Web Host Shopping Guides: How To Avoid The Bad Apples?

Posted in Web Host Shopping on May 6th, 2011 |

In this day and age when there seems to be countless businesses sprouting up just about anywhere, a website becomes an absolute necessity for every business. Your website should not be just a plain and simple website. It should reflect your goals and objectives. It must be unique and interesting to drive traffic to it and get you new customers. And most importantly, your website must have a good host.

Many web masters usually find themselves in a problematic situation because they did not take the time to rigorously evaluate their web host. The internet is notorious for scams and it holds true for web hosting. If you are not wary enough, you may just pick a web host that will have you ripped off or frustrated. To avoid such case, here are some tips to avoid bad web hosting.

Read Web Hosting Reviews

Just like in making any purchase, you should read the reviews before actually availing of the product. Reviews are useful because they provide insights about the product made by people who have bought them already. In case of web host reviews, you will find out the pros and cons of getting a certain host. This is also the best way to find out if a web hosting service is a scam since people who have already been scammed will definitely make it known.

Nonetheless, user reviews are not always available. If that is the case, you should not assume that the web hosting service is safe. Most of the time, if it does not have reviews, it either means it is just starting out in the business— which means less experience and lower quality compared to the long running web hosts— or it is not desirable enough to be bought by consumers. Also, if there are no reviews for the web host you are interested in, there are other signs that you can consider to determine if they are good or not.

By the way, in case you need some reliable, unbiased, web hosting reviews – TWHR is the best place to be! We offer both editor and user reviews here.

Tell-tale Signs

These are the signs that you should look for and take note of to avoid bad web hosting. These signs reveal the quality of service and the credibility of the service provider.

Long term contract

If a web hosting service offers a yearly contract, you must be wary. Ideally, you should just avail of a monthly service (for VPS and dedicated hosting) or a yearly service (for shared web hosting) so if you are not satisfied, you can easily look for another provider.  Besides, if you sign a long term contract with a provider, they will have no more reason to provide you a high quality service and keep you coming back.

Unlimited Hosting Features

Understand that unlimited hosting is not *unlimited*. They are just words of marketing. When something is too good to be true, it probably is. No web host is able to offer you limitless features such as unlimited space and bandwidth for a cheap price. So make sure you understand the catch-22 behind these unlimited hosting offers. Hosting companies often will suspend your hosting accounts when you are using too much of CPU power or inodes. Beware!

Trial Period/Refund Policy

A 30 days free trial period is a must; better if you can get 45 or 90 days; best if they are offering life-time refund policy. For example, Bluehost and iPage offer Anytime Moneyback Guarantee, this means you can ask for a pro-rated refund any time during your subscription.

Postal address

A postal address on the service provider’s site is a very good sign. A good company would always welcome letters sent by their clients for whatever reason. Also, this is a good way to know that the web host is not “bedroom-based”.

Support system

It is very important to have a web host that provides excellent support. So, before sealing the deal with your web host, check their support system. See if they deal with their clients quickly and professionally. It is also a good sign if they have a 24/7 online support and do not just take their word for it. Try if the support staff is really available 24/7 and if they can really help you in case a problem arises.

Uptime claims

Uptime is the amount of time your website will be up and running and functional. It is usually shown in percentage and is found on the site of the service provider. If it is not there, you must contact the company and ask them about it. You must know that there is no such thing as 100% when it comes to uptime. It is inevitable that your website will be down at times. Therefore, you should find a web host that will be honest with you in stating their uptime percentage.

Shop Around Before You Decide

You should also take a look at the top rated web hosts and the worst rated web hosts. For the top rated lists, the order of the ranking is rarely the same. A web host may be number one in one list but might not be present in the other lists, so what you should do is identify the web host that appears most often in all the top rated lists.

Our top rated web hosts are iPage, FatCow, BlueHost, and Hostgator. But wait, don’t take our words just like that. Check around and read more hosting user reviews for your own good. With just some little extra research work online, you can save some good money and working time in the long run.