Hi guys Let 's contribute how we can escape from the tricks of dishonest hosting guys. Never trust their services such as uptime (eg. Use a third party web monitoring to measure its uptime) Never pay with Credit Card Always use PayPal or the like Never trust testimonials listed in their sites and their paying third-parties sites. Never buy for 3-year/5-year plan Test using a hosting for one year. Never search for very cheap hosting with very high features Search your hosting to buy in the ripoff sites to see if anyone has complaints http://www.ripoffreport.com/Search/godaddy.aspx http://www.ripoffreport.com/Search/-HostGator.aspx http://www.ripoffreport.com/Search/dreamhost.aspx http://www.ripoffreport.com/Search/webhostingpad.aspx http://search.complaints.com/search...=complaints&site=complaints&q=godaddy&x=0&y=0 Always know there is no best hosting Find out people who are actually using x.y.z host. Then approach them. Ask them if they actually appreciate the x.y.z hosting.
Few More Points - Never go unmeterd yearly plan specially for very cheap rates its not possible - Find out about the support of the host if they 24x7 and cant answer a ticket in days whats the point
- never deal with a company that doesn't have a physical address - always check their phone number is answered by a real person and actually works. - it is usually safer dealing with a company that has been around for a couple of years at least, is established, and has a track record - pay by credit card because if it is a scam you have more chance of getting your money back. Paypal will NOT refund you for a service that goes wrong. - check to see whether they are a reseller of another company. If they are, check out the hosting company supplying them. There aren't that many hosting companies with their own servers, most of them are reselling other peoples
Pay by CC only if the gateway is reputed. if they just ask u to fill ur cc details in a form i wouldnt recommend it.. it could just get hacked
AFAIK,the details we filled is direct deal with bank not with hosting company? In other word,hosting company will not store our CC details?
Some people try to steal credit card and they make changes to script and they can get ur details i guess.. if its a service like 2checkout then its legit
That's true, but it does depend on the company. Very large companies will have their own merchant accounts and will do their own processing, so following that general advice to the letter would mean that companies like 1&1 wouldn't get any customers. It's usually small-to-medium hosts that use a payment gateway or processor but then again that depends on who they bank with. For instance, in the UK, companies that deal with Barclays will probably use Barclays Merchant services and the processing will be transparent on the hosts web site although the CC details are passed to Barclays for processing. On the other hand, companies who bank with RBS will usually have to use WorldPay because they don't offer any other options for online payments unless you are transacting a huge amount of money. Fortunately, most credit cards come with a lot of protection for online fraud, so if you are affected then you will more than likely get your money back. After all, "card not present" transactions are completely at the risk of the merchant unless they can prove by other means the transaction was legitimate.
Few more points: 1. E-mail them a simple question (eg: if they allow proxy hosting) and see how fast they reply. 2. Ask them the limit of outgoing emails (per hour and/or per day), otherwise you may have problems running a simple web directory if approving many listings in a short while. 3. Avoid using the hosting service of the companies that are mainly doing domain registration, even if they seem to have good offers/discount/promotions etc. 4. Never trust "unlimited" offers. If you use too much storage space and/or bandwidth on a cheap shared account, they will suspend your account sooner or later. If you have a site with huge traffic, you need a powerful host (that is also limited, btw). 5. "Never trust testimonials" is listed in the first post, but I just want to confirm this. I have posted a negative testimonial in the hosting company forum (I won't say the company name here); My tickets were unanswered from 72 hours, but the testimonial has been removed in minutes and I've got an infraction from the forum administrator. 6. Do not trust the reviews websites that are only promoting "top 10" companies. They are just eager for affiliate commissions. Look for large reviews websites that has hundreds of hosting companies in the database.
That's a good idea. Do you mind if I add the following? Send the email to the correct person. Sometimes sales teams only work standard office hours so if you send your email there don't always expect a quick reply if it's the weekend or outside office hours. If they claim 24/7 support, send your email to their support team. It may not get back as quickly as a proper support email would (their "support" emails will be their priority) but they should at least reply to you. When they do reply, how friendly was it? Did they explain that they may not be able to answer your query but they will forward your email to the sales team who will get back to you? Did they forward the email? Did the sales person get back to you? All this should give you an idea how willing they are to help, how efficient they are, and what sort of response you will get from them when you are a customer. Finally, did they answer your question? You want to deal with people who understand your question and answer the question you've asked, not a company who employs people to send out pre-written standard responses that "almost" answers your question. When you're a customer it's the support team you'll be relying upon the most. Make sure they are up to par. Happens all too often unfortunately.