1. Calling into customer support and waiting on hold for 40 minutes and the hold music is Marilyn Manson!
2. You ask for RoR (Ruby on Rails) and the tech on the phone assures you he can provide that and yells ?RWAAAAR?
3. Your hosting company just got bought out by a web hosting company you just transferred away from.
4. They claim to be a member of the BBB but later you find out their BBB is The Birmingham Bizarre Bazaar (quality fetish suppliers).
5. You call in tech support and a gentleman with an Indian accent says ?Sir is your computer plugged in?? .. and you're a woman
6. You sign up for domain privacy and later do a WHOIS and see your credit card information and SS number. ?I was told I would get domain privacy!? ?Miss we thought you requested domain piracy? .. and you're a man.
7. You ask the tech if he has a TOS and he says yes. You later find out he meant totally offensive smells and your site has been suspended unexpectedly, you have no leg to stand on and the tech's response is ?Oh THAT TOS!?
8. The same tech who told you he has backups on your pre sales call turns out to be a wannabee singer and his ?backups? are his 12 year old twin sisters who ?doowup? when he busts a move in the bathroom.
9. You ask him how big his file size limit is and he responds ?That's kinda personal.. but what I can tell you is I leave the ladies smiling?.
10. The same tech (let's call him Hubert since there's a whole theme happening here) answers yes to your questions regarding shared server offerings. You later find out that Hubert is a very giving and generous guy and he ?shares? your server space, bandwidth allocation and resources with all the clients hosting on the same server as you? along with your personal information and email address!
11. When you ask Hubert how long they have been in business his response of 15 years reassures you that they are a legit and solid company. When you phone in to challenge this as their whois says 2006 he replies ?Ohhhh I thought we were talking DOG years!?
12. When your server goes down right before a big marketing campaign goes out.
13. Calling into support to ask a question and the rep cannot find your account because somehow it got deleted OOPS!
14. Your host asks you to verify your account by repeating your password over the phone. Every time you say it, you hear a stifled giggle and they say ?I'm sorry sir can you please repeat that?? Your password is IamTheBe$tLOVER
15. Your web host has automated support. After 23 minutes of keying in your SS number, last 6 digits of your credit card and your domain name (37 characters) you finally speak with a real person who requests the SAME information AGAIN!
16. After cancelling your hosting account you are continually getting billed but now for 2 dedicated servers instead of your $100 a year hosting account.
17. After 36 straight hours of working on your new sites web design and meticulously putting every image in its place you find out that your server crashed and there is no backup. NOOOOOOO!!!
18. Getting a deal on your first year and then having to renew at a more expensive price.
19. You have never been on the internet before and you decide to buy a hosting account and setup an email account through them. Within 20 minutes you already have spam!!!!!
20. Your host experiences power failure and they have no backup generators!
21. When you call your hosting company and ask why your servers went down. They respond with ?No they didn't. It must be a propagation issue or something with your ISP?
22. You call support because your site is down and they say ?We are going through an upgrade?. That works once but when it happens every week sporadically during the middle of the day and they keep saying ?it's an update to help better serve you? SUUUUCKS!!!!
23. Your hosting company has a problem with spam and the filter is up so high that no mail is getting through but when you are in a meeting and check your mail all there is in your inbox is porn spam and everyone is looking at you like you're a sicko.
24. Every time you go to your website it's down but when other people go to it, it's fine. Sometimes you will sit your friend down at his computer and you at yours and you phone conference each other to see if it comes up and it does for him but not for you. You decide to go to his house and he to yours and see if it's just your home computer but wherever you go your website will not be displayed. SUCKYVOODOONESS!!!
25. You call your web host support team because something is wrong with your site and they tell you that a widget 2.0 socket 5 cloud storm hit their data center and that's why a page got deleted. IDIOT SUCKFEST!!
26. After many attempts of being patient with your web hosting customer support techs inability to fix any problem you get frustrated and a little upset. Later that day you find the following things wrong with your site.
? Your real estate site is unexpectedly not selling real estate anymore. You are selling liquor stores now. ? You just put up a very professional picture of yourself on your site and the next thing you know someone photo shopped your photo with a mustache, a black eye and teeth missing.
