12 Things I Learned the Hard Way about Web Hosting

All hosts claim to have a 99.8% uptime but that's no guarantee your site will be up.

My second site (an online store) was on a $40-a-month host who claimed to have a 99.8% uptime, but as it turned out, my site was down more often than it was up. Particularly when I managed to score a free plug for it in someone's newsletter that was sent out to 50,000 or more subscribers.

I would be so excited hoping for a big rush of sales that I'd sit in front of my computer waiting for their newsletter to arrive, and when it did, I'd click the link to my site and...

It was down. Every time.

Take it from me... it's hard to build a good reputation online when your site is down every time you send traffic to it.

If you want to sell stuff on your site, like an ebook or a software program, and a host says you need the $40 per month or more plan to do e-commerce, that's not true. For a one-person business, hosting for $8.95 a month works just fine whether you have a 3-page site or a 50-page site.

But, if you have a big company with a number of employees all using email, you'll need a more powerful site that can handle the strain on your bandwidth than an affordable host can offer.

When I was shopping for a new host to replace that one, I saw one on Google in a sponsor ad across the top [Note: It costs big money to be listed there]. They had a slick, professional-looking site so I was shocked when I called the 800 number and a guy answered his cell phone in his car. Looking at the site, I just assumed it was a big company - not some guy working on his computer in his basement.

Some hosts are actually resellers. You want to deal with the company, not some middleman. Oh, and if you do get your hosting through a reseller and the host shuts him down for any reason, your site will be GONE.

There are lots of web sites filled with reviews where you can compare hosting companies, but trust me! They are biased. Most are affiliates and they're only going to show stellar reviews for the companies that pay them the most money to steer you toward them.

Since I have a couple of sites on one host, I got it in my head that I shouldn't put all of my eggs in one basket so I shopped around for a new host. I searched for "compare web hosting" and went to the site that came up at the top on Google.

It showed my current host with a not-so-good rating and I clicked to read people's comments. Many were saying that the host wasn't friendly and that their site was down a lot — both of which I knew weren't true. But everyone raved about the host they rated #1 [I won't say their name but their initials are "IM" Hosting]. I clicked on the link to visit their site and noticed that it was an affiliate link but I didn't think much of it until after I signed up.

When you call, you wait on hold. When they finally answer, you get some surly representative who is not helpful in the least. When you want to add on a new domain [I'll talk about doing this in a second], they tell you to send an email to support@ their site with your login and password in it.

Wait! What?! You NEVER want to send private info like that over the Internet! Are they nuts?

A good, reputable business is going to have a secure, automated system for managing your account. If they don't, that's a sure sign you signed up with the wrong host!

But I did as instructed to get my new domain, and then waited...

And waited...

Since I know it only takes an hour or so for your new domain to work, and after a couple days my new domain name still wasn't working, I did a live chat through their site and here is the actual text from it:

Diane: I have www.[My Site].com and bought an add-on domain name a few days ago - www.[New Site].com - and I just uploaded the index file and the Images folder (I see they're there in cpanel) but when I tried to go to the site - www.[New Site].com, it couldn't be found. HELP! :-D

You are now speaking with Rodric J of Support and Billing.

Rodric J: Hello Diane.

Diane: Hi!

Diane: Do you see my plea for help or do I need to re-enter it?

Rodric J: [New Site].com does not show up as being registered currently.

Diane: Um... I called and the guy told me to do the add-on, which I did. Did he forget to tell me some important step?

Rodric J: Hello?

Diane: Yes

Diane: So... what do I have to do?

Rodric J: I will need to end this chat due to inactivity. Please ensure that you register [New Site].com and point it to our name servers. Please let us know if you have any further issues.

Your party has left this session.

Diane: HOW?????

You probably heard my head explode.

I'd type and wait for his response. There was no long delay. I didn't go for coffee.

If this happened to you, you'd know how angry I was.

Completely p.o.'d, I called their 800 number and told the guy who answered about this crappy chat and asked him to go slap "Rodric" in the back of the head for me.

This new guy said he'd take care of my site problem for me, which he did.

But still irate, I wondered how this host could possibly get so many stellar reviews and I found the answer when I took a peak at their affiliate program.

If an affiliate sends them one sale in a month, the affiliate gets 50 bucks, but if they send them two or more sales in a month, they get $100 for each sale. So... of course an affiliate is going to push unsuspecting people at this host because, at a 100 bucks a pop, it's in his best interests.

As for the reviews on cnet... Personally, I take theirs with a grain of salt. Since they pay their bills with the money they make on advertising, they're certainly not going to bite the hand that feeds them by giving an advertiser a bad review.

