Web Hosting Scams - A MUST READ

[richy2]

Webhosting Scams Exposed!

In today's hosting market, competition is fierce.
So fierce in fact it drives some companies to
practice less than respectable business tactics
and others to downright fraud.

With so many hosting companies going bust everyday
and leaving their customers hanging, how can you
be sure you will not be one of those customers?

The truth is you can't be sure - no one can, but
you CAN know what to look out for when searching
host providers or when being tempted by a fancy
ad or e-mail promising greener pastures for less
money.

The anonymity and the lack of personal contact
makes any Internet business an ideal candidate for
a scam. Please keep in mind when reading this that
some very legitimate and respectable hosts use
some of the marketing tactics below.

Here are some of the more common "scams" practiced
by fly by night Webhosting companies.

A) Deceiving Price Advertising.

Some hosting providers will advertise a very low
and attractive monthly price. You will be lured to
their site and overwhelmed with flashy graphics
and follow the order links only to find out that
in order to get that low price, you must prepay 3,
6, and sometimes 1 year in advance.

B) Yearly / Advance Payments.

Some hosting providers encourage and heavily
promote advance payments for hosting services.
Some even offer such tempting discounts that it is
hard not to give in to their ploy. This can be done
for one of two reasons.

1) the hosting company is barley hanging on
financially and needs all the money they can get
to pay their bills for the month or

2) they know that their service is less than
acceptable and without an advance commitment the
customers are sure to leave.

C) Hosting Term Contracts.

This is where you sign your life away for a long
-term commitment hoping the service you expect is
everything you were told. See reason #2 above.

With the exception of very custom high-end dedicated
server solutions that are build especially for the
customer, term contracts in this industry are
history so don't be talked into signing one.

D) "Unlimited" Bandwidth. Or unlimited anything for
that matter.

Think about this, with the exception of Outer Space
itself (and perhaps love), everything has a limit.
Without being too literal the word "unlimited" in
the hosting industry really means that there is no
set number that can define the limit, and the real
limit is determined by other factors.

Most providers who advertise unlimited bandwidth use
that "feature" to suck prospects in and make a quick
sale knowing that only about 1% of Websites will ever
use a large enough amount of bandwidth to cause
problems for them.

These unfortunate 1% are simply told that their sites
are either "killing the server" or given another
excuse as why they cannot host them.

E) 24 Hour Support.

This is one of those features that every respectable
hosting company must have, after all, your site is
(or should be) online 24 hours a day. Some hosts
define their support as an answering service taking
messages that are never returned from irate callers.

Other hosts use complex voice mail systems only to
return the message "I am sorry, all lines are busy
now, please try back later" (later being 9-5 when
the one guy who does support is actually in).

F) "Free" Hosting.

Ahhh, the word "free", used so often and abused even
more. Why would anyone give away free hosting? In
most cases, your site is required to display some
banner ads and generate revenue for the host
provider. That is fine and many customers, especially
customers with personal Websites who can live with
that sacrifice.

However in some cases, signing up for free hosting
is like selling your soul to the devil (ok maybe not
that bad) and here is why. Your personal information
and your e-mail address is sold to many, sometimes
hundreds of "opt in" spammers. You have essentially
opted in to receive all their spam when you signed
up for the free hosting and pretended you read the
host provider's 26 page of terms and conditions.

At times, the service is so poor it actually costs
businesses large amounts of money in loss revenues.
The same can be said for very cheap hosting.

G) Host Provider Registers Your Domain For You.

This has got to be one of the biggest scams going.
If a host provider registers YOUR domain for you,
make certain that their information only appears
as the technical contact at most and NEVER as the
domain owner. If a host provider controls your
domain you are theirs for life and are held hostage.

By no means is this a complete list and we will most
likely be adding to it as we discover more You
really need to do your homework and talk with sales
people, customers, or others who have experience
with the Webhost you are looking into.

Don't associate top positions in search engines
with respectable companies or companies that have
been in business a long time. Most top positions
are bought and those that are not still have
nothing to do with the stability of the companies.

Look for telephone numbers and contact information
on the Webhost's site. Never do business with any
company that hides telephone numbers. Remember, if
it is too good to be true it probably is.

This has been Brought To You By
Richy Craig
http://www.wwkiosk.com/members/richy2/

[Blood[B]ath]

This has helped a heck of a lot, and have seen some of these "tricks" in action, with having really low prices but only if you register for about 3 years. The "unlimited" storage and bandwidth to me was a bit dodgy, now I know for a fact not to go with that company

[goczilla]

Some hosting providers that registered domains for some of my clients now when those domains have very high PR and are will promoted they took the ownership over the domain changed the ads on the pages and got their money making machine with no effort. My clients went to court but lost the case cos they were listed under technical contact on the domain name.

[zetaf]

span class="postbody"

Ahhh, the word "free", used so often and abused even
more. Why would anyone give away free hosting? In
most cases, your site is required to display some
banner ads and generate revenue for the host
provider. That is fine and many customers, especially
customers with personal Websites who can live with
that sacrifice.

However in some cases, signing up for free hosting
is like selling your soul to the devil (ok maybe not
that bad) and here is why. Your personal information
and your e-mail address is sold to many, sometimes
hundreds of "opt in" spammers. You have essentially
opted in to receive all their spam when you signed
up for the free hosting and pretended you read the
host provider's 26 page of terms and conditions.

At times, the service is so poor it actually costs
businesses large amounts of money in loss revenues.
The same can be said for very cheap hosting.

brbrI have to disagree on that opinion, many owners or just people who rent the host per month dont belive in paid hosting plans, they want to help people and some of them even know that they wont earn anything at all!brSo far as many i have ecounter free webhosting i have never seen the admins from that webhosting abused members mail and spamming them! I have register at least over 30 free webhosting and my mail have never been spammed, and i doubt it was the luck that i wasnt spammed!brbrby registering you will sell your soul to the devil? thats little overboard dont you think?brbrbr
/span

[mondine]

Rather a dramatic flair, I thought.
While quite a bit of all this holds true today, at least as a warning of a possible worst-case scenerio;
one would expect that a few things have changed since it was written in December of 2004.

[andrew247]

Originally Posted by zetaf

my mail have never been spammed

Lucky you...I have 1000+ spam emails in my GMail account's spam folder.

[peterk]

Yeah that was very useful, the one I hate most is Host Provider Registers Your Domain For You. I have never fallen foul of this but even seeing it on an advert etc. annoyes me.

[whitebmw]

Thank you very much. That was very useful for me.

[fjpoblam]

I've registered a domain, and hosted a site, with one company, twice. I finally wised up and split the two. But I must ask, about *free* hosting. Given that I have paid for a registered domain name, what do you think of using Page Creator (Google for Your Domain) as the "free" host for my small business website?

[maxx888]

Thank you very much. Can we post the bad hosting company in here?