A frequently-asked
question:
Answer: You are not alone. Many affordable hosting is plagued with inflexibility on their resource limits and haunted by unprofessional support. Web hosting is one of the most important part of your web presence and can mean the start or the end of your business.
Before we answer your question, let us review the 7 qualities to look for in a good web hosting. An excellent hosting:
- has excellent support and rated at least A+ by Better Business Bureau (BBB)
, - gives unlimited storage,
- offers no limit on bandwidth,
- gives multiple add-on domains,
- has easy-to-use Site Builder with thousands of unique templates,
- has QuickInstall to quickly install apps like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, OSCommerce, ZenCart and more
- can be easily upgraded to VPS or one of the best dedicated server plans if and when your business require.
To answer your question, more than 80% of experienced Webmasters recommend to try Hostgator. If you need an “unlimited” hosting plan, experts usually highly recommend going with Hostgator because they are the best hosting and domain registrar around.
With more than 4 million websites hosted, a “Hostgator sucks” comment cannot be avoided. See the drawbacks of Hostgator in the section below. Objectively, HG has an amazingly long, 45 days money back guarantee so you have ample time to test them out. They are rated A+ by Better Business Bureau which shows their commitment to customer satisfaction. You also do not have to pay for the first month. You can just try their fully functional hosting service – you pay only $0.01 (you need to use the special coupon code). Do you know any other hosting company that can give you that kind of assurance? Anybody can grab an account from Hostgator for almost FREE.
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Hostgator Complaints
No web hosting service is perfect. Some complaints about Hostgator plans include:
- No free domain name included – but you can easily get a domain name from the best domain registrar such as Godaddy or Namecheap for $10 or less. Would you agree that a website is not complete without a domain name?
- You need to pay full price after your first invoice – well, they need to make money too and all the support and great service do come with a cost. It is like they say, you get what you pay for.
If you are still not sure if HG is right for you, or you have specific query about anything at all, try the Live Chat at HG. They are fast and knowledgeable. Just ask and you shall receive.
Hi Menaka,
Honestly, it’s not easy to tell how quality a web hosting company is until you use its service yourself. However, I do have some tips here to help you screen out most of the low-end hosting companies based on my past experience with several web hosts.
Keep your eyes peeled.
1. Money Back Guarantee – Now, this tells you something about the company / provider. Generally you’ll see most of them offering 30 days full refund.
Few offers "anytime"… meaning anytime you cancel (even after 6 months), you’ll get a refund, but pro-rated. Take note of this kind of web host, they never offer full refund, even for the first 30 days.
They’ll refund you the money based on the number of days remained for that particular month.
For example, imagine you’ve just signed up for the service for 15 days and paid $7 for that month, and if you cancel the service and demand a refund, they’ll return you only $3.50. You don’t get the full amount back.
Here’s an even few that offer a longer 45-days full-refund guarantee. I personally prefer this type of web host so that I can play around with their site-hosting / building features intensively to see if it’s the one I’m looking for, otherwise I’ll just switch without losing a single dime and yet gaining some good experience to help me in search of a more suitable web host.
Just remember this, the longer the guarantee period, the more confident the company is with their service, and the higher chances you’re going to get quality service from them.
However, you should still test drive the service, even though you have faith in their confidence. The longer guarantee period means you can test their service longer, before you nod your head and commit to them for long-term.
2. Customer Support – Many "dirty" companies pull the wools over people’s eyes by claiming they offer 24/7 customer support, which in fact is nothing short of email support, only.
You can imagine how long you have to wait for them to respond to your message when you need urgent help.
Take note, only very few truly offers 24/7. But how to identify which is genuine? Very simple.
The one that truly offers 24/7 round-the-clock support will put up both their phone number and live chat box somewhere on the home page. Again, the more confident they are, the more prominent they’ll position those info – usually along the top.
You can open their chat box anytime to see if anyone attends to you, or even call them on the phone, and you’ll be able to tell whether there are really real human answering to your calls.
24/7 support is extremely crucial.
Imagine somewhere at 2 am you realize your site is down and you need someone to address your issue?
Emailing those so-called "24/7 support" companies will make you wait until you pee in your pants. That’s why it’s critical to have real human support always on ‘live’ to help you with any problems anytime.
Note: Don’t expect to get a web host that doesn’t come with a "lick" of problem. All web hosts will have some degree of problems. The real deal is how fast they can recover your problem. Of course, if a web host keeps giving you problems "regularly" and rip your hair off till you become bald, then that’s not the one you would want to go with.
3. Free or Paid Web Hosting? – There are basically two types of web hosting companies available – one that offers free hosting, the other does not.
Free web hosting companies are less reliable in terms of customer service and resources. For this, I would refer you to this web page that gives you more details:
=> http://tinyurl.com/3-common-mistakes
(It also tells you about the price, whether cheap is better? And how you can find one that’s affordable yet reliable.)
Company that offers free web hosting is very distinguishable – you can usually find the free hosting info on the home page.
They’ll encourage you to sign up for their free service first, and then later email you to persuade you to upgrade to their paid hosting plan, which turns out to be more expensive than if you were to buy hosting plan with a company that doesn’t offer free hosting but which are more robust and reliable.
Another feature with free hosting companies is that they don’t offer 24/7 phone support and live chat, because they want to cut cost. Bear in mind.
There are a few other things which you have to take note of too. They’re equally important to help you find a perfect web host for you to start off with. You can refer to the source below.
Hope that helps. Cheers 😉
Soon Chai
You can do that by doing a google search and seeing what are the feedback’s that the site has got. You can also do a blog search to see if anyone has made any posts on them.
refer this site : http://b2evolution.net/index.php
As an experienced webmaster I recommend BlueHost service which I’m sure it would work for you and fulfill all your requirements. They have a really great offer for hosting & I have used them for over 3 yrs now, and have never had a single problem with them.
They are a Multi-awarded Web Hosting which offer a Full-featured service only $6.95. You can see their Plan Details accompanied with reliable reviews regarding their service at:
http://www.threehosts.com/reviews/1st
Here I have copied and pasted its features from their website to view:
– Free Domain Forever
– Unlimited Space
– Unlimited Transfer
– Blog (wordpress)
– Forum (phpbb,bulletin)
– Host UNLIMITED Domains (Support All Domain Names)
– 2,500 POP/Imap Email Accounts
– SSH (Secure Shell), SSL, FTP, Stats
– CGI, Ruby (RoR), Perl, PHP, MySQL
– Front Page Extensions
– Free Site Builder
– 24/7 Superb/Responsive Sales/Support
– Free Search Engine Submission
They also offer "Free Site Builder" that helps you build your web pages without difficulty if you are not skilled in using any website creating program. (WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get) You can use this service optionally.
******IMPORTANT********
* This service was awarded “The Best Web Host OF The Year”.
* If you sign up for this service you will have $75 credits to advertise your website with the google & yahoo search engines for free!
* You Can Register A Free Domain or Use Your Existing Domains. They Support All Domain Names.
**************************
Another useful link:
http://www.threehosts.com/build
There you can find a step-by-step guide to start your website.
And also a cheap, reliable service:
http://www.goldpuma.com
And the easiest way to create a website is reachable here (web host offering 4500 decent templates):
threehosts.com/tell-me-more/hg.html
Good Luck!
I suggest you rent a VPS from ServInt.
ServInt is a fully managed VPS/Server provider, and they have AMAZING 24/7 support. They also have virtually 100% uptime, since they have an awesome feature that automatically reboots your server when it goes down.
I personally recommend ServInt to everyone, I use it myself, and would never use any other hosting provider.
http://www.anonymode.info/servint/