Best Blog Host OR Scam - Which is It?
Buzz it
Mirror, Mirror On The Wall … Who’s The Best Blog Host Company Of All?
Sound familiar? How many of us have been faced with this very question? I know that I have as I’m struggling with this right now because my current blog host wants to jack the price up a thousand percent over last year.
Googling around I can see there is no shortage of blog host companies offering relatively inexpensive hosting services. But in every case they demand at least a year or two prepaid up-front to get the cheap rates.
Just when I think I’ve found a company I’m disappointed after reading customer reviews. In all cases I’m finding the same common complaints.
Apparently the blog host companies are on their best behaviour for the first month until their money-back guarantee is over. Then like magic things start going wrong.
The most common complaints I’m finding are speed and stability issues. Customer service is also poor, and after reading the same complaints over and over again I’ve come to the following observations. This is what I’ve noticed is going on.
Here are the top 10 complaints I’ve read about blog host companies:
- Blog Host companies may initially put their new customer accounts on a fast server. At first everything seems rosy. Your site is looking good, it’s performance is fast and stable. Happy times!
- But not long after the money-back guarantee is over they get greedy and move your account over to a server that’s already overcapacity with too many shared accounts.
- Too many shared accounts on one server can be beset with problems. Soon you might notice a decrease in your site’s performance and your blog takes forever to load.
- Then there are stability issues. Your blog seems to be down more often for so-called “maintenance”.
- If you are lucky enough to get someone on the phone they don’t seem to care all that much. Customer service is not a strong point for technical support staff. They might even blow you off to useless faq files that don’t help much or tell you to email them. There’s nothing like discussing a problem electronically over the course of a few days while your blog sits in cyber-limbo.
- Their support staff are incompetent or unsympathetic to your problem. You might even get someone with a thick foreign accent that you can’t understand because they out-source support to another country.
- They might become arrogant or belligerent and tell you to stop being a nuisance. They scold you with a comment like “What do you expect for a cheap account?” Then they try to sell you an “upgrade” — “If you want fast then you should $$$ upgrade to…”.
- You soon discover that their so-called “unlimited” or “unmetered” features are in fact capped. God forbid your blog should get popular because once they discover you using “too much” bandwidth or webspace they take your blog offline without notice until you promise to be a good little boy or girl. Or they hit you with another “upgrade” notice. Or they just might cancel your account with a refund that’s “pro-rated” in their favour, less charges for setup fees of course (that was supposed to be free). So much for being “unlimited”.
- If you end up frustrated and leave their service after the refund period has lapsed, they couldn’t care less because they still have your money. (Please note that in some cases they will only refund credit-card payments at their discretion, so be sure to read their TOS agreement).
- It’s a win/win for them because if you leave on your own accord they will happily delete your blog, install a new
suckercustomer over your old webspace (and keep your money of course).
Mmm, I don’t know about you but I’m smelling SCAM here. Am I right or am I wrong? You tell me.
What do I recommend?
- My advice is to search Google for the “best blog host” companies.
- Then shorten the list and search Google again for “customer reviews” of the blog host companies you are interested in.
- It’s also a good idea to check the local Better Business Bureau for complaints.
Even with these precautions you still might be disappointed, and most of the “reviews” that I’ve read out there are not completely unbiased.
That’s why I’m writing this post. I want honest opinions from customers (or ex-customers) so that we can all benefit from your experience. Hopefully we will discover a few good (and affordable) blog hosts, and/or those companies that we need to avoid.
There’s nothing like word-of-mouth (especially in the blogosphere) so please share with us your experiences because this is your chance to speak up:
- Have you experienced any of the above listed problems with a blog host company? If you have please name names and circumstances.
- Have you experienced any other problems with your blog host company that I might have missed?
- In your opinion is this a widespread problem throughout the industry or are they just isolated incidents?
- Or is your blog host company great? But please be honest and don’t waste our time linking to blog hosts offering you affiliate kick-backs because I will weed those out. Be sure to tell us how long you have been with the company.
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I’ve found Dreamhost pretty good. They’re pretty cheap and their customer service has been decent - I’m in Australia so only used the email service, which is usually in the middle of the night US time. Still, they generally get back to me within 2 hours.
While they claim huge amounts of bandwidth in their plans, they do limit you to one CPU hour a day so if you hit the big time or have poor performing scripts then they’ll be on to you.
