Choosing a Website Host

[zenmaster]

Hi

I am a website host I would be interested in what others need in a website host.

I have looked at www.myshophosting.com it has no information to allow you to make an informed hosting decision.

It has an email address for more details, this is not acceptable if there are more details they should be displayed on the site.

Maybe these are coming I dont know .

My hosting site contains around 200 pages of FAQ's and services for nearly every situation that may occur, also links to helpful sites for doing business online.

I have a comparison of all the hosting packages I offer.

The packages have 50 or so services included in these packages.

Email/ livehelp/bulletinboard/domain registration/ and much more.

One of the posts had

"if you pay peanuts you get a monkey hosting"

Not always true it depends on how many people are paying peanuts.

Does it matter where you host? Not nearly as much as who you host with.

It can be slower to download to your site the first time, but not unreasonbly slow we are talking seconds not minutes in most cases.

That is the most commonly cited reason for not hosting overseas.

I run 573 websites on linux boxes and cpanel they are all hosted overseas. I run these on my own. I run them through a dailup connection from Sydney.

uptime quoted I quote 95% everyone else is 99% uptime I believe that is an unrealistic expectation. I would rather underquote and over deliver a service.

There are just too many external influences beyond the hosts control to quote anything less than 95% uptime.

Maintenance scheduling can affect the users perception of uptime, if it takes place every time the owner is online the perception would be that it is always having problems even if it is within the specified uptime figures quoted.

my comments on www.myshophosting.com are what I see on the website it is not meant to deter others from what may be a very good service.

When I get time I will add a post detailing what I believe is a minimum requirement for anyone hosting a website for a small to medium business site, If I dont get kicked off for this post.

I would be interested in comments on hosting from other hosters or users.

Dave

[dferguson]

Hi Dave

We find that ezimerchant clients prefer the luxury of calling and speaking to us directly about their hosting requirements or technical problems. You forgot to mention in your email that we have our phone number on our website for customers to call. (http://www.myshophosting.com/support.htm)

We provide 9.00am - 5:30pm phone sales and support - For free, to all myshophosting clients and prospective clients.

As myshophosting concentrates on hosting ezimerchant websites only, our clients dont need a lot of the features found in a cpanel/fantastico server.

Our support staff (me) are extremly proficient in the use of ezimerchant and are aware of all the issues involved with hosting such a site. So helping customers with email setups, uploading problems etc is no problem for us. Our customers appriciate being helped over the phone in minutes rather than hours by looking through FAQ's. Point taken however regarding the lack of FAQ's, I will work to resolve this.

Of course, there are cheap hosting companies around - Many of them provide excellent packages and value as im sure yours does.. But some clients simply require a level of service that goes beyond self help. myshophosting offers that service.

[Edit: myshophosting also offers top of the line Dell servers on ultra fast Australian networks (Agile Network) - Sites are extremly fast and snappy compared to servers hosted on International networks and even sites hosted in Australia on 2nd or 3rd tier networks. When it comes to ecommerce, speed really does matter.]