At one point in time or another, during the course of the career of a webmaster they are going to have to take on the task of changing web hosts. The reasons for this are many and ultimately determined by the individual webmaster and can range from the current host providing poor service to the need to upsize.
Changing the current hardware or software platform is much more painless than changing hosting company. It doesn’t matter whether you own your own hardware that is co-located in a datacenter or you are planning to lease a dedicated server owned by a large hosting firm, the decision to swap hardware or software systems in place will depend upon the cost benefit study.
Though the swapping will adversely affect the short-run uptime stats, it will eventually be inescapable as hardware utilization approaches the maximum limit owing to your website’s growth and expandability.
If you are tired of hearing lame excuses from your existing web host for network outages, unfortunately which is quite a common case, then maybe it is time for you to consider changing the web host you’re doing business with.
For many, the decision to switch web hosts is an emotional one. And though it’s not entirely wrong to be led away with actions based on emotions, it’s equally important to stay as calm as possible and protect your own interest.
Minor network outages – unless they get very frequent – are normal part of a hosting company’s operation and you may face the same issue anywhere you move out to. However, there’s a limit to outages and if it begins to affect your web site performance; you should start planning the change.
This deciding ‘outages limit’ factor should not be based on mere emotional perception but should be backed by factual figures. Either ask your hosting provider to provide you a historic uptime record furnishing details of why downtime is happening more frequent recently or if you are not satisfied with stats provided by the hosting firm, start monitoring their server via an unbiased 3rd party.
Apart from the technical problems, you may encounter issues with the human expertise of your hosting company. Even if you are self-managing your servers and carrying out all website maintenance tasks on your own, you’ll still need to contact someone in the hosting company every now and then.
There have to be people actually keeping an eye on your servers monitoring the overall situation proactively and that’s what really differentiates one hosting company from the other.
If you’ve decided for whatever reason that it’s time to move on. Don’t be afraid to do so as more often than not and by planning properly, changing web hosts can be a rather simple process.
Ultimately, you alone will be the one to decide what has put you over the edge in regards to whether or not you make a move. If you’ve decided that enough is enough, don’t worry, changing web hosts is typically a fairly simple procedure and can be done in most cases with little affect on your web site or sites.
