5 Tricks a Web Host Will Use to Cheat You

The internet is full of opportunities, providing business owners with various ways to create a positive online presence. The internet is also full of uncertainty as everything isn’t always what it appears. When it comes to finding a company to host your website, distinguishing a legitimate host from a fly-by-nighter can be more difficult than you think. If you happen to fall for a company using cheap servers and software, you run the risk of suffering from poor performance and possibly losing potential clients who simply can’t wait for your site to respond.

By conducting a bit of research online, you will find plenty of “horror stories” related to bad web hosting. Perhaps it’s a website that experienced more than 24 hours of downtime, or worse, maybe terrible customer service where emails and phone calls go unanswered for days. The fact is that some web companies are operating without morals, willingly to do anything to gain a step on the competition – even if it means shorting the customers.

Below we have listed five of the most common ways a web hosting company will attempt to cheat you and provide less than stellar service:

1. Cheap Servers

The highly competitive nature of the web hosting industry has led many companies to use inferior equipment to save a few bucks. They do this by leasing cheap servers with no way to assure quality or monitor performance. Because these companies do not own the equipment, they are essentially powerless at addressing hardware-related issues. This leaves you paying for terrible hosting while your clients take their business elsewhere.

2. Bad Support

Although 24/7 technical support has become a standard in the industry, a few companies do not live up to this claim. These companies leave you waiting hours or days for a response, in which your problem still may not be solved. Any company that leaves you hanging on for a response or has limited ways to contact them are cheating you on service. A reliable host will offer a variety of support options such as a toll-free number, email support, live chat and online self-help.

3. Shared Severs

Shared hosting is a popular option for personal sites and small business owners. It works rather smoothly when a particular company is skilled at managing their customers and server resources. However, some web hosting companies will overload their server with a large of amount of clients for the benefit of profit. This often leads to a sluggish website and visitors being discouraged by the poor performance.

4. Unlimited Storage and Bandwidth

Web hosting providers often advertise plans with unlimited disk space and bandwidth. However, many of these claims are untrue as even the most powerful server has its limitations. Instead of rushing to purchase service with a company offering “unlimited” features, calculate how large you anticipate your site to be, which will give you an idea of how much bandwidth and storage is really needed. A company offering 500 GB of storage and 5000 GB of bandwidth can be just as good as the one offering unlimited if it meets the needs of your website.

5. Up-selling

There are a few companies on the market that lure customers in with bait-and-hook pricing techniques. They tempt you into purchasing a plan for a low monthly price then tack on additional fees for each service request. For instance, your hosting plan may only be $4.95 per month yet an additional $5 to implement blogging software, access web building tools, the database and so forth.

Conclusion

Web hosting is a wonderful service when offered by the right company, but it can also be a disaster as well. To keep yourself from being cheated, it’s important to pose as many questions as possible before signing up. Find out if your site will be hosted on a shared server. You should also test their response time and overall customer support by asking questions via telephone or email. Find out exactly how much bandwidth and storage will be allocated to your usage on a monthly basis. The answers received will help you determine if a particular company is worth your time and money.

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