Web Hosting for Life? It Sounds Too Good to Be True

February 26, 2010 | Posted by admin

If you had to pick between a fly by night webhost or a company that well known, who would you pick?  I doubt anyone would want to go with the standard fly by night web host company” that litters the hosting world.  But would you sign up for a web hosting offer that is branded as “Web Hosting for Life?” Hosting is a volatile industry and especially smaller players come and go faster than most of us would expect. As a web hosting customer it is always risky to go with “the little guy” for web hosting as you never how good or bad this web host is and if he is still in business tomorrow morning. Of course on the other side you might miss out on a web host that offers a much more personal approach to web hosting. Sometimes these web hosts are the best out there and they will go the extra mile to make you happy.

When looking for web hosting I always recommend to listen to friends and family that can recommend a certain web hosting provider. These personal referrals are worth so much more. No money back guarantee can make up for that personal recommendation. Your chances to go with a bad web host are greatly reduced if you follow a friend or family member to a certain host. See it like your personal edition of “consumer reports”.

Believe it or not, but there is web hosting for life out there. As a matter of fact I do have 3 reseller hosting accounts with a specific company since 2003. There was a time when I was ready to leave the company because the owner decided to sell out at the peak. The new owner had a completely different approach to business and the quality of service was declining fast. Fortunately he was bought out by another web hosting company which then in return turned things around dramatically. For now (knock on wood) I am really happy with this host and have no reason to leave at all.

However, buying web hosting at a wholesale level is not for everyone. There is more work involved for yourself, but as I am hosting over 150 domains, I a) do have a certain level of experience and b) do need wholesale resources. A normal consumer does not need this kind of web hosting. If you are just looking to host 1 or 2 domain names there are many cheaper and better web hosts available to choose from. My recommendation is to look for a web host that has at least 3 or more years of business history. Their servers should be located in a larger data center with many Internet uplink providers or even in-house in a data center owned by the web host. You also want to look for a web host who offers a web hosting control panel like cpanel or Plesk. Pricing should be less than per month and the more you prepay the cheaper your web hosting package should be. Support needs to be 24/7 and the more support options available, the better it is for you.

Conclusion: Web hosting can be an adventure, but your ultimate goal should be a calm passage. My biggest goal is reliability and super-fast support. I do not care about the latest and greatest feature as you would barely use those anyway (they’re eye-candy). Spend some time researching the new web host you are looking at for your website. This will not guarantee that nothing goes wrong, but it will greatly reduce the risk of signing up with another bad web host. Maybe you find web hosting for life the next time.

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