How (Not) To Pick the Wrong Website Host – And (Not) Lose Your Sanity in the Proccess

Most people new to making a website are not educated in just how important it is to pick the right website host for your business.

If you pick the wrong website host (and I will tell you the WORST website host further down this post) – you stand to lose not only hundreds of dollars due to poor customer service but also – in extreme cases – may have your website entirely deleted with no warning (and yes this has happened to a client of mine).

Imagine this – you wake up in the morning and check your website – only to find out that it is DOWN. You are soon receiving a couple of emails from concerned clients alerting you to this issue. You freeze up – it’s so embarassing – and in a state of anxiety and anger you call your website host.

Now imagine you are told you have to wait on hold – and you are waiting, and waiting – the whole time the anxiety builds as you wonder just how much of a headache it will be to fix this issue.

You wait nearly 30 minutes – and finally someone answers the phone in a foreign accent.

The person who you have been waiting to speak to for 30 minutes seems unsure and not confident.

But it doesn’t matter – at least finally you’ve reached someone at the company that you can actually talk to about this problem.

Surely – you’re close to fixing everything – or at the very least finding out what the issue is so you can fix this yourself.

You explain what the issue is to the support person.

And he does not give you a single bit of useful information regarding your issue.

“I’m sorry sir, it seems your website is down but we cannot handle technical support issues relating to your code.”

“But I have not done anything to the website! It just stopped working – surely the issue is with you guys!” you say, exasperated as you realise that this may be a bigger part of your day than you thought.

“I am sorry sir, I will have to put this to Level 2 support, can you please hold?”

“Fine, no problem.” you answer, and before you get a chance to ask how long you will have to wait for the hold music comes on again.

Either way – you are out of time or money (if your web developer has to troubleshoot with the host).

And this is the biggest mistake that new clients make when purchasing hosting.

Do you want to be paying me (or another developer) – to stay on hold for an hour on your issue?

At the moment – the hosts that you may think are popular and safe are actually the worst and will cause endless nightmares for you – but luckily – I have been in web development for over 10 years – and have used the most popular hosts you can think of – cheap ones – as well as incredibly over priced ones.

In order to avoid anxiety and issues like the one I mentioned above – use GoDaddy hosting.

You will never have to worry about incompetent sales reps and inordinate hold times – GoDaddy support will answer your call within less than 5 minutes on average – and you will be talking to a support representative that is knowledgable in technical website issues.

And if you want to know the one company you should avoid like the plague? That company will be revealed now

Crazy Domains is the one hosting company you should avoid at all costs – this is coming from someone who has used them on more than one occassion and has always found the proccess incredibly frustrating.

So – go to GoDaddy now (au.godaddy.com) – register a domain and hosting – and know that you will not go wrong and won’t have to experience what I outlined above.

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.