Mosess last blog post…Ball of the Century
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Moses, the biggest negative that I’ve read about Dreamhost is they have no telephone support. Personally I hate email trying to resolve a problem. I would much rather have a conversation over the phone. It’s so much more convenient.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on January 16th, 2009 6:44 pm:
I used http://www.realwebhost.net for a long time (three or four years). I was really happy with their service but they don’t offer very much storage space for the price and after my daughter was born I needed room for TONS of pictures.
Their response time was great and always answered questions thoroughly. I was always warned before maintenance would happen, and the down time was minimal.
I now use godaddy, which is the used car salesman of the domain and web hosting world. I’m not impressed. Just the other day my site was down. I asked what was up. Their response was fast but they basically said, “Oh yeah the server your site is on crapped out. We have no clue what happened and don’t know when it’ll be fixed. Thanks for your money. Good luck.” They provide a lot of storage for my pictures and their cheap, but you get what you pay for. :S
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I use only GoDaddy as my preferred domain host. Their support has been great and they helped me figure out how to properly set up a Blogger Custom Domain. As for a site host I’ve heard that there servers can be slow.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on January 16th, 2009 6:47 pm:
I would advice you to take http://hexahost.com/, I guess they are new entrants, I took a site from them and hosted it, Service and support is good. Their Blog hosting plan is just $1 a month, for 200 MB space with. It has CPanel with fantastico support to install your blog softwares in a click away. THeir contribution to the forums and official blog (http://hexahost.com/blogs/ reveals they understand blogging well.
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Never heard of them Sam. I’ll check them out.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on January 16th, 2009 6:48 pm:
Call me old fashion but I still use what I started with, Blogger. I live in Costa Rica where the Internet is “iffy” at best but I never have problems with my blog. I never change anything either, I just keep posting. Thanks for all your tips Bloke. Hope your new year is a great one. Teri
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Blogger Rules
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on January 16th, 2009 6:48 pm:
Is there a reason why you’re not mentioning your current hosting company, BB? Are you keeping your powder dry until you’ve found a new host?
I had two different accounts with them, both of which I’ve now cancelled.
They ‘upgraded’ the server on account A which led to my sites being unavailable for a month. They insisted it was something I’d done despite the fact I’d not logged into the control panel for several months. Eventually they fixed it but no apology.
They then suspended account B - my main account with them with a very active site hosted on the server - for non payment of account A. They got very snotty with me when I pointed out their error - that they’d suspended the wrong account. They got snottier when I pointed out that they’d never invoiced me in the first place which might go some way to the non-payment issue. How can I pay an invoice I don’t know exists?
Eventually the rectified the problem but, again, no apology.
Then, after paying the invoice, they sent me ANOTHER invoice with an accompanying snotty email telling me that they were going to suspend the account.
Needless to say I cancelled my PayPal subscriptions, moved the sites to another host and deleted all the files off their server.
After cancelling the accounts, I received yet another invoice from them…They really are clueless.
I also pointed out to them that their original offer was based on a heavily discounted price ‘for life’ but, oddly enough, the T&C’s on their site had been changed.
I found them to be possibly the worst company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. I won’t name names at this point because you might have your own reasons for not outing them but I think it’s only fair that people get to hear about what an appalling company they are.
Someone mentioned DreamHost earlier. I do have an account with them but, in all honesty, I’ve not used it in anger. I have 3-4 sites with them, not had any downtime in nearly 2 years and not had need to contact their customer services. Would I recommend them? Well I guess so but with the disclaimer that I’ve not been a heavy user.
I have two VPS with different companies (ServInt and Future Hosting) and just find that running a VPS makes more sense. Sure you pay more but if, like me, you run a number of sites, it makes sense. Both ServInt and Future Hosting provide a managed service and take care of OS upgrades, hardware, backups etc. I simply log in to my control panel, add my new domains and away I go.
One VPS provider that I urge your readers to avoid is WebFusion. Awful customer service and over priced. I’m now paying less for a managed VPS than I was with their offering which I had to fully manage. The one time I had their support people do some work on the server, it fell over and kicked its legs in the air for over a week before they fixed the mess they’d made.
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Keep your powder dry and your nose clean is my motto
Live today to fight another day is another one. Thanks for the great tips Mike.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on January 16th, 2009 6:52 pm:
Unlike Erica, my experience with GoDaddy has been completely positive. I have been with them for a little over a year, and not only host my blog with them, but also a business account for myself and another for a client whose website I manage. I have not had a single failure, that I’m aware of.
