Identifying and Avoiding Dishonest Hosting Providers?

An anonymous reader asks: "Recently I have had the (dis)pleasure of dealing with the buyout and resulting problems problems of Managed.com by WebHostPlus, Alphared (aka Orangefiber) being dishonest about backup facilities (no power backups and not multi-homed), and CalPop overselling bandwidth. What can we do to protect us from these companies, they all seem to be have web sites and be real companies, but we seem to get scammed by them. The dishonest ones look a lot like the honest ones. We can't afford the attorney's fees or to build a data-center, and that is why we pay the monthly fee to host a server, but the companies do not have what they claim to, nor do they care about the customers. We contacted two attorneys in the United States and they said that the companies didn't have any assets worth going after. What does Slashdot think of these problems and what can we do to avoid them?"

Ask Slashdot?

What can we do? I dunno, write-up and ask slashdot that names them all so that all the technical people in the world avoid them in the future?

Of course, that'll only kill about 10% of their business. The rest of it comes from the clueless PHB set.

Google?

You could google for them and see what comes up; I'm sure that the tech types that have had trouble with them have posted in forums and boards detailing their troubles!

How about looking at the websites?

Well.. the first thing that comes to my mind is LOOK AT THE WEBSITE! All of these websites scream 'FRAUD' to me.

That's a tough one, really.

There are so many hosting providers out there, it really is a tough one. I think that if you're a member of various message boards then perhaps you could ask around on every one of them and see if any company's name comes up more than once or twice. Clearly you can't go by the claims made on a company's website, and those "hosting review" sites aren't any help, either, from what I've read.

Do your homework.

Referrals are a good place to start. Find out more about the data center; don't just hit the buy button on the website. How about taking responsibility for your reliability? That means having a backup plan and being able to quickly move to another facility. Its just like anything else really. Do you homework.

Web hosting Talk

Swing by http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ [webhostingtalk.com] and check them out before putting money down. A really solid community, where SOMEONE will have experiance with any given provider. And many of the members are more on the profesional side of thigns, not what another comment here refered to as "the clueless PHB set".

Ask Slashdot!

And be sure to post a link to one of their hosted sites in the summary. If they can survive a good slashdotting you don't have to worry about bandwidth and server capacity.

Think Global, Host Local

Besides referrals, it would seem like the most definitive method of assuring a hosting company's honesty would be to choose one local to you and ask to tour their facilities. Assuming you have serious need of reliability and backups (folks with blogs can keep their own backups and it isn't a crisis if the host has some downtime), they'll probably be willing to accommodate you. If they're not, then they might just be writing checks their systems can't cash...

NearlyFreeSpeech

I don't know what your exact requirements are, but http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ [nearlyfreespeech.net] is the best hosting provider I have ever stumbled across.

They charge *only* what you use, and I havent had any problem with my webstie. Even when once they reported some sort of attack, nothing seemed particulary at issue in any of the sites they host.

You can also host anything you want.
Check them out.

-AC

You can't

First off, you can not entirely avoid a dishonest host. Second, your vulnerability depends on the type of service you are looking for.

Dedicated:
If you want to be the safest with a dedicated server, order from one of the providers such as EV1 and TP. You are less likely to be screwed. The downside to this is higher cost and less personalized service. The large companies have their problems, but them disappearing generally is not one of them.

Shared:
No matter what, there is a good chance you will get screwed. It is simply the nature of the industry. There are thousands upon thousands of hosts out there. Before purchasing service, check for comments on the company at WHT (webhostingtalk.com). That will give you an idea of the hosts popularity (based on the number of complaints) and the level of service (based on the types of complaints). Most threads relating to companies are negative (a happy customer has no reason to post). More importantly, take a look at what you are getting. If the host is offering unlimited bandwidth or disk space, stay away. Every host out there counts on you using only a fraction of the resources allocated to you. If you are paying $20 month, do not expect to host a website getting thousands of visitors per day. Simply put, you get what you pay for.

More important than anything else, keep backups. If you don't have a backup from the previous 48 hours, it is your own fault.

It's a valid question...

So someone is looking for hosting. Go to Google. Find lots of hosting sites. Some featured advertisers, some just search results. In among all of the results, find sites that let the public review hosting providers.

You look over a few providers, pick some to look into in more detail, google for reviews, see they're all mostly good, and settle on one. Then you find _another_ site, where all the reviews for a hosting provider you picked are completely the opposite of everything else you've researched on them. You start to wonder which review sites are valid, and which ones are being astroturfed.

