Common Mistakes When Choosing a Hosting Service

Getting your website off the ground means more than a great design and catchy domain. Our hosting service shapes key factors like load times, security, and customer trust.

Here’s how the usual process goes for many:

• Spend hours on the perfect domain name
• Put weeks into building out the site
• Choose a hosting provider in under ten minutes, often by going with the first result

This shortcut can lead to headaches down the road:

• Server outages during peak traffic
• Slow page loads that frustrate visitors
• Security breaches risk customer data
• Unanswered support tickets for days at a time

Many of these problems start with simple, preventable mistakes when picking a hosting provider. By learning what to watch for, you can save time, money, and headaches later.

Picking the Wrong Type of Hosting

Shared, VPS, and dedicated servers exist because different websites have different resource requirements. A personal blog with 500 monthly visitors does not need the same infrastructure as an e-commerce store processing 10,000 transactions per month. Yet many first-time website owners select their hosting type based on a single factor: price.

Shared hosting places multiple websites on a single server, allocating resources such as CPU, bandwidth, and RAM among all accounts. This arrangement keeps costs low, but it also means your site competes with your neighbors for resources. When another site on the same server experiences a traffic surge, your site may slow down or become temporarily unresponsive. Shared hosting works well for small sites with modest traffic, but it becomes a liability as sites grow.

VPS hosting partitions a server into isolated virtual environments, giving each account dedicated resources. Performance becomes more predictable because your site no longer competes directly with others. The trade-off comes in cost and complexity. VPS plans cost more than shared hosting, and managing one requires more technical expertise.

Dedicated servers provide an entire physical machine for a single account. Large businesses, high-traffic sites, and applications that require maximum control typically use dedicated hosting. Monthly costs range from $169 for entry-level configurations to $439 or more for high-performance setups.

The mistake happens when someone assumes the cheapest option will meet their needs indefinitely. A site that starts on a basic shared plan may outgrow it within months. Slow load times, frequent crashes, and lagging performance often indicate a site has exceeded its hosting resources.

We offer hosting across all three categories. Our shared hosting plans start at $2.95 per month with Lite, Pro, and Premium options. If you need more resources, our VPS plans range from $39.95 per month for 2 GB RAM and 50 GB SSD storage, up to $129.95 per month for 8 GB RAM and 150 GB SSD storage.

Our dedicated server options are ideal for those who need the highest level of control. You can start small and upgrade with us anytime. Open a support ticket to begin the process, and we’ll handle the transition with no downtime.

Overlooking Uptime Guarantees

Uptime refers to the percentage of time a server remains operational and accessible. A 99.9% uptime guarantee sounds impressive until you do the math. That 0.1% translates to approximately 43 minutes of potential downtime per month. For an e-commerce site, even a few minutes of unavailability during peak shopping hours can result in lost sales and damaged trust.

Many users never check uptime records before signing up with a hosting provider. They assume all hosts perform similarly. In reality, uptime varies considerably across providers, and some fall far short of their advertised guarantees.

The consequences of poor uptime extend beyond immediate revenue loss. Search engines factor site availability into their ranking algorithms. Frequent outages can push a site lower in search results, reducing organic traffic over time. Visitors who encounter errors may never return.

We guarantee 99.9% uptime across all hosting plans. Third-party monitoring frequently shows that we meet or exceed this. For example, one test recorded four minutes of downtime over two weeks (99.98% uptime), while another showed 100% uptime throughout the testing period.

If there’s planned maintenance, we’ll let you know in advance through our status page and keep you updated during any unexpected events. Our support team responds fast, and our users report short wait times for live chat help.

Ignoring Security Features

Security breaches can destroy a website and the business behind it. Hackers inject malware, steal customer data, deface pages, and use compromised sites to attack others. Recovery costs money, time, and reputation. Yet many website owners treat security as an afterthought, selecting hosting providers that offer minimal protection.

Budget hosts often skimp on security infrastructure. They may lack firewalls, offer no malware scanning, and perform infrequent backups. When a breach occurs, the site owner is responsible for cleanup and recovery.

Before selecting a hosting provider, verify what security measures are included with your plan. SSL certificates encrypt data transmitted between your site and its visitors. Malware scanning detects malicious code before it causes damage. Firewalls block suspicious traffic. Regular backups ensure you can restore your site if something goes wrong.