As for support, all inquiries have been responded to extremely quickly. On two occasions the issues I was having were caused by setup issues on GoDaddy’s side of things and the problems were resolved in very short order. I don’t remember details right now, but I can look for the e-mails if anyone wants them.
On two other occasions, while the responses were quick, they essentially said they couldn’t help under my current plan. It turned out that there were issues with a couple of PHP scripts in my blog. Actually, their not helping turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it motivated me to do some research and figure out how to fix the problem myself.
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Even if hosts offer free scripts, 9 x outa 10 they do not offer support for them…that’s normal.
Dennis Edells last blog post…Blogroll Effectiveness - What Do You Think?
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That’s what I’m finding out. And to be honest, I wasn’t at all surprised when they said that they didn’t support scripts or associated problems.
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Yep, Hostgator offers like 50 1click scripts free of charge, but send you to the script owners site for issues.
I could just imagine the wait times if they did support those too…no thanks I like it like this. LOL
Dennis Edells last blog post…Blogroll Effectiveness - What Do You Think?
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Dennis Edell (@blogbloketips) reply on January 17th, 2009 9:44 am:
Lee (@blogbloketips) reply on January 16th, 2009 7:32 pm:
Dennis Edell (@blogbloketips) reply on January 16th, 2009 6:03 pm:
What about speed Lee? Is your site responsive? I’ve heard GoDaddy servers can be slow.
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I don’t see any issues with speed. From my perspective, my blog seems to be pretty responsive. I guess you, as a visitor, might be able to give me feedback in that area. I’ve thought about using caching plug-ins, but previous experience with them has not been positive. In fact, I would appreciate any feedback anyone is willing to give me on the technical aspects of my blog. Such as general impressions, appeal, etc.
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Hi Lee,
I have run a quick tour of your blog (nice pictures !) and I find it pretty fast. It tuns nice on both IE and Firefox. Obviously you don’t have put too many plugins in your site.
The theme is clear and nice. Maybe you could tune Wordpress to use the pretty permalinks instead of the standard ones ?
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I would love to convert the permalinks (I was clueless when I first set up my blog or I would have done it right then) but I haven’t been able to find a plug-in or utility to help me convert the existing permalinks. Otherwise, they all get broken and I really don’t know how I would fix them all.
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And after posting that, I found a plug-in that works to allow me to convert my permalinks…and the job is done. Thanks for the nudge to take another look.
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Hi Lee. Which plugin is that? Let me know if it works for you.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on January 17th, 2009 6:11 pm:
Lee (@blogbloketips) reply on January 17th, 2009 5:18 pm:
Lee, I believe he is referring to what I discussed with you on another post. Changing your URL structure within Wordpress will break your links with Google or anyone who has link to you. However, there are plugins that will help minimize this inconvenience. I’ve never used these myself and I can’t recommend them so use them at your own risk. But you can always revert your permalink structure back to what it was if you don’t like the results.
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Lee, BB,
I have run some tests about the pretty permalinks, without plugins.
If your original situation is the use of the standard permalink setting (ie something like http://www.tarheelramblings.com/?page_id=2 ), you can change it in the wordpress administration to a personalized setting like /index.php/%year%/%postname%/
When done, all your links will have a pretty look, and the previous settings will keep working.
http://www.tarheelramblings.com/?page_id=20 will still send users to http://www.tarheelramblings.com/about-2
I hope this helps.
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fanta78 (@blogbloketips) reply on January 19th, 2009 7:13 am:
Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on January 17th, 2009 5:23 pm:
Lee (@blogbloketips) reply on January 17th, 2009 5:05 pm:
fanta78 (@blogbloketips) reply on January 17th, 2009 7:01 am:
Lee (@blogbloketips) reply on January 16th, 2009 7:30 pm:
Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on January 16th, 2009 6:54 pm:
May I ask why you say “blog hosts”? is that just a term used by bloggers or are their specific hosts for blogs?
OK I’ve never used anything but Hostgator and couldn’t be happier. I think it’s been 4yrs or so, maybe longer but they all seem to blend together after a while. LOL
I could go on for days but won’t. Any questions, I’m open!
