If you’re thinking of taking your business online, one of the things you absolutely need is good web hosting. But looking for a hosting company that won’t let your business down is easier said than done.
It isn’t surprising to find sub-par web hosting services with shady practices, i.e. hidden charges, forced upgrades, etc. In fact, even the most popular hosting services today will promise you things they can’t live up to. So, more than just finding out which hosting services are good and which ones are bad, it’s better to get acquainted with the specific practices of these companies that will cause more harm than good to your business.
“Preparing for the worst isn’t pessimism. It’s called being a realist. And realists are usually the best people to run a business.”
To help all of you digital marketers and business owners out there, we’ve rounded up all the worst practices you may come across when dealing with hosting companies. Of course, we’re not telling you this to discourage you. Our goal is to help you out, even if that means revealing web hosting’s dark side to let you see the light.
The 15 Worst Practices Web Hosting Companies Are Doing Right Now
1. They brag about having fast-performing servers when they’re actually painfully slow.
Bluehost, Godaddy, and Hostgator aren’t exempt from this problem. They’re really aggressive with their advertising. But you’ll be surprised to know how many people complain about their server performance, making them a not-so-good choice for businesses who want to cater to large volumes of traffic.
2. A really bad user interface that isn’t worth the service’s cheap value.
The purpose of UI is to make it easy for customers to do something in a timely and elegant manner. But if you’re experiencing a lot of errors and the page content doesn’t make any sense, or worse, if they don’t even have Cpanel, it just isn’t worth those few dollars that you’re saving.
Don’t know how to tell a good UI from a bad one? This post gives you a lot of great insight on how to spot the difference.
3. They take hours for you to get connected to someone to help you out on an issue.
Some hosting companies think that once their product is sold, it’s sold. They don’t prioritize managing customer concerns. In fact, they probably have low-cost call center representatives who aren’t even qualified to solve your problem. Imagine the frustration of waiting for an hour to chat or talk to someone, only to end up with zero satisfaction and no resolution.
4. They charge you for things you had no intention of buying.
Imagine being billed for a bunch of domains you don’t even want to renew. Of course, there’s a chance you agreed to it without you noticing because it’s buried deep within the fine print of their terms and conditions. But still, it would be good if they give you a heads up. Or at least getting a confirmation email before they start billing you would have been good.
Not used to reading the fine print? Check out this article that tells you how skipping reading the T&Cs can lead to bigger problems for your website in the long run.
5. They offer you unbeatable prices but make you regret it once you find out how crappy their server performance is.
Unless you don’t mind having a website that’s frequently down and the pages taking forever to load, cheap hosting just isn’t an option. Paying a couple of extra dollars for stable and quick hosting is the smart way to go if you’re serious about giving your visitors a good experience on your website.
6. They charge you a month earlier than mentioned without warning and then ignore you.
One below-the-belt move some hosting companies will pull on you is to charge you for something without you knowing. They may send you an email telling you about an optional service and include a “click here for more” link. And you, thinking it was harmless, click it… only to find out it was a buy now link. Next, you end up being debited for a service you don’t even want. Talk about a pain in the neck (and wallet).
7. When you run into trouble, they try to upsell you on a website builder promising that everything should work fine afterward.
It kind of makes you think that hosting companies want you to have a hard time just so they have an excuse to upsell you on something. Unfortunately, this is often the case, especially with free hosting services. The headaches you get from using their service are there for a reason, and it’s to convince you to pay to get rid of it.
8. They make it hard for you to tie a domain name purchased from somewhere else. Or transfer a domain out.
Another common strategy used by free hosting companies is to make it almost impossible for you to find the DNS settings. On top of that, they strongly encourage that you just get a domain name from them instead.
similar common strategy is paid web hosting providers make it pretty much confusing to transfer a domain you’ve registered through them to another registrar. This often happens through complicating the transfer process or burying their tutorial about domain transfers in a pile of Knowledgebase entries usually under the “Miscellaneous” section.
