With the proliferation of companies to choose from and even local operations springing up in spare bedrooms it is becoming increasingly difficult to discover the bad web hosts and separate them from the reputable ones.

One of the first signs of a bad company that should set off sirens and warning bells in your head is lack of support. This is the easiest and quickest way to tell, if the company isn’t returning your phone calls or emails then it’s simple, they are no good. This is typical of the type of companies we see springing up all over the internet that have no support staff and offer no customer support whatsoever. Be careful and stay away from the small fly by night web hosts. Cheap can be costly in other ways, I like to test them ahead of time by calling in to ask about features and see how long I have to wait on hold listening to elevator music or how many push button prompts I have to go through to get a real person.

Still another way to check out a web host is to look at their profit. If the web host you are looking at is traded publicly take a look at their profit reports, if they are then you’re in good shape, if not you probably want to look elsewhere. If you are looking at a private hosting company take a look at the prices they are charging, are they the cheapest or are they in the middle? It is best to choose someone in the middle as those offering the cheapest are either cutting features, have no support, or are simply not making enough money to be able to remain a viable business.

Another easy to see issue is constant price changes. If the company is constantly adjusting prices it indicates they don’t know what they are doing or they are starving from charging to little to begin with and are now having to make adjustments.

For hobby sites or web sites that really don’t matter much it may not hurt you tremendously to have a bad experience with a web host, but if you are like many of us on the internet and are actually trying to earn a living, a bad web host can destroy your business overnight. Keep close tabs on the company you choose until they have proven themselves to be trustworthy.