What Bloggers Think of Their Hosts

Barely a week ago I attended OpenCamp Dallas 2010, my talk there was on copyright and licensing issues but I also spent a great deal of time talking to other bloggers about an issue close to my heart: their hosting.

With Neospire Hosting and Layered Tech being a major sponsor of the event, it was a difficult topic to avoid but one that actually produced some of the best conversations of the evening.

So what did the bloggers there think of their current hosting situation? I had dozens of conversations over the days I was there and learned a great deal. However, some of the answers, quite frankly, surprised me.

The Best Kind of Hosting

When I asked bloggers what they thought the best kind of hosting was for a blog, they, predictably, agreed the choice had to be based on the specific needs of the site. But beyond that, there was very little agreement on the best kind of hosting for a modest blog mostly because everyone I talked to was focused on the drawbacks, both perceived and real, of the various hosting types.

Shared Hosting: Virtually no one took shared hosting seriously, saying it couldn’t handle traffic spikes or more than a few visitors at a time. However. several did admit that they use shared hosting plans, claiming that they had found a host that was “different”.
Cloud/Grid: Very few that I spoke with were on cloud or grid plans but there was a lot of uncertainty about these plans as issues of higher cost and security seemed to keep bloggers from considering them.
VPS: Many bloggers were on VPSes but complained that VPS accounts felt slow and moved sluggishly. Many felt that they were overpriced and were questioning if it was worth it.
Dedicated: No one I spoke with was on a dedicated server, at least no one running just a blog. It was generally viewed as overkill and unnecessary for a blog and as an extremely expensive option. Those who hosted blogs on dedicated servers also hosted something else on the server, such as a Web application that required more power.

In short, no one felt that any of the hosting types really met all of the needs and concerns of a blogger. Shared was too small and too prone to collapse, dedicated servers were seen as overkill and VPS solutions as well as Cloud accounts came with perceived drawbacks that made bloggers dislike them, even if they begrudgingly used them.

But despite all of the gripes and concerns, there was a strangely upbeat quality to these conversations, likely because bloggers were almost too happy to talk about who they are hosting with now.

How Bloggers Feel About Current Host

For all of the dissatisfaction those I spoke with had about the current hosting landscape, most were very happy with their current host and went out of their way to show why their host was different and didn’t fit into the paradigm that they disliked so much.

For example, several people mentioned that shared hosting couldn’t survive traffic spikes but told tales about how their host had. Likewise, others claimed to be on a VPS that was fast and peppy, unlike every other they had tried.

This loyalty often bordered on fanaticism. Though it might not be as public a love as Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux, the loyalty was just as strong, even getting some bloggers heated when others mentioned having had problems at a particular host.

All in all, only one person I spoke with was even considering leaving their current host and he wasn’t in any particular hurry to make the move and wasn’t sure he would have any better luck elsewhere.

What Bloggers Think About Past Hosts

However, for all of the praise and love bloggers heaped on their current hosts, they threw scorn and hatred at their previous ones. Nearly every blogger had war stories about hosting arrangements gone bad and it didn’t take much prying to get them to tell them.

The stories could broadly be broken down into two categories:

Stories of hosts that were sour from day one and they only stayed a few months/weeks with.
Hosts that were once great but, for one reason or another the relationship went sour in a dramatic way.

The causes of the bad relationships were varied. Downtime was the most common probably but site sluggishness and even billing issues were repeatedly mentioned. One thing that wasn’t given as a reason for leaving was support issues (though it probably played a big role in the aforementioned downtime and sluggishness issues).

All in all though, there seemed to be a pretty clear picture of how this group of bloggers approached hosting and it was one with several disjunctive views.

Bottom Line

The big picture was a complex one but had five great truths that I think every host should take away:

Bloggers are not happy with the overall hosting landscape, feeling that there are few good options out there.
Bloggers are very happy with their current host, thinking them to be an exception and they are fiercely loyal.
However, that loyalty is fickle and can be lost very easily, in just one or two incidents.
Once that loyalty is lost, it is replaced by an equal amount of hatred and anger.
That anger seems to stay for a very long time and isn’t forgotten, even after several years.

In short, hosting companies have to work hard to earn the trust of a blogger and then even harder to keep it. Simply put, once it is lost it is gone for good and becomes downright poisonous.

In the end, there is a lot of opportunity for Web hosts if they can break the paradigm, or at least appear to. However, this clearly illustrates why hosting reviews and word-of-mouth advertising is so important.

Simply put, there is little trust of the hosting industry at large and most seem to be looking for exceptions to the perceived rules. Hosting advertising doesn’t come from a very strong position of trust and that makes it very difficult to earn new customers without an army of happy ones to advertise for you.

Basically, if you’re a host, your customers are your best friends and, if something goes wrong, your worst enemies. Always keep that in mind.Keep up with posts like this by subscribing to our RSS feed, or following @WhoIsHosting on Twitter.