The single most important factor when choosing a web host is reliability. This is confirmed over and over again in surveys of webmasters and online entrepreneurs.

But "reliability" is not a simple thing. If you assume for the moment that most web hosting companies are technically competent, have been consistently upgrading their systems, and have products that are reasonably priced, then a major part of web hosting reliability comes down to good old fashioned "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.

A web hosting company is likely to have thousands of clients. Problems often come in waves. This floods their technical support call system. You may have noticed that technical support customer service representatives often handle multiple calls at one time. Unfortunately, this can make technical support conversations very frustrating.

A good technical support person will use a helpful tone of voice and offer solutions. They will assume that you are basically competent and not automatically assume that you have somehow caused the problem at your end. After all, they are most qualified to check out problems at their end.

This kind of troubleshooting is understandable, since the user side can be the source of the problem. The frustration arises because, in many cases, the hosting end is the trouble. Hours can be wasted looking at the user's website even though rebooting the host's server is the proper solution.

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.

Many hosts will assist you if you want to transfer your domain to their system. Alternatively, there is now enough step-by-step information available for you to change hosts on your own. This is definitely a welcome change.

There, is, sad to say, no completely reliable way to ensure that you will receive the best customer service.

While you could look at review sites for web hosts, keep in mind that not all are as they appear. Some are trying to make money by reselling services, and their reviews are colored by the money they might make. Representatives of web hosts can make posts on public boards anonymously. These people can post a review that says their own host is great, and make up bad things about the competitors.

You can also scan web hosting forums for comments and recommendations. These seem to be generally reliable, but are still open to the kind of manipulation mentioned above. And since things change so quickly in the web hosting business, comments made a year ago about a specific web hosting company will probably be out of date.

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