On Hosting: What I’ve Learned So Far

I’ve been hosting my own domains for a couple of years now. It would be sad if I didn’t learn anything from more than two years of dealing with my own hosts and the hosts of my friends and clients. So I am compiling what I’ve found out to be true of hosting companies in bullet form, in the hopes that you learn something from them, too:

• You get what you pay for. There is a wealth of cheap website hosting in the planet, you won’t have trouble finding them if you’re on a budget. But, as with almost anything you purchase online or offline, if it sounds too good to be true, then it is.
• Unlimited is not really unlimited. People, when they see the word “unlimited” get excited easily. Well, in the real world, there’s always a fine print. It is unlimited, BUT. There will always be a BUT. So read the fine print and see if that BUT is something you are amenable to.
• You can’t please everybody. There’s another universal truth. It takes a lot of patience to maintain a hosting service and accommodate to all the requests of your clients. Especially the small ones where the owners don’t get to hire customer service representatives (CSR) to deal with irate (and often incredibly clueless) customers. I know, because several of my friends are into the biz.
• There’s always a lazy CSR. No matter if it’s an affordable host or an expensive one, you will always encounter a customer service representative whom you’ll want to conk in the head if it was electronically possible. So always, always rate a chat with a CSR to weed out the rude, ignorant and condescending in your own little way.
• If you find the perfect web host for you, hold on to it. It’s like finding your true love. Sure, there is really no perfect host. Like a real marriage, you’d find that your host is not as good as you dreamed them to be during the courting stage. But as they say in those cheesy movies, you’ll eventually find a host whom you can say this to: “you might not be perfect but you’re perfect for me“.

Anything you might want to add to the list? I’m pretty sure I missed a lot.