27. When you bought your website and domain name through a sales rep at your first hosting company the hosting company used the CEO's name to register your domain name. Now you want to leave but they own your domain name. TRICKY WEB HOSTY!!!
28. You bought a hosting account through a template hosting agency because you don't know html and their backend admin area looks cool. After you purchase this you find out that they don't support their templates!
29. You are talking to smooth salesman Timmy over at a hosting company and he promises you 4 add-on's, forum management, bulletin management, Free email marketing and a 200 Google adwords credit. After you sign up for their premier account for 5 grand a year you notice that the freebies are not included in your package. You call back for Timmy but no one knows who Timmy is and a ?Timmy? has not worked for them EVER!
30. You do not have log files!
31. Your log files are never accurate.
32. You started a lead generation site where people fill out forms for products/servers/newsletters and in return you get there email addresses. Someone decides to give your site a virus and take over your mailing list and your web host cannot do anything about it.
33. Your built in traffic stats never work.
34. Your built in traffic stats are always off.
35. You purchase a large hosting account with a lot of extras but when you need small things done you are nickeled and dimed till you are broke.
36. Your hosting company charges you to park domains.
37. You buy a hosting account with a ton of space but cannot put up multiple sites on it.
38. The only way you can put up multiple sites on your account is via your .htaccess file but you have no freaking clue how to do that and your web host does not support that. GREAT that's awesome good work!!!!
39. You actually love your hosting company because it's a smaller no name company but the service is great. You tell all of your 5 friends to join and they do and their servers are overloaded.
40. You sign up for a web host by doing a Google search and after you sign up you call their support line but find out they are a foreign hosting company in Germany and all there support techs speak German.
41. You sign up with your web host but you only get 1 MYSQL database.
42. Your web hosting company is in charge of sending you notification on domain name expiration but you never get yours. Your domain expires.
43. A cyber squatter picked up your domain name and is holding it hostage. You find out it's the guy from your web hosting companies support team who you previously screamed at and called a stupid moron.
44. You utilize a free web hosting service but they place ads all over your page.
45. Your hosting company has backup servers but they are in the same geographical location so when the power goes off the original servers go down AND the back up's go down.
46. Your hosting company cannot automate its billing and invoices and its all done by hand. Sadly, the accounts guy was recently paralyzed in a freak server accident and types by blowing into a straw.
47. Your web host goes ?down? for 24 hour periods at a time.
48. Your user control panel consists of 2 options. On and Off!
49. You need redirection for your ASP site and when you call to make sure they can support it the sales-guy happily announces they can but when it comes time to implement it the only advice they can give is to hit the forums where you discover that you just need to edit a couple files. Files they don't support.
50. They offer SSH on shared servers and your site is constantly OWNED by 12 year old hackers.
51. They advertise domains for under $2 but when you complete the purchase your charge says $98?
52. You request support and they advise you support costs extra!
53. You request a CPanel them change and they escalate your request to a System Admin!
54. They don't tell the truth. They claim a lot of services that when you host with them, you find out they don't offer. Like bandwidth, they'll claim to provide x amount of bandwidth, then you find out they have a daily cap for using it and when you multiply the daily cap x 30 or 31, it is about 1/2 the size of the bandwidth they claim to provide monthly.
55. canceling - they'll claim they let you cancel anytime within the contract, but it turns out you can't ever get a refund (you have to write a letter in your own blood to prove you are who you say you are, then send it to their office in Nome, Alaska that reads mail only once a year during the famous dog sled race). Of course, when you complain about these points, they point you to their TOS where it spells out the whole Nome and dog sled stuff, although it doesn't mention the writing the letter in your own blood (the person on the phone just made that up to be funny).
56. When immediately after you sign up with them, they offer this great deal on more space/bandwidth/whatever?but you can't get it because you are already a customer.
57. EVERYTHING is an extra charge, and you feel like you are getting nickle/dimed to death.
58. You get treated like you just won the ?Imbecile of the Year? award. (Even if you do deserve that award, being treated that way is not nice.)
