One of the biggest problems with modern web hosting is choosing a reliable company. Reliable web hosts will keep your website online 99.9% (or more) of the time, deliver the content to your readers in a matter of seconds, and continue doing so no matter what the conditions. Among great web hosts like GoDaddy and HostGator, some sketchy ones have slipped into the business offering what appears to be deluxe web hosting at a rock-bottom price. These web hosts will make your website suffer from what I call server retardation.
By connotation, the adjective “retarded” is often used to insult somebody with a mental disability. By definition, however, the word “retardation” simply means slow or incapable, which is exactly how some web servers act. These retarded servers will harm your website in numerous ways as well as annoy your customers. Dealing with such a problem is simple – simply switch web hosting companies, but diagnosing your website with server retardation is even easier if you ask yourself these few questions.
Do You Host Your Website Yourself?
I have seen many people (mainly IT technicians) who want to set up a home web server and hard wire it into their Internet connection. There is nothing wrong with doing this to host files for your household or set up a small website for your fraternity, but anything with more traffic than a few hundred page views a month will require something a bit more powerful. For more information on this, see my post titled Why It’s Not Worth It To Run a Home Server.
Do You Utilize The Right Hosting OS?
One major reason your website could be running slow is because of the operating system the server runs. Linux has been shown to be the best operating system to run PHP and MySQL-based applications such as WordPress, Joomla, and most forum software. If you are trying to run one of these web applications using a server powered by Windows or another operating system, simply using Linux could fix all of your problems. For more information on this, see my post comparing Windows v.s. Linux v.s. Mac web hosting.
Is Your Web Host Known To Be Unreliable?
Before choosing any web hosting company, do some research about them. Never trust what they have written on their website because web hosting companies are very similar to cable and Internet companies – they just want your money. This is not to say that some companies do not have great customer support, but I’m simply pointing out that these companies will do anything for a paying customer. Ask yourself: how important is it that this company’s servers are wind-powered? Does it really matter that they host my site at four different locations for the best performance? Are their servers really up 99.9% of the time?
I would suggest researching every claim that a company makes by reading web hosting reviews, asking forums, etc. Don’t just accept what they are giving you as facts.
Is Your Website Running Slow?
One of the biggest annoyances as an Internet user is encountering a slow website. It happens to me all the time and I normally give sites a maximum of 10-15 seconds before I click the back button. This is hurting their bounce rate, which is a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm. Not only that, but by me clicking the back button, they are losing a potential customer or reader – depending on the type of site it was.
It’s understandable that your site may be running slow if you are using shared hosting and you have 2,000+ views a day, but if your website is running at a snail’s pace and you’re only getting 200 viewers a day, there’s probably something wrong with your server.
Are Your Readers Getting 500 Errors?
Besides an overload of IMAP connections, the most common reason for 500 errors with shared web hosting is too many requests being held on the server. If your site is getting a lot of traffic, but the server is slow, you are susceptible to getting timeouts. A timeout occurs when too many requests are being placed and held in the server’s queue for too long. Think about it… If you have a limit of 25 processes on your web hosting account, that means you can only have it doing 25 things at a time. If you are getting 3,000 views a day, that means you are getting approximately 2 new viewers every minute. If your website takes 45 seconds to load, then each minute you are racking up 1.5 minutes to complete two processes. Because 1.5 minutes doesn’t fit into that timeframe of one minute, you will eventually receive more processes than your server allows and a timeout (500 error) will occur.
Are Things Like FTP Uploads Failing?
One of the biggest problems I had when I used FatCow web hosting was dropped FTP connections. Back then (about a year ago), I mainly built my websites using Adobe Dreamweaver, so each page would have to be uploaded before it went live on the Internet. To do this, I used FileZilla or the built-in Dreamweaver FTP client, depending on what I was uploading. The problem occurred when I wanted to upload something like an audio file that was 4MB or so. The server would allow half of it to upload before timing out and then I would have to start completely over.
Is Your Server Retarded?
Did you answer “Yes” to any of these questions? If so, your server may be suffering from server retardation. Honestly, the only cure is to switch web hosting companies. I have been with three different companies in the short amount of time I have been running Omega Web (about 6 months so far). Switching a website from one server to another is fairly painless, but it could get a bit tedious if you have more than two or three sites to move. Nevertheless, it’s always important to have a fully functional server behind your website to ensure you are taking care of your customers.
Image Source: IT Resource
I have been with godaddy for some time now and well to say the least I am not satisfied. When I installed WordPress on there servers i had to first of all switch my hosting plan to linux just to get it to work. Then on the basic plan that I had it slowed to a crawl so I had to upgrade to their ultimate linux hosting plan. It works fine now, but the price is more than I would like to pay for hosting.
