smash
06-13-2001, 02:29 PM
Hi,
I posted this article not so long ago on my website, hostswatch.com and I thought it was worth posting it there.
Long Term Contracts
This is definately the first thing to check. Most "economic" hosting plans, and sometimes more expensive ones must be prepaid 3, 6 or 1 year in advance. This may not be a bad thing if you know you can thrust your host and the plan's features will be enough for your needs for the duration of the contract. Although it can easily turns out into a big waste of money if the host isn't reliable, or you are not receiving the service you paid for. Also, doing business with a major company doesn't necessarily mean you will get good service. I hear stories everyday of people not receiving good service and tech support from all kind of companies, big and small.
Money back guarantee
I've seen many hosts offering 30 days money back guaranteed if you're not satisfied of the services. Most of the time you will get your money back without too much problems, although, you may not get all the money back: setup fees are usually not refundable, and sometimes they are more expensive than one month worth of hosting.
Bandwidth and space limitations
Always make sure your site won't exceed any limitations. Sometimes budget plans are only allowed 500 MB or 1000 MB of monthly traffic. Even though this is usually more than enough for most websites, if you intend to receive considerable traffic and/or host image or file archives on your site, you may exceed the allowed bandwidth and have to pay for the excess. By the way, there is no such things as "unlimited bandwidth", your host will be paying his own (bigger) provider for every file transferred on your website, and he would certainly prefer that your website do not get too much traffic as it means more money for him. So, it is NOT a bad thing to have a limit on the amount of transfer you can do (as long as it is high enough for your needs). Unlimited transfer on a slow server is worthless.
Unlimited bandwith?
Take the time to read the Terms of Services or contract that any respectable web host should present you. Most of the time unlimited bandwidth isn't unlimited at all. Common limitations are: sites containing image galleries, sites using too much server resources. In other words, you qualify if you don't have too much traffic. I've even seen hosts where you didn't qualified for unlimited bandwidth if the file transfer of your site was more than 60% from images. This means that if you had more than 2 images per page, you don't qualify!
Quality of services and reliability
Usually, when paying $10 or less per month, you should not expect incredibly good services. Although the market is really competitive and most hosts offer decent customer support, even if you're not paying much. Also, there is hosts where budget plans do not qualify to receive tech support (dell host), most of the time it is clearly stated. Finally, it is very possible that your site will be placed on a server with hundreds of other hosted sites, resulting in slower access time. So if the host claim to have servers with the best hardware available and the fastest connection speed available, if there is too much sites hosted on their servers, it will be slow anyway! You can ask the webhost about the sites/server ratio and hope to get a true answer, but you are better to read reviews from current customers in this board to get accurate facts.
I hope this helps some people.
Thank you,
--
Cedric Veilleux,
"A la carte" web hosting.
http://www.inetflex.com/
I posted this article not so long ago on my website, hostswatch.com and I thought it was worth posting it there.
Long Term Contracts
This is definately the first thing to check. Most "economic" hosting plans, and sometimes more expensive ones must be prepaid 3, 6 or 1 year in advance. This may not be a bad thing if you know you can thrust your host and the plan's features will be enough for your needs for the duration of the contract. Although it can easily turns out into a big waste of money if the host isn't reliable, or you are not receiving the service you paid for. Also, doing business with a major company doesn't necessarily mean you will get good service. I hear stories everyday of people not receiving good service and tech support from all kind of companies, big and small.
Money back guarantee
I've seen many hosts offering 30 days money back guaranteed if you're not satisfied of the services. Most of the time you will get your money back without too much problems, although, you may not get all the money back: setup fees are usually not refundable, and sometimes they are more expensive than one month worth of hosting.
Bandwidth and space limitations
Always make sure your site won't exceed any limitations. Sometimes budget plans are only allowed 500 MB or 1000 MB of monthly traffic. Even though this is usually more than enough for most websites, if you intend to receive considerable traffic and/or host image or file archives on your site, you may exceed the allowed bandwidth and have to pay for the excess. By the way, there is no such things as "unlimited bandwidth", your host will be paying his own (bigger) provider for every file transferred on your website, and he would certainly prefer that your website do not get too much traffic as it means more money for him. So, it is NOT a bad thing to have a limit on the amount of transfer you can do (as long as it is high enough for your needs). Unlimited transfer on a slow server is worthless.
Unlimited bandwith?
Take the time to read the Terms of Services or contract that any respectable web host should present you. Most of the time unlimited bandwidth isn't unlimited at all. Common limitations are: sites containing image galleries, sites using too much server resources. In other words, you qualify if you don't have too much traffic. I've even seen hosts where you didn't qualified for unlimited bandwidth if the file transfer of your site was more than 60% from images. This means that if you had more than 2 images per page, you don't qualify!
Quality of services and reliability
Usually, when paying $10 or less per month, you should not expect incredibly good services. Although the market is really competitive and most hosts offer decent customer support, even if you're not paying much. Also, there is hosts where budget plans do not qualify to receive tech support (dell host), most of the time it is clearly stated. Finally, it is very possible that your site will be placed on a server with hundreds of other hosted sites, resulting in slower access time. So if the host claim to have servers with the best hardware available and the fastest connection speed available, if there is too much sites hosted on their servers, it will be slow anyway! You can ask the webhost about the sites/server ratio and hope to get a true answer, but you are better to read reviews from current customers in this board to get accurate facts.
I hope this helps some people.
Thank you,
--
Cedric Veilleux,
"A la carte" web hosting.
http://www.inetflex.com/