
that they may have lost 20 or 30 thousand of those
customers, or they may have turned over many more
times that amount in dissatisfied customers. Many of
these companies make their money from getting new
customers, not from keeping the existing ones by
honoring their commitment and providing good
service. They load hundreds of accounts, even
thousands, on each server, all sharing many of the
same resources, which affects your site and all
others you share the server with, especially if you
have any CPU (processor) intensive programs or
functions. This is one of the reasons many of the
advertised unlimited resources are not unlimited.
They may disable your account when your site uses
more than its fair share of resources (we've had
that happen too), or start charging your credit card
for more than you bargained for.
Smaller companies can offer something the large ones
can't, personalized service. That can make a big
difference in helping your site make the most from
being on the Internet.
Companies that are Internet access providers do not
offer any advantages over companies that are solely
in the hosting business. Their core business is
providing access and even many companies that excel
at that are deficient in their hosting service. Some
have file restrictions that make them impractical
for all but the simplest of sites, those where no
additional programs will need to be added. There may
be attractive financial packages from combined
services, but these can be secondary or tertiary to
more important concerns.
Sometimes cheap is too cheap. It is perfectly
natural, even expected, to seek the best deal one
can get. For a business site, the best value may be
much less expensive than the lowest price. Remember,
many sites advertise low prices to get a constant
influx of new customers. They have to as many of
their present ones leave them. You get what you pay
for. The poor service at so many companies means
frequent changes from one host to another in search
of a decent one. That can be costly, between the
time lost in transfers, reinstalling and
reconfiguring your programs, down time of your site,
lost sales, lost exposure, inability of certain
programs to operate properly, etc.
The bitterness of poor quality remains long after
the sweetness of the low price is forgotten.
Part 2 What to
look for in a good host
•
Find the best web hosting
companies
• Read More Articles and Help
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