# How visitors can trust on your hosting business?



## kunnu (Oct 29, 2015)

If you are a customer then how and why you will trust on a small hosting company?


Do you prefer big company or small company? I don't like big company for many reason.


1. Why new visitor will trust on your company?


2. How can you increase trust, what you need to do?


Some of customers ignore negative review and give a chance


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## Tyler (Oct 29, 2015)

I like medium sized companies. Increasing trust is about being an established operation, showing signs of transparency, and being known for running a quality operation. It takes time.


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## RLT (Oct 29, 2015)

Some of the negative reviews make people want to buy from a company. How you respond to an negative review matters as well.


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## Licensecart (Oct 29, 2015)

I prefer small / medium business who give the personal touch, but I do checks on every business I use.


- No hiding behind CloudFlare (DNS)


- Real whois (no hiding behind private protection)


- A year or more in business (unless I know the owners)


- Realistic prices (not 10GB diskspace, 1000GB bandwidth for $1 a month)


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## Awmusic12635 (Oct 29, 2015)

Licensecart said:


> No hiding behind CloudFlare (DNS)



What issue do you have with people who use cloudflare?


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## Licensecart (Oct 29, 2015)

Awmusic12635 said:


> What issue do you have with people who use cloudflare?



If they can't trust their own name servers why should we use their name servers for hosting .


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## Awmusic12635 (Oct 29, 2015)

Licensecart said:


> If they can't trust their own name servers why should we use their name servers for hosting .



Redundancy of course. You don't want your own site to be down if your services go down. You need to be able to communicate with your customers by having your stuff external. 


On top of that cloudflare provides a good bit more than just name servers. Dismissing a company because they use cloudflare seems very pointless.


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## Licensecart (Oct 29, 2015)

Awmusic12635 said:


> Redundancy of course. You don't want your own site to be down if your services go down. You need to be able to communicate with your customers by having your stuff external.
> 
> 
> On top of that cloudflare provides a good bit more than just name servers. Dismissing a company because they use cloudflare seems very pointless.



Well you either give redundancy for yourself and your customers or host yourself on a high availability cluster.


And most people who use CloudFlare do it to prevent being ddosed which relates to the "if they don't trust their servers / name servers why should the customer?" and others claim because it makes their site faster, and I don't fall for that answer either because there's CDN for that. 

Cloud flare is a pain in the ass and causes more issue so don't understand where you get that it's better to use. Rocket loader causes Javascript to fail, they don't make sites faster or stop ddos attacks, their WAF mod_Security rules aren't better either.


And you use CloudFlare, so...


https://www.cloudave.com/13564/to-cloudflare-or-not-cloudflare-that-is-the-question/


http://halfelf.org/2013/i-dont-understand-cloudflare/


https://xenforo.com/community/threads/to-cloudflare-or-not-to-cloudflare.76389/


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## Munzy (Oct 29, 2015)

Using proper English .


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## drmike (Oct 30, 2015)

These sorts of threads give me a headache.  There is a place for them.  I think we are overdue to setup a section called: HOSTING PROVIDER SCHOOL.


*0. If you are a customer then how and why you will trust on a small hosting company?*


Answer:  I won't trust you, nor will I trust any other n00b.  In order to build trust you have to be trustworthy, perhaps be known somehow, have a bio, have testimonials, support projects, perform miracles, work in a soup kitchen, give to charity, not bankroll via SPAM, not be bankrolled by PORN, not be bankrolled by [name that ill].


You probably should come across as being of legal age to contract, incorporation is nice but I am not such a stickler about it -- lots to said about liability and personally assuming it versus hiding behind a corporate structure... 


Point is, long long road, see me when you are a year into this.


*0.5 Do you prefer big company or small company? I don't like big company for many reason.*


ANSWER: I prefer 'companies' that are smaller in size.  READ: NOT INTO SOLO OPERATORS.  Smallest a shop should be is around 4 guys.  Anything less and you are playing with fire.  Stress will crack you eventually, overload happens, people get sick, life needs tended to, etc.


*1. Why new visitor will trust on your company?*


ANSWER: Unsure what this means.  Any buyer who has sense and has bought prior products elsewhere and pays attention knows trust is not blind and inherently placed on a whim.  So no trust.


*2. How can you increase trust, what you need to do?*


ANSWER: See above.


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## mitgib (Oct 31, 2015)

drmike said:


> *0.5 Do you prefer big company or small company? I don't like big company for many reason.*
> 
> 
> ANSWER: I prefer 'companies' that are smaller in size.  READ: NOT INTO SOLO OPERATORS.  Smallest a shop should be is around 4 guys.  Anything less and you are playing with fire.  Stress will crack you eventually, overload happens, people get sick, life needs tended to, etc.
> ...



Maybe amateurs crack under the stress, and life? This is life!


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## drmike (Oct 31, 2015)

mitgib said:


> Maybe amateurs crack under the stress, and life? This is life!



I'll exempt you from that rule   Not many people can solo operate very long.    Not with the BS of *We respond to tickets on average in 25ms*_._


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## TO.oL (Nov 3, 2015)

Using proper english will help a lot.  If you're unsure about yours, better hire a copywriter. For example writocity.com would surely proof-read your content for relatively low fees with good results. Also make sure the website and images/design/logo look high quality and professional.


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## HN-Matt (Nov 3, 2015)

very easy, http://trustgaininggraphics.com


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## Hosterbox (Nov 14, 2015)

Yeah, no real shortcuts here. Just do quality work, stand behind your service and the trust/reputation will come.


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## HH-Jake (Nov 15, 2015)

Hosterbox said:


> Yeah, no real shortcuts here. Just do quality work, stand behind your service and the trust/reputation will come.



I agree with his comment. I feel that as long as you are honest, and you do what you say trust/reputation will come with it.


