Choosing Web Hosting: Learning From Mistakes

This article is for bloggers (and webmasters) who are planning to buy Web hosting space. Here I will share with you my own experiences and mistakes in choosing a hosting service.

No Background Check

I purchased hosting from a local company without looking for any review of the company on the Web. I didn’t Google the company or scoured hosting review forums. Before buying Web hosting, I had two domain names registered with them. There had been no reason to complain. I assumed their hosting service will also be good.

Undue Preference For Local Host

Given that it’s a local company and one of the major players in India, I though it would be good to buy hosting from them as they will be easy to reach. I didn’t even bother to check the services and pricing of popular global hosting providers. Most of the assistance is online, so contacting an international company isn’t different from a local company. Yeah, phone calls are cheaper.

Paying More Than Market Rate

I had agreed to pay higher money for hosting and additional charge for MySQL assuming that I will get good service. When other popular hosting firms give unlimited space and domain name hosting with multiple MySQL databases for $6-8 per month, I paid around $100 for an year for just 500 MB space for one domain and a MySQL database.

Poor Uptime

My blog goes down for a few minutes to an hour every day. It has now started creating hurdles in growth of my blog. Every visitor who will click some link to my blog during the downtime is a visitor lost, forever.

Hope you guys will avoid the mistake that I made. Did you ever make a mistake in choosing a web hosting service?