Mabuhay Web Hosting Philippines

Choosing the right Web Host

If you search the internet on Google for web hosting, it returns more than 300.000.000 results. This is a very large industry with thousands of companies providing web hosting services, which means, you can easily go wrong.

Here are some useful tips for choosing the right, honest web hosting company:

1. Do not join a web host that offers unlimited disk space or bandwidth. All web hosting companies have very identical limitations when it comes to server resources. There is no magical server with unlimited supply of memory, disk space, bandwidth and CPU resources. If a web host is offering unlimited bandwidth or web space, they are absolutely lying.

2. Be smart about choosing the hosting package. Most hosting companies make up scam plans with lots of bandwidth and disk space, only 1% of their customers really use all the bandwidth advertised. Do not spend your hard earned money for 'lots of everything' you will never use. Nowadays, we see that even the largest web hosting companies try to fool internet users with their '600 Gigs of web space' or 'Terabyte' hosting plans. This is not honest and you should stay away from such offers.

3. Do not join a web host that offers a free domain name with their hosting package. This might look like a very attractive offer but always pay for your domain name, make sure you own the domain and the domain registrar control panel access. There are thousands of aggrieved internet users and webmasters being blackmailed or ployed tactics by such companies into staying with them.

4. Do not join a web host that claims 100% uptime. A good web server has to be rebooted every now and then for security and software updates. If a server is never rebooted for updates, it will get hacked soon!

5. Try to stay away from extremely big web hosting companies which claim to be in top 10 to 100. Such companies generally have huge server farms and you may have to wait for days for your server to be updated with an important security patch. The last thing you'd want is a clumsy web host. Such companies also have hundreds of employees, which may lead to lack of personal attention and security. Try to find a small to medium size web hosting company where you can get private attention and don't have to wonder when your servers turn will come for updates.

6. Do not join a web host that offers a custom control panel coded for that company. Such control panels have very limited abilities and generally have security issues as they are not used and tested by a wide community on the internet. Our recommendation would be cPanel for web hosting accounts and Web Host Manager + cPanel for reseller hosting accounts.

7. Be aware that telephone support is mostly a trick. Some web hosts with telephone support never answer the support line and most of them are expensive web hosts because telephone support means additional costs for the hosting company. Besides, most issues require written directions as it is very hard to explain solutions verbally on the phone. You will eventually end up getting an email about what you should do. Web hosts have customers from all around the world and making international calls to get support sometimes means paying more than the monthly hosting fee.

A recent trend in hosting industry is to hire cheap support staff out of India. As the person you're talking to is non technical, your call is simply handled like FAQs and you get pre-formatted replies. You will lose a lot of time until they realize you have a REAL issue and route your problem back to the company. You will again end up getting an email about what you should do.

In short, save your money and care about good online support instead. First of all, check if they have an extensive knowledge base. A detailed knowledge base will answer 99% of your questions. Also make sure they have a 'working' support ticket system where you can report problems and get prompt answers to your questions.

8. Most hosts offer free setups for package upgrades but they ask for a huge setup fee for downgrades. Do not join such a host, life is not about always moving upwards. One day you may realize that you actually don't really need such a big hosting package. It's not fair that you have to pay when you ask for a downgrade.

9. Do not choose your host from hosting directories. They're nothing but paid listings and the host that bids highest gets the recommendation.

10. Be careful about hidden fees. The price may look very attractive but you can end up paying a huge fee for getting a simple feature enabled in your account. Look for the host's add-ons page and examine it carefully, some hide it very well and some don't even have one.

11. Do not join a web host that doesn't offer a real money-back guarantee. You will need at least two weeks to test the host's performance and they should be willing to issue a refund if you're not satisfied with the service.

12. Be extremely careful and picky about web hosting companies that store your credit card information.