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## AtlanticServers (Nov 20, 2015)

Licensecart said:


> I prefer small / medium business who give the personal touch, but I do checks on every business I use.
> 
> 
> - No hiding behind CloudFlare (DNS)
> ...



CloudFlare don't use for hidden but for performance and security


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## Licensecart (Nov 20, 2015)

AtlanticServers said:


> CloudFlare don't use for hidden but for performance and security



People do because you can't trace the name servers or the IP the server is hosted on. Performance nope, that's what CDN are for or load balancing. For security, Mod_Security is more secure than CloudFlare, and you can have a hardware firewall which is securer than cloud flare.


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## sterile (Nov 29, 2015)

I prefer small companies, give them a chance to grow.


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## fm7 (Dec 5, 2015)

Short answer: Hosting is a lemon market


Long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons


Excerpt


The paper by Akerlof describes how the interaction between quality heterogeneity and asymmetric information can lead to the disappearance of a market where guarantees are indefinite. In this model, as quality is undistinguishable beforehand by the buyer (due to the asymmetry of information), incentives exist for the seller to pass off low-quality goods as higher-quality ones. The buyer, however, takes this incentive into consideration, and takes the quality of the goods to be uncertain. Only the average quality of the goods will be considered, which in turn will have the side effect that goods that are above average in terms of quality will be driven out of the market. This mechanism is repeated until a no-trade equilibrium is reached.


...


Akerlof's paper uses the market for used cars as an example of the problem of quality uncertainty. A used car is one in which ownership is transferred from one person to another, after a period of use by its first owner and its inevitable wear and tear. There are good used cars ("cherries") and defective used cars ("lemons"), normally as a consequence of several not-always-traceable variables, such as the owner's driving style, quality and frequency of maintenance, and accident history. Because many important mechanical parts and other elements are hidden from view and not easily accessible for inspection, the buyer of a car does not know beforehand whether it is a cherry or a lemon. So the buyer's best guess for a given car is that the car is of average quality; accordingly, he/she will be willing to pay for it only the price of a car of known average quality. This means that the owner of a carefully maintained, never-abused, good used car will be unable to get a high enough price to make selling that car worthwhile.


Therefore, owners of good cars will not place their cars on the used car market. The withdrawal of good cars reduces the average quality of cars on the market, causing buyers to revise downward their expectations for any given car. This, in turn, motivates the owners of moderately good cars not to sell, and so on. The result is that a market in which there is asymmetric information with respect to quality shows characteristics similar to those described by Gresham's Law: the bad drives out the good.


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## drmike (Dec 5, 2015)

fm7 said:


> shows characteristics similar to those described by Gresham's Law: the bad drives out the good.



Let them try.  I'll keep hanging the bad in the public hosting town squares.  Hopefully others step up and the industry gets to self policing and gone with the recurring bad actors who view this all as easy money.  Fact is, their lying arses could make a lot more money lying in other industries.  (that's my invitation for them to run before I go on another bender weeding people).


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## River (Dec 5, 2015)

I havent seen SSL mentioned before, lots of general business practices which are all good.


I'd also make sure you have an SSL certificate on your site (kinda goes without saying) but I would never, ever give my financial information to a company who didn't have the decency to spend a small amount on an SSL certificate.


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## ioZoom (Dec 15, 2015)

Trust starts with being trustworthy and that usually starts with being a legal registered company that people can actually lookup.
Do you have an address listed on your website? Be transparent as possible.
Do you own your own hardware? That tells me how invested you are in the business. The more invested the less likely you're a fly by night operation.
Are you committed to customer satisfaction? Being accredited by entities like the BBB shows how serious you are to customer satisfaction.


The bottom line is you want to be seen as a company who is transparent (company registration, whois, address, etc), who is invested in the company and not just someone who rented a cheap server, and committed to their customers satisfaction.


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## mitgib (Dec 16, 2015)

ioZoom said:


> Are you committed to customer satisfaction? Being accredited by entities like the BBB shows how serious you are to customer satisfaction.



This is worth $0, you are only accredited if you pay them, and anyone who pays gets accredited. BBB is as big a scam as SSL certs and the browser mafia.


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## KuJoe (Dec 16, 2015)

+1 to what @mitgib said. I'm never going to pay for that BBB sticker since it's not worth the pixels it's painted on. In my many years of hosting I only had one person complain about my company not being BBB accredited and they still ordered service and never had an issue so it wasn't that big of a deal apparently.


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## ioZoom (Dec 16, 2015)

mitgib said:


> This is worth $0, you are only accredited if you pay them, and anyone who pays gets accredited. BBB is as big a scam as SSL certs and the browser mafia.



Sure you have to pay them but we're talking about how to show visitors that your business can convey trust and this is one of them. Not everyone will agree and to each their own and there is no problem with that at all. It's just simply one extra way to convey trust and as a BBB accredited business you're obligated to respond to and resolve customer complaints. To some customers that's worth something.


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## CenTex Hosting (Dec 22, 2015)

IMO it really depends on the company.


Some small companies will give you better support and service than larger companies. To a small company trying to make it you mean something to them. For a large company you are just another number to them.


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## BalkanVPS (Dec 25, 2015)

Small providers generally care about all of their customers, big providers care about earning the most money. I'd go with smaller providers.


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## drmike (Dec 26, 2015)

BalkanVPS said:


> Small providers generally care about all of their customers, big providers care about earning the most money. I'd go with smaller providers.



Ahhh well, this isn't a truism.... There are slews of small companies that couldn't care in the least about customers.  Just check out most of the companies that show up on Lowend*.


Big companies aren't really any better on average.  They are just less likely to do stupid, but I point at EIG as the poster child of big company dysfunction that acts no better than scammy lowend companies.


