Web Hosting Companies That Suck

May 18, 2006 @ 9:41 pm

Web hosting companies have a reputation for service that ranks right up there with the cable and phone companies. In other words, execrable.

This is one case where the reputation is in line with reality. Web hosting companies, on the whole, suck.

One can feel some sympathy for the people running a web hosting business; it’s not an easy thing to do. You’ve got to keep web servers up and running over 99% of the time, even during a storm or a power fluctuation. You’ve got to have adequate security to keep out denial-of-service attacks and data thieves. And you’ve got to have the patience to deal with customers who simply don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

Granted that it’s not an easy business, but one must still expect a minimum level of competence. Nobody forced these people to get into web hosting. You don’t pop the key into the ignition of your Toyota and, when the damn thing doesn’t start, tell yourself that it’s okay because building a good car is hard.

I’m not sure what the margins are like on web hosting. But I can’t imagine they’re all that impressive — who can make money running a technical service on $5.99 a month? Big corporations like Dell and Yahoo! just throw up their hands at the whole thing, or they change their business strategy every two months, presumably because the service still blows.

So here I am, with twelve years of web design and programming experience under my belt, and I still can’t find a reliable web host.

This post was spurred by a bad experience I had recently with GoDaddy, which is more well-known as a domain registrar. I spent close to two hours on the phone (long distance) with GoDaddy technical support trying to figure out why the server wouldn’t create a ColdFusion search collection on one of my clients’ websites. (This isn’t a particularly arduous task; it’s literally one line of code.) GoDaddy’s first conclusion: your one line of basic code must be wrong. Their second conclusion: we can’t answer this question until you pay an upfront fee of $300 for our “advanced” technical support. Their final conclusion: sorry, GoDaddy doesn’t support basic ColdFusion searching.

Some other companies that have raised my ire over the past few years:

• Interland. Interland is simply a disaster of a company — or at least it was a few years ago when I was dealing with them. Horrible customer service, unparalleled downtime, and simply the… slowest… Internet… connection… in… existence.
• WebCore. The field is full of little guys masquerading as larger companies, and WebCore is one of them. As far as I can tell, this company consists of a few guys renting space in someone else’s server room. It’s a little unnerving when you call the main line and hear the company’s lone salesman on his cell phone saying “Hello?”
• Flare Networks. I probably shouldn’t complain about Flare Networks, which mysteriously stopped billing me for no apparent reason. I never really had any serious technical problems there — but would you stick your neck out by sending an e-mail to tech support when you’re afraid of suddenly getting a $700 backdated bill?
• CFXHosting. CFXHosting might not only be the worst web host I’ve ever dealt with, but the worst company I’ve ever dealt with, period. I came to them in a bind, with three separate clients under tight deadlines, and no reliable web host to use. Based on the high ratings on ColdFusion guru Ben Forta’s website, I went with CFXHosting for all three.Big mistake. In the two years or so I’ve had to deal with CFXHosting, they have literally not done a single thing right. Let me repeat that: not one single thing right. Their technical support has fucked up every issue I’ve brought to their attention. For instance, setting up my account. They messed up the credit card billing and then put my client’s ColdFusion website on a server that either didn’t support ColdFusion or didn’t have the damn thing turned on. After numerous phone calls and e-mails, they fixed the problem — and then turned around the next day and did the exact same thing to my next client.

Right now, my web host du jour is a company called CrystalTech. As of this date — maybe six months after signing up — it’s been smooth sailing. The online control panel is pretty complete, the technical support has been prompt, and the price is definitely right.

How long until they fuck something up and I have to go looking again? It’s anybody’s guess.