If your host offers "unlimited domains"...

...you don't have to shell out another 100 bucks or whatever for another site. You can get an "add-on" domain through your cPanel [which I'll talk about in a second] and add it to your existing site for the cost of the new domain name ($10 or less). I learned this one the hard way after needlessly shelling out a few hundred bucks for different websites.

Some hosts let you have a few add-ons; others, like mine, let you add as many as you want.

If the server your site is on crashes, does the host keep a current back up of your site handy so they can get it back up fast?

Don't count on your host to do the back ups for you. Always keep a fresh back-up copy of your site handy just in case.

A friend of mine was using a host that was bought out by another company and her site vanished in the process.

Since she didn't have a back-up copy and the person who had built her site for her was nowhere to be found, she had to scramble to find someone else to rebuild her entire online store. There's no telling how much business she lost in the weeks it took to get it back up. But she learned the hard way about keeping a back-up copy of her site handy.

If your host's electricity goes out, will your site go down? A good host will have a back-up diesel generator, for example, to power their servers in case of power loss.

Remember when those hurricanes pounded Florida a few years ago? Yup... my online store's host was in Florida. I couldn't send or receive emails through the site, I couldn't receive orders... It was dead for days.

After ditching that one host, I found out the hard way that the next one was a one-man shop and if I called and got his voice mail, it might have been his bowling night. [I kid you not!]

Not all hosts have cpanel. cPanel (your control panel) makes it easy to work with your site (upload files, add a blog, add domains, delete files, etc.).

When I had that one host, it was back in the day before cPanel came along, but after seeing how cPanel makes your life so much easier, if a host doesn't give it to you, look for another host that does.

If you want to run an application that requires the current version of a particular software, like Perl 5 for example, and your host is running an old, out-dated version of it, you'll have problems.

Plus, most software updates fix problems or security issues so you always want to run the latest version. If a host can't be bothered to update stuff on their end, that's a sign you need to find a better host.

When I first built my online store, my visitors who were using Internet Explorer would see a pop up that said my SSL certificate had expired. [I was using Netscape so I never saw it, but I had just paid huge money for my shiny, new certificate so I didn't think anything was wrong.

I finally called the host and they discovered their certificate on the server had expired and replaced it for me. But... there's no telling how many sales I lost out on because people didn't trust my site.

NOTE: When you're at a secure site, the url changes to https:// — the 's' shows it's secure.

So... when I saw a similar pop up on my new site with "IM" Hosting, I assumed it was just like before where it's something on the server so I immediately contacted them and asked them to fix it. They told me that I have to buy a secure certificate to use on my site. Um... I'm not using SSL on my site! But they wouldn't do anything about it.

Grrrr...

Hosts usually have a long list of stuff that comes with their plans, but if you're like me, most of that stuff might as well be written in Greek cus I have no clue what it is. That stuff you don't pay attention to is important.

For example, I don't use databases so I didn't give it any thought whether or not my hosting came with one or five or 50 databases. Until I found out that every cool thing you want to add to your site, like a blog or a forum, needs its own database.

So, if your host lets you have five but you need more than that, it's going to cost you. But, if they say you get 100 databases with their service, you have nothing to worry about.

Lots of people opt for a free site to build their first one but if you're trying to sell stuff on your site or even build your reputation as an expert in your field, that free site will hurt you more than it'll help.

For starters, they usually come with a weird-looking URL, like:

http://www.SomeSite.com/user/123abc/

If, for example, you're selling an ebook, potential customers will look at your site's URL as a bad sign, like you're fly-by-night. They expect good, reputable sites to have a dot com name, and if your site doesn't have one, they'll run.

And most free sites have ads on them (they have to make their money somehow) and if you're trying to sell Product A that'll pay you handsomely but the site puts an ad on it for Product B, or even your competitor's product, you wouldn't want the visitors you work so hard to get to see that ad.

A few years ago I built a site for a friend of mine and when I saw all the cool stuff you can add to your site with Bravenet, I signed her up. And then I discovered that to add each cool thing was going to cost you. So... they nickeled and dimed us to death.

Today, you can add tons of cool things to your site for free. If you don't see what you want on your cPanel, search for free gadgets and widgets on Google.

Go to an online forum and look for a recent post by someone asking the participants which host they recommend. These are real people who have nothing to gain by recommending one [Most forums don't allow affiliate links in posts].

That's how I found mine and I couldn't be happier! In case you're curious, that was their ad I used when I talked about "unlimited domains," and if you really want to see how I feel about them, check out my 'Link Love' Lens.