Joe Ryder, (a)g

Small businesses have to consider their hosting company carefully before purchasing. I have seen and coached many people who took a cheap or local hosting company for their web site that regretted it shortly after. You need more than just affordability:

• Reliable uptime
• An easy-to-use administration interface
• Plenty of storage and transfer
• Multiple options to reach a tech support or customer service person.
• Enough coding and service support to allow any web developer the tools he or she needs to create the applications that support your site.

Even those just planning on a one-page, brochure-style site need to consider these factors; a small site can still drive a lot of traffic and you still need it to be online at all times.

I’ve been with a lot of hosting companies. That’s not just arbitrary conversation. When I say a lot of hosting companies, I mean it. I remember my first web hosting, with WorldAccessNet.com, the local ISP at the time. From there I moved to GeoCities (the old GeoCities before Yahoo!), then to Fortune City (the most horrible experience of my hosting history), then to nameless other hosts.

I landed at Jiffynet.net on the suggestion of a friend and  stayed there for a long time; to this day they are probably the lowest price around for what you get. I moved away from them around 2003 when 1&1 Internet gave out free hosting for the first 3 years. I didn’t last long there, primarily because there are little details in Windows hosting I don’t like and I didn’t care for their admin panel. I fell back to JiffyNet, and stayed there until last year when I was working on an e-commerce site for a California company that eventually folded before the project was paid for. They had gone to Hostmonster for $6.95 a month at my suggestion, even though I had never used Hostmonster before.

I suggested Hostmonster not just because of the price, which is comparable to most budget shared hosting. They use cPanel on Linux, they had unlimited storage and traffic, they had Fantastico and Simple Scripts services which made installing open source software a breeze, and I got my questions answered quickly by customer care about the rest of the account management there even before I purchased. I liked it so much I moved my server there, even though I was only paying $36.00 a year at JiffyNet. The price was worth it just to have reliable customer service and uptime, which JiffyNet couldn’t provide me at the time.

I have seen some rare negative press for Hostmonster, from a Blogspot dedicated to “Hostmonster sucks” which is a misunderstanding of their terms of service (offensive material being shut down due to a complaint is not the same as a site closed due to a report of slander) to a list of ways to get in trouble with Hostmonster, which in the end turns into a plug for them. But then there’s the praise, which overshadows the momentary frustrations of loud bloggers. Top10WebHostingSite.com has a great review on Hostmonster, and there is a site dedicated to using Hostmonster, finding deals with the company and understanding its functionality.

There is a reason Hostmonster has such a good track record no matter where you go online: they are owned by BlueHost, arguably the best web hosting and technology services company on the net right now. I prefer to send people to Hostmonster rather than BlueHost directly, however, as Hostmonster has a better layout and more straight-forward billing system. Their domain management has some quirks, but I get all my domains with GoDaddy.com anyway, so I don’t usually use their domain manager except for subdomains or adding a new domain to my hosting.

I am not a reseller of Hostmonster (well, not as of this writing), but if you are looking for the best in small business hosting support with great customer service and high reliability, check them out. Do me a favor and click on the link below if you really are interested in either Hostmonster or BlueHost, because even though I don’t resell either of them the link below helps me out. And if you’re looking for a web site design or help managing your Hostmonster account, contact me for a price quote.