Those looking for web hosting today may be bewildered by the number of companies out there hawking services. The huge price range alone for hosting services is enough to drive you insane.Those looking for web hosting today may be bewildered by the number of companies out there hawking services. The huge price range alone for hosting services is enough to drive you insane. When you can seemingly buy hosting services from anywhere for $4.95 to $999 (or more!) it is certain to lead to confusion and uncertainty.

A lot of Webmasters rely on personal recommendations to choose a host. Others buy based on lowest price and take their lumps. Others still pay a fair price for hosting but in return get headaches and poor customer service. Hopefully this article will arm you with the minimum amount of information you need to make a more informed decision.

Make no mistake; your web-based business is only as good as your web host. You might have the slickest website in the world with the best conversion ratios, but if it isn’t performing up to par when the customers arrive they’ll head for the virtual door in five seconds or less. That’s lost revenue. Even worse, site downtime and partially broken sites drive your current members away in droves. No one will pity your technically difficulties except yourself.

Don’t overlook this point. As competitive as the industry is, seconds really do matter. Raw download speed and instantaneous response times from your website are not optional, they are a basic requirement. If your site is anything short of consistently fast and reliable, anytime, day or night, you should seriously consider your alternatives. This business is difficult enough without a web host hampering your success.

With that said, whether you are a newbie or an old hand, you should find the following an interesting low down on some of the little known dirt about the web hosting providers you may call home. But first I’ll give you the good news. There are many companies out there that are reputable, reliable, and technically competent.

Depending on your needs (from a basic shared hosting account to dedicated servers) you have many quality companies to choose from. Just keep the following in mind: A company that may provide great shared hosting does not necessarily have the wherewithal to do a great job with dedicated hosting (if they even offer it at all). So separate the wheat from the chaff by asking the right questions before you fork over your cash and potentially your success.

Fact 1: Technical skills vary considerably between hosting providers.

This naturally affects the quality of their services and their ability to offer solutions to your problems. Just as mechanics can be good or bad at their trade but still offer auto repair services, all hosts aren’t created equal. Ideally you want a host with the knowledge to provide the best solutions to your problems promptly, and have the foresight to head off issues before they become problems.

A prospective customer said to me today, “Your client xxx.com never has any problems and I have so many!” (He is currently hosted elsewhere with a budget provider and was referring to a dedicated hosting client of mine.) The fact is that we fix small problems before they become big ones, and head off twice as many issues before they become problems at all. That’s a benefit of skill and experience. To the independent observer it may appear that everything goes smoothly all the time. But that’s by design, not luck.

Fact 2: A huge number of hosts out there are resellers of another company’s services.

Generally they buy shared hosting accounts in bulk for a few hundred dollars or less, and then parcel out the accounts using a web based management interface. They have no direct control over the servers housing the sites they host and thus no real control over the quality of their own service. In the case of technical problems, you contact them, and then they contact the “real” hosting provider.

Fact 3: Many hosts hide from their customers.

They may provide “email only” support and offer no phone contact number with a live person at the other end. This may be the result of several things: they could have a day time job and do hosting on the side; they may not be competent enough to personally deal with the customers; or perhaps customer service really isn’t part of their offering and has been eliminated to preserve profit. It’s hard to imagine counting on a business with no one at the helm on a daily basis, yet many thousands of websites do just that every day.

Fact 4: Many hosts exaggerate the scope of their resources, sometimes to great extremes.

When it seems like everyone is sporting “multiple OC-3” connections to the Internet, you just know something must be amiss. Even with the Internet implosion, a true OC-3 clear channel connection (155Mbps) to the net runs in excess of $40,000 per month at rock bottom rates. What does it say about your provider if they can’t be truthful about the basic facts of their service?

Fact 5. Not all bandwidth is created equal.

Think you’re getting a killer deal on a megabit or a gigabyte? Think again. Good bandwidth still costs real money, and if you’re buying it for $50/Mb, except in rare circumstances, there is good cause for alarm. With ISPs folding left and right that great deal you are getting now might really be the death knell. Sometimes in an effort to raise last minute cash to take with them before a hasty exit, a failing company resorts to unethical tactics. They drop prices to attract new business while not paying their own bills to compensate. Many upstream providers are so starved for cash that they can be strung along for months before they actually follow though on threats to terminate service.

You may have heard of Cogent (the guys selling 100Mb to ISPs for $3,000) offering metro Ethernet access that’s up and down like a yo-yo. I’ve seen hosting companies offer “unlimited” bandwidth and connect the customers to Cogent. If you like that deal I’ve got a fast cable modem that I can host your server on at my house.

Since bandwidth is the lifeblood of every host, you should make it your business to know and verify who a host buys their bandwidth from. Or one day you might just find that your site is off the air and your host is scrambling to salvage what they can of their business – if you can contact them at all.

Fact 6: Only the customer suffers from price competition.

Shopping for the lowest price is a sure way to shoot yourself in the foot. Think quality not cost if you’re serious about your success. Just today I heard from a new client who relayed to me a horror story. Due to an ongoing string of misconfigurations, accidental deletions, and slow performance, his host caused him to lose 225 of his 300 members in a matter of weeks. It took him 18 months to generate that $9,000 per month, and now 75% of his efforts are lost forever.

He chose that provider because it was cheap. He stayed there because everything seemed fine. He saved about $20 per month over what a firm such as mine charges for a similar amount of disk space and bandwidth. Extended over the 18 months he realized a total savings of $360. In the end it literally cost him tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of wasted hours.

I can only say that his tale demonstrates nothing short of true incompetence and lack of technical expertise on the part of the hosting provider. Not to mention any names, but it is a fairly prominent shared hosting firm. Apparently they overloaded their server (servers?) and killed the performance of the sites. As commonly happens at this point, the host attempted to redistribute websites on another server. Following their attempts to improve performance bigger problems started.

You get what you pay for. It’s true for a lot of things, and certainly for hosting. The price you pay for quality hosting is still a fraction of what you stand to (or currently) make in overall revenue. Find a provider who is willing to be your business partner as much as your service provider. Choose one who can sell and manage dedicated servers even if you only need shared hosting for the moment. Look for indications of skill and technical expertise. Do they offer managed security and consulting services? Don’t settle for the mediocre and don’t risk your business to save a few bucks.

Michael Marinello is the owner of Premier Adult Hosting and a 7-year veteran Internet technology consultant. Through Premier Adult Hosting, Marinello and his team offer the adult industry access to advanced hosting, consulting, and technical services not otherwise readily accessible to this audience. Their expertise helps clients get an edge on the competition and solve business problems, build stable platforms, find new solutions, and ultimately improve gross revenue and profit. Premier Adult Hosting offers shared and dedicated hosting, security, independent consultation, and collocation services.

Marinello’s non-adult consulting practice has serviced clients on the Fortune 500 and Wall Street. Marinello applies his extensive background in business, network security architecture, and web based systems to clients of Premier Adult Hosting with the same exceptional results. He can be reached at mike@premieradulthosting.net or via ICQ # 172303844. The Premier Adult Hosting website is located at http://www.premieradulthosting.net.