Webpage Hosting - Our Hosting Experiences

When we first placed our business on the Internet, we thought we could basically pay for performance when it came to hosting. Like many other things, we figured -- you get what you pay for.

We were wrong.

Hosting services seems to defy the common notion that your quality of service goes up with the monthly price tag -- and likewise, the less you pay, the less reliable your services become.

Our First "Big Name" $50 / Month Web Host

In choosing our first host, we went to the web sites that do nothing but review hosting companies. The impression you get from them is that they give impartial, fair assessments of which hosts provide the best services. We clicked through their "top 25" and "top 10" lists to find common recommendations.

For adamssite.com, we finally decided on one of the big name providers (we won't mention the company name to avoid any problems with them). All the hosting review sites gave this host glowing recommendations. They went on and on about how this hosting company had been at the top for years, was highly recognized for reliability, and so on and so forth.

So we signed up.

A "big name", loved by hosting review sites, $50 setup fee and $50 / month. Oooo, they must be good.

"She's breaking up! She's breaking up!"

Things seemed fine at first. We actually thought a 48 hour turn-around in setting up our account was a normal timeframe for such tasks. We didn't know any better.

Loaded our site, set up email, set up cgi forms and put certain pages on the shared SSL server. Wonderful.

Over the next few months, service was spotty at best. We noticed many times how our site would load very slowly, and many times not at all. And our email would often be out for up to 2 days at a time, and we actually lost customers due to our "lack of communication". Ouch. The host we had also promised detailed site statistics and account management functions, but those services would be unavailable for days at a time.

So, we tried emailing and calling for support and experienced the return of the 48 hour response time.

As time went on, we'd talk with friends and business associates who loved their hosts. Their web sites were almost never down and always loaded quickly. They said all their questions were answered within a day.

Then we found out how much they paid per month!

"Yes, you can find a good host for less!"

We've dealt with over a few dozen hosts since our first hosting experience -- for hosting adamssite.com, our other domains, and sites for our web design customers. The unfortunate reality of hosting is that you can never truly know how good a hosting provider is until you use it yourself or know someone who uses it.

The hosting review sites are just out to make money, like everyone else. Apparently, they'll recommend whatever hosts give them the most advertising dollars.

Hosting directories aren't much better, since they list any and all hosts. They do little to really help someone decide between one particular host or another. They may give general guidelines, but that's about all.

Our recommendation is always to talk to your friends and other site owners that you know first. Find out the hosting providers they use with good results and go with them. For other options, look at our Cheap Domain Hosting page. There you will find some hosts that we use ourselves. They are all great bargains, provide tons of features with their accounts, and have provided us with more than adequate service and support.

We won't use the big expensive hosts again, because we know we can get good hosting from companies that cost less. Our current plan even gives us far more Disk Space, Data Transfer and special features then we did with our first host.

So yes, you can find a good host for less! We're on one right now.

Articles On Webpage Hosting From Adams Site:

Additional Webpage Hosting Resources

• Low Cost Web Hosting Guide - A directory of hosting providers that charge as little as $5.00 / month!
• HelpWithHosting.com - A great site for hosting beginners, with articles, guides and advice.