I don't really, outside of knowing people who host with X company and asking them, know of a way to find out if a site is good or not. I just recently had to find a new hosting provider (my free provider was closing up his space), and searched around for about 3 months before settling on a company, only to find an entire site complaining about all the horrible service and technical people they have.

When I moved, I started searching around some more for local hosting providers (I mived to Raleigh, Research Triangle Park is right here with piles of tech companies). I found a couple I liked, then googled their addresses to see where they were. The ones whose location didn't look like a place of business, I wrote to and asked what their hosting was like and where it was physically located. Asked a few technical questions (I actually had real questions, not just test questions, but if you don't have real questions, just make up some that you know the answer to and play dumb). I settled on one, and he's been pretty decent for me over the last few months, working through some wierd bugs that have cropped up on occassion.

So to answer your question - be very careful. When you google for reviews of the companies, don't stop at page 3 - go to page 10 or 15. Call and talk to someone there and tell them you're looking at someplace to move your hosting to. Send email with technical questions and see what answers you get back. If this is for business-class hosting, go to their hosting facility, they should be able to arrange a tour, if not of the raised floor itself, then the facilities and monitoring center and such. Basically, don't let other people's opinions be your sole guide, feel them out yourself and see what kind of impression they make.

Homework. Eyeballs. RTFC.

Step one: Know what you need. 'Reliable' doesn't mean anything. *How* reliable? To what level? What is an acceptable risk level for the facility your data will be in, or must your data be multihomed? If the latter, failover or clustered? Etc. Make sure that the company can tell you how it will meet all these requirements, in writing, to you and your lawyer's satisfaction before signing a contract.

Step two: Referrals. Who else do they host? Check uptimes. Talk to their other customers. If they won't give you references, or if they can't give you companies you've either heard of or can verify have existed and are independent, walk.

Step three: Read the contract. Better yet, have your lawyers read the contract. Anything fuzzy? Push them on it. If they waffle at all, or look like they're trying to get you to sign terms they might give way on if you push (not the price, the *terms*) DANGER. Established hosting companies should have their risks well set out and know what it will cost them to assume whatever level of risk - at worst, they should simply change pricing if you try to reassign risk, or simply tell you they don't offer that service level.

Step four: GO LOOK AT THE FACILITY. No excuse for that. If your business is going to depend on this facility, you need to see it. No trusting web photos. This is your place of business and your physical plant. If your business depends on it being available, or worse yet on it being something that you describe to *your* customers, it's your responsibility to eyeball it. If you don't know what you're looking for (and if you're a business type, there's no shame in that) then find a technical person to eyeball it with you and pay them for their time.

Step five: If you're concerned about their available bandwidth, ask to see bandwidth reports. Ask for peers who can verify their connectivity. When you visit a facility, ask to see the external switching facilities and rough-count circuits if you have to. If you're still concerned, then tell them you want legal guarantees (with penalties) in the contract for available bandwidth - they shouldn't bat an eye at that, since the more bandwidth you (verifiably) use, the more they should be able to bill you, probably. If they balk at potential penalties for short bandwidth, there's likely a problem. Typically, they themselves will offer tight bandwidth monitoring just so they can bill you for those bits.

Step six, and final for me: HAVE A BACKUP PLAN. Things can and will go wrong. The best hosting provider out there might suffer incredibly bad luck and multilevel catastrophe. EVERY admin will have horror stories of 'the two things that would never go wrong together' going wrong. My favorite is a switching center in downtown Boston having *both* of its redundant data pipes being taken out by construction on the same day by the Big Dig, on opposite sides of the building. This might mean having a small backup system in another center on the smae provider. It might mean having a staging system in a home office that can be brought live on limited bandwidth. I don't know, that's *your* problem. It might just mean having a really good PR checklist. But HAVE A PLAN.

Sure, if you're not dependent on an uptime number, these steps may not be necessary. But if, as the question seems to imply, your success or failure will be tightly coupled to the reliability of your hosting provider, then there's no substitution for Doing The Work.

WHP

For the most, it will be hard to avoid, especially when another company aquires your former host. I ran into this recently when WHP (yep, the same company in the OP) bought out Netbunch. It went from a crown jewel of a hosting company into a nightmare almost overnight.

Blotched migrations (why keep the nice shiny fast servers, when we can move you to our own slow oversold ones?), horrible support (tickets unanswered for weeks or closed without reply), constant downtimes (usually 2-6 hours / day for weeks on end), and completely incompetent techs (Can even follow simple instructions it seems).

WHP doesn't seem to have a grasp on how to handle migrations, nor cares to learn from their mistakes. Just google them to see their handy work all over the place. Which leads to the best advice anyone can probably give, research the host fully first. A hosting provider not showing up in any of the webhosting forums is not always a bad thing, as it seems to be human nature to complain 10x as much as praise. Along as the host isn't "new" then you should have plenty to go off of.

