Kudos for Imre, referred by RapidHost

Before we talk about Rapidhost, let me state this: Some hosting companies are truly very difficult to deal with. I will give you a clue and an example.

Clue:
Carry out the mathematical operation on the company name and the answer = 2

Example: 
Try to move a domain or talk to support and you get the feeling that life just cannot be this hard. In one example a client was dumped into a black hole and I was pleading with an Indian support manager to do the decent thing, which he promised to do. On the next phone call I found that he had finished his shift! Arrrghhh. Result, client email and website was down for 48 hours. No fault of ours, as we had been bady advised and supported on what should have been a simple procedure. (A procedure that we follow with many other hosting companies!)

Now let us talk about Rapidhost.
A  decent, capable, intelligent and a people oriented hosting company. They are a joy to deal with as you can actually talk to them, without cultural translations, and they really know their stuff. For a specific project we needed a load balancing solution and they simply and calmly organized the technology  and came up with a deal that would not break the bank of our startup client. Every interaction that I have had with them has been entirely professional whether it be on the sales side or working with the support team. Rapidhost show that on a daily basis hosting does not have to make your blood boil! Rapidhost are different and are worth a serious look. Simple.

The great news for us is that we have been added to the Rapidhost partner page. This is a great boon when you consider that the gesture was entirely theirs. We must have done something right! Thank you Rapidhost.

You can count on Namesco

A big thanks must go to Micheal Follet and Tom Vernon. Here at Imre we had a huge incident that tied us up in knots for the whole week.

Tom and Micheal were very efficient, pulled out all the stops, and got us up and running in super quick time. Offered great advice and were an extension of Imre to help our clients.

We only exist to serve our customers and when we really needed Namesco, they stepped up to the plate! Thank you!

If you want cheap hosting – good luck! If you want people who will stand behind you and who actually care, well then you wont go wrong with the Nameco dedicated support team!

Will hosting companies get a bad rep?

We have some very simple advice for you. When you are about to sign up for hosting make sure that the provider picks up the phone! I would say that on average we rescue 4 to 6 clients  per year……  Most people do not understand hosting technology, the procedures and best practice. So when things go wrong there are issues with emails, websites and who owns what. These issues can be very difficult to resolve due to data-protection and security….   So if you are dealing with a hosting company that does not pick up the phone and you have lost email…. what do you do?

Yet, we get those calls and most of the time after much agro we are able to help clients.  So avoid cheap as chips hosting, make sure the provider picks up the phone AND above all make sure that the domain is in your name. That last point seems obvious –  but at a recent networking meeting I stood up and asked how many people had actually made sure that their domain registration details were correct. Most people said yes –  I went back to the office and checked a couple at random  and guess what, the details were not correct.  Would you buy a house in someone elses name?  No? So why do it differently for a domain?

Let me give you an incentive. A friend of mine recenly had a domain valued at Sedo.com. To his amazement the report came back with a figure of £5000 and the initial investement was £9.99 + VAT. So who should be in control of that domain?

Back to the title of this post. Will hosting companies get a bad rep?  Yes and no. The stack em high and sell em cheap ones will. You need to understand the where the costs are. If you buy a domain for £1 and the hosting for £10 then you need to think about how many staff can be hired to service your problems. The answer is obvious – the hosting provider needs lots of YOUs all paying £1 and £10 just to employ one person. They rely on most people not having any problems. But when things do go wrong and everyone starts to phone in, and then imagine what happens next. Not a lot.

Take it from us, it may cost extra to have crumple zones in your car, but when it does crash you are certaily happy to have them. Same with hosting, you pays your money and you takes your chances.

Good hosting companies have good people.