I started my first website August 2005. Since then one of my main challenges have been finding a web hosting with good customer service and fair prices.
It can be very frustrating when you call your provider to add an option and they charge you couple times the amount, and you dont get the serrvice for over a week. It only ads to frustration when you have to spend so many of your cellphone minutes (an hour each time) talking to customer service personell only to find out they can’t or are not going to help you.
That being said, I decided to write this to show you the path to finding a good webhosting. Following are the points you need to know:
- IPOWER WEB has awful customer service (personal experience).
- Before signing up with any provider go to Web Hosting Jury and read the reviews.
- You can even use Web Hosting Jury to find the highest rated or best reviewed web hosting providers
Every web hosting provider will give you very large number of options and services included in your account. You need to ask them the following questions to see if they have the services you NEED. These services are the type that you don’t think of when signing up, however later you might have to add them to your service for a high price. Those questions are:
- How many databases you can have. It’s good to have at least 3 for every domain hosted on your account.
- Whether you have AWstats included or not. Statistic information is what helps you improve your website. AWstats is free for the web providers. I didn’t ask this question and I have to pay additional $50 (almost $50) a year for AWStats right not.
- How many MySQL connections can you have at any given time. (25 and above is a pretty good number)
- If you are looking to add more domains to your account later, you need to ask whether there is a fee for ADD-ON domains. Sometimes they charge as much as $20 a year per add-on domain
That’s it for now. But keep in mind the cheapest is not always the best option neither is the most expensive ones. Customer service makes a huge difference too. A good customer service can fix all problems in a not so good service in a short time. But nothing replaces your website being down for 2 days (and they will not reimburse you for any damages caused by their mistakes except the hosting account money you supposedly paid for those days.)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Ipower is the worst
I cannot believe this, It’s been over 2hours I am still on hold. I have 2 phones going one for Customer support and one for Sales. I am so frustrated i can hardly think straight. For the past few weeks i’ve been trying to upload some files to my web site. a total of 2MB. THE FTP doesn’t work. every link they have on the stupid site is timing out. and 30% of your screen is ads for their shitty service.
DOEs anyone know the procedure to transfer to another hosting company and more importantly the name of a better hosting company.
I am trying to get these nimrods on the phone so i can ask if they will prorate my account cause i just renewed for another 3years.
I really hate their service and their new vDeck shit….
i forgot to bitch about my mails. A few weeks ago They deleted all my mail boxes (with lots of mails). i called them when i noticed the problem it took them more than 8 days to activate my server. everytime i called they would tell me that they are working on the problem. Finally after 8 days when i called they told me that I can now add mailboxes to my domain….