Also, find out when they were started, and be sure to google the whois address and the support's telephone number to see if you get any hits. A lot of bad hosting providers have multiple sites under different company names, but ofcourse have the same main office and the same support hotline.

imagelinkusa.net comments

having a single point of data but i have had good results from imagelinkusa.net

1 linux server (i think its RedHat)
2 direct ftp/http access to the server
3 unlimited subdomains/email/sql dbs
4 fast service (i had to do a bit of a reset and they moved my stuff to a new server/reset my cp password and did a package upgrade all in the matter of 5? hours

not that i have anything big on site but THE SITE DOES NOT GO DOWN and if they dink with the servers you get a set of emails (weeks before, week before, during , just after)
psst if you do decide to go with them mention laurencemartin.com

Let the BOFH be your guide...

Two ways:

1. Hack a server or two and have a poke around the network yourself to see what they have.

2. Assume the worst when talking to them. If you say with full and complete confidence that you know they're lying, they'll admit it (if they are).

Go visit

If at all possible, go visit. Then ask them to physically show you all the things they promised.

One place I looked at promised backup power. Then when I asked to see it, they explained that they only had the fittings and a contract for a backup generator that would be delivered in a couple of hours. Given that they are in San Francisco, that's a stupid plan, my-nurse-only-lets-me-use-a-spoon stupid; in an earthquake, their provider wouldn't have enough generators and probably wouldn't be able to deliver them anyhow.

I didn't bitch-slap them. But I should have.

crystaltech

been hosting with them for about 4 years now.

And yes, they now do linux...

This is why you work a couple years for others

Because over time you'll see what the good bosses buy and what the lazy bosses buy.

Eventually, when you start your own business, you'll have a good bead drawn on what works.

It's complicated

A complicated testing strategy involves contacting the city council of the host site's residence. Ask them to turn off the power to the city for 5 minutes and see what stays up.

Hey it sounds hard to pull off, but it beats simulating an earthquake or hurricane.

Don't go with 'flashy' hosts.

First of all, don't go with 'flashy' hosts that try to woo you with their whiz-bang web design unless it's one of the big, well-known hosts. By this, I mean look at their website design. Does it look like a template? The sort that involve stock art pictures of people. If so, stay away.

Second, are the prices absurdly low, or are the figures absurdly high for the price? If so, stay away. (I would also imagine that you want to go for neither the lowest or the highest price you can find.)

Third, you probably don't want to go with one-man webhosts, or hosts run by teenagers. If you can find proof that the webhost is neither, that too makes it a better candidate.

Fourth, yes, WHT [webhostingtalk.com] is a very good community. You should do a search on any host before choosing them. It's usually the negative reviews, not the positive reviews that really matter. There can be any number of positive reviews for a company, but one negative review can tell you everything the positive ones didn't.

Fifth, what does the host claim, datacentre-wise? You might want to look for hosts that host in GNAC [gnac.com] or ThePlanet [theplanet.com], or claim to, rather than claiming to (or having) have their own datacenter (unless it's one of the very big hosts). Even if the host does have its own datacentre, ask yourself: is it really likely to live up to the former two?

Sixth, yes, do ask people you know. I don't reccomend Google. Search engines use ranking algorithms, and thusly can and are gamed. People aren't so much.

Seventh, I have heard very good things about ASmallOrange [asmallorange.com].

Host with a Telco or Big ISP

All the companies I've worked for have either used a large/dominant Telecom or a well established, large customer base ISP. You won't get the cheapest deals in the world (far from it), but they do have the infrastructure to provide for your needs. Especially if you are using them for business critical systems.

Get in touch with your credit department

usually found in accounting, marketing, or similar (although often not in purchasing).

Somewhere in there, you will have a credit analyst. Make friends with this person. They will have access to Dun & Bradstreet reports, paydex scores, and a host of other information about the hosting provider. They are the best people in most companies to research other companies -- because that's what they do for a living.

In a smaller company, it might make the most sense to speak to the department head/CFO, because you don't want their normal sales analysis, but rather a dependability analysis (similar, uses many of the same things, but not automated).

If you have questions, ask for CPA certified financials -- or at least a letter of attestation from a CPA firm that says they own/lease the multiple facilities, lines, etc. and that the company and pricipals are financially sound.

