So Bluehost our hosting company went down yesterday for close to 16 hours. a record I believe as far as system outages go.
A long time ago when I first started in this business, I would have been driven to Vodka, Tequila or even conceptually to strapping explosives round my waist and running deep into their headquarters (I kid).
These days, it’s not even a blip to me.
You see the truth is, as the web gets more crowded, every hosting company is vulnerable to some sort of outage here and there. Between incompetence, hacking and good old infrastructure overload, anyone who knows about IT knows that if computers can malfunction, they will.
It was fun to watch the Bluehost support Twitter feed go bananas as customer after customer wailed and complained about their website being down. The customer service was superb. They responded to every tweet with variations of the same message “We’re working on it and we’ll let you know.”
I have tried every major hosting company and they all have their idiosyncrasies. Some have great customer support and crappy hosting plans, some are too expensive, some are just crap. I love Bluehost because their dedicated server packages are (usually) the most stable and best value for the money.
Some advice to you if you’re starting out in this business. Find a host that is affordable and you feel comfortable with. The truth is, as you get more experienced, you will start to notice that need different things.
Support by phone may be more important to you or Linux vs Windows Operating Systems or as in my case, the amount of RAM may make the difference.
When you find a host that is reasonably able to provide all the features you need, make peace with the fact that things may go wrong at some point. As long as the BS is few and far between, don’t stress it.
Remember this is a marathon not a sprint.