It's less of a matter of company size and more a matter of integrity of the ownership and having said people that align costs with customer expectations and spend that money properly caring for customers.  That might mean just customer support or it might mean that plus bringing in competent systems administrator.   Support remains pretty bad in many shops.


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## Hosting Specialists (Dec 30, 2015)

I dislike buying from huge companies such as 1&1, HostGator etc, but don't like buying from new startups either. Companies that have been going strong for at least a year and are medium sized.


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## graeme (Jan 4, 2016)

Shared hosting (or one segment of it) is a lemon market, I am not sure VPS hosting is.
 


it is a service, not a one off sale: if quality is poor people will switch - and unlike shared hosting you tend to have reasonably knowledgeable users (I hope so, anyway, running an internet connected server...).

A lot of people do consider reputation before buying. I am on this forum today because I am trying to decide which smaller suppliers I can trust (although I probably want a dedicated server for this project).


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## drmike (Jan 4, 2016)

VPS is mostly the same, tons of lemons.  It's issue of lack of skills of many owners, lack of proper sysadmin, lack of automation, lack of monitoring and usually a ton of server oversubscribing vs. the physical resources.


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## graeme (Jan 4, 2016)

I should have made it clearer that I was replying to this: https://vpsboard.com/topic/7994-how-visitors-can-trust-on-your-hosting-business/?do=findComment&comment=103013

Certainly here are lots of lemons sold. I do not have the insider knowledge of the business that the providers here do, but I do know a lot of the people who lack skill and resources seem to go bust. On the other hand those that provide a good service do well. This means there is an incentive to sell good services - so although it is a market in which lemons are sold, it is not a market for lemons in which it is pointless selling good quality goods or services.


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## CenTex Hosting (Feb 9, 2016)

Its really up to your personal preference Really. You can say both good and bad about small companies as well as large ones.


Example would be look at hostgator. Since EIG bought them out everyone is saying that support went down hill and so on. So it really doesn't matter the size of the company if they are going to be able to take care of you or not.


If you pick a small company do research. If they don't even have an ssl on the site then pass them over for sure. See how long they have registered a domain for. Gives you insite if they think they will be around. Put in a support ticket and see how long it takes them to get back to you. start a chat and ask questions and so on.


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## graeme (Feb 10, 2016)

I thought about this while reading:


https://vpsboard.com/topic/8501-why-people-pay-so-much-for-big-brand-vps-and-cloud/?do=findComment&comment=104833


You want to be trusted. Give people the information they need to decide whether they can trust you. Tell them who runs the business, how long its been around, what skills your staff have, let them see your accounts to prove you are financially viable. In short have an about page that is actually informative. By far the best I have seen is this:

https://www.bytemark.co.uk/company/


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## DomainBop (Feb 10, 2016)

graeme said:


> You want to be trusted. Give people the information they need to decide whether they can trust you. Tell them who runs the business, how long its been around, what skills your staff have



Adding two things to that:


1. when telling people about your staff, please, please avoid saying "our staff has a combined xx years of experience" because it tends to decrease trust not increase it, and it actually makes your business seem smaller if the customer can do basic arithmetic. 


2. not only do you need to tell them who runs the company on your about us page,  but on your TOS you need to accurately state the name of the legal entity that the customer will be entering into a contract with.  Guess what, if you're not a registered company and you're a sole trader/sole proprietor then you need to put your own name on the TOS because you need to be a legal entity to enter into a contract and your non-registered hosting business isn't a legal entity (legal entity =  a registered company or an individual who is of legal age to enter into a contract) .  UK sole trader / serial hosting entrepreneur Ash is one of the very few sole traders who actually get this right on their TOS _ ("You're entering into a contract with the sole proprietor, Asxxx xxxxxxxx, who in this instance is trading as "xxxxx" and will be referred to as: "Provider" or "xxxxx".).  If you fail to state the name of the real legal entity on your TOS then your TOS is basically worthless if there is a dispute and anyone calls you on it (and if you're not old enough to enter into a contract and your business isn't registered your TOS is also worthless).  Incorrectly listing a nonlegal entity as a party to a contract will decrease trust and drive away many potential customers (and the buyers who don't care about this are generally not the ones you'd want: spammers, abusers, children).._


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## graeme (Feb 11, 2016)

I do not think that is right. My understanding (of UK law which is what I know best, although its probably the same in most common law countries) is that a sole trader using a trading name in a contract does not affect its enforceability. However it can cause problems if there is doubt about your identity.


If a company contracts without revealing its real name it is breaching obligations under contract law, but contracts are still usually enforceable.


A contract with a minor is often (not always) voidable by the minor, but can be enforced by either party until it is voided. It is a one-sided opportunity to wriggle out - but I do not know what the precedents are for a minor running a business. Employments contracts can be enforced on a minor: http://www.lawandparents.co.uk/minors-entering-into-contracts.html

It is definitely good practice to have the proper legal name on contracts, and I agree entirely that not having the proper legal name on contracts will decrease trust, particularly if there is nothing on the website to identify the legal entity involved. I would not enter into a contract with a minor without legal advice.


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## graeme (Feb 12, 2016)

graeme said:


> If a company contracts without revealing its real name it is breaching obligations under contract law, but contracts are still usually enforceable.



Should read

If a company contracts without revealing its real name it is breaching obligations under *company* law, but contracts are still usually enforceable.


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## graeme (Feb 14, 2016)

I have a question for providers: why are you not doing the things @DomainBop and I suggest? It may be a deliberate business decision - for example if your target market is geeks who want somewhere to test stuff, or backup servers, or for hobby stuff.

