3 Common Mistakes Made When Choosing Web Hosting

By: Cynthia Wang

I am an owner of several websites hosted on a few good web hosting companies that have met my needs for the last 5 years. What I am about to share with you will most definitely save you heaps of time and money when it comes to choosing a great web hosting company and you must avoid the 3 most common silly mistakes that buyers of web hosting services made:

1. Buy from Multiple-Awards Winning Web Hosting Company

If you investigate further you will realize most of these awards are awarded by people none other than those who are promoting them. Their criteria for awarding are always based on the typical but outdated mode of selection such as good customer service, uptime, pricing and features etc. The web hosting industry is extremely competitive, and these days there are just fewer and fewer differentiations as far as the above criteria are concerned. Any quality provider worth their salt already knows this.

2. Buying Based on Reviews Available Online

If you do not already know by now, most of the reviews are extremely biased. And while a handful but rare few are sincere in their recommendations, it's still just plain silly to base your buying decsion on their reviews. And even if they have a good collection current feedback and comments listed on their website, you still should not buy based on that kind of recommendation. Why? Because often times, most comments are not objective, and everyone's experience with their provider are always unique to their hosting needs. And to handpick your choice based on a few isolated "good" or "bad" experiences is just not smart. I can almost guarantee you no great web hosting companies are ever spared from complains, genuine or fake anyway.

3. Focusing on the Wrong Feature to Compare

The typical buyer compares prices, the slightly savvy buyer compares customer support features, a smart buyer looks at the company's customer base, the number of years in business, check on their uptime and backup features essentially all those things that a typical and slightly savvy buyer will look at and probably more. Personally, it's just common sense to do those due diligence before you entrust your website to the provider but it's still highly unreliable and a waste of your precious time. Take for example, most web hosting companies claim their uptime is 99.9% but many people do not spend time tracking their sites or at least know how to do so.

So my final advice to you is this, don't choose web hosting companies based on how people feel or what they have experienced, it's just too not smart. If fact, please don't listen to me or anybody at all for that matter, instead I rely on a critical single piece of information to help me decide on which are the really good companies to buy from, and over the years this piece of information have never failed me and those who have access to it.