Don't be fooled by Web Host Marketing Tricks

The web hosting market is very competitive. The competition is becoming more and more aggressive every day. Web hosts are offering a wide range of attractive plans. Some web hosts use marketing tricks to attract (or sometimes deceive) customers. How to avoid this situation?

Read Terms and Conditions
Many customers unwisely ignore reading the details of a host's terms and conditions. They depend on the brief and attractive write up of the hosting plan. Many web hosts are able to deceive customers because of this. To avoid being tricked or deceived by these marketing tricks, take your time reading the terms and conditions carefully and completely. If you run into a web hosting term you can't figure out, but it makes you wary, copy and paste the paragraph in an email and send it to us. We'll send you back a more down to earth explanation of its meaning.

Unlimited Space and Bandwidth?
A lot of hosts offer "unlimited" space and/or bandwidth in their plans. This is the most widely used marketing trick. In reality, there is no such thing "unlimited" space or bandwidth. A web hosting server is actually a computer, similar to the PC you are using now. No matter how powerful the web host server is, its hard drive space is limited, and it can only transfer limited amount of data during a given period of time.

Most hosts that offer "unlimited" space and bandwidth will put restrictions on some file types and sizes. For example, they will disallow you to put video, audio or executable files on your site. In other cases they will allow any file type given it's not exceeding certain size (e.g. 500KB). Sometimes they use a generic condition to prevent consuming their resources. An example condition will be: "we may find a customer to be using server resources to such an extent that he or she may jeopardize server performance and resources for other customers. In such instances, we reserve the right to suspend that site immediately".

Un-metered Space and Bandwidth
The term "un-metered" is closer to reality. They imply to you that the offered space/bandwidth is limited but not watched. This is, however, not 100% true with all web hosts. Suppose I buy a $20.00 per month hosting package and then try to run a huge site like Ebay or Yahoo through the server to take advantage of the unlimited space. I can be sure someone from the web hosting company will be phoning me pronto to have me upgrade to a much larger package.

We have found only one web hosting company that means what they say regarding "un-metered bandwidth". MidPhase offers true un-metered bandwidth. See MidPhase review: Click

Unlimited Websites
Or sometimes it's called "unlimited domains". This probably is the most honest marketing phrase, although it sometimes confuses naïve customers. It simply means that you can point as many domain names as you want as long as you are within the space and bandwidth limits. This is good if you plan to have more than one website, but if you are intending to build only a single website then you do not need this feature.

$1 hosting plan!
Sometimes you might see a hosting plan that offers space and bandwidth (that usually costs $10 or more) for very low prices such as $2 or less. You might get the space and bandwidth stated in the plan, but you should not expect the same level of support and reliability. When buying an extremely cheap web hosting package beware, there is always a catch. Web hosting companies can not stay afloat financially by charging $1.00 or $2.00 for their services. Another point to consider is that web hosting companies dole out technical support according to what you pay for their services.  Cheaper web hosting also always means more customers sharing the same server, which means less performance and reliability. 

Bad neighborhood.
Also consider that your web site will be sharing server space with not exactly the best of the web, which leads to the following politically incorrect fact of life online. Many of the super cheap or free web hosts are blocked entirely from  sending email to or accessing thousands of major Internet service providers. Our company has found it necessary to block thirteen different free web hosts and their clients and two free IP companies from viewing our web sites or sending us email due to excessive Spam and theft of bandwidth by their users. So, if you use a free web host or free IP service, agree with it or not, you still will get penalized online.

These are a few  of the tricks used to attract customers, of course there are more. Reading terms and conditions carefully, reading customer reviews, and consulting experts will help you avoid being deceived by these tricks.

Please note: There are a few legitimate web hosting companies online that do not resort to marketing tricks to get your business. We at HostingCompanies.com have filtered out the less than ethical web hosts and present you with excellent choices in our Web Hosting Reviews located in this web site.

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