There are many reasons why people want to sever a relationship with an old web hosting company and opt for a new one. Some of these include better technical assistance, greater storage and bandwidth, lower prices, the capability to run certain scripts, moving to a dedicated server and many more. However there is one reason more than any other that tops them all when it comes to ditching web hosts, and that would be for a lack of communication.

You may have a simple question, or it may be something more serious, requiring immediate attention. You just need to tell them something!

It’s one thing for your site to go down at some point. Almost everyone who’s been on the Web for any length of time has experienced their site being unavailable at some point. It usually lasts for a very short period, and then your site is back up as before–the online equivalent of your home’s power going out. That we can live with.

What’s not easy to stomach is when you have a problem, and you can’t, no matter how much you try; get anyone at your web hosting account to respond, much less help. This happens many times with resellers of web hosting: they are often one-person outfits, and can’t always get back to you. (They may be in The Bahamas!) You may be losing money hand over fist, as something in your hosting account is broken, and you can’t get anyone to answer emails, support phone call, or online chat windows. This can truly be infuriating, and in my mind is the number one reason people leave.

Especially when you consider how much trouble it is to move a hosting account, particularly if you have a lot of sites, or large, involved sites like e-commerce stores. It can be a royal pain to move everything to a local server (your computer) and then reconstitute your site on a new hosting account. Things can go wrong, especially on large sites, and it can be a huge headache. Still, the wrath of a webmaster scorned results in moved accounts, and with reliable web hosting is so easy to find, this occurs more often than you think.

This is one reason why web hosts who have earned a reputation for great customer service will win out over others who may offer more every time, and if they have a live phone number where you can actually speak to someone, they are miles ahead in my book.

One way to avoid this type of scenario is to do some investigation before you sign up with a web hosting company. Start by asking pointed questions, such as what is your support process? How long does it take you to respond to support requests? Is there phone support? Is there enough support staff to be able to respond to problems? What about weekends?

There are but a few concerns. You may have more specific ones of your own. The point here is to make sure you and your web hosting company are clear about what happens when problems arise, so you won’t have to end up saying “seeya!”