Okay, I’ve had to change web hosts half a dozen times in the
last year and I’ve noticed a pattern. It’s a very clear and
simple pattern, actually a series of behaviors on the part of
web hosting companies. These behaviors cause these companies to
lose customers and gain poor reputations.
To sum it all up in a single word: ethics. Web hosts need to act
ethically. As long as they are ethical towards their business
and customers, they thrive. When they become unethical, they
will fail.
What are web hosting company ethics? This is a code which all
hosting companies need to follow if they want to stay in
business for the long term.
The most important goal is up-time – Almost anything can be
forgiven as long as sites are up and running, as close to 100%
of the time as possible. Every feature provided by a hosting
company needs to be working and working properly. A small amount
of downtime (an hour or two in a month long period) is
acceptable, but more than that is not.
Every time I’ve had to change web hosts, this was the base
reason. Unexplained and unexpected downtime. Oh, there were many
excuses and many reasons which I’m sure were perfectly valid.
But the basic reason why I create and maintain a web site is so
people can see it – and they cannot see it if the site is down.
To make it even worse, sites which are down for a significant
length of time have side effects. Webrings owners often check
for broken rings using automated code – down sites will trigger
suspensions and even deletions. Search engines tend to drop
sites which are down too often or for too long a period of time.
And, of course, visitors may remove your site from their
bookmarks, thinking you have closed it or moved on.
The second most important goal is performance – I understand
that you want to jam as many sites on a single server as you
can. This is how you maximize your profits. Please understand
that all of the web sites which you host must perform well. So
don’t overload your servers.
Stay in communication – We all know that things happen.
Sometimes servers do crash and once in a while they require
maintenance. Let your customers know about important events. If
you are concerned that they might consider it spam, give your
customers the option to receive updates if they desire.
I had one host (Hostrocket) which performed, in my opinion, one
of the most hostile acts that I have ever seen against a paying
customer. I had a CGI script on my site which logged each 404
error in a text file. Normally this script was harmless and used
little CPU. Unfortunately, with the new breed of worms striking
the internet, 404 errors went way up and the script began using
large amounts of processor.
One day I tried to reach my site and didn’t get my friendly
front page. I got a “forbidden” error. I freaked out and sent
off a quick email to the web host support group. I didn’t
receive a response. Not a word (and it was only early
afternoon). I sent another, then another. Nothing. Finally, 18
frantic hours later, I received a note that my site was closed
down because of the script.
The number of four letter words that spewed from my mouth that
day would have turned a street girl’s face red. I was so angry -
not because they closed my site, but because these idiots
(again, Hostrocket) didn’t tell me what they had done. Because
of that, I wasted almost an entire day trying to figure out what
was wrong.
What I would have done had I been the technical person in their
company is simple. Just disable the script and send off an email
to the web site owner explaining why and telling him not to do
it again. If the owner ran the script again, then shut down the
site (and, of course, send another email).
Needless to say, I regained access to my site, copied my
databases to my hard drive, then switched web hosts. Within two
days I had moved my site to another, much better hosting service
(and, of course, I deleted the offending script).
Don’t test on your production servers – I know you want to
upgrade your Apache to the newest version or install the new
control panel right away, but please don’t immediately install
anything on your production servers. Believe me, your customers
don’t care about any of this – they want working sites. Saying
“everything is going slow because we upgraded” is not acceptable
- the host should know ALL side effects of any upgrades from
actual testing long before any change, however, small, is made
to a production system.
Do what you say you are going to do – I was with a hosting
company called Bizland for over a year. They were good most of
the time except for (a) excessive downtime, and (b) they didn’t
deliver on their promises. They kept saying CGI will be released
in April, then May, then June. Finally, I decided I could not
wait anymore (and also concluded the host was down too much) so
I moved my site.
Free hosting companies seem to have a bad habit of using
production systems as test beds. This is one of the strong
downsides to using free hosts – they really don’t care if your
site is up or not, as long as the advertisements are displayed.
Acknowledge your trouble tickets – One web hosting company that
I was with for quite a long time was Addr.com. These guys had
easily the best support so far. What stands out in my mind is
every single message that I sent got acknowledged by a human
being.
The sequence was as follows: I would send a trouble ticket and
get an automated response. A short time later, I got a note that
the ticket was handled. I always respond with a “thank you”,
because I’ve been a support person before and I understand the
power of getting thanked. Addr.com even responded to the thank
you with a “you are welcome” message!
To contrast, another hosting company (hostrocket again), had a
nasty habit of just closing tickets. I’d send in a question and
get an answer, then ask another question as follow-up. I would
never get a response, then check to see that the ticket was
marked “closed”. This is not the way to keep a customer happy.
Actually read your trouble tickets – I write very clearly in
trouble tickets, precisely because I’ve been a support person
and I know exactly what is needed. I’m constantly surprised at
how many times web host support people simply don’t read the
ticket and thus do the wrong thing.
One particularly glaring example was a ticket which I sent in
which said to set up a certain domain with bigmailbox. The
support person (from Hostrocket) changed the MX record for an
entirely different domain, in spite of my message clearly
stating “change it for domain xyz”. This caused my site to lose
email capability for two days until they eventually figured out
what they messed up.
Most importantly, remember where you get your money from – This
message is for all web hosting companies everywhere. Your money
comes from those people called webmasters. Free hosting
companies get their money indirectly via the content provided by
webmasters. With paid hosts the relationship is direct and to
the point – money is paid by webmasters.
If you annoy your customers or don’t provide service, then you
will find yourselves out of business. And in these days of a
looming recession, good customers are gold. Keep them happy and
your company will prosper.