What Makes An Amazing 10/10 Hosting Service?

I'm not talking about acceptable, okay, or even good. I want to create a service that would be incredibly awesome and exceed all expectations, the kind of service which seems to stand a few levels above all the others.

There are some things which are obvious, like high uptime, fast support, and good servers. So, what would it take for you to consider a service 10/10 or even 11/10 (if you ever rate that high)? What kind of behaviours and policies make you say 'wow' (in a good way)? What's the most important feature to you that a hosting service can provide? Is there any particular thing a web host has done for you (or that you've done for your customers as a web host) that really makes them super happy and excited to be a part of your service?

Thanks for all your great ideas!

 

The way I see the priorities is as follows:

1 good uptime - because without it nothing else pretty much matters
2 good/fast support - because when you need something looked into you can't afford to wait too much, especially when your website is facing critical issues
3 good server hardware - this will improve your website's performance, it has been proven that website visitors get annoyed and tend not to use websites that take more than 2-3 seconds to load up, so you'd want your hosting provider to have great server hardware which is not overloaded with too many accounts or oversold
4 (optional) SSD storage and LiteSpeed HTTP Server - this is for exceptional (as you've requested) performance, the SSD is up to 100 times faster than regular HDDs and LiteSpeed is up to 9 times faster than Apache which is used by most web hosts (because it's free)

When you combine all the above (in that order) I'd say you get a 10/10 or even 11/10 web host as you requested.

The above are what I consider 'wow' as to answer your first part of the question... as for the second part if you truly truly TRULY want something done 100% exactly as you want it done you can only do it yourself, which means shared hosting is not for you, perhaps a VPS or dedicated server. Why? Because when it comes to shared hosting, even the best of the best, crème de la crème web hosting company cannot guarantee you this 100%, simply because you 'share' an environment with other clients who can impact the overall server in a negative way at one point or another, and here's where Point #2 comes in action, with a good/fast support the hosting company will be alerted of any irregularities on the server and fix them ASAP as to minimize the overall performance hit that the server is taking.

You should give more details as to what your project is about, as for us to be able to give you a more detailed answer for what hosting environment would best suit your needs.

 

Even if you have the 1-4 you still need exceptional customer and technical support services. It is when you really need assistance and you get that above and beyond personal touch service that can make all the difference.

 

- server location
- unlimited bandwidth
- speed
- downtime frequency
- fast support

 

- unlimited Space
- unlimited bandwidth
- server speed
- Quick support
- No hidden charges

 

In my opinion overselling is never a good sign of a hosting company, they're basically lying to you from the very start, as there is physically no such thing as unlimited space and bandwidth... and you'll never know exactly when your website will pass their hidden quotas after which they will basically tell you to upgrade to a VPS or Dedicated Server or tell you to move your site elsewhere.

 

Even if you take 10 GB hosting, in that case also the hosting provider may make problem for you after a certain point of time. What is important is how you use the server resources and what kind of websites you are using.

 

I don't see anything "oversell" here. When a hosting company claim "unlimited", I will not get so innocent to believe there're no limits here, but i understand they can fulfil far clients' requirement for a hosting package in this price. Hostgator, for ex, provide shared hosting package for about $10/month, right? And they also claim "unlimited", but if your website is receiving million of pageviews/month, do you think of stop using this hosting package and move onto VPS, for ex? Is Hostgator a BIG name and reliable?
And between company A and B (the same reputation they have), one claim "Unlimited", one claim "100 GB bandwidth/month", both for the same price, which one you will choose?

 

My top 5:

1. Friendly support / customer service with a bit of banter (generic professional responses really grind on me)
2. Uptime Uptime Uptime, 3 times as its 3 times more important than account size, bandwidth, etc
3. A small business, a handful of staff with only a few customers, feeling like a customer rather than a number
4. Uplink speed, everyone wants everything now, and the faster their uplink, the faster its on my, and my clients screens
5. Backups - wow no one has mentioned this, I am notorious for accidental deletions, their back up is my god send. Plus if it goes down, theres a copy somewhere else.

Bottom 5:

1. Unlimited bandwidth
2. Unlimited space
3. Unlimited domains (else there are tonnes of others, tonnes of accounts, slow dns, etc)
4. Poor and over the top professional support, I am a person!
5. Being hosted on a 1995 server, move every so often as some hosts become complacent leaving you on old tech stuck in well.. 1995.

 

You should look up what overselling means, and if you're saying that offering unlimited space and bandwidth isn't overselling then... I really can't explain it any further to you.
Just because you're one of the happy cases that doesn't believe in the unlimited feature, doesn't mean the company isn't overselling.

And to answer your question, I would chose the 100GB bandwith/month rather than unlimited bandwith, cause at least I know I have 100 GB to consume, while on the unlimited side they could suspend me after 20GB used.

 

Fast servers
Solid uptime and fast responses to problems
Fast support when required

 

Oh, so you mean: at the moment, you don't use any host service offered by: Hostgator, stablehost, bluehost, ... since they all claimed "unlimited" on the homepage, right? It's so strange for me.

 

Its upto you, you need to use the server resources effectively. I would always recommend Hostgator and Blue host for cheap & reliable web hosting.

 

No, I don't use any of those hosts.

And like I said, this is just my personal opinion just like you have your own opinion, I'm not saying they're bad companies, some of them are really great, I know hostgator is really good. My point was only targeted to the overselling part, they do oversell and I personally don't like that part, I'd rather know the limits right from the start rather than finding them the hard way.

 

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