Why I Hate Web Hosting
February 18th, 2006 by Michael Gray in Random ThoughtsIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Throughout my life one of the things that’s constantly plagued me is my ability or more correctly lack of ability to delegate. Many moons ago when I worked in sales selling high end watches i was in charge of a staff of 15 to 25 people (imagine that me like a grown up in charge of people). Anyways on my annual review one of the things that was repeated every year was I need to improve my ability to delegate better.
One of the things that I find most enjoyable about working for my self is I get to do things the way I want them. While I do outsource some page creation and a lot of writing, I know what I’m going to be particular about and those are the things I’ll do myself. When it comes down to crunch time, I’ll lock myself in a room put on some Shostakovitch (there’s nothing like coding to the music of an angry Russian) and not come out until it’s done.
In this business hosting is something you have to deal with. I’ve had some issues with a injection script going awry and a host shutting down my reseller account. The customer service response which followed would be comedic if it wasn’t me. I spent three hours filling out tickets back and forth with technicians, all of the time all I wanted was a phone call to which I received every excuse possible why they couldn’t possibly call. So Jim is spot on in his hosting company post, that you need to be able to get someone on the phone when the shit hits the fan.
So I’ve taken this opportunity to consolidate some of my hosting and make it more manageable. While I am able to get a hold of customer service with my new host, it is rather annoying that I’ve been on the phone or in a live chat session at least a dozen times in the past three days getting things set up the way I want them. So I’m dealing with that overwhelming sense of frustration and wanting to lock myself in a room and fix the problem, but not being able to do it. At times it’s so aggravating I’ve considered running my own server out of my laundry room data center.
Sphere It
February 18th, 2006 at 8:24 am
Getting a hosting company on the phone is a major problem, my host is the same whay, but I am exptremly happy with their online customer support. First of all, all of their emploees in every department are online and available almost from any major IM. You still have to submit a ticket in the majority of the times, but that’s mostly for the record and something that has to be done, but I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t get hold of one of their support guys online, I even had a pleasure chatting with their billing department and taking care of me.
Of course not everything perfect, but pretty much every time I had problems - they were able to help me fast. If interested - lookup my website’s dns.
February 18th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Over the years I’ve tried and discarded at least 50 different hosting companies. The vast majority of hosting companies truly suck. When I finally found one that only sucked rarely, I stuck with it. I now host almost all my sites with that one host. I still occasionally try a new site out on a new host just to make sure I have a backup plan in case my favored host ever goes bust. People complain about bad SEOs, but man, bad hosts are far more in abundance.
February 20th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
After switching to Rackspace I never have to worry about getting someone on the phone. Someone answers within a few rings.
Downside- I had to learn more about Apache than I really wanted to learn BUT, when I want a website up and running now I don’t have to wait for nameservers to be changed, accounts to be set up and on and on.
Now if I could just find a good domain name registrar…