Hosting Company Negative Traits
We've discussed ideal traits of a good web hosting company before, but what about the things that you don't want? The things that say, “Stay far away from this hosting company!”
Here's a quick list of things you should watch out for. If you come across a company that possesses any of these traits, you should look elsewhere immediately.
1. Hosting Company: Rigid Contract
Keep your distance from the hosting provider not offering month-to-month plans, or those without a money-back-guarantee. They should have confidence in their services, that you will like what you get and stick with their cheap hosting company for some time.
While you'll save some money on that 12 or 24-month package, you're stuck in that contract until it runs out. So if that company doesn't offer a month-to-month plan, they should have some form of guarantee that allows you to jump ship at the first sign of trouble.
2. Hosting Company: No Mention Of An Uptime Guarantee
Go through the service level agreement (SLA) in order to determine the likelihood of an outage. What is the typical response time if there is an outage? This is a question that you need to ask right away.
It's a good idea to choose a company that offers a 99%+ uptime guarantee too. If you have any doubts about the company's uptime claims, contact some current customers to see how they are fairing.
3. Hosting Company: Poor Support.
Although not often 100% reliable, web hosting forums are a great place to determine the level of support a customer will receive from any hosting provider. Just know that sometimes paid affiliates or actual company employees will post to these forums.
You want to stay away from the company that doesn't respond to customer requests (especially emergencies like outages) quickly. The ideal window for response time is no longer than 48 hours, although 24 hours is even better! The best: a company that offers an online chat support for immediate response and assistance.
4. Hosting Company: Not Enough Servers.
It stands to reason that the more servers a shared hosting company has, the better performance you'll get. Downtime is minimized because there are less websites sharing the same server. If your hosting company is operating off of a handful of servers, you should be concerned and look elsewhere.
5. Hosting Company-Specific Control Panel.
This isn't always a big deal. What you need to watch out for is the company that offers their own control panel without also offering an area you can visit to learn more about using it. Imagine using a new application without a help feature! It would be a nightmare!
You don't want to call tech support for something that should be as easy as walking through an online tutorial on your own time. While many tutorials exist online for cPanel, Plesk, and WordPress, there won't be many, if any at all, for a company-specific control panel.
Have you experienced trouble with your web hosting company not listed here? Let's talk about it! Comment below.
