Your Rights as a Web Hosting Customer

When you are a customer of a web hosting company, there are certain rights that you have. You shouldn’t stand for being pushed around just because the hosting company can’t handle the problems that you have. That is what they are getting paid for, and they are going to have to deal with their customers’ problems one way or another in order to stay in business. If you are paying for a service, make sure that you are not letting yourself get ripped off when it comes to customer service.

A common mistake that webmasters constantly seem to put up with for too long is just bad service in general. No, we are not talking about customer service or dealing with tech support, we are dealing with the actual server reliability in itself. As a paying customer, you are entitled to use a server that actually works. In no place during the sign-up process does it say that you have to deal with constant server outages, slow speed, and poor interfaces. If it is your first time dealing with a web host and you are experiencing these problems, get the heck out of there!

Another thing that commonly goes unrecognized is the ability to access your data in a reasonable amount of time, no matter what sort of server problems they are experiencing or violations to their TOS agreement they have claimed you have done. No matter how bad of a day their having with either you or their own equipment, there is no excuse for them not being able to submit to you your website’s code and database entries in one form or another. Yeah, everybody has their off-days, but you shouldn’t have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in lost data and scripting because of it. Web hosting companies know this and if they feel threatened enough legally, they will eventually find a way to surrender your property back to you.

One last thing that no customer should have to put up with is a web host that doesn’t let you leave them in peace. For instance, some web hosts will try and constantly nag you to stay with them and offer some sort of deal that they only offer to their angry customers. Sometimes these deals come in the forms of free trials, for instance, they will continue your e-mail service for free for a few months and start to charge you eventually for it.

Practices like these are more likely to take place while using a company that doesn’t have much of a popular brand name. It’s important to research these types of things before selecting your web host. Everybody is entitled to make a mistake here and there; they shouldn’t be judged based on just that. They should be judged on the ability to deal with the problems that arise.

Best Web Hosting Companies 2010

In 2010, it has been quite a year for web hosting. With the recent advancement of technologies concerning Web 2.0, heavy bandwidth usage, space, security, and an almost endless amount of spammers out there, it is important to select a web host that has adapted well to the new decade. Let us take a look at some of those web hosting companies that are making sure to keep themselves, and in turn their clients, up to date with the times.

HostGator:

These guys have been around for awhile, and they seem to have a good rapport with every community out there. This is not a coincidence. People have long been catching on with the fact that if you are not sure what you’re doing, HostGator is the way to go. It is no secret as to why this is.

First of all, HostGator seems to have almost every piece of the puzzle you need in order to make any kind of decent social network or Web 2.0 community. They are one of the few hosts that not only allow for unlimited bandwidth or disk usage, but also for unlimited MySQL databases as well. Hosting multiple different scripts and extremely large communities becomes a lot less limited and confusing, while the amount of time it takes to access those databases decreases. It is basically a database programmer’s heaven.

They have also got support for almost every language in the book, including some of the lesser used ones including Python and Ruby On Rails. Security seems to be quite a big deal for them, which is why they supply you with SSL functionality, anti-spam tools, and the ability to block any incoming IP directly from the control panel.

Omnis:

Not a lot of people talk about this web host, but we are not quite sure as to why that is. Omnis seems to have created a pleasant balance between programming flexibility and automated features. In other words, no matter what your web development experience level is (or even if you are just lazy), you are bound to be satisfied with what Omnis offers.

For their automated features (those instant-install programs most web hosts have 2 or 3 of), they have got 6 different blogging platforms, 8 different content management systems, 6 types of forums, 6 different media gallery scripts, and 6 different shopping carts to choose from. Not to mention, they include a hefty miscellaneous utility section with more features than we have ever seen.

The more interesting side of Omnis comes into view when you realize that they also have the more “techie” people covered as well. They have got all the well-known programming languages covered, as well as some of the more rare ones (including some of the Microsoft-based languages that most hosts tend to leave out). Omnis also allows for an unlimited number of domains, meaning that the only thing that limits the amount of websites you can own is your ability to maintain them. All that comes with their base plan (which, by the way, seems to be their only plan) which costs about $80 per year.

Fat Cow:

Fat cow seems to be more of a “budget friendly” type of service. Though they are not quite up to par with the first two listed (no Ruby on Rails, a lot less applications that automatically install, etc), they actually offer some interesting features that even the more expensive websites don’t include.

What got our attention was the ability to directly accept a credit card payment. Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to convince all your customers to go through the lengthy process of opening up and activating a PayPal account just to do business with you? That feature alone is bound to convert a lot more visitors into customers.

Now, we couldn’t leave out the whole point of Fat Cow if we are going to review them. If you visit their website (http://www.fatcow.com respectively), you will notice something strange that you won’t see with any other web host. It is not something that benefits you or them directly, but did you know that Fat Cow servers are powered by 100% wind energy? We couldn’t tell whether it was a gimmick or something the company truly cares about, but mentioning that your website is maintained by an environmentally friendly server would be a great way to build rapport for a “Go Green” type of site.