Don’t Make These Hosting Mistakes!
by HostVoice.net
During the course of business, HostVoice serves many customers
and sees many situations plaguing webmasters out there. Here are 10 true-life
hosting mistakes our customers tell us they learn from and how to avoid
them.
1. Falling For The Price Trap
The call of low hosting prices is like a siren. There are
reasonable budget-hosting solutions and there are outrageously low budget
hosting almost guaranteed to become a nightmare. If the price makes you
wonder how they make money then you can look forward to an extremely slow
site or even denial of service because they maxed out the bandwidth. Not
good. Trust your instincts stay clear.
2. Inexperienced Reseller or Not Researching Your
Reseller
Hosting with a reseller is not a bad thing. In fact sometimes
resellers give you very good support. But you need to do your second layer
research. Sometimes a reseller is very good all around but inexperienced
especially when it came to scripts and server environments. Some resellers
also couldn’t accommodate customer requests because the server administrators
wouldn’t work with them under any circumstance. This usually happens
when the server administrators are bulk sellers who are disconnected from
the end customer.
If the server administrators are not reliable or cannot
accommodate you, don’t hope your reseller can. Resellers should
also have done their homework and know their servers as if their own.
3. Not Clearly Defining Your Requirements.
As an ongoing process you should keep a list of what resources
your site needs and add to that list as you grow. One Webmaster was changing
their static HTML pages to dynamic, which meant scripts were going to
be used. Since the Webmaster didn’t have a clear idea of what he
would like to install and what these scripts required, he only found out
after moving, the host servers were not compatible with the scripts. He
lost months of work moving the sites in and out again.
So, maintain a list. It also makes it easier when you need
to upgrade because you can show the list to your host. If you use a service
such as HostVoice the list is even more helpful because it can go out
to multiple hosts at one time who’ll quickly evaluate if they have
what you’re asking for or not.
4. Purchasing Hosting In An Auction
It might be a good place to pick up a deal but then you’ll
need to go back and review the first point. This is not to say all auctioned
hosting is completely unreliable but in case you haven’t noticed
auctioned items have a good deal of terms and conditions attached, usually
more than if purchased through the website. This makes your package very
inflexible. Unless you review closely those terms or if you have a small
static HTML pages with little ambition for the site, stay away or pay
their regular website prices. This way the host will more likely work
with your requirements.
5. Forgiving A Host’s Bad Or Limited Website
If the host can’t or won’t take time to craft
an informational site of their own, most likely they won’t be too
concerned about yours either. Cookie cutter sites are a dead giveaway.
6. Putting All The Eggs In One Basket
If you manage several sites, it seems like a good idea to
have everything in one account. You can simplify your billing and get
a better deal. Not always. We know of some webmasters who lost hours or
work time because they couldn’t work on anything since all their
sites were down. If your site generates income and they are interconnected,
having all sites down at once is bad business. There is an option to this
though. Ask your host if they’ll be willing to split your account
across 2 or more physical servers.
7. Taking Testimonials At Face Value
Not all testimonials are created equal. You need to ask
other webmasters, talk to their customers. If they don’t list customer
names on their site, ask them if you can contact any of their customers
or if they’ll contact you. If the host refuses, beware.
8. Not Keeping A Record Of Their Contact Information
Most of us are happy with email, forum and live support.
One Webmaster’s host was down for days. This also meant the host’s
own site. The Webmaster couldn’t contact them at all because he
hadn’t taken the time to record a physical address or telephone
number. 24/7 telephone support is still desired. When your site is down
indefinitely and you’re losing visitors even sales it’s guaranteed
you’ll want to talk to someone.
9. Relying On Host Backups
This happens far too often. When a customer’s site
went down indefinitely, they were stuck. They couldn’t put the site
with another host because they didn’t have any backups of their
own. They would have to start from scratch, which would be just as bad
because the site was rather mature. Always keep your own backups.
10. Trusting your host to have the latest software
Internet crime is and viruses are more prevalent than ever.
New software or the latest versions are meant to plug security holes.
A customer had their site hacked twice in 2 months only to find out the
host was not up to date with their software. Check with the host before
you order what versions they are running and how often they make updates.
_____________________________________________________
Written By HostVoice.net
- HostVoice is a free online service which brings hosting companies and
consumers together. Submit a free request and receive offers within 15
minutes from qualifying hosts. When hosts compete for your business, you
win!
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