Web Hosting Dangers Exposed

If you are new to the webmastering game chances are you want to keep costs to a minimum. While this is a perfectly reasonable consideration when it comes to choosing your hosting cost is not the main factor. If you are new to the scene then you may have no idea what criteria you should use to select your host or what to look for. Any host you go to will claim to have minimal downtime and the best service and at the end of the day hosting is hosting right? -Wrong!

Here are some of the main dangers of choosing the wrong host.

Your site is deleted from existence

To some this scenario may seem a little farfetched but choose the wrong host and all of your work can go up in smoke with little to no warning. In May 2010 this is exactly what did happen to clients of a company called Volsh. This is a company that claimed to offer the best support and care to their clients. They also claimed they would never sell their client base on but when they were ready to move on they did just that.

When a host “sells you” to another provider it can be a serious inconvenience and if you have multiple domains – a pain in the ass. But in this case once the business along with all the clients had been sold Volsh pulled the plug. They deleted everything. Online businesses ceased to exist at the flick of a switch while the management saved a few coins for their next venture. This is not the first time a host has done this and it will likely not be the last.

When choosing your host find out how long they have been established and find out if they are legitimate registered companies. Some very nice people may offer fantastic maybe even the best support from their garage conversions – but so many of these small companies come and go overnight and you have to ask if it is worth the risk to your domains.

More downtime than uptime

Chances are you are looking in to this seriously because you need your site to promote your business. You need your investment to work for you. When your site is down you are not making money. Perhaps even worse it makes you look unprofessional. Visitors to a broken link may never return.

When evaluating a host ask what their downtime is. It should be less than 0.01%. The trouble is whoever you ask they will claim that it is less than this. So all you can do is try to ensure failsafe methods are in place and they are well established and serious about hosting.

While small hosts can potentially offer better service than some of the big players you need to ask for their technical specifications before you can go ahead with them. Also ask if they can guarantee the uptime and what they will do if they fail to deliver. Under no circumstances should you be paying for hosting that is not taking place.

Once you are signed up you can’t get away

You should be able to cancel any hosting contract when you wish – so make sure you do not have to give long notice periods. The majority of providers would not be so militant so there is no reason to pick one that will.

Even if there is no long term contract, it can still be extremely difficult to move on when you need them to transfer the domain to another provider. You can avoid this scenario completely if you purchase your domain names from another registrar. Transferring the Domain names is a simple process taking minutes and you can guarantee to avoid any problems moving the domains later.

Domain owners risk a similar situation where a web designer develops the site and provides a Content Management System (CMS). The CMS makes it easy for you to change the site yourself, but chances are the designer will insist that since it is their CMS it must be hosted on their servers. This of course is nonsense but unfortunately fairly standard practice. Many domain owners are happy to go along with the deal but some do not fully understand or anticipate being forever dependant on the designer and having to pay them a commission on the hosting until the site is taken down.

Usage Problems

With a well thought out, user friendly control panel anyone with a little technical knowledge can manage their own website. However with a basic hosting system and no support then you may need to be a technical genius. Even if you do consider yourself to be such, without support a single query could stop you in your tracks.

Before signing up it is helpful to establish:

i)  Host offers easy to use functional control panel (set up emails, users, domains, FTP)

ii) Quality support documentation and help is available

It would be easy to assume that a big well known provider will be able to offer the most help while a two man operation will not have the same expertise or time to help. This can be but is not always the case. Sometimes a small company may really go the extra mile to look after its valued customers.

To find out how helpful a company is email them before signing up asking for help and evaluate the response. Consider the potential pitfalls and ask how they can help you avoid them.

Choosing a host can be difficult with the sheer number of options available. One of the biggest mistakes a domain owner can make is to choose based purely on price – hosting is not a commodity product. Since resellers buy the cheapest hosting and sell it at the highest prices this means that you can pay a low price or you can pay a high price but this does not directly correlate with the quality of the provider. Being aware of the dangers of poor hosting services is essential before entrusting potentially valuable domains to a third party.

Update: What to expect from a good host

Written by Marcus Lewis