A lot of good providers do not do not provide much information. I just had a look at the Ramnode, BuyVM and Secure Dragon sites - I think there is a consensus here that they are all good?. None comes anywhere near the level of disclosure we suggest. They seem to have no problem acquiring clients, so we should we conclude that their strategy (i.e. selling to people like me rather than people like my clients) is a good one and DomainBop and I are either wrong, or advocating just one of many possible strategies?


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## VPSclub (Feb 14, 2016)

LLC + Premium domain + Custom website design + SSL + Excellent support + Live chat + Public WHOIS + Address and Phone number published on website + Competitive offers + Tutorials + Activity on top hosting forums


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## drmike (Mar 4, 2016)

graeme said:


> I have a question for providers: why are you not doing the things @DomainBop and I suggest? It may be a deliberate business decision - for example if your target market is geeks who want somewhere to test stuff, or backup servers, or for hobby stuff.
> 
> A lot of good providers do not do not provide much information. I just had a look at the Ramnode, BuyVM and Secure Dragon sites - I think there is a consensus here that they are all good?. None comes anywhere near the level of disclosure we suggest. They seem to have no problem acquiring clients, so we should we conclude that their strategy (i.e. selling to people like me rather than people like my clients) is a good one and DomainBop and I are either wrong, or advocating just one of many possible strategies?



All providers should listen to the input on this thread.  No matter what stage / age they are.  Clearly missing a bunch of stuff and lacking proper disclosure and image, your brand will suffer.


What @graeme in particular did you find with Ramnode, BuyVM and Secure Dragon did not meet @DomainBop 's disclosure level?  Honest question there and perhaps each provider can learn and realize what is 'deficient' from a buyer who is not in these communities and stumbles into their site solely.


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## graeme (Mar 5, 2016)

I picked those three companies because, far as I know, they are good. Here is what I can see missing:

Ramnode: no information about who runs it or how big a team they have. The legal name of the entity is correctly given, but not where it is registered not any registration number (most jurisdictions have them). The only contact address I could find was a PO Box number


BuyVM: TOS is in the name of Frantech, but there is no indication of what legal entity I am dealing with. No address, but whois gives a PO Box number in Canada, which is the only indication of what country they are based in. There are photos and a little info about Francisco and Aldryic on the about page, but gives the impression of a two man business, which is not consistent with the claim of 24/7 support.  No contact address at all on the site, but there is what looks like real address in the whois.


SecureDragon: no address on the site, whois gives a PO Box number. Only two "founding members"  are mentioned by name, so, again, it is not clear whether or not the small team IS the two of them.

None of them disclose financials. Bytemark actually links to their accounts on the companies house (the registrar of companies for England and Wales) which means you can see exactly what the filed. This may not be possible in other places, but posting a summary of your accounts and disclosing ownership is.


I also think BuyVM's humorous tema pages are a mistake. That sort of humours works well on other pages (I love the operating systems page) but I think it is out of place on the "about us" page and will lose you some customers.


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## VyprNetworks (Mar 5, 2016)

I prefer to be a valued customer so I'll go with small. Smaller companies usually equal better support and down to earth staff who understand the day to day struggled of not only other companies but they're customers. Bigger companies usually make less efforts to satisfy every customer simple because they have the money to ignore one out of 5 customers if they wanted to.


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## graeme (Mar 6, 2016)

There are plenty of small companies whose service is terrible and big companies whose customer service is good. How much customer services does an unmanaged VPS need? As long as it keeps working, very little.

The differences from a customers point of view are that 1) you can find out whether a big company's services are good or not as plenty of other people use them and 2) you can be confident that they are not suddenly going to shut down, possibly taking your data with them, certainly interrupting your servicse.


Also, consider what happens if someone like me recommends a business uses a small company or a large one. Imagine a little conversation:

Customer/employer: "The server has been down all day. I am losing money"
Developer/IT: "Sorry, it is Amazon's fault, the whole AWS data centre is down"
Customer/employer: "Oh, can we do anything?"

Alternatively:

"The server has been down all day. I am losing money"
"It is [small provider]'s fault"
"You should not have recommended them"

Which is the safe option from my point of view?

In face I do not recommend AWS and the like, but I do stick to reasonable sized outfits with enough staff to keep things running normally even if a few key people get sick. That said, some of my customers were either already locked in to a big supplier or just prefer them.


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## drmike (Mar 7, 2016)

graeme said:


> I picked those three companies because, far as I know, they are good. Here is what I can see missing:
> 
> Ramnode: no information about who runs it or how big a team they have. The legal name of the entity is correctly given, but not where it is registered not any registration number (most jurisdictions have them). The only contact address I could find was a PO Box number
> 
> ...



Thanks for taking the time to look, research and construct this.  Useful indeed.


1. Registration details of company - I think this is a powerful must have.  In the US you can sole operate as unincorporated entity, however, due to liability / risk such isn't advised.  UK for instance seems to require such details to be public on sales site.  I really like what I see in regard to this in the UK.  The data should be there if a company is indeed incorporated.


2. TOS and dual company / unit names.  Confusing indeed.  This will happen where guys isolate risk in brands and ideally different incorporations. Literally need a visual graphic for normal people to understand the relationship.


3. Photos = 2 guys Business = more guys.  Indeed another gotcha there.  It's fairly common for ownership / management to be on a site, but not the whole company. In other fields they do this so recruiters don't go hiring workers away.  Also has privacy implications per se. But yes, conveys smaller than are as-is.


4. Financials - even though UK requires / collects such, said data isn't indicative of much if anything.  If I believed data on the companies house reporting, I'd believe most companies have no business, owe not much in liabilities and appear to be not very busy shelf companies.


The financial indicator from reporting such places too much trust in a system that is heavily gamed long ago.


