Having your website hosted by a provider is a task that needs to be handled with extreme care. Your online presence, and thus your reputation, is at stake whenever you go out shopping for a hosting provider. If you choose a wrong fit, you will have to suffer the consequences – some of which you might not be able to recover from.
Then again, it really is quiet difficult to find a hosting provider that meets all you requirements. With thousands of providers out there, you will sometimes have to make a leap of faith when you are faced with an insolvable dilemma. That is when you will have to settle for a hosting provider that will eventually displease you.
Below (in no particular order) we will see some of the most common complaints people or clients of web hosting providers have made when it comes to the services they have been offered:
- Slow Customer Support: this is a very common complaint due to the fact that businesses [quite understandably] want to cut the downtime following their sites’ crashing.
A good hosting provider will not only make sure that there is enough manpower with sufficient expertise to handle the majority (if not all) of the technical issues that their clients could face, but also that it is done in the shortest possible time.
- That’s NOT What You Promised: whether it is because they haven’t clearly read and understood the TOS (including the tiny-fonted small print), or simply because the hosting providers are indeed trying to pull a fast one on them, arguments will ensue over features and services and they don’t always end amicably.
A good hosting provider will always make sure the client knows exactly what they are getting into by simplifying the English, and using as little tech-talk as possible, in their TOS. When there is an argument, a good provider will always consider the customer to be right and make some concessions, even though they probably didn’t deserve it. Who knows? The cranky customer of today could be the Zuckerberg of tomorrow.
- My Site Isn’t Fast Enough: some businesses launch their websites without the proper preparation. They are in such a hurry to get their site up and running that it is launched after the preliminary tests have been completed on a local server. When it actually goes live, and the traffic really starts to hit it, that is when the true performance can be gauged. Usually, the results will show that the site isn’t running as well as it should. Alternatively, it may run pretty well at first and quickly deteriorate in performance over the span of a short time. That is when the customer will start asking for improvement in speed and/or storage space.
Good hosting providers, whenever possible, will encourage their clients to opt for virtual or cloud-based web hosting because these can easily be scaled up (or down).
- My Site Isn’t Making Me Money: now, while almost all businesses do already have a business plan and have probably been in the off-line market for quite some time, there will always be the new player that has just joined the trade game and decided to take it online as well as offline. They will set up their site and, as hard as they may try, won’t make more than a few straggling sales here and there.
While the hosting provider can simply ignore the failing site and look away, they can rest assured they will soon be saying goodbye to the particular client. On the other hand, including features like SEO, advertising and Marketing in their packages can help with launching a successful website. Having tutorials or a forum where business owners can discuss their sites’ “failure to launch” could go a long way in ensuring a longer online life.
- Your Uptime Is Nowhere As Promised: most hosting providers promise an uptime that is higher than 90, or even 95, percent. They promise to have their servers available come rain or come shine. But as soon as they have taken their clients’ money their servers crash and take all the sites down with them.
If it is an unfortunate coincidence then all is fine as the future track record will serve as a warning. But, if it is a regular occurrence, the only option a client has is to bail out and scamper to another hosting provider. Then of course, they could have avoided this issue by researching the hosting providers’ up time records which is readily available online.
- They Kept My Money: when client and hosting provider have to part ways, it will eventually come down to money that is owed. The hosting provider will want to keep the fees that have been paid them while the client will want a full refund. This is where the policy comes into play.
A good hosting provider will make sure that their refunds and termination-of-contract policies are clear-cut to avoid arguments.
