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Tips On Choosing the Right Hosting Company

Some deals seem too good to be true. Here are some valuable tips to consider when choosing the right hosting company so you don't get scammed.

Support

Support is always an overlooked consideration when choosing a hosting company. One of the best ways to check the quality of support is to use it before you make a decision to host with the company. Do they have an 800 number? Call it and see if it even works. Do you get a message? How long do you have to hold? DId you end up in phone tree hell?

Some companies have great sales support, but the service is skimpy if it exists at all. After all, the real money is in sales. Companies don't make money by supporting you. They only make money by selling to you.

Scam Plans

If it sounds too good to be true, it's too good to be true. Every Web host has the same restrictions when it comes to resources. If a service offers you unlimited bandwidth and hard drive space, DO NOT JOIN THEM. The reason is simple. Every provider is using a computer to serve Web pages and there is not a single server made that has unlimited RAM, hard drive space or CPU speed.

The average Web site uses about 50 Mb of hard drive space and less than 1 Gb of bandwidth a month. The only way a company can offer you unlimited bandwidth and server space is if they give everyone on the box unlimited hard drive space and bandwidth. Since everything is finite, there could come a time where you cannot add something to your site or be able to visit your site because the resources have been exceeded. It's a numbers game.... Only one or two of every 100 people that signup on the plan are going to use all the bandwidth advertised. So what do they do? They usually terminate the sites that use it saying "your site is using too many resources." They aren't lying about the resource usage. IT'S the truth! Most people don't realize that bandwidth and space used have nothing to do with the server resources being used. Resource usage has to do with the amount of CPU and RAM a site uses. If a site uses a lot of bandwidth they aren't kicked for using their bandwidth they are kicked for using up most of the servers cpu and ram. Another thing to remember is that the cheaper the plan is, and the more space / bandwidth included the more sites per server the host will have to pack in to make their money back.

Never Pay Yearly

The biggest complaint we see is with people who complain the company they are using sucks and they want to switch companies, but they paid for services for a year, so they stick it out. Do not put up with bad service. You won't get your money back so you have no choice but to stay with them. ONLY PAY MONTHLY!

We take payments in advance if people want to make them, but we do our best to keep people's hosting needs flexible. You should make sure you have the ability to move if your hosting company does not do the job you need.

Domain Name Tips

Do not join a host that includes a free domain name with their hosting package, and never purchase your domain name from a hosting provider, unless you are positive they will be putting your information in the WHOIS (We do, most don't). If your information isn't in the whois they could blackmail you into staying with them. For all technical purposes whoever has their information in the whois is the owner. A domain owner doesn't go by who paid for it; it goes by whose information is on the whois. To check a whois on the domain go there and type "domainname.com" and click submit. Whoever�s address, email, and phone number shows up is the domain owner. We recommend purchasing a domain from www.godaddy.com after you purchase the name all you would do is put your host's dns in and your domain name will then point to your hosting company.


A few more tests to check out how legit a company is

Do a whois on their domain name. Then look for the creation date of the domain name. If the domain name was created less then a year ago it's more of a risk to join that hosting company. They could be a great host, but considering more then 95% of new hosts go out of business within a year that really isn't something you should be taking a chance on. It's too easy to become a hosting company. All someone has to do is join our reseller plan and they are now a host. Sure the hosting may be good, but that doesn't mean they are going to provide good support nor does it mean they are going to pay their hosting bill. We end up kicking resellers of ours all the time for not paying their bills (after many warnings) and in many cases their unsuspecting customers lose their site.

You could also test the speed of a host's network to your location by...

Clicking start > run > type in "command" enter, and then type "ping hostdomainname.com" wait for it to finish and look for the average ping. The lower the number the better, and chances are the faster your site will load if you should host with them. Any number around an 80 average would be good. Anything over 100 is very bad (unless you're living in another country from where the host is based.)


Customer Reviews

Don't believe anything you read on the hosting directories. They don't care who they recommend as they are all paid listings. The highest bidder gets the spot. What you should do to find reviews is search google using the company�s name. If they have been around a year you should find many real reviews of people who use their hosting. Another good place to check would be the company's forum, but don't always believe what you see. If someone writes something bad in the forum most hosts will delete their post and ban the user.


Uptime

If a hosting company claims 100% uptime they are lying. All servers need to be rebooted every now and then for security and software updates. If they never reboot that means their server is insecure and they will eventually be hacked.

When a company guarantees an uptime, that doesn't make it true. A host has as many uptimes as they have servers. It all depends on what server they put you on, and how well they manage it from the time you're put on it. We guarantee a 99.9 uptime but that does not mean we will hit it every month for eternity. Our guarantee means we give you a 100% refund for the month if we should not hit it. Many hosting companies will give you a prorated refund based on the amount of downtime. So say you pay $10 for a month of hosting and your site is down for 24 / hours. They will refund you for one day of downtime which ends up being about 33 cents. A guarantee is worthless! What is worth something is how they define the guarantee, and if they do in fact honor it.

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