Previously, I wrote about the hosting plans of Top Hosting Center, where I am currently hosted with their Speedy hosting plan. On this post, I’m going to take a peek of another web hosting company, ImHosted.com, and see if people will get the worth of what they will pay with the company’s hosting plans. So, let’s start inspecting their customer service — the foremost criterion anyone should consider before looking at “lovely” hosting plans.

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The previous hosting-related article I wrote might have opened your eyes to the reality of web hosting reviews. That is good that you are never so naive when you look for hosting solutions. I want to make a clear point that some hosting reviews are reliable, I was just emphasizing that some web hosting review websites make their writings look “unreliable” and “casts doubt” on its credibility especially to advanced readers who knew how to dug the codes behind the pages.

In this article, I will discuss to you what a good web hosting company is made of – and should be made of. This is truly significant – there are traps out there that will make you lose your money’s worth, your digital assets, and break your site’s revenue potential if you are too gullible in hosting your files everywhere. Deriving from these consequences, I came up with a realization what a good hosting company is made of.

A good web hosting company is built from the ground with the following qualities:

Robust, competitive hosting features versus price.

Expensive hosting may give security to some people and assurance about the quality of hosting – but this isn’t really true at times. You have the chance to overspend your hosting allowance to an expensive hosting plan where in fact, there are almost myriad small to medium-sized hosting companies on the Web that offer similar hosting quality features and customer support excellence at lower prices.

A good hosting company would offer plans that the masses can realistically afford. If you are new to hosting and you want to start running a site (especially a blog or a forum), a shared hosting plan with at least 200 GB disk storage, 2000 GB monthly data transfer and a domain name is well suited for you – unless of course, your proposed website has “special needs.” Choose hosting plans that use CPanel, H-Sphere or Plesk, as the web management software. In addition, the hosting network should be running at 100 Mbps speed. A standard hosting plan should cost from $4 to $6 per month, and should come along with other hosting features.

Typically, hosting companies sell shared hosting plans, virtual private servers or VPS hosting, reseller hosting and dedicated server hosting solutions. They may also optionally have domain name registration services and other hosting-related services.

Ask your company where their servers reside. It is a good warning if you found out that they are running their servers at home and not within a datacenter’s server farms.

Consistent server uptime performance, security and stability.

It’s very common to read on hosting companies’ sites that they guarantee 99.9% uptime – but trust me it’s more like a part of their blurbs. Downtimes normally happen (even in large hosting companies) usually after server patches, control panel upgrades, and reboots. However, these “critical upgrades” rarely happen every six months.

A good hosting company understands the significance of server uptime especially to their customers who earn through ads and services. It provides solutions towards greater consistency of server performance and stability.

In shared hosting department, where customer accounts and their files reside in a single server, a good hosting company would implement necessary software configuration to wipe out vulnerabilities and protect the server from exploitation. Some functionality of scripting languages normally would be disabled to leave no chance for hackers of intruding the system.

Excellent channels of communication to the management and support departments.

Personally I like a hosting company that features proactive customer support service (though some find it irritating). I feel secure if I am able to communicate with real people from the company than being answered by machines. For me, a hosting company is a minus if they offer excellent hosting plans but fails to respond in timely fashion their customer’s hosting support needs.

A good hosting company should be able to deliver at least two different methods of support: email support, live chat support, trouble ticket support, and telephone support. This ensures customers that they would be able to get help whenever they need it. Support from live chat and telephone should be instantaneous for basic inquiries. For more technical problems sent through email or trouble ticket support, a good hosting company should be able to make a reply in less than 24 hours and should be able to come up with a solution or a follow-up in less than two days (this may vary though depending on the severity and scope of your problems).

What about outsourced customer support? If you ever found out that a company’s support is being outsourced outside first-world countries (or North America), don’t worry much but still remain highly skeptical. There are many others countries in the world such as India and the Philippines that boast a vibrant population of globally competitive IT professionals. If your concern is the language barrier, reach their management and inform them so it will be addressed. Discovering that their servers reside on those countries would sound more “alarming” than their outsourced support. So, remain wary and skeptic.
The company’s “hosting engine” is constituted of people happy with their jobs – not just mere high-spec machines.

How to know: If you have found a prospective web hosting company that lets you feel initially confident with their hosting features, try accessing their live chat support and throw a number of questions to the support representative regarding how he/she feels about the company’s management, products and services. If the representative is happy, it is a good a sign. Companies with satisfied workers usually translate to excellence in their products and services.
Good reputation, positive feedbacks from existing and previous customers.

A good hosting company that has been around for more than a year with a good reputation usually validates their legitimacy claims.

The most common method to do in finding out the reputation of a hosting company is doing an online search (preferably Google). Finding reviews of hosting company that has been around for years should be fairly easy. Never rely on feedbacks done by customers through the hosting company’s own forums and testimonial pages – unless you can personally vouch that they stand firmly in bringing “honest” reviews to the quality of their hosting.

I suggest that you use this Reverse IP Domain Check utility to find out the websites/blogs hosted on the hosting company’s web server. From there, you can experience the actual web hosting performance of the hosting company and it may also provide clues on contacting a real, existing customer for better advice.

Personally, I don’t trust much the reviews made by “hosting review websites.” I prefer reading blogs having independent reviews and participating web hosting forums in getting reliable advices from experienced webmasters. There you can throw comments or questions about a certain company and people will give you relevant responses. In the future, I will make a post about the best hosting forums I knew.

The demand of web hosting products continually rose to new heights since the advent of Web 2.0 years ago. Web hosting products sales, usually constituted of shared hosting plans, virtual servers hosting and dedicated server packages soared as innovations on the Web recaptured worldwide audiences’ interest. The combined popularity of new-age websites like blogs, social communities, video streaming, and social bookmarks sites, along with the healthy growth of online advertisement marketing, invoked people to set their own ventures on the Internet.

People’s first stop to join the Internet bandwagon is to find a good hosting company. Normally, most of them would consult Google (or any search engine) to find “reliable” hosting review websites. Given the thousands of sites that appear on search engine results page, not all review sites are reliable. People need to be careful else they could end up putting money on fraudsters’ pockets than enjoying its worth.

Honest web hosting review websites are expected not to accept money from hosting company clients for their opinions. Being an affiliate of the products they review, though actually allowable and legal, still certainly can cast doubt on the truthfulness of their say. Though many would defend that they are only paid by their writings, obviously it is some sort of advertisement and could influence the outcome of the review. Web hosting companies participating on these sites are willing to pay a good amount just to have a good spot on the page – shame on them for fooling people.

I recently found an interesting YouTube video on how to spot fake, biased hosting review websites. It shows that identifying biased reviews are not that easy to spot for normal Web users. Watch the video below and you’ll learn the hints and see the reality behind web hosting review websites. You will realize how “trustworthy” they are.

I fully credit the person who made the video. If you benefit the advices of this post, and you’re one of those people who are looking for a good web hosting company, don’t get scammed! You may contact me directly and I will let you know a good host that I trust, and you can trust. Don’t worry, it’s free and unbiased. My judgments are based on my experience.