what do you really want from a hosting company?

M

muda

New member
if you are want to publish a personal thought or start a web site,
what do you really want from a hosting company?
 
I want everything that they say on their website including an SLA, 24/7/365 support and very quick responses to email.
 
As a client I want good customer service, decent prices and a place that doesnt have my site down more than its up. As a provider I do this for my clients as its something I would want done. That old saying of treat others as you would want to be treated goes along in the business world too.
 
First of all, I want uptime and performance. Then quality support, when needed, hopefully very rarely. I'm not the kind who chats with the techs day in and day out, I only contact them when there's a real issue with a solution that's out of my reach or abilities, not "how to create an email account?" type of question.
 
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I want every hosting company to complete everything they promise... Uptime guarantee, space, bandwidth of named amount, support with a quick response time. When I pay money I want to have everything that is included in certain hosting plan...

Unfortunately Yet, among all companies I know, only ***********.com has fufilled everything they promised.
 
Uptime, a easy to navigate site and good support (support shouldn't always show as offline even when you just got an e-mail from them). The proper amount of space and bandwidth you purchase should be available too.

A nice thorough knowledgebase or FAQ for people who are more new to some things is nice as well. I am getting tired of having three tabs open just to understand how to do one thing (one for host, one for cpanel and then the actual panel). Also not contradicting yourself in those directions is great as is maintaining consistent use of terms (aka accounts shouldn't turn into package and vice versa). Also if you have a forum for the site, it shouldn't be so dead as to make people wonder if the owners/tech are even around. If you can't keep it updated you may not need it.
 
Just out of curiosity...you folks whose posts seem to imply that hosts' plans haven't given you the full disk space and bandwidth you expected, what happened? If a host states that you have X gigabytes of bandwidth available each month and they don't deliver on this, you may have a case against them for false advertising.
 
you may have a case against them for false advertising.
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Only if the host cuts you off "for using too much disk space/data transfer". But no host will state something so silly, they'll invent a CPU over-usage incident if necessary. The TOS will leave it up to them to judge what server abuse is, so, building a case may prove an impossible task. :)
 
ldcdc said:
Only if the host cuts you off "for using too much disk space/data transfer". But no host will state something so silly, they'll invent a CPU over-usage incident if necessary. The TOS will leave it up to them to judge what server abuse is, so, building a case may prove an impossible task. :)
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That's the best reason I can find for *not* going with a host that offers unlimited disk space or bandwidth. It seems like many companies (I now include cell phone providers) will use the magic "unlimited" word to draw in customers, but will try and stop customers from using the webspace for anything but small, low-traffic, largely-static sites...so the hosts can keep crowding and overselling but not really suffer the consequences of such practices.

I have had one case of CPU overusage with a client of mine, and was able to trace it to one particular script. I asked them to stop using that script until such time as they were able to rewrite their code so that the script didn't just walk in circles every time it was run. I think that most web hosts should be able to tell a client exactly what script or process is using a lot of CPU cycles, and the client can then either use a different app or rewrite their code. If a host just states "excessive CPU usage", ask for a list of which processes were using too many CPU cycles and when. Don't just accept reasons, ask for them to be explained until you understand what needs to be done to avoid the problem in the future. Also, asking for an explanation may force hosts who are being creative with the truth, to either stick to the explicit truth or stop promising the moon when all they can deliver is a nighttime shot of Death Valley.
 
Lesli said:
I have had one case of CPU overusage with a client of mine, and was able to trace it to one particular script. I asked them to stop using that script until such time as they were able to rewrite their code so that the script didn't just walk in circles every time it was run. I think that most web hosts should be able to tell a client exactly what script or process is using a lot of CPU cycles, and the client can then either use a different app or rewrite their
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The same happened with me. My hosting company contacted me about a script that was being abused externally and causing the server to overload. So I obviously removed the script.
I am glad to see you run your hosting business with honesty.

Lesli said:
That's the best reason I can find for *not* going with a host that offers unlimited disk space or bandwidth. It seems like many companies (I now include cell phone providers) will use the magic "unlimited" word to draw in customers
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Actually, its a bit easier for a cell phone carrier to offer unlimited - there will always be a limited number of minutes in a given month that you simply can't go over. :)
 
Artashes said:
Actually, its a bit easier for a cell phone carrier to offer unlimited - there will always be a limited number of minutes in a given month that you simply can't go over. :)
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True. Though I would dearly love to see a phone plan that offered 11,520 minutes a week, and see how long it took anyone to do the math and find out how unreasonable that was, unless you were keeping time a la The Beatles. :D (And that's when 60 minutes per hour x 24 hours per day x 7 days per week is common knowledge.)

Not every user knows how large their host's hard drive is or how many other clients are using which plans...but they still don't necessarily stop to do the math. They all think in terms of their own PC hard drive - and for most, that's the closest referent they've got.
 
webhosting

yes here is the one webhosting company where providing good packages with high quality and low price.with high server uptime and with good customer support.
 
I want a company to be reliable. Reliable means providing everything from uptime to amount of bandwidth in that quality and quantity which I have paid for.

***********.com is one of those I trust.
 
shockym said:
As a client I want good customer service, decent prices and a place that doesnt have my site down more than its up. As a provider I do this for my clients as its something I would want done. That old saying of treat others as you would want to be treated goes along in the business world too.
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You Sir hit the nail on the head "treat others as you would want to be treated". This statement is very very true.

What I would look for:
Reliability, Security, Integrity and Superb Support!
 
How about a company that does what it says that they do? None of the underlining text and processes that make things difficult. Sometimes I think some one should create a lie detection system that would tell you if a hosting company is pulling your leg or not. Just a thought
 
Yeah, I would say that support is totally key, and honesty in features offered. I definitely want a good feature set, for a good price, but there are dozens of companies that offer the features I want at a reasonable price, and what is going to make me choose one hosting company over another is reading reviews online and seeing who actually provides good support and who actually delivers on the features they claim to have.
 
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