Web Hosting: The Crucial First 24-Hours

I was in the market for a web hosting service. After hours of research, I tried to sign-up for a hosting company called iPage. Within 24 hours, I knew that I made a mistake. How did I know that it was a terrible hosting company?

Here goes my list of “signs of a bad hosting company”:

• If the ticketing service isn’t straightforward. For example, not getting any response for over an hour is bad in my book. On top of it, charging for “Premium Support” is just plain awful. Why make your paying customers feel that they need to pay extra just to get decent service?
• There’s no proper documentation on how to get set-up. I got a couple of initial emails, and they weren’t helpful at all in helping me to get set-up. And, going to the website didn’t provide any better answers.
• The lack of documentation is even worse when you have an account management interface that isn’t familiar to most people. CPanel is popular, so that may not need a lot of documentation, especially for folks who have been on the web a long time. But, if the web hosting company has a not-so-popular account management system, then the least they can do is provide adequate documentation.
• If there are issues in setting up FTP and other matters, they don’t help to get them sorted within 24 hours.

There were only two things that saved iPage for me: One is the fact that when I managed to get a hold of someone via their “live chat”, I started getting quicker responses to my Support Tickets. And, the other saving factor: They had a refund policy that I managed to take advantage of. They also waived any additional charges in cancelling my account. So, thank goodness for that. I have had some bad hosts before who charged me for cancelling even though they had a 30-day money back guarantee.

What about you? What kind of bad hosting service experiences have you had?