The Importance of Choosing a Good Hosting Company
Great hosting is a must for anyone out there running a real estate blog or website – trust me theres nothing scarier than the thought of losing precious leads or getting in touch with prospective clients because your website is down or having troubles. But hey, every once in a while, stuff happens, and in the event that it does, you also want to make sure that your hosting company provides quick support to get things back on track.
Ok, so I fooled you – I know I know – I’m usually the guy thats sharing great tips on stopping comment spam, wordpress customization, building up your backlinks and social networking profiles. And I’m sure you thought, well, this is a Justin Bartlett post so I’m gonna find some great stuff that’s really going to help me out here.
Sorry guys, today I’m here to gripe. First order of business, let’s change that title from The Importance of Choosing a Good Hosting Company to Man I Really Hate JustHost, or better yet JustHost: That Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Ya Wanna Forget About.
Yep, I think the later title is by far the most suitable.
I’ve been a just host client for two years, and pretty much every single website that I’ve built for myself and for every single client I’ve had has been hosted with them. Our story starts the way most awfully ending relationships do – with passion, fireworks, and amazement – Support was legendary, I never had a problem with a site being down, and sites hosting on the JustHost basic hosting were loading blazingly faster than my significantly upgraded GoDaddy hosting. Things were great for a little over the duration of a year, then suddenly 6 months ago the rug get’s yanked out from underneath me and I’m wondering why every other week a site is down or something is wrong.
Time for that legendary support, right? Far from it. Their “live chat” is now staffed by (*breath*) — can’tdonothing, can’thelpya, lemmereferyousomewherebut-I–REFUSE-to-give-you-a-phone-number, wait15minutesinbetweenreplies, Englishgrammarain’tmystrongpoint — do nothings that crawled out of a deep dark hole somewhere that they most assuredly and with all haste should crawl back into.
Over the last couple of months, things have gotten worse. I’m definitely not wanting to change all of my websites (30+!) over to another host as this will take time away from actually working on my sites, responding to those clients that just now finally reached a live site through which they can finally contact me, or enjoying time with my girlfriend (a real relationship, take that JustHost!) and finally getting away from my computer. And what about my friends & client’s websites – do I have them switch to?
Am I the only one here or are other people having biiggg problems with JustHost? Who are you guys using for hosting now? I love the GoDaddy support but man I really much prefer cpanel. Lemme know lemme know!
PS – Drew who are you using for hosting? And how can I get involved / help with the re-design?! Much love fellow GeekEstaters. (I love comments more than Cookie Monster loves Cookies)
Brad
Posted at 00:30h, 25 MarchI’ve tried several, but really like http://www.bluehost.com . Their customer service is top notch, and better yet, they always answer the phone when I call.
drewmeyers
Posted at 00:43h, 25 MarchDreamhost all the way. Or wphost if you are only doing wordpress sites
drewmeyers
Posted at 00:43h, 25 MarchDreamhost all the way. Or wphost if you are only doing wordpress sites
drewmeyers
Posted at 02:39h, 25 MarchWe used to have some of our Virtual Results client sites on bluehost, and switched off from them a couple months ago. We had a few problems with them.
Kim Hannemann
Posted at 01:08h, 25 MarchI’ve been using inmotion for a couple of years, they have cpanel and always up.
drewmeyers
Posted at 02:08h, 25 MarchJustin-
I didn’t see the end of this post prior to my first comment (I was responding from my email). I personally use Dreamhost for my personal blog and a few random side projects I’ve done over the years. I have had no problems with them over the past few years. A few site outages, but nothing major.
At Virtual Results, we are in the process of moving all of our client sites over to WPHost.com (http://wphost.com/) — a new company run by Pete Mall (he’s one of the core WordPress developers). For those with WordPress sites – which is probably most of us reading this – I’d totally recommend switching to them. They get wordpress like few others do because they are the ones actually pushing the release button and writing wp core code. For the same reason you likely work with a company that specializes in real estate websites for your website (or you’ve probably had a bad experience if your web vendor has never done a real estate site before yours), you want to work with a company that specializes in WordPress hosting if you are on the WordPress platform. Tell them I sent you 🙂
drewmeyers
Posted at 02:09h, 25 MarchPS – Not a fan of GoDaddy.
mortgage loan modification
Posted at 02:15h, 25 MarchLol, three comments, three completely different suggestions.. Wait no, four different suggestions! I have a client using BlueHost and they seem pretty happy (forgot about that!) Haven’t heard of or tried inmotion or Dreamhost yet. Seems the WPWebHost pricing looks better – if its the same wordpress specific host I was looking at a year ago I think they wanted to charge an outrageous amount to install BuddyPress & WPMU for you.
mortgage loan modification
Posted at 02:18h, 25 MarchAh I see – a completely new hosting company — woot! I’ll definitely give them a try (and of course I’ll drop your name). Maybe I should split my sites between a number of different hosts and figure out who’s got the biggest bang for the buck.
Ben Goheen
Posted at 04:58h, 25 MarchI’ve used a few different hosting companies over the years. Most start out good but the customer service fizzles quickly. Do no use Godaddy if you want to setup a WordPress site – way too many hoops to jump through.
My hosting company of choice is Site5. I prefer to use online chat for support, and they are always quick to respond and help. Plus they offer some really nice free WordPress themes: http://goo.gl/s8iM
Ron Reed
Posted at 05:41h, 25 MarchI use HostMonster (sister site of BlueHost.com) with 20+ sites. Customer service is top notch!
Hope this helps!
Ron Reed
P.S. – Agree with Drew… Not a fan of GoDaddy for hosting.
Craig mullins
Posted at 06:43h, 25 MarchServint
Careers
Posted at 15:06h, 25 MarchI am in favor of Blue Host. Great service, easy to use. GoDaddy is getting better and just recently has fixed their problem with regards to contact forms not getting sent. If you understand GoDaddy (takes time) they are great. Blue Host will tell you that your account comes with unlimited storage. This may be true but you end up with a 50,000 page count maximum. For hosting many sites under 1 account, 50,000 will come fast.
Alex
Posted at 17:51h, 28 MarchI must be lucky, I have had no problems with JustHost, just renewed for another 2 years
Jeremy
Posted at 02:55h, 29 MarchAN hosting here. Good support ( the live chat is great ) and only had one minor problem that was resolved with 5 minutes.
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 14:33h, 29 MarchI really haven’t had a problem with GoDaddy, but it seems the majority of comments I read on the web are negative. I have dozens of small sites on GD, but don’t host our biggest/highest traffic sites there, so maybe it’s just a speed issue? Anyone have personal experience?
Steve Trang
Posted at 21:48h, 31 MarchSo far, I’ve been happiest with dreamhost. Bluehost has been good to me, but not for people I’ve referred to them. Stay away from sitecloud and godaddy. Apparently sitecloud outsources their hosting, which I find highly suspect. If I wanted to use another host company, I’d go straight to them. I had to drop them cold turkey, which nobody should have to do in the middle of a contract. Godaddy just did not play nice with wordpress, and they blamed wordpress. Funny, when I switched from Godaddy to Bluehost, wordpress was not the problem.