Choosing the right hosting company is an incredibly important part of having a successful website. Price and technical specs are often the only factors that people examine when making this decision. While they are important considerations, they’re not the only things to take into account. Different hosting companies will have different sets of issues and advantages.
One of these additional items to examine is whether the host is able to load your site more or less quickly, an important factor in how long your impatient visitors will stay on your site, not to mention a definite portion of the Google search algorithm. One host may have downtime only on rare occasions, while another will have several hours of downtime per week. The quality of customer service will also vary greatly. Selecting a host with good customer service could mean avoiding lots of time on hold as you wait for someone to help you. Beyond that, hidden fees, limitations, or less obvious services may make one host suit your needs better than another.
One of the best ways to find out about these little hosting details is by looking up reviews on the company.
The problem is, while you can easily do a Google search for this information, these results can and are manipulated by the companies being reviewed. Intelligent hosting companies will generally have a full department in charge of reputation management, doing everything it can to create and promote positive reviews, while hiding any negative press. So, how can you get around this information manipulation? Here are a few advanced tips on how to find hosting reviews written by real people.
Check Better Business Bureau
One place to start your search is at the Better Business Bureau. These negative reports are all written by real people, and can give you an idea of the frequent issues that the company has. Keep in mind that every company, big or small, is likely to have at least some complaints against it. The important thing to consider is how often these complaints happen, how quickly and completely they are resolved, and any issues that seem to be happening consistently.
Search Google
Once you’re done with the BBB website, going to Google can be a good step. Do searches with the name of the company (or some generic phrase like “hosting”, “hosting provider”, “hosted exchange“) combined with words like “scam,” “experience,” “review,” “issues,” “opinion,” or “complaint.” If you want to get really in depth, you can narrow the Google search by clicking the “more” button on the left hand side. This will allow you to look at entries that were posted recently and get results directly from blogs or forums.
Check Discussion Boards
To get really in depth with your forum search, use the website Omgili. This forum search engine will allow you to get thorough results, and has advanced search features that allow you to manipulate those results to suit your needs. When looking at these posts, make sure that the poster has more than a couple of posts on the site. Otherwise, it may just be a representative of the reputation management department of the hosting company fabricating a positive review.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for this good guide, recently i used Hostgator for hosting plan because they have many Capable Staff. I’ll use your guide to search best hosting service for future.
(37 comments) June 29, 2010 at 4:16 pm
I think it is hard to know until you actually deal with them. I currently deal with 3 different hosting companies, and I know which one of them I will continue to use with new projects. Until you experience a problem, you are never sure how quick and helpful the support is going to be. I would suggest asking other people you know who they use and if they are happy with the service and support.
Melinda´s last blog ..4th of July Cookout
(1 comments) June 28, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Finding a good hosting company for site/blog is a difficult task. I changed two hosting companies and then learned that there should be no compromise on hosting service. I am very satisfied with my current host. Before this, when ever i got a traffic spike, i got banned by that hosting company. Amazing part was, one of them has very good reviews on net. So until unless you personally experience a hosting company, or get some opinion from experienced web master, please don’t rely on web reviews. My last webhost had very good infrastructure and hardware (12 cores processor) but they were very strict and suspended my account three times and then permanent suspended my account.
Thaks for your Article, Ann.
(312 comments) June 28, 2010 at 3:35 am
Nice idea here Ann. I think that it’s extremely hard to find good hosting reviews on the web since you never know whether they were simply fabricated ones or whether they are real. I like the idea of using Better Business Bureau and of using discussion boards. These are probably two of the best ways to find good reviews.
It’s really hard to know which reviews are true ones, or posted by people who are somehow paid by the hosting company itself. The BBB is definitely a good place to start, as well as searching the company name in Google to make sure it doesn’t come up with a rip off report or something to that effect. But even those you have to take with a grain of salt – every large company has pissed off one or two people in their time.
Kristi Hines´s last blog ..Strengthen Your Article Marketing With CommentLuv Links
(49 comments) June 26, 2010 at 11:27 am
Talking about choosing a good webhost, it is always difficult to me, as i learn more and more about it on the internet.
A very recommended webhost everywhere, is putting their link in wordpress dashboard page, that really shocked me after i read many good reviews on them.
Problem is, we know that we can pay people nowadays to write positive reviews..