9. They offer their hosting for free but you have no control over most of the back-end (and even front-end) stuff.
Unless you’re a professional developer and know all the tricks to get the most out of free providers, you’re probably better off with a paid hosting company. For a decent price, you can already get plenty of the tools that can make your life easier. Moreover, you’re almost always guaranteed better server performance. With free hosting, you’ll need to suck it up and settle for whatever they give you.
10. They sell you on “unlimited” hosting, but they’ll force you to upgrade once your website stops being a ghost city.
One horror story from lifestyle blogger, Lisa Koivu, shows just how sneaky some hosting businesses are. Recounting her experience with Bluehost, she describes how she was having trouble with her site loading. Bluehost then told her she was better off upgrading to a VPS because she was getting too much traffic. So, she did.
Unfortunately, that just led to more problems and even more downtime for her site. And on top of that, she now pays more for hosting only to have nothing resolved. So, no, don’t always believe your hosting provider.
11. When they offer “unlimited” packages on a shared hosting, it isn’t unlimited and you’ll eventually suffer from too much usage.
Some companies will advertise too-good-to-be-true deals, promising you the world when it comes to hosting. But anyone who’s familiar with hard-selling knows that you can’t trust these types of offers at all.
Choosing an unlimited plan and expecting it to be really unlimited is setting yourself up for disappointment and a lot of headache in the long run. Instead of just relying on the information they give you in their marketing copies, get in touch with someone who’s in a position to explain to you all the ins and outs of the deal. At least then you can dive in with a better understanding of what you’re getting into.
12. They still give you the same problems even after switching from a free to a paid plan.
You may think upgrading to a paid plan gets rid of all the error messages. For some people, it doesn’t go away even after shelling out the money. Error messages still get thrown here and there, making you question what you paid for in the first place.
To be fair, I don’t think there’s still a free web host out there that deserves your attention if you’re serious about your website. After all, a paid shared hosting shouldn’t cost much. For example, you can get a year of hosting from HostGator for only $31 when you use this discount code. There’s also a bunch of other cheap alternatives you can research as I’m not a big fan of HostGator myself.
13. When there’s a problem, their support team will put the blame on you, your plugins, theme, and everything else rather than acknowledge that something is wrong with their server.
One of the red flags to watch out for when dealing with a hosting company is when their support team just won’t accept that the problem is with their hosting. No matter how much you argue with these people, you’ll never get anywhere. In these cases, the best thing to do is to just move on to another web hosting company that will take your concerns more seriously.
14. They use annoying and cheap advertising methods that over-promise and under-deliver.
We don’t need to tell you how often this happens. And it’s a problem with both small and large hosting names. They tell you all these great things such as good server uptime, top security, and a 24/7 support team. But ask even the most experienced host service users. They’ll tell you that these advertising pitches are mostly untrue and they had to find out the hard way.
What you can trust in most cases, however, are the reviews. So don’t ever think it’s a good idea to just choose a hosting service without at least doing your research first.
15. They don’t place enough attention and effort on improving security to protect their users from hacking and identity theft.
If you’ve read complaints about people getting hacked while using a specific hosting company, that’s probably a sign that they’re not providing the right level of security. If you want to own or already own a growing business, security should already be one of your main concerns today. Remember that it doesn’t take much for your website to be completely wiped out or hijacked if your hosting service doesn’t provide adequate protection.
Web Hosting Companies Aren’t All THAT Bad
Straight to the point, fellas. No hosting company is free from weaknesses and shortcomings. With that said, they’re not all generally bad. However, trusting a company to host your site is a big decision, so we urge everyone to take the time to do their research first.
Go through as many reviews as you have time for. Get in touch with people who have first-hand experience with the company. Do whatever it takes until you can finally decide on a company you’re confident you’ll be happy with, limitations included. Because let’s face it, there’s no perfect service out there. You can always make the most out of whatever hosting service you get, but it’s just better to have more advantages than disadvantages.
