What are warning signs of a Bad Hosting Provider?

I need an advice when choosing a shared or a VPS hosting provider, which I should avoid when selecting their hosting services. What are warning signs of a Bad Hosting Provider?

All your suggestions are welcomed.

Make sure you get advice from people you know on who they use and like. Read all the fine print to make sure you know what you are purchasing. Open a ticket or email their support, see what kind of response you get and how long it takes. Get what you need but don't pay for extra this or that which you will not use. I would also shy away from newer companies, go with someone that has been around awhile and will be around tomorrow when you wake up. Decide if you want a managed server or unmanaged (which means you do all the server work and updates).

Just some quick thoughts that jump in my head when people ask questions like these.

Some tips to keep in mind:

1) Avoid resellers. Only select providers that have their own hardware. Yes, resellers can provide a great service, but they have little control over the network and usually have no direct communication with the datacenter.

2) Read reviews on established forums only. Don't use review sites, or reviews on other websites for that matter. On forums such as WHT you'll most likely get genuine reviews.

3) Avoid EIG. It's an umbrella for many large hosting companies, such as Site5, HostGator, and BlueHost.

There are other things you must consider, but that only factors in when you look at your specific requirements. If you have a website, SSD VPS usually does the trick. Most hosting providers now install a control panel and it's not so different from shared hosting in terms of user interface. Prices are slightly higher, but it's very much worth it.

You can check reviews at review websites, check their ToS and check if they have an emergency phone number in case you need help.

Generally their Terms of Service will say a lot about their operations. I know they're a pain to read through, but they can be revealing. For example, I just read one where they charge an administrative fee for any IP's you get blacklisted, or if you don't follow their termination guidelines, they charge a Termination Fee (on top of what you've already paid them). Some spell out very specific rules for resource allocation.

Image, presentation, and professionalism would be the first thing you look for. If you're interviewing someone for a job and they walked in looking like a hobo i dont think you'll give them the job right? Take a look at the website and determine if it's something ran by a 13 year old or a professional who is serious about their business.

Are they a registered company, do they have a legitimate address, and means of contact. If they are kinda established check recent reviews for ongoing problems. A provider might have great history but if they recently sold it can all go down hill so check for the most recent reviews if available. Obviously a new company won't have recent reviews but that doesn't mean they are bad. Overall, just use good judgement otherwise you'll go through a lot of headaches.

There's some good advice and tips by the others above. One thing that I would really target is to do your research and find "Legitimate" information on their customer support / tech support. No matter what site or sites you will have, there will come a time when you need good quality support so make sure they have a good recent reputation for having good support.

It's better to be with a web host that has great support and not need it than it is to be with a web host that doesn't have great support when you need it!

I think every one covered it so well. Bad thing is, you usually don't know it's bad host until your with them and you learn the hard way. Like my last host, did not update the software.

I agree, do your research! So many people don't. I changed hosts less than a year ago and checked and checked and checked again.

No doubt, do not use a hosting company that is part of the EIG monopoly. I use to have hostgator and after they got swallowed up, it was all down hill. Bad news. Major downtimes, support when to crap and more.

Use your an IT person, always pick managed. I don't know enough about servers so I'd rather pay some one who does.

Good tip about checking their support before you buy. See them in action.

Ron Killian said:

Sorry that happened to you. Sure not the only one, I went through it myself. I was a long time hostgator customer and before the buyout they were a great company, great service. But ya, afterwards, it was a mess. I was dumb enough to stay on, mainly because I had so much stuff to move.

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Yeah, I had Hostgator before they were bought as one of my hosting providers and they were good. Since the purchase by EIG, their service went to the dogs. Most people don't know that almost all of their support comes from the same place, just different label. I thought each had their own till I stated to deal with the same people on the phone with the 2 different EIG companies. I asked and one of their reps told me it's the same.

Ron Killian said:

I could even get a support ticket answered. Always had to call and sit on the phone for ever. So often it was then, well, we need to pass this on to level 2 support. Really? So wait some more.

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I sat on the phone for more hours that I can remember, it's that much. Especially when dealing with the scams they were trying to pull. I was on the phone dealing with them one time for just under 3 hours. Hold, talk to one, hold, talk to another, hold, talk to supervisor, hold, talk to manager. It just went on and on.

Ron Killian said:

Bad thing is most people don't know how many companies EIG owns. MANY of the big brands. I see people complain about hostgator and some one recommends something like Bluehost, uumm.. same company.

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That's so true! I think that many people don't even realize that they are constantly buying some of the better hosting companies, so they still think they are going to be treated as good as in the past. A guy on another site the other day recommended Fatcow to someone that was having bad problems with iPage. Same ones I dealt with. I told him it's the same owners and he didn't believe me.

EIG had some kind of legal action to get most of their information including the brands they owned, from wikipedia. I went to wikipedia several months ago and saw they removed the information and it was there not too long before that. Lots of people have spoke up around the web about that. They shouldn't be hiding who they are.

The guy at the link below has the most complete list of EIG hosting companies that I have found as well as some info on them. Got almost a hundred replies and responses on the post here

Is hard to tell if someone is overselling a node but you can never go wrong with KVM, it can be oversold but you mostly get dedicated resources. So if you are going for vps, go for a kvm, shared hosting.......ummm unless you are not tech savvy and can run a vps you should go for a cpanel with cloudlinux

Good sign of oversold node could be that your website is slowing down, 500 errors, or any sudden unfamiliar behavior means is unstable and you should move asap

Ron Killian said:

I was wondering about gators support after the buyout. Seems it was said the support was the same people. But they sure did not seem to know much. Same here, hours on the phone. I remember when EIG first started moving all the stuff, all the down time and so many angry customers. Think phone support went down. That or they shut it off, wouldn't surprise me.

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One EIG customer service rep I was dealing with when I had a big problem with them told me that they use the same support people for all branches. That's why they ask you questions when you first start talking to them, like "What domain is associated with your account?". He said that when they buy a new hosting company there is a brief transition period where the support might get handled by the original company but it eventually all goes to their big support center.

Ron Killian said:

Heard the same thing, about them getting their stuff removed from wikipedia. That should be a be black mark on wikipedia. They are suppose to be all unbiased and all. It's like they can be bought out. Not cool

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Yeah, I think that that information should have stayed up. If it's facts, then I don't see what the issue was. I think the main thing is that they didn't want people knowing all the companies they own. That way if you are fed up with one of their services, you might buy hosting from another service and not realize it's the same thing. They get sooooo many customers that don't like they way they do things, so they don't want them to know which other ones they own. Otherwise that customer (if they knew) wouldn't know to avoid a particular company.

Ron Killian said:

Funny, I just gave that link to a customer the other day. I was installing a site for him on his hostgator account and I had trouble. software way out of date, ect.

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I had that same issue many times with the software on the EIG accounts that I had/have.

Ron Killian said:

Course the sad part, I was on hostgators facebook page the other day and all these people pushing their black friday deals. Sure it was for affiliate sales, but still. Seems they have really been ramping up the promotions lately. Maybe because they've lost so much business. Lost a good monthly payment from me.

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Well once they were bought out then the marketing tactics that EIG uses for their other companies goes into action. They have to do a lot of advertising because of customers that don't like one thing or another with what/how they do things.

I had a website monitoring service I was using when I was with them and I used to get my sites go down multiple times just about every day. Anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour. That's terrible.