What are the most common web hosting mistakes that people out there make? We recently went through a harrowing experience with a web host, and we thought we should write this article as a warning to others. It seems nowadays anyone can start a web hosting company, even a single person with no backup staff. There are resellers of resellers, with the chain seemingly going on into infinity. When choosing a web hosting company, you need to be careful. The following are some of the most common mistakes that people make in this regard;
Signing up with a web host that has no live support
Why is live support important? Well, it’s inevitable that something is going to go wrong with your website. If you are administering the site yourself, you will want to be able to reach out to your web host for help, or you can navigate here for help.
Of course, that can be done using tickets but tickets are rather cumbersome. It’s difficult to solve anything with tickets. Imagine waiting hours for instructions on how to solve an issue. So, it’s important for you to be able to talk to a real person whenever you encounter issues.
With some hosts, you have to wait up to 20 minutes before someone from support becomes available. That’s okay. It’s better than nothing. You can do other things while waiting.
Not backing up your data
This is another web hosting mistake that people make. In general, we all take the issue of backups for granted. However, you will regret this approach should something bad happen to your website. That’s what happened to us with the host that we are using in this example.
One day we woke up and our website was down. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a recent backup. It meant a lot of work was lost. So, it’s important to always have a backup. We advise that you backup your website at least once every week.
Not having your domain registered in your name
This is another terrible mistake that people make when creating their websites. Perhaps you hired someone to create the site for you. But instead of registering the domain using your details, they registered it using their own details.
It’s a common enough occurrence. Your website’s main asset is the domain. In our case, what actually happened was that we signed up for the domain and web hosting package at the same time. The domain was free as part of web hosting.
After we started having issues with our host, we tried transferring the domain to our new host. However, we discovered that the old host had actually registered our domain, along with hundreds of others, in their own name.
What it meant was that they were effectively the owners of our domain. So, make sure your domain is yours. It’s your biggest asset here. Register your domain yourself. Where possible, get a domain from a separate company. Don’t get it as part of the hosting package.
Choosing a web host based on price
What’s the most important thing to consider when choosing a web host, like avada vs divi? For most people, it’s price. If you consider that to be the case, you are making a terrible mistake. We have already noted that the most important consideration is support.
The good news is that web hosting prices are pretty much near each other out there. Many web hosting companies charge about $5 per month for the cheapest plans. There are some that are even cheaper than this.
It doesn’t actually mean a cheap web host is bad. On the contrary, many of them are actually very good. But don’t make your decision based on price alone.
Failing to research a company
All the above web hosting mistakes emerge from one point; failure to carry out proper research before signing up with a web host. You should go through reviews online before committing to any company. Find out what others who have used the company have to say.
In most instances, you will find reviews on Google. You may also find reviews relating to the company that you are interested in on Yelp. There are many other online review platforms out there. Look up you prospective host and decide whether or not they are what you are looking for.