I would suggest switching to a better web hosting provider. I promote both HostGator and Web Hosting Hub. I’ll put both of the links below so you can decide 🙂
https://www.omegaweb.com/hostgator/ (use coupon code OMEGAWEB25 to get 25% off your order)
https://www.omegaweb.com/uses-web-hosting-hub/
Hey Ashley,
Yeah there are lots of unhappy customers with GoDaddy. Over the years I have collected a ton of them. Please look at my GoDaddy review and leave your personal experience there if you want to: http://www.the-best-web-hosting-service.com/godaddy-review.php
Sorry Ian to link drop on you I just personally hate GoDaddy!
I don’t mind people dropping links as long as they are relevant. Thanks for sharing, Garen!
Good description on some of the issues of hosting. I am on hostgator right now. I have heard good things about it. I also know that blueshost is also supposed to be good. If the blog grows then VPS would be a good idea. Would you say that if one gets 3,000 visitors a day then its time to move to VPS hosting.
Honestly, I’m not the person you want to talk to about this. I get about 4,000 unique visitors a month on this blog and about 2,000 on my aquarium blog. I use HostGator’s shared hosting, so I don’t know much about their VPS or dedicated or when you should switch. Although I do know that the amount of visitors you’re getting is way more than I am.
I do know that VPS and dedicated are more recommended for certain types of websites. For example, WordPress blogs use more resources than a site built with pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript because the WordPress site is accessing the database as well as a lot of files. And forums use more resources than a blog because it has a database but the users are constantly sending the database requests.
I do not know if there’s a set number of visitors when you should upgrade to VPS or dedicated, but if there is, you’re close to it. I would recommend calling HostGator and asking them, but being the company selling the hosting, they will most likely tell you that you need to upgrade.
The best bit of advice I can give you is to use shared hosting until it becomes a problem. If your blog starts loading very slow, timing out, etc, it may be time to update. Also, HostGator will ban you from the server momentarily if your site is using too many resources. I’m just going to use shared hosting until it becomes a situation to where I HAVE to update to VPS.
Yes hosting is major concern when coming to online business.
It`s not just about security but also speed which can improves SERPs. HG is one of the best hosting which provides max uptime. I too use HG 🙂
~@khajamoin1
I’m glad you are happy with HostGator as well. Do you have their shared hosting? Or do you use VPS or another more robust option?
Shared hosting as my blog is new.
Once I get high traffic will change to Dedicated server.
What do you prefer VPS or Dedicated?
I use shared hosting from HostGator right now. Once you outgrow shared hosting, it makes the most sense to go to VPS. Then when you outgrow VPS, you go to dedicated. You can’t really compare VPS and dedicated as they are two different things.
Hi Ian,
The idea of setting up an own server at home does not appeal too much to me for the simple reason that it can not take on too much traffic.
You are right- some servers are slow and take too much time loading a page. When I started my blog, the guy who set it up for me suggested me to use Lacehost. He had been using it for quite some time and assured me that it had never created trouble for him.
Now while it cost me a fraction of what Hostgator would have charged me.t has never created any problems for me so far in all these 5 months. If the loading time for my blog is too long, do let me know.
Small and relatively unknown companies can also provide you good service at times- if you are lucky enough! 🙂
I checked out your blog and it appears to be running fine. Most web hosts are generally the same, but it’s the super sketchy ones you need to watch out for. The ones that look like their website hasn’t been updated since 1995 sketchy ones…
Hi Ian Eberle, I’ve been with Godaddy since 2007 and they have been really reliable for being up. The only time I’ve ever been down was due to my own issues and growth of the site. I’ve also heard great things about Host gator as well. The only thing is now I’ve got a fully dedicated server and I’m responsible for it all which is pretty hard for me. I’ve had many challenges but thankfully real life friends have helped me work it out.
I actually used GoDaddy shared hosting for a couple of months before switching to HostGator. I had a great experience with them, but there’s some things they could have done better. I posted about that here – https://www.omegaweb.com/2012/09/why-i-switched-from-godaddy-hosting-to-host-gator/.
Whenever I outgrow my HostGator shared hosting plan, I will be on the lookout for the best VPS service. But until then I am enjoying the quality that HG is bringing to my sites.
Yes, never trust what someone says and what really is a big problem in the web hosting world. A lot of companies overload their servers not just shared hosting packages but also, VPS too. Very frustrating and it hurts the user experience, which in turn Google takes note of and lowers your rankings.
I agree. I am planning on moving to VPS whenever I need to and when I do I want to choose a reliable company. But for right now, HostGator is doing the job nicely.
Hostgator does offer VPS so you could easily just upgrade with them. I have 1 VPS Hostgator and 1 VPS Inmotion server.
I’ll have to think about it when the time comes. I know compared to other VPS providers, HostGator is a bit more expensive.