You never miss the water until the well runs dry. No, in the Internets we seldom appreciate the amount of work and dedication that goes into creating our beloved blogs until of course something goes wrong. And let me not be an exception to that rule. Recently Millionster ran into it’s own headaches with one of the world’s worst web host slash domain registrar’s notorious for AOLing their customers to the point of tears and insanity. In hindsight there are some steps we should’ve/could’ve taken to cover our asse(t)s, and now here I am to share this wisdom with you.

Beloved friends of “teh Internets” let ye not fret over thy woes of finding thy host!

1. Don’t pick your host by price alone… - It’s way too easy to be lured in by unbelievable prices, but chances are if it looks too good to be true it probably is. Sure you might get 500 GB of space and 10 TB of bandwidth, but is $4.99 a month really enough to pay for quality tech support, trained maintenance, and 99.9% uptimes? Probably not.To make matters worse, company’s that charge less than the market rate for hosting and domain registration usually have other catch-22’s lingering in the fowl depths of their hellishly long contract agreements. Registering a domain name for only $2? Well you might not have noticed that the next year they will charge you $30 to renew and $50 to transfer! doh!



2. Get the world’s opinion… - Anyone who’s ever bought anything online has usually read a review about it first. Don’t let your web host or domain registrar be the exception. There are literally hundreds of web host review sites with thousands of users all sharing their good and bad experiences. Doing a search for keywords like “web host reviews/rating”, or postpending the word “sucks” to the name of the web host you are researching may reveal to you a plethora of flaming, disgruntled ex-customers. (Try searching for “1and1 sucks”) On the flip side of this though, you should be mindful that every web host will have some problem eventually ranging from downtime issues to improper billing. The trick to really getting a sense of a bad company is to look at multiple reviews and look for recurring problems. Dreamhost, for example is loved far and wide by many a web developer however you may discover in your searches that they are notorious for downtime problems.



3. Check the quality of their website… - I am not implying that web hosts are expert web designers, but there is something to be said about a professional-looking website versus a site that looks like it was made in the 1990’s on the old Geocities Pagebuilder. As a business a company’s website is their ambassador to the world, and so a certain amount of weight can be put on determining whether a host is penny wise and pound foolish by humming around their site. Personally I do this with any site I am going to spend money on. Also one unknown trick to finding a quality host is counting the number of clicks it takes to find information on how to cancel your account. (This of course means without using any search feature on their site) The more clicks you make to find this information the more likely this web host may AOL you to death when trying to close or cancel your account. In some places you may not even find any information. In this case you would consider the number of clicks to be infinity.



4. Ask these pre-sales questions… - Many web hosts and domain registrars have all the glitzy marketing banter that is designed solely to get you to spend money, but it is very rare that you will find the exact details for incredible features and pricing to help you make an informed decision. If you run across some fancy promotion don’t be fooled, ask questions targeting the specifics of their ad. In any case you should always ask pre-sales questions to get a sense of quality of communication, and customer service. What questions to ask?
   • If for some reason I am not happy with this service does this promotion allow me to cancel my account and get a money-back guarantee, if so what is the time-frame?
   • If I am not happy with my service here how do I close my account and guarantee that I will not be continuously billed?
   • Do you have uptime guarantees (if so is it 99.9%? ) and how do you compensate your clients for downtime during their contract?
   • If I register my domain here will you send me a notice as to when I need to renew it to avoid additional fees?
   • If I am not happy with my service how can I guarantee fast and easy transfer of my domain to my new host without having to pay additional fees?
   • If I cancel my service will I be able to easily transfer my domain and move all my files and assets to a new server?

   Also ask questions regarding any too good to be true offers, and ask them what are the contract conditions of such offers especially regarding closing your account, transferring your domains, and moving or getting backs ups of your files. Also be mindful of the response time and quality of communication that you get from the web host’s sales rep to help you gauge.



5. Quality Support = Quality Service… - Once you sign up with a service fire off a couple of support questions the first few days whether you have any or not. Ask a couple of difficult technical questions and some simple account related ones. Like the above use the response-time and quality of communication to help you get a feel for the quality of service. If you asked all your pre-sales questions, signed up with a service that has a money back guarantee, go ahead and cancel your account if you aren’t happy with the tech support. The reason for asking tech support questions now is that you may go on having this web host for a year or two at a time without realizing how truly horrible they are until you have a problem. By then however, it will already be too late.

More Tips
I would also recommend not doing business with web hosts outside of the U.S. because it makes it difficult to sue them or put legal action against them in case of abuse or fraud.

If all else fails and you get stuck with a horrible web host or domain registrar, you can find some peace of mind by complaining to the Bureau for Better Business, the Federal Trade Commission, ICANN , and the District Attorney for whatever state your host is doing business in. Before doing any of these things however make sure you have already contacted the Customer Service or Complaint department.

Millionster’s Recommended Web Hosting & Domain Registrar Service
If you still are having a hard time finding a host, I would recommend our current web host DREAMHOST (Use promo code SUPER40 to get $40 off and a free domain see promotional ad here, expiration date extended to May 30 2008 )

The Good and The Bad. Dreamhost has every feature even a serious developer would ever need. Their plans are highly customizable with Shell access and huge amount of disk space and bandwidth. Unfortunately however, there are times when Dreamhost has downtime issues due to the complexity and enormity of their network. Though despite this they are one of the most trusted services in the business with awesome and attentive customer support.

Yahoo is very reliable as we all know:

If you have any other tips to share or a blog article written on How to Pick a Good Web Host, feel free to post a comment. I hope my bad experience has helped someone make a good decision!

Always
Juan!

*Shared on the First Edition of the Carnival of Blogging Success