One of the most critical components component of your success on the internet is your web-host. If your web-host keeps giving you troubles, you will not be able to concentrate on developing, promoting and monetizing your websites. Also, if your website is down, you will not be able to show any ads and that would translate into zero revenue for you.
Sure — you can go with the top-of-shelf hosts which provide 100% uptime but they cost an arm and leg. Since our objective is to keep our costs minimum, we are going to use cheap shared-hosts. However, a LOT of these cheap hosts often resort of tactics — which I call “Dirty Games” — to squeeze every bit of profit from their customers.
Read this post to find out how most of these hosts try to rip-off their customers and “Rules of Thumb’ for identifying and avoiding such hosts. And yes, I will have host recommendations from my personal experience with some companies. Let’s get down to business, shall we?
With the advent of cut-throat competition in the hosting market, a lot of hosts have taken to making false and misleading statements to lure those new to the industry and then use “dirty-tacts” to squeeze every bit of profit out of them. Here are Five Worst Dirty-Tactics.
#1 – Long Lock-In Periods – See those ultra-cheap $3 or $4 a month prices? Most of the times they are valid only if you prepay for a year or two. What this means is that you are going to be stuck with this host for next year or two.
Yes, what this means is that it doesn’t matter how bad the quality of service after the 30 days trial period, you are neither getting a refund nor you have an exit strategy. And let me tell you from my own personal experience, even the poster-boys of the industry go bad.
A few years ago I used to have a website hosted with Site5. At that time they used to be a rock-solid host and everyone used to swear by their quality of service. And then within a few months the quality of service turned into one of the worst in the industry.
Perhaps they were victims of their own success and grew much faster than they could manage. They are still in business but I don’t hear much about them these days. However, the point is not that. The point is that people who had prepaid them for two years had to stick with them and suffer through the bad quality of service.
Some hosts use tactics like introducing setup fees to motivate people to pay for longer period. If a host has a setup fee — avoid them. Back in 1998-99, setting up an account used to be a manual thing. However, today, when most of the stuff is automated, charging a setup fees is just a scheme to get you to pay for a longer contract.
#2 – Unreasonable Restrictions – A lot of these hosts put unreasonable restrictions on their users. These may include a restriction on number of domains, daily bandwidth limit, maximum file size limit, database size limit, not being able to use certain popular scripts etc.
One very popular host doesn’t allow its customers to use FTP Software but rather forces them to use an online interface — what a pain in ass if you have to upload hundreds of files — like when you are installing wordpress.
The very same host also has a file size limit of a few kb and a database size of just 10 MB — even though they are giving their customers hundreds of GBs of diskspace and thousands of GBs of bandwidth. Try filling up those spaces in a few lifetimes if you can.
Another host claims to give 3000 GB of bandwidth a month — however they have a daily cap of 10 GB. This means that no matter what, you cannot use more than 300 GB a month of bandwidth.
And there are so many other hosts which do these type of things.
Now mind you, we want to host all of our domains on just one account — using addon domains facility which I will explain it at later in post. If you end up with a host with such crazy restrictions, you are basically in big trouble.
#3 – Super-Sneaky Contracts – Let’s not even get started on the fine-print they have in their contacts. Basically what it usually says is that if you site starts to get popular, we will kick you out unless you upgrade to our more-expensive plan.
Want to know another super-sneaky clause most of these cheapo hosts have? Even though you are given a 30 day money-back period, but, if you ask for the money back, you have to pay setup costs which are usually about $30. Pretty high considering annual fees of most of these hosts is like 80 or 90 bucks!
#4 – Low Quality Infrastructure. One of the reasons why these hosts are able to offer services at such low prices and still be in business is because they do ruthless cost-cutting.
Usually this cost cutting involves using low-quality server infrastructure and using low-quality networks. This usually translates in low-reliability and quality of services being delivered.
Another department which suffers is customer-service. Since highly skilled technical staff costs money, so they are out of question. These hosts usually outsource their support to third-world countries and hire bare-minimum skilled staff. Result – lower quality of support for their customers.
#5 – Hidden Costs – What most people don’t realize when they are paying for the super-cheap hosting package is even though that they are getting a package with “more than you can ever use” bandwidth and space, the power-features missing.
