WEB HOSTING SCAMS

In today's hosting market, competition is fierce.  So fierce in fact it drives some companies to practice less than respectable business tactics and others to downright fraud.  With  so many hosting companies going bust everyday and leaving their customers hanging, how can you be sure you will not be one of those customers?  The truth is you can't be sure - no one can, but you CAN know what to look out for when searching host providers or when being tempted by a fancy ad or e-mail promising greener pastures for less money.

The anonymity and the lack of personal contact makes any Internet business an ideal candidate for a scam. Please keep in mind when reading this list that some very legitimate and respectable hosts use some of the marketing tactics below.  The difference is, the respectable ones deliver what they promise. Here are some of the more common "scams" practiced by fly by night web hosting companies.

• Deceiving Price Advertising.  Some hosting providers will advertise a very low and attractive monthly price.  You will be lured to their site and overwhelmed with flashy graphics and follow the order links only to find out that in order to get that low price, you must prepay 3,6, and sometimes 1 year in advance.
  
• No one can. No one can sale you services below what it cost realistically to run it. If you pay near to nothing, you can bet your life you will get the same near to nothing services in return. Reputable Hosting Company will have on stand by 24 x 7 Tech Support, Accounts, Help Desk and Domain Registration Departments staff to serve you instantly and to keep this staff working 24 hours around the clock cost company lot of money. Not to mention professional Hosts will use expensive professional servers and high-speed connectivity that may cost them up to $1,000 per month to maintain.


• Dead give away. Dead give away to spot one-man shows that operates from the basement is the price. Lets face it, if $1 or $2 per month won't buy them a cup of coffee and donut then for sure it won't buy you any services as well. Average Hosting Company with 1,000 clients will spent $15,000 per month to keep 2 support technicians around the clock and if from the basement "company" charge you only $1 per month, then they will need to work 48 hours per day or have 15,000 clients just to brake even and of course then they will need to work 480 hours per day to do the job of 20 technicians to service 15,000 clients and so on.
• "Unlimited" Bandwidth. Or unlimited anything for that matter.  Think about this, with the exception of  space itself  (and perhaps love), everything has a limit.  Without being too literal the word "unlimited" in the hosting industry really means that there is no set number that can define the limit, and the real limit is determined by other factors.  Most providers who advertise unlimited bandwidth use that "feature" to suck prospects in and make a quick sale knowing that only about 1% of Websites will ever use a large enough amount of bandwidth to cause problems for them.  These unfortunate 1% are simply told that their sites are either "killing the server" or given another excuse as why they cannot host them.
• 24 Hour Support. This is one of those features that every respectable hosting company must have, after all, your site is (or should be) online 24 hours a day.  Some hosts define their support as an answering service taking messages that are never returned from irate callers.  Other hosts use complex voice mail systems only to return the message "I am sorry, all lines are busy now, please try back later" (later being 9-5 when the one guy who does support is actually in).
• "Free" Hosting. Ahhh, the word "free", used so often and abused even more.  Why would anyone give away free hosting?  In most cases, your site is required to display some banner ads and generate revenue for the host provider.  That is fine and many customers, especially customers with personal Websites who can live with that sacrifice.  However in some cases, signing up for free hosting is like selling your soul to the devil (ok maybe not that bad) and here is why.  Your personal information and your e-mail address is sold to many, sometimes hundreds of  "opt in" spammers.  You have essentially opted in to receive all their spam when you signed up for the free hosting and pretended you read the host provider's 26 page of terms and conditions.  At times, the service is so poor it actually costs businesses large amounts of money in loss revenues.  The same can be said for very cheap hosting.
• Host Provider Registers Your Domain For You. This has got to be one of the biggest scams going.  If a host provider registers YOUR domain for you, make certain that their information only appears as the technical contact at most and NEVER as the domain owner.  If a host provider controls your domain you are theirs for life and are held hostage.