Yes, your web host matters
Selecting a web hosting provider is usually at the bottom of a long list of priorities for a business launching a website. Especially for smaller, simpler sites, it hardly seems like a thing that should matter. What matters is that the site is there. And hosting is a commodity after all, right?
Not quite. While physical servers have become pretty well commoditized, the service delivered to customers has not.
Selecting a good hosting provider won’t make your website better and it won’t drive business for you. However, selecting a bad hosting provider can slow your site, put your data at risk, tank your budget, and cause you more grief than a leaky roof. A recent thread on reddit.com detailed one customer’s experience with a fly-by-night hosting provider, Stay the f—- away from This*. Following a public dispute with the hosting provider, the provider pulled the customer’s data without notice.
We recently helped a new client with a small project of moving their website to a new hosting provider. The provider was a large ISP with great rates, but the interface they provided to the customer was a nightmare, and the system they used more so. In the end we suggested a new hosting provider (WebFaction) and the deployment took half the time from start to finish. Plus the client’s site is faster and they can control everything with a much friendlier interface. It’s even less expensive.
Our recommendations to customers and non-customers vary greatly depending on what they need. We use services like Rackspace for much of our own hosting, but that’s because we’re comfortable with and desire access to more basic systems configuration. For shared hosting plans, your best bet is a company with lots of experience and a happy user base, like WebFaction or MediaTemple. For some businesses, it makes sense to have the whole thing hosted by a company that provides the site structure, too, like Squarespace or Business Catalyst. And in case you were wondering, if you’re using your domain name provider for hosting, yes, you might want to look elsewhere.
Note: we are not affiliated with any company mentioned here.
