Okay, I've had to change web hosts half a dozen times
in the last year and I've noticed a pattern. It's
a very clear and simple pattern, actually a series
of behaviors on the part of web hosting companies.
These behaviors cause these companies to lose customers
and gain poor reputations.
To sum it all up in a single word:
ethics. Web hosts need to act ethically. As long as
they are ethical towards their business and customers,
they thrive. When they become unethical, they will
fail.
What are web hosting company ethics?
This is a code which all hosting companies need to
follow if they want to stay in business for the long
term.
The most important goal is up-time -
Almost anything can be forgiven as long as sites are
up and running, as close to 100% of the time as possible.
Every feature provided by a hosting company needs
to be working and working properly. A small amount
of downtime (an hour or two in a month long period)
is acceptable, but more than that is not.
Every time I've had to change web hosts, this was
the base reason. Unexplained and unexpected downtime.
Oh, there were many excuses and many reasons which
I'm sure were perfectly valid. But the basic reason
why I create and maintain a web site is so people
can see it - and they cannot see it if the site is
down.
To make it even worse, sites which are down for a
significant length of time have side effects. Webrings
owners often check for broken rings using automated
code - down sites will trigger suspensions and even
deletions. Search engines tend to drop sites which
are down too often or for too long a period of time.
And, of course, visitors may remove your site from
their bookmarks, thinking you have closed it or moved
on.
The second most important goal is performance - I
understand that you want to jam as many sites on a
single server as you can. This is how you maximize
your profits. Please understand that all of the web
sites which you host must perform well. So don't overload
your servers.
Stay in communication - We all know that things happen.
Sometimes servers do crash and once in a while they
require maintenance. Let your customers know about
important events. If you are concerned that they might
consider it spam, give your customers the option to
receive updates if they desire.
I had one host (Hostrocket) which performed, in my
opinion, one of the most hostile acts that I have
ever seen against a paying customer. I had a CGI script
on my site which logged each 404 error in a text file.
Normally this script was harmless and used little
CPU. Unfortunately, with the new breed of worms striking
the internet, 404 errors went way up and the script
began using large amounts of processor.
One day I tried to reach my site and didn't get my
friendly front page. I got a "forbidden"
error. I freaked out and sent off a quick email to
the web host support group. I didn't receive a response.
Not a word (and it was only early afternoon). I sent
another, then another. Nothing. Finally, 18 frantic
hours later, I received a note that my site was closed
down because of the script.
The number of four letter words that spewed from
my mouth that day would have turned a street girl's
face red. I was so angry - not because they closed
my site, but because these idiots (again, Hostrocket)
didn't tell me what they had done. Because of that,
I wasted almost an entire day trying to figure out
what was wrong.
What I would have done had I been the technical person
in their company is simple. Just disable the script
and send off an email to the web site owner explaining
why and telling him not to do it again. If the owner
ran the script again, then shut down the site (and,
of course, send another email).
Needless to say, I regained access to my site, copied
my databases to my hard drive, then switched web hosts.
Within two days I had moved my site to another, much
better hosting service (and, of course, I deleted
the offending script).
Don't test on your production servers - I know you
want to upgrade your Apache to the newest version
or install the new control panel right away, but please
don't immediately install anything on your production
servers. Believe me, your customers don't care about
any of this - they want working sites. Saying "everything
is going slow because we upgraded" is not acceptable
- the host should know ALL side effects of any upgrades
from actual testing long before any change, however,
small, is made to a production system.
Do what you say you are going to do - I
was with a hosting company called Bizland for over
a year. They were good most of the time except for
(a) excessive downtime, and (b) they didn't deliver
on their promises. They kept saying CGI will be released
in April, then May, then June. Finally, I decided
I could not wait anymore (and also concluded the host
was down too much) so I moved my site.
Free hosting companies seem to have a bad habit of
using production systems as test beds. This is one
of the strong downsides to using free hosts - they
really don't care if your site is up or not, as long
as the advertisements are displayed.
Acknowledge your trouble tickets -
One web hosting company that I was with for quite
a long time was Addr.com. These guys had easily the
best support so far. What stands out in my mind is
every single message that I sent got acknowledged
by a human being.
The sequence was as follows: I would
send a trouble ticket and get an automated response.
A short time later, I got a note that the ticket was
handled. I always respond with a "thank you",
because I've been a support person before and I understand
the power of getting thanked. Addr.com even responded
to the thank you with a "you are welcome"
message!
To contrast, another hosting company (hostrocket
again), had a nasty habit of just closing
tickets. I'd send in a question and get an answer,
then ask another question as follow-up. I would never
get a response, then check to see that the ticket
was marked "closed". This is not the way
to keep a customer happy.
Actually read your trouble tickets - I write very
clearly in trouble tickets, precisely because I've
been a support person and I know exactly what is needed.
I'm constantly surprised at how many times web host
support people simply don't read the ticket and thus
do the wrong thing.
One particularly glaring example was a ticket which
I sent in which said to set up a certain domain with
bigmailbox. The support person (from Hostrocket) changed
the MX record for an entirely different domain, in
spite of my message clearly stating "change it
for domain xyz". This caused my site to lose
email capability for two days until they eventually
figured out what they messed up.
Most importantly, remember where you get
your money from - This message is for all
web hosting companies everywhere. Your money comes
from those people called webmasters. Free hosting
companies get their money indirectly via the content
provided by webmasters. With paid hosts the relationship
is direct and to the point - money is paid by webmasters.
If you annoy your customers or don't provide service,
then you will find yourselves out of business. And
in these days of a looming recession, good customers
are gold. Keep them happy and your company will prosper.
