Your website is the one thing that has to be up and running whilst you’re asleep, on the move, in the middle of a launch etc. Hosting is the thing that makes that happen.
Most people treat hosting as a line item. It’s really more like a lease on the land that your business is sitting on and someone else has written the terms of.
Before the fine print, here’s what a bad decision looks like in practice.
A good host will see your business stand out. If you’ve got a business and you’ve gone out and just bought a host without doing any proper research then you’ll very quickly find that your site is going to be plagued with server end glitches and it’s not going to load at all. Your client database is going to be sitting there untouched, your site is going to be viewed extremely negatively and your customers are simply going to be unable to engage with your business in any way whatsoever. That’s a total wipeout for your business. You absolutely have to be very mindful and very aware when you’re selecting the right host for your business. If you need a 100cc engine bike then buying a 2000cc engine bike is completely pointless.
The investment of money should be in the area that meets your needs and your requirements. You can of course get some technical advice from a mate who has the knowhow. If you don’t then get in touch with me or leave a comment and I’ll be able to help you to select and choose. The big thing at the moment is that the AI models (Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude etc) are absolutely superb at comparing the different types of service. The caveat is that if the features that the company have listed aren’t actually available then you’re left with just a few estimates to go on. Take your business straight to the path of success by selecting the right hosting for your carrier.
The way to avoid that is to stop buying on the features list and start asking what the plan actually can do.
What the pricing page doesn’t print
Every hosting page starts off with what they’re selling: space, a free domain, free SSL, a huge amount of bandwidth. The actual limits that matter in terms of whether your site is going to stay up under real world traffic are generally somewhere else and in fact are largely non-existent.
Ask support for the actual figure and you’re always given a general answer rather than the figure itself. That’s why I won’t trust a plan until I’ve actually run it.
These are the numbers worth asking for:
- CPU and memory allowed per account
- Simultaneous processes or connections
- Inode (file count) limit
- Disk I/O speed
- What happens when you hit any of them: throttling, suspension, or an upgrade email
“Unlimited” is a marketing word
Myth: an unlimited plan has no limits.
Reality: unlimited storage or unlimited bandwidth is always going to be accompanied by some form of fair use policy and limits on the resources which cost the host money (CPU, memory, processes etc). The banner is true on one resource and silent on all the others. Always check the terms of service for “fair use” or “acceptable use” before you go any further.
The banner price is not the price
The first term price is an acquisition price. The renewal price is the real price of the hosting.
Most providers will state it in the fine print: the low rate is for the first term and your annual fee then increases. Take note of the renewal rate for years 2 and 3 before you go any further.
Compare widely, then treat the result as a shortlist
I’ve had a look at Bluehost, Hostinger and WordPress’s own hosting (which is a bit more expensive). The various community forums are also currently full of mentions of the newer kids on the block such as Era.Hosts.
Put the plan pages side by side and score each one on the same set of criteria (renewal price, refund window, support access, speed and security). Features aren’t going to be the differentiator between them as they all have features.
Turn the refund window into a test lab
A 30 day return policy is pretty much the buyer’s version of a free trial with all the real limitations in place. Treat it as such.
- Read the refund policy before you pay. Look at the window (30 days is the one to look for), check what’s excluded (domains and add-ons are often excluded) and how you go about claiming.
- Put real content on the plan (your theme, your plugins, your images). An empty install tells you absolutely nothing.
- Log into cPanel and go to the Metrics section. Check out the bandwidth, the visitors, the errors (and where the host provides it, the resource usage). Then have a look at your database. If the host doesn’t use cPanel then their own dashboard will almost certainly have something very similar.
- Send real visitors: either invite a few people over or run a speed test tool from a number of different locations and compare the results to what the dashboard has recorded.
- Ask support a specific question about a limit you’ve found and note whether you get a number or a deflection.
- Decide before day 25 so that a refund request is in the window.
This is the bit where your own testing produces a figure that beats any pricing page.
A couple of months ago I actually had a very good mate come to my house and ask me for help (I’m a fairly experienced technical guy and developer with 10 years’ experience). He said “Hi Manu, I need your help to actually launch a business. I want to start a blogging site. Can you help me out with the hosting?” I went through all the various types of hosting, compared them against each other and showed him the specs. The problem with the various hosting companies is that they will only ever highlight the features of their server that are the best. They will never tell you the limitations that are in their hosting and you only find out when you’ve actually bought it.
We also have consumer rights protection in the form of a 30 day refund policy which they’re claiming so we can get a refund if it doesn’t meet our expectations. After that he lies and he knows full well he’s lied and we then go to a hosting provider such as BigRock shared hosting which is more than sufficient for us. I’m not in any way recommending that you go with that one, it’s your choice. You can go with any piece of horrific hosting that you like to run your business on, you just have to do your own due diligence. I’ve heard the trick and the technique of exposing their hidden limitations. You can easily log into your hosting cPanel to see the analytics and the metrics on your bandwidth usage etc, everything and how your site is performing when people come to it.
That figure (the figure not the feature list) is the one I’d have in front of me prior to the refund window closing.
Where I land
Here’s my verdict and it’s short.
My final word on this is if you’re looking at a hosting provider then you absolutely need to compare them head to head, test them out and see how they work for your business. Then you can decide whether you want to go with that hosting or whether you’d rather change your mind and go with a different one. If you do change then you need to be very careful about moving your data over to the new host and you need to have a backup. Once you’ve got a plan in place you can move as and when you like. There are loads of plugins available (Updraft for example) that will make the move from one host to another very straightforward.
Pick the host that passes your own test rather than the one with the most features on the list.