I wrote this comment paragraphs because of Cori, luv ya lol
Kimi´s last blog ..Move “wordpress.com” blog to selfhosted
(17 comments) June 26, 2010 at 8:15 am
I had a problem last night. My site crashed after I adjusted a 301 redirect.
I’m using Bluehost and I went to their online help and the dude fixed the corrupted file problem in seconds. I’m no expert in hosting, but I was pretty damn pleased by good service like that.
Dr Joe@Toronto Dentist Blog´s last blog ..Dentists are Tooth Carpenters & Dental Hygienists are Gum Gardeners
(10 comments) June 26, 2010 at 7:41 am
there is nothing like personal interaction on any topic….to be sure about a hosting service, get in touch with existing bloggers, ask their experience, use your head and invest the money
Tushar @ BloggersPassion´s last blog ..What I Learned About StumbleUpon in 3 Tries
Great post, I have had issues before when I was looking for hosting – you can’t really trust what you find anymore, who do YOU recommend for hosting? I may be needing to change soon, mine is a little slow lately.
evelester´s last blog ..Got Questions about Commenting Methods?
(10 comments) June 25, 2010 at 11:37 pm
evelester, check out geekstorage.com. They’re one of three host I currently use. They are steered towards the developer a bit more than other hosts, but by far the fastest servers I’ve used. Good support and competitive pricing.
Mitch´s last blog ..Too Busy to Blog
(1 comments) June 25, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Most hosting companies also have forums and I’ve found them to be very resourceful as not only do you get to see the issues people are having you also see how efficiently they are dealt with.
Sire@The Only Way To Blog´s last blog ..Taking Off Your Clothes For The Greater Good
(10 comments) June 25, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Great post you’ve written here.
Hosting companies do, in fact, cover up everything bad that is said about them, but are sure to get as much exposure on the good stuff.
Why wouldn’t they? Anything that is keeping someone from buying from the hosting company is obsolete and unneeded. Thanks for the link to the BBB, didn’t even know it existed!
(232 comments) June 25, 2010 at 3:37 pm
When I first started looking for a new web host, our company choose a web host that had a great deal, but I did a lot of research and found a lot of mixed reviews and the owner of the company with that company. At first things were great, but after a few months, we started having outages on client sites and several of the sites that had on there. Mostly they were only out a few minutes late at night, but it got to the point it was weekly and in some cases it was daily, our host would go down sometimes for several hours.
Their support staff basically was unhelpful and said we were wrong and there wasn’t outages. Almost every time we had to deal with their support staff or sales department for an issue, they would put the blame on someone else and it took weeks to resolve an issue that should have taken a day or to.
What I learn from this, is listen to reviews, research, research and research some more. If you get that gut feel that they aren’t a good choice, then don’t do it. It may be a costly mistake.
Now we are on a good host with an excellent support staff and we are very happy. Thats all because I went with what most said and I agree with them that our host is one of the better ones.
(5 comments) June 25, 2010 at 2:03 pm
I think the google way is one of the best ways to search for what you need. After resting at Yahoo for my first domain I learned real quick to do research on host providers before I make another decision. After searching Google for the keywords you wrote down above I was able to find a better home for my wordpress site at a price I wanted.
Ryan Hanzel´s last undefined ..Response cached until Fri 25 @ 20:15 GMT (Refreshes in 14 Minutes)
(10 comments) June 25, 2010 at 1:56 pm
I have three different reseller hosting accounts spread across the country. I only host for active clients that I do work for, so reliability is key as it directly reflects upon my reputation. I spread my sites across multiple host so if one goes bad – which has happened on more than one occasion – I can quickly move to another host. One hosting review site that I have found to be legit is webhostingreviews.com. They seem to be genuinely interested in allowing non-biased reviews from real people like you and me. When I post a review, it actually shows up for all to see. That’s not the case with many other review sites.
(71 comments) June 25, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Hi,
I was always confused regarding this matter. As I have read more than once, that if you google ‘host + review’, then chances are you will not find honest reviews. But I think that is not true, as I did find a website which had 100’s of reviews for iPage and that is what I ultimately choose.
I really like the last advice about searching through omgili. It will take us to posts about the hosting in question, and will definitely provide good advice by experienced/senior forum members.
Nabeel
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