We include robust security features with every plan:

• Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate for every account
• AlphaSSL certificate on Premium plans for extra protection
• Automated server monitoring every 10 seconds, plus human checks every 30 minutes
• Real-time malware scanning
• If your site is compromised, our support team will handle cleanup at no extra cost

You’ll also get:

• DDoS mitigation to block malicious traffic
• An advanced Web Application Firewall to intercept threats
• Automatic nightly backups on all plans
• On-demand backups for Pro and Premium plans

Skipping the Terms of Service

The Terms of Service document contains information that hosting providers would rather bury than highlight. Refund policies, cancellation procedures, acceptable use restrictions, and account limitations are often in the fine print that most users never read. This oversight can lead to unpleasant surprises.

Some providers lock customers into long-term contracts with steep early termination fees. Others impose bandwidth caps or storage limits that trigger overage charges. A few reserve the right to suspend accounts with little warning for activities that violate vague usage policies.

Refund guarantees vary widely. Some hosts offer 30-day money-back policies. Others extend guarantees to 90 days. A few offer no refund option. Signing up for a 24-month contract with a provider that offers no refunds poses considerable risk, especially for users with limited hosting experience.

Reading the Terms of Service before committing protects against these pitfalls. Pay particular attention to refund policies, renewal pricing, cancellation procedures, and any restrictions on site content or resource usage.

We offer a 30-day money-back guarantee for our shared hosting, reseller hosting, and VPS plans. If you cancel within the first 30 days, you’ll get a full refund of hosting charges (minus domain registration and setup fees). This covers cancellations due to dissatisfaction with our services, but not for non-use, misuse, or abuse.

Our terms are straightforward. No hidden clauses or buried restrictions. If you’re not sure about your hosting choice, our policy lets you try us out with minimal risk.

Prioritizing Price Over Support

The cheapest hosting option rarely delivers the best value. Low-cost plans attract customers with rock-bottom pricing, then cut corners on the features and services that actually matter. Customer support suffers most often.

Website problems do not follow business hours. A site crash at 2 AM on a Saturday requires immediate attention. Providers with limited support hours leave customers stranded during emergencies. Even those offering 24/7 assistance may route inquiries to undertrained representatives who provide scripted responses rather than actual solutions.

Testing customer support before committing to a hosting plan provides valuable insight. Contact the provider through their available channels. Ask a technical question and evaluate the response time, accuracy, and helpfulness. Compare what the provider claims to offer against what actual customers report in reviews.

• We provide support through multiple channels, any time you need it:
• Live chat available 24/7/365
• Phone support for urgent issues
• Email tickets for detailed troubleshooting
• Live chat responses usually take under two minutes
• Our support team knows our products inside and out and offers real solutions, not canned responses
• You’ll connect with a real person, not a chatbot
• Most issues resolve within 10 minutes, often even faster

Independent testing confirmed the quality of this support. During monitoring periods involving 100% uptime, every interaction with the support team proved fast, knowledgeable, and helpful.

Failing to Plan for Growth

A successful website will eventually outgrow its original hosting plan. Traffic increases, content expands, and functionality demands multiply. Hosting that served well in the early months becomes inadequate as the site develops.

Shared hosting plans typically support sites with modest traffic levels. Once monthly visitors exceed 10,000 and page load times begin to slow, the site has likely outgrown its shared environment. Continuing to operate on an insufficient plan leads to poor user outcomes, abandoned shopping carts, and search ranking penalties.

Selecting a hosting provider with scalable options from the start simplifies future transitions. Upgrading within the same provider costs less and causes fewer disruptions than migrating to an entirely new host.

We make upgrading easy. Start with our shared Lite plan at $2.95 per month, then move to Pro or Premium as your needs change. Need more resources? Our VPS plans offer 2-8 GB of RAM and SSD storage from 50 GB to 150 GB.

With our VPS plans, you’ll get:

Security features match those on shared hosting, including DDoS protection, account isolation, and nightly backups.

Dedicated server options accommodate the most significant sites. Entry-level dedicated plans start at $169 per month with Intel Atom processors. Pro servers with Xeon processors run $439 per month.

Upgrading is simple. Open a support ticket, and we’ll handle the migration and transition for you, with no downtime. You don’t need to switch providers as your site grows.

Trusting Free Hosting Services

Free hosting attracts users who want to minimize startup costs. The appeal makes sense on the surface. Why pay for something available at no charge? However, hidden fees make free hosting a poor choice for any site intended to last.