God forbid, if your site ever becomes famous — which it will if you keep following my strategies — you are in for a shock!
I have seen some hosts charging $15 per GB of bandwidth over usage (yeah right!), $10 a month for SSL Certificate (needed for eCommerce) and $8 a month for ever add-on domain.
Now you have to remember that for these hosts, it is simply a numbers game. If you get dissatisfied and move on, it would hardly make a dent to their figure of hundreds of thousands of customers.
However, for you, it will mean a lot of wasted time, effort and money. Let’s see how to find the right host.
Am I saying that all cheap hosts are bad and should be avoided? Absolutely Not. I have used them for a long time before moving to VPSes. However, I do have a big problem with those super-cheap hosts who will go any extent to lure new customers and keep them locked in — by hook or my crook.
Here are some things you should remember when choosing a web-host. They will save you a lot of hassles and headaches in long run.
Rule#1 – No Lock-In. I would strongly recommend against paying anything more than a month in advance and, if you have to, a maximum of three months.
Sure, you may pay a bit higher price by paying monthly than you’d if you pay yearly. However, think of it as your “host-reliability” insurance — in case their services start to deteriorate, you will have an option of moving to another host.
Rule #2 – Know the Restrictions. It is an excellent idea to clear-up any special restrictions that the web host may have before you sign-up with them. Nasty surprises are particularly bad if they affect you monetarily.
And when you ask them about this, be specific in your questions. Ask them the database size limit, file-size limit, if they have any cap-on daily bandwidth usage and any particular script they disallow.
Do remember that nearly every host disallows extremely server intensive scripts like chat-scripts on shared infrastructure. You should be concerned only if they disallow popular scripts like vBulletin, PhotoPost and other which you may use.
Rule #3 – Know Thy Contract. Read the terms of service and acceptable use policy carefully before you sign-up with the webhost. Don’t just skim through it considering it to be regular stuff — more than often it is not and it directly affects you.
Rule #4 – Clarify Prices. Make sure that you always clarify the pricing of various add-ons before you hit the sign-up button. Here also you have to be specific unless you love getting vague responses.
Ask them if they will charge a setup fee if you terminate within first 15 days, cost of excess bandwidth and space, cost of upgrading an account and if there are any additional administration and support charges you should be aware of.
Rule #5 – Contact Support. Always contact the webhost’s support department via eMail and, if they provide it, by phone. Try to assess how professional and supportive they are when you ask questions I recommend above.
Rule #6 – Take my Recommendation. I have recommended a host below who I had happily used for over two-years! I am sure you will be glad that you took my suggestion.
I had used over 8 hosts before I settled for HostGator and used them happily for over two years before I had to move on to PowerVPS due to increased requirements. Even today I hear rave reviews about them just so frequently even though they have become one of the largest hosts out there.
The package I recommend is the Baby Plan at $9.95 a month plan. Now if you host 20 sites on this account, it turns out to be less than 50 cents a month! Click this link and then use the coupon Jury to get the first month for just 1 cent.
Even though they offer insanely high space and bandwidth, they don’t have the crazy restrictions like which I have mentioned above. And furthermore, they are a company with pockets deep enough to back these claimed quotes in case some customers ever reach the levels.
They also offer unlimited add-on domains and on-click install for all popular software. What this means is that you can have as many domains as you want on your account.
And with a click of a button, you can install software like WordPress, Joomla, PhpBB and Coppermine among others on your site. Yes, this means that you can setup a site without having any technical skills.
Remember — a good host means that you will be able to concentrate on developing, promoting and monetizing your websites. And yes, I know from my personal experience that HostGator is one of them.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
No matter what, don’t go with these guys:
http://www.nouptime.com
April 17th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
My last hosting company was giving me a hard time when I decided to swith to Hostgator. Hostgator team did a great job helping and advising me during the transfer of the data. I found their support service very responsive. I am very happy with them so far.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Good tips there!
Hostgator is my favorite as well, I have a few accounts with them.
April 17th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Thank you for the post. A lot of people talk down about the hosting company I use but they haven’t given me any red flags that you mentioned and I’ve only noticed one outage in over a year (and it was about 30-45 minutes long).
April 17th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
@Draggar — Whatever works for you! If you are happy with your host, stick with them.
