Signs You Have a Bad Webhost
Let me rant a little bit with my post today.
What will you do if you woke up one morning and you can’t access your blog?
You’ve tried other browser, still your site is inaccessible…
You’ve tried other internet connection, same problem…
You’ve asked your colleagues, same result as yours…
You’ve tried to change the DNS of your modem, still no reply…
You ping, and the reply is “unknown host”…
Multiply this with 4 blogs and what do you think are you gonna feel?
I’m sure most of you will get mad already.
This was exactly what I’d experienced last Thursday. 4 0f the numerous blogs and websites that I’m managing went into oblivion.
I sent an email to the technical support of the web host provider where these 4 blogs are hosted and guess what?…
They replied after 11 hours! Wow, that was too fast wasn’t? Do you think that’s a reasonable time to reply to an urgent and critical technical support?
I thought that they are monitoring their servers 24×7? Why is it that I need to ask them what happened before telling me the real issues? Isn’t they supposed to be more active in reporting this kind of incidence to their clients?
I’m working as an I.T. consultant managing webhost servers too and we have a policy in our company that we need to send an incident report to all our clients whenever there’s a critical network outages. Aside from this, we are also required to send a report every 30 minutes to lessen the anxiety of our clients.
I’m not expecting the same treatment from this webhost provider but I hope that they’ll be more pro-active in dealing with their clients.
The Worst is Yet to Come
Not only that their technical support is horrible but also on how they managed their web host servers. When I received their email, I was expecting that perhaps the problem is just a simple DNS problem but I was alarmed when they told me that there was a hard disk failure.
Hard disk failure??? How could it be? I know that webhost hardware are using server grade hard disk, meaning they are configured to recover itself from this kind of failure. This kind of hardware are supposed to be using multiple hard disks. The minimum hard disk for this kind of setup is 2. If one of the two drives should fail, the other will still be available to run applications or recover files.
I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt but their excuse is really lame. This is really unbelievable.
Additionally, they told me their weekly backup was corrupted and they can’t put back all the files, although they gave an assurance that they’re doing their best to restore all files as much as they could.
The Resolution
They’ve sent my account information but telling me nothing on what should I do with this information. After sending them numerous support tickets, finally they replied that I need to setup all my domains again and start from scratch because their previous backup for the month of June were all gone! I have to setup domains on WHM, make Packages, upload all files, install wordpress, themes, plugins etc..
Can you believe that? Remember, they’ve mentioned on their first email that only a week time of backup was corrupted? Now here it is, they’re saying the whole previous month is corrupted too.
The only consolation that they gave me is they won’t bill me for one month. Thanks but no thanks. Don’t know they that my clients lost more than the cost of the free one month they are offering? The lost of traffic, lost of income opportunities such as payperpost, adsense, affiliates and more.
Sadly, one of my clients whom I have been working with since 2007 transferred to another host.
Signs You Have a Bad Webhost
Based on my experienced, here are the signs you have a bad webhost and you’ve better think twice to RUN or stay with them if you see these hints.
1. No 24×7 customer support. Your online presence is not only limited within your time zone, and if something goes wrong, you need to get it back up no matter what time day or night it is.
2. Poor or lack of support. You pay them good money and it’s just appropriate that they will treat you like an important customer but if you’ve noticed that only 1 person is answering your support tickets then it means that they are understaffed.
3. Hard to get in touch with their customer support service. This is almost synonymous with no.2, but if the webhost provider isn’t returning your phone calls or emails then be careful and stay away from them.
4. Your site or blog is down on a frequent basis. As I’ve mentioned on no.1, your site or blog must be running not only on a 24×7 basis but it should be up also for at least 99% all the time. This is what the webhost providers are offering. You need to find a provider that can guarantee you a 99% uptime or more.
I had almost one week of sleepless night trying to recover all 4 blogs of my clients. Some have backups on their local PC but not updated. It’s been a week also the live chat support of this webhost provider that I’m using is offline. How can it be “live” when it’s off?
Sorry for this post but I hope you will learn a lesson or two on my experienced. It has a big impact on my clients (financially – lost of income opportunities, etc.) and to me as well. I lost one big client, and it affected my emotional and physical health too. I was not able to ride my bike and play badminton for almost a week since I’ve spent sleepless nights to make the 4 blogs work again.
I hope dear readers this won’t happen to you. I tell you, it’s costly. So go, find the best and most reliable webhost provider you can afford.
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hmm… i was waiting for you to mention of the webhost, but as it is, in spite of your bad experience you were courteous enough not to name them.
good thing my webhost’s service is quite satisfactory, otherwise i wouldn’t know how to do all those things you mentioned – ping, change the DNS, etc.
Good list! I’m on a great host, and you can certainly tell the difference from a bad host.
I’d suggest the following as well:-
1. Server up, but database server down.
2. Poor support in terms of technicalities.
Great post
[...] This post was Twitted by FreeNuts [...]
This is terrible Eric, I would not have the patience to put up a blog all over again. That’s genuine hard work. Don’t they have an online chat for instant replies? I think Roy and I have the same webhost, not sure, but they have been assisting me promptly with my questions. I chat online with the technical stuff. I am an ignoramus about codes and php, etc so I need lots of help. My webhost was always there when I needed help. I am wondering why Roy didn’t name his webhost. Are you advertising another lol..anyway…good luck with your dilemma. I hope you’ll solve it soon enough.
Ay ganun! this is helluva day! Eric… so far wala panaman ganito yung akin … but anyway, that’s why they’re machines and your human Eric… wag kanang magalit…. hehehe… Lightening you up a bit… Good night!
First of all, sorry to hear about this unfortunate event. Second, all the trouble, hassle and headache caused by their incompetence and all they could offer was a free month of hosting? That’s just shows what kind of webhost they are.
Like Roy mentioned, I admire that you didn’t mention them inspite of what happened. Although, mentioning the name of the company would do more people good, especially your readers so that they can avoid this webhost and spare them the same experience.
Are you still with them or have you moved to a different webhost?
That’s terrible stuff, and, if you know me at all, you know I’d have outed them. Had that problem, of sorts, back in 2005. Folks sold their site to someone else, and a month later the entire database crashed, and all was lost. I had my website, but not my blog posts. Luckily, Google had every single one of them, but it took me hours to find them all, download them all, and repost. But I did it, once I found a new hosting site. Scary; I’d have to think about moving.
Thanks to Google cache too, Mitch. To recover 3 blogs with no backup… it was terrible and painful.
Before I started my blog year ago, I take into consideration the importance of webhost. It will save us a lot of headache if we do a little research about the prospective host we want to rent. Better go to those with names than to gamble with less known hosting services.
you are correct, Walter but for almost new bloggers they want to spend as little as possible. sometimes they try to look for free hosting as well until it’s too late already.