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Mistake #4
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How Much Money Can You Afford To Lose?
If your website represents your business’ only revenue channel, then probably not much.Today nearly every low cost web hosting provider can offer an uptime guarantee in the 99.8-99.9% range without having to charge extra for it. Any web host offering less than that shouldn't even be in the game.
Numbers don’t lie - do they?
If you achieve 99% uptime that means your site could be unavailable to your customers for approximately 88 hours annually. That’s eleven 8 hour days every year.
And, as always, you may be in for a nasty surprise if you fail to read the fine print. Buried within their terms of service every cheap web host, in fact, virtually all web hosts define their availability guarantee as excluding the following:
- Circumstances beyond the web hosting provider’s “reasonable” control - acts of God, acts of any governmental body, war, insurrection, terrorism, sabotage, armed conflicts, embargos, fires, floods, strikes or other labor disturbances, interruption of or delays in transportation, unavailability of or interruptions or delays in telecomm or other third party services, hackers, virus attacks, failure of other software (including chat software, ecommerce software, statistics scripts, payment gateways, or any other free scripts) or the inability to procure raw materials, supplies, or electric power needed for the provision of this SLA;
- Failure of any access circuits which connect to the web host’s network - unless the failure is caused directly by the web host itself. (Good luck trying to prove this.)
- Scheduled maintenance as well as emergency maintenance and software upgrades;
- DNS issues beyond the web host's direct control;
- Issues with POP, FTP, IMAP, or SMTP access;
- Customer acts or omissions (or any acts or omissions by others engaged or authorized by the customer), including, but without limitation, custom scripts or coding (e.g., ASP, Perl, CGI, HTML, etc), negligence, willful misconduct, or the use of Services in breach of the host’s terms of service;
- Failure of email or webmail delivery and transmission;
- Outages elsewhere within the Internet which impede access to your hosting account. (For example, your web host is not responsible for web browser or DNS caching problems that may make your web site appear inaccessible to some while others can still access it.)
What should you conclude from this?
Simply that while availability guarantees are important, the guaranteed uptime promised with a low cost web hosting plan merely represents the best you can expect.
So, what should you do?
Consider the availability guarantee that comes with any low cost web hosting plan as just one indicator of the web hosting provider’s confidence in his ability to maintain uninterrupted service.
More important than this, however, is the web host’s actual track record which they should make available for inspection. This applies to the full service host as well as the low cost web hosting provider.
Testimonials
Most web hosting companies provide customer testimonials in the advertising copy of their sales pages. In order to be able to take these seriously you should see testimonials from real people with real web sites, and you should see a URL and/or email address with which you can contact them directly.
Beware of anonymous testimonials or testimonials from “people” whom you cannot actually locate.
What does a great guarantee look like?
The simpler the better. Here's an example of an excellent guarantee with no strings attached.
The Bottom Line
An availability guarantee is only as good as the reputation and track record of the web hosting company making it. Consider it as an indicator of availability and you’ll probably choose well. Rely on it blindly and you’ll surely be disappointed.
