Choosing the right host for your website – our #1 choice

Choosing the right host for your website is one of the most critical choices you will make for your online business. The wrong host can kill your business. Finding the right host for your website is not something to leave to chance.  There is nothing worse than having an unreliable host who doesn’t care about their customers. I learned this the hard way.

You can build a beautiful site on many different host platforms.  But if your site is really slow to load, no matter how much you optimize, or if it’s constantly going offline due to server errors or shutdowns, it’s not going to convert well, if at all. Choosing the right host is critical.

Photo by Tranmautritam from Pexels

I’ve tried a number of different hosts over the years, including the one we now use.  In fact, this is the second time I’ve used our present host.

Disclaimer:  Certain links on this site are affiliate links for which the owner is remunerated for sales and/or leads./small>

After trying several different hosts, I finally arrived at Bluehost.  They did a pretty good job, and were helpful if there was ever a problem, but of course they weren’t perfect (who is?), and when a host offering unlimited hosting with a whole lists of affiliate programs included, I switched over. Big mistake!

Unfortunately, it turned out that our new host was more interested in selling all kinds of get-rich-quick schemes than being a good host.  It was a very frustrating and expensive.  Their support was hard to reach, slow, overworked, and just not very good at their job.  Every time I had a problem, getting help was difficult and I often had to figure it out myself – and I am not a trained tech guy!

I should have moved everything when I was hacked. One of their tech guys rolled back the PHP version for my site without letting me know, which opened it up to being exploited by hacker robots – and that is exactly what happened! Your PHP version needs to be kept up to date, because hackers send out virtual robots programmed specifically to look for known PHP weaknesses to exploit – and those weaknesses DO get exploited when they are found.

When I tried to get help from Support to find and remove the malicious software, they told me I was going to have to fix it, and they wouldn’t turn my sites back on until it was fixed.  All my sites were down, because they are all on the same server.

I finally found and fixed everything and was put back online, but it was a terrible experience, and a big hit to my traffic flow (and therefore my profit).  But I decided to give them another chance (silly me).

The last straw was when I lost everything, and their backup didn’t work!  The problem was caused, it turned out, by their carelessness.  THEY got hit by something – they never said what it was – but all my databases disappeared.  Without databases, your website can’t work.  So I was down for the count.  And they did not help.

Image by Mediamodifier

I finally got the message.  Web hosting wasn’t important to my web host.  Their only interest was in getting as much money out of everyone with all their scammy programs as they could.  So, here I am, back where I should have stayed – with Bluehost. Choosing the right host is probably the most important thing you can do when preparing to go online with your own website.

I’ve tried other hosts, too.  Most of them have been all right, but one of them shut down without any warning.  It turned out they weren’t paying their bills!  The good thing at that time was that I had good backups and was able to get started on another host.  But it had me shut down for several days.

Other other hosts were fine, but didn’t have any good setups for anyone with multiple sites. That made it very expensive to run multiple sites, which is important when you market in multiple niches. That’s because trying to sell everything on one site is a sure recipe to sell nothing.

Then I discovered Bluehost.  They offer unlimited hosting for a very good price.  They also offer excellent support.  So, here I am to stay!  In fact, I plan to upgrade shortly to a pro account which will give me even more speed and options. The price is just too good to turn down!

What is your experience? Please tells us about it in the comments. Don’t forget to leave us your link!