Recommended Hosting Companies
Given what I’ve just talked about above, it would be remiss of me not mention some web hosting companies that I have had positive experiences with, and am happy to recommend:
WP Engine
WP Engine is all about innovation, which they aim to deliver at a faster pace than any other hosting provider. Utilizing over 30 open-source technologies means their platform isn’t stuck with closed, proprietary systems.
With the bonus of the Genesis Framework and Premium StudioPress themes free, and best in class customer service and technical support, this is one professional outfit you really cannot go wrong with.
We have a special offer for WP Engine from WP Mayor – Get 20% OFF your first payment. If you purchase an annual plan, that’s a total of 4 months of free hosting.
Kinsta
Kinsta managed WordPress hosting boasts some big name clients – Ubisoft, TripAdvisor, GE, and Ricoh to name a few. If that’s not enough to show that these guys can be trusted, they also boast premium features and a purpose-built WordPress hosting tool, making it easy to oversee and manage all your sites in one place. Throw in speed, security, and support and you’ve got a managed WordPress hosting solution we definitely recommend.
Kinsta offers a free migration service if you are currently hosting with other WordPress hosting companies such as WP Engine, Flywheel, Pantheon, Cloudways, and Dreamhost.
You may want to start off by reading their ultimate guide on improving your site’s performance. That should give you a good idea of the quality of host you’ll be dealing with.
20 Responses
Good info…
Think the worst is IONOS 1and1 as they were on your naughty list of practices.
2019 allot has changed.
Would say the best is Amazon & Google Cloud if your savvy enough to setup a virtual machine.
What I really like about the Google Cloud Platform VM’s is the reliability. Never goes down!
Kept cPanel as I have been using for 20yrs. Support is good and clients find it easy to use.
Cons: Zero G support unless you pay bigtime every month.
You have to go to G college and learn it.
SMTP mail listing ports are blocked. You must use g-work-space or 3rd party mail delivery service. Most of these providers are snow-shoe bulk mail providers where good mail gets rejected and returned. Took forever to find a decent mail provider. Horrible experience!
2022 See majority of small mom & pop providers are gone.
Keeping software and security up constantly is a must.
Cost to keep a good custom server going in Premium Google Cloud will cost your around $25 per host per month. I charge $35-$50 and make nothing for my time. It’s like selling cigs at a gas station. 30+ years in business have made allot of business owners wealthy and never made a dime off of hosting. Only cheapo hosts may survive like GoDaddy & Host Gator.
All true…
Industry is only getting worse.
IONOS classic “We Only Support Hardware”
Today it’s sorry but we only offer fee based support!
Paid services used to be remote in and fix.
Today it’s tutoring session not technical support.
Hosting industry is rapidly changing.
Everyone is migrating to Amazon & Google cloud marketplace for speed and reliability.
Only free support on Google these days is SALES…
Been in the hosting business for 30+ years.
Predict 90% of web hosting providers to be gone over the next 10yrs.
Only ones that will survive will have full service support to replace in-house IT professionals!
Great Article! We have used Media Temple and have had good results, also their customer service is very good and they respond to issues that come up very quickly.
I like to improve my work every day and learn new things every day. I’ll get experience and be a successful and useful man for the community.
Very informative blog , thanks for sharing these type of knowledgeable blog.i have a liitle bit idea about related to hosting but after read your blog i have too much learned from your blog.
I’ve used about 10 different hosting companies over the past 20 years, and have literally never run into any of the problems you mention here. They all strike me as extremely bad, things I would never even consider putting up with.
I was hoping for some more nuanced, real-world problems with *decent* host companies, including companies with more real-world affordable prices than SiteGround, Kinsta and WP Engine. SiteGround has a pretty terrible general reputation, by the way.