Dennis Edells last blog post…Blogroll Effectiveness - What Do You Think?
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RE: “blog hosts” … it’s called SEO
Hostgator made my shortlist (not to be confused with HostMonster). If you are happy with them then maybe I’ll give them another look.
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Good call on the SEO
Quite happy indeed. I’ve heard the disgruntled stories, yada yada, but can’t comment as I’ve never experience them myself.
The customer service is fantabulous. Phone, email and that ultra cool live chat thingy lol.I’ve used it often for quick fixes/questions.
If you end up wanting my extra special link, let me know.
LOL
Dennis Edells last blog post…Blogroll Effectiveness - What Do You Think?
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Dennis Edell (@blogbloketips) reply on January 17th, 2009 9:40 am:
Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on January 16th, 2009 6:58 pm:
Btw, I love the link in the upper right, thanks!
Dennis Edells last blog post…Blogroll Effectiveness - What Do You Think?
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What link?
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Top contributors.
Dennis Edells last blog post…Blogroll Effectiveness - What Do You Think?
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Dennis Edell (@blogbloketips) reply on January 17th, 2009 9:41 am:
Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on January 16th, 2009 6:59 pm:
I’m with BlueHost. There was a three month or so period where I was down for 30-45 minutes at a shot, every other Saturday. Sometimes they reported it was for maintenance, other times I couldn’t determine why my server was down. But it’s been smooth sailing since then.
Their technical support is good. I get fast replies to questions and helpful advice when I need it. No complaints here. (Knock wood).
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How responsive is your blog Kathy? Is it fast? I’ve heard some negative things about Bluehost customer service. I’m glad to hear it’s working for you. They are also on my short list.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on January 17th, 2009 4:42 am:
My advice would be to check out genuine reviews from REAL hosting company customers on an excellent forum that many good hosting companies are members.
All you need to do is search for the hosting company on the Web Hosting Talk (WHT) forums and see what others experience is with the company.
For UK based hosting, I recommend Innohosting. Another good bit of advice I will give is DO NOT…. Under any circumstances, sign up for a year. I never have and never will, sign up for a full year with any company.
Mark Bartletts last blog post…Pulling My “Haier” Out Over Unbalanced Wet Clothes
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I checked the reviews but unfortunately even the most recommended blog hosts had lots of negative comments. Which is why I’ve decided to give a lesser known host a chance. They’re hungrier and more apt to be willing to go the extra mile. Not signing up for a year at first is probably a good idea, until you are sure you will be happy with their service. Thanks Mark.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on March 3rd, 2009 7:43 pm:
“I’ve decided to give a lesser known host a chance. They’re hungrier and more apt to be willing to go the extra mile.”
I totally agree. Another good thing about lesser known hosts is that they may have less users on their servers, possibly meaning faster and more responsive website load times…. possibly! lol.
Mark Bartletts last blog post…Pulling My “Haier” Out Over Unbalanced Wet Clothes
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@Mark Bartlett, agreed .. another good point.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on March 4th, 2009 4:57 pm:
Hello Guru, what entice you to post an article. This article was extremely interesting, especially since I was searching for thoughts on this subject last Thursday.
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Fantastic. care to share your sources
?
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Hello,
I just would like to know why not including some hosts samples like 000webhost which piratically the worst on the field .. I wrote a full article at chaibialaa.com about it ..
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Cheers! http://bit.ly/5Z3vbE
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@Kay, I never thought of it that way http://bit.ly/1CQix9
@humglum http://www.blogbloke.com/moving-wordpress-blogger/ basically… no. doesnt look like it'll happen.
@BLOGBloke,
I decided to get rid of the Blogger redirect as the redirect via modification to .htaccess works, t… http://bit.ly/5Z3vbE
@Michelle, redirect speeds will depend on the blog host's servers and your internet connection. You only need to pa… http://bit.ly/5Z3vbE
@drugi, you mean "you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you… http://bit.ly/4CvJh7
Finding Your Blog Voice http://bit.ly/5LD5kQ
@zarazek, don't get your domains through Wordpress. Use GoDaddy or something similar. http://bit.ly/1fDYre
Saw an advertisement for Moving Blogger to Wordpress Service. Why not save your money and read my free guide? http://bit.ly/6rFYFE They do
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hello everybody, how are you all doing.i am liking this web sight i might start staying on it more. me i stay sick … http://bit.ly/6krJX6
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