That's a bold title, isn't it? Well, after my recent fiasco with HastyHost, I started shopping around to find a new hosting company to move most of the sensitive websites I have on HastyHost to.
The one thing I found most frustrating when this whole thing was going on was that I had no way of voicing my questions and frustrations and of knowing what else was going on except through the support tickets. This was annoying because I am sure I am not the only one who went through that ordeal. This made me realize how much I value forums. The other host that I use is Hosting Zoom, and they're a pretty decent company. Their services are slightly pricier but their service is okay. I thought I could upgrade my current plan with them to allow for more domains, but I discovered I could not without getting a whole new package on a plan that seems to have a lot of customer dissatisfaction, which I learned from their.... you guessed it... member forums!
As I was searching for another host the first thing I looked to see was if they had any member forums, and what the members were saying. This is an excellent way to shop for hosting, because you get to hear from the actual users of the service in a place that exists for them to ask questions and voice their issues. Visiting the user forums gives you a chance to see what level of peer support you will have when you use the hosting company, and how the staff communicate and how fast they respond to issues in the forums. If there is no such platform, then there is no way to tell in truth whether the customers are satisfied or not. Getting awards and getting ratings and reviews on other websites doesn't really count for much because these things can be skewed and rigged, with paid reviews and fake testimonials. But on member forums where the day to day issues come up and are addressed, things such as downtime problems, customer support issues, reliability, mail problems, etc., are discussed and addressed directly. This gives you a really good picture of customer ratings and also of the kind of support you will get.
So if you're out looking for a hosting company, first check and see if they have a member forum, visit it and see what people are saying. If there is a PreSales subforum, go in there and read through the posts and ask your questions. You'll know much better what you're getting into before you jump in.
So at the end of the day after doing all the above, and more, which I will be discussing in later posts, I settled on Hostgator
No comments:
Post a Comment