Avoiding the Big Web Hosting Lies

[mandy]

The complex development of the reseller hosting business, and the relative ease with which just about anyone can create private-labeled hosting company has created a great deal of healthy competition within the industry - a situation that tends to benefit the average hosting customer. Unfortunately for that average customer, the ease of setting up a Web hosting business means that there is also no shortage of pretenders.

And for every unqualified or unreliable Web hosting company, there are dozens - at least - of dissatisfied customers, many of them inclined to believe that Web hosts are thieves, guilty of false advertising, poor performance and unreliable support.

Many of those customers are guilty, too, of failing to research before making their purchases, or being sucked in by low prices. The "buyer beware" principle applies in Web hosting as much as in any other business.

full article: http://www.thewhir.com/features/030106_A...g_Lies.cfm

[jezebel]

these are warnings:

We have the best support in the industry - If your SLAs promise 24/7 support, what do they say about your average response time by e-mail or phone and average on-hold time?

We have unlimited capacity - A common claim, and almost always untrue, especially among small hosts with just a few servers. Overselling has become a common complaint among hosting customers. Making an irresponsible claim is setting yourself up for trouble, possibly of the legal variety.

We have been in business for "X" years - How long have you been in Web hosting? A Web design shop that now does hosting doesn't count as a seasoned hosting provider.

or being sucked in by low prices

So many low-priced hosts who promise the moon are nothing but inexperienced 1-man ops.  :

[bargainbloodhound]

or being sucked in by low prices.

Inexperienced web site owners have always been sucked in by low prices and hosts who throw in a ton of crap like Fantastico... push a button and install billions of scripts, unlimited bandwidth (which is always a lie)...blah, blah, blah but that's been going on for years.  The web hosting industry has always been full of hosts who promise much more than they can deliver and who cram 500-2000 sites on a single server. 

If you're not familiar with what you're buying then the odds of you being disappointed after signing up increase exponentially.