These days, there are more web hosting providers around than you can shake a stick at. And they all want your business, in case you are in the market looking for good web hosting. Is this a source of confusion to you? Yes, I guessed it would be.
One way of getting things straight is to read the opinions posted at some of the sites offering web hosting reviews. These sites evaluate the quality of various web hosting companies, to the benefit of those folks trying to figure out which host to choose.
This is great if you happen to stumble on a site with honest web hosting reviews, based on real customer experiences. I have seen some web hosting review sites with thousands of customer ratings in their databases, and by browsing these sites you can learn a lot.
You soon notice that some web hosts get mostly positive feedback, while other companies seem disliked by almost everybody. Here are a few examples of what customers may write about a web host:
<i>”I have been a customer of theirs for two weeks. I have had 5 complaints already with service issues and support. Their 24/7 support is a joke. Yes you can talk to someone but they cant do anything at all. 40 minutes plus wait times on the phone the worst was 2 hours just the other day”…</i>
That opinion was posted by a customer of Dot5Hosting. In one place I saw there were 47 ratings of that particular company and 45 of those were negative!
Another opinion about the same host:
<i>”This company is a scam, pure and simple. Check the Better Business Bureau for their ratings (F)…</i>
The review explains how the account never worked and how the company refused to give the person a refund in spite of a money-back guarantee.
And here is a rather characteristic experience with another web host, SurfSpeedy:
<i>”My site got off on friday, came back on saturday for few hours, then i tried to access my MySQL database (where i have more than 700 customers signed up) and guess what? My whole database was GONE.”…</i>
Only ONE of 22 people recommended that hosting company, the last time I checked.
I gave you these examples to show you what may happen if you don’t do some research before jumping on a web hosting deal. And actually it isn’t so much a matter of cost either – most web hosting companies will offer entry-level shared web hosting plans for around $5-10 per month; however, what you get for that money varies a great deal.
The type of web hosting company I would personally consider doing business with should have at least around 80% positive customer reviews. And of course I also expect them to offer generous features at competitive prices.
You could wish for a web host which never gets any complaints by anyone, but this hardly ever happens. There is always some customer who feels they haven’t been treated right, even if the issue actually was their own fault.
In summary: by perusing those web hosting review sites that base their opinions on actual customer feedback, you can rather effectively avoid the bad apples in the web hosting barrel.