Free hosts generate revenue through advertising. They display pop-ups and banner ads on hosted sites, often without regard to the site’s content or audience. The ads distract visitors and undermine professional credibility.

Resource allocation on free services remains limited and unpredictable. Bandwidth caps, storage limits, and CPU throttling constrain a site’s capabilities. Performance suffers as a result. Load times fluctuate, and availability cannot be guaranteed.

Security poses another concern. Free hosts lack the resources to maintain robust protections. Sites become vulnerable to hacking, malware injection, and data theft. When breaches occur, free hosts provide minimal assistance with recovery.

Technical support on free services ranges from inadequate to nonexistent. Questions go unanswered. Problems persist unresolved. Site owners have no recourse because they paid nothing for the service.

Free hosting also imposes branding limitations. Most free services provide subdomains rather than custom domains. A site URL like yoursite.freehost.com looks unprofessional and undermines visitors’ trust. The custom domain capability requires upgrading to a paid tier, which undermines the cost savings that initially attracted users.

Search engines treat free-hosted sites skeptically. The association with spammy or low-quality content can hurt rankings. Sites on free hosting often struggle to compete with those on paid platforms.

We offer real value at a low monthly cost. Our shared hosting starts at $2.95 per month, and the Lite plan includes:

• 25 GB storage
• Unmetered bandwidth
• Free SSL certificate
• Free domain for the first year
• Free site migration
• Nightly backups
• Softaculous for one-click installs of WordPress and 150+ apps
• cPanel for easy site management

You’ll find that these features go beyond what many paid providers offer at the entry level, and they’re a huge step up from what you’d get with a free service.

Ignoring Backup Policies

Data loss happens. Servers fail, software malfunctions, and human errors delete critical files. Hackers encrypt site data and demand ransom for its return. Without adequate backups, recovering from any of these events becomes difficult or impossible.

Free hosting services rarely include backup capabilities. Budget-paid hosts may perform infrequent backups or store copies at the exact physical location as the primary data, which does not protect against facility-level disasters.

Before selecting a hosting provider, verify their backup procedures. Ask how often backups occur, where copies are stored, how long they are retained, and how the restoration process works.

We perform automatic nightly backups on all accounts. Your data is copied and stored in multiple locations for safety. If you ever need to restore, backups are available instantly in your dashboard.

If you’re on Pro or Premium, you can create backups on demand—perfect before a big site update or plugin install.

And remember, our 30-day money-back guarantee gives you extra peace of mind. If our service doesn’t meet your expectations in the first month, you can get a full refund on hosting charges.

Not Checking Technical Specifications

Hosting plans advertise features using technical terms that many buyers do not fully understand. Storage space, bandwidth, database limits, and processing power all affect site performance. Selecting a plan without understanding these specifications can lead to insufficient resources.

Storage determines how much content a site can hold. Websites with extensive media libraries, large product catalogs, or numerous pages require more storage than simple blogs or portfolio sites.

Bandwidth governs how much data can be transferred between the server and visitors. High-traffic sites consume more bandwidth. Plans with strict caps may throttle performance or impose overage charges when limits are exceeded.

Databases store dynamic content. E-commerce sites, forums, and applications that manage user accounts all rely on databases. A plan that limits database capacity restricts the functionality a site can support.

Processing power affects how quickly the server handles requests. Sites that run complex scripts or serve many simultaneous visitors require more processing capacity.

We provide generous specs across our plans:

• Unmetered bandwidth on all shared hosting tiers
• 25 GB storage on Lite, unlimited on Pro and Premium
• Unlimited email accounts and databases on Pro and higher

We also keep our servers fast by limiting the number of accounts per machine. Each site runs in its own isolated container with dedicated resources and a secure virtual file system, so your performance isn’t affected by neighboring sites.

Our VPS plans make resource allocations clear:

• 2 GB RAM: 4 vCPU cores, 50 GB SSD, 10 TB transfer
• 4 GB RAM: more storage (75 GB) at $69.95/month
• 8 GB RAM: 6 vCPU cores, 150 GB SSD at $129.95/month

Missing the Renewal Price

Hosting providers advertise promotional pricing prominently while burying renewal rates in fine print. A plan priced at $2.95 per month during the initial term may increase to $11.95 per month upon renewal. Users who fail to notice this distinction find their hosting costs quadrupling after the first billing cycle.

