My #1 Tip For Choosing The Right Hosting Company For Your Business

Ask just about anyone who has run their own website at any point in time, and you’ll hear at least one web hosting horror story.

The last thing you need as a new business owner is your own horror story. Those bad experiences cost time and money. And sometimes at least a small bit of your sanity.

So how can you avoid the whole mess in the first place?

Before I share that tidbit of information with you, let me tell you a little bit about myself and my web hosting experiences. While many people have worked with multiple web hosting companies over the years, I’ve actually run my own hosting company. I know the inside story on what web hosting clients want, based on what my own clients have told me. And I know the inside story on what it takes to run a web hosting business, because I’ve been in the trenches, so to speak, for more than 7 years.

I’ve helped clients leave other hosting companies and cleaned up their messes. I’ve had a few clients leave my company for other hosts, for various reasons. And I have a lot of happy clients, including those who have been with my company since the beginning.

I have a unique view from both sides of the fence, and I’d like to share what I know to help you make better decisions, whether that means you choose my web hosting company, or someone else’s.

The #1 most important thing I recommend you do is ask your colleagues or a trusted web designer with sites a little bit bigger in size and traffic to yours to recommend the host. A personal referral from someone who runs or builds similar websites will go a long way in protecting you from ending up with a lemon.

Now, there is a caveat to go along with this. Asking one friend for a referral is not the only step you need to take. Don’t take the recommendation and buy a hosting account in the very next step. You still need to do your homework.

1. Get four or five recommendations from different colleagues or your web designer.
2. Do a search on Google for reviews of the company.
3. Check out the company’s testimonials and contact some of those clients to see how happy they are with their hosting.
4. Contact the company itself to ask about their usage policies, their server specs, how they manage bandwidth overages, billing and client communication. Make sure their servers can handle the software you plan to use for your site.
5. Read the company’s terms of service, acceptable use policies and any other legalese they have. If they don’t publish that information on the web where you can find it easily, find another company. Make sure you understand what you’re reading. If you don’t, find someone who does.

If you’ve followed these instructions and still aren’t sure, tune in next week for the next installment of this series: What do web hosting companies and cheese have in common?

And if you don’t want to wait that long, contact me for a 1-hour web hosting consultation and I can help you figure out to get the services you need and the quality you expect at the price you can afford.