When you choose a web hosting company, you’re making a big decision.
Many new entrepreneurs make the mistake of choosing based on price alone. I was guilty of this and it burned me bad in my first year of business. Fortunately a fellow work at home mom rescued me from ‘closed down web host’ hell and helped me get set up on more reliable web server. That was the year I met Scott.
Scott, who would from then on forever be known as ‘the awesome Scott‘ for his unending patience and reliable, skillful support to me and my friends.
I trusted Scott so much that I eventually went into business with him, launching Mom Webs as an affordable, mom friendly, web hosting option. That went so well, we went on to launch Reliable Webs in 2008. Reliable Webs is branded for small business owners and entreprenuers and has enjoyed quite steady growth so far – something I’d like to boost to be up front about it!
I’d like to know what you look for in a web host. If you’ll leave a comment below telling us what you care about most when it comes to choosing a quality web host and you’ll be entered for 12 months of free multi-domain web hosting from Reliable Webs.
You can transfer an existing website over or use it as an opportunity to launch something new! This prize is worth $300 – a nice chunk of savings for you if you win. A winner will be chosen at random on the morning of Tuesday, September 8th, 2009. You can comment anytime between now and then to be entered.
I look forward to reading your comments!
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Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Easton Ellsworth is owner of 
1. A web host that has great communication with their customers.
2. A decent amount of space & add on domains.
3. Affordability.
4. Fanastico. The easier it is for me to install wordpress is a huge plus!
5. Great uptime.
These are the top 5 must haves when looking for hosting. I have been burned with so called affordable hosting too. Am now on a very reliable host but would love to launch a new site and this would be the perfect opportunity to do so and be able to promote another exceptional hosting company
Hi, Kelly
The thing that matters most to me at this point is technical competence. I’m on DreamHost right now, which has been great for the most part.
One day, I went to log in to the panel for one of my WordPress blogs so I could check comments and stuff. The site wouldn’t load.
As a general of thumb, when that happens, I’ll try to load up another of the sites, since they’re all on the same shared server space, to see if it’s just the one site or if it’s server-related.
None of my sites loaded, and I poked around a bit and discovered that it looked like the MySQL server wasn’t working right.
I opened a support ticket, telling them I just needed them to reset the MySQL server, since it had happened once before and I knew from last time resetting the server would work.
Their response to me 3 DAYS LATER was that I need to make sure my wp-config.php file for each blog was correct as far as server, login and password settings.
I think I basically had to open about 3 or 4 identical tickets to get them to reset the server. Total down-time was 3 or 4 days.
So, basically, I love when a hosting company doesn’t treat me like I don’t know what I’m talking about.
My comments are probably going to be different from most, since my background is in owning hosting companies (I’ve started and sold 2 hosting companies.)
Here’s what I like to see in a host:
1) Owners of the company have physical access to the servers; extra hardware on site.
Why? Too many hosting companies just resell access to a server — often at companies that don’t even offer remote reboot ports! When something goes down, you then have two layers: your hosting company has to escalate to another hosting company, who then may even have to escalate to *another* hosting company. That’s too much risk of downtime. I want to see pictures of you, the owner, physically touching the servers. Even better is if I can get a datacenter tour if I’m in the area, and meet your staff.
We always built our own servers and colocated them (with our own remote reboot ports and KVM devices) so this was never out of our hands. I had someone within 10 minutes of the servers 24×7.
2) Proactive hardware and service monitoring. Especially when you run a shared hosting company, runaway processes by one user can kill the entire server. This needs to be *proactively* monitored and fixed, and you need to have someone on staff 24×7 to handle this–preferably more than one person who knows how to fix it. This should never be out of your hands as a hosting company owner.
3) Multihomed to several 100% uptime, premium carriers. Please, no Cogent. You need to know who your upstream providers are so you can call them if a DDoS hits. You should have contacts at a high level at these companies and build relationships with them.
4) Your own routers. If one of your upstream providers goes awry and refuses to route to a certain subnet, you should have your Cisco guy on pager 24×7 and be able to route around it using other providers. (Learned that one the hard way.)
5) A tech support team who actually enjoys dealing with customers. Most geeks don’t. They want to muck around in config files. Those guys are great, but you need at least a few who are experts at great customer service. Phone support isn’t necessary, but if you don’t have it, you better respond really quickly to outages, and have pager escalation available to customers who email a special emergency email address.
I ran a shared hosting company, sold it, and wouldn’t do it again. I vastly preferred running our high-end managed hosting service. You just can’t give great customer support at $5-$7/month.
