1. Support

Do not join a host without testing out their support first. The best way to test out a host support is accessibility. You'll be surprised how many hosts with an 800 number never answer their phones, or have long hold times. E-mailing a hosting company or submitting a ticket to their sales department is not even enough to test a host! Many of the companies have incredible response times when contacting their sales department, very few have good times when contacting support. After all they don't make money by supporting you they only make money by selling you.

2. Scam Plans

If it sounds too good too be true it usually is! All hosts have the same basic limitations when it comes to server resources and specs. There is no magic server that has a never ending supply of ram and cpu. If a host ever claims to give unlimited space or bandwidth DO NOT JOIN THEM. The thing to remember is that the average web site uses about 50 Megs space and less then 1 gig bandwidth a month. So what hosting companies do is they lie! They make up scam plans with tons of space and 50 gigs bandwidth for around $8 bucks a month. It's a numbers game.... Only one or two of every 100 people that signup on the plan are going to use the 50 gigs bandwidth. So what do they do? They terminate the sites that use it saying "your site is using too many resources." They aren't lying about the resource usage it's the truth! Most people don't realize that bandwidth and space used have nothing to do with the server resources being used. Resource usage has to do with the amount of cpu and ram a site uses. If a site uses their 50 gigs bandwidth they aren't kicked for using their bandwidth they are kicked for using up most of the servers cpu and ram. Another thing to remember is that the cheaper the plan is, and the more space / bandwidth included the more sites per server the host will have to pack in to make their money back. So going by the above numbers which we would say is pretty accurate from our numbers... If a company hosted 200 sites per server and 2% of the server used the 50 gigs bandwidth that would equal 200 gigs bandwidth a month used on the server. Guess what If they don't kick those sites using it those 4 sites are going to be using more resources then all 196 sites on the server combined. So think about it would a hosting company boot 4 people paying $8 bucks a month in order to double the amount of sites they can hold on the server? You bet they would! We only put 100-200 sites per shared hosting server, our pricing and packages don't force us to jam sites on to a server in order to be profitable. If you think most hosts put less then 200 sites per server your living in a fantasy land. Most hosts put 1000's of sites per server. Making it all that much more important to kick the 2% or so that use what their plan comes with.

3. Never Pay for Yearly Plans

Another thing you'll notice is that most of these incredible scam plans force you to pay for a year up front to get the good pricing. Why would a hosting company care if you pay monthly or yearly? After all if you are happy with them you’re going to end up staying much longer then a year. Merchant fees aren't that much so why? It's because most have horrible support, slow servers, or even tons of downtime. If you were paying month to month you’re not going to stick around, but if you paid for a year up front what are you going to do. You won't get your money back so you have no choice but to stay with them. ONLY PAY MONTHLY! We have yearly plans listed on our site mainly because some people will only pay yearly; unlike most of the companies our yearly price doesn't have any discounts. We could care less if you pay us monthly or yearly as people stick with a host they are happy with.

4. Domain Name Tips

Do not join a host that includes a free domain name with their hosting package, and never purchase your domain name from a hosting provider, unless you are positive they will be putting your information in the whois. (We do most don't) If your information isn't in the whois they could blackmail you into staying with them. For all technical purposes whoever has their information in the whois is the owner. A domain owner doesn't go by who paid for it; it goes by whose information is on the whois. To check a whois on the domain go there and type "domainname.com" and click submit. Whoever’s address, email, and phone number shows up is the domain owner. We recommend purchasing a domain from domain registration companies like www.godaddy.com or www.enom.com after you purchase the name all you would do is put your host's dns in and your domain name will then point to your hosting company.

5. Uptime

If a hosting company claims 100% uptime they are lying. All servers need to be rebooted every now and then for security and software updates. If they never reboot that means their server is insecure and they will eventually be hacked.

When a company guarantees an uptime that doesn't make it true. A host has as many uptimes as they have servers. It all depends on what server they put you on, and how well they manage it from the time your put on it. We guarantee a 99.9 uptime but that does not mean we will hit it every month for eternity. Our guarantee means we give you a 100% refund for the month if we should not hit it. Many hosting companies will give you a prorated refund based on the amount of downtime. So say you pay $10 for a month of hosting your site is down for 24 / hours. They will refund you for one day of downtime which ends up being about 33 cents. A guarantee is worthless! What is worth something is how they define the guarantee, and if they do in fact honor it.