March 2016

I have had this website for almost 3 months and when I first started, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.  I spoke to quite a few people who already had blogs or websites to see which hosting service I should go with.  If you go online and just google “best web hosting service” you’re going to get a ton of articles.  I must have read through most of them for about 4 days and I still could not decide who to go with.

One of my coworkers told me that she had BlueHost and she thought they were pretty good and cheap.  I googled them and found that WordPress recommended them as well as a few other blogs that I read.  It was strange that their ratings weren’t very good but I figured, why not?  It’s cheap!  Well, you definitely get what you pay for.  First of all, my site kept going down.  Almost every other day and especially on the weekends, I would get email notices that my site was down…and then that it was back up. Then, I started having issues where things wouldn’t work on my website, so I called their Tech Support.  The wait was almost always over 30 minutes.  They were generally very friendly but the weird thing was that a lot of the time, the Tech Support person had to “google” or flat out said “I don’t know” when I asked a question.  I found out that BlueHost hires anyone for Tech Support without experience and will teach you the basics – which explains the “I don’t know” I kept getting.

Then came the kicker … I was given advice from a Tech Support person to upgrade to a better plan and that if I was unsatisfied within 30 days, I could go back to my original cheap plan AND get the additional money back that I paid to upgrade.  Well, I didn’t notice any difference in the website.  It still went down multiple times.  Towards the end of my 30 days,  I called to cancel. Long story short, they wouldn’t do it.  They basically told me that everything the Tech Support guy said about getting my money back and going back to my original plan was false and there was nothing they could do about it.  Even though, their employee gave me false information that should have been recorded (since all phone calls are recorded as per the message I hear when I wait to speak to someone) they were not willing to fully refund me.  So I left them and found myself a better hosting site.

If you have read this far, then good for you!  It’s going to get better!

For a few dollars more a month, I have had the BEST experience in the 2 weeks that I have been with SiteGround.  I was recommended to them by another co-worker, did my research and found that they have great ratings!  The wait time to speak to someone on the phone or through the online chat has been less then 2 minutes. Everyone I have spoken to was incredibly knowledgable and they actually sound like they know what they’re talking about. Working at The Big Fancy for over 10 years, my customer service bar is pretty high.  I know I am pretty hard to please, but their customer service is amazing!   Now, transferring my site over to this hosting service was THE biggest pain in the behind, but SiteGround was as helpful as possible and I am GLAD it is OVER!  Amazingly, my site has NOT gone down in the past 2 weeks *knock on wood*.

So, since this post is already longer than I would like it to be, I’m going to tell you … if you are thinking of starting a blog or website and want to go with a hosting service, go with SiteGround.  Seriously, you get what you pay for and I had to learn the hard way.  Dealing with incompetent people is not a fun thing and neither is losing money on something that I shouldn’t have.