One of the first things you need to answer when starting a website is the question of where will it be hosted. Nearly every hosting company you visit on the web will tell you they have 99.9 up time. The problem with that is very few of the hosting providers actually deliver on that promise. Then what do you do when they don’t deliver. You don’t get compensated by the hosting company for the loss of business during that down time. You basically have only a couple options. You can move to a new web hosting company or choose to stick with your current provider and run the risk of losing your sanity the next time they fail you.
Most end up staying with their current host to give them just one more chance. That one additional chance is then extended time and time again. Mainly because those hosting providers will have great excuses for the outages or downtimes, they are highly skilled at excuses. Some of the common excuses are a hardware failure, upgrades, a denial of service attack or even loss of power and the list can go on. In the end though you will not be compensated for the extra down time over and above that 99.9 guarantee because they know the statistics that most customers will choose to stay rather then move their sites.
Moving to a new host is typically a painful process for most people. Backups of files need to be made, backups of databases and then all the files related to your site need to be transferred to the new host. Just a few of the other things which need to happen are recreating databases, updating dns and all this can cause downtime for your site in some instances.
In addition, some of the hosting companies set their plans up in a way the makes it even more difficult to change hosting providers by offering little support for a move and no refunds for the months remaining on your term. You may have prepaid for one or two years worth of hosting to get a better rate as most people do. Many decide to ride out terrible hosting services just to get the time the paid for in advance but that is a mistake. A bad hosting provider can cost you customers, lost business in addition to your sanity.
These are just a few of the reasons why you want to get your hosting provider right from the beginning. Take the time to do your homework on any hosting company your considering. Search for reviews and look for complaints. Every big company will have some complaints but are there excessive amounts and do those complaints have a common theme to them?
Evaluate your options carefully and in the end go with the option that suits your situations and websites. If it comes down to a choice between your sanity and a bad host, choose your sanity and lose the bad hosting company.
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