If you own a website, then you have undoubtedly had a bad experience with a hosting company at one time or another. Sadly, over the last couple of months I have had a terrible time with hosting companies.
After being reliably hosted with KnownHost for a couple of years, I received a DDoS attack. When this happened, KnownHost quickly disabled my hosting plan and advised me to leave. They later changed their mind but when it happened again a few weeks later, I knew I had to find a host with good DDoS protection as they had stopped responding to emails and just wanted me to leave.
Unfortunately, I chose a company called Limestone Networks, who turned out to be the worst hosting company that I have ever used in sixteen years of working online (partly due to me making a rushed decision about finding a new hosting company).
I published a video about website hosting today. In the video I give a brief introduction to website hosting and speak about the problems I have faced over the last few months.
If you own a website yourself and would like to know more about hosting, I recommend watching it.
Hosting companies referenced in the above video:
Website backup services referenced in my video:
I also referenced the server management company Server Surgeon, the performance and security service CloudFlare, the blacklist checking service MxToolbox, and the website hosting discussion forum WebHostingTalk.
Last but not least, I referenced my internet marketing discussion forum Rise Forums.
Hi Patty. It sounds like you are on a shared hosting. As you have learned, unlimited hosting plans are nothing but a scam. As soon as you start using resources, they will ask you to leave.
Just yesterday! woke up to an email from HostGator saying that I had been “abusing CPU usage for an extended period of time” and that they were taking punitive meaures until I resolved the issues. After many hours of hard work, I find out that actually I had *not* been doing that for any period of time at all — only about an hour on one day, while SiteLock, which HG is partner with, did a huge scan — and that there was no reason for all the research and agonizing I had done all morning. They said, “Sorry!” I feel like sending them a bill for $150.
Hi William.
HostGator is primarily a shared hosting company. They make their money by targeting the low end of their market (i.e. cheaper plans for people who have small websites). They do offer VPS plans and dedicated servers, however their prices are very expensive. BlueHost appear to be a little better priced for VPS and dedicated plans.
I signed up to BlueHost once, however I signed up on the day they suffered lots of outages so I could not even access the VPS I paid for. As a result of it being offline for a day or so, I asked for a refund and didn’t use them. I was, however, really impressed with the support I received during it all.
I used HostGator once to host a small website. I didn’t have any problems with them, though I was only hosting a small website with little traffic. I cannot comment on how good their support as I never needed to ask for help.
HostGator do not offer DDoS protection. Neither does BlueHost.
Drop by Rise Forums and tell us what your requirements are. I’ll do my best to point you in the right direction. :)
Thank you for the very interesting story! I have just recently moved to Wordpress from Blogspot so security is my number one worry. I always keep my plugins and Wordpress up to date and additionally I use the “limit login attempts” feature from Itheme Security and Google Authenticator as an extra layer of protection for my login dashboard. I know these will not protect me from a DDos but at least I think because of my security measures and the fact that I always update my plugins and Wordpress that I wont get hacked like your old site that you never updated.
But I noticed that you did not mention Hostgator or Bluehost as hosting companies. Is it because they do not support DDos attacks or because their dedicated hosting is too expensive?
Please let me know since I am currently with Hostgator (shared hosting) and later on I might open a new account with Bluehost. I picked these two companies because they are well advertised and referred by some of the big names in the internet business like Patt Flyn and John Chow. Anyways if you are reading this please let me know your thoughts on these 2 hosting companies.
Thanks
I haven’t looked into doing that yet. I don’t have time to do it myself, though I am aware that there are services available online from people who will do it for you. However, at this point of my YouTube journey (i.e. with only 81 subscribers), I don’t feel that it is worthwhile.
Hi Kevin,
Is there a transcript for those who are faster readers than listeners?
Hi Kevin
its awesome info about hosting and also with video
good job man
Time will tell if Server Surgeon are good. Their pre-sales support was good, but I am not sure they live up to their promise of 24 hour support. Last night they migrated my websites and my websites were down because of an SQL error. They didn’t respond to my email for several hours.
The next day they advised this was caused by a PHP extension not being installed, though obviously there is a slight concern that something like this could happen when something serious is happening.
Fingers crossed they are good, but the good thing about this setup is that I can change to a different support service at any time and do not have to move my websites again.
Man Kevin you have definitely been through the ringer this last year when it comes to hosting. I think your new setup though will work great. You now have a beefy server and you got separate support from guys who appear to really excel at server management. Maybe now you won’t have to spend as much time troubleshooting and more time doing what you love.