For most website owners that did not use the services of free web hosting companies like Geocities and many more, they surely know the advantage of being hosted at a cost. This idea can be digested readily, but the real concern is for those people who have entrusted their hosting needs to the wrong company. Of course, it’s a natural thing to commit mistakes and that you need not necessarily ponder heavily on that error of getting the services of a less capable web hosting company.

The listings below are the most common aspects that should be taken note of, and which may serve evidences that your current web host provider is trying to hide something that is not really legal. Why only six? Because, from the moment you learn that your host is not really that credible enough, or not legally existing, you may burse into rage like you’re in the middle of digital hell, hence, 6 is the number of the devil.

6) Shared Hosting – Initially when you sign up membership for a hosting company, there can be offers made to you that be beneficial as a starter on renting servers, one of the offers may come in the form of shared renting of a dedicated server. You may take of this advantage if you are just on the beginning steps of your website because it offers reduction to the cost that you would pay eventually. Shared hosting can be briefly described as a dedicated server to multiple client accounts. A certain website hosted on a shared server would certainly appear the same on the internet even if were to be hosted by a dedicated sole server.

Shared hosting does that necessarily mean that you share your time exposure or up-time with the rest of the accounts on that server, its concern is on cost not the broadcast time. So when your web host tells you that all the accounts on the server shall have a proportionately equal time that shall be allotted, then you should always be on the go. Basically, when you are in a shared hosting type of service, you should never experience a round robin type of broadcasting your site. Your site should be always available on the internet every time.

5) Outsourcing: English Language Quality – With the view of trying to cut down on labor expenses and to help the poor countries by giving additional jobs, several large companies now are outsourcing most of their company processes to workers from the poor countries. In this case, they could still maintain and process daily business requirements and at the same time greatly saved on the labor cost which is far cheaper in the poor countries.

Sometimes, we may receive responses from the company technical or customer service representatives that are poorly written in the language. This holds to be true even for the native speakers and to those who were born in an English speaking country. We just try to decipher of its meaning and just make sense out of it.

However, if you are getting e-mails from customer service, billing or tech support wherein you are addressed as, “prized glittering gem of customer with extensive loyalty to this of our business”, perhaps things are not quite as they should be. Your tech support responses should not read as if they have been run through Google Translate. You deserve better than, “time of the assistance in nature of MySQL database remain temporary in custody of computer server to be not available when called upon by computer the user”, when you request help installing a blog.

Really, you can only take so much so if you find you find your web host’s written communication as difficult to read as a poorly transcribed copy of Tolstoy, it’s time to move on.

4) Your host tends to go GREEN for the environment – The recent trends of most companies now is to be more mother earth friendly, trying to conserve on their usage of energy, reduce carbon dioxide emissions and other activities that give similar benefits to the environment. This kind of advocacy among companies did not only limit itself to certain industries because now, even a number of website hosting companies are adhering to this ideal. But sometimes, there will still be the presence of those who try to take advantage of this good initiative.

At any point in time that you receive a notice from the website hosting company that they are eventually lowering the number of hours that your website can go live let’s say from 99% down to just 60%, then you should definitely be concerned of it. Energy conservation is a good objective but is should always be played fairly. Whatever the explanation the company would give you, don’t submit to it. Theirs is not even a single connection of their adherence to the 24 hour functioning of your website and totally you are not obliged to do so.

Stay away from this level of extremism or your profits are going to end up dipping into the red, despite how “green” you may feel.

3) The President of Your Host Company is Not a Reputable Man – To assess on whether what kind of person runs your hosting company, you may find it beneficial to make an advance personal checkup of him over the internet. Most of the people now are concerned about the true identities of their new friends and new business partners as well. So there’s nothing wrong on a having a free background check of that person on Google. Most people now rely on Google to obtain relevant information with most of the personalities.

When you put the president of your hosting company’s name into Google and the top result is an entry on The Smoking Gun, you may have a problem on your hands. Don’t be fooled, money laundering is not about sanitizing cash. Pyramid schemes are not rare, historic, architectural blueprints. Racketeering is not a sport. Extortion has nothing to do with being able to twist your body into unique shapes. Pay attention to who you do business with because a lower price is not always the best way to go, especially if you’re paying into the pockets of the same guy you saw as an “artist’s rendering” on a flier at the Post Office.

2) Atypical Requests – When you sign up for a web hosting company, it’s definitely a good idea to be on friendly terms with your provider, but sometimes things can get a little too, well, intimate. While you do want to be personable with those whom you conduct business with, it’s a smart idea to keep things on a professional level. Customer feedback is one thing, but if your host asks for unusual favors, you shouldn’t feel you have to oblige.

In the event that your web hosting providers e-mails you a lengthy, ornate letter requesting you intervene in family matters, stay skeptical. Just because their terminally ill uncle who happens to be a wealthy political official in Nigeria has told them he will give you a cut of the several million dollars he needs wired to your bank account, does not mean this is true. In fact, obliging this particular request may result in federal interest in your financial activities. Even though you may have the best of intentions, it’s better not to bail out individuals in little known countries whom you don’t have a personal relationship. After all, oil tycoons rarely ask for the assistance of unknown parties when they need to convert their local currency into dollars.

1) Management of Your Web Host Has Been Bought by “Family” – Like any business, web hosting firms are sometimes bought out by competitors or simply change hands for any number of reasons. This is nothing to be unduly alarmed by, but stay alert to potential changes in your terms of service and in the performance of your hosting itself. You may find that the new management isn’t quite the type of people you want to continue doing business with.

Of course, when a business changes hands you will often be asked to send your payments to the new company. Yet, if you get asked to send your bill to Joey “The Fish” Castigliani who resides at a Chicago address but you’re requested to make the check out to Sam Poppenfields, then your suspicions are rightly aroused. In these hard economic times, businesses often need extra capital to stay afloat, but still, taking loans from certain “businessmen” is not the brightest ideas.

Always be vigilant on your transactions with other people. Most of the web-hosting companies are genuinely legal but there are the illegitimates too. And in case you have decided to move out of that company, be sure that you have fully settled your obligations.

You don’t probably want to have problems especially with an illegitimate company.

And you certainly don’t want to find out how he got his nickname.

Laurence Flynn is the CEO and Chief Coffee Maker at leading web hosting firm, HostNexus. If you are frustrated with inferior Shared Hosting then HostNexus can help.

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