If you’re like most entrepreneurs, your website makes up at least part of your income and when there are website hosting issues, it can impact your bottom line. There is nothing worse than a website hosting company that goes down without warning or explanation, takes forever to rectify problems, fails to secure your site or overcharges for extras.
Dixie Vogel wrote on
You’re buying the service. The quality of service will make or break your hosting experience. Buying service is an entirely different purchase than buying a commodity.
Vogel is correct. With “unlimited” hosting plans, the cost of similar services is negligible these days. However, how these services are ran can make or break your website.
5 Web Hosting Shoppers Mistakes to Avoid
1. Not Checking Hosting Reviews
You’ve landed on the website for a hosting company and their packages sound like a dream – almost too good to be true. This should serve as your first red flag, but even if the deals seem to line up with what other hosting companies have to offer, you should always check reviews.
When checking reviews, watch for red flag items like:
- Complaints about customer service
- Complaints about down time
- Recent complaints that seem to be in a cluster (this can signal a server overload caused by growth pains)
- Complaints about viruses and other security problems
The best terms to use when searching are “complaints against XYZ hosting company” and “blog post review of XYZ hosting company”. More than likely, you’ll quickly spot those reviews that are written by the company or that are a paid review and be able to weed those out from the rest of the reviews.
2. Not Looking at Restrictions
Some web hosting companies are tricky. They will post that you get “unlimited” whatever in big, bold letters, but when you dig a bit deeper, you’ll find out what “unlimited” really means.
In his article
In reality, unlimited hosting is, always, limited.
Think about the limitation in our physical world – it is simply impossible to have unlimited semiconductor to build unlimited RAM and CPU; it is impossible to offer unlimited bandwidth when we have limited cables transmitting data around the globe.
In the very fine print, you may find information on how much bandwidth and space you can actually use before the web hosting company will throttle you. This is important information to have, because if your site already uses something close to these limits, you could find yourself suddenly without a host or your site could be shut down for an unspecified amount of time.
Other restrictions to watch out for:
- No multiple POP accounts (
- No SSH
- You can’t add statistics
- No installation of your own software (some security limitations are understandable, but most Open Source software should be on the okay to install list)
Restrictions may not be listed on the sign-up page. Ask questions to be sure you can operate your site the way you want. If you use a shopping cart, is this allowed? Will you be able to use SSH?
3. Choosing Free Space or a Host that Offers Free Space
If you’re just starting out, it might be tempting to utilize some of the servers that offer a small amount of free space. However, the old saying that you get what you pay for really is true. If you go with free space, then you need to understand that there are many other people going for the same free space. As we mentioned earlier, the capacity of servers is indeed limited.
…this kind of web hosting includes serious restrictions in a detriment for your company. Your site is going to be utilized by the actual web host to show advertisements. And also the visitors that you have proved helpful difficult in order to immediate aimed at your website is going to be siphoned away without any earnings for you. This isn’t that which you want.
On a shared hosting plan you may be competing for resources with other websites paying for the same service, but with a free hosting plan, you are now competing with anyone who wishes to sign up, free of charge.
Even if you are going for a paid plan, if the server offers free space, ask some pertinent questions.
- Do the free websites and paid websites share the same servers?
- What happens if a free website is using too many resources? What about a paid website? Is there an option to upgrade before being shut down?
- Are there ads placed on only the free sites? Paid hosting should never have ads as these pull away from your own website traffic.
4. Going with a New Company
Then, they hit the wall. They reach that magic number X customer that is one too many for their resources to handle. The servers crash, the users are taking advantage of all those features they offered and they can’t seem to get a grip on the situation. Yes, they are growing pains, but do you really want your website to fall victim to your website hosting company’s growing pains or would you rather choose a company that has already been through growing pains several times and has a plan in place for how to handle the next growth spurt?
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