Finding the Best Hosting Provider Part 2

Web Hosting Don'ts (Read the Part 1 of this article here)

Avoid these hosting mistakes at all cost or face the consequences!

Choosing a Host On Price Alone

Do not chose a web host based only on their pricing. Their are many cheap hosting providers and with most you get what you pay for. Very little. If the price you are quoted seems to good to be true, it probably is. Expect to pay at least .50 cents for every gigabyte of bandwith for average reliability and three or four times that if you want high quality hosting.

Purchasing Hosting from an Auction Site

Not that you will not find good hosting from an auction site, but the chances aren't good. Especially if the company does not even operate a web site to market their services.

Trusting Customer Testimonials

Most testimonials simply can't be trusted. If the web host lists contact information and the web site of the testimonials listed they may be trustworthy, but the majority should not be taken at face value.

Free Domain Included with Hosting

It is always better to keep your domain seperate from your hosting company. Many hosts offer free domains with their hosting plans. This practice is fine as long as the domain is registered in your name and belongs to you. If they register it to themselves and only let you "borrow" it you face the risk of them holding your domain hostage if you ever decide to move to another hosting provider.

This valuable information has been provided by Michael Shelton
Owner of Host-Resource.com

Comments

[T Wright]

The problem with hosting is its like a totally blind item. I've dealt with a dozen hosts over the years.

They can say anything on their site. Offer you the moon and at a great and fantastic price. But here is the catch, a host who is doing things right shouldn't be able to offer you the moon. If so then they are cheating the system or overloading their servers. This is why so many hosts just are gone one day.

I mean look at one host I used. They offered my twice as much space and traffic for half the price, but they could suppport what they offered. That is a lie and any other business they would be in court.

Eventually, like I said in another post I ended up at webcs.com. I like webcs.com because they are honest with me. They give me half of what that other host did for the actual amount it costs them to provide me with good service. And they even stated up front to me that they are not a discount host. Cool.

I would also add that AGE is something you should look for in a host. Most commercial hosting began around the end of 1995. The majority of hosts are around 2-3 years old. Totally new. Thus they have not gone through bad times or recessions or had to reinvest themselves. Webcs.com 9+ years! Once again, cool. Sticking with them. Great article by the way.

[Jennifer]

I think another point is don't be fooled by people offering you huge accounts. I mean, there are sites popping where its like 5 gig of space for $5.

Go to Best Buy. We all know what regular hard drives costs. And this is the cost of the drive, the service, the data line, everything. Seriously, if you are paying too little and you know it, how can you expect that company to provide you service. You work for a specific amount and hour, so do all of its empoyees. OR there aren't really employees there in the first place.

So make sure the hosting company is fair to you, but also make sure you are fair to the hosting company. That is the only way you will succeed. You can only do so much shopping around before you find out you have shopped too much.

I've reviewed WEBster Computing Services before, webcs.com, and the user above is correct. The pricing model makes sense for actually providing support. So that is definitely ONE of a handful of companies I would host with. Good review T.