But don’t prepay as you never know who will go down south with the blink of an eye. =)
April 17th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Nice article. Just wondering why you choose to move and get a VPS, rather than stick with Hostgator and get a Dedi?
Personally, I find the small guys (with a track record) a million times better than the big companies.
Dedicentral & mjzhosting are both good companies, with personal service rather than a faceless helpdesk.
I’ve heard loads of good stuff about nearlyfreespeech.net – you pay only for what you use, so could be ideal if cPanel isn’t essential.
Sadly, I must advise against a company called DSBHosting. It is/was part owned by a respected WF member, and I gave them a go after seeing him promote it. Support was terrible and one day my account just got closed with no replies to emails at all. Fortunately I had a recent backup… remember to REGULARLY BACKUP guys!
April 17th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
A tip from WF that mattered to me “get a host that uses cpanel because it makes it easy to move your sites later if necessary”. HG does, lots don’t.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Si — the reason why I went in for a VPS rather than a dedicated server was because I had indeed out-grown my shared hosting account and, more importantly, needed to tweak the server according to my requirements.
However, had not grown to the level which warranted investing into a Dedicated Server. I don’t like spending more money than I have to, so I went with a VPS. =)
April 17th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I’m with you on the not spending money thing! I went for a cheap Dedi and am kinda tempted to move to a VPS instead… need to do more research, but is seems for the same money I’ll get a share of a much better cpu, but a lot less RAM. Decisions, decisions…
I’ve got nothing against HG – I had an account with them for a few months, but just found I was paying for way more space and bandwidth than I was using. A cheaper and smaller shared reseller package + a dedi for the resource intensive stuff suits me better than a large shared account.
That’s the thing though, there are so many choices out there and no two people have the same needs.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I run a webdesign company, and i’ve been using hostgator for nearly 4 years now. They have been 100% up to and above my standards and i use them for nearly all my customers.
The only downer is they havn’t integrated windows hosting yet!!
Chris
April 18th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Great article. This is a very helpful and informative piece of article.
April 18th, 2008 at 2:22 am
What is ‘integrated windows hosting’?
April 18th, 2008 at 2:35 am
MAllie — I guess what Chris is referring to is the ability to offer both Windows and Linux hosting on the same reseller account.
However, I absolutely DO NOT recommend using a windows host. They have a lower stability and most popular scripts like WordPress, vBulletin and Coppermine don’t run efficiently on it.
Linux is not something to be afraid of as you will never be dealing with any technical aspect of it. As a matter of fact, you will never know if you are on a linux server or a windows server unless you plan to do custom-programming on it.
Hope that helps!
April 19th, 2008 at 5:59 am
Couldn’t agree more with the comments on Hostgator, I’ve been very pleased with them so far.
Just phoned through to my ex-hosts 24/7 customer support this morning to remove my old hosting plan and they’re closed for the weekend, they must mean there’s an answer phone 24/7, whether you’ll get anyone well thats another matter.
April 19th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Very informative & much appreciated. And a “keeper” for me.
I’ve been considering making the jump on a couple of my traffic names from simply parking to developing a website and this type of info is essential as a first step.
Thank you.
April 20th, 2008 at 3:08 am
Thankyou lord Brar for this brilliant article. Loved reading it and the feeling of Dejavu. Good host is important.
April 21st, 2008 at 12:45 pm
If their website looks “unprofessional” then they probaly are too.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Chris — I am not so sure about it. A host has to be good at server management and not web-design.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:45 am
“A host has to be good at server management and not web-design” Agreed. HG’s site looks like it was hit with the ugly stick, but so far they have done well for me.
April 27th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
i started with HG, luckily. the main reason being – no contracts – and the ability to go month-to-month. they were one of the only hosts that i could find doing that a couple years back and as a noob it was a no brainer. i still recommend them to people, also because cpanel is such an easy non-technical interface and comes bundled with so many features and extra scripts. so yes, I concur!
May 11th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Hi Sir Brar,
I like all i am reading about HG and i really want to sign up, my problem is i am based in the UK and i have been hearing stories that if you host on an American server, then you will have problems ranking in UK search results, at the same time i heard you can set your geo location at google webmaster, so that you can rank for your targeted market.
