Many web hosting services have hidden secrets to trick potential customers. Those secrets are mostly marketing gimmicks and in a few cases very deceptive. Be careful as these tricks can end up costing you a good deal of money.

6. Free Domains
Well, a free domain sounds nice doesn’t it? But guess what, there are a couple of different tactics that are currently in use:

1. The domain is free, however the ownership is retained by the hosting company. What it means? You’re either stuck with the company forever or you need to pay them what is equal to a ransom when you want to ‘buy’ it.
2. The first year is free but when you want to renew it, they’ll charge $19.95+ for renewal. That is like a 200% mark-up over the average domain name cost

It’s better to ask questions during the research process to know who will own the domain and also make sure that the standard renewal fees costs are acceptable.

5. Web Hosting Review
Some web hosting review sites are developed for the sole purpose of advertising specific web hosting services. Frequently the reviews in those web sites are fake and written by the review site owners. Obviously, the highest paying site will get the best review and somehow will make it to the top position of the most recommended web hosting service.

4. Unlimited Storage
Unlimited Storage seems like a great offer doesn’t it? That’s what some web hosting services want you to think. But, there is no such a thing as an Unlimited Storage. Okay, storage costs have dropped dramatically in the past couple of years, but Unlimited Storage is just a marketing gimmick that many future customers fall for.

This is how a web hosting company gets around it. Have you ever study the TOS of your web hosting service completely? If you’re like many people, you’ll scan it and don’t read it carefully. Somewhere in the TOS there is a section that mentions CPU/Server Usage. To sum it up, basically it says if your web site uses more than a certain amount of storage, it violates the TOS and will subject to termination.

Of course, it is necessary for just about every hosting service to have something like that in their Terms of Service to protect resources on their servers from improper usages. However, many web hosting services are using the CPU/Server Usage to get around their Unlimited Storage promises.

3. One Hundred Percent Uptime Claims
Fine, you have just found a web hosting service that has a 100 percent Uptime Guarantee but what will you get from it? Will you get a refund if the downtime passes a certain limit?

Uptime Guarantee is a common marketing gimmick with little consequences for the hosting company. To get a month’s worth of full refund, your web site would have to be inaccessible for a week. However, most customers will never notice if a website is down for a couple of hours and out of those who actually notice only a tiny fraction will ever ask for compensation.

What’s more, the uptime policy is only valid for the Network Downtime. Network Downtime describes a condition when the whole server network is inaccessible. So if your domain is located in one server that isn’t working smoothly the guarantee probably will not apply.

2. Testimonials
Surely, testimonials can provide good information about a web hosting company, but can we trust them? Do you really believe a web hosting service would put up bad testimonials? If the web host does put up testimonials on their web site, there will be two types of them.

1. Hand picked testimonials to make them look great.
2. Fake testimonials written by the web hosts themselves.

Either way, are they helpful? No way! Try to find an independent review sites, in fact if a review shows a little bad things about a company, there is a bigger probability the review is genuine.

1. Web Hosting Awards
Many web hosting awards are created by review web sites. Just like other sites, review web sites want to have a good rank on popular search engines. One of the most important ways they get a high ranking is to get many quality backlinks. By creating awards they’ll get free links from the sites they give the awards to. Most of the award badges are linked back to the review website. Some even use a devious trick by using a code that prevent the image to be shown unless the link is intact and uses the do-follow tag.

Author Bio: Jason Bacot – It would be very wise of you or anyone looking to put their business online with a website to check out all the Web Hosting Reviews possible, before choosing your Web Hosting Company.

Category: Internet
Keywords: web hosting services, hosting company, Web Hosting Review, Web Hosting Review Sites, web hosting