Web hosts are offering wide range of attractive plans

Choosing a Web Host

Web hosting market is very competitive. The competition is
becoming more and more aggressive every day. Web hosts are offering wide range
of attractive plans. Some web hosts use marketing tricks to attract (or
sometimes deceive) customers. How to avoid this situation?

Read
Terms and Conditions

A lot of customers ignore reading the details of
host's terms and conditions. They depend on the brief and attractive write up of
the hosting plan. Most web hosts are able to deceive customers because of this.
To avoid being tricked or deceived by these marketing tricks, take your time
reading the terms and conditions carefully.

Unlimited
Space and Bandwidth

A lot of hosts offer "unlimited" space
and/or bandwidth in their plans. This is the most widely used marketing trick.
In reality, there is no such "unlimited" space or bandwidth. Any
person with a little background about web hosting must know that a web host is
actually a computer, similar to the PC you are using now. No matter how
powerful the web host is, its hard drive space is limited, and it can only
transfer limited amount of data during a given period of time.

Whenever you see a hosting plan offering
"unlimited" features you must remember it's not real. This, however,
does not always mean that those hosts are bad. First thing you should do is to
read their terms and condition. If they claim they are providing
"unlimited" features without any conditions then avoid registering
with them, they are lying to you.

Most hosts that offer "unlimited"
space and bandwidth will put restrictions on some file types and sizes. For
example, they will disallow you to put video, audio or executable files on your
site. In other cases they will allow any file type given it's not exceeding
certain size (e.g. 500KB). Sometimes they use a generic condition to prevent
consuming their resources. An example condition will be: "we may find a
customer to be using server resources to such an extent that he or she may
jeopardize server performance and resources for other customers. In such
instances, we reserve the right to suspend that site immediately".

Unmetered
Space and Bandwidth

The term "unmetered" is closer to
reality. They imply to you that the offered space/bandwidth is limited but not
watched. This is, however, not 100% true. It's just another way to attract you
to their plans. In most cases terms and conditions will be more or less similar
to those of "unlimited" space and bandwidth.

Unlimited
Websites

Or sometimes it's called "unlimited
domains". This probably is the most honest marketing phrase, although it's
sometimes confuses na�ve customers. It simply means that you can point
as many domain names as you want as long as you are within the space and
bandwidth limits. This is good if you plan to have more than one website, but
if you are intending to build only a single website then you do not need this
feature.

$1
hosting plan

Sometimes you might see a hosting plan that
offer plenty of space and bandwidth (usually cost $10 or more) for very low
prices such as $2 or less. This is not a marketing trick, because you will get
the space and bandwidth stated in the plan, but you should not expect the same
level of support and reliability. Cheaper web host usually means more customers
sharing the same server, which means less performance and reliability.

HostGator

A lot of hosting companies claim their servers' 

HostGator

 are 99.99%, while in reality they are not. You can test this by using
an hostgator monitoring service for a week or two. Some websites (such as
netcraft) provide free monitoring for a list of hosts.

These are some of the tricks used to attract
customers, of course there are more. Reading terms and conditions carefully,
reading customer reviews and consulting experts will help you avoid being
deceived by these tricks.

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