There is a Shortage of Good Customer Service

After you settle on a domain name it is time to choose a good hosting company.  Many places will provide hosting right along with the domain name you purchase.  They might even provide web design too!  That works for some people.  It doesn’t work for me though.  I look for different things in those areas and need the most flexibility.  The one-stop-shops always seem to have a drawback somewhere.

There are many hosting companies to choose from.  Everyone has their favorites.  I have tried out a few and learned that one with fast and responsive customer service is best.  The customer service must carry over into their ability to provide great technical support as well.

When I first started out in this business I thought it would be great to be a “one stop shop” for all of your web design needs.  I had to learn firsthand why that was a bad approach.  Yes, we all make mistakes or bad choices from time to time but the important thing is that we make it right ALL of the time!

A long time ago I was the customer of “one stop shop” and chose to host my website with a provider that was simply a reseller of web hosting.  They did not provide the in-house technical support that is pretty critical when it comes to hosting.  They decided to switch providers themselves which meant that they had to move all of their customer accounts to another server.

Long story short… the switch-over was a disaster.  My websites were down for days!  I was livid!  To top it all off, when everything was back up and running, they offered no apology or explanations for this MAJOR interruption in service.  My websites were not even functioning again 100%.

I moved ALL of my websites back to my current provider.  As a matter of fact, my MAIN money maker site was moved to my current provider before the old provider even resolved the issues.  I had no time to wait for those shenanigans to play out.

When people invest a ton of blood, sweat, and tears into their Internet business website they want it to have that 99.99% uptime.  Time is money right?  Anything can go wrong.

Sometimes, your site can be attacked by a virus.   I had a virus scare once too.  My chosen hosting company was there to help at a moments notice.

One little line of code could get messed up on your server and take your site down.  I was integrating a script into a website and something small caused a big problem in a database.   Again, my hosting company found the problem and had me back up and running within 30 minutes.

A good hosting provider will be accessible at the drop of a hat to get in there and help resolve your problem quickly.

It is hard to be all things to everyone.  When a company focuses on ONE thing then they can be the BEST at that one thing for everyone that needs it.

I highly recommend using Hostgator. Check them out and see for yourself.  Please be aware though that if you click through my link and set up an account through Hostgator, I might receive a referral commission for that.  I just put that in there to stay in line with the FTC guidelines.

Hostgator didn’t give me anything to tell you about them.  I have used them in the past and left thinking there was a better company.  I went back to them and I am now, once again, a HUGE fan of Hostgator.