My Strong Advice to Newbies: Only Pick the BEST / Most reputable Companies (story inside)

I say newbies, while I'm somewhat of a newbie myself (made lots of money years ago, but now getting back into things)

My suggestion, when it comes to any company you will be working with, webhost, list building, content delivery etc... only use the best! You can try to save a few bucks here and there, but in the long run, it will save you ton's of time and frustration.

If you have a minute, I will share my little story about why I feel this way...

When I was looking for a VPS host, I narrowed it down to a few companies (I will leave their names anonymous).. I tried 2 companies, and some reason couldn't get my very small and simple wordpress site up and running on them. It crashed both of there servers. These 2 companies, seemed reputable, yet less known than something like Hostgator, for example. I was looking at the server stats and trying to go with what had the best / stats / price vs who has the best reputation.

1 of the previous companies gave me a refund, no problem, but the other was a nightmare. They told me that they cant honor a refund because I hosted "chatroom" on their servers. This was 100% bs. I email them back and say, "i did not host a chatroom on the server"... They email back and say, "oh, sorry, it wasnt a chatroom it was an IRC client"... Basically, just making up stuff as they were going along. I eventually gave up, and filed a dispute with my bank. A month later today, I get an email from them saying: "we received both of your fraudulent chargebacks and we are disputing both of them. You violoted our TOS etc etc etc.."... He also said that after they dispute it they may be referring me to a collection agency. The part that amazed and shocked me, was a company emailing me back, a month later, over $60 bucks, and calling me fraudulent... I decided, you know what, it's not that serious, it's really not. I emailed him back and said to prevent any further hostilities with your company, you guys can keep the $60 that I paid for 1 day of service with your company. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking if these guys will go THIS FAR, just over a measly $60 bucks, maybe they are running their server set up out of their basement, and may retaliate, or hack my site in some way, seeing how disgruntled and desperate they are.

After failing with 2 companies, I switched to host gator . Amazingly I had the same problem on their VPS, but the difference this time? Their 100++ online live chat representitives were there, waiting to help me. The other 2 companies claim they have live chat, but it's really only 1 or 2 guys (I get the same person EVERYtime), and they are hardly ever online, even though they advertise as 24/7/365 on their site.

Hostgator eventually fixed my problem, and I am hosting happily with them. I contact them with self inflicted problems non stop, and they are always their to help quickly.. Saving me hours or days of delays and frustration.


Bottom line: I will from this point on only use the best, most reputable company I can find (even though the host above was BBB acredited, they weren't NEARLY as big as hostgator). I will not try to skimp and save a few bucks here and their. I have Hostgator for my hosting, Aweber for my email list, and using Wishlist Member (also tried digital access pass and DLguard) for my membership / content locking..

Are their cheaper alternatives out there? Sure... But you get what you pay for. Even if you have to get a part time job, making 8 hours a week, just get the best companies... It will save you a world of trouble and frustration.

That's just my opinion and advice, and I hope it helps any "newbies" out there going forward.


(and just so you know im in a time crunch, couldn't do too much proof reading. apologies in advance!)