5. Humorous team page - I am not fond of guys with party shots mixed with business.  I advise owners/managers to roll their fun up in personal accounts online and remove name relationship too.  No matter how well intentioned, any attempt at humor will find someone turned off.  It's a guess about the net impact which direction from such a page.  But, I will say, in this instance that that page and photos have got many people talking about such.  In these communities, that's a good thing, usually.


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## drmike (Mar 7, 2016)

graeme said:


> Also, consider what happens if someone like me recommends a business uses a small company or a large one. Imagine a little conversation:



No question about it. There is a prevailing and dated statement that went something like 'No one was ever fired for recommending [IBM]'.


Society is massive group think and comfort pursuits.  This applies to the most mundane cheap purchases even.


I buy from companies that are active in communities first and foremost.  Companies who appear to understand the tech to some degree and are attempting to work daily. 


I avoid faceless monoliths aka super big companies.  


I avoid the 2 guys in a pea pod trying to get money easy instead of working.  


I won't buy from a company where I can't see recently a senior person out there somewhere contributing to tech, or writing about experiences in that company, or contributing on forums.


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## kunnu (Mar 18, 2016)

To many good suggestion,  going to copy all replies and read it in Kindle since reading on PC will be hurt eyes.


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## tmzVPS-Daniel (Mar 18, 2016)

Usually when i purchase any type of service, the first thing I check is the activity of it's employees on forums, blogs etc. This tells me that they care and are working every day to achieve their goals. 


- Daniel


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## kunnu (Mar 20, 2016)

VPSclub said:


> LLC + Premium domain + Custom website design + SSL + Excellent support + Live chat + Public WHOIS + Address and Phone number published on website + Competitive offers + Tutorials + Activity on top hosting forums



Wow, Only 2 lines but I learn a lot from this two lines that I need to improve Customer support, Live Chat, Address/Phone number and tutorials.


Activity on top hosting forum is done by most of hosting company who is old and understand that they need to be active in forums.


*More suggestion from various members will be very helpful so please give more advice.*


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## drmike (Mar 20, 2016)

kunnu said:


> Wow, Only 2 lines but I learn a lot from this two lines that I need to improve Customer support, Live Chat, Address/Phone number and tutorials.



Customer support is industry wide horror zone.


Live chat is indeed a good thing, but needs to be staffed and by someone who actually knows the inside of the business.  I am fond of hopping on live chat to ping providers.  Have had my share of laughable experiences with outsourced warm body controlling the chat.  Not so good and too often incorrect information or that dreaded 'everything is escalation' to management.


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## kunnu (Mar 21, 2016)

drmike said:


> Customer support is industry wide horror zone.
> 
> 
> Live chat is indeed a good thing, but needs to be staffed and by someone who actually knows the inside of the business.  I am fond of hopping on live chat to ping providers.  Have had my share of laughable experiences with outsourced warm body controlling the chat.  Not so good and too often incorrect information or that dreaded 'everything is escalation' to management.



I think "escalation" problem can be solved If you are one man company and handle everything by yourself and you have a good knowledge about server.


Some type of customer only hungry for a response like "We're working on your issue". It will satisfy them that someone is working on their problem and they will be happy If ticket resolved within few hours like 3 to 4 hours.


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## TurnkeyInternet (Mar 21, 2016)

Reputation and consistency (being around, with that reputation) are what help most when picking a stable long term partner to work with (hosting company, datacenter, colo provider, etc).  Big vs Small isn't so simple to quantify - big could mean 'soon to sell out to EIG or similar', and 'small' can mean 'gone overnight due to 1 man operation', but a long standing consistent reputation is the best thing to look for.


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## ViridWeb (Mar 22, 2016)

I think a provider who are in business in more than a year and with good communication skills and most important thing is the good service can attract new clients.


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## graeme (Mar 22, 2016)

@drmike why are you so sceptical about financials? There are legal consequences if they are materially inaccurate and I would expect them to be a reasonable indicator.


Maybe a lot of companies you have looked at do not have much business, or are shell companies etc?


I used to know guy who was a liar, and later a conman. He lied his way on to the Sunday Times rich list, got himself a black Amex card, a very expensive car, and spent lots of money on credit even though all he owned was a computer shop in a small town. He eventually fled the UK leaving a mountain of debt behind and claimed it was engineered my MI5. Judging by his FB page he is now delusional. In spite of all that, the accounts section of his website looked exactly like what you would expect from a smallish retail business - and this was before companies house made it easy to check accounts on the web.


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## fm7 (Mar 25, 2016)

> *Lydia Leong* (*) ‏@*cloudpundit*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
 


(*) VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, covering cloud computing, content delivery networks, hosting, and more.


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## KuJoe (Mar 25, 2016)

graeme said:


> SecureDragon: no address on the site, whois gives a PO Box number. Only two "founding members"  are mentioned by name, so, again, it is not clear whether or not the small team IS the two of them.



We have the PO Box address on our site, that's the only address we really have. My dad and I don't want to post our home addresses online because we piss off a lot of people being in the VPS business. It's only the 2 of us, there was 3 of us at one point but that didn't work out. We've never advertised that our team was more than the 2 of us.


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## graeme (Mar 25, 2016)

KuJoe said:


> We've never advertised that our team was more than the 2 of us.



I did not say you did.


I think you are probably doing as much as you can honestly do in the circumstances by way of information.


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## Hosterbox (Apr 6, 2016)

fm7 said:


> Short answer: Hosting is a lemon market
> 
> 
> Long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
> ...



Wow. Really interesting wiki!


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## drmike (Apr 7, 2016)

Gresham's Law in essence were coins of valuable metal that people literally removed or skimmed off the coinage some of the precious metal.  Making the coin weigh less and be worth less, not worthless like fiat money (that made from nothing of value).  