59. They pretend to help but can't speak English?.only geekspeak. And they refuse to repeat or explain any further.
60. They don't have a community forum!!!
You finally decided to approach a web-hosting company for hosting your website. You got your domain name registered or perhaps you did not. Web Hosting isn't like buying groceries - there are far too many things you have to consider even for something that looks deceptively this simple as putting up a website. It depends on how cautious you are and how you manage to bag the best web-hosting provider available to serve you. It would help you a great deal if you asked your potential web hosting provider a few pointed questions such as those mentioned below, along with the reasons as to why you need to ask ( for your knowledge). 1. Do they have sound customer support systems in place? Now, you would find a lot of web-hosting serve providers online. Some of them serve their customers promptly while some don't. It is very important as a web master, or a web site owner for you to know how your potential service provider rates on this aspect. You could shoot some pre-sales questions about something you wanted to know or ask them one of these other questions and wait to see the response period. If they don't respond within 24 hrs (the Industry Standard) you are talking to trouble-hosting providers. Good customer service and the extent to which the provider would go to educate you or familiarize you with their available services would mean a lot to you as a client. 2. Server systems, technology, Data Centers, Back-up schedules: Does your provider explain his standing on these? Servers are a must for a web-hosting provider. It forms his basic infrastructure. Back-systems are scheduled to run automatically and these servers are backed-up as frequently as daily with some hosting providers. What does your potential provider has to say about these things? Do they mention the kind of technology they use? Do they have reliable back-up systems at traceable data-centers? How are they equipped technically? Do they have technical people on rolls? 3. Company data, financial standing and profitability: How sound is your provider financially? You must be wondering as to why you need to bother about your web-hosting provider's financial standing - well, it so happens than some companies might be new and there are chances that you could be talking to a fly-by-night operator. Properly financial health also signifies a stronger management which might be placed better to be able to serve its present and potential customers. However, it is another entirely that some of the best of the web-site providers also make losses and is not to be mistaken that they do not have good customer support or services offered. 4. What might be scope of service provided? What exactly is your service provider going to offer to you? Depending on your requirements he must be able to provide everything (almost!) under one roof. You could have wanted just a single page hosted or perhaps you wanted a 300 page super content website -Do they have the range to suit your requirements? Under your allocated budgets? Single page websites usually are simple HTML pages and can be hosted easily. Your requirement can be very complex too which calls for inclusion of different application platforms like PHP, asp.net and Java extending up to scripts, forum, shopping carts, Intuitive control panels, plesk and also enabling e-commerce. So can your service provider be able to provide you all of this? If you had plans of making a truly interactive and content rich site, you could have thought of including content in the form of Video, streaming media, blogs, chatting, live customer support and much more. You will have to ensure that your service provider is able to provide you with all of this and much more. 5. What's your provider's take on Hosting reliability and up-time guarantee? Up-time when it comes hosting means the time (expressed in percentages) the host is available to access through the Internet. You would have seen a lot of hosting providers mention a 99.9 % up-time guarantee. But then, you ought to realize that any hosting application environment calls for maintenance too. You should ask how the web-hosting provider manages to shuffle this time efficiently. How do they manage their maintenance? According to an extract from wikipedia "A popular claim from the popular hosting providers is '99% or 99.9% server uptime' but this often refers only to a server being powered on and doesn't account for network downtime. Real downtime can potentially be larger than the percentage guaranteed by the provider. Many providers tie uptime, and accessibility, into their own Service Level Agreement, or SLA. SLAs may or may not include refunds or reduced costs if performance goals are not met. One must be extremely careful when selecting a new company and they should read all terms and conditions carefully. A potential customer should also check out the web hosting company's Acceptable Use Policy in order to avoid potential cancellation of services due to activities that are considered a violation" Hence, it is important to read all their terms and conditions carefully before signing up any new company as mentioned above and never forget the Acceptable Use Policy before signing on the dotted lines.
Both Amy Armitage & Vasi are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Amy Armitage has sinced written about articles on various topics from . Amy Armitage is the head of Business Development for Lunarpages. Lunarpages provides quality from their US-based hosting facility. They offer a wid. Amy Armitage's top article . to your Favourites.
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