Why I Left The Worst Website Hosting Company Ever And Where I Went
I recently started selling Viagra on my pet sitting business website. I didn’t intend to, it just happened one day. As I was leaving the Dr office with my little girl, I get a frantic message from a great friend saying, “You might want to check out your website. You’ve been hacked!”
“Huh? What?” I think.
I go into panic mode:
What do I do? Who do I call? Luckily I have a IT guy who helps me from time to time, but usually it is on things like “Can you change the font or the color of this” Not fix my hacked website. Plus, I know he works a day job, so this wasn’t going to help.
So I rushed home, gave my little girl her brunch and fired up the lap top. Surely someone could help me from my host? I fired up the chat. 3 minutes. Ok, I can wait three minutes. Two minutes later, it says four minutes.
Wait.
Whaaaat?!?! How did it go from 3 to 4 in five minutes?!?! I am not great at math but….
So I wait. I have no other choice, but I wait. I decided to call them too. Hold music. I wait. Finally someone answers.
“Please hold. We are helping other customers in addition to yourself” is the message I got on chat and twenty minutes later I was still on hold on the phone.
Great. Just great. Basically, what you are telling me (shoving in my face actually) is that everyone else is more important… in front of me… and I am just waiting for my number to be called.
In my head: ARGHHHHH!!!!!! It could be that $5,000 a year client that just went to my website, and then bounced to a competitor bc they didn’t think I was a real business. Not to mention, couldn’t see any contact info so couldn’t call me.
I wish I could say the debacle ended there. It didn’t. When I did get someone on the phone, over the next 40 minutes and a bunch more, “would you mind holding?” the guy told me everything that he couldn’t do for me with the exception of giving him my credit card, paying $199 to have the site “fixed” Which I later realized was just restoring an older version. I felt so taken advantage of.
Sigh….
I was stranded. All alone. Not understanding this world. With the only help available was to pay $199. And I still didn’t even really understand what was going on, how it happened, or how to prevent it in the future. They were all about solving the problem. Not preventing it.
SO I PAID IT.
And then I started looking for a new host.
Turning Point
I started asking my friends. Afterall, isn’t that what you do when you are looking for someone you can trust? You trust your friends….
So Kirsten told me about Siteground and I checked them out. It was late at night, so I clicked on the chat box. Up appeared this pulsating heart telling me they would be right with me…
A few seconds later I got a person. Someone with a picture, a short biography, and a star rating showing me how many people they have already helped. I was impressed.
Right away, “Hi Bella. How can I help you tonight?” It was impressive. None of the “please wait while we help other people and not you” crap that I got elsewhere.
They were so helpful. So responsive. So coming from a place of YES and WE WILL FIGURE IT OUT.
In instantly fell in love and bought the three year package.
You see? All I needed was to feel loved and supported. Yes, even with something as technical as a website. But it is more than a website to me. Just like our clients animals are more than “animals” to them. They are their beloved fur children.
“Ever since I made the switch, I have been repeatedly impressed with their chat and phone support. I have had more issues with my website since the switch. In fact, when I transferred over to them, I still had malware! They immediately alerted me. Then they quarantined my site so I couldn’t infect others on the server and gave me seven days to fix it.”
Basically, a virtual time out. LOL
I cringe every time I have to call a support desk or chat. I think, ok, how am I going to convince them I need help and get them on my side to help me?
How many times have you done something like that?
Now, I release my tense muscles and connect with Siteground thinking, what “friend” will I meet today?
Seriously, if you don’t have a good or existing relationship with your hosting company, may I HIGHLY recommend switching to SiteMonster?
In Lesson One of the Employee Quick Start Guide I preach the importance of having a great team so that when things go down hill (and they will) you have proper support and back up in place.
Admittedly, web hosting was one I never really had too much of a problem with so I never investigated. But boy did I get caught with my pants down.
I don’t want this to happen to you so take my challenge -go to their website and click the chat link at the top right side. See what type of experience you have. If it is better than what you are currently getting, I encourage you to think about switching.
When my friend was talking about it months ago, I wish I listened to her. Instead I didn’t and when I really needed the support, I was with the wrong company. Don’t make the same mistake I did.
I moved all my websites to Siteground because of their customer service. When things go wrong, I need people I can count on. Thank you Siteground for giving me that peace of mind.
With so many hosting sites out there, one never knows who to go with. Thank you for sharing this information. I will be checking into this. My current webhost seems to have a good response time as of right now so I am okay with them for now but would like someone more passionate … as I am about my pet sitting clients.
Lisa,
Thanks for your comment.
I totally understand and agree with what you are saying. I was just astounded that one company was doing everything to figure out how to tell me how they COULDN’T help me, and the other was bending over backwards TO help me.
As an example, just last night, I needed to put some text in my DNS server that Youtube wanted me to do to verify some things so I could get the cards going…. I had NO CLUE what they were talking about. I spent 5 minutes on chat with a awesome lady and she took care of it for me.
THAT is who I need on my team. 🙂 Decide for yourself. If you decide to do it, the advise what I would have told myself last month, “Don’t “wait” to be done with your term with your existing host. Switch now, so if anything happens, you know you have help.
I switched and the old company refunded my used portion.
Good luck!
Bella
Great article Bella! I agree 100% that you need to have a support team that listens and wants to help. My website was hacked back in October of 2014. Calls were down, web hits were down by the hundreds. When I contacted my hosting company with a Bing report, they were hesitant because the report wasn’t from Google. I got another report from Bing saying I had 2 malware issues. I then contacted the hosting company and asked if there was a plug in that could scan the site. I was told I already had one. When asked what it was, low and behold, I DIDN’T have one. They immediately added the plug in for me and scanned the site. I did have malware and they were very responsive and got everything all cleaned up. My only complaint is that they didn’t believe me at first. I wasted several months of potential business and am STILL trying to clear things up with McAfee.
If you are serious at all about your business, you NEED to have support all around you that is willing to help at a drop of a hat. Especially when it comes to websites.
Great article, Bella!
My current hosting company is pretty good, but I’m going to save Siteground’s info in case my current company doesn’t step up in a time of crisis.
Kathryn, My best advice is DONT wait until you need it. Have all your ducks in a row NOW 🙂 Happy Sunday 🙂 -Bella
Hi Bella!
Make sure you set up a back up of your database so you can upload it for free. I download one of my site about once a week from my provider. It is in my Dropbox so if my site gets hacked, I can be up and running in no time! SiteGround should be able to walk you through it. Glad you are back up!
Amy, that is such a great point. BACK UP! Site ground does it every day and alerts you if you have contracted malware. They have been soon incredible. I like them doing it. I would forget to make a copy and put it in drop box. I can’t take any more “to-do’s” in my life… 🙂
Thank you for commenting! 🙂