Go local

You'll want to be able to apply legal pressure if possible and you won't want some weird law in another country to trip you up. As an example, the company I work for is not based in the USA and has worked on some oil exploration data orininally gathered by the USSR in Iran. Obviously getting that back to the clients via an ftp site in Texas (one of the best economic options) would be a bad idea in case some loonie decided it was in his nations intrest to show it to a lot of people - most likely eventually including competitors of our client because spooks would need an expert opinion. Other countries have other laws designed to stop money laundering or have some effect on terrorism (or use that as an excuse) which could have unexpected consequences and hit you will collatoral damage - as well as the obvious theives which are hard to get if they are in another country.

Like anything else... get references!

Especially at the low end, you have to do a bit of searching on sites like SitePoint forums or WebHostingTalk. Keep in mind, almost every large web host will get a bad review now and then; however, as long as there doesn't seem to be a large number of complaints, you're off to a good start. Unfortunately, with hosting, it is possible to offer pretty decent basic hosting packages at very low prices. If the host is good everything is automated, hardware is cheap (for everyone), and bandwidth at a datacenter is cheap. So it's not safe to assume that you get what you pay for.

The best thing to do IMHO, is to get a personal reference from either a comparable website to yours or a friend who actually uses the product. For instance, when I was looking at VPS's about two years ago, it was very reassuring to find out that Damn Small Linux was hosted with the provider that I had short-listed (and eventually chose).

several things to consider....

We are a small ISP/hosting/consulting firm and just because we're small doesn't mean we can't/don't offer quite a few of "extras" like generator power multi-homed and plentiful backup space. Just because a company is small doesn't mean they can't provide. But at the same time you can't take their word for it either. Find out where their facilities are and ask for a tour. Sometimes a tour might not be possible due to security restrictions on facilities, but that doesn't make it any less likely that they can't provide. For example we are in a building that's shared by about 30 other companies. While I could allow you access to our areas, I couldn't get you into the rest.

Doing your homework is always best. The internet is a wonderful tool and when used properly the answers to all your questions are out there. I say this often, and it holds true in just about everything. Cost is always a concern noone wants to spend more than they have to, but if someone is selling you an entire cabinet for $400/mth power included, I would question where they are making their money. That's not to say that you should willingly pay $2000 for a single cabinet, but cost and quality are usually related to each other.

Referrals are probably one of the best ways to go. Because we are small and are forced to compete with the big guys we have to cut corners. While I refuse to cut corners where it matters, I have to shave on the "extras" that aren't necessary for operations. For example, instead of spending $100k on advertising a year, we buy equipment. Instead of buying $2k desks and $8k conference tables, we buy....equipment. I think you get the idea. Since we spend very little money on advertising our growth comes specifically from word of mouth. There are plenty of good providers out there just like us that operate the same way.

Basic checks

You should: 1) Check with local LUG members and find few good hosting services. 2) Check what google/other people has to saying about them. 3) If required check edgar database. (for their financial position) 4) Check SLA. Now a days all hosting service provider offers a months trial, if not then atleast try them out for a month before moving your website/business with them.

go with what people recommend

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ [webhostingtalk.com] good place to start researching. For me, Pair has always done me good.

I use 1and1 because...

Hi,

I have been using 1and1.com [1and1.com] as my provider for about 3 years.

They are a very large company, originally from Europe. In Germany they are the largest hosting provider. What they did when they entered the US market 3 years ago was what brought me to them:
Any other company would have spent the allocated marketing millions for buying ad space and all that stuff. They gave away their best (shared) hosting product for free for 3 years, no strings attached - no ads (on your site), no need to stay with them after the period. Free hosting on a shared Debian-based system with Mysql, PHP, etc. for nothing. I thought that was a GREAT idea compared to what any other company would have done (i.e. "traditional marketing" using ads). For a large company trying to rely on word of mouth marketing instead of "doing what everyone else does" is very good, that's why I like them.

After two years I used an upgrade offer for those early adopters like me, and now I've their "Developer Hosting" (Linux, shared server) for half the price. I've had no reason for complaints, except that their support works "the Unix way": no news is good news ;-) When I complained about a problem (after the plan upgrade my quota hadn't been changed) I never got a response, but the problem was solved quickly.

I would not use any small companies as a hosting provider. Maybe if I knew they in turn host at a large facility and I needed the sepcial services of that small company for something, but not for a standard off-the-shelf hosting plan. Competition is all nice, but I prefer my server to be in a hosting location like the one I once visited in Sao Paulo (Brazil): huge, extremely clean, two huge ship diesel engines for backup power (and huge batteries to last until they were up), great connections to several Internet backbone providers at once, not just one, excellent security, etc. The company I once worked for rented a small room in some old building in Oakland (CA) and put a few servers and a movable AC in - I don't want that kind of hosting for myself (we were not a hosting provider, we were so stupid to do that for ourselves instead of outsourcing).

