There are many things that can turn out to be disappointing when you've signed up for a website hosting service. Often, these complains stem from new webmasters who are just learning and don't know what questions to ask, or what to expect out of a hosting plan.
#1 Building a website is hard and complicated
The most common complaint relates to difficulty and complexity. While a web host is essential to building a website, they're also very different from the kinds of companies that build websites. Sometimes the two coincide, but more often than not, these are extremely limited services where you're renting the website software as much as you're renting the web hosting servers.
For most web hosts, they're basically just providing you with a file directory somewhere that is accessible from the internet. Your job as the webmaster is to put files and databases on to that file server - files and databases that can be interpreted by web browsers as web pages. This doesn't necessarily mean hard coding your website, however, as many easy to install content management systems exist to help you get publishing ASAP.
If all of this sounds like Latin to you, but you're still really sure that you want to start a website of your own, considering finding a web host that provides one-click installation of popular content management systems like Wordpress. These hosts provide a managed installation process that doesn't require a lot of technical knowledge to get started. You can always learn more along the way!
#2 My cheap host is slow
In other shocking news, cheap services are often of low quality. This phenomenon isn't limited to web hosts, but it certainly remains true there. While there are some great budget web hosts out there, there are also a lot of scammers who will make big promises they can't deliver.
How can you protect yourself? If you're technically savvy, you can set up a VPS with Linode, AWS, or one of the other high speed VPS services. These do require additional configuration by the user, and if CPanel was already giving you a headache this one will be double.
Otherwise, spend some time reading reviews. Not just the optimized sales pages that bloggers and host resellers set up to brag about how great their product is, but the ones written by actual webmasters. Check hosting forums for discussions led by users of different brands. Look up BBB reputations and search the web specifically for complaints. Every host can have a bad day, but what's important to look for is how and even if they manage to resolve their performance problems.
#3 Downtime
Downtime can cost you business - and even rankings in the search engines. After all, why would Google hurt its own reputation by endorsing and suggesting websites that are often inaccessible?
There are some tools that can help you measure and monitor your downtime - even for free - but it's a problem that's better to avoid in the first place. Search the web for instances of the hosting brand and downtime. Are these brief, isolated incidents? Or is it a recurring problem...?
Research twice, register once
While it's tempting to get started ASAP and everyone hates excuses that interfere with progress, it's important to consider your research as a valuable and productive thing to do. Moving from one web host to another will be a big hassle later on down the road, so taking some time to make sure you've got the best provider for your personal needs is always a good investment.
