Signs of a Bad Host

One of the first signs of a bad web hosting company that should set off sirens and warning bells in your head is lack of support. This is the easiest and quickest way to tell, if the company isn’t returning your phone calls or emails then it’s simple, they are no good. This is typical of the type of web hosting companies we see springing up all over the internet that have no support staff and offer no customer support whatsoever. Be careful and stay away from the small fly by night web hosts. Cheap can be costly in other ways. Test them ahead of time by calling in to ask about features and see how long you have to wait on hold or how many push button prompts you have to go through to get a real person.

Another way to check out a web host is to look at their profit. If the web host you are looking at is traded publicly take a look at their profit reports, if they are then you’re in good shape, if not you probably want to look elsewhere. If you are looking at a private hosting company take a look at the prices they are charging, are they the cheapest or are they in the middle? It is best to choose someone in the middle as those offering the cheapest are either cutting features, have no support, or are simply not making enough money to be able to remain a viable business.

Another issue is constant price changes. If the web hosting company is constantly adjusting prices it indicates they don’t know what they are doing or they are starving from charging to little to begin with and are now having to make adjustments.

For hobby sites or web sites that really don’t matter much it may not hurt you tremendously to have a bad experience with a web host, but if you are like many of us on the internet and are actually trying to earn a living, a bad web host can destroy your business overnight. Keep close tabs on the web hosting company you choose until they have proven themselves to be trustworthy.