Just my own opinion, I've no experience worth mentioning with other providers than 1and1, only with their shared hosting plan and I've no critical apps running.

Oh, maybe one more thing. I said in Germany they're #1, but #2 is not far. It was interesting to see that the two largest German hosters (for some readers who may misunderstand what I say - 1and1.COM is American, you won't have your servers in Europe, okay?) use tow radically different approaches:
1and1 uses decentralized small Linux boxes (or MS Windows, but Linux is their default) for all hosting, they're more like Google (they also use lots of boxes). The other large provider developed the opposite structure: a huge server (Sun) and net attached storage. Of course, things have developed, don't know how much things have progressed, they're now putting lots of ads for Opteron based servers in the papers, but I don't think they threw away the single server for shared hosting. Anyway, I liked the 1and1 philosophy much more - another reason for me to stay with them.

Michael

A few tips

There's a few things you can do:

• Traceroutes. try to trace the route to your prospective hosting provider from as many worldwide locations as you can. traceroute.org is your friend. Look at what carriers they go over, and if those are any good.
• Someone else mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again because it was a very good tip: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ [webhostingtalk.com] ... Many hosters roam those forums and they're making offers there that you don't normally see. That's where I got my server with 10 mbit flat for just over 100 EUR, and there's also a lot of people talking about their experiences with various hosts. It's probably the best friend you'll have on your quest.
• As far as support is concerned, you have to know what you can do yourself and what you can't. If you can help yourself, you're always better off because you can get a much less expensive server. Support these days is at a premium, especially good one. Also, if you have any choice, don't count on their support. Most companies seem to have completely incompetent tech support stuff these days :( Plus the response times are often dysmal, even if you have to pay extra for it.

Don't know if they offer what you want, but...

If you aren't familiar with the DirectNIC Hurricane Katrina saga, google "directnic katrina" and read a few of those stories, and check out the back pages of "http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/" and see if you think they're your kind of people.

How about doing business in your community?

I work for a regional hosting provider and a pretty decent percentage of our business comes from within 100 miles of our location. We probably have one or two potential clients dropping by per week to talk to our tech staff and see what we have to offer. Are we more than $12.95 a month for hosting? You bet we are. Do we provide better service? You bet we do.

You can come take a look at my big honkin UPS system, my generator backup, and I'll be happy to sit you down and walk you through our multihomed, multiredundant systems.

So, back to my point, how about cracking open your local phonebook and seeing if there is a hosting company right in your community that will work with you, answer your phone calls, and let you come look at their stuff.

Go local!

Find a local webhost. Ask to tour their datacenter -- verify for yourself that they are what they claim to be. And for Pete's sake, remember my first rule of technology: You get what you pay for.

If you're paying $5/mo. for webhosting, do you really think you're getting top-notch service??

nearlyfreespeech.net

Since I haven't seen it yet, I'll put a shoutout to nearlyfreespeech.net [nearlyfreespeech.net].
I really enjoy their service, and the price is definitly right, kind of pay as you go.

Go Local

Find a provider who's local to you, ask to tour their data center, and make your decision from there. If they're local they're probably part of the Local Business Council and you can check up with them there too. Also small providers will provide you with better support and won't dump you if you become "unprofitable" like the cheap mass hosters will. They likely will charge more than a low cost hoster, but you get what you pay for.

Pre-sales questions

You must, no matter what, ask before buying... Ask everything you can think of and even if that means that you need to ask for their plans should they sell their company - do so.

http://whreviews.com/ [whreviews.com]

That's a good site to use to find honest hosts and to show one how to dig through the mess to find one that's not listed. I think you'll find that the information there is still pretty current and worth reading.

Full disclosure: KGIII

Call them

The industry is full of "kiddie hosts," who resell part of a dedicated server or whatnot. Some might actually be decent, but I think a nifty little trick is to try to find a phone number for the place, and call them. They can have a great-looking website, but if the person that picks up is bewildered as to who you are, it's probably not a good pick.

Try reading the reviews.

Most of the services you mention have bad reviews. These are all cheaper services too. Sometimes you get what you pay for. I have hosted many sites over the years and I've found that even the "reputable" companies can sometimes have problems. My solution was to do one of two things. Host locally (so if there is a problem I can drive over and talk to someone face-to-face) or with someone I know (I'm currently hosting all of my sites with simpli.biz, which is ran by SlashChick [slashdot.org].)

Re:Tour...

That seems like a wonderful way for a con-artist to get free trips across the country with impunity.

In other words, get real. No company would ever agree to that. The reverse, perhaps, if you were to pay for the trip and they pay you back if you decide to go with them...