The backbone of internet business, no matter how you slice it, is web hosting. There are good hosts and then there are the bad web hosting companies that seem to find a slice of market share online today. You’re going to find that no matter how hard you fight through the listings, you may be tempted to go with one of these bad web hosting companies. They don’t point themselves out as such, and you may find that their marketing is spot on. You will find that there is something familiar about what they put out, and in some cases they will even hire celebrities to sell their product. You will definitely be tempted, as many others have gone through the bad web hosting option before. If you’re not sure whether or not the next host you want to use is good or bad, consider looking at the following 5 telltale signs of bad web hosting that you should know about today.
Very Limited Bandwidth
You are going to need bandwidth. If you have a website today, you’re going to need a lot of this, and while you may not need unlimited options, you should not get stifled. Some of the worst offenders will only give you a few megabytes of this. You know you’re working with a bad web hosting company because they will only give you a few megs and then charge you more down the line. You may only receive a thousand visitors before this ends up costing you serious money. Not only that, you may have to deal with issues associated with downloads and more. Every time someone downloads sometimes from your page or even loads an image, you will have to deal with the bandwidth going down, and eventually will run out.
Terrible Up Time
When dealing with bad web hosting companies, you’re going to find that their pages aren’t always updated or even up. If you find that they do not have a site up every now and again, your site is going down too. Your page may be promised to be 99% of the time, but you’ll find that it will time out, die out and will not be online when you need it most. You’ll find that server space should not be relegated to dead spots, but many bad web hosting companies are doing just that. They know they have unstable servers and dead zones within their IP addresses, but they don’t care, they just want your money and will put you on an unstable arena.
No Support or Limited Support
Perhaps one of the biggest issues that you’re going to run into, especially when dealing with a bad web hosting firm is that there will be no support to speak of. Imagine having to deal with a site that isn’t going to allow you to contact them. You may get an 800 number to call, but they won’t be there to pick up when you need them most. In fact, you will end up dealing with a variety of issues as a result of this, and could end up falling short of getting help overall. If you run into a support issue and you can’t call, or email, or no one answers, then you’re definitely dealing with a bad web hosting company, plain and simple.
Very Limited Storage
Many companies today are giving out gigs of storage. Even Google gives out a gig or so of storage, and that’s free to use. Imagine having to pay for something that is limited, and not just in terms of gigs, but within the world of megs. Some of the bad web hosting companies that you’re going to end up having to deal with will only give you about 5 or 10 megs and that may not even be enough. That won’t let you upload much, and could end up stifling your creativity with relative ease. Not only that, you will have limited bandwidth, so if you could work with this limitation, you will not be able to work with the other limitation, that’s for sure.
Free or Extremely Low Cost (upsells galore)
The last straw for the bad web hosting companies that are out there will be this one. You’ll find that the free or extremely low cost will get you to sign up. Then after you’ve been with them for a month or less, they will start in on the upsells which could range from more bandwidth to more storage, and then some. They’ll relentlessly email you and eventually you’re going to give up on it, and quit. If you cancel your account, get ready to pay for your files and even reinstatement fees and more. It’s just a terrible idea to go with bad web hosting firms that are going to do all of this. Yet they still manage to proliferate the internet.