Hi Patty, thank you for your feedback. We will look into writing similar articles in the future that focus on some of the more higher-tier hosts and their possible downfalls.
We have used SiteGround over the years, and although we can see some areas that need improving in their offering, they were one of the best options at their price-point (at least for us).
We’ll delve a little deeper though and see what we can find.
You should take part in a contest for one of the most useful websites on the web. I am going to highly recommend this website!
Thanks Mohsin, glad you found the post helpful 🙂
Greengeeks is terrible at those. Had the company 2 years and when I had got an ssl through them the email specifically stated I would have to ‘manually renew’ well the site I got it for didn’t perform as expected and I took it down and allowed the domain to expire. But greengeeks decided it would be nice to auto renew the ssl certificate for a domain I didn’t own anymore and they said would have to be manually renewed (still had the email from a year ago). I sent them a copy of that email and said I no longer owned the domain so they need to reverse that charge as it was completely unauthorized. They said no and I should have cancelled the renewal 5 days prior to the renew. I said it wasn’t supposed to renew, you got the email you sent me, can you not read YOU said I would have to manually renew which means I should have to cancel an auto renew.
They decided to give me credit (half of what they charged me) towards their stuff but in order to use that credit I would have to tell them specifically when I wanted to use it… Rather than just applying it to the next bill or two until the credit was gone. I told them to keep their credit I would have my bank reverse the charge and I won’t be around long enough to even use that credit cause I’m done with them.
My bank quickly agreed these guys had stolen money from my account and reversed the charges. I won’t get into the transfer stuff but it was a total nightmare. They make it extremely difficult to leave and they hide how to cancel auto renewal. You have to go to a hidden page and click the things you want to cancel and then leave a comment. They then reply in a ticket (which if you just originally send a ticket they tell you to do it this way and is totally circular and needlessly complex) and in that ticket they say ‘hey, do you really want to do this?’ first off.. did you read my comment? Cause it looks like you didn’t. Second… Duh. Cancel it.
Hi Daryl, thank you for sharing your experience with us. That’s not the way any customer should be treated, and some of the practices you mentioned certainly don’t sound right.
I haven’t personally heard a lot about Greengeeks yet, so I’ll keep this in mind for the future. If we manage to get in touch with their team, we’ll see if they have anything to say about this too.
This info come in time as i looking for a good hosting company, but the price of the hosting company are a bit high for beginner like me, anyway, thanks for the sharing, it’s really help me in decision making.
Hey Foo, you’re welcome. What kind of a price would you feel comfortable paying for hosting? Being a beginner shouldn’t hold you back from opting for a good host if your site is important to you, so I’d recommend keeping that in mind. Uptime, performance and support start to suffer as you go cheaper (or free).
At least one of the hosts you recommend is guilty of several of the offenses listed.
And I’d add to the list billing you a month early on annual plans – cheap way to bump up the pay date every year. (looking at you, SiteGround)
I wasn’t going to say it but I’m glad you did! LOL MK
Hey Rod, have you got any experiences to share? That would definitely be helpful for other readers and for ourselves too. As for the payment date, has that been something you saw change from the way it was done in the past?
Great article. Have come across a number of these issues in my time and surprisingly a lot have been with large well known hosting providers, the ones the advertise on the TV. Always advise my clients to steer clear.
The trouble is a lot of companies don’t see the value in quality hosting as it’s something they have to have to keep their website live and would rather pay as little as possible for it them complain when it goes down or can’t get the right support.
That’s very true, James. Having your site up and running (fast) is one of the main requirements for your site to be successful nowadays. That’s worth investing in.
Nice write up – working for a managed WordPress hosting company I can definitely attest to the reality of some of these issues. We hear so many sad stories from our customers that switch to is from “cheap” hosts. I’m happy that none of the issues you listed here are things that we are currently battling. Thanks for the pulse check! Cheers from a fellow digital marketer.
MK
Hey MK, thanks for chiming in with your thoughts.