The promotional rate typically requires a multi-year commitment. Monthly payment options, when available, often apply higher rates. Understanding both the signup and renewal pricing helps calculate actual long-term costs.

Our lowest rate of $2.95 per month is available with a 36-month sign-up. After that, the Lite plan renewal is $11.95 per month.

We believe in transparency. Our pricing is upfront and easy to understand. Our 30-day money-back guarantee covers you if you’re not satisfied. Upgrades from Lite to Pro or higher are seamless, and we’ll handle the migration for you at no extra cost.

If you want to keep monthly costs low, the 36-month signup is your best bet. Try us out on the Lite plan, then upgrade as your needs grow.

Overlooking Performance Capabilities

Page load speed affects visitor behavior and search rankings. Sites that load slowly lose visitors before the content even appears. Studies consistently show that most users abandon sites that take more than a few seconds to load. Search engines factor page speed into their ranking algorithms, penalizing slow sites and lowering their placement in results.

Hosting infrastructure determines baseline performance. The type of storage, server software, caching systems, and content delivery networks all contribute to load times. Budget hosts often use outdated technology that cannot compete with modern alternatives.

Solid-state drives read and write data faster than traditional hard drives. NVMe SSDs operate faster still. LiteSpeed servers handle requests more efficiently than older Apache configurations. Built-in caching stores frequently accessed content for quick retrieval. Content delivery networks distribute content across multiple geographic locations, reducing latency for visitors from distant places.

We use LiteSpeed servers with NVMe SSD storage and LSCache integration for all hosting. LiteSpeed can deliver up to twice the performance of Apache, and LSCache helps WordPress and WooCommerce sites load quickly.

We integrate with Cloudflare CDN to distribute your content worldwide. Choose data centers in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, or Singapore to keep your site close to your primary audience.

Independent testing shows an average load time of 1.29 seconds and 100% uptime during the test period.

Not Researching Provider Reputation

The hosting industry includes providers of wildly varying quality. Some have operated for decades with consistent service. Others emerge, collect payments, and disappear within months. Due diligence before purchasing can prevent costly mistakes.

User reviews offer insight into real-world performance. Look for patterns across multiple reviews rather than relying on any single opinion. Consistent complaints about support quality, uptime problems, or billing issues signal genuine concerns. Consistent praise for specific features suggests actual strengths.

Business longevity indicates stability. Providers that have operated successfully for many years demonstrate the capacity to maintain infrastructure and support customers over time. Newer entrants may offer innovative features but carry higher uncertainty.

Industry recognition provides additional validation. Awards from independent reviewers, certifications from regulatory bodies, and partnerships with established organizations collectively suggest that a provider meets professional standards.

We’ve been in business since 2008, and we manage over 600,000 websites for 55,000 customers. Our long track record shows we’re here for the long haul.

We’re committed to sustainability. Since 2009, we’ve been an EPA Green Power Partner. For every unit of energy we use, we invest in three units of renewable energy through the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

We also work with One Tree Planted, planting a tree for every hosting account created.

Our commitment to green energy places us among the top EPA Green Power Partners, alongside major brands you know.

If sustainability matters to you, our environmental practices are a strong match. We bring the same discipline to every area of our service.

Making a Sound Hosting Choice

Selecting a hosting provider requires evaluating multiple factors beyond the initial price tag. The hosting type must align with current needs while allowing for growth. Uptime guarantees should reflect actual performance, not marketing promises. Security features need to protect against real threats without requiring additional purchases.

Terms of service should be readable and fair. Customer support must be available when problems arise, not only during business hours. Technical specifications should provide adequate resources without artificial limitations.

We cover all these needs in one place. Our hosting options include shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting. Independent testing confirms we meet or exceed our 99.9% uptime guarantee. Every plan includes SSL certificates, malware scanning, firewalls, and nightly backups.

Our 30-day money-back guarantee keeps you protected. Support is available 24/7 by live chat, phone, or email. Our infrastructure, including LiteSpeed servers, NVMe SSDs, and CDN integration, delivers reliable performance.

Our environmental commitment means we match our energy use 300% with renewable credits, maintain EPA Green Power Partner certification, and plant a tree for every account we create. We’re genuinely invested in responsible hosting.

Our plans start at $2.95 per month. By choosing a provider equipped to support your site as it grows, you’ll set yourself up for long-term success online.