I would recommend serious web business owners consider a managed VPS or managed dedicated server platform and just skip the shared/reseller hosting platform if your business’s website is critical to your success. Shared hosting is plagued by general issues like one script from a single customer being able to crash an entire server. You’re looking at somewhere from $50+ a month at that point, but if your business relies on your hosting to be up, it’s a small price to pay.
-Erica
1) reputation for reliability
2) rapid response to outages/downtime
3) more than one contact method
4) scalability
5) price structuring
The problem is that I know too much about it – from personal background on the other side. So that #5 moves up and down the list depending on what I’m hosting.
For a company account versus a personal account? Different priorities.
But honestly I agree with everything Erica said – all other things being equal.
Unfortunately, most “mom bloggers” can’t swing the outlay for dedicated hosting – so it’s not until something happens that sends a huge traffic surge and takes their site down for 3-5 days while they are on the road during a huge traffic surge that they can justify the cost.
I’d love to see “cloud hosting for the little guy” that wasn’t priced beyond the means of most moms.
I love “the awesome Scott”!! What does he look like, anyway?
I think what I care most about is communication and response to my technical problems. I am not wired to understand most technical ’stuff’. So for me, I wouldn’t mind paying a little more for the extra support.
I don’t know anything about the technical side of hosting, so I need easy set up and accessible support. I also want the best deal I can get. Right now I host sites on DreamHost and HostGator, both because they were affordable. I would love to host with a smaller company where I feel I’m not just one of thousands (or millions) of customers, and where I could find someone to help me with any problems that come up.
I look for a lot of space. As I grow so do my sites and I have many business ventures I would like to start but if my web hosting is not large enough well it holds me back.
Ultimately I am willing to pay a little more for web hosting if their customer service ROCKS. So customer service is certainly a BIG DEAL.
I enjoy having email accounts (1-2) per website and so email address capabilities are important.
Last but not least I have now learned (after paying for hosting) that I need to be sure the hosting is going to be capable of handling the database sites I need it to.
Wow just looking at some of the comments, I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know about hosting…LOL! As you can probably guess I’m still in the “early” stages of learning all about hosting. Right now all of my sites are hosted with HostGator. The reasons I prefer HostGator:
1. Great customer service/Easy access-you can livechat(really like a lot, phone, and/or email
The turnaround time and response time is very quick.
2. Technical skills-just yesterday I used live chat to resolve a problem. The technician asked me a question that I had no idea what he was talking about. He was still very understanding and patient and was able to resolve the problem quickly in spite of that.
3. Unlimited Domains-this really helps out to scale your business without scaling your expenses
4. Additional Incentives: Google AdWord vouchers, free pci scan, change domain name for $5, free domain transfer etc.
5. Price-their price is affordable
6. Affiliate program-Hey, at the end of the day, I would much rather use a service that I can confidently promote and profit from.
I’m still new to self hosting, but I can tell you that FAST RESPONSE time is my top priority. If I have a problem with my website, I don’t want to wait 3 days to get it fixed.
I think my 2nd priority is communication – new features, changes, downtimes, etc…
3rd – any kind of Resources and References to help me learn how to manage my cPanel more effectively – how to work it, use it, etc. to make my website better – is a great bonus!
There are several things I look for when choosing a hosting company to meet my needs. I currently have a reseller account first and foremost is RELIABILITY- nothing is worse than a host whose servers are experiencing outages more than my site is up. Second is AFFORDABILITY- As a WAHM, being able to stay within my budget and manage my online business effectively is key. Last is SCALABILITY- My business needs are constantly changing, and as such I require a host that makes scaling my web services to match easy.
I want a lot of space for my domains
very little down time
quick response to questions & good customer service.
c-panel
fantastico
I’ve been hearing alot about Simple Scripts. I’d like to have the option to try that.
I care about 2 things, when it comes to web hosting: fast tech service by someone who doesn’t talk over my head about techie stuff – and that I can pay for it with PayPal. Those 2 things put any web hosting company way up at the top of my list.
I’d like to add a 3rd thing, because it’s a “must” for me: I’d like a company that allows me to have a reseller account without me having to learn how to do redirects and a lot of techie stuff. I can handle cPanel and Fantastico (Love ‘em!) – but I’m too busy to relearn the techie stuff every time I want to add a site. I need to pay attention to my business.
Just reading Cathy’s post… I *haven’t* heard of Simple Scripts. Hmm… sounds interesting. (I like anything with the word “simple” in it.)
I would say that reliability, customer service, and technical knowledge would be important to me. If I need help or questions answered I want to know that there will be a timely response from someone who is knowlegeale and who has the expertise to solve the problem or answer the question(s)