Skimmed coins caused distrust and for people to hold and horde full coins.  Same effect has taken place since 1970 with citizens holding silver coinage issued as money in general circulation due to silver no longer being mixed into US coins.



Hosterbox said:


> incentives exist for the seller to pass off low-quality goods as higher-quality ones



This is every industry, not exclusive to hosting.  Intangibles are a little more prone to this as no weights and measures and in the case of shared resources it's terrible to even measure a baseline to say if you are getting what you should (and subject to change at any time and for the worse).


No-trade theorem is what I think you meant.  That involves rational people  None of those here or in hosting 


I think the industry, much of it is operating on a self destruction toilet bowl swirl effect where many are the turd competing to actually be flushed before the cycle runs out.   Commodity good traders are why and what fuels the swirl.   I've said it MANY TIMES when you have nothing real to compete on (you are trading commodities), you run to competing on ever lower prices.  It is that simple.


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## fm7 (Apr 7, 2016)

I don't think hosting is a commodity


1. The production of a _commodity_ conforms to standards


2. _Commodity_ doesn't imply low quality nor low price


Respectfully, I insist that Hosting is a lemon market 



Aldryic C'boas said:


> What is wrong with you people. _(Yes, that was rhetorical)._  One looks at the VPS industry, and it's small wonder that people regard VPS providers as a joke; something just to utilize when you just have a couple bucks laying around.  _Companies_ filled with kids that couldn't write their own code if their lives depended on it - dependant on shoddy, repeatedly compromised systems like Solus to do the work they have no clue how to perform on their own.
> 
> 
> _Providers_ that continuously make asses of themselves publicly - basking in the attention of hate-filled drama threads, doing anything they can to make a sale; then having the audacity to cram clients onto overloaded, bargin-bin hardware and scream at them if they dare post any kind of public complaint.  *Children* that frequently 'employ' people that they have never met, and are oft school kids themselves, to be their _directors_ and _administrators_.  Operators that can't even be bothered to vet their own orders and have to rely on _unverified public input_ to make their decisions for them - if they even bother to do that.  Some of you clownshoes will accept any order that comes in if it means another payment.  It's absolutely embarrassing.  I don't even like to tell people that I work for a VPS company any more.  _"Oh, you're one of 'those'." "No, no, we're actually a real establishment." "Sure, that's what they all say."_


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## badpatrick (Apr 7, 2016)

I love small companies. I check forums for reviews. I check their site for spelling, broken links and contact information. Sometimes I make sure they are using legit licenses. Sustainable plans is always a big plus.


For reviews I have to remind myself how hard it can be to get someone to write a positive one


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## drmike (Apr 7, 2016)

fm7 said:


> I don't think hosting is a commodity
> 
> 
> 1. The production of a _commodity_ conforms to standards
> ...



Oh I entirely agree Hosting is indeed a major lemon market.  No disagreement on that 


Here's commodity definition from Merriam-Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/commodity


Full Definition of commodity
plural com·mod·i·ties
1
: an economic good: as
a : a product of agriculture or mining
b : an article of commerce especially when delivered for shipment <commodities futures>
c : a mass-produced unspecialized product <commodity chemicals> <commodity memory chips>
2
a : something useful or valued <that valuable commodity patience>; also : thing, entity
b : convenience, advantage
3
obsolete : quantity, lot
4
: a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (as brand name) other than price
5
: one that is subject to ready exchange or exploitation within a market <stars as individuals and as commodities of the film industry — Film Quarterly>


#4 in particular.  Generic good or service with great availability (i.e. lots of companies offering the very same product).  Typically leads to smaller profit margins (because they have nothing to compete on) and so price is the last thing to differentiate, so they all go a-slashing.  


Brand name gets tossed in there and it's an interesting one, because there are more premium brands who don't play in the commodity price slashing circlejerk.   Instead the develop identity that consumers know, they might also engineer their own solution stacks (panel, ready made distros, high availability, fail over, free addons, etc.).


#5 is applicable from different angles.   #1(c) is also highly relative to the commodification of products / services that is hosting.


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## fm7 (Apr 7, 2016)

What is a 'Commodity'



A commodity is a basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other commodities of the same type. Commodities are most often used as inputs in the production of other goods or services. The quality of a given commodity may differ slightly, but it is essentially uniform across producers. When they are traded on an exchange, commodities must also meet specified minimum standards, also known as a basis grade.


http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/commodity.asp


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## fm7 (Apr 7, 2016)

drmike said:


> #4 in particular.  Generic good or service with great availability (i.e. lots of companies offering the very same product).  Typically leads to smaller profit margins (because they have nothing to compete on and so price is the last thing to differentiate, so they all go a-slashing.



I would say it is a characteristic of mature markets. Definitely not commodity.


E.g.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_titanium_production


This is a *list of countries by titanium production* in 2010–2013 based on USGS figures. The production figures are for titanium sponge, units are in metric tons.


Rank


Country/Region


2010


2011


2012


2013


 


 World


137,000


186,000


200,000


222,000


1


 China


57,800


60,000


80,000


100,000


2


 Russia


25,800


40,000


44,000


45,000


3


 Japan


31,600


56,000


40,000


40,000


4


 Kazakhstan


14,500


20,700


25,000


27,000


5


 Ukraine


7,400


9,000


10,000


10,000


6


 India


00


00


00


500


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## drmike (Apr 7, 2016)

fm7 said:


> A commodity is a basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other commodities of the same type. Commodities are most often used as inputs in the production of other goods or services. The quality of a given commodity may differ slightly, but it is essentially uniform across producers.



Hosting is a commodity   Most of it at least.


It's interchangeable 'with other commodities of the same type'.  Have cPanel, we can migrate you / will to one of the 110k other hosting brands that supports it / has same software stack.  Use Solus?  Your API / interface tool you use in the other 110k hosting brands works here too. Comfortable with the management interface and process of ordering and post deployment, same tools, we all win together. Commodity.


Only knit pick here is uniformity of the commodity. Without being too much of a dweeb, I'd say that the product delivered is essentially uniform:


They have Intel CPUs

They claim to be enterprise 

They claim to be industry standard / leading (says the guy walking behind the pack)

They claim to have RAID

They use the same software (see above)

They are on blended bandwidth with multiple upstreams (performance of we'll ignore since it's incredibly variable even in the same DC  )

They are mostly in proper DCs with some security and proper environmental conditioning (some freaks violate the rules, but those are the slightly different)

They all claim / advert responsive support staffed by hordes of people just begging you to break their boredom by ticketing.  Operators are standing by - NOW!


Far more uniform about these companies than is different about them.  Very depthful and long term investment to prove / track their bad performance.  Which  just gets dismissed as noisy neighbor abuse and assumption that such is resolved and won't reappear again, today.  So much for you Mr. Troublemaker monitoring your hosting provider and being able to show how they go down more than a street walker with a drug habit.


That's big arse chunk of industry above.  Most wouldn't be in biz if the aforementioned software stacks didn't make it approachable.


Commodity for hosting companies stops when they drop some of that above stack as a start.  Other ways to break out also, like actually having support.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen companies boast about support then get hard tackled for what isn't even close to support (ticket hockey anyone, or do you prefer getting answers only during 80% or greater of full moon?).


Non commodity hosting companies for the most part aren't dipping down to insane giveaway prices.  They don't have to and can do basic math.  They have reputation usually, they are battle proven.  Those other guys, they are bushels of manure.   Commodity


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## fm7 (Apr 7, 2016)

LOL


Frankly ... I couldn't agree more. You won 


Great post!


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## fm7 (Apr 8, 2016)

drmike said:


> Non commodity hosting companies for the most part aren't dipping down to insane giveaway prices.  They don't have to and can do basic math.  They have reputation usually, they are battle proven.






> *Cloud Computing is NOT a Commodity*
> 
> 
> Timothy Chou | Lecturer at Stanford University
> ...





From the study (PDF,40p)


" ... we realized that_ because there is less control over the environment we cannot assume that every instance tested is identical at start up, over time and per location_. This causes great uncertainty about the capability to process workloads consistently."


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## drmike (Apr 8, 2016)

fm7 said:


> From the study (PDF,40p)
> 
> 
> " ... we realized that_ because there is less control over the environment we cannot assume that every instance tested is identical at start up, over time and per location_. This causes great uncertainty about the capability to process workloads consistently."



Great post   Keep it coming.  


Reading the edumacted paper rambling.  


I stand by this all being commodity, despite the academic knitpicks.  Remember it's such mentalities that mutates virtualized VPS into cloud and dances around the liberal definitions, in effect considering a Raspberry Pi potentially a cloud hosting thing, or any iOT device a cloud hosting thing.  It is boundless insanity.


Me, I remain a limited buying it audience for cloud and expect the fixings and a good dog show to buy it or belief that such is actually cloud.  Includes mature API, mature documentation with working code samples, actual community, ideally customer support that is more useful than most people are accustom to.


If a cloud company meets my standards they would also break out of being commodity in some additional manners.  Doesn't mean they are entirely non-commodity even then, just means on the spine of the matter dancing about.  But in clarity, in fairness, if someone has a redundant HA installation with NAS/SAN as the base of their buildout it's today a tier above most of the market and the commodity Xeon white box + CentOS + Solus = done.  However, what isn't commodity approach today, very well may be down the short and local road.  Tomorrow buildouts are almost out of necessity going to have to mature and change to compete in the market.  Being average, going along with the stream to get along, that's very commodity-like behavior.


Reading the first 11 pages of the PDF above, it's typical harping on performance of CPU bound tasks.  Commodity, the scripts all run on these, a box of equals, but some are less equal.  While AWS might be bottom of the pack, their tools and addon features might make it a far more superior eco system.  Inverse relationship there on raw computing is performance units per dollar, which starts to go the way of lowend* with this performs so much better for so much less (while totalling missing the features, elasticity (if it exists), etc.)... I can see baremetal-like simple boxes with direct storage (i.e. traditional VPS) being faster and also having less container shaping (lack of knowledge usually).  Of course they are faster, direct drive channel = fast, wide open cores = faster...  No IO wait to SAN, cheap to deploy... Just wait until one has to scale now, replicate now, do real near time or live-like time stuff --- it won't and cannot unless you pre-build all that yourself and create the scripts and logic to plumb it all together.


I think battles like this are comparing commodities again, just different commodities.


One is like corn (VPS)
Other is like flour (AWS, Google, more real cloud computing)


Both are related, both are product base same, will accomplish the same thing, one type is just more refined. Refined is fine, if you need it.  A Mercedes is a lovely vehicle, but a GM will do at much lower cost.


Oddly in this market, we have arguably a larger chunk of the market buy the Mercedes-like brands, at greater cost, with less performance raw computing wise and probably typically without actually utilizing the actual benefits / differentiators of those products.  Speaks to the buying habits of trained population.  Speaks to the power of branding and proper marketing (although I remain completely disgusted by Amazon and find their approach like most of these big competitors to be insanely dry, traditionally broken, unfriendly to n00bs, and artificially barrier reefed).


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## fm7 (Apr 8, 2016)

I'm not comfortable calling commodity a service sold by a bunch of me too companies but I certainly agree with your reasoning. 


Even though many people here still believe in product/service differentiation, I believe what really matters is the *company* be seen as distinct from all others.


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## drmike (Apr 8, 2016)

fm7 said:


> I'm not comfortable calling commodity a service sold by a bunch of me too companies but I certainly agree with your reasoning.
> 
> 
> Even though many people here still believe in product/service differentiation, I believe what really matters is the *company* be seen as distinct from all others.



Oh I get parts of your anti-commodity truth in labeling 


Fact is virtual services never traditionally have been viewed as commodities.   In financial sense commodities are under various weights and measures and often transacted on financial markets (mainly to wreck the wealth generation of agriculture and create added inflation if anything).


VPS is not, but with things like OnApps Federation marketplace this moves more towards that.  Also the default level of $10 per GB of of RAM is pretty much a set point DO really parked hard.


Company differentiators are indeed key.


@fm7 what companies, be they cloud or otherwise, in the hosting industry, strike you as distinct brands?


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## fm7 (Apr 8, 2016)

drmike said:


> Oh I get parts of your anti-commodity truth in labeling



Agreed. 



drmike said:


> @fm7 what companies, be they cloud or otherwise, in the hosting industry, strike you as distinct brands?



Fortune 500: IBM, Microsoft, Oracle


CDN: Akamai


SMB: Rackspace


Startup: Amazon


Developer: Linode


Consumer: Apple, Google


For the record, I think VMware vSphere is the best virtualization solution and Azure the best "public cloud".


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## cristipuc (Apr 25, 2016)

Small companies are ok because they try to fix any problems and provide low cost.


1. First impact, you need to see clear information and nice design without bugs, if you see problems on theirs website then you can expect problems for provided services.


2. Second, search for reviews and create your own opinion about them, any companies can have some negative feedback's but depends about how much true is there.


3. Buy a Small Package, also see if any weekly packages are available ( this is a plus, because you can test it for a week and you should not expect any refund,  )


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## RombelIrk (Aug 5, 2016)

Small companies are good only if you're planning a small project, like a promo site or blog. If you need a hosting for any commercial activity, it's better to address to well-known, time-proved providers, even if they provide a higher cost. I'd rather pay some extra money to avoid (or to minimize risk of) any possible issues at the provider's side in future, so that I could do the business in comfort.


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## graeme (Aug 5, 2016)

I have to disagree with @RombelIrk. Big providers are not necessarily safer - if an AWS server failure takes your VPS down  it is just as down as if a small providers server fails. In fact, AWS may be less bothered about a single instance failing because they are primarily catering to people who design systems with no single point of failure.

*Good* small providers tend to provider better customer service to small customers (which is most businesses). If you are not large enough for running your own data centre to be a viable alternative, you are a small customer as far as the big providers are concerned.

@fm7 those are a list of major global brands. There are also strong national brands (in every country) and brands that are strong in particular markets.


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## buildmyblock (Oct 19, 2016)

being in the hosting industry before ive had a few key things ive picked up on


first thing is it takes time your going to loose alot of money before making a profit but clients like to see established business's and also like to see how they have handled upset clients always respond to negative reviews or feedback even if its on a forum google your business name and find any possible signs of negativity and try to correct it 


also a professional looking website noone is going to buy from someone that just sticks up any old page make it look unique and also integrate with your billing system 


from my experience ive had alot of clients come on livechat questioning the host servers configuration always be willing to share information to clients about your hardware this makes them trust you more that your not keeping it a secret


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## copperhost (Nov 23, 2016)

I put question then answer below to each question.
 



If you are a customer then how and why you will trust on a small hosting company?


- If website functions properly and has phone number and has a professional look then I can trust.


Do you prefer big company or small company? I don't like big company for many reason.


- small because most of time they care about keeping customers and to give good customer service


where as alot of times with big companies the employees don't care at all.


1. Why new visitor will trust on your company?


- same answer as above "If website functions properly and has phone number and has a professional look then I can trust."


2. How can you increase trust, what you need to do?


- To be on top of customer service.


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## kunnu (Dec 9, 2016)

cristipuc said:


> Small companies are ok because they try to fix any problems and provide low cost.
> 
> 
> 3. Buy a Small Package, also see if any weekly packages are available ( this is a plus, because you can test it for a week and you should not expect any refund,  )



Wow, Weekly plan is a really great idea. Thanks. I will work on it.



copperhost said:


> I put question then answer below to each question.
> 
> 
> 
> - If website functions properly and* has phone number *and has a professional look then I can trust.



I will add a phone number for increasing trust. Its a really nice and I will also check alternative option.


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## farhanideas (Jun 8, 2017)

You must give good support before sale and provide demo for checking which help to get trust of that customer on your website


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## SGraf (Mar 19, 2021)

> 1. Why new visitor will trust on your company?
Its not about just "getting trust" so that people purchase stuff.
Provide a solid service,preferably something unique and if you keep doing good work, customers will find you 

If you just provide the same thing everyone tries to do, chances are you are going to be unhappy and eventually quit.
(if you get there, drop me a mail, i'm happy to take some of that burden off your hands)

2. How can you increase trust, what you need to do?
See #1 you are focused too much the model 

get trust=> sell products

instead focus on 

provide a unique/niece service at good quality => help people find you


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## Host4Biz (Mar 25, 2021)

I think that worth to be honest with clients and do not oversell. 
Doing your best every day will help to gather good results.


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## HostMines (Mar 25, 2021)

I think you should try small companies if you have a small/ medium size website so save your web hosting cost on unlimited plans.
sometimes big companies are costly to you because they pay heavy affiliate commission upto $100 per signup.

It's better to choose a small host in this case and you will also get personal attention when support is needed.


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## visualwebtechnologies (Apr 13, 2022)

Small and medium business i prefer


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## Jack134 (Jul 5, 2022)

It depends on trusted website reviews. How your services good features provide to customers.


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## saqibbbutt (Jul 5, 2022)

Just do quality work, stand behind your service and the trust will come.
Home


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