Not all hosting companies are created equal. Before you pull out your credit card, we highly recommend that you take a few extra steps to protect yourself and your investment. There are thousands and upon thousands of sites out there more than willing to give you a site. Which ones are worth a second look? Which ones will actually help you out when get stuck? This article should help answer these questions.
- Greedy or Non-existent Support
- Testimonials can be fabricated
- Register domain separately
- Don't sign a contract
- Never Pay Yearly
- Check the Uptime guarantee
- Get a temporary credit card number
- Check the Whois
Greedy or Non-existent Support
Before you buy, you want to test if their support service is good. If you are new customer, of course they'll be fast and friendly. But how about after they have your money? Think back to the last time you called your cable company. Your potential hosting company could be the same way. Go to their Support, not Sales, section and ask them to do something for you. Then time how long it takes to get an intelligent response. Also, see if they want to charge you.
Often a hosting company will promote their support service and then charge you to use it!
A great good potential email could be:
Some hosting companies will charge you more than your month's payment for that. This also checks to see if they actually do back-ups. Find out what you are really buying when you shop for a host! If you haven't heard back within 24 hours, then take your business elsewhere.
Testimonials can be fabricated
Just about every site has a testimonials section stating how happy their customers are. These may or may not be true. It's their site, and they can put whatever they want up there, and you just have to take it at face value.
That may seem obvious enough, but what some people don't realize is that even on 3rd-party websites, such as epinions, Amazon reviews, and others, is that even those testimonials can be fabricated. All it requires is the hosting company to create several accounts and start giving themselves positive ratings.
Register domain separately
Once you figure out what domain you want, to protect yourself, don't let your hosting company register your domain for you. What if they decide to list themselves as the owner, and not you? If they did, that means they own the domain and not you! They could blackmail you by not giving you your own domain if you decide to leave!
Instead, register the domain yourself. We recommend Dotster or GoDaddy. Contact us if you'd like to know more about how domain registrars work.
Don't sign a contract
There should be no reason for you to ever sign a contract for a hosting company. Their hosting performance alone should be enough for you to stay.
Never Pay Yearly
This is essentially the same as signing a contract. They only reason a hosting company would want you to pay yearly (other than greed) is if their business model is a pyramid scheme. They can't possibly sustain their level of service at the price they offered you unless they continuously get new customers to sign up (and pay yearly). If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.
If a hosting company says "100% Uptime", they are either flat-out lying or feeding you marketing hype with a side of fine print. All servers must shut down for maintenance or upgrades. If their servers truly are running 100% of the time, then they are not getting important security updates. Since the inevitable will happen, it's important to find out what happens during these moments of downtime. Check what their guarantee says. How will you be compensated? Some places will only refund you for the time missed. That means if your site goes down for a full weekend, your refund could just be $1.
Get a temporary credit card number
With credit card fraud being so widespread, most credit card companies now offer secure online account numbers specifically for you to give to online companies. Call your credit card company and see if they offer this program. Most do. Here is the site for Discover, Bank
of America, Citi, and PayPal.
Be sure you are able to subscribe to a service with the number (as in that number is tied to that company). Otherwise you may be digging up a new number every month, or your payment may be denied.
Check the Whois
By now, you are fully secure. You own your own domain, and you can stop a dishonest hosting company at any moment by calling your credit card company and
telling them to cancel that temporary number.
But if you want to go the extra mile, try to find a domain that the company hosts. Look them in up the whois database, and see if who owns the domain. Type in the domain name and scroll down to the registrant and contact information. Remember the "Register Your Domain Separately" step? The REAL owner's name should be in there! It's OK for the hosting company to be one of the contacts, but the owner should be in there too. Otherwise, all authority of that domain is with the hosting company. If you see only the hosting company listed, then you know this company is either dishonest or incompetent (or both).
The above list was compiled from our experiences in dealing with hosting companies. Use your best judgment at any place you shop. Good luck!
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