Although, for the most part, web hosting providers are an honest bunch, there are some bad apples that will try to scam you out of your money. This may be intentional – although a quick onslaught by bad reviews will certainly set them on the right track – or unintentional due to erroneous information provided, for example.
Whatever the case, we will focus on some of the scams that are more common and that you should look out for.
Why is it important?
If you own a business and have a website that serves as an income portal – directly for sales or indirectly as a marketing portal – you will always want to know that you are in safe hands. You can’t afford to have your website down (even for minutes) in a world that has gone online.
You should therefore know that your website is being handled a professional web hosting provider that isn’t in the game just to get a few bucks out of you.
So, below are the most common web hosting scams out there:
- Now You See It…: in this scam the web hosting provider will show you one set of packages with all types of features and freebies packed into it and announce that you can have it all at rock bottom prices.
But once you have paid and signed up for their services, you will quickly be informed that in order to get the features you will need to pay a little more. You pay for that and some of the features are allowed. The game goes on until you opt out.
- Sterling Reputations That Really Aren’t: one way web hosting providers get their clients to come on board is by presenting them with seemingly impressive reviews they have received from “customers” and reviewing companies and websites.
What most clients do not know is that there hosting providers that get people to create fake reviews for them. This may be done by hiring freelancers who simply go around the web saying nice things about the providers (making sure the relative keywords are in place to attract the search engines and potential clients alike) or paying review sites to give them positive reviews.
The best way to avoid this scam is to make sure you do your research well: only accept reviews that are put on sites with good reputations themselves, check the hosting providers’ rating on the BBB (Better Business Bureau) website if it is an American company and trying to contact actual people and businesses who have written the reviews to see if they stand by their words.
- Domain Name Withholding: in this scam you are encouraged to sign up for a package that has everything you need and more – plus, they say, they will throw in a free domain name in the bargain.
Well, you will certainly get the domain name. The only problem is once the period you have signed up for has expired, you will be asked to either continue with them (regardless of the fact that you may not want to) or lose ownership of your domain name. In most cases, they will ask you to pay the full domain name purchase charges or even say that since the name has been around for a while, the price has gone up.
The only way you can get out of this one is by continuing to be their customer, paying the full price (whatever they may ask) or ditching it all and creating everything from scratch.
- We Are Always Up… Not: the one thing that can kill client confidence is your not being there when your clients want you to be there. If every time they come around they find that your website is down, you will very quickly lose their confidence.
Therefore, do not take any hosting provider’s word about their up time. There are plenty of websites out there that can give you up-to-date information on the uptimes of hosting providers. Make sure you do your own research and then go for the most reliable ones.
- Expensive Templates: today, we live in a world where any person with the most basic of tech knowhow can create and launch a website. In some instances novices can create complex websites that can perform all the business that large commercial sites do.
There are lots of free website creating tools out there that you do not even have to ask anyone to create a site for you. Why, then, should you be paying for templates – no matter how good they look – when you can get almost anything for free.
The only exception, of course, should be when you want to create a site that goes above and beyond the limits of your hosting provider’s provisions or want to implement a design that you really can’t do without. And even then, make sure you deal with the designers in person and not go through the hosting providers – it will be much cheaper for you.
