If you are looking for a web host the thing you should look at the most is reliability. By surveying people who run sites and people who run online stores, this has become clear.

The concept of reliability is complicated. One can suppose that the majority of web hosting firms meet a minimal level of technical competence, have regularly invested in upgrades to their computers, and offer decent pricing plans. Based on these assumptions, a major component of web hosting reliability is delivering traditional, high-quality customer service.

When you have a problem with your website, will you receive timely, no-nonsense answers? Unfortunately, with many web hosts, the “no-nonsense” concept seems to be decidedly lacking.

You may have gotten the impression that when calling web technical support, the representative is handling multiple calls at a time. They have thousands of clients, and many calls coming in come in waves. This can lead to your tech person and yourself becoming frustrated.

Often times the customer service or technical support agent will just simply assume that the problem is your doing. You will get the typical response of, “Have you done this?” or “Have you done that?” All of these responses from technical support assume that the issue is at your end.

It is not difficult to sympathize with this approach. In many cases the problem really is at the user end. But often enough it is not, and there is nothing more maddening than spending several hours trying to trouble shoot your website and then finding out that a simple reboot of the server at the host end fixed the problem.

Unfortunately many web hosting tech support people just do not understand the importance of customer service. They often consider themselves superior to their clients. And they have been able to get away with shoddy, unfriendly service because it is just too inconvenient for clients to change hosts.

Fortunately, this is changing. It is not too difficult to change hosts, and there is much step-by-step information out there to help you to do so. Many hosts will be happy to help you transfer your domain to their systems.

Unfortunately there is no completely fool-proof way to know in advance where you are likely to get good, reliable, customer-friendly service.

To compare web hosts, you can examine web host review sites, but many of these sites are unreliable. Since most such sites exist to resell hosting services, the reviews tend to be biased. Sites that allow reviews and comments by outsiders can be easily manipulated. Many hosts will post their own reviews, containing fulsome praise for their own sites and harsh criticism of their competitors.

Web hosting forums provide a convenient place to read comments and recommendations. However, remember that web hosting forums are also open to the type of manipulation discussed above. Also, comments quickly become outdated due to the changing nature of the web hosting business. Nevertheless, comments and recommendations may be helpful and are generally reliable.

A great idea is to begin by examining the website of the host and if it is sort of perplexing or full of jargon, it may mean that the host does not care about communicating with clients. Usually, this tips you off to a problem that you might find navigation of their support structure difficult or that just getting a plainly worded answer to your questions could be extremely difficult.

You can tell if a company is customer focused by their website. You are looking for a simple layout and products designed for the customer, combined with a support system that is easy to work with. Contact customer service before you have a problem, and see if they are willing to work with you.

A good idea would be to look for recommendations from actual web hosting customers. Be certain that they are plainly marked with names and website addresses. You may even want to get in touch with some of these customers directly.

There is no single predictor of whether a web host will provide high quality customer service. However, the best indicator continues to be a no-nonsense, plain language approach. Look for that in a web host.

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- Howard Brule