All the time I see people posting in marketing forms “Who is the Best Webhost”. Then the comments all start flying in from people who are stating opinion based not on experience, but on some kind of affiliate incentive.

I’ve used more than a dozen hosts in the past 10 years running my business. LunarPages, HostGator, IPowerWeb, Host Excellence, and many more I can’t ever remember the names of.

Why did I try so many hosts? Because you can’t know how good a web hosting business really is until you try them. And you should keep this in mind as you are looking for your own host for yoru projects. I always choose the short term… even pay more, because in the end it costs less. So if you have to commit to a year long contract to get the special $4.95 month rate I’d recommend skipping them. Choose the 1 month plan, and don’t commit all your sites to that host until you know that you will be happy with their service. It’s very time consuming to move sites from one host to the next.

I’ve experienced everything from hosts being down due to ice storms, hurricanes, and power outages, to reasons they simpley never explained. I’ve experienced some of the worst customer service you can imagine – passwords changed without my consent, sites becoming corrupted and not restored, extremely slow service; so slow my sites wouldn’t even load.

So can you trust me? That’s up to you. You don’t know me so why would you? You shouldn’t trust me, you should read what I say and check things out for yourself. I know a lot about Hosting and a lot about Technical Issues related to hosting. But I’ve made plenty of mistakes trusting the marketing literature of Web Hosts.

So it doesn’t matter if you trust me or not. What I am going to say about Hosting doesn’t require your trust, because it’s completely verifiable by visiting and reading the user forms of the host themselves. And think about this… if a huge website uses a particular host and seems to always be fast, always be up and running, and everyone seems happy with the service … well can you trust them then?

There are so many pitfalls that are not “advertised” to the consumer. All you see is things like “unlimited disc space”, “unlimited bandwidth”, “$4.95 per month” and none of them are true. There is always a catch. People who are asking who is the “Best Web Host” have no idea what is important in a hosting relationship. Uptime guarantees mean almost nothing because there is almost never a way to prove that your site being down is their fault. What are you going to do sue them? For what? $10 or a fraction thereof for the time your site is down?

What you really need in a web host goes beyond just bandwidth, disc space, and uptime guarantees. What you need in a web host is reliability and service and a commitment to not overselling the shared space. The slower your website loads the less opportunity to earn money from your site. People will not hang around to browse slow loading sites. If you are serious about making money in your online business then you need a business host that understands business. You need a host that allocates enough resources to keep your website running at optimum speed all the time.

Too many hosts oversell their services, then cram as many people as possible on the same server and same server bandwidth pipe. What happens is “bottlenecks”… one site starts using resources and this in effect “steals” from the other sites. A poor solution is to penalize the host using excessive resource by shutting them down. It only sounds like a solution on the surface, and it seems a good solution until you realize it’s your site that has been shut down because a few too many people visited all at once.

If you want a real host that values business that offers quality services for a fair price I recommend you visit Rochen and read what their customers have to say.

The bottom line is this… when you are ready for business class hosting with a real host that has the very best equipment and pipeline direct to the internet then you are ready for Rochen Hosting. If you are not then go ahead and take the advice of whomever is pitching some host to make a profit. You’ll find that the better hosts don’t need affiliate programs because their services sell themselves through word of mouth.

Quick Overview of Rochen Webhosting Features

Rochen has all of their servers located in Dallas, Texas in the United States at a truly fantastic facility called Colo4Dallas and a brand new facility near London, England with a highly respected provider called Gyron Internet.

The Colo4Dallas facility provides connections to 10 different providers: Level 3 Communications, AT&T, Time Warner Telecom, XO Communications, Qwest, Cogent, Reliance Globalcom, AboveNet, Alpheus and FiberLight. And there are no monthly fees for cross-connects to your cabinets.

From a purely Geographical Standpoint Dallas is probably the safest place to host in the United States – no Hurricanes, no Earthquakes, No Floods, nothing to take down a facility by an act of nature.

As is the case in the US with our UK hosting setup Rochen will own outright all of the servers and network switches we deploy, allowing us full end-to-end control over the service. Rochen very much focuses on “performance hosting” so this type of control is critical. That’s right when you deal with Rochen Web Hosting you are dealing DIRECTLY with the people who own the equipment.

Rochen has no outstanding debt. No worries about them packing up tomorrow and leaving you out in the cold.

The new UK data centre uses the latest enclosed hot isle technology allowing for increased density per square foot and reduced environmental impact in line with our green hosting initiatives. All aspects of the new facility including connectivity, cooling and power are fully redundant to a minimum of N+1 or 2N standards. We will maintain redundant network drops using Cisco’s Hot-Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) to all cabinets (as we do in the US already) and will maintain dual Power Supply Units (PSUs) in every server connected to separate and fully redundant Power Distribution Units (PDUs) with A+B circuits.

Who you choose for your web hosting solution is obvously up to you, for me and my business I depend on reliability and speed. My sites are never down and if I have a problem I always get prompt professional courteous replies. And here is the real kicker it doesn’t cost more to use a quality host than a run of the mill host. Think about what your business is worth and what your time is worth and then decide who has the Best Web Hosting option that suits your needs.

It doesn't cost any more to go with a quality web host, in fact it costs a lot less. But knowing who is a quality host and who is just blowing steam with marketing fluff is not as easy as you would think. My views are based on experience.