How To Find The Best Web Hosting Brands

When it comes to web hosting, good branding has proven a red herring. Some of the best-marketed brands are the worst possible choices. Since hosting is quite an intangible product, well-known names tend to fool many customers into spending big on subpar service.

Take a look at these GoDaddy reviews for example. GoDaddy and Bluehost, two of the biggest names in hosting, consistently get terrible reviews from customers and experts. Their names come up first in Google searches, and because many new website owners don’t have much technical knowledge, this is enough to keep them making tons of profit.

So, if you’re not going by popularity, how do you find the best web hosting brands without much technical knowledge? These tips will help you choose wisely.

Customer Service is Key

When searching for web hosting, you should prioritise reviews about customer service. Experts can tell you about reliability, speed, and other technical factors, but only real clients can tell you about their personal experience. See, when it comes to hosting, it is often the brand’s response to adversity that matters most.

The reason is that no hosting is perfect. All hosting services will experience downtime, no matter how good they are. Downtime is therefore not always a good indicator of the quality of a hosting service. However, when your website is down, the lack of customer service can be more than just frustrating. You are unable to make decisions or contingency plans if you do not know what is happening. And you won’t be able to troubleshoot on your own.

Bad customer service is the main reason clients hate brands like GoDaddy and Bluehost. Any hosting you choose should have glowing reviews regarding what actually happens when things go wrong.

Don’t Ignore the Experts

That said, expert opinion is also important. Only customers can tell you about the sort of service they received from support. However, many customers will have very little experience with hosting, and therefore cannot tell you much more about the service. This is why it is crucial that you compare expert reviews.

Experts will have done the necessary research on how often downtime happens and if it is unusually bad. They will be able to tell you what you should expect from a good hosting service on a technical level, and whether the service you are looking at matches up.

They probably can’t give you personal experience, but their opinions should be given significant consideration.

A Variety of Plans

Right now, you may have a strong idea of what you need from web hosting. It could be that all you’re looking for is the most basic plan to help get your blog set up. However, what we’ve learnt from the past couple of decades is that the internet is a constantly-changing force. It is tough to say what it will look like a year from now, let alone in the next decade.

For this reason, you should choose hosting that offers a variety of plans and the ability to switch when necessary. Chances are, your website is going to evolve in ways you don’t currently expect, and your needs will change. When that happens, your hosting provider shouldn’t make the transition difficult.

Ultimately, branding can be deceptive when it comes to web hosting. Do the necessary research, paying careful attention to user reviews, rather than going with the big names.