I don't even know enough to know what good hosting is and is not. I have used only Namecheap hosting and now Arvixe. Arvixe seems to be OK but there customer service is either immediately or never. They just took so long to restore a backup (all my images were messed up from a WP 3.9 update) that the server overwrote the backup that was good. Now I only have a copy of a broken site. They had at least 36 hours and possibly 48 before the normal server update. Is this normal? I have shared hosting. If I get different hosting can I expect a little better response times. I have 2 and 3 days downtime every few months. Or is that the norm?
2-3 days of downtime isn't normal at all. I use hostgator and my downtime is like 2 hours per month or less. Just search on google with keywords "Web Hosting Comparision" or similar and you'll pretty much figure out what host suits you best.
Over the years, I have used numerous different web hosts, including hostgator, godaddy, dreamhost and a couple others, but for the past 4 months, I have been using iPage; it's really cheap, but so far I have only had downtime once for about 30 minutes.
Arvixe is my host. They were top rated and still come in on TopTenReviews rankings but their customer service is crap. They seem to know less about website problems than I do, and I don't know much at all. Is there someone who is known for outstanding customer service? I would pay more for better customer support without hesitation.
I believe there are two key conclusions, my friend, that you have to make from your post. The first one you have already discovered - a great customer service is absolutely mandatory and should a hosting company deprive you from that, they are not worth your business. The second thing is that you cannot believe review websites, especially those making ridiculous rankings and including the same companies all over again. In reality such websites live off affiliate commissions and the companies you see there are simply the highest bidders. You experienced that first hand - they came highly recommended (from a review site) and their service was below expectations. The truth is that there are far too many people in your position. Instead of wondering about what is good hosting and what is not, the question you need to ask yourself is what is good hosting FOR YOU! You are in the position of power and the companies are fighting for your business. So you need to know your business and what its requirements are. Once you know what you are looking for, you can start searching around. You can check forum marketplaces (here, WebHostingTalk, HostingDiscussion) as a good source of finding smaller, yet reputable companies. As a person of more basic knowledge you want someone to take their time and be personal with your questions and issues. So before you sign with any company - just try their Live Chat. Most companies surprisingly fail that simple test, being not-so-knowledgeable, giving only templated responses, or plainly rude. In any ways I am sure that you will find plenty of small/midsize hosts that will do a more amazing job than a well-known name, that will treat you just like a number on their board with sales.
A webmaster should always keep his or her own backups and never rely on any host's backups. As far as support response times, if there is a server outage or something, support may be swamped with tickets. Also, they are probably already working on getting the server up and running so they are dealing with that in addition to handling support requests. A reasonable support response time will depend on the severity of the problem. A server outage should be dealt with immediately. Something like asking about an .htaccess configuration to enable PHP 5.5 is of a lower priority and you should get a response within an hour or two or maybe a little longer. Occasional downtime every once in a while is to be expected with every host. But that downtime should not last more than a few minutes to an hour or two. If you are having days of downtime, that is unreasonable. One thing I wanted to mention is that sometimes people think their websites are down when they are not. I, for example, have had a few occasions where I thought my website was down because I could not access it, but was able to successfully access it via a proxy like hidemyass.com. Also, my domain registrar (Namecheap) handles my DNS and they have had a few problems recently where I was unable to access a few domains of mine. I got some errors in Google Webmaster Tools about DNS problems and a few days ago a DNS lookup took 21 seconds. My first thought was that the problem was with the web server when it was actually with Namecheap's DNS. If you think your website is down, try accessing it through hidemyass.com or another web proxy. Because there is a lot that can go wrong along the route between your computer and your web server. If you cannot access your site via your ISP's route but can access it via proxy, then it is not down.
Thanks billzo and thanks radio_ch. Great answers. I have 3 complete Updraft Plus backups. They don't restore. Once I get them up I get a message to recreate the database (or something like that) and I do and then all my permissions are gone. I don't have anything I also have a backup through cPanel of My Home Directory and MySQL databases but restoring them results in a website that has no images. That is how things blew up on me. Wordpress 3.9 came out and I had an image upload problem. Then the images started disappearing in my gallery, finally they disappeared off of my pages. I thought a restore to a time prior to WP 3.9 (released 04..15..14, maybe 15) would fix that problem. If I leave Arvixe (my current host) will the Updraft Plus backups and the cPanel My Home Directory and My SQL databases be enough to salvage this site. I have spent a lot of time on creating this site. It has a 5.98 Moz rank and decent citation flow but no TF. I think I can make some money with this site if it is not lost forever. Unless I can determine that this is not Arvixe's doing I cannot stay. I just don't have any confidence in them. Thanks again billzo and radio_ch, can either of you tell me the probability of salvaging it with only the backups I have.
This is a somehow complicated question, @lucabrasi , because it really depends on many factors. Generally speaking, I can tell you how are things with our company. As both we and Arvixe use cPanels, when a customer requests a website transfer, our Support Member goes into the Arvixe cPanel, makes a backup of the files and databases and restores it here. Pretty straightforward. However if currently something is broken there, the same issues will exist on the new host too. I am also not aware if Arvixe can provide you with a working backup from before your issues popped up. As I see on their website, they should keep backups that are 2 weeks old, so if everything was ok 2 weeks ago, you can request a backup from them and use with any other host. To summarize it all, should you have a proper backup of both files and database, then there would be no issue to move elsewhere. Your best bet would be to choose a good company with responsive and knowledgeable support and offering either a free trial or a moneyback guarantee. You get an account with them and ask them to get your website from Arvixe and bring it live on their servers. If successful - congrats, you may have found your new host. If not - you can cancel and not lose any money but you will at least know if your backups are good for something
Most reliable startup company was acquired by a large company called EIG last year. EIG owns and operates some of the biggest names in web hosting. And they do NOT have a good track record. What usually ends up happening is: A fast, reliable web hosting company gets popular ->EIG buys them ->EIG oversells and overloads the servers, usually while switching to cheaper datacenters->Web hosting company gets crappy
iPage is a good and cheap host. Godaddy is fine. You should go with a reliable host to minimize down times.
When you are looking for a great web hosting service there are a few key points to consider. Uptime, support and backups are three which are important to those needing service. While uptime is critical even the best hosts can have downtime but it becomes a bigger factor when downtime is not only significant but also frequent. Look into the history of a service to see if the problem with uptime is frequent or if it is occasional. While host offer backups it is still necessary to keep more than one backup. Redundant backups are your only 100% insurance against data loss. Finally, support may be the first element you should consider choosing a hosting provider. Timely responses, multiple means of contact and 24/7 support availability can make a big difference when issues do occur.