It’s great when things are going well. Your website runs like a dream. The traffic is flowing in. You’re making sales and growing your business. However, when things aren’t going well, you feel powerless. If your website isn’t performing the way it’s supposed to, and you’ve tried everything to fix it to no avail, the problem may be with your web host. Here are 10 signs that it may be time to change your web hosting company.
1 – Too Much Downtime
When your website is down, you don’t have a website. If your website is down on a regular basis, it affects your business immeasurably. Your traffic levels drop, you will slip in the Google search rankings, and you will lose business (current and potential future business). Downtime affects your business even when your website isn’t down. If a visitor tries to access your site and it’s down, they’ll think you don’t know what you’re doing, that you’re an amateur.
If you’re experiencing regular patches of downtime, it’s time to find a new web host. More than 1% of downtime is bad, more than 10% is unacceptable. Find a web host that can demonstrate that your site will be up more than 99% of the time.
2 – Your Site is Slow to Load
Like downtime, if your website is slow to load, it can have an extremely negative affect on your site. It affects your traffic, as visitors don’t like to hang around waiting for your site to load. In addition, Google will penalize you in the search rankings if your site is slow to load. You lose traffic, you lose business.
If your site is slow to load, it could be that the bandwidth supplied by your web hosting company is insufficient. An average time of more than 3 seconds to load a page is unacceptable. Find a host that will offer you enough bandwidth. You may need a dedicated server rather than shared hosting.
3 – Your Site Won’t Grow With You
As your website grows in popularity, it should be able to cope with the increased traffic. However, if, over time, downtime increases, and your site loads more slowly, then you have probably outgrown your web host. They are not equipped to see you through the next stage of your site’s life.
If a social media post suddenly goes viral, and visitors flock to your site to see more, you want to give the best impression of your site possible. You don’t want it crashing, or taking 10 or more seconds to load. Your new visitors won’t hang around.
Again, these problems probably mean you’re sharing your hosting with other sites. You may want something that is tailor-made for you.
4 – Lack of Features
If you’re growing a business, you may want to start selling products or services on your site. You will need eCommerce software, protection for your customer data and more. Most web hosts will offer this as part of a business package, but if yours doesn’t, you will be better off to find one that does. Web hosts offer a myriad of extra features to keep your business and help you grow your site. Don’t feel tied down to your original web hosting company, if they can’t offer you what you need.
5 – Inadequate Security
Security is one of the most important aspects of running a website, especially with ransomware attacks so much in the news. You do not want your site to be hacked and lose your information, and that of your customers. You could lose control of your business, and leave yourself open to lawsuits. Your web host should be equipping you with firewalls, DDoS protection, anti-virus, and malware software. It is important that if your current web host isn’t providing sufficient security, you move to a host that will.
6 – Non-Existent Backups
Your web host should automatically back up your site regularly. This will save you from losing all the information associated with your site, either due to security issues, or you changing a setting by mistake (It happens!). If something goes wrong, you can simply switch to the last backup. It’s like traveling through time to before the problems started. If your hosting company doesn’t back up your site regularly, you should switch providers to one that will do it daily.
7 – Poor Customer Service
Problems with your website are a part of life. They happen. However, a good web hosting company should be able to solve them quickly and easily. If, when you call customer service, it takes an age to get through, and when you do finally speak to someone, they are unhelpful and clueless, it’s time to switch.
Technical issues lead to loss of business as we’ve discussed above. If your host can’t fix them as quickly as humanly possible, find one that will. You deserve to be treated well by your web host.
8 – It’s Expensive
When your contract with your web host is up and it’s renewal time, does the price you pay for web hosting suddenly increase? If you happen to see prices for other web hosts, are they always a lot lower than the amount you’re paying? If so, it’s definitely time to change hosts. You can usually find great introductory offers. Don’t throw money down the drain.
9 – You’re Losing Business
If any of the above problems are happening, they may be your web host’s fault, but you’re getting the blame. It’s you that your customers are cursing when they can’t get onto your site. It’s you that’s losing traffic, engagement, and sales.
Moreover, it’s you that’s wasting valuable time on the phone to customer service when things go wrong. It’s you that’s losing time trying to recover information. It’s you that’s paying too much for your hosting.
10 – Because You Can!
Changing web hosting companies is a simple task, as long as you do it methodically. We’ve produced a handy guide to help you switch hosts and still keep your domain name.
You don’t need to accept poor performance from your web hosting company. Demand the best. If you’ve recently changed your web hosting company, how did it go? Leave us a comment to let us know.
