Posted by Iowadawg on
March 30, 2009
This is a guest post by Mr. Atlanta Locksmith
I saw a huge boost in my Atlanta locksmith business after my website went live about 4 months ago. Everything was going great - I was getting some great business from the site! That is until a few weeks ago…I noticed business seemed to be slacking off, well my contact form emails at least. So I started to investigate and discovered that my website was loading slowly, timing out and was even totally unavailable at times.
That explained where the customers went. When my website stopped working correctly, I started to fall down the search engine rankings I worked so hard to get. I don’t know if it was 100% the slow loading, but something definitely pushed me off the first page in Google.
I called Godaddy to explain the problem, and they were very polite and helpful on the phone. I was told they would look into the problem immediately to have it resolved right away. I waited for a bit and then starting testing the site again – only to have it time out on me again. I waited a few more hours and tried multiple times to get it to load normally. Same deal.
This was certainly not my definition of “resolved right away.” Rather irritated at this point, I called Godaddy back and spoke to someone else who was very polite, but didn’t seem capable of giving me a straight answer. I thought I was getting a great deal with this host – respectable company with a low price, but now I’m rather certain that I’m getting what I paid for. Low price = low priority for service.
Since then I’ve switched to a much better company – Webtech Services. They cost a little more, but they don’t give me the lip service I got with Godaddy. They’re also a small company based in Atlanta, so I can reach out and touch (or if my site is down, grab) them if need be. They also cover Atlanta SEO work!
Just remember, when you buy cheap hosting, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. So what if you spend a couple bucks a month? Your entire online presence depends on your site being available. No amount of money saved is worth leaving money on the table, and being aggravated by cheap companies that don’t give a crap about you.
Make sure you consider that next time you’re finding the cheapest hosting price.