If you have been around the web hosting business for any time at all, you may have noticed that it is full of deceit and empty promises. A lot of hosting companies, like every other company out there, only have one thing on their minds. They want to sell as many of their products as possible with the lowest amount of overhead. They advertise crazy amounts of features to lure you into their program, but then cut costs where it counts the most. This results in a poor experience for most of their customers, but a lot of them do not want to deal with the hassle of switching to a new host. This is why I have come up with 10 tips that will help you have a better hosting experience.

1. Research, Research, Research!

I cannot say it enough, researching every option before you choose your host will help your hosting experience tremendously! Read every review you can find on the internet involving a particular host you are looking at. Keep in mind that it will be easier to find negative reviews than positive, because most people that are satisfied with their hosting say nothing about it. However, a lot of people that are unsatisfied like to voice their opinion. It is a good idea to read what the negative reviews are saying, just to see what kind of issues you MAY run into with this host. Just because Joe Shmoe says his site goes down every 3 hours with a particular host, doesn’t mean your site will have the same issues. If every customer felt this way, then they would not be in business anymore.
Another good idea to use before purchasing a hosting plan is to test the speed from your connection to their servers. A quick way to do this is to open a cmd prompt in windows and type: ping www.example.com. This will show you the delay (in milliseconds) that occurs between your connection and their server. You can ping their homepage, which is hopefully hosted on their servers (if not that is a serious warning sign). Or better yet, try to find one of their customer’s web pages and ping it. You can usually find some web pages to use by reading the host’s testimonial pages.
A couple of good websites for you to check while your researching for a web host are: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ and http://hostjury.com/.

2. Host your domain with a third party registrar.

Although that free domain you may get from your hosting plan may seem nice and cool, but never use it to buy your main domain. If your main web page that your spending all your time on is off of a domain that you got for free from your web host, you can easily run into problems down the road. The reason being, the host can be very reluctant to release your domain if you want to transfer it down the road, especially if your transferring because your canceling your account with that host. You never want to feel stuck with a particular host, just because they host your domain as well. The host also may employ sneaky techniques to advertise their services using your domain. They do this by entering their information into the whois records for your domain. This could also have negative effects in terms of SEO of your web page. This is why it is just a better idea to host your main domain at a third party registrar such as www.godaddy.com. However, you can use that free domain to create a less important project for yourself, or maybe register your domain in the .org or .net categories as well.

3. Don’t fall for their marketing schemes

While browsing through different hosts you may come across some hosts that offer a substantially higher amount of certain statistics, such as bandwidth, disk space, domains, or anything else, than their competitors. This may appeal to you at first, but do not fall for these schemes! More often than not they will give you crazy amounts of bandwidth, but stick you on a server will hundreds or even thousands of other customers. They can do this because the majority of their customers will only use a fraction of their allowed statistics. This can have a huge, negative impact on the performance of your web site. After all, what good is it to have all of that extra bandwidth and space you don’t need anyways, when your site is slow and your users decide they don’t want to stay because of it?

4. Find ways to cut your costs

If you did not know already, there are many different ways you can save money off of your hosting costs. A lot of the more popular hosts are willing to basically give away your first year’s worth of hosting costs to their affiliates. This means that if you use their affiliates links to find your host, those affiliates get a large percentage of your payment. HostRebater.com uses this relationships to offer you a rebate back on your payment! This can save you tons of money off your first year’s costs!
Another option to save money is to search the internet for coupons and promotional codes for a particular host. Some of these can take a large percentage off the cost, again only for your first year. Most of the time you can actually use both rebates and the coupons together cut your costs down to almost nothing! These methods are completely free and available to anyone, so why wouldn’t you use them?

5. Backup your own data

All good hosting companies will backup your data automatically from day one. It is a good idea, however, to not rely on your hosting company for backups. The only way to be sure your data is safe is to back up your data yourself. How often you do it is up to you, but you won’t regret it once you run into a problem down the road, and your host isn’t willing to help.

6. Avoid long contracts if possible

A lot of hosts will offer you discounts if you sign up for longer contracts. This may be fine and dandy if you already trust the host and plan on keeping it there for a long period of time. However, if you have never used the host before than you may find yourself locked into a contract you cannot get out of if you don’t like that host anymore.

7. Use PayPal or a one time use credit card

It is always a good idea to pay with PayPal or with a one time use credit card. In doing this you can avoid issues where your host charges you for something you were unaware of. If you just pay with your normal credit card, you may find small fees and charges from your web host.

8. Use your money back guarantee period

Almost every host out there has some kind of “money back guarantee period” for you to utilize if need be. It allows you to back out of your contract if you find out you don’t like that particular host. It only lasts for a short period of time, so cancel your account immediately if you feel like you won’t enjoy your experience for the entire term of your contract.

9. Know what your site actually needs

It is a good idea to know how much bandwidth and space your website is going to need. If you plan on just creating a blog that only a few of your friends know about, or is only going to have a couple visitors a day, don’t buy a plan with crazy amounts of bandwidth and space just because you think you could utilize it someday. Chances are you won’t for a while, so stick with the basic plan and look for better customer service and data speeds when looking for the plan that is right for you. Keep in mind that most hosts will allow you to upgrade to their more expensive plans if you need to, so even if you do eventually outgrow your limitations, you can upgrade once you hit that point. There is no use for paying for extra statistics now, when you won’t use them until later.

10. You get what you pay for!

Last but certainly not least, always remember “You get what you pay for!” This is especially true in the web hosting industry. So, if you decide to go with that plan that offers great stats at less that $10 a month, and then later find some problem that you were not expecting, don’t complain too much. Always keep in mind that if it looks too good to be true, it is too good to be true. That may sound cliché, but you will save yourself from a lot of hassle if you keep this in mind.

Hopefully you will keep these ten things in mind next time you are searching for a web host. It will allow you to have a better experience overall, and to focus on your web page, not the fact that you hate your current host.