Ive been browsing the forums alot recently and i would like to put forward the following tutorial that may help some new members!

Well first of all youve all heard the saying "if you pay peanuts you end up hiring monkeys" well thats sometimes the case with webhosting.

Whilst we all love so called "bargains" many members post saying they are looking for the cheapest possible hosting company but please be aware and i hope you could take my following points into consideration.

1."too good to be true" If you see a host advertising 20Gb of Space and 500Gb Bandwith for $4 a month you know theres a catch in most cases, Yes i put my hands up on say you can sometimes pick up "Genuine Bargains" but in alot of cases these sort of deals are not worth the trouble, for instance you may find a super cheap host, but take into consideration there uptime
Guarentee and other features such as Support Systems. Use your common sense:)

2. Also please do read your hosts terms of service many low cost hosts have you cornered in a 12month contract!

3.Its always a good idea too pay monthly rather then yearly so if the host has major problems or anything of the sort youll know you havent layed out too much money!

4.If your considering a reseller hosting plan make sure you go with a half decent company and make sure there server are located in good datacenters on good networks because you dont want to get on the bad side of your first few customers there your key to sucess!

5.Make sure you check wheather or not your host provides a control panel unless your a advanced user you will find it very difficult to manage your hosting account.

6.Make sure the host has a secure billing system before keying in your card details!

7.Be aware of hosts which come across with a very strong approach meaning things like they lower there price straight away and be sure to avoid "if you sign up now ill give you 50% off:stickout:)

Some tips on helping you find your ideal host
When you think youve found your host be sure to do the following checks before going with them.

1.First of all do make sure there site is compleated if you are ordering via there URL.

2.Dont host with comapnys who have a free Url Address (such as .tk .free domain) Believe me i have seen it advertised!

3.Seach for reviews on your "to be host" www.google.com is your best friend when doing this, or another good idea is too seach WHT using the search feature, if you find bad user feedback be sure to take it into consideration especially if you see lots of bad reviews.

4.I would certainly do a whos search on there domain name this can be done VIA www.whois.net type in your hosts domain name into the search box followed by the extension, when your get the details be sure to check the following details or certainly take them into consideration
-See if the domain is registered with a email address and avoid hosts whos email address is host@hotmail.com or johnsmith@hotmail.com
-See if the whois data looks "Geniune" for instace if the domain is registered to "John Smith" with a address of "20000000 White house road" you know is unlikely thats there real address!

5.If the host provides a phone number check and see if it works.

6.Send the host a random pre sales question and see what there responce time is like.

If your unsure if you should go with a host or not post in the WHT forums, members will surely help you out ;)

I am hoping this tutorial may help some of you people out there.
Thanks for reading
PS:If you spot any mistakes or disagree with something please do PM me.
Kind Regards
Naz.A

thanks...this helpd i dont plan on owning a site yet...but in the near future i plan to and this is taught me some things i would have never thought about...*im currently working on websites owned by another person so i can learn the ropes...then ill start a site*

*~LittleWebNooby~*

Thanks for your comment. You have alot of wisdom in what you said

Thanx for all the nice comments more tutorials to come!

nice 1 ! i learned from it ;)

very nice job, and yes....google is great!

Thanks for the positive feedback:)

good advice. thanks :)

I can't agree with everything, though something is really wise.

Originally posted by Dimarick007
I can't agree with everything, though something is really wise.
Shame but too bad you got banned, so im not sure i can talk no advice from you:emlaugh:

hey naz you did a great job there, I am sure many people that want a hosting provider will need it... keep it up ;)

Why thanks ;)
im thinking of writing some more some time soon!

Nice Job. I am planning to inter this industry with a reseller account, so going through the posts. Your one has helped me. Some of your tips I have noted down ( searching for feedbacks using google :) ).

Oh Good, Good luck with your new reseller.
Regards

I went recently through the process of reshuffling all my hosts. All my websites (about a dozen) are under 10MB, and I used to pay $10-25 a month to host each of them. I now pay US$1-5 for each of them, and that seems more in line with the size of my sites. That will represent a yearly saving of nearly US$2,000.

Because I went through that research recently myself, I can add the following comments:

- Yes, using Google to research information about your projected host is a good idea. I used the search [host name] problems and it worked fine!

- Of course, using these forums is another obvious idea. I researched hosts with many posts (not necessarily a thousand; but usually more than a hundred), or who had made interesting replies in a thread. Also, of course, I signed up with some hosts who had a good reputation in these forums.

I intend to report here on all my new hosts (doteasy, phlint, atomic-hosting.net, hostcolor, hostsnare, perfecthost, sh3lls, connectyourweb and 3ix.org) in about 6 months. I am subscribing to an uptime monitoring service for all my sites. So far, my experience is that these smaller, cheaper hosts offer a better service than the larger ones I used in the past (Yahoo, Pair, Westhost).

Certainly smaller hosts are able to give you more attention, Yahoo will have millions of customers and its all automated responces:D
Good luck with finding a host

thanks for good tut.

Tutorial is really good and simple one. www.whois.sc can be a handy tool for whois information.

6.Send the host a random pre sales question and see what there responce time is like.

I think this the weak point in this tutorial guidelines is this one, since most -if not all- of cheap hosting companies realize that the first moments -meeting moments ;)- with the customer is this one, pre-sale questions time.
They'll response in no time, to make the customer think that their support is fast and so it's impressive.

I liked most of this tutorial although I find some parts aren't always true.

Very usefull, keep it coming. And thankyou for writting these for all of us newbies...

I have some advice-

1). Make sure the host is a legal business entity (this gives you some recourse if you get ripped off)

2). The host should list their mailing address on their web site, like any other legitimate business.

3). Choose a host that offers a money back guarantee of some kind.

4). Test the support response - send an email or call the phone # and make sure you get a reasonable response.

Good stuff. I'm actually make a presale Q txt file with questions to ask the webhost about their company.

Good tut.

It's also sometimes useful to have a look at how long a company has been in business (you can take a look at their WhoIs info to see when their domain was registered).

You can't heavily base your choice on this (all companies have to start somewhere) but if you're feeling a little iffy about a company and they've only just started business then you may want to be a little bit cautious, because they might not be around long enough to provide the services they promise.

Thanks for this good tut and info.

After I sent out my e-mails I found a host that I think will work out for me + price wise, SkyNet Hosting. Once again, nice job on this tut and thanks :)

Nice job this tut and thanks

Horrible butchery of the english language, but some really good checkpoints.

Should be a list of things that you check off when looking for a host. A few more things should be added though, such as checking for added functionality that you may not be using yet. I.E.: you don't currently need shell access, but you might in the future. You don't currently use SQL databases, but you might in the future. In general, check the company/plan for potential growth. Make sure you identify which options are and are not available to you.

Also, check the host in the wayback machine ( http://www.archive.org/ ) This helps you validate their claims of "being around since 1998" or whatever. Also gives you a good idea of how the company has grown since their inception.

This is a great post! Thanks for the info! It definitely helps beginners (like me!) as we tend to fall for those bargain prices :P

cheap hosting will always have a minus point. Be careful

Your idea is nicely expressed!

Thank you for saving me the work of explaining the to-good-to-be-true part to people.
:agree::agree:

Most of this is common sence really. Know when your getting scammed people.

Most of this is common sence really. Know when your getting scammed people.

True, but I never cease to be amazed by how easily many people are parted from their money without first exercising their common sense. ;)

Great post! Can we have reprint rights to that? LOL!

Its a great way to explain to people why cheap is not always as good as it seems. This type of info-campaign can raise the pricing standards and awareness in the webhosting industry. Hopefully, many people will read this and learn.

Thanks for the info.

The ones starting a hosting business have too competitive things, so there is nothing wrong to be cheaper.

4.If your considering a reseller hosting plan make sure you go with a half decent company and make sure there server are located in good datacenters on good networks because you dont want to get on the bad side of your first few customers there your key to sucess!

Am going with this... but still can't get it, how ppl are going to by my 100 MBs for 10$ when they can get 5 GBs for that price? I mean online hosting solution, how can I can convince them if they didn't read this tutorial...?

Let them try out 5$ hosting and its results, then they'll run to you and pay 20$