Web hosting options and costs vary wildly. Website owners need to be able to rationalise and justify the additional cost of premium hosting. The benefits of more expensive premium hosting are not easily explained, and it is hard for people new to websites to understand the difference.
In the past, we tried to compete on price, but after experiencing the disaster of using low-cost hosting, we now take no chances and use premium hosting. Having used premium hosting for several years now, the difference is huge. Unfortunately, people new to websites don’t usually accept the higher price and go for the low-end option, which is their choice, but we always try to recommend good premium hosting.
Without naming all of the hosts that we have either had direct experience with or witnessed problems with. These are based on our experience at the time of writing this. Here are a few:
- Recommended: WPengine.com – We have used them for 3 years now without major issues. Premium pricing, but it has been worth it for us.
- Not Recommended: Rackspace – Expensive, but for a company that proclaims fanatical support, we have not experienced this level of support. They have failed us on a number of occasions, and we’ve really had to push for help with an issue.
- Take your chance: EUKHost – Low cost, but it was a disaster for us. However, other people we know have had good results.
Here is a breakdown of the difference in simple terms, avoiding the more technical aspects.
Low-cost hosting issues – All of which we have experienced
- Performance: Slow website, pages don’t load, and frequent downtime. The website is inaccessible to all or part of the web.
- Security issues: Getting hacked
- Backups: Poor backups or no backups.
- Backup can’t be relied on: Poor access to backups when needed. They often failed.
- Technical support: Poor or no technical support. Live chat dressed up as support, where everyone is following a script
- Blame-passing: When something goes wrong, they blame your software/website and don’t take any responsibility.
- The technical support fob-off: Something goes wrong, and you get sent to an article or help file.
So far, using WPengine
- Performance: Great uptime and fast load times
- Security issues: They seem very security-conscious
- Backups: Full backups
- Technical support: Real technical support from trained techies
Disclosure: No payment has been received to say any of this. This is our opinion based on real-life experience since 1999.