One of the worst ways to find out you’ve got a web hosting problem is to wake up one morning and find out your site is down, or that there is a spam problem and your server is smack dab in the middle of it. These are but a few of the more sticky issues that web site owners can sometimes face when saddled with a truly poor web hosting company. Let’s take a close look at our top 5 web hosting warning signs, and what you should do about them!
1. Downtime Problems – You can’t afford for your site to be down. If you have a business site, all the more so. That is lost money! While we are aware that things do happen from time to time, your web hosting account should not suffer repeated outages or attacks. A pattern of such incidents reflects a lax or inept attitude toward keeping their customers’ sites not only up and available, but safe and sound. If you find that this looks like your host, start looking around NOW!
2. Poor Support – There will come a time when you have issues that you need addressed within your web hosting account. You need to be able to reach someone who can help, and have that help actually solve your problems. While phone support is definitely preferable, it’s not always available. At the very least, your emails need to be answered promptly, and for me that means at the longest within a few hours on business days, and within 12 on the weekends. Live chat is also helpful at times. Try and use as many avenues of communication as makes sense. Also, don’t pepper your web hosting support with “urgent” requests if they aren’t really urgent. They may be dealing with server-wide issues, and you want some minor issue dealt with ASAP. Be realistic, but definitely leave a hosting company that doesn’t get back to you with help.
3. Slow Loading Sites – If your sites are loading slowly, causing potential visitors and/or customers to give up on them, you may have server load issues. Ask to be moved to a different server. Another cause of something like this could be server throttling, especially if you are getting a large amount of traffic.
4. Security Issues – One of the last problems you want is security issues with your web hosting company. To have your site hacked, or your server vulnerable to those who may use your email and bandwidth for spamming and worse is not an easy or palatable problem to deal with. Most often this is caused by web hosts not keeping up with security patches in their software, or failing to update their software. You don’t need that brand of headache!
5. Unlimited? Maybe Not… - While almost every host on the planet touts “unlimited space and/or bandwidth, this is almost never the case. There is always a limit. It’s just that not many people come near it. The ones that do are dealt with in a rather hush-hush way, gently steered towards higher priced, “more appropriate” accounts. It’s best to know what your real limits are before you begin to test them. It’s a hassle to change hosts; so arm yourself as best possible beforehand.
Any of these sound familiar? I hope not, but if they do, it may be time for a change!