Can you please try and clarify this for me as hosting in the UK is ridiculously high.
May 11th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
ArtMS – Some “SEO gurus” and clueless newbies dispensing advice at DigitalPoint and other webmaster forums say that it matters — however, the best way to find out is to experiment yourself and see – I did and found it didn’t really matter as they claimed.
The reason why I put SEO gurus in quotes is because these people have nothing better to do than just talk about SEO and they make their money by making claims that may be half-true and keeping people in state of confusion. Probably to sell their own consulting?
I used to lurk a lot on SitePoint, DigitalPoint etc. and guess what? Most of the advice was given by people who had no idea what they were talking about. And people who actually ranked high in search engines and made money, they usually are too busy experimenting with new things to spends hours and hours on some forum.
Yes, the above was a rant.
Hosting location is just one of the THOUSANDS OF FACTORS which Google takes in accounts when ranking. Your incoming links and on-page optimization matters far more than where you host your site.
I don’t have any of my sites hosted in India and still I have my sites ranked in Google India — and that too for some very competitive terms related to Orkut, which is the largest social network in here. And that is just one example.
So overall, it is not as big of a deal as some people try to make it — so if I were you, I’d save money on hosting and spend that on marketing and advertising.
Let me know if you have any questions.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Sir Brar, i got to say i really like your answers and the best thing about them is that they are honest, i really appreciate your advise and you probably saved me over £100($200), i will use your link and purchase right now, i hope we can help you with something in the UK, if you require any sort of help here in London offline or online then please mail me and i will be sure to assist.
p.s i heard you interview on cantgetrich again great honestly and dam i was surprised your only 22.
Thanks Again
Art
May 12th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Thanks Art – I would love to visit London soon… just need to find a good excuse. Right now I will be going for ICANN Paris in June and spending some time in Sweden. =)
But thanks for the offer and I will certainly keep it in mind.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:22 am
I agree with the Lord, I have signed up yesterday and I like the easy and simplicity of use of the hostgator interface facilty. I also used the Jury code to get a month free. Thanks to the might lord for pointing out the coupon.
August 8th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
IMHO, really good host is one, when support isn’t needed at all. Without downtimes & other troubles, I mean.
I’ve tried over 20 hosts since 1st site, but probably best one is IX for me.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:31 am
nice post Lord Brar
Thanx! Hostgator is absolutely a best hosting company out there with good technical support and perfect management.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Excellent article especially for a newbie, there really is so much to learn, I have around 40 domains at present mainly with GoDaddy & 123-reg but certainly will look at Hostgator Excellent help and advice, thanks guys
December 25th, 2008 at 12:05 am
I have a host that seems very cheap and allows 6 or seven domains with static address for each and tons of storage space. However, after I was signed up for a while I notice the fine print that said there is a maximum of 5 GB of database space. Most content management systems use the database for storage. So the 300 GB advertised was of limited use for a great deal of uses. It is still pretty good value but I definitely see your point of needing to pay attention to the details before signing up.
January 4th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
I have been with Hostgator for over a year now, and I have never experienced any downtime.
I am not monitoring my up-time, but my site use to go down a minimum of about six times a year because of denial of service attacks at my first host..
I have not experienced one bit of problem from the “Gator” in terms of my site “falling down”. They were also pretty good at responding to my DMCA Complaint.
I am very surprised that for such a cheap price, they can provide such good service. They seemed like just another company that “oversells” their services.
My next hosting company was timing out my site – and giving me “500 Internal Server error” messages. Supposedly, this happens if you exceed their memory and CPU usage limits.
I only had a simple site, with no scripts or data bases added to the mix. Same site that is now hosted at the “Gator”.
No such limits should have been exceeded. I was a bit leary of going with another host that seemed like they were offering a lot – for a little.
But, I am glad I did…Go Gators..
Robert C. – The Wholesale Products Guy
January 31st, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Great post above.
Also check the term Unlimited Hosting of data (files) and domain names.
Many of the hosting companys do not allow U to host adult websites and unlimited data (files) – they use misleading terms just to suck U in.
Also be careful if U register domain names with the hosting provider – are they registered under Ur name ?
The Hosting company can take ur domain names and u wasted ur money