Some must read tips about the hosting industry, and how to avoid
being taken for a ride!
- Always test a host's support before joining them!
how?
- The truth to why many hosting plans are scams.
info?
- Never pay yearly!
why?
- Never purchase your domain name from your host.
why?
- A few tests you can run to check how good a host is.
info!
- Why hosting directories lie, and the truth to customer
testimonials. info!
- The truth to a hosts uptime and guarantees.
info!
1. Support
Do not join a host without checking out their support first.
You would be surprised at how many companies only offer support via
email, and while we love email also, some problems you need
immediate assistance and you need to find out if support is
available via telephone or even live chat. Some companies like
to flash a 800# for you to get support, but once you call, you find
yourself on hold for long periods of time. Many of the
companies have incredible response times when contacting their sales
department, very few have good times when contacting support. After
all they don't make money by supporting you they only make money by
selling you. That is why, when you call Digicom, our sales &
our technical staff are the same people. First, when you have
questions before signing up, we want to make sure it is the right
answer, not just the one you want to hear so we get a sale.
Second, we don't want new potential customers taking priority over
our existing customers, thus again, why we don't force long term
contracts, we want to earn your business every day... And
being in business since 1984, well, we aren't going anywhere.
2. Scam Plans
If it sounds too good too be true it usually is! All hosts have the
same basic limitations when it comes to server resources and specs.
There is no magic server that has a never ending supply of ram and
cpu. If a host ever claims to give unlimited space or bandwidth
DO NOT JOIN THEM. The thing to remember is that the average web
site uses about 50 Megs space and less then 1 gig bandwidth a month.
So what hosting companies do is they lie! They make up scam plans
with tons of space and bandwidth for around $8 bucks a month. It's a
numbers game.... Only one or two of every 100 people that signup on
the plan are going to use all the bandwidth advertised. So what do
they do? They usually terminate the sites that use it saying "your
site is using too many resources." They aren't lying about the
resource usage it's the truth! Most people don't realize that
bandwidth and space used have nothing to do with the server
resources being used. Resource usage has to do with the amount of
cpu and ram a site uses. If a site uses a lot of bandwidth they
aren't kicked for using their bandwidth they are kicked for using up
most of the servers cpu and ram. Another thing to remember is that
the cheaper the plan is, and the more space / bandwidth included the
more sites per server the host will have to pack in to make their
money back. And that means, at first your server may speed along,
but over time, as they sign up more customers, they don't stop when
they reach top server load, they keep on going. This
creates a server overload, and then all of a sudden, your web pages
come up slow, your websites response time looks terrible, and all
that looks negative on YOU! Because, let's face it, to the
tons of visitors to your website, they don't think, hey this site is
hosted with XYZ Hosting and they are slow, they think YOUR website
is slow. Find a company that knows their job, and that is to
make you look good! So the lesson here is don't shop for a host based on
their plans! You should shop based on recommendations and
experience!
Another thing you'll notice is that most of these incredible scam
plans force you to pay for a year up front to get the good pricing.
Why would a hosting company care if you pay monthly or yearly? After
all if you are happy with them you're going to end up staying much
longer then a year. Merchant fees aren't that much so why? It's
because most have horrible support, slow servers, or even tons of
downtime. If you were paying month to month you're not going to
stick around, but if you paid for a year up front what are you going
to do. You won't get your money back so you have no choice but to
stay with them. ONLY PAY MONTHLY! We have one plan that requires a
year payment up front (hatchling) Why? because most hosts advertise
a low monthly fee if paid yearly and a much higher price if monthly.
We still need to be competitive so made one plan showing this
option. We would however prefer you sign up for a monthly plan.
Remember paying yearly to anyone is always a bad idea, but the
choice is yours. We would do everything in our power to honor the
year but anything can happen to anyone. The state of Texas were our
servers are located could be wiped off the face of the earth. If
this happened we would most likely be out of business instantly and
have no way to honor your payment. All we're saying is no matter how
good a company is anything can come up, and you could lose your
upfront payment.
4. Domain Name Tips
Do not join a host that includes a free domain name with their
hosting package, and never purchase your domain name from a hosting
provider, unless you are positive they will be putting your
information in the whois. (We do, most don't) If your information
isn't in the whois they could blackmail you into staying with them
or if you can get the domain back, you might find yourself with a
$1000 bill to buy what you thought was your own domain. Just
ask our customer, the All-Star D.J.'s about that experience with
their previous hosting company. We were able to negotiate with
the company and eventually got the domain back, but not until 100's
of hours of emails and calls had to be made.
For all technical purposes whoever has their information in the whois is the owner. A domain owner doesn't go by who paid for it; it
goes by whose information is on the
whois. To check a
whois on the domain go there and type "domainname.com" and click
submit. Whoever's address, email, and phone number shows up is the
domain owner. If you
aren't sure how to change the dns just watch our
movies on it.
Do a whois on their
domain name. Then look for the creation date of the domain name. If
the domain name was created less then a year ago it's more of a risk
to join that hosting company. They could be a great host, but
considering more then 95% of new hosts go out of business within a
year that really isn't something you should be taking a chance on.
It's too easy to become a hosting company. All someone has to do is
join our reseller plan and they are now a host. Sure the hosting may
be good, but that doesn't mean they are going to provide good
support nor does it mean they are going to pay their hosting bill.
We end up kicking resellers of ours all the time for not paying
their bills (after many warnings) and in many cases their
unsuspecting customers lose their site.
Here is an example using whois on our domain:
Domain Name: DIGICOM.COM
Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
Name Server: NS1.DIGICOM.COM
Name Server: NS2.DIGICOM.COM
Status: ACTIVE LOCKED
Updated Date: 21-jun-2005
Creation Date: 18-oct-1994
Expiration Date: 17-oct-2006
You could also test the speed of a host's network to your location
by...
Clicking start > run > type in "command" enter, and then type "ping
hostdomainname.com" wait for it to finish and look for the average
ping. The lower the number the better, and chances are the faster
your site will load if you should host with them. Any number below 80 would be good. Anything over 100 is very bad (unless
you're living in another country from where the host is based.)
Don't believe anything you read on the hosting directories. They
don't care who they recommend as they are all paid listings. The
highest bidder gets the spot. What you should do to find reviews is
search google using the
company's name. If they have been around a year you should
find many real reviews of people who use their hosting. We
have a customer testimonial section where we even give you contact
information for some of our clients that don't mind answering
questions on their experience and we are always looking to add on to
that list!
If a hosting company claims 100% uptime they are lying. All servers
need to be rebooted every now and then for security and software
updates to put the changes in effect. The server looks for
off-peak times for this to happen, so hardly any downtime is
noticed. If a hosting company claims to have 100% uptime, that
means they never reboot, which then means their server is insecure
and they will eventually be hacked. This again, making you and
your website look bad due to it's slow performance or even data on
your website that you didn't put there!
When a company guarantees an uptime that doesn't make it true. A
host has as many uptimes as they have servers. It all depends on
what server they put you on, and how well they manage it from the
time your put on it. We guarantee a 99.9 uptime but that does not
mean we will hit it every month for eternity. Our guarantee means we
give you a 100% refund for the month if we should not hit it. Many
hosting companies will give you a prorated refund based on the
amount of downtime. So say you pay $10 for a month of hosting your
site is down for 24 / hours. They will refund you for one day of
downtime which ends up being about 33 cents. A guarantee is
worthless! What is worth something is how they define the